“You’re finally trying to set yourself forward,” Nin said, her warm voice suffusing the water. “Excellent.”
“Aren’t you… supposed to… thwart me?” Merlin asked, the words mere shapeless bubbles.
Merlin came up spluttering, shaking.
“Once more, carbuncle!” Old Merlin shouted, pushing him back down.
Merlin’s knees jackknifed, folding up somewhere near his nose. His robes fluttered, heavy with water. “You think I’m your enemy?” Nin asked softly as his air slipped away, and everything went darker than the void of space. “You know that’s not true. We’ve always been tied to each other.”
“No,” Merlin said, thrashing.
This couldn’t be the answer. He couldn’t come all the way back here only to find out that he was the son of the vicious magical entity who’d ruined his entire life.
Old Merlin let him up for just a breath. He yowled like a cat. And then—back down, his head aching where Old Merlin pressed.
The light that Merlin associated with Nin, golden and wondrous, lit the tub, and he swore he felt her fingers on his chin. Her kiss on his cheek. Was she trying to tell him that she really was his mother? Or was she messing with him, yet again?
Merlin squirreled out of her grasp, and the tub went dark and cold. “The old man isn’t really helping you with the full force of his magic, is he?” Nin asked. “Such a shame. Maybe that would spark something.”
Merlin came back up once more.
“Sparks!” he cried, kicking and grabbing for the edges of the tub.
“What about sparks?” Old Merlin asked, more interrogation.
Merlin leaped out of the tub while he had the chance, pacing the tower and dripping all over the stones. “The magical sparks you make, with your fingers.” Merlin had to find some way to explain his idea to Old Merlin, who lived in a time well before modern physics. They didn’t even know the laws of thermodynamics yet. “Think of it this way. Heat is what drives time forward. Every time it’s released it creates a past and a future—an event that cannot be reversed. What is sparked cannot be unsparked. Once heat is released, time flows onward from there.”
No turning back.
“You’re brighter than you look, carbuncle,” Old Merlin said.
Merlin shivered, twisting out of his robes. He didn’t know if a compliment from Old Merlin was a badge of honor or a mark of shame.
There were other, deeper fears, too. Nin had pushed him to this revelation with her carefully chosen words. Why? Was she the kind of parent who gave him gifts and punished him on an epic scale? It hardly mattered now. Nothing could change the bedrock fact that Merlin couldn’t break Nin’s cycle until he was able to use his magic fully, and without fear of skipping backward over another birthday.
“Hit me with enough sparks to put the stars to shame,” Merlin said, tilting his chin up at what felt like a brave angle.
“All right, then,” Old Merlin said, pulling up his sleeves as though he relished the challenge. “… and if you’re wrong, and you end up nothing but a burnt stick of an apprentice?”
“I accept that risk,” Merlin said, taking a deep breath and hoarding it in his lungs.
Old Merlin sang in his harsh tenor, a Welsh song that Merlin didn’t remember strictly, and yet the sound of it sank deep into his bones. The old mage’s hands lit with a hundred points of light, and then they connected, a fireball headed straight for his chest.
And then there were steps on the stairs, and a voice so terrified it ripped a hole through the singing.
“Merlin!” Arthur cried.
“Yes?” they both responded, swiveling to face him. The fireball missed, crashing into a cupboard of magical ingredients and setting it on fire. Smoke poured out in several unexpected colors.
“Merlin, I need your help,” Arthur said as the old mage quenched the fire with a quick counterspell. “Gweneviere has been taken!”
“Gwen?” Merlin cried.
“They raided her chambers,” Arthur said. “I knew we should be sleeping together so I might defend her.” Merlin tried not to scoff. Arthur’s intentions were in the right place, but Jordan was the one who would have stopped any threat to Gwen—and they’d lost the black knight to the future.
“These villains left a message,” Arthur said, holding up the torn scrap of a note. Merlin snatched at it, but Old Merlin got there first.
“Curious that such crude thieves would know how to write,” Old Merlin said. “They must have employed someone to do this.” Merlin tried to catch a glimpse of the rag that had been written on, but Old Merlin put it right under his nose, squinting and even sniffing. “I can use this to find where she’s gone…” Arthur’s expression tilted toward hope. “But only if you promise not to go after her yourself.”
“I must,” Arthur said. “I no longer ask my knights to do the hardest work in this kingdom without putting myself in the same danger. There is no honor in such inequality.” Merlin could hear the echoes of Gwen and Ari in those words. He would have been proud of Arthur’s evolution if there had been room in his body for anything other than fear.
“This is undoubtedly a trap to draw you in, Arthur,” Old Merlin said. “If you go, your reign will end before your round table is given a chance to thrive. Don’t give these petty villains what they’re after. Send someone who wishes to save Gweneviere as much as you do.”
“Lancelot,” Merlin and his old self chorused.
They’d come up with the same answer to the equation, but they’d done different work to get there. Merlin wanted to send Ari because she would never stop until Gwen was safe. Old Merlin didn’t mind tossing Lancelot straight into the maw of danger.
“Fine,” Arthur said, with an even-dealing tone that matched the new maturity the chalice had brought. “But I have a condition of my own. This is the last time
