Mystify the Magician Read online

  It had to be both or Keith couldn't come in. But if they were both open, that would be okay. Then the little psycho could come in, run through the gauntlet of arrows.

  Keith. Senna. It was Senna. Senna was Etain and Etain loved me, wanted me to save her.

  The gate. A fairy and a man on guard. Had to take out the fairy first. Take him by surprise, otherwise he'd be too fast. Then the man. The fairy, then the man.

  How? If I drew my sword wouldn't they freak? What was I supposed to do, take them both on? That wasn't me, man. Not me, man.

  Don't be afraid, Christopher, it's all going to be fine. Etain will be yours. Happy. Everything as it should be.

  The man was looking at me. Bored. A guard pulling late-night duty.

  "Hi," I said. "Hey, you're probably a real expert and me, I don't know anything about swords. What's the handle part thing here called, this part?"

  I drew my sword hesitantly, unsure, an amateur handling a complex tool. The soldier smiled, smug and superior. The fairy ignored us both.

  I drew and slammed the handle directly back into the fairy's face. Then I swung the blade in an arc, aiming for the man's neck, but he was quick.

  He jumped back and the blade sliced him across the chest, right through the leather jerkin, biting flesh and spraying blood.

  The fairy was staggered. The man just surprised. He was trying for his own sword. I kicked him where no man wants to be kicked. I swung my sword pommel again and caught him hard on the side of the head. Down went the Fiannan. I spun and stabbed at the fairy and the blade point hit bone. The fairy fell on his back and I could see he was out cold.

  "Let's see David do any better than that," I crowed, wishing Etain were there to see how well I'd done; man, she'd be proud.

  The gate's crossbar was heavy. Like a tree. I had to crouch under it and use my legs to lift. Slide it away. Slide and heave till it toppled off. It still blocked the left gate, but I'd be able to open the right door all right.

  I pulled with all my strength and the gate swung inward.

  Now, there, a big pulley holding the spooled rope. The rope taut up to the guide that led it to the drawbridge.

  "Who goes there?" a man's voice yelled from above, up on the wall.

  I swung my sword hard and sliced through the rope.

  "Alarm! Alarm! To the gate! Alarm!" A spear flew and nicked my left arm and stuck into the ground and the drawbridge didn't drop, it still stood, balanced. I ran straight at it, yelling, hit it with all my weight and bounced back.

  I landed on my back, winded. The drawbridge creaked and slowly, slowly, then faster, fell away. I rolled over, winded, on hands and knees, tried to stand, tried to get up, saw a rush of fairies rushing at me, zooming, blurring.

  Then behind me the sharp sounds of the old world. Pop.

  Pop. PopPopPopPop. Red flowers appeared in the fairies' chests and they fell.

  I turned, bleary, lost now that I'd done all I'd been told to do, confused. I caught a Doc Marten in the head.

  I was in the shower: "No!" Staggered back against the cool tile, rocked, uncomprehending. CNN Breaking News: Christopher bewitched by Senna. Christopher gets everyone killed.

  "No way, no way." I denied it, but no way to deny it.

  Everworld me was there with an update. Everworld me had been taken over by Senna, a wholly owned subsidiary.

  But not real-world Christopher. The fuzziness, the confusion, none of it af ected me now. Now I could see it al with perfect clarity.

  I had handed victory to Senna. She would kill us all. David and Jalil and April. And Goewynne and the king. And all the brave Fianna and the fairies and the druids, too.

  And Etain.

  I turned off the water, numb. What could I do? What had I done? What could I do now?

  I wrapped a towel around myself and ran for the phone. I grabbed it and dialed David's number. Ring. Ring.

  Someone picked it up. Not David. My brother picking up the extension.

  "Dammit, get the hell off the phone right now or I'll beat you till you can't walk!" I screamed, panicked, hysterical.

  I couldn't be the cause of all those deaths, no, no, I couldn't be the one, I couldn't make Etain die. Had to be some way.

