"I see," Riguzzo said.

"Your coffee is growing cold, Sergeant," Merlin said to Cleary. Cleary gave a start and nodded, picked up his cup, and then set it back down again a second later without drinking from it.

'Tell me, Professor," said Riguzzo, "how would you assess Karpinsky's abilities as an adept?"

"Well, he was gifted," Merlin said, "but somewhat er- [ ratic. No discipline. No patience, as I've already said. He was on a scholarship, you know." He shook his head, breathing out a cloud of violet-scented smoke. "It didn't reflect well on me or on the school when he was expelled. It's the sort of thing a teacher really hates to see. Wasted potential."

"How much potential, would you say?" Riguzzo said.

"A great deal," said Merlin. "He was one of my best students. One remembers students like that. One has high hopes for them. That makes it all the worse when they let you down."

"I realize I'm asking for some speculation here," Riguzzo said, "but would you say he could have passed his certification exams—if he had taken them, that is?"

"His first levels? Certainly. He would have breezed right through them. As I said, a shameful waste."

"If he was certified," Riguzzo said, "based on what you know of his abilities, at what level would you place him now?"

Merlin raised his eyebrows. "You mean beyond the first level? I really couldn't say. That does call for speculation. Potential is hardly the same thing as certified ability. He might have done well on the more advanced-level exams if he had prepared himself adequately, but it would be difficult to say. It's been a number of years since he left school. He might have continued to pursue his studies on his own, though that would be difficult to do, and especially in the case of practicing the more advanced spells, it would entail a considerable degree of risk without proper supervision."

"Would you say it might be possible for him to attain the skill level of a wizard?" said Riguzzo.

"On his own?" said Merlin. "I shouldn't think so." He shrugged. "But I suppose anything is possible."

"Would you say he was capable of violence?"

"Everyone is capable of violence."

"But some people are more inclined to it than others," said Riguzzo.

"Indeed," said Merlin. "However, my impression is that he would not be one of those. Dishonest, yes, but violent? I suppose it's possible, but it would surprise me."

"The local police are anxious to question him concerning a recent homicide here in Boston," said Riguzzo, watching the mage for a reaction. "We have reason to believe that it's connected with the robbery of the Christie Gallery and that there's a possible connection with a couple of homicides back in New York as well, one of which was the result of arson. I believe the reason that Karpinsky was expelled had to do with a fire at a concert?"

"Yes," said Merlin, pursing his lips. "As I recall, he overreached himself a bit and a fire spell went out of control. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured. You're telling me he's wanted for murder, as well as robbery?"

"At the moment he's only a suspect," said Riguzzo, "but we would very much like to speak with him. Our information indicates that he is keeping company with a young woman named Kira. Slim, pretty, dark hair, about five foot six or seven, around eighteen years old. Ring any bells?"

"I don't recall anyone like that among my students," Merlin said. "Still, I can't remember all of them, you know. Some stand out for one reason or another; others are just part of the crowd. I'm sorry I can't be of more help to you."

"I respect your desire not to want to be involved with the police, Professor," Riguzzo said, "but if Karpinsky should contact you again, I would very much appreciate it if you would let us know. You could call the Boston Police Department, ask for Captain McGarry."

"Not the local office of the ITC?" said Merlin.

"There seems to be some problem about jurisdiction," said Riguzzo. "The ITC is looking into it, but for the mo-

ment we're carrying the ball. I suppose they want us to do all the legwork for them before they walk in and wrap it up. Frankly, that's why Captain McGarry called us in. Ordinarily we wouldn't be pursuing an investigation in his jurisdiction, but there isn't much point to tying up a lot of man-hours on a case that's only going to get taken away from you sooner or later. This is a headache that no one seems to want, so I guess we're stuck with it, at least for the time being. Anyway, that's not your problem, Professor." He stood, and Cleary followed suit. "I'd like to thank you for your time."

"I'm sorry I couldn't have been more helpful," Merlin said. "I'll see you to the door."

"Please don't trouble yourself, Professor, we can show ourselves out."

Outside, Cleary shook himself. He seemed dazed.

"What was wrong with you in there?" Riguzzo said.

"I don't know," said Cleary. He glanced uneasily at the ceramic gnomes on the front lawn. "I felt... strange. Numb, sort of."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I... guess so. It's like I sort of drifted off somewhere."

They walked down to the car where Agent Morgan waited.

"You don't think he did anything to me, do you?" Cleary said.

"Like what?" Riguzzo said.

"Like... I don't know. Hypnotized me or something."

"You're being paranoid. You sure you feel okay?"

"Yeah, now I do. But I had the strangest feeling back there..."

They got into the car.

"Well, we didn't learn much," Riguzzo began.

"I know," said Morgan.

"You know?"

"I listened in," she said. "I wanted to hear exactly what he said and how he said it." She glanced at Cleary.

"7r was you!" said Cleary with a start. He became angry. "What the hell! Where do you get off pulling something like that? You've got no right!"

"Calm down, Sergeant," she said. "I was well within my authority to—"

"Wait a minute," said Riguzzo. "Do I understand this correctly? You commandeered my partner's body to listen in on that interrogation?"

"As I was saying," she said, "I was well within my authority as the agent in charge of this investigation to pursue whatever means are necessary to—"

"Dom—" said Cleary, suddenly grabbing Riguzzo's shoulder. He was looking out the window, his eyes wide.

One of the ceramic gnomes was walking toward their car. It came up the door on the passenger side and knocked on the window. Staring, Riguzzo rolled it down.

"Oh, by the way, Morgana," said the gnome, speaking with Merlin's voice, "don't be so shy next time. Did you think that I would be so petty as to bear a grudge for some two thousand years?"

CHAPTER Eleven

They materialized inside the crammed apartment on East 4th Street, and Kira immediately sank down into the big chair, draping one knee-socked leg over the arm and dangling her saddle shoe.

"This popping in and out like this is getting real old," she said wearily. "I'm so blitzed, I can't even think straight." She glanced up at Wyrdrune. "What are you grinning at?"

"The new you," he said, referring to her outfit. "You look like you're about twelve years old."

"Yeah, well, if I am, you're in a pile of trouble. That's going to be the first order of business, warlock," she said. "I got to get me some decent clothes. I have to admit this beats wearing nothing, but not by very much."

"It's sort of a cute outfit, actually. I guess Merlin's not up with current fashions," Wyrdrune said. He stopped smiling abruptly. "You gave me a hell of a scare, you know."

"I was a little scared myself." She smiled wryly. "Thanks for rescuing me. What you did took guts."

"Did he... hurt you?" He kept thinking about her nakedness and how vulnerable she had looked.

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"1 don't really want to talk about it."

"It was my fault," said Wyrdrune. He felt as if he should comfort her somehow, take her in his arms, but her manner was the same as always, despite the schoolgirl costume. Street-tough and defiant. Her body language and her tense mood held him at a distance. You're not so tough, you know, he thought, and he said, "I should never have left you alone."

"Don't be stupid," she said. "If you'd been there, you'd probably be dead by now. Which reminds me, just how safe are we here?"

"As safe as anywhere else, I guess," he said. "Nobody really knows I'm here—except Merlin, that is. I keep pretty much to myself. I've been subletting this place from some actors who moved to the West Coast. They only keep it to have someplace to stay when they come into town every few months, and they never show up without letting me know in advance. They give me a break on the rent, so it works out. There's no record anywhere of me staying here, at least not that I know of. I don't get much mail, and the little I do get I pick up at my post office box. And the phone's not in my name because I never saw any point to going through the hassle. I'm glad of that now. Merlin and I discussed it, and he figured this would be the best place for us to be for now."

"I suppose so," she said. "It's a cinch we can't go back to my place."

"So there you are!" the broom said, swaying into the room. "Where have you been? And don't tell me you've been 'out.' What is it, too much trouble to let me know what's going on around here? You think maybe this is a hotel where you can just come and go anytime you please? Does anybody think to check with me? No, of course not, I'm just part of the furniture! A note is too much trouble, I suppose, a phone call, even? Should I hold dinner? Should I wait up? Should I start calling up the hospitals to see if maybe you were run over by a car? Does it occur to anybody that I

might be frantic with worry here? Is it too much to expect some consideration?"

They glanced at each other and burst out laughing. And a moment later they were in each other's arms, kissing and clinging desperately as the tension broke and washed out of them in a flood of emotion.

"The schmoozing can wait till after dinner," said the broom. "When did you eat last? You must be starving. I'll go warm up some meat loaf."

"What did he mean about not bearing a grudge for two thousand years?" said Cleary. "What was that, some sort of joke?"

"I don't mink he was joking," said Riguzzo, looking at Morgan strangely. "Special Agent Faye Morgan, ITC," he said. "You didn't even change it much."

"I've changed it quite a number of times over the years," she said, staring straight ahead.

"What are you talking about?" said Cleary.

"She and Merlin go way back," Riguzzo said. "Way, way back. Sit up straight, Al, you're in the presence of royalty. She's King Arthur's sister, Princess Morgan Le Fay."

"Half sister," she said. "And I'm not a princess. I never was, not really."

"But you almost had a kingdom once," Riguzzo said.

"Yes, once. But that was a long, long time ago," she said, staring straight ahead.

Riguzzo shook his head slowly. "No wonder you didn't want to go in and see Merlin. You're the one who put him to sleep for all those years. But he recognized your presence, anyway. That's what you felt, Al. You felt her fear. But Merlin seems inclined to let bygones be bygones. I wonder why. I don't know that I'd forgive you so easily if it had been me."

"I told you, Merlin has his own priorities," she said. "Maybe he's forgiven me. Maybe he just wants to see me

squirm. I never could figure him out. And he's always scared me. But he's involved in this up to his neck. I just wish I knew why." She glanced at him. "Your knowledge of history is unusual for a cop."

"I read a lot," he said. "Chronic insomnia."

"Really?" she said, not taking her eyes off the road. "I can fix that for you."

