“Jordan, you fool!” Merlin whisper-shouted. She was going to get herself killed, and she didn’t even like Ari. She pitched her sword and it stuck in the dragon’s thigh, lodged in a paper-thin slit in the armor of scales. The dragon roared flame, forcing the crowd back.
Jordan tried to borrow a sword from a nearby knight, and when he wouldn’t give it to her, she stole it and knocked him out with a swift roundhouse kick.
“Oh dear,” he muttered. Jordan would pay for that one. Merlin hoped the embarrassed knights would wait until the dragon was defeated before tackling Jordan, but they seemed to find her a much more compelling foe. Half a dozen of them wrestled her to the ground and grabbed the sword, while Ari baited the dragon farther from the crowd.
Merlin hummed, raining sparks from the window, hitting Ari’s sword with a bit of magic that would make it easier to wield. Quicker, smarter, able to find the chinks in the dragon’s armor. Ari had a soft spot for a good enchanted sword. The blade glowed with a rainbow sheen for a moment, and Ari looked up to the tower. He awaited her signature smile, but she only gave him a heavy nod and got on with the fight.
Old Merlin looked up, too, as if he’d felt the first ominous drops of rain.
Had he seen the sparks of Merlin’s magic? Had he noticed the change in the sword? Merlin had to hurry, returning to his ransacking.
“Damn dragons!” he whispered fiercely.
“Dragons!” came a screeching echo.
He looked around and saw a dark cloth rustling. He rushed to the end of a large table and whipped away the scrap of dusty old tapestry, revealing a large brown owl.
“Archimedes!” The bird looked far meaner than he remembered, with a harshly hooked beak and an uninviting gleam in his eyes. Even so, Merlin was delighted to find his old friend. “Do you know where the enchantment is to control the dragon?”
“Dragon!”
“Can you do nothing but repeat me?” he asked. “Gods, were you just a glorified parrot?”
Archimedes squinted and motioned his hooked beak across the room at a dusty little cupboard. Merlin rushed over and flung the thing open. Inside was an animated scene. It looked, for all the universe, like a child’s primary school diorama, though it was a complicated bit of magic with several pieces in motion. Stick figures represented Lancelot and Gweneviere, one adorned with a scrap of Gwen’s handkerchief and the other with a lock of Ari’s short, dark hair.
“When did he even have a chance to cut that off?” Merlin asked with a shudder.
The dragon was animated by a single scale, still bloody on the underside.
He shuddered harder.
There, looking on, was a tiny wooden falcon. That piece represented Merlin, and seeing it was like being hit with a sledgehammer of déjà vu. He reached in the pocket of his robes. His own wooden merlin figurine from the market on Lionel was still there.
He threw the scene to the ground, raised his foot and tried to stomp the enchantment apart, but only ended up yowling in pain. This called for magic. He summoned everything he could and sang an old battle song. When he flung his hands apart, the diorama split, stick figures blasting to pieces and the dragon scale shattering. Only the little wooden bird remained unharmed, tottering in the wake of the tiny explosion.
He hadn’t the heart to destroy it. When his life started in the crystal cave, it was the only thing he’d had to his name. The only piece left of whoever gave him up.
He doubled over, exhausted. “Too much magic,” he muttered, stumbling to the window just in time to see the dragon lift heavily on its wings, dripping blood in several places, and fly off toward the hills in the distance. Arthur grinned and lifted Ari’s arm in triumph as the crowd went mad. So much for Old Merlin’s plan to rid Camelot of Arthur’s favorite new knight, he thought smugly. If anything, this had cemented Lancelot’s place at Arthur’s side.
Ari looked more destroyed than triumphant. She was on her feet, though, and that would have to be enough for now. Some days were for saving the universe. Some days, still breathing was all one could hope for.
“Merlin!” the bird cried. “Merlin!”
“Archimedes, do you recognize me?” He flushed with delight. It couldn’t hurt if a bird knew his true identity, could it?
Archimedes screeched and extended a talon toward the stairs. Hollow footsteps sounded, and then dark-blue robes appeared, stitched with stars and moons.
“Oh,” he squeaked. “That Merlin.”
After all this time, he was facing himself. Pale skin riddled with wrinkles and liver spots. Deep, intent frown lines. Bright brown eyes. And over them, epically bushy eyebrows, overgrown and gray, which now thanks to Val had been tamed into two robust lines that had infinite character. Merlin knew that face from the inside—seeing it from this angle gave him a case of existential vertigo.
Did Old Merlin feel it, too? A deep sense of recognition? The old mage moved his jaw back and forth, as if chewing on week-old bread. Every moment spent waiting was a stone, weighing on Merlin’s nerves. “Please say something,” he found himself blurting.
“How did you get in my tower, you little carbuncle?” Old Merlin asked.
“Someone must have left the door ajar in all the dragon fuss,” he said, suddenly very happy that he wasn’t Ari and that lies did, in fact, become him. But his old self didn’t seem convinced. He took in the destroyed diorama, the look in his eyes a shade darker than curiosity.
A hum started so low that by the time Merlin heard it, sparks were already headed toward his face.
So, this was what it felt like to be knocked out by his own magic.
When he woke, a rope was thrust into his hands, and he was lowered through a hole in the ground. He looked up, but his evil old
