The narrow circle of dirt opened up slightly, and he hit solid ground. The rope was tugged back up, leaving him in a small, smothering pit that made a dungeon seem like a four-star hotel. “Oubliette!” he cried, remembering the word the French had given it much later in history. “My gods, you’ve put me in an oubliette.”
“Hello, mage,” came a voice near his elbow.
He scrambled and lit his fingers with magic, revealing several things he wished he hadn’t. Sewage ran freely along one wall. Human bones were half-embedded in the dirt floor. Jordan was in her undergarments.
“You’re alive!” he cried. “Well, that’s something. I saw what you did in the courtyard. It was brave. And ridiculous. But mainly, brave.”
The compliment only seemed to intensify her anger. “When I learned Earth history on Lionel, I heard not one mention of real dragons. Such creatures were treated as storybook villains. How did I face one today?”
“Oh, I’ve got this,” he said, happy to have something to focus on besides the death-hole they’d been pushed into. “It’s hard to see the truth of history beyond what we’re taught. Whatever is passed down, we remember. When we first landed here, I had to remind myself that many existences—people and dragons and more—were revised right out of history by later scholars with rotten agendas.” She looked intensely horrified, and Merlin’s chest tightened in agreement. “People have used many hateful weapons over time. Forced forgetting is a powerful one.”
The meaning of the word oubliette rose in his head, unbidden. “From oublier,” he muttered. “To forget.” This wasn’t a place of punishment; it was a means of erasing enemies from existence.
“I devoted my life to a planet that sought to re-create this era,” Jordan said. “Yet the codes of honor I live by are not honored here. If they were, no one would have pulled me from battle. Who stops a knight from slaying a monster?”
Merlin tried to shake off the sticky feeling that, today, he had been the story’s true monster. “These unevolved grubs see a woman with a sword as an equal threat.”
“Gwen assures me Arthur is different,” she said. “That he sees strength in unexpected places. Yet he let his men throw me down here.”
“A lot happened during the fight,” Merlin said, springing to Arthur’s defense even after all this time. “He’ll let you out, I’m sure of it.”
Jordan nodded stoically. “Mayhaps Arthur is the spark of hope that became Lionel.”
“Mayhaps.” He found himself back at the strange circular notion of this story. His friends featured at both the beginning and the end. They were all caught up in it—or trapped in it. With Gweneviere and Lancelot’s roles confirmed, it didn’t seem like a stretch to hope that Lamarack and Percival would take their original places in the story, as knights of the round table. Merlin’s heart jolted at the thought that Val would be in Camelot soon—the story required it.
A fresh wave of sewage sloshed into the oubliette and Jordan drew back. “Will you use your magic to free us?”
“Oh, no. This is a test,” he said. “My old self wants to know if I have power. He stuck me down here to see if I would escape. Which is exactly why I can’t.”
“You’re stuck in a battle of wills with your previous self?” Jordan clucked her tongue. “The odds are not with you, mage.”
“I’m just as magical as he is!”
“And less ruthless. The old man would put a child down here.”
Merlin’s brow furrowed, magnifying his headache—until he realized she was talking about him. “In that irrefutably harsh way that you have… can you tell me how old I look?”
She squinted. “Like you can barely mount a full-grown mare.”
“Years, please.”
“Fourteen?”
That was improbably young, even for his backward aging. Were things speeding up? Why was he tumbling toward infancy so fast? He thought of the feeling after he’d crushed the diorama. Every time his magic drained, it left him feeling exhausted. No—not just exhausted. Aged.
“It’s my magic,” Merlin muttered. “Every time I use it, I get younger.”
“You only noticed this now?” she asked.
“When a person is very old, there isn’t much difference between six hundred and four hundred.” His voice no longer cracked over the spines of his words. It was higher, sweeter. “Between sixteen and fourteen? The alterations are… stark.”
“Oh, dear.”
Jordan’s hand went to her waist in an automatic motion—to draw the sword that she would never be allowed to carry in Camelot. “Is there anyone else in here?” Merlin asked, spinning around.
“No,” she said. “I looked.”
“Merlin.”
He knew that even-handed tone, that lovely silvery laugh.
“Nin,” he said. “How are you in the castle?”
The Lady of the Lake wasn’t able to leave her cave. Her bound nature had always been a comfort to Merlin.
“My waters give me a way in,” Nin said, the puddles at his feet rippling. “My lake becomes the mist, clouds, and rain of Camelot. I can be where I wish, and I wish to be present for this moment. You have finally discovered that your magic is tied to your aging. Now you’ll have to stop using it to help those companions you refused to leave… otherwise you’ll leave them permanently.” Nin’s laughter burst with bubbles.
“I wish you would leave me permanently.” He couldn’t believe that Nin was still bothering him after all this time. He’d thought he was done with her until she grabbed him out of Ari’s big standoff with Mercer, offering him one of her rigged bargains.
“Are you sure you want me gone? I thought you might like to say hello to Percival.”
“Val?” He fought the urge to dive headfirst into the filthy puddle. “Val is with you?”
“Don’t fret, little Merlin,” she said. “He’s perfectly safe in my cave.”
Val’s static, distant voice called out Merlin’s name through the water.
He started to shout, but Nin
