The Mirror of Fate Page 3

  “And not just any wizard,” I added, “but the greatest one of all times! Even greater than my grandfather, Tuatha, they say—and he was the wisest and most powerful mage ever to live. It’s . . . well, a lot of weight to carry around. So much that sometimes it’s all I can feel. As if my own choices, my own decisions, aren’t really mine after all.”

  “Oh, but they are! They surely are. That’s what makes you . . . you. That’s why I wanted to tell you . . .” Her voice fell to a bare whisper. “What I wanted to tell you.”

  “So will you tell me now?”

  “No,” she declared, determined to stay on the subject. “Listen, now. Do you honestly think you have no more say in your future than the acorn that’s destined to become an oak tree? That couldn’t possibly become an ash or a maple, no matter how hard it tries?”

  Glumly, I scraped the muddy bank with the heel of my boot. “So it seems.”

  “But you have your own magic, too! What I said about the outer powers is true—but they couldn’t be used by us at all if we didn’t have our own powers, our own magic, within. And you, young hawk, have an amazing ability to tap into the greater magic. To receive it, concentrate it, and bend it to your will. I see it in you all the time, as clear as a face in a reflecting pool.”

  “Maybe the reflection you see is yours, not mine.”

  She shook her head, so vigorously that her auburn braid flew over her shoulder, brushing against my ear. “Without your inner magic, you couldn’t have healed the ballymag the way you did.”

  “But was I really using my own magic, and my own choices, to heal him? Or was I merely following my destiny, plodding through a scene in a story written by someone else, long ago?” My fingers drummed against the silver hilt of the weapon at my side. “Even this sword is part of my destiny. That’s what I was told, by the great spirit Dagda himself. He commanded me to keep it safe, for someday I will deliver it to a great, though tragic, king—a king so powerful that he will pull it free from a scabbard of stone.” I paused, trying to remember how Dagda had described him. A king whose reign shall thrive in the heart long after it has withered on the land.

  Hallia raised a skeptical eyebrow. “A destiny foretold be not a destiny lived.”

  “Is that one of your people’s old proverbs?”

  “Mmm, not so old. It was my father who first said it. He thought a lot about such things.” She nudged me hard enough that my shoulder bumped a branch, knocking loose some leaves. “Like someone else.”

  I grinned, glancing at my staff leaning against a rounded stone at the stream’s edge. Water slapped the shaft, moistening the seven symbols engraved along its length, making them gleam darkly. “The more I think about things—destiny or anything else—the less I really know.”

  Suddenly Hallia laughed. “My father said the same thing! More times than I could count.”

  I gave her a nudge of my own. “What else did he have to say?”

  “About destiny?” She thought for a moment. “Not much, though he did say something puzzling.”

  “Which was?”

  “He said, if I remember rightly, that seeking your destiny is like looking into a mirror. You see an image, however blurred, in whatever light exists at the time. But if the light ever changes, so will the image itself. And if the light ever vanishes, the mirror will be empty. That is why, he concluded, the truest mirror is . . . how did he put it? Oh yes. The truest mirror is the one that needs no light at all.”

  Bewildered, I furrowed my brow. “No light at all? What did he mean by that?”

  “No one in my clan has ever made sense of it, though many have tried. Some of the elders, I’m told, have debated it endlessly, with no result. So it’s best not to spend too much time pondering. It could have been merely a jest, or a play on words. My father knew much, but he also loved to play tricks on people.”

  I nodded, still wondering about the curious pronouncement. It could well have been a jest. But what if it really held some meaning after all? Evidently the elders believed it did, or they wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to understand it. Perhaps someone, someday, would succeed. Perhaps . . . even me. For a moment I savored that thought—a lovely one, indeed. I, Merlin, might be the one to shed light on the old mystery. And on many other mysteries as well.

  A sudden movement on the muddy bank distracted me. My shadow! Although I was sitting perfectly still, it seemed to be moving—indeed, shaking. Could it be just the play of light from the stream? I concentrated my gaze. No, there could be no doubt.

  My shadow was shaking its head at me.

  3: SECRETS

  I growled at my insolent shadow, still mocking me on the stream bank. “Why didn’t you just stay back there at the boulder?”