"Thanks, but please don't bother. My insomnia is one of the few things I can count on these days. It's getting so that hardly anything surprises me anymore. But it explains how a woman who looks so young could rise so far in the ITC. Not so young at all, as it turns out. What's it like to live so long? To literally watch history taking place over generations?"

"Nowhere near as interesting as you might think," she said. She sighed. "It can get very boring, actually."

"How many others are there like you?" said Riguzzo. "Besides Merlin, I mean."

"Like me?" she said.

Riguzzo hesitated a beat and licked his lips nervously. "Immortals," he said.

She chuckled. "I'm not immortal, Lieutenant. I can be killed just as easily as you. And I do age, although at a rate far slower than yours. I can slow down my aging even more through sorcery, but I can't stop it completely. Eventually I'll die. I just don't know when."

"I've always wondered about Merlin," said Riguzzo. "It's true, then. There really was a different race before us, and some of them are still around. Merlin's one of them. And so are you."

She shook her head. "Not really. Merlin and I are half-breeds. I suspect that both of us would have died a long time ago if it hadn't been for our sorcery. My mother was a human, as was Arthur's father, Uther. Arthur didn't have the gene. He never suspected what I was. I didn't know myself, until I met Merlin. He was my teacher, you know." She glanced at him. "As to how many more of us there are, your

guess is as good as mine. I've met a few over the years, an old man named Cagliostro, a seer called Nostradamus, an industrialist named Long, a few others here and there. Never any full-bloods—one of the Old Ones, as we call them. Many of them died in the Great Mage War. The others scattered. They interbred with humans, grew old, died out. Some were discovered for what they were and were killed. Their blood became diluted over the years. Every now and then someone turns up with unusually developed paranormal abilities, but they never really know where they got them from. It's the sort of thing you won't find in any of the history books."

"Does the ITC know who you really are?"

"Only a few of my most trusted colleagues know," she said. She smiled. "The rest just make jokes about my name. If they only knew."

"Why the ITC?" said Cleary. "Someone like you could live any way you wanted to. You could be rich."

"I am rich," she said. She smirked. "You'd be amazed what even the most conservative of investment plans can accomplish over several thousand years. But I keep it quiet. It would take a team of the best accountants in the world a generation to unravel my various assets and trace them back to me. I prefer keeping a low profile. A habit born of centuries of paranoia. If I decide you can't be trusted, I can easily make you forget you ever even met me. Perhaps I will, when this is over." She shrugged. "Or perhaps I won't. It doesn't really matter anymore. We sorcerers have come out of the closet, don't you know."

"You still haven't said why you're working as an ITC investigator," said Riguzzo. "Not that it's not a prestigious job, but I should think you could easily do better."

"True," she said, "but I'm not really interested. This job suits my purposes."

"And gives you easy access to a constant stream of information from all over the world," Riguzzo said, watching her

for a reaction. "It's Morpheus, isn't it? You're doing this because you're after him. He's like you, isn't he? A descendant of the Old Ones. One who's gone bad."

"I gather you're quite good at your job, Lieutenant," she said.

"I don't miss much," he admitted. "Force of habit, I suppose. You work as a cop as long as I have, you learn how to read people, how to watch them closely without even thinking about it. You get a very intense look in your eyes when you're talking about him. Your body talks a lot too. This is something very personal for you, isn't it?"

She remained silent for a long moment, staring out at the road.

"I didn't mean to pry," Riguzzo said.

She glanced at him. "Yes, you did. But it's all right. I understand. You have to be able to trust the people you work with. And I want you to trust me, because I need your help." She turned to look back at the road. Her whole body was tense. "Morpheus is my son."

He stood at the window of his hotel room on the twenty-seventh floor, staring out at the city. He had only one suitcase, which lay open on the bed. He had started to unpack but hadn't finished. Several folded shirts lay piled on the bed, along with a leather case holding his toilet articles, some underwear, socks, a pair of expensive black slacks, and a black tunic that buttoned up the side. He had purchased a new 10-mm automatic pistol with a silencer and spell-warded it against metal detection. It rested in its black shoulder holster, visible now that he had removed his suit jacket, which was tailored so as to conceal the slight bulge. He would need to buy some new clothes. He had complete wardrobes in a dozen apartments in a dozen different cities, homes in several countries, some of which he hadn't seen in years. He could start over—although replacing Apollonius would not be easy and valued possessions had been de-

strayed that never could be replaced—but he still had unfinished business to take care of.

The kid was a better adept than he had thought. He had somehow managed to snatch the runestones back. No matter. He'd get them back again. He was dealing with amateurs. Gifted amateurs, perhaps, but amateurs nonetheless. He'd had years to perfect his craft. Years and years and years.

He had called room service and ordered a bottle of expensive, unblended Scotch. He held the glass in his right hand, drinking it straight and neat as he stared out the window at the lights of the city. His left hand held a cigarette, and the smoke from it trailed up past his face. For the first time in generations he felt as if things were slipping away from him, out of his control.

He was an adept, although not an expert one. Not as highly skilled as a sorcerer or a mage. Had he ever taken certification tests, he would probably have certified as a mid-level wizard. His education had been informal; he had been taught by his mother in his youth, and what proficiency he had was attributable to her demands on him, but though he had practiced as she wanted, he had always disliked magic. He found it useful on numerous occasions, but he preferred not using it. It was part of her world, part of her design for him, a design he had never really wanted any part of.

The intervening years had erased his hatred of his father. It had been dead for years, as Arthur himself was. When he thought of Arthur now—and he could never quite bring himself to think of him as "Father"—it was with a somewhat poignant wistfulness. It had been a terrible waste. Perhaps they might have had the normal relationship of a father and his son, even of a king and his acknowledged bastard, despite the sinful circumstances of his birth, but Arthur had never been able to face up to it beyond acknowledging his son's existence as an unpleasant fact. And Morgan had been

poisoned by her hate and lust for vengeance. Or maybe it was lust for power. Or both. In any case, it no longer mattered, had not mattered for generations. What mattered was that she couldn't let him go.

For a while he thought he had escaped her suffocating influence. Everyone had thought him dead after the final battle, after the fall of Camelot and the vaunted age it represented, a time he had always perceived as being dedicated to vainglorious pride, ambition, and self-righteousness. How it had rocked them when Lancelot, the purest of them all, Arthur's own idealistic icon on a pedestal, had proved only human, after all. But even after it was over, there was no relief.

He knew his name would be forever linked with Arthur's fall, as if it were his fault that Guinevere and Lance fell to it like a pah- of randy goats. It was all right, as long no one openly admitted it; they could sleep with one another beneath Arthur's own roof and pretend it was their guilty secret when Arthur knew about it, Merlin knew about it, Morgan knew about it, and half the palace guard and servants knew of the affair as well. That was the extent of Camelot's idealistic purity. Sweep the dirt beneath the rug and look the other way. But once the affair had been officially exposed, it was a different matter. Then Arthur had to stand upon his principles and watch his queen condemned to burn while he withheld his royal pardon, counting on his friend—the friend who had made him a cuckold—to rescue the woman they both loved and, in the act of doing so, condemn them both. The hypocrisy was nauseating. Arthur could condone the sin committed by his wife and his best friend, and even love mem still, but he could not acknowledge the sin that he himself committed, nor bring himself to love his son, for that would reveal his own frail humanity, his own inability to live up to the lofty principles he had laid down for the entire kingdom. It was that which had infuriated the young Modred. His outrage over the injustice of it all and his de-

spair at being denied his birthright only served to fuel an adolescent temper, so easily given to extremes, making him an easy pawn for a manipulative mother who had her own emotion-charged agenda.

Afterward, he had disappeared. For a time, he wandered the countryside as an itinerant bard, and then a thief—a prince reduced to petty theivery!—and finally a mercenary, a vocation that eminently suited him. It called for nothing but the most elemental human traits. In battle after battle he forged himself anew, losing his old self in the white heat of combat and creating, like a phoenix rising from the ashes of the fallen Camelot, a new and very different man, a soldier, given to simplicity of dialogue and action, a man who made his way in life by way of physical accomplishment rather than by way of thaumaturgic skill. The youthful emotions that had consumed him and made him vulnerable were restrained, then numbed, and finally transformed into a cold and ruthless pragmatism. He had no ideals beyond the precision of his craft, no morals beyond those defined by the logic of the situation. He had seen enough of morals and ideals in his youth, and he knew how easily they were equivocated by expediency. He had sworn that he would never stoop to the hypocrisy of self-righteous virtue, and he had reconciled himself to what he had become. He did not pretend to be anything else but what he was.

He traveled the world and watched it change over the centuries. He lived many lives as many different people, but always, essentially, he had remained unchanged—a black knight errant who deceived neither himself nor others with chivalric pretensions.

The only purity he recognized was that of craftsmanship, and the purity of art. Especially art. The true artist, at least in the practice of his craft, was incapable of deceit. His each and every effort was a striving for an elemental truth. The artist could no more hide the object of his quest than he could alter the result. It was there in every piece of sculp-

tare, in each painting—Michelangelo's search for the godlike quality in man, Raphael's quest for his spiritual beauty, Bosch's visions of the dark side of the psyche, Gauguin's restless yearning for a primitive simplicity. Van Gogh could no more hide his own hysteria than he could resist the driving urge to capture the hysteria of nature. His paintings shouted with a divine madness, revealed the frenzied momentum of nature as plainly as they revealed the manic restlessness of his own soul. The artist ceaselessly revealed himself in his own work, and it was this breast-baring honesty that Modred cherished, the openness, the brutal frankness of bringing truth into the light of day. He found it on the canvases of the masters, but only rarely did he find it in people. And the irony of the fates so many of these artists came to did not escape him. Truth was not well tolerated in the world.

