Yesterday's Magic (9 page)

She broke off into cackling laughter. “Never thought I’d end up this maternal. Ha! There even used to be stories about me eating children. I never did—well, not much, anyway. But I kind of fell into this group-mother role, and you got to do what you got to do. Ah, here we are, in the dining hall. It’s between mealtimes, so there’s lots of room. I know you’re in a hurry, but you got to eat and we got to talk.” She motioned them to seats at long tables and bustled off to see about their food.

“
We
have got to talk?” Welly muttered as they sat on the long smooth bench. “Where does the
we
come in?”

Merlin nodded. “Talks a lot, but I guess she doesn’t get outside visitors much.”

Troll was sitting on top of the long table tapping its smooth whitish surface when Baba came back. With her were several translucent people carrying a big steaming bowl of something gray. Others timidly placed a large pot of something red in front of Blanche, who had tucked herself into a corner of the dining hall.

Baba handed out spoons and smaller eating bowls to her guests. “Eat up. Mushrooms. We grow lots of different types here. Even before the Devastation, it was a big local crop. They do well underground. Ah, here’s little Ivan. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

Just
let
him talk,
Welly thought as he spooned a quivering gray mushroom into his mouth. He bit down cautiously. It was slimy but tasted rich and nutty. He scooped more into his own bowl.

The young boy walking toward them was short with the same see-through skin as the others and with eyes almost as big as Troll’s. He looked very nervous and shy.

“Come on, boy,” Baba said. “Don’t freak out. These are special guests. Tell them what you heard. You know—in your mind.”

The boy sat at the table and without looking up said, “I’d heard that voice a few times before, sort of faint and far away. But a couple days ago it was real loud. It hurt my head.”

He lapsed into silence until Merlin prompted, “And what did the voice say?”

“That she’d been kidnapped from someplace foreign and didn’t know where she was. She wasn’t hurt, but she was scared. That’s all. I’m not very good at this.”

“Yes, you are,” Merlin said encouragingly. “You’re miraculous. Can you reach her again?”

“I don’t know.”

“Try, boy,” Baba urged. “It’s important.”

“Be like hero in old stories,” Troll offered.

Ivan’s smile spread until it was almost as wide as Troll’s. “Like the stories Baba tells us?”

The old woman grinned, her eyes almost disappearing among the wrinkles of her face. “Like the Prince saving Vassalissa the Beautiful.”

Nodding, Ivan crawled onto the table, curled up beside Troll, and closed his eyes. For a while, they watched the boy apparently sleeping. Then Baba motioned for them to eat their mushrooms and ignore him.

Troll was just serving himself a third helping when the boy abruptly sat up. Startled, Troll dropped the ladle, splattering the others with mushrooms. Ignoring this, they all concentrated on Ivan. Eyes wide, he huddled there trembling.

“Well?” Baba snapped impatiently. “Did you reach her?”

Troll wrapped an arm around the boy. The shivering subsided and Ivan nodded. “She’s
very
happy you weren’t killed. I described who was here and she is even happier. She’s afraid she’s being taken away someplace else soon. She thinks the woman has some scary plans for her. She wants me to tell you that you should go back home and forget about her. She says that just knowing you’re alive makes it easier for her to deal with whatever Morgan is planning.”

Ivan closed his eyes a moment, then looked directly at Merlin. “But I don’t think she means it. Not deep down.”

Merlin stood up. “Whether she means it or not, we’re going after her. Now!”

With a clawlike hand, Baba grabbed his sleeve and yanked him down. “No, you’re not. Sleep first. It’s still night out there, and that’s when the truly nasty Otherworld types that hang out here are worst. I don’t think even a famous foreign wizard like you could take them all on.”

“But…,” Merlin began. Welly poked him and pointed toward Blanche. The dragon was fast asleep, her head in the empty bowl, each snore filling it with little puffs of smoke.

“All right,” Merlin said reluctantly. “We could all use some rest. But only until dawn. We can’t let Morgan spirit Heather away without a fight—or a clue where they’re going.”

“Judging by the performance tonight,” Baba observed, “I’d say you need some sneakier tactics. But I haven’t lived like a mole for centuries without developing a few pesky tricks. I think we can get you a lot closer to your friend than you managed on your own. Get some sleep. I’ll work on it.”