  Ring. Ring.

  "Levin residence, talk to me."

  David!

  "It's Christopher."

  "Yeah?"

  "David. David, man. David, I..." All at once I was sobbing, unable to control my voice.

  "Calm down, Christopher. Take a breath."

  I took a breath. Took another. "I screwed everyone, David.

  Senna got to me. I opened the gate. Senna got to me. I let Keith into the castle, David."

  "What?"

  "David, man, they're in. They're in the castle."

  A long pause. Then, "Yeah, they are," David said. "Yeah.

  Something happened. I'm down, Christopher."

  David had just had his own breaking news. Everworld David was down, at least unconscious. Maybe dying. And now, thanks to my own recent close cal , we knew what for so long we'd wondered about: Death in Everworld was death all the way around.

  Call-waiting on David's line.

  "I better get that," he said grimly.

  He clicked over to the other line and I waited, trying to breathe, waiting to fade, waiting few death to reach me across the gap.

  A long wait. Then David was back.

  "That was Jalil. He was in and out. Unconscious, but then he thinks maybe he regained consciousness, he doesn't know for sure. You know how it is."

  "Yeah. Jesus, David. I'm sorry. She was there in my room. I thought she was Etain. I mean, she was Etain. She got to me."

  “I know how it is, Christopher. No one knows better than me. Jalil says it looks bad. He doesn't know what happened to either of us. Its chaos over there."

  "April?"

  "She hasn't called."

  "So maybe she's fine."

  "Or dead," David said. "Don't give up. Don't wimp out on me." I realized I was crying into the phone and that David could hear me.

  "Let's go see Brigid," he said.

  "Okay, man. I'm okay. I'm okay."

  "I'll be there in five."

  And I guess I was there when he drove up, I guess because Everworld me had just woken up in a world of hurt.

  Chapter

  XXIII

  I was alive, but felt like I'd rather not be.

  I was lying on my side. A dead man was sprawled beside me. Two dead fairies, one draped right across me. Dead people all around.

  They thought I was dead. I'd been dragged and dumped with the dead bodies. And just then a druid and a servant from the castle came shuffling along carrying another dead man.

  They were supervised by a jeering, swaggering punk I'd never seen before. He had a Kalashnikov propped on his hip. He was eating a roll of some kind.

  Everything was lit by fire. Night had fallen, but the village was burning, and the glow of orange reached up to dim the stars,

  I closed my eyes to slits. I felt the thud as the body was slung toward me. I saw another of Senna's boys, a big bruiser of a guy, head scraped bald, tattooed, a pair of automatic pistols in a leather belt, a machine pistol in his left hand, dragging a dead fairy along by the hair.

  The punk said, "Hey, compadre, you ain't gotta be carrying them yourself. Get a couple of the prisoners to do it."

  "The little ones don't weigh much," the big man said.

  "No, but they're fast," the punk said. Then, with a laugh added, "When they're alive. Ha-ha-na, not too fast now."

  The two of them walked off laughing at this wit and embellishing the joke further. Variations on the theme of "dead people are slow."

  I figured now was the time.

  I felt for my sword. Gone. But the nearest fairy still carried his sword, more like a dagger, really. I slid it from his belt, whispering an apology for robbing the dead.

  I slithered across the corpses, sick at heart, sick in every way, crawle
d and slithered across the drawbridge. If I was seen I'd have to run. Outrun bullets. No problem. But better than waiting around till someone noticed I wasn't exactly dead.

  No popopop. No explosion of pain in my back. I got up and ran. Ran and ran, down through the burning town, gagging on the swirling smoke. I tripped over a charred body, got up and kept running. I was crying from smoke and weak rage. What was happening back up in the castle? What were Senna's monsters doing to my friends and Etain?

  One thing was sure: David was either dead or unconscious.

  Couldn't pawn this off on David. Not his turn to play hero, not this time. This was on me. But what the hell was I going to do?

  No gun, no army, nothing but a knife.