He had learned a lot over the years, and he understood enough psychology to comprehend himself. Sometimes too well. The well-examined life allows for little self-justification, and he knew that at the core of his persona he had not changed very much at all. No one ever does. He had restructured his worldview and his outward self, his priorities, and, to a large degree, even his personality, but deep down inside he was still the same young Modred, the outraged and angry boy who had dragged the ugly truth into the light of day and torn the veil from it so all could see. And then, as now, he could gain little satisfaction from it. The truth revealed did not necessarily set things right. It was merely the truth revealed. Sometimes, as with the paintings of Van Gogh, it could be beautiful. More often it was ugly. But whether it was beautiful or ugly, he had learned to accept it with equanimity and to settle for nothing less.

Morgan had never learned.

He thought of her as Morgan now, sometimes more impersonally as Le Fay, rarely as "Mother." He did not love her, and it had taken him years to learn that he had never

loved her, nor had she loved him. What they had for each other in the place of love had been dependency, obsessive need. Their feelings toward each other had always existed in the context of their relationship with Arthur, and that relationship was poisoned. There was never any honesty, nor was there acceptance. On his part, all that was in the past. What he felt toward her now was, in a way, much worse than resentment, even worse than hate.

He felt pity.

And there was no room in his life for pity. He wanted nothing more to do with her, He wanted only to be left alone, bat her pursuit of him had been relentless, spanning centuries. Over the years they had encountered each other several times, and he had always fled from her—not so much from her as from his feelings toward her. He did not like unfinished business, but that was the one piece of business in his life that would remain unfinished. The ony way to settle that relationship once and for all was to confront her with the truth, as he had confronted Arthur with it, but unlike Arthur, she would not accept it. The victory she had won over Arthur, through her son, had been a hollow one. Her so-called "triumph" over Merlin made a mockery by his return. Both men had refused to be cast into the simple roles she had devised for them. Both were too complex for such facile characterization. Her fulfillment had eluded her because she looked for it in things outside herself, and now the only thing that she had left to pin her reason for existence on was a son whom she had never learned to love, a son whose only identity to her was tied up with her ambition, her feelings of rejection, and her desire for revenge. And, like Arthur and Merlin, Modred refused the role she had assigned to him.

He closed his eyes as he stood at the window, thinking, "Morgan, Morgan, why can't you let it be? Find a life of your own to lead. Why must you insist on living it through

me? How long must this go on? How many years? Must one of us die for the other to be free?"

She was somewhere close now. He could feel it. But he could feel something else as well, something much stronger than her presence. It was this disquieting feeling that occupied his thoughts now. He did not know what it was. It had something to do with the warlock and the girl and, indirectly, with Al'Hassan as well. He had always steered clear of Al'Hassan before, as he had scrupulously avoided Merlin since his reawakening. Both men were too powerful; both possessed enough thaumaturgic talent to discover him for who and what he was, given the opportunity. Modred had avoided them as he had avoided all the real power brokers, people who might have many convenient uses for a man such as himself, but who just as easily could have become an inconvenience themselves. He had plied his trade conservatively, picking his clients with care, charging them according to their ability to pay, and keeping most of them at a distance. He had always made it a rule to serve the petty warlords, never the princes and the kings, because with increased power came increased visibility. And for a man in his profession, the greatest power lay in being invisible.

Yet now he had set out to pay back Al'Hassan for the destruction of his penthouse, of his hyperdimensional matrix computer, and of his cherished paintings. It was unlike him. He had never before allowed personal emotions to interfere with his profession. A part of him realized that the intelligent thing to do would be to cut his losses and start fresh. He had brushed up against one of the heavyweights, someone well out of his league, and the prudent thing to do would be to chalk it up to experience and carefully avoid any further contact in the future. But some insults were too outrageous to be borne.

And there was something else.

He had found the warlock and the girl and picked up their trail easily. Perhaps too easily. He had lost the warlock back

in Boston, and the runestones along with him, yet some powerful instinct urged him to return to New York City because he knew the warlock would return here also. How did he know? At first, he told himself that it was just a feeling, a hunch, the result of generations of experience as a stalker of men, and yet it was something more man that.

He hadn't liked the job from the very beginning. He had used Fats as an intermediary before in several of his jobs; men like Fats were useful, and he had not objected to undertaking a commission for him. But once he had found out the particulars, he hesitated. It was not his sort of job. He was a predator who preyed on other predators. Not for any moral reason; he did not delude himself that he only killed men who deserved to die, although that was usually the case. He killed those who had placed themselves into death's arena. They had bought into a game played by rules outside society, and consequently had incurred the risks that went along with it. But this was different. This was a case of a lowly, although extremely well connected, fence wanting him to take out two even more lowly snatch-and-grabbers, amateurs, little more than kids. It was distasteful. It was beneath him. And yet he had accepted the commission without really understanding why.

It should have been a very simple job. The work of a few days. But complications had quickly introduced themselves. The police were involved. Well, that was to be expected, but Porfirio Rozetti had been a wild card. And then Rozetti had been murdered. And then Fats was hit. And AFHassan's long arm had reached out and almost struck him down as well. And now Merlin was involved. Why? Why so much interest in a couple of kids who got in over their heads? What were those runestones that they were worth so much? And why did he feel this peculiar connection with the warlock and the girl? It was even stronger than the ancient link he shared with Morgan. They were like magnets exerting their force upon each other, aware of each other's proximity

long before they came together. It was like a sixth sense, like an animal sniffing the wind and sensing the approach of an intruder.

The kid's an amateur, he told himself. A bloody, smalltime amateur. So how had he managed to escape from the police? And how had he managed to regain possession of the runestones? And Merlin, damn him, he had gone to Merlin. Where did he fit in? Surely Merlin would not involve himself in such a case merely because the warlock had once been his student. There had to be much more to it than that. What powerful spell did those runestones represent? And if it was some ancient, terribly significant, potent spdl, why didn't Merlin retain them for himself? How had Al'Hassan allowed them to slip out of his grasp?

Something was coming. But what?

He drew on his cigarette and sipped his Scotch as he stared out the window at the night-shrouded city. His gaze fell on the Tricorp Building, headquarters of the U.S. branch of the ITC. Its tall, wide, pyramid shape towered over the much older buildings all around it. Its unique architecture was an indication of the future, the first sign of an old city beginning a transition to a newer, brighter age. He stared at its triangular shape, illuminated against the sky, and for some reason he couldn't take his gaze away from it. It was like some gargantuan symbol, pregnant with significance, confronting him, waiting for him to decipher its meaning.

What was it?

CHAPTER Twelve

He stood in dazzling sunlight, before an altar high atop a stone pyramid in a sweltering jungle. He was dressed in white ceremonial robes embroidered with gold and a tall, heavy, ornate headdress, like a war helmet with cheek-pieces and a crown of long, brightly colored feathers. Below him was a throng of copper-skinned worshipers, their arms upraised, their voices clamoring. He turned to them and raised a stone knife before him in both hands, clasping it point downward, raising it high over his head. They became utterly still. He turned, facing the altar, on which reclined the body of a naked virgin, just past puberty. She looked up at him, eyes wide, her body shivering, her lips slightly parted. A single tear rolled down her cheek and fell upon the blood-encrusted stone. He raised his eyes up to the heavens, staring into the blinding sunlight, and gave the invocation in an ancient language that he could speak only in his dreams. Then he brought the knife down hard, plunging it deep into the young girl's bosom as she screamed, rending the flesh, sending arterial blood spurting out in fountains. It spattered his white robe and shot up into his face. He plunged his

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hands into the bloody cavity and closed his fingers around the still pulsing young heart. He ripped it from the chest and held it high, displaying it to the cheering multitude as warm blood streamed down his arms into his sleeves....

His sandaled feet made not the slightest sound as they walked slowly across the cold stone floor in the vaulted chamber. Flames burned in tall and heavy braziers made of bronze, throwing dancing shadows on the walls. His long Pharaonic gown brushed the floor as he stepped within the borders of the pentagram. A tall, cylindrical crown of gold was on his head, a golden beard-piece fixed to his chin, his eyes outlined in black and heavily shadowed in pigments of blue and green. His cheeks were rouged, his lips reddened, his face painted a glistening gold. He raised his head, and his gaze fell on the naked sacrificial victim chained to the wall before him, beyond the borders of the pentagram. Unable to meet the stare of a living god, the trembling young boy looked down at the floor. His body was covered with cabalistic symbols painted in black and gold upon his alabaster skin. His head was shaved. His finger and toenails had been painted red, his cheeks and lips rouged, his frightened eyes delicately outlined in black and gold. There was not a sound within the chamber except for the boy's labored breathing and the clinking of his chains. Inside the borders of the pentagram, the living god took a deep breath and closed his eyes, bringing his hands up before his chest and turning his palms outward. His head thrown back, his eyes closed, he began to recite the incantation. A cold wind blew through the chamber. The flames sputtered in the braziers and then burned down very low. The chamber was in almost total darkness now. And in that darkness, outside the borders of the pentagram, a darker darkness gathered. It seemed to flow and writhe across the floor, moving toward the boy, resolving itself into a large black shape that rose up like a wave. It crested and then crashed down upon the

naked boy. His high-pitched, throat-rending screams echoed

off the cold stone walls-----

They moved in single file, chanting, torches held high against the night, entering the circle of the standing stones. Four of them carried a litter strewn with fresh-cut boughs, green and fresh-smelling, on which the offering reclined, a young girl with hair the shade of fire and eyes as bright green as the grass upon the gently rolling hills. He stood within the center of the circle, the High Priest, as his hooded, white-robed acolytes placed the litter down before him, the young virgin sitting erect upon it now, eyes glazed, face empty of expression. They formed a circle around him inside the larger circle of the standing stones. He led her to the altar, a large, flat stone placed across two shorter stones set deep into the ground. He lifted her up onto the flat stone and gently laid her down. The torches lit the night, throwing shadows on the standing stones. His fingers closed around the knife as he looked down at her. Her eyes cleared, and she seemed to see him for the first time. She gave a gasp and opened her mouth to scream as the blade came down....