The travelers wanted to stay together, so accommodations were found for them all in an empty storeroom large enough to house even a dragon. Blanche grumbled fiercely when they awakened her to move, but she’d no sooner lain down again than she was asleep.

Merlin was certain he’d never manage to sleep. Lying down, he clutched the smooth carved staff, sensing it would somehow make him feel close to its maker. At least he could pass the time thinking of her. But soon he slipped into blackness and jumbled dreams.

Others needed him, cried for his help, but he could do nothing. Heather, wrapped in fear. Arthur, embattled by enemies, hopelessly outnumbered. They both called for him, but he was trapped in darkness. The darkness became a cave. Enchanted in the heart of a mountain, voices cried to him for centuries, but he could not answer. Voices died away as their speakers turned to dust, forgotten except by him. But one voice remained. One taunting laughing voice. Morgan Le Fay knew she was winning. Just as Merlin knew he must not let her win.

U
PWARD

R
oused a few hours later from his troubled sleep, Merlin felt only vaguely refreshed. Suddenly remembered purpose brought him to his feet. He joined ever-chattering Baba in rousing the others. Welly groaned, Troll whined, and Blanche snorted in a way that threatened to incinerate them all. But eventually they stumbled from the room, led by several guards with glowing skulls and the seemingly tireless Baba.

“No time like the lovely predawn to start adventures,” she said cheerily. “I can’t wait till I can take my own people up to see a real dawn again. Ah, well, I’m nothing if not patient. Now, where I’m taking you is not the scenic route. There were passages that the makers of this place started building, then abandoned. Maybe they ran out of money; maybe the wars caught up with them before they were finished. Early on, we walled them off—partly because they were clammy and yucky and partly because they are just too close to the old castle and all the evil that seeps from there. But because they
do
lead close to the castle, they’re a good route for you now.”

Merlin nodded. “If we can sneak into the place, I think I can find where she’s being held. The closer we get, the more I sense her nearness.”

They turned several corners, and suddenly the wide corridor came to an end. In front of them was a wall of closely packed rubble, slabs of broken concrete mixed with soil, twisted metal furniture, and odd machinery. Wires coiled out of broken metal boxes like severed blood vessels.

“Just shift some of this garbage away,” Baba said, “and you’re into the unfinished parts.” She looked at Merlin appraisingly. “Your magic or mine, boy? Or do we let the dragon do the heavy lifting?”

“I don’t lift,” Blanche snarled. “I smash. Stand aside, punies!”

The others scrambled away as the dragon smashed her massive tailquarters against the makeshift wall. It sagged, and a few chunks of concrete and rusted metal fell away. Another blow and the whole structure collapsed. The dust cleared to show a ragged hole large enough for even the dragon to pass through.

Baba stepped forward and peered into the darkness. “Haven’t been in here for centuries. I doubt it’s gotten a lick better since it was walled off. Oh, well, there’s no adventure without a little danger.”

She turned to the small group of her guards that had accompanied them. They clustered together looking less than eager for adventure. “Here, give our guests some lights. And you stay here and guard this opening till I come back. We don’t want anything nasty slipping through.”

As she climbed through the gap, glowing skull upraised, additional skulls were passed out to the others. Welly took his reluctantly, wishing he somehow didn’t have to touch it. But even its grisly glowing face was better than the thick blackness beyond. Blanche took a skull in one clawed foot and examined it contemptuously. Then she clambered through the gap in the wall, tossed the skull onto the floor, and kicked it ahead of her down the passage like a football. Her glowing nostrils provided all the light she needed, but the game was entertaining.

Troll scampered on ahead, raising his skull here and there to examine the walls. They were straight and featureless except for damp patches of moss and pale glowing fungi. Occasional wispy shadows flitted on ahead of their advancing lights, but the shadow-casters never showed themselves.

Baba and Merlin walked together while the witch eagerly imparted a torrent of magical advice. After a lecture on potions against radiation sickness and how to ward off vampire bats, she turned to the subject of Morgan.

“Of course, I don’t know as much about her as I should. Whenever she shows up, we try not to draw her attention. Not that
I
wouldn’t be a match for her, mind…. Well, maybe she’s just a
teeny
bit above my league. But my folks here would be easy targets for her shenanigans and for her horrid Otherworld friends.”