  Hallia stiffened, slapping her hand on the muddy slope. “Young hawk!”

  “Not you—oh, I’m sorry.” I reached out my hand, but she swatted it away. I glared down at my shadow, which seemed to be quivering with laughter. “Hallia, I wasn’t talking to you at all! Just my shadow.”

  Slowly, her expression softened. “Seems you’re having as much trouble with that shadow these days as you are with Gwynnia.” She pushed aside some branches to glance at the meadow where we had left her. “She’s gone again. I wonder where.”

  “Probably just foraging down the stream. She’s not far away, that much is certain.” I tossed a river stone onto my shadow—half expecting it to toss something back. “So tell me. How did your father come to know so much? Was he a scholar? A bard?”

  “Neither. He was the healer of our clan, for many years.” Taking her braid, she toyed with it, separating the strands, as if she were untying a much-knotted memory. “Even after we were forced to leave our ancestral lands by the sea, which nearly broke his heart, he continued his work. And he knew much more than the art of healing. He understood things no one else did about certain places. And . . . certain people.” She swallowed. “That was why, I suppose, he was entrusted with caring for one of the Seven Wise Tools.”

  I started. “Really?”

  She nodded.

  “Which one?”

  “I shouldn’t say more. It’s a secret among the Mellwyn-bri-Meath.”

  As I watched the water moving past our feet, my own memories flowed like the stream. I remembered well those legendary tools, having rescued most of them from the collapsing Shrouded Castle. There was the plow that tilled its own field, the saw that cut only as much wood as one needed—and what else? Oh yes: the magical hoe, hammer, and shovel. Plus that bucket, feeling almost as heavy as the plow, since it always brimmed with water.

  Only the seventh one had eluded me—though not my thoughts. For while I didn’t know its description, let alone its powers, I had often dreamed of finding it, usually behind an impenetrable wall of flames. Whenever, in my dreams, I had tried to rescue it, the searing flames burned my hands, my face, my useless eyes. All I could hear were my screams; all I could smell was the stench of my own burning skin. When I couldn’t stand the agony any longer, I always awoke, soaked in sweat.

  Gently, Hallia touched my hand. “I can see from your face, young hawk, that you know some secrets of your own about the Seven Wise Tools.”

  “That I do,” I replied, still gazing at the stream. “I have held them all, even used them all—except for the one that was lost forever.”

  She gazed at me, weighing her thoughts. At last, she whispered, “It wasn’t.”

  “What do you mean? That’s what everyone said. Even Cairpré.”

  “Because that’s what everyone thought. Except for my father, and the few of us he had trusted with the secret. You see, that Wise Tool was the one in his charge. And when the wicked king Stangmar’s soldiers came to seize it, my father gave them not the tool itself, but a copy he had made—a fake. The real one he hid away, somewhere safe.”

  “Where?”

  “He never told anyone. Soon after he made the switch, the hunters . . . found him.”

  Reading the gri
ef in her eyes, I wrapped my hand around hers. For some time we sat there, watching the swirling current. As much as I wanted to share her secret, I wanted still more to share her burden.

  At length, she spoke again. “It was a key, young hawk, a magical key. Carved of polished antler, with a single sapphire on its crown. Its powers . . . oh, I can’t remember—like so much else my father told me. I was so young then! It mattered a great deal to him, that’s mainly what I remember.” Her fingers entwined with my own. “Though I do recall his saying once that, as great as its powers were, they still couldn’t rival a healing hand.”

  At that instant, we heard a wailing cry from somewhere downstream. The cry grew swiftly louder—and more familiar. A few seconds later, the ballymag came swimming straight toward us, his six arms splashing furiously. He swam up the channel, flopped onto the bank, and leaped into my arms, shivering and panting.

  Eyes ablaze with fear, he blurted, “Troubledous terror! Mangledous murder! It’s getcoming closergulp.”

  Before I could ask what he was talking about, an enormous head lifted out of a grove of hawthorns downstream. Gwynnia! Her stiff ear snapped a few branches, sending up a cloud of leaves, as she straightened her long, scaly neck. She stepped from the trees, wings folded tight against her massive back, and leaned toward us. The orange light of her eyes flashed on the water.