Rashid's eyes flew open as he awoke with a start. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes again, taking a deep breath. His body was damp with sweat, and the silk sheets were soaked and tangled by his thrashing. He moistened his lips and sat up slowly, rubbing his forehead. His pulse rate was high, his breath was short, and he had a throbbing headache.

Every morning was the same now. Insomnia plagued him when he went to bed at night, vainly hoping for a sound and dreamless sleep but knowing that when sleep finally came, it would be fraught with nightmarish visions. He knew only too well where those visions came from. There was nothing he could do to banish them.

He pulled the tangled covers back and got out of bed, feeling utterly exhausted. He walked unsteadily over to the

sideboard and poured himself a glass of whiskey from die bottle that he kept there. He was drinking steadily now, spreading it out throughout the day, but mostly at night, especially at night, and he needed a few shots in the morning to steady his ragged nerves. As he leaned against the sideboard, holding the glass in a trembling hand, he looked up into the mirror mounted on the wall and saw the face of an old man. The hair was long and lank, heavily streaked with gray, like the hair of an old woman. There were deep, dark pouches beneath his eyes, his skin was pale and wrinkled, his lips trembled slightly. The back of bis hand was wrinkled and liver-spotted. It wasn't a hand so much as a claw.

Once, not very long ago, mere had been servants to attend him in the morning, to bring him his breakfast, to assist with his ablutions, and to help him dress. Not anymore. Breakfast was a thing of the past now, and he had given strict orders that on no account was he to be disturbed until he came out of his bedroom. He did not want anyone to see him like this. He tossed back the drink, and then another, and stared into the mirror at the tired old man reflected there. As he stared at his reflection, waiting for the change to come, the jewel set in his forehead began to glow. The gray in his hair slowly became a lustrous black. The skin darkened and the wrinkles disappeared. The bags under his eyes faded away, as did the liver spots on his hands. He held up his hand, closing it into a fist and opening it again, feeling the strength returning to him.

Each morning he awoke looking much older, feeling more tired, more afraid. Each morning he was again restored. He could feel his strength increasing every time. It was as if he were actually living out the full span of the lives he relived in his dreams. They were making him over. It was as if he were dying in pieces and being resurrected in stages as a new and different being. Now he looked even younger than before, and he was terrified that it would stop, that one

morning he would awake as an old man and remain that way.

At night they spoke to him. He felt their presence like tendrils of ice being wrapped around his mind. They were restless, impatient now that their long wait was almost at an end. And in their weakened condition, they were hungry. Rashid shivered at the thought of what he would have to do to feed them. He had been working on the spells for weeks. They terrified him.

He poured himself another drink, his hand steady now, and he sipped this one slowly, savoring its taste. His plan to use the girl to bring the warlock to him with the runestones had failed, thanks to Merlin's interference. He could afford to wait no longer. Ambrosius was the immediate danger now. He knew. He had to know. And that knowledge meant he had to die.

Merlin's fate was a foregone conclusion, but Rashid had hoped that he wouldn't have to be the instrument of his old teacher's death. It wasn't that he had any warm feelings for the old mage; he did not regard Merlin with affection, nor did Merlin think of him that way. They had not been in contact for years now, except for that brief visitation he had sent to Merlin's home following Kira's rescue. He should have known better than to hope to catch Ambrosius off-guard. The old archmage was as strong as ever. And just as shrewd. That blast he had sent back through the conjured entity had hurt. It had weakened him severely. Under ordinary circumstances it would have killed him, but these were not ordinary circumstances. Things would never be ordinary for him again.

He was neglecting business. It didn't matter anymore. Today the board would meet, and it was almost certain that they would vote him out of office. The official censure had been the first step; now they would finish the job and have him removed. There had been dozens upon dozens of calls, none of which he had bothered answering, all from fright-

ened people whose power depended on his patronage, all greedy, grasping little double-dealers who had hitched their stars to his, and now they were in a panic, afraid that they would go down with him. His own staff was acting as if some sort of funeral were imminent. It had not escaped their notice that he was letting business slide, that he was keeping increasingly to himself, that he had started drinking heavily. All signs of a man on his way to ruin, they thought. An empire was about to fall. Little did they suspect what sort of empire would replace it.

They would give him power. More power than he had ever dreamed of. But at what price? And no matter how much power he held, it would always be subservient to theirs, in the manner they were showing him in dreams. It wasn't what he wanted. He had never wanted this. But he had no choice now.

Merlin's words came back to him, the words Merlin had spoken to him in his office years ago, when he had been in his last year of studies at the university.

"You've done well, Rashid," Merlin had said. "You've done very well, indeed. Much better than I had expected. I wanted to tell you that because I know that none of this has come easily to you and I can appreciate how hard you must have worked."

"I've had to work hard, Professor," he had replied. "My country has invested in my education and I had an obligation to my people. They were depending on me."

"Yes, I also appreciate how seriously you've approached your studies," said Merlin. "You will leave behind an admirable record at the university, one that will be difficult to surpass. However, there's much more to being an adept than mastering the skills, which you have done. There is also the philosophical approach, developing the proper attitude, learning to appreciate the spiritual nature of the craft. And that, I fear, you have not done."

He had reacted as if stung, because he had worked hard,

brutally hard, devoting every spare waking hour to his stud- , ies, cursing himself because it came less easily to him than | to some of the others, and he had taken a fierce pride in his own progress. No one, he thought, could have been more severely critical of him than he was of himself. He drove himself unmercifully, and it was shocking to think that Merlin could have found him wanting in any aspect of his performance.

"But... I don't understand, Professor," he had said, wounded to the quick. "I am at the top of my class. You, yourself, have said that my record is beyond reproach. Where have I failed? What is it I have overlooked? Show me and I will make immediate amends!"

"I don't know if you can make amends, Rashid," said Merlin sadly. "Some things are too deeply ingrained to be changed. I'm referring to your ambition."

Rashid had frowned. "But how can you fault me in that?" he protested. "It is my ambition that has seen me through my time here, that has resulted in my progress! Where is the sin in wanting to excel?"

"There's no sin in wanting to excel, Rashid," said Merlin. "However, it is in your reasons for wanting to excel that the sin, as you put it, lies. You reveal yourself with your own words. 'Your people' are depending on you, you said. Your people?" He held up a hand to forestall Rashid's rejoinder. "Oh, I understand that the phrase is used colloquially to refer to one's fellow countrymen, but that isn't really how you used it, is it? You really do think of them as your people, as your possessions, as your birthright. No, wait, let me finish. I've been watching you carefully ever since you came here, and I'll be honest with you: I didn't think you would last out the first year.

"You're not a very popular young man, you know," Merlin continued. "You do know that, of course. It's revealed in your demeanor among your fellow students. You haven't got a single friend here, have you? From the very first you've

held yourself above them, refusing to blend in, acting as if somehow you were being forced to perform some sort of necessary service as a condition of assuming the office to which your birth entitles you."

"I am a prince," Rashid said defensively. "I must bear myself accordingly."

"Oh, nonsense!" Merlin said. "You think I don't know the status of royalty in your country? Most of them are paupers, and a few cling to a pretense of nobility at the price of living constantly in debt, on the edge of financial ruin. I don't say this to belittle you, but to remind you of precisely where your responsibility to your people, as you put it, lies. Your country is nearly bankrupt. You were sent here to study the thaumaturgic arts in the hopes that you would succeed in bringing the benefits of thaumaturgy to your nation, which is sorely in need of the skills we teach here. You're a symbol to your people; you represent the hope for progress and education. But I don't believe you see yourself that way. You see yourself as a symbol, of that I have no doubt, but as a symbol of the return of power to a privileged few. Your ambition is not for the advancement of your country, but for the advancement of yourself and others like you. And I'm not even sure that you're terribly concerned about others of your so-called class. I think you're concerned primarily, exclusively, with yourself. You didn't come here to study the thaumaturgic arts as a means of gaining knowledge, you came in order to acquire power. Such an attitude in an adept, one who'll undoubtedly become a mage eventually, is reprehensible. And more than a little frightening."

"I see," Rashid said stiffly. "It is not my performance you find fault with, but my motivation. I submit to you, Professor, that it is not your province to judge me in that manner. You least of all, perhaps. Can you honestly say that in the old days, in your 'previous life,' as you refer to it, your own motives were entirely egalitarian? When you returned from your long sleep, was it the unselfish love of your fellow man

that led you to destroy, yes, to destroy all those who stood in your way? Oh, yes, of course, you are hailed now as the great educator, as the founding father of the new thaumatur-gic age, a veritable candidate for sainthood, to be sure, but what was it that brought you to this pinnacle you now occupy if it wasn't power? Throughout history there have always been those who lead and those who follow, and the difference between them could always be measured in one thing—power. The power of their own belief in themselves, the power to assume the role of leader, and the power to make others follow. Where would Arthur have been if it were not for your power behind him? Where would this country be today, where would most of the governments in the international community be today, if it were not for your power of leadership in helping to resolve the conflicts between them? And where do you think my country will be if someone—yes, perhaps someone like myself—does not take power and give it direction? Is that, then, where my fault lies, that I do not meekly assume the humble posture of the sorcerer's apprentice as the others do, but that I see a greater destiny beyond that?"

Merlin had let him talk until he'd run out of steam, watching him with a frown, smoking his pipe in silence. "Are you finished?" he said.

Rashid had taken a deep breath to steady his nerves. He knew that he had said too much, far too much, and he was amazed that he had the nerve to speak to Merlin in such a manner, but it had all come bursting forth, all his frustration and resentment, and now that it was out, he felt afraid.

"Yes, I am finished," he had said stiffly. "I suppose I am finished in more ways than one."

Merlin shook his head. "No, I won't hold it against you, if that's what you think," he said. "If I did, I'd be guilty of everything that you accuse me of. The fault is mine. I didn't teach you well. I've failed you. You've studied hard and you've learned much, but you haven't understood a thing.

