by We trotted up House’s driveway, passing in between those ancient oaks all silver-painted by the moon. Upon discovering the front door sitting open at three in the morning, we entered the building at a near run.
‘House,’ I said, a bit breathless. ‘Is everything all right?’
I couldn’t see much. The door might be open but no lights illuminated the entrance hall. That air of dead-of-night stillness shrouded everything, as indeed it was supposed to at that hour, and though Jay and I stood for a couple of minutes, we heard nothing but silence.
‘House?’ I said again. I found the nearest wall and laid a hand against it. Cool, smooth brick met my fingers, and that was all. Nothing untoward.
‘Seems normal enough,’ I whispered, and that’s when the lights came on.
‘Aha,’ said Merlin, coming into the hall through a far doorway, her arms full of boxes. ‘I’ve brought your argent.’
I blinked stupidly at her. ‘What?’
‘Your argent,’ she repeated, and offered the stack of boxes to me. They were ordinary parcel boxes, though I could feel the strength of their warding enchantments even from several feet away. The cardboard hid some of the Elvyngs’ patented safe boxes, I guessed, and inside those…
‘Wait,’ I said, looking wildly about. ‘How is it that you have the argent? And — and how are you here?’
Her brows rose, and she looked more closely at me than she had yet. ‘Oh,’ she said, no doubt observing my inebriated state. Fortunately, her expression was more amused than disapproving.
‘You haven’t done something to the House?’ I said, unable to suppress a flicker of panic. The visibility, the open door — it wasn’t normal and it wasn’t right.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘The House has been very welcoming.’
I relaxed a little. House was very, very hard to find, when it wanted to be. If it didn’t want Merlin in here, she’d never have discovered its whereabouts.
Probably.
Was Merlin powerful enough to outwit our House?
‘If House didn’t want her here, we’d be seeing some sign of it,’ Jay murmured to me, sotto voce.
And he had a point. If she had forced her way in here, House wouldn’t be doing all this nothing about it.
‘It was visible,’ I said to Merlin, attempting to explain. ‘From the fields, way back there.’ I waved an arm.
‘I did ask it for your whereabouts,’ she said. ‘Having gathered that you were absent, I requested its assistance in bringing you Home. Perhaps that is why it rendered itself perceptible from an unusual distance.’
A nearby floating lamp flickered briefly, and I felt a sense of warmth. Approval from House.
‘Right,’ I said, relaxing. ‘Sorry. Um, hi! Lovely to see you again.’
‘Perhaps I can take those,’ said Jay, stepping forward.
‘You must be Jay,’ said Merlin, handing off the stack of boxes to him. ‘Excellent.’
‘Is it?’ said he, hefting the load as though the boxes weighed nothing. Hopefully they didn’t literally weigh nothing. Just a handy enchantment to take the burden out of carting them around… right?
‘I was hoping to meet you both,’ said Merlin. ‘It is important that Ves should have suitable support, at least for the early years.’
‘Support?’ I felt that lurking sense of dread again, the same as had plagued me during my last conversation with this woman. ‘For what? The early years of what?’
‘If we may find somewhere suitable to talk?’
‘Milady’s tower,’ I said promptly. Whatever it was this woman proposed to say to me, or to do to me, I wanted Milady to be present for it.
‘An excellent choice,’ she said.
I exchanged a puzzled look with Jay, who glanced at the boxes he carried. ‘I guess these can come with us for now,’ he said. ‘I can take them to Orlando in the morning.’
Few places at Home could be more secure than Milady’s tower, so I made no objection. As we clambered our way up the stairs, more questions flooded into my befuddled brain.
‘Ophelia,’ I said. ‘Or Merlin. Sorry to be inquisitive, but how do you come to have Crystobel’s argent?’
‘I thought it polite to pay a call on her,’ she said, sounding for all the world like an eighteenth century society lady. ‘Having inconvenienced her and her father over the matter of the grimoire, of course.’ Something in her tone hinted at a hidden layer of steel. Had it been a mere social call, or had she also wanted to inspect those who had access to the magick contained within the grimoire? I was suddenly grateful that I wasn’t standing in Crystobel Elvyng’s shoes just now. Had the uses to which they’d put the grimoire’s enchantments satisfied Merlin?