  “The frightdragon!” squealed the ballymag, burrowing his head under my arm. “We’re doomedkilled, every deadlastous one of us.”

  “Nonsense,” I replied. “That dragon is our friend.”

  “She won’t harm you,” added Hallia.

  Hearing her friend’s voice, Gwynnia thumped her tail vigorously on the ground. One of her strokes, however, struck a hawthorn, uprooting it. The tree toppled with a crash into the stream, spraying mud and branches across the bank. At that, the ballymag shrieked—and fainted. He lay in my lap, as limp as a drenched tunic. Even his tails, once so tightly coiled, hung loose against his back. Gwynnia’s head, now nearly above us, cocked to one side in puzzlement.

  I stroked the ballymag’s smooth skin. “This little fellow just isn’t cut out for adventures. I think I ought to send him back to where he came from.”

  “The Haunted Marsh?” asked Hallia. “That’s the last place you should send him.”

  “It’s where he came from.”

  “Then he was wise to escape! That’s an evil place, a dreadful place, with deathtraps at every turn. My people—like every other people, except for the marsh ghouls—avoid it however we can.”

  “Look, he clearly needs to be near water. And away from dragons. How he came to be here, I can’t say. But surely the best thing to do is send him back to his home.”

  Hallia, shaking her head, touched the ballymag’s wet back. “It’s foolish, I tell you. And, besides, that wretched swamp is all the way on the other side of the island.”

  Hearing the doubt in her voice, I stiffened. “You don’t think I can do it?”

  “Well . . . no. I don’t.”

  I frowned at her, my cheeks burning.

  “Leaping is one of the most hazardous skills of wizardry. You’ve told me so yourself.”

  My fist slammed the bank, spraying mud on my tunic. “So you think I can’t.”

  “What if you send him to the wrong place by mistake?”

  “I won’t make any mistakes!” Noticing my shadow, which seemed to be shaking its head again, I bit my lip. “And if by chance I do, then at least he’ll wake up someplace where there’s no dragon staring down at him.”

  Carefully, I lay the unconscious ballymag down in the reeds at the water’s edge. Then, grasping my staff, I stood. I planted my feet firmly, turned my back to Hallia, and began to concentrate. Almost instantly, I felt the powers building within me, pushing to the surface like lava in an erupting volcano. Finally, I intoned the intricate chant, calling forth the high magic of Leaping.

  Voyage near, venture far—

  Lo! The leaping place and time.

  Find the center of a star

  In the dreaming Muirthemnar;

  Or the echo of a rhyme

  Ringing rightly as a chime.

  Ever honor, never mar—

  Lo! The leaping place and time.

  A flash of white light erupted on the bank. Water coursing through the channel sizzled into steam. At the same time, the ballymag vanished—along with Hallia and myself.

  4: PAINODEATH

  Pine needles! I rolled over and spat them from my mouth. Above, thick branches arched upward, looking sturdy enough to support the sky itself. And burly enough to obscure it: Only a few specks of light shone through the tight weave of limbs.

  “Good work, young hawk.”

  I cringed, spat out a chunk of sticky resin, then turned my head toward Hallia. Like me, she lay on her back among the needles and broken sticks. “All right,” I admitted. “So my Leaping was a little . . . off.”

  She sat up, watching me solemnly. “A little, you say? Seems to me you were trying to send the ballymag, not us. Now we’re here, in some forest, while he’s nowhere in sight! And wasn’t the Haunted Marsh your goal? I should be grateful, I suppose, your aim was so poor!”

  She shook a needle off her nose. “Compared to your aim in Leaping, well, Gwynnia’s aim in landing is superb.” Her expression darkened. “Where is she, anyway?” She bounced to her feet, spraying me with sticks. “Gwyyyniaaa,” she called, her voice flying into the forest like a sparrow hawk. “My Gwyyyniaaa.”

  No answer came. Hallia turned to me, her brow knitted with concern. “Oh, I do hope she’s all right. She’d answer me if she could hear. You don’t think we—”

  “Left her behind?” I finished, pushing myself to my feet. I brushed the bark and needles off my tunic. “It’s possible, I’m afraid. Very possible. I wasn’t, after all, supposed to send her anywhere.”