You're like a musician who has practiced diligently until he has mastered his instrument, but you've never truly felt the music, and your playing will always be merely technically proficient, perhaps wonderfully so, but it will have no soul. I feel sorry for you, Rashid. You'll graduate with honors, but not with my respect. I take no pride in having had you for my student. I can only hope that when you realize your dreams of power, as I'm sure you will, you won't suffer from the nightmares that come with it. I know only too well what that means. You have yet to learn. Good day."

He had left the office in a daze of fury mixed with shame, feeling like a small boy who had been unjustly disciplined by an elder, one whom he had respected and admired, but who had disavowed him. It was unfair. His face had burned with shame and anger, and he was close to tears. He had resolved, in that moment, to prove Merlin wrong, to do much more than prove him wrong, to become as great a mage as Merlin was himself and to rub his face in it. He would show Ambrosius that his view of things was the correct one for bis country. He would bring the knowledge he had learned back home and spread it, yes; but he would do much more than that. He would assume responsibility for lifting his poor nation out of its deprivation and restoring it to its rightful place as a world power. He would start an empire, give jobs to his people, raise their standard of living, create wealth, reconcile the feuding nations with each other, and unite them into a confederacy of republics that was a nation instead of just a name.

But it was not so simple.

He had succeeded in his goals, he had become a powerful man, world-famous, head of a vast financial empire, but every success had left him wanting more, feeling strangely empty, somehow denied. His hard work entitled him to enjoy well-deserved rewards, but satisfaction and contentment continued to elude him. The very dogs that he had raised soon started yapping at his heels, biting die hand that

had first fed them now that they had the means to feed themselves. He was still respected, still feared—perhaps not so greatly anymore, now that they believed they had found a way to circumvent him—but he was now regarded as some sort of dinosaur, or to use the colorful metaphor an American publication had belabored, he was like the fast gun who had put on a badge and tamed a town, and now that the town was tame and prosperous, the aging gunfighter was considered an embarrassment. Although the marshal's gun hand was still as fast as lightning, the image of the gunslinger was not the one the town was anxious to promote. Now that the task had been accomplished, they argued with his methods, and while they were grateful for all that he had done, they wanted to be rid of him.

Merlin had been right. It galled him to admit it, but he had to give the old man credit. Power was an addiction. Once you're hooked, no matter how much you increase the dose, it's never enough. And while it may have started as the most direct means to a noble end, it had not taken long at all for it to become an end in itself. He had come to his present state seeking more power, when he had already gained more than enough to accomplish all that he had started out to do. And he had done it. He had met every goal that he had set himself, except perhaps to become as great a mage as Merlin, and now perhaps he had done even that—but there was only one way to find out for sure. He didn't want to do it.

What is it you're afraid of, Rashid?

He stared at his youthful reflection in the mirror, at the face of a man who appeared decades younger than he really was, a handsome, powerful man, envied by his peers, desired by women, feared and respected by those he had subdued, loved by his people—his people—who gave him the obeisance due a monarch, though his title was only nominal.

Are you afraid of Merlin?

And what would his people think of him if they knew

what he had become, what he was about to unleash upon them?

You were born to rule. The blood of Pharaohs runs in your veins.

A living god? He was not so much of a fool as to believe that, A high priest, perhaps—yes, that was fitting, the highest office lie could aspire to in the coming kingdom.

Merlin would take even that away from you.

He shut his eyes, then opened them again and poured himself another drink. He knew whose voices spoke to him through his own mind. He feared them. He was in awe of them. He worshiped them. They were Power Incarnate. Everything that he had done had groomed him to be their acolyte.

He thought of a story he once heard, part of the mythos surrounding Merlin, the legend that Merlin lived backward through time. According to the legend, the past was Merlin's future, the future Merlin's past. Nonsense, of course. But then, before the dawning of the second thaumaturgic age, magic was also regarded as nonsense. I wonder if you know, he thought. Do you already know the outcome of all this? No, of course he doesn't know. If the old legend were true, then Merlin never would have come back, because in his past, the very near future, he would have met his death.

It has to be today.

If he could have reclaimed the runestones before Merlin was alerted, then the Dark Ones would have been freed and they would have seen to Merlin. He would have stood no chance against their combined power. But now that Merlin was alerted to the threat, it was too dangerous to leave him alive. Even now, he would be preparing spells to counteract the power of the Dark Ones, the power that flowed through him. One of them would be destroyed.

Rashid did not know if he had the power to prevail over Merlin, even with the aid of the Dark Ones, but he had an advantage that Merlin did not have. He did not have to pit

his strength directly against Merlin's. The milestones were the key to the Dark Ones' containment. Now that they had been removed, the Dark Ones could reach out with their power. The runestones and the length of time that they had been contained had weakened them, but even so, their power was like nothing he had ever encountered. If they could be strengthened, they could break free. And they had shown him what to do in dreams.

They needed life energy to regain their strength, and he was the only one capable of giving it to them. But they were hungry. Very hungry. There was only so much he could give them before it was beyond even their power to replenish it. That was the reason for the dreams.

He would not strike at Merlin himself. Instead, he would cast his spells against others, releasing life energy the Dark Ones could consume. Merlin would be bound to try to stop him. And while Merlin was thus occupied, he would be vulnerable.

It has to be today.

"I'm going to go crazy if I have to stay cooped up in here much longer," Kara said.

She was once more in boots and trousers. The schoolgirl outfit Merlin had given her had been tossed in the trash as soon as she had bought new clothes. They had stocked up the refrigerator and the pantry, and a new, larger television set had been purchased to replace the one Wyrdrune had dropped. He sat before it now, watching the all-news channel, staring moodily at the screen. Kira was irritated at his lack of reaction. Since their shopping trip, they had been staying inside the apartment, and she was getting cabin fever.

"Between you staying glued to that television set and the damn broom trying to stuff me full of food, I'm starting to lose it," she said.

Wyrdrune turned toward her. "I'm sorry, Kira," he said.

"I don't like this waiting any more than you do, but I can't think of anything else to do right now."

He reached into his pocket and took out the pouch. He kept it on his person constantly, placing it under the pillow when they slept. He held it in his hand, staring at it, as if expecting it to say something to him. He shook his head.

"Merlin said we'd be guided by the runestones. I don't know how they're supposed to tell us anything, but I don't have any sense of what to do. I've got to keep track of what's going on out there," he said, jerking a thumb toward the television screen. "Something's bound to break soon. I just know it. I need to know what's going on before I can figure out what we should do."

"All right, so you can tune in the evening news," she said, "but do you have to stay planted in front of that damn thing all day? I'm starting to go stir-crazy in here."

"So read a book or something," he said. "There's several hundred here to choose from."

"Oh, great," she said sarcastically. "The police are looking for us, you've got a hit man out there trying to find you, Al'Hassan wants us both dead, and you say 'Read a book'! Shouldn't we be doing something?"

"Like what?" he said.

"How should / know?" she said, her temper flaring. "You're the adept around here, not me! Hell, all I wanted out of this deal to begin with was a simple score, and now all of a sudden I'm caught up in some kind of bizarre magical plot!"

"Fine," said Wyrdrune, bis own temper getting short. "If that's the case, then you can take your cut of what's left of the money and just go."

"Don't think I wouldn't if I could!" she said. "I never wanted any part of this! I've been teleported from one place to another till I'm dizzy, attacked by goons and almost killed, raped—"

Wyrdrune jerked around to stare at her. "He raped you?"

"So what? What do you care? While you and Merlin are busy planning how to save the world, it all comes down on me! And I'm just supposed to sit here and take it and wait till you decide to tell me what to do? What are we doing here? Why aren't we going to the police and telling them what happened? Why aren't we taking the money we've got left and hiring a lawyer? Why the hell aren't we doing something?"

He got up and came toward her, holding his arms out. "Kira, I'm sorry, I didn't know. I thought that... well, I was afraid that—"

"Just keep away from me!" she said. "It'll take more than a hug and a pat on the back to make things right!"

"Kira—" He tried to take her in his arms, but she shoved him away so hard that he went staggering back and fell over the coffee table. He rubbed his elbow where it had struck the coffee table and got up to a sitting position on the floor, staring at her in bewilderment as she glared down at him.

"I'm sorry," he said in a hurt tone. "I just wanted to—"

"Just leave me alone!" she said, turning away from him and going into the kitchen. The broom was bustling around in there, sweeping the floor with itself. She kicked out at it viciously, sending it flying across the room to strike the wall and fall back to the floor with a clatter.

"What? What?" the broom said. "What did I do already? Such a temper—"

Kira glared at it with such fury that it quickly scuttled back into the broom closet and shut the door behind itself. A second later it stuck the top portion of its handle out cautiously, but a thrown cup caused it to quickly dart back inside the closet as the cup shattered on the door.

She turned toward the kitchen cabinets and pulled open one of the drawers. She reached inside, and her fingers closed around the handle of a ten-inch butcher's knife. She pulled it out, staring at the keenly honed blade. She glanced back at the living room where Wyrdrune had resumed his

position in front of the TV set, his back turned toward her. He was hunched forward in an attitude of dejection.

Kill him.

She stared at the knife, holding it before her, her eyes glazed and unfocused.

Kill him now!

Slowly she started to move toward the living room, her eyes on Wyrdrune's back. In a daze, she approached him, turning the knife over in her hand, grasping it firmly by the hilt so that the blade was pointed down. Only a few feet separated them now. She raised the knife high over her head—

"Look out! Look out! Behind you!" the broom cried from the kitchen.

Wyrdrune turned quickly, glancing over his shoulder, and his eyes widened with shock at the sight of Kira with the knife raised high over her head—

There was the sound of breaking glass and a sharp, abrupt cough, a chuffing sound, and the bullet struck the knife blade, knocking it from Kira's grasp as she cried out.