‘And when,’ Ophelia/Merlin continued, ‘I understood she intended an immediate dispatch of your argent, I offered to convey it.’
‘How kind,’ I murmured. ‘But, um, you aren’t here just to deliver the silver?’
‘Indeed not.’
I rubbed at my face, tripped over the next step, and wished to all the gods we hadn’t chosen this of all possible nights to let our proverbial hair down. My wine-fogged brain refused to keep up with these strings of surprising events. I felt half asleep and half awake, dreaming yet not.
‘Perhaps I might be of assistance?’ said Merlin/Ophelia, and without waiting for an answer, she touched my elbow. The lightest of touches, there and then gone, but in an instant my inebriation vanished.
I straightened, blinking. ‘That is a good trick,’ I said, with a certain amount of envy. ‘Thank you. Could you do Jay, as well?’
‘Do what to me?’ said Jay incredulously, but in another instant Merlin had performed her excellent drink-busting charm upon him as well, and he followed that up with an enthralled, ‘Oh.’ He added, ‘That’s way better than Anaya’s!’
Dimly, I recalled that this was the name of yet another of Jay’s sisters.
‘It is one of the inherited arts,’ murmured Merlin, striding slowly up the stairs beside me, and without exhibiting the smallest signs of tiring, despite her apparent age. ‘Not among the most useful or the most spectacular, of course, but it has its uses.’
‘A.. Merlin-inherited art?’ I hazarded.
She nodded.
I travelled up the rest of the stairs in silence, trying unsuccessfully to parse that unlikely piece of information. Something about her Merlinness involved inherited charms, presumably those ancient magicks my mother had spoken of. And one of them was… an inebriation-busting charm.
Right.
At last we reached the top of the many flights of stairs, and arrived at Milady’s tower-top room. The oaken door, of course, was closed.
I knocked. ‘Erm, Milady? Sorry to bother you at this hour, but it’s quite important.’
‘Come in,’ she said instantly.
‘Sorry,’ I said again, upon entering the room. My bare feet, slightly damaged from the walk, relished the sensation of soft, thick carpet under my toes. ‘I know it’s an unsociable time, but…’ I stopped talking, because the wall-lamps were softly aglow, a set of three deep armchairs sat arranged around a low, pearl-inlaid coffee table I hadn’t seen before, and a tea set sat ready, with several elegant porcelain cups and two pots. One for tea, one for chocolate, judging from the aromas.
We hadn’t taken Milady by surprise. It might be three in the morning, but she was waiting for us.
‘This looks nice,’ I said lamely, claiming one of the chairs.
‘Welcome Ves, Jay,’ said Milady. ‘And Merlin. It’s an honour to have you with us again.’
Again? Jay and I shared a what-in-the-name-of look.
‘One of my predecessors, I fancy,’ said Merlin, taking her seat.
‘I had thought the role lapsed,’ said Milady. ‘Long ago.’
‘I have considered it advisable to remain hidden,’ said Merlin.
None of this made much sense to me, or to Jay, either. We sat in shared silence, thoughts awhirl.
‘Is it time?’ said Milady.
‘Not immediately. But the time approaches, and it would be well to prepare.’
At which point, she looked at me.
I didn’t like that look either, nor the timing. I avoided it by lunging for the coffee table, and divesting it of one cup of chocolate. This I attempted to sip in elegant fashion, and ended up gulping half of it down in two swallows.
My hands were shaking.
Jay, sensibly appointing himself spokesperson, said: ‘May I ask what’s afoot?’
Milady said nothing, leaving Merlin the floor.
Merlin — or Ophelia — shifted in her seat, betraying a trace of discomfort at last. ‘You understand the nature of the Merlin role, of course?’
‘We never heard it referred to as a role until two minutes ago,’ said Jay.
‘In other words, no,’ I croaked.
‘Many years ago,’ she answered. ‘Many centuries ago, the man remembered as Merlin wrought magicks of unfathomable power across the British Isles. He was, and is, among the greatest of magickal legends these shores have ever produced. All this is known.
‘What is not known is what became of him when he died. He had no wish to permit his extraordinary powers to die away with him. Perhaps it was arrogance; perhaps it was foresight. He may have seen that we would need those powers, someday far in the future.