“Have you any advice for how to deal with her?” Merlin managed to squeeze in.

“Basically, my advice is
not
to deal with her. But that’s not an option for you, is it? This castle of hers isn’t really hers, of course, but she’s been using it on and off for centuries, since well before the Devastation anyway. Its original owner was a great pal of hers. So creatures who like her style are all over the place. And of course, there are all sorts of mutants. Radiation was quite severe in this part of the world. Really amazing what it did to some things.”

Their little party had been walking for some time down the dark passage, their footfalls echoing hollowly off the damp walls. With every step, the air seemed to get colder and heavier. And the smell of stale mildew increased. At last the passage ran into a rough wall of natural stone.

“End of the line,” Baba said briskly, “unless you want to blast your way through miles of solid rock. I’m sure, of course, Madam Dragon, you could make quite a dent, but fortunately you don’t have to. We’re right under the old castle here, and the passage’s ceiling is quite thin in this spot.”

Merlin gazed up at the ceiling. “Yes, I can feel it is. Are you coming farther with us?”

Baba sighed. “No, dear boy, I fear I cannot. How I’d love to get a crack at some real adventure again. But my pathetic people here would be lost if I go off adventuring and get myself reduced to a quivering blob of magicked gunk. I confess, my magic’s rather the provincial kind. Good for frightening babies and making houses walk on chicken legs, but I’m no match for Morgan and her ilk. I wish you the best, though. It’s heartening to know there are others in the world I might actually
like.
Maybe we can keep in touch—even get together once this world straightens itself out a bit. Ta-ta!”

Briskly she shook everybody’s hand or claw, and in a flurry of flowered shawls and skirts, Baba bustled down the hall. Merlin watched her light shrink to a gray dot and vanish. Then he sighed and turned his attention back to the corridor ceiling.

“Baba’s right,” he said, putting down his glowing skull and igniting a brighter purple light along his staff. “The rock is very thin here, and there’s the base of some large structure just beyond it. All we have to do is break through.”

“Right,” Blanche said, drawing in a deep breath.

“No! No blowtorch here,” Merlin cried. “We need a little more subtlety.”

“Suit yourself, boy,” she said, letting smoke dribble unused from her lips. “I’m just along for the mindless-brawn role, it seems.”

When Troll tried to comfort her, she moodily sent him away coughing in a cloud of smoke.

Flipping his staff around, Merlin raised the pointed end to the ceiling. A narrow purple beam of light shot up and slowly etched a pencil-thin circle in the stone. The large circle completed itself, but nothing happened. Reversing his staff, Merlin impatiently battered the circular section with a broad purple beam. The rock shivered, cracked, and broke loose, smashing to the floor with a thunderous boom and an explosion of dust.

“Oh, master of subtlety you are,” Blanche snorted.

Chagrined, Merlin waited until silence and dust settled again. Nothing seemed to move beyond the opening. He hoped they were far away from the parts of the castle where anything lived that could hear them.

Welly stared into the opened darkness ten feet over their heads. The feeble glow from their skulls didn’t chip into it. “Now what?”

“You people would be hopeless without me,” Blanche snapped. She grabbed Welly with a clawed foreleg and abruptly lifted him through the opening. Troll and Merlin followed; then, with a jump and a sculling of her wings, Blanche joined them, barely managing to squeeze herself through the hole.

“You might have made it a little bigger,” she snarled at Merlin. “Just be glad you have a young lithe dragon like me to work with. Though, underfed as I’ve been since joining you, I’ll be lucky to ever be a big strapping adult.”

“Chronic complainers often don’t survive to adulthood either,” Merlin grumbled as he led the group away from where the floor was ominously creaking around the hole.

Merlin and Blanche had left their skulls below, but the light from the remaining two and from Merlin’s staff showed they were in a large stone vaulted room, dark and damp and empty. A small window high in one wall let in a thin sliver of predawn light. At the far end of the space, a narrow flight of stairs was carved into the wall, disappearing through a narrow opening at the top.

“Looks like you’ll have to stay down here, Blanche,” Merlin said. “I’m sorry; I know you can be subtle, but you’re a little large for sneaking around castle passageways.”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll just catch up on my rudely interrupted sleep.”