She clutched her hand and blinked several times, shaking her head, and then her eyes cleared and she suddenly realized what she had been about to do.

"Oh, my God," she said.

The man on the fire escape reached through the broken glass and released the catch, then raised the window and stepped through into the apartment, holding a silenced automatic pistol in his right hand.

"You!" said Wyrdrune, staring at him with disbelief.

"That's twice I've saved your life now, wferlock," Modred said. "Sorry about the glass, but I didn't want to risk deflection. There was only time for just one shot."

Kira stood there looking stunned, still holding her hand, which stung from the impact of the bullet wrenching the knife out of her grasp. "I almost killed you," she said in a

small voice, barely louder than a whisper. "Oh, God, that's what he meant...."

Wyrdrune looked from her to Modred, feeling shocked and confused.

Modred gestured toward Kira with his pistol. "Go on," he said. "It seems you have something to settle here. I'll wait." He leaned against a bookcase, watching them, holding the gun loosely at his side.

"Kira," Wyrdrune said, staring at her uncomprehendingly. "Why?"

"It's him," she said, unable to look at him. "Oh, God, he's in my head! I didn't understand. He said that he could have my soul—"

"Rashid?"

She nodded jerkily. "He said the violence in my nature would bind me to him. I didn't understand. I thought he only wanted.. .1 thought—" She burst into tears. "I'm sorry! Oh, God, Melvin, I'm so sorry!"

He held her while she cried. He could feel her struggling for control, her body going tense, terrified now that any emotional display would allow Rashid a foothold. She got herself under control after about a minute and looked up at him, wiping away her tears.

"Forgive me," she said.

Wyrdrune smiled. "Melvin?" he said.

She attempted a weak grin. "I guess not, huh? Think I'll just go back to warlock." Then she stopped smiling, and her eyes filled with fear. "What am I going to do? I can't leave you, but if I stay, he might take control of me again and I might..." Her voice trailed off.

"I think we've got a more immediate problem on our hands right now," said Wyrdrune, turning back to Modred. "For someone who was hired to kill me, you've got the strangest way of going about it. How did you find us?"

"I honestly don't know," said Modred. He reached into

his pocket. "Perhaps these have something to do with it." He held the pouch containing the runestones in his hand.

Wyrdrune's right hand immediately slapped his own pocket, but of course, the pouch was no longer there.

"I suddenly felt their weight in my coat pocket while I was on the fire escape," said Modred. "And I don't know how I know, but I'm convinced they led me here. I find it all rather confusing. I was hoping you could explain it to me."

"It's him," said Kira, staring at Modred. "He's the one!" She glanced at Wyrdrune. "Don't you see? He's the one that we've been waiting for! He's the third part of the triangle!"

Modred frowned. "What's this about a triangle? What does a triangle mean to you?"

Wyrdrune watched him cautiously. "Does it mean anything to you?" he said.

"I'm not sure what it means," said Modred, "but it means something. Lately, every time I've seen something triangular in shape, I've had the most peculiar feeling, as if it were something very significant."

"It is," said Kira.

"I've told you once before, warlock," said Modred, "I'm not without some skill when it comes to thaumaturgy. I know when I'm under the influence of an enchantment. And I also know that a mere warlock does not possess sufficient skill to overcome me with a spell." He raised his weapon casually and pointed it at Wyrdrune. "I'll ask you the same question I asked you once before, and this time I want an answer. What is the purpose of these runestones?"

In the brief moment of silence that followed, the voice of the newscaster on the television set suddenly sounded very loud.

"This just in... it appears that a massive explosion at a home in the exclusive Boston residential area of Beacon Hill has claimed the life of the eminent thaumaturge, Merlin Ambrosius. For a special on-the-scene report, we now go live to correspondent Bruce Miller."

The screen showed an image of a large Victorian mansion wreathed in flames as a reporter with a microphone stood across the street from it in the foreground, framed on the right side of the screen. There was a cacophony of sirens as firemen struggled to put out the blaze and police arrived to hold back the crowd of onlookers.

"I'm standing just across the street from the residence of Merlin Ambrosius, internationally known archmage and educator," said the reporter. "As you can see, the fire here is raging out of control, and the concern now is to prevent it from spreading to the neighboring houses. A short while ago, this block rocked with the concussion of several massive explosions. Reports as to their number vary from between three to six. As we were setting up here, yet another explosion shook the house and blew out part of the left wall. According to our information, Professor Ambrosius was inside the house at the time of the first series of explosions, and it seems virtually impossible that he could have survived. Irma Hofstedder has resided next door to Merlin Am-brosius for the past thirty-five years, and she was home when the explosions occurred."

The shot widened to show a squat, gray-haired, little battle-ax of a woman wearing a print dress and holding two squirming cats in her arms.

"Mrs. Hofstedder, could you tell—"

She did not give him the chance to finish. "It was his magic what done it," she said, drawing herself up fiercely and staring belligerently at the camera. "I told him and I told him, no good would come of it, no good at all, all the time sitting down there like a spider with his conjuring and spells and all, 'tain't Christian, 'tain't Christian at all, and now look what he's gone and done! All the times I've called up and complained, but they wouldn't listen to me! Well, now you see what comes of it! It's the devil's work, that's what it is! And my poor house next door to his, look at it, look what they're doing!"

There were fierce thunderheads gathered directly over the neighboring houses, pouring forth a deluge of water as the fire department's sorcerer adepts fought to keep the flames from spreading while the lay firemen trained hoses on the blaze.

_ "Even if the fire doesn't spread to my house, there will be all that water damage," she said. "I never had a chance to close the windows! And my vegetable garden and my precious roses! All ruined, I tell you! I'm going to sue the fire department! I'll sue the police for not putting a stop to all his conjuring all those times I've called them! I'll sue City Hall! I'll sue the university! I'll sue—"

"Thank you, Mrs. Hofstedder," said the reporter, moving away from her with the mike. "As you can see, the neighbors are understandably distraught. However, it should be pointed out that at this tune there is no evidence to indicate the explosions that resulted in the fire were the result of thaumaturgy. And there may be evidence of foul play. Shortly after the first of the explosions occurred, one of the neighbors witnessed two vehicles speeding away from the scene."

He moved over to his right, and a young man who was standing by, just out of camera range, appeared in the shot with him.

"Steven Rasnic resides hi the house directly across the street from the home of Professor Ambrosius," said Miller. "Mr. Rasnic, could you tell us what you saw immediately following the first explosion?"

"Well," said Rasnic, speaking slowly and deliberately, "we were just getting ready to sit down to dinner when we heard the first explosion. It blew all the front windows right into the house. I thought maybe a gas main had burst, and I ran to the front door. As I opened it, the next several explosions occurred—at least three of them, one right after another. Debris was falling down into the street and our front yard, and I saw several men running across the street. There

were four of them, and they jumped into these two cars that were pulled up in the street right in front of our yard. They took off at top speed in that direction, down the street. I didn't get a very good look at them, but it looked as if they were running from the direction of the professor's house. And the gate to the professor's yard was open. Of course, it could have been blown open by the force of the explosion, but he never leaves it that way." And, as if rebutting the old woman's testimony, he added, "We've never had any problems with the professor before. He's always been a good neighbor. He kept mostly to himself. I can't believe he would have been doing anything in there that would endanger the community. I think those men I saw had something to do with this."

"You're suggesting that this could have been murder?" the reporter said.

"I don't really know. But I never saw those men in this neighborhood before," said Rasnic, "or those cars, either. I'm not saying I could recognize them if I saw them again— I'm sure I couldn't—but they were in one hell of a hurry to get away."

"Thank you, Mr. Rasnic," Miller said, moving away from him and turning to the camera. "So there you have it, at least one witness reports seeing a number of men apparently fleeing from the scene. It is not clear at this time if they had anything to do with the explosions, but as police and fire marshals pursue their investigations, we will be reporting on their progress. As of right now, one thing seems certain, and that is that Merlin Ambrosius has perished in the explosions that ripped apart his home. Reporting from Boston, Bruce Miller, TVN News."

"We take you now to Cambridge, Massachusetts," said the anchorman, "where reporter Kathleen Williams is standing by at the university—"

"I can't believe it," Wyrdrune said, staring at the television. "He can't be dead! Not Merlin!"

"Merlin was not invulnerable," said Modred. "If he was in that house when those explosions occurred, it's doubtful he could have survived. But knowing Merlin as I do, I wouldn't write him off until they discover his remains."

"What do you mean? Who are you?" Wyrdrune said.

"I've been known by a lot of names. More than I care to remember, really. Michael Cornwall will do as well as any other."

"Modred," said Kira, staring at him intensely.

He started; his gun hand jerked toward her. "What did you say?"

"Your name is Modred," she said, her gaze locked with his, speaking as if she were surprised at the sound of her own voice.

He went pale. "How do you know that name?"

"I know it too," said Wyrdrune slowly. "My God, you're Arthur's son."

"Your god had little to do with it, Karpinsky," said Modred. He glanced down at his gun and sighed, then returned it to its holster. "I believe I need a drink. You haven't any whiskey, I suppose?"

"Light beer," said Wyrdrune.

"Light beer," said Modred with a wry smile. "Well, I suppose light beer will do."

"Broom!" said Wyrdrune. "Bring us three beers!"

The broom cautiously ventured into the living room. "Is it safe in here, or am I liable to be blasted into splinters?"

Modred's eyes widened slightly and he smiled. "We're quite finished with the shooting," he said. "I'm sorry you were frightened."

"Frightened? What frightened? It's a wonder I have any bristles left living in his madhouse. You want I should just bring the cans, or do you drink out of a glass like a normal person?"

"A glass would be just fine," said Modred. "Thank you."

"You want I should bring a bowl of chips or pretzels, maybe?"

Modred's lips pursed in amusement. "No, just the beer, please. It's not necessary to go to any trouble."