  “You weren’t supposed to send us, either! Oh, she’ll be horribly upset.” She glanced around the grove. “Maybe she’s here somewhere, just out of earshot.”

  “Wherever here is,” I muttered.

  Tilting my head back, I peered up into the vaulting branches and drew a deep breath of air, poignant with the sweetness of cedar and pine. And something else, I realized: a slight odor of something rancid, or rotting, that lurked just beneath the sweetness. Nonetheless, I drank in the aromas, for as much as I disliked being lost, I always savored being in a forest. The darker the better. For the darker the grove, the older the trees. And the older the trees, the more mysterious, and more wise, I knew them to be.

  A breeze rustled the needled branches, sprinkling my face with dew. Suddenly I thought of another day, in another forest—in the land of Gwynedd, called Wales by some. Pursued by a foe, I had escaped by climbing a tree: a great pine, much like the ones towering above us now. Moments later, I’d found myself caught in a rising storm. The wind swelled, and I clung with all my strength to the tree. When the storm finally arrived in force, I rode out all the swaying and twirling, rocking and twisting, supported—nay, embraced—by those branches. And when, at last, the storm subsided, leaving me drenched in the boughs of that rain-washed tree, I had felt refreshed, revived, and newly born.

  Hallia tapped my arm. Just as I turned to her, another, stronger breeze coursed through the limbs above us. She started to speak, but I raised my hand to stop her. For in the creaking branches of the trees, I heard voices, deep and resonant. Yet . . . these voices did not seem to belong to a forest whose boughs lifted so majestically. They sounded full of despair, and of pain slowly deepening.

  With all my concentration, I listened. The trees cried out to me, their great arms flailing. I could not understand all they said, for they were all speaking at once, sometimes in languages I hadn’t yet mastered. Yet there were several whose words I could not mistake. From a stately cedar: We are dying, dying. From a linden tree whose heart-shaped leaves twirled slowly to the ground: It is eating me. Swallowing my roots, my very roots. And from a powerful pine
, in mournful tones: My child! Do not take away my child!

  As the wind, and the voices, subsided, I turned to Hallia. “This forest is in trouble somehow—great trouble.”

  “I feel it, too.”

  “It doesn’t seem natural.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Yet if you look closely, the signs are everywhere. Like those death-grip vines on that stand of hemlocks.”

  “And here, look at this.” Reaching for the trunk of a nearby pine, I scraped a bit of gray, scraggly moss off its bark. “Rotting beard. I’ve seen it on trees before, but only after a flood. Never in a thriving forest.”

  She nodded grimly. “I wish we could do something to help. But what? Besides, we have our own troubles. How can we find our way back to the Summer Lands? And to Gwynnia, poor thing! And what about the ballymag? Who can tell where he might be now?”

  Grinding my teeth, I stooped to retrieve my staff. “Look, I’m sorry. I had no idea that my Leaping would go all awry like this.” Squeezing the gnarled top of the staff, I lamented, “I forgot the very first lesson, what Dagda called the soul of wizardry: humility.”

  Angrily, I slid the staff under my belt. “I need another hundred years of practice before trying something like that again! Why, I might have sent us to another land, or even another world.”

  Hallia shook her head. “No, no. My feet, my nose, my bones all tell me we’re still somewhere in Fincayra.” She scanned the shadowed trunks surrounding us. “This forest reminds me a lot of an ancient grove that I visited years ago, when I was still a fawn-child. The mixture of trees, the way they stand—it all feels so familiar. But that place was so much more alive! What kind of sickness could have attacked a whole forest like this?”

  “Ehhh,” groaned an anguished voice from behind the knotted roots of a cedar. “Terribulous painodeath.”

  We rushed to the spot. The ballymag, his round eyes more woeful than ever, stirred within the roots. Shards of bark and clumps of needles dangled from his claws, his padded belly quaked with the slightest movement, and his whiskers drooped morosely. Yet my second sight, keener than an owl’s vision in the darkened grove, found no new signs of injury.