Welly frowned. “Don’t sleep so hard you can’t hear us if we need you.”

“Ignorant human. Dragons sleep with one eye and both ears open—to guard their treasure.
Not
that I’ve been given any chance to gather treasure on this adventure.”

Leaving her grumbling, Merlin, Welly, and Troll headed for the stairs. They were steep and had no railing. Merlin and Troll had no trouble, but Welly’s fear rose with every step. He pressed himself so close to the wall he scraped off rock dust, but he still felt he was teetering on the edge.

At last the stairs opened into another, smaller room. The vaulted stone ceiling was lower, and the main furniture seemed to be curtains of cobwebs. Seeing no doors or further stairs, Merlin stood in silence a moment, trying to locate the direction where he felt Heather to be. Then he led them to the right. The hanging cobwebs were thick and sticky. The more they pushed through, the more the clinging whiteness seemed to wrap around them. Hearing a squeal behind him, Merlin spun around and saw Troll almost totally cocooned in white. Welly, struggling to free his sword, wasn’t much better off.

Looking down, Merlin saw white tendrils spreading over his own body, wrapping themselves around his legs and chest. Clutching at his sword, he fought to pull it loose from the scabbard, then slashed at the smothering webs. The Eldritch blade sliced through them. Like smoke, the torn webs writhed and curled away. Freeing himself, Merlin staggered to Welly and sliced the webs from his friend’s sword arm. Next he carefully cut loose the struggling troll. The webs didn’t give up but kept flapping and slithering toward them.

“Better run!” Merlin called, and led the way, slashing whiteness as he went.

After steady hacking, they broke free. The vault ahead of them was clear of cobwebs. Troll had lost his skull in the struggle, but by Welly’s light and the glow from Merlin’s staff, they saw that the only objects in the space ahead of them were several large rectangular stone boxes. Most were set back in shadowy niches, but as they passed close to one, Welly studied it and shivered. Its stone lid was partly shoved away. Inside, he glimpsed a scatter of brittle white bones.

Behind him, Troll groaned. “No like this place. Want to be somewhere else.”

Welly tried to sound brave and comforting, though his voice broke. “The floor’s slanting up, so we’re headed somewhere else.” Then he hurried to be a little closer to Merlin. “But, Earl, those were really humongous spiderwebs. And where there are spiderwebs…”

“There are usually spiders,” Merlin finished for him. “And they’re here too. I can sense them. But they don’t like the light. Keep hold of that skull, and, Troll, keep up.”

Instantly Troll was nearly plastered to the back of Welly’s legs. “Small spiders nice and crunchy. Big ones creepy. These big?”

“Very,” Merlin said, gesturing into the darkness on their right. Two red eyes stared at them, disturbingly far from the floor. Welly took a hesitant step forward, thrusting his glowing skull toward the eyes. Briefly he saw a cluster of long hairy legs, a swollen belly, and a glint of fangs before the dog-sized creature scuttled back into the shadows.

Merlin increased the level of purple light glowing from his staff. “We seem to be safe enough in the light, but let’s get out of here.”

Welly had just opened his mouth to agree when he caught sight of something hanging on the ceiling above where the spider had been. A shapeless, sickly yellow glob. Suddenly with a slurping sound it dropped from the ceiling. Fierce hissing erupted. Their light showed a tangled mass of hairy legs and yellowish blob rolling over and over. Rolling their way.

The three spun around and quickly headed in the direction they’d been going. The floor was more steeply slanted now and slippery. Very slippery. Welly felt slickness under his boots. He leaped ahead, trying to find surer footing, but the floor was so slick he slid back. Flailing his arms, he took another step and fell. Facedown on the floor, he realized the stone was covered in slime. Rolling over, he was suddenly looking into a large face. Two eyes on stalks, a slit sharp-toothed mouth, and smooth, slimy yellow skin. A giant slug!

“Gross!” he squealed, and tried to sit up. The mouth split open and slime spewed out, thick yellowish putrid-smelling stuff, like the creature was endlessly blowing its nose at him. Welly gagged as the mucus covered his face. He reached up, trying to peel it away. More slime engulfed his hands, gluing them to his face. He flopped away like a fish, tried to stand, and again slid to the floor. Slime flowed over his legs, sticking them down.