"Trouble? What trouble?" said the broom, heading back into the kitchen. "Digging bullets out of the wall, that's trouble. Replacing broken windows, locking up the cutlery, trouble I've got plenty of—what's the bother with a bowl of corn chips..."

"You have an unusual familiar," Modred said, grinning.

"Too damn familiar if you ask me," said Wyrdrune.

"I believe I rather like it," said Modred.

"Good. You want it, it's yours."

The sound of tops popping came from the kitchen, and a moment later the broom brought in a small tray holding three cans of light beer and one glass. "We're out of corn chips," said the broom.

"Thank you, broom, it's all right," said Wyrdrune wearily. He sat down on the couch, and Modred and Kira each took a chair.

Modred took a healthy slug of beer and made a face. "Nectar of the gods," he said sarcastically. He looked curiously from Wyrdrune to Kira. "I haven't heard my truename spoken in a very long time. It brings back unpleasant memories. It should disturb me that you know it, yet somehow it doesn't. I'm not sure why. It seems we have a great deal to discuss."

"How can you be Arthur's son?" said Wyrdrune. "According to history, you died after the fall of Camelot."

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated, to quote Mark Twain," said Modred. "The line between history and legend blurs increasingly with time. They told many lies about us. Some versions of our story claim that Morgan was my mother, others that it was her sister, Morgause. All agree that I'm Arthur's bastard son, and that part of it is true. My mother was Morgan Le Fay, Arthur's half sister, but she was

no more Queen of the Faeries than I am an elf , unless one wishes to stretch the definition of faerie to include the old race, who were the basis for most of the old legends. Morgan's father, Gorlois, the Duke of Cornwall, was one of the Old Ones, though he concealed it. You know about the Old Ones? Merlin told you?"

Wyrdrune nodded.

"Then you know about the Dark Ones too."

"Yes."

"This all has something to do with them, doesn't it?" said Modred. "And Al'Hassan. I know he's involved. He's the only one who'd dare to put a contract out on Merlin. That's what it was, you know. It has all the earmarks of a gangland hit. I've heard rumors that Al'Hassan was involved with organized crime. But he's involved with much more than that now, isn't he?"

"He's been taken over by the Dark Ones," Wyrdrune said.

"And while he had you, he cast a binding spell on you," said Modred, looking at Kira. She looked away from him. "Your emotions are the catalyst. Violent emotions. It's where his power base lies. Their power base."

He took the pouch containing the runestones and tossed it on the coffee table.

"And our power base lies here," he said. "Three rune-stones, three of us, three sides to a triangle. Tell me what it means."

"It's an ancient spell," said Wyrdrune. He started to recite it:

"Three stones, three keys to lock the spell. Three jewels to guard the Gates of Hell. Three to bind them, three in one, Three to hide them from the sun. Three to hold them, three to keep, Three to watch the sleepless sleep."

The leather pouch on the coffee table suddenly seemed to collapse in upon itself. Simultaneously Modred gasped and doubled over, clutching at his heart. Wyrdrune cried out, and his hands went to his head, holding it with pain. Kira grabbed her right hand and screamed.

"God, what nowl" the broom said, hurrying in from the kitchen. "Are you all right? What's happening? What is it?"

Tendrils of smoke curled up from Kira's right hand. Wyrdrune knelt on the floor, holding his head and moaning, wisps of smoke seeping out between his finges. Modred's breath came in short gasps as he clutched his chest. Frantically he tore open his shirt.

A bright red ruby gleamed against his skin, embedded in the singed flesh over his heart.

Kira opened her hand and stared at the shining sapphire embedded in her palm, and as Wyrdrune took his hands away from his head, they saw a softly glowing emerald embedded in his forehead.

CHAPTER Thirteen

Riguzzo had felt sick throughout the flight back to New York, sitting rigid in his seat, much to deary's amusement. He had suggested taking the train back, but Morgan wouldn't hear of it. She countered with a proposal that she teleport them back, but that frightened Riguzzo even more than flying, so he had acquiesced, taken several drinks, and decided to suffer through the flight. He was profoundly relieved when they landed, thinking the worst was over, but as they were getting off the plane, Morgan doubled over with a gasp and clutched at her heart. Riguzzo immediately grabbed her and picked her up, rushing out into the deplaning area while Cleary ran ahead, shouting for medical help. One of the passengers waiting to get on another plane was a physician, and hearing the commotion, he hurried over.

"I'm a doctor," he said, pushing his way through to where Riguzzo knelt over Morgan, laid out full-length on the carpet. "Let me through, please, I'm a doctor!"

"Give us some room, dammit!" yelled Riguzzo.

221

The doctor knelt and took Morgan's wrist, measuring her pulse.

"I think she's having a heart attack," Riguzzo said.

"An ambulance is on the way," said one of the airport security officers.

"Pulse is strong," the doctor said, frowning. He checked her pupils. "Pupils dilated, though. Her skin's cold and clammy, breathing is shallow and rapid and she's sweating ... I'd say she was in shock, but her pulse seems all right. I haven't got my bag, damn it...." He bent over and listened to her heart. "Jesus, she's started fibrillating! We need a goddamn crash cart now!"

"Pound on her chest!" Riguzzo said.

"It won't do any good," the doctor said, his voice reflecting his concern. "When the heart is fibrillating like that, you've got to stop it first with shock and then try to start it up again and hope like hell it works!"

"Can't we do something?" Cleary said.

"Where's that ambulance?" the doctor shouted. He spotted the security officer with his radio. "Get on that thing and get the auport paramedics here with a crash cart right now!"

"They're on the way," the security man said. "The ambulance will be pulling up right outside the gate."

"Coming through, coming through!"

The airport paramedics pushed their way through the crowd, carrying a portable cor zero cart with mem. The doctor was ripping open Morgan's blouse. "Get it in here!" he said.

One paramedic moved in with the electrode paddles while the other reached into a bag and handed the doctor a stethoscope-.

"Clear!"

The paramedic hit the juice, and Morgan's body spasmed, jerking briefly. The doctor listened. "Again—now!"

"Clear!"

Her body jerked once more as power flowed through the paddles.

The doctor checked again. An expression of relief came over his face. "We've got it," he said, still listening to her heartbeat. He glanced up at Riguzzo. "We'll get her to a hospital right away, but I think she's going to be all right."

The onlookers started to applaud.

They took her down to the ambulance on a gurney, and Riguzzo showed his badge to one of the attendants. "I'm riding hi with her," he said. "Al, report in and meet us at the hospital."

Her eyes fluttered open as they started administering the IV, and she turned her head toward Riguzzo. "Dominic..."

"It's all right, Faye, don't talk," he said. "You've had a heart attack. We're taking you to the hospital."

"No," she said, shaking her head and trying to sit up against the straps of the gurney. The attendant immediately urged her back down, gently but firmly.

"Please, ma'am, you'll have to relax. You're going to be all right now."

"My son," she said. "Something's happened to my son...."

The attendant glanced up at Riguzzo. Riguzzo shook his head. "She's delirious," he said.

"Dammit, I'm all right!" she said, sitting up and snapping the restraining straps. She shoved the amazed attendant away hard, and he fell back. With one hand she ripped the IV out of her arm, and with the other she grabbed Riguzzo's wrist, squeezing it hard and saying something quickly under her breath.

The next thing the ambulance attendant knew, both she and Riguzzo had disappeared.

They materialized in a penthouse suite high over Fifth Avenue. The place was under construction, and mere were spattered drop cloths, stepladders, and buckets of paint all around mem. The rugs had been pulled up, and there was a

tang of smoke in the room, mingled with the smell of paint. Riguzzo looked around, and it took him a moment to realize why the place seemed so familiar. It was the penthouse i apartment of John Roderick, alias Morpheus. Her son, Modred. The renovators had been hard at work, but the place was still only partially rebuilt and still smelled of smoke.

"No, no, no," Morgan said, moaning, staring around dejectedly. "He isn't here-----"

"Of course he isn't here, Faye," said Riguzzo, releasing his wrist from her grasp. It felt sore. "Damn, I didn't realize you were so strong. I wish to hell you'd warn me before trying something like that again. I'm not as young as I used to be, you know. And for that matter, neither are you. Please, let me take you to a hospital."

She sat down on a small, folding stepladder, an expression of dazed confusion on her face. She looked as if she were about to cry.

"I really think you should be examined by a doctor, Faye," Riguzzo said gently. He took off his jacket. "Here, put this on."

She stared at the jacket uncomprehendingly for a moment, then looked down at herself and realized for the first time that her blouse had been torn open, exposing her bosom. With a self-conscious smile she took the jacket and put it on, buttoning it up.

"Thank you," she said. "I didn't realize. I hope I didn't embarrass you."

"I've been married a long time," Riguzzo said. "And after some of the things I've seen on this job, the sight of a little female flesh isn't going to raise my blood pressure. Besides, you're young enough to be my... well, that is..."

She smiled. "To be your great-great-grandmother fifty times over," she said. "You're a good man, Dominic. Thank you for your concern, but I'll be all right now."

"Faye, you've had a heart attack—"

"No," she said, shaking her head, "although that well-meaning doctor almost killed me. In a moment, I would have been all right if he'd left me alone. You mustn't make hasty assumptions about me, Dominic. I'm not like you."

"I'm sorry. I thought—"

"Never mind," she said. "It's over. Whatever happened's over now."

"What did happen? You said something about your son."

She sighed. "Modred," she said. "I told you about the affinity we have for each other. I can always sense it when he's near. He's near us now, somewhere in this city. Something happened to him. I thought at first that he was dying, but he's still alive. Alive yet... changed somehow. Something feels different." She looked puzzled, concerned. "I don't know what that means. We've got to find him."

"I can understand how you feel, Faye," Riguzzo said, "but you've just had a shock and—"

"It concerns him," she said. "Something terrible is happening. I know it. Don't ask me how."

"All right," Riguzzo said. "But you realize what has to happen if we find him, don't you? I'll have to place him under arrest."