  This was so screwed up. And it was my fault. I should have been able to resist Senna. Should have been able to keep her from playing with my mind. All the times I'd made fun of David for being her sock puppet. And now whose hand was up my butt? I was the new star of Senna's very own Sesame Street.

  I saw a column of men approaching and ducked into a black, charred, smoking alley between two hollowed-out buildings. A dozen men, real-worlders, loaded up with guns.

  They were moving in a parody of military style, making the moves they'd learned from watching too many war movies. A dozen guys playing out their Action Hero Schwarzenegger fantasies, swaggering, poking guns here and there, imagining themselves on film, no doubt playing the background music in their heads.

  Easy to ridicule them. But their guns were real enough.

  One guy seemed to be in charge, a crew-cutted, beer-gutted guy of fifty who looked like the old Navy guy on Survivor.

  He was yelling orders the others occasionally heeded,

  "Secure that doorway! Cover that alley!"

  Others were marveling aloud: at the castle, at the destruction, at all the cool burning, at the dead men and women. At the dead fairies.

  I didn't have the energy to run and hide anymore. I had the energy to breathe, that was about it.

  Fortunately, these weren't real soldiers. Some imagined movement down the street set them all to firing wildly and yahooing. Then they were past, and I wasn't dead.

  So, Senna was still bringing in more men. How? Wasn't she in the castle? These guys had come up from the countryside to join the party, Johnny-come-latelies to the big party.

  The gateway must still be open.

  Senna was back out there, out there in the countryside.

  Why? Had the ring of druid stones held some magic she could use? Was she really back there in that weird little dell?

  Shouldn't Queen Senna be in the castle?

  No, she had to bring in more men. That was her top priority: She was in a hurry. Why? Because it wasn't over, that's why. She was in a hurry to raise forces. She was expecting trouble. Not from us, we were beat, but from someone.

  Merlin? Loki?

  The opening of the gateway would send shivers through all the powers of Everworld. Brigid had said that. Loki would know.

  Ka Anor would know. Huitzilopoctli and Hel and Zeus and Athena and Neptune, they would all know. They were all on the same psychic-magic e-mail list.

  But none of them would suspect what was really happening. It wouldn't occur to them any more than it had occurred to us, that the traffic through the gate was Chicago-style: one-way the wrong way.

  One way out. One solution, that was clear: Senna had to be stopped. Permanently. The monster I used to date had to be stopped.

  No problem, Christopher, I thought. After all, you have a fairy sword, and what's Senna got, aside from magic powers and a bunch of guys with Kalashnikovs?

  What should I do? What should I do?

  Go to the druid stones. Maybe because I could do something to stop her. Or maybe because her enchantment was still strong and I was like some low-level vampire drawn inexorably to the boss vampire. I couldn't even trust my own motives.

  And anyway, I knew this: I wasn't going to kill her. Not my thing, you know, killing. It was different if someone was attacking you directly, trying to kill you. Then, in the absence of cops or troops or even a vice principal, you had to defend yourself, no other way. But to lie in wait for Senna and jump out from behind a tree and stick my fairy sword into her? Not me, and not anyone I wanted to hang around with.

  Besides, Brigid had said it, right? No one was going to kill Senna.

  Still all and all, there I was, walking down the too-well-trodden path like a man with a plan. Heading for the dell. So, like I say, I had to question my own motives. Senna's hook was still in me: I was a trout and all she had to do was reel me in and fry me up in the pan.

  Out into the countryside. Out into stone-fence and scruffy-tree country. The moon was at the quarter and sliding in and out of the clouds. ,

  "What word, stranger?" a voice asked. A voice in the darkness.

  I jumped approximately my own height.

  "Peace, brother," the voice said. "Or if not peace, then at least have no fear of me."

  When I had swallowed my heart again I peered into the darkness and saw a cloak and a beard. The face was obscured. But the voice was familiar.

  "Merlin? Is that you, man?"