‘So he chose a successor. An apprentice, if you will, but one who inherited the greater part of Merlin’s powers upon his death, as well as much of his knowledge. And he charged his apprentice to do the same, whenever his own time should come. By no means should Merlin’s magick ever be permitted to fade away.’
‘You’re wielding fifteen-hundred year old magick?’ I squeaked. My brain stuttered and died just trying to picture the kind of potency she was talking about.
‘Some of it has been lost to time, of course,’ she said, nodding at me. ‘Merlin’s magick is a degree lessened each time it is passed to a new host, and some of the things he knew are no longer remembered now. But what remains of it is still considerable.’
‘Interesting,’ I said.
Interesting indeed. When Ophelia said considerable, she meant of unimaginable depth compared to weak and faded modern magick. Yes, she was just one person, but still. The possibilities.
‘And in my turn, I shall need someone to carry these powers into the future,’ Ophelia continued briskly. ‘Someone who will put them to good use.’
She was looking steadily at me as she uttered most of this. I have no idea what my face was doing, but my brain repeated just the one word, over and over: no, no no no no no no…
Milady said, ‘Someone dedicated to protecting and preserving magick, perhaps.’
‘And restoring it for the future,’ said Jay, the traitor.
‘Wait,’ I said, breathless. ‘It — you — surely you can’t mean me.’
‘You have shown a remarkable capacity to absorb unusual and potent magick,’ said Merlin. ‘You also possess a kinship with creatures such as the unicorn, and an affinity with ancient magicks most can in no way fathom, such as the Lyre of the Yllanfalen. And your morals, your priorities, are exactly where they ought to be.’
‘You also have the full support of the Society,’ said Milady.
‘And your friends,’ said Jay quietly. I shot a sharp look at him. How could he be so laid back about this? Why wasn’t he freaking out, like I was?
‘This is—’ I groped for a fitting word. ‘Insane. Impossible. You can’t be serious. Jay, tell me you don’t believe this craziness?’
Jay’s smile was a little strained. ‘Too crazy, even for Ves?’
‘Way too crazy!’
‘We’ve little reason not to believe it,’ he said. ‘And imagine what it would be like, to have powers like this at the Society’s disposal. We need this, Ves.’
‘I don’t,’ I said vehemently. ‘I can’t do this. Ophelia, you’ve got the wrong person. I haven’t been the same since Vale — the damned lyre — it almost tore me apart.’
‘But it did not,’ said Merlin.
‘It might yet,’ I muttered darkly.
Merlin shook her head. ‘The worst is in the past.’
‘Until you dump an ocean of ancient magick on my head. Then I fly to pieces.’
‘I do not think you will,’ she said, damnably serene.
‘I have full confidence in you, Ves,’ said Milady. ‘This comes as no surprise to me.’
‘I realise this is a great deal to take in,’ Merlin said, inadequately.
‘You, perhaps, do,’ I said. ‘But can you tell me you’ve never regretted the day you agreed to take on this role?’ I was thinking of the life she seemed to lead, tucked away from the world among the echoes of a distant past. Safely hidden. Completely alone.
‘Sometimes,’ she said. ‘But the things I have been able to achieve—’
‘I have to go,’ I blurted, and shot out of my chair. ‘Sorry, I… I have to go.’ I was out of the door and halfway down the stairs in seconds, running hard. Running away. I ran and ran, clattering back down all those long flights of stairs, through corridor after twisting corridor, doors that opened for me before I ever had a chance to touch them.
I ended at last somewhere I’d scarcely ever been before.
The parlour at the heart of Home. House’s favourite room.
‘House,’ I panted, collapsing into one of the delicately upholstered mahogany chairs. ‘Shut the door. Please, don’t open it to anybody else. Not yet.’
The door creaked slowly shut behind me, locked with a reassuring snap, and I was safe. Safe from importuning Merlins, encouraging Miladies, or supportive Jays.
A fire flickered into being in the grate, and roared into comforting life. Better still, the opposite wall buckled, and a narrow bed slithered free of it, thickly covered in a floral duvet and drowning in pillows.
‘Thank you,’ I said weakly, trying unsuccessfully to stem a confusing and rather humiliating flow of tears. But the bed was welcoming, and as I collapsed face-first onto it, I watered the pillows pretty liberally. I’m not proud of it, but I’m here to tell you the truth.
Sometime much later, I fell into an exhausted sleep.