  "Merlin indeed," he said.

  "Yeah? How do I know you're not Senna pretending to be Merlin?"

  The wizard laughed softly. "You have begun to learn the ways of Everworld, Christopher."

  "Yeah," I said. "But that's not what's up right now, man.

  What's happening right now is that Everworld is learning the ways of the real world."

  He stepped closer. "The witch has opened the gateway.

  This I know."

  "She's importing, not exporting," I said. "Senna's bringing over well-armed guys from the real world. Guns. Lots of guns.

  You want the short version? Lorg the giant? Dead. MacCool?

  Dead. Pretty much all the local Fianna are dead. Most of King Cam's fairies? Dead. My friends and Goewynne and Etain and all, I don't know, but Senna's people have burned the town and taken the castle and we're all pretty well screwed. So, what's new with you. Merlin?"

  He stroked his beard and considered. "MacCool is dead, then? That is a terrible blow."

  I was still not in the mood to hear how great MacCool was.

  "MacCool didn't like to listen. He thought he knew what was what, and he ended up all full of holes."

  Merlin looked up sharply. He looked like he might just decide to put some magic whim-wham on me to teach me not to back-talk him. Then his expression changed.

  "Come. I will listen," he said.

  Chapter

  XXIV

  So we sat down well off the road and damned if Merlin didn't brew up a pot of tea. Made himself a little fire out of damp twigs that shouldn't burn and whipped a little teapot out of his rucksack. It was a Yoda moment. I expected him to start talking backward and moving like a Muppet. "Screwed we are, yes."

  But the old wizard didn't get to be an old wizard by being stupid. He clammed up and let me pour out my whole tale of woe. And boy, did I pour. I gave it all to him.

  He gave me some tea.

  When I was done he did something that endeared him to me: He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head and said, "It looks bad."

  Yes, indeed, it looked bad,

  "It may be that the witch's power has grown too great for me to counter. She has learned much. She has great natural talents. And, of course, her armed men give her very great power."

  "But you have it worked out, right?" I said. "I mean, you know how to stop her, right?"

  He shook his head and made a slight, rueful smile. "No.

  Some of what you tell me, I knew already. A mutual friend on the other side, in what you call the real world, had alerted me to hurry."

  "Brigid?"

  Merlin nodded. "Yes, Brigid has done more for her people than wil ever be known. Her powers are limited in the old world, your world, but she has over these many centuries reached across the barrier to defend her people."r />
  "Yeah, we noticed Ireland is doing a little better than the rest of Everworld."

  "It is in large part..." He stopped. Froze. Seemed to be listening to something far off. "The gateway has closed."

  I nodded. "I guess she's brought over all the guys she can find." Merlin dumped out the last of the tea and made me give him back my cup. Then he stood up. "I can allow us to pass among them, but I do not know the form of them. I do not know their costume."

  It took me a minute to get that. "What? You're talking the shape-shifting thing?"

  "It is not shape-shifting, my young friend. It is mere illusion.

  The ignorant call it shape-shifting. The shift is only in their minds.

  But I must know the look of these armed men in order to allow us to pass among them."

  "Us?"

  "Us."

  "You can do it to me, too?"

  "I could make you appear to be a troll or a wolf or a wench," Merlin said, not without some cockiness.

  "Yeah? Could you make me appear to be somewhere else?"

  No answer.

  I sighed. This was a disturbing idea, but I didn't see how I could decently weasel out of it. So I set about telling Merlin how to dress the part of a gun nut.

  I drew pictures in the dirt. I painted word pictures. And when it was all done the old man turned himself into an extra from a Mad Max movie.

  "A little less flamboyant, maybe," I suggested. "The pants should be looser. Longer. The boots are black, not brown."

  He adjusted.

  "And the gun... well, it looks too smooth. You need more, I don't know, like slots and stuff. You know what, it'll pass in the dark, and then you can adjust when you see the actual guys."

  "Yes, that is what we shall do," he said, again with a not-