She smiled wryly. "Modred? Good luck. No jail would ever hold him."

"If what you tell me is true, Faye, he's a killer. He has to be stopped."

"Better men than you have tried," she said. "No offense, Dominic, but you may as well not waste your time. You'd never take him."

Til have to try."

"Don't," she said. "Please." She came up off the folding stepladder and approached him. "I'm not asking for my sake, believe me. He'll kill you."

"It's my duty, Faye." He paused, looking into her eyes. "And yours."

"Duty," she said bitterly. "Don't tell me about duty. I've seen too many people die needlessly because of duty. Do you think he's just an ordinary man? He's managed to survive for several thousand years! He's seen more battles than you've seen meals!" She slapped at his potbelly contemptuously, and Riguzzo looked pained. "I'm sorry," she said, shaking her head. "I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."

She sighed and went over to stand by the window, staring out at the city spread out below them. "He's out there, Riguzzo, and I'm afraid for him."

"If and when we find him, one of us will have to take him in," Riguzzo said. "If not me, then you. Whatever else your son may be, he's a professional assassin. I know that has to be a very hard thing for a mother to live with, but the law is the law, and as an officer of the ITC, you're sworn to uphold it."

"The law is the law," she said sarcastically. "My son and I were both alive long before your precious law. And if you're going to dangle oaths before me, I've broken oaths far older and far more binding than any allegiance I owe to the ITC."

"I see," Riguzzo said. "Do I take that to mean that both of you consider yourselves above the law? Because it was written by mere humans? I just want to be clear as to where we stand here."

"Oh, don't be a fool, Riguzzo!" she said, spinning around to face him. "You should see yourself, standing there stiff . with righteousness and virtue! Can't you understand that things are nowhere near as simple as you see them?"

"Maybe not," Riguzzo said. "Why don't you explain it to me? I've been known to be flexible."

"Have you got any real evidence with which to build a case against him?"

"Perhaps not, but I suspect you have."

"I wouldn't give it to you. It isn't your jurisdiction, anyway."

"Then you'll have to build the case against him."

"Dammit, Riguzzo, he's my son!"

"I guess it will be up to me, then. I'm sorry, Faye."

She snorted. "You're a fool. He'll kill you."

"Maybe," Riguzzo said. "The question is, will you try to stop him?"

"Are you seriously asking me to choose between you and my own son?"

"No, that would be a very simple choice. The choice you'll have to make is a lot more difficult. I suppose as argument could be made that it isn't any real choice at all. I don't have the right to judge you, Faye. I'm only a man, stiff as I may be, though I doubt it's with righteousness and virtue so much as with arthritis. But I know what I have to do. I've got to live with the choices I make. And so do you."

She stared at him, a sad, ironic smile on her face. "You remind me of his father." She looked away from him, back toward the window. "There isn't any real resemblance, but I look at you, a balding, fat little Italian cop in a cheap suit and shoes run down at the heels, and you make me think of him. It's the way your silly little badge is every bit as important to you as his crown was to him."

"I'll take that as a compliment, in spite of the unflattering description," said Riguzzo. "But you still haven't answered my question."

"You won't back off, will you?" she said.

"I don't see how I could."

"I could have you taken off this case," she said. "I have that authority, you know."

"I know, but you won't use it."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because you're scared."

"Of youl You must be crazy."

"Oh, not of me. Of yourself. It's like you said, you're not like me. I can't imagine what it's like to live for

several thousand years, but I'd guess it would give you a very different feeling about time. I guess if I knew I had the kind of time you've got, I'd feel differently about a lot of things. Like if I was after something that I'd ordinarily consider a waste of time, something that seemed hopeless, I might take a lot longer to give up on it. I'm not sure what you planned on doing about your son, but from what you've told me, it seems pretty obvious that he doesn't care about you. He is what he is, and there's nothing you can do to change it. I think maybe that's finally starting to sink in."

Riguzzo shrugged. "Maybe I'm not capable of understanding what you've gone through all these years because I don't know what it means to be immortal, but you're still part human, and I can understand that part. It's the part of you that's scared to give up on something you've been after for so long because you're not sure what you'll have left if you let it go. You don't really need me on this case, Faye. You never did. There's no real reason why you should have kept me on. I think you did it because you're starting to get scared and lonely and you need to have a crowd around you. If not me and Al, then it would've been McGarry and his people or some of your fellow agents from the ITC, only I don't think you'd have wanted them along as much because they wouldn't have been as easy to control as a couple of street cops grateful for the chance to make points with an important case.

"Only you see, it isn't points with me. It never was. It's a job I happen to take very seriously, so I like to keep my priorities straight and do it right. And while I'm doing it, I like to watch out for my partners, which in this instance happens to include you—and you're in trouble, Faye. You've been in trouble for a long, long time. I'm not saying I'm the guy to get you out of it; you're a powerful adept, you know more than I could ever learn, and you could probably take me with one hand tied behind your

back even if you didn't use magic. You're a superior being, and you know it and act like it. But you're also part human, and nobody human is all that tough. One moment you're coming across as a tough, professional investigator, a sorceress able to hold her own with anyone and anything, and the next you're acting vulnerable and asking Al and me to trust you because you need our help. You've got to face up to a few things, and the fact that you haven't done it for over two thousand years isn't gong to make it easy."

"So what's your prescription, doctor?" she said sarcastically.

"You're not listening, Faye. I told you, I'm not the guy to get you out of this. It's not my place and I'm not equipped to do it. You're going to have to do this for yourself. And I wish to hell you'd get around to it, because I haven't got the time to wait. I'm not immortal."

"All right," she said, suddenly looking tired. "What do you want me to do?"

"What do you want to do, Faye? What did you hope to accomplish when you found your son?"

"I... I just want him back, that's all." She sighed. "He's not being himself. He's rejected everything he is, everything he could be."

"Don't you think it's a little late for kings?" Riguzzo said.

"I don't mean that, of course," she said. "I'm not a fool. But he's been running from himself ever since he left me. He has it in him to be a mage as great as Merlin. Instead he's chosen to become..." She turned away. "It's such a waste, what he's done with his life!"

"What about what you've done with yours?" Riguzzo said. "With everything you've done and seen, with all you know, isn't it also a waste for Morgan Le Fay to be nothing more than a glorified cop? I don't know, maybe it isn't, if that's what you really want. But is it?"

She didn't answer.

"You know, it's arguable how responsible we are for what our kids turn out to be," Riguzzo said gently. "I mean, we can do our best, trying to raise them right, to give them opportunities, to instill our values, but they still turn out pretty much the way they're going to be, regardless of what we do. Parental influence has to count for something, but it isn't everything. Not by a long shot. As a cop, I've seen a lot of cases where parents who were fine, upstanding, caring citizens had kids who were habitual criminals. And I've also seen cases where parents who were scum somehow wound up with kids who managed to turn out just fine. It seems to me the choice is up to Modred. It's possible he could turn it around. We've been known to make some deals. He'd wind up serving time, but then what's a little time to an immortal? Even if they gave nun life, which could be an interesting judicial test considering his life span, he'd be up for parole in twenty years. For him that would be a drop in the bucket. He could make a fresh start, if that's what he really wanted. If it isn't, I don't see what you could do about it. But you could give him that choice."

"I can't imagine Modred letting anyone put him away," she said. "I told you, no jail would ever hold him."

"Not if he didn't want to stay," Riguzzo said. "Jail's a hard place to be. But I can't imagine anyone giving Modred any trouble if he's all you say he is. They say jail never succeeds in rehabilitating anyone, but I know that isn't true. I've seen convicts come out of jail with a whole new outlook on life. Sometimes it's just a way of letting them work off their guilt so they can forgive themselves. Maybe all he needs is for someone to give him that opportunity."

"You think it's that simple?" she said.

Riguzzo shook his head. "No, nothing ever is. He's not my son. I don't know what drives him. I don't know if it's guilt or anger or just plain meanness, but two thousand years

is a long time to keep the fires burning. Maybe he's tired. I know you are."

She started to cry. Riguzzo put his arms around her, and she held him tightly, sobbing against his chest. They remained that way for a long time in the burned-out apartment while the sun went down over the city.

And all the lights went out.

The workers at the plant heard the screams from inside the control room of the power station. They hurried up the stairs with battery-powered flashlights and broke down the door. No one knew why it was locked, but the locked door lost all significance when they saw what lay behind it. The control room personnel, including the chief engineer adept and his assistants, had all been slaughtered, their bodies torn apart, the pieces flung throughout the room. Blood was everywhere: on the control panels, on the indicator screens, on the floor, and on the ceiling. There was no sign of who—or what—had done it, and they couldn't call for help. The phones were dead. There was no power in the city.

In Washington, D.C., the lights went out during the bottom of the sixth inning at RFK Memorial Stadium—all except for a dark blue glow that seemed to writhe and shimmer, pulsing like a giant heart in the middle of the diamond, just behind the pitcher's mound. As the pitcher turned to stare at it, tipping his cap back on his head, something grabbed him and lifted him high into the air. He screamed briefly, and then half of him went flying toward first base; the other half went arcing out toward center field. Huge paw prints, thirty feet across, appeared in the ground as something huge bounded across the field and leapt into the stands. Bodies started flying everywhere as a screaming human wave surged toward the exits, people trampling each other in

blind, unreasoning panic as they fled the unseen thing that roared like an express train and mowed through them like a scythe.

In China, about two miles from the center of Peking, disaster struck at Peking Station, trapping over two hundred thousand people when the four columns holding up the shell-shaped roof of the ten-story-high, beamless concourse suddenly collapsed, crushing everyone beneath it. It was a crude sacrifice, lacking any ritual, but it served its purpose. Thousands of souls gave up their life energy, and the tile-inlaid ring circling the pit in the Euphrates began to crack and buckle.

"It's a blackout," said Riguzzo, staring out the window at the lightless city.

"No," said Morgan, standing very still behind him in the darkened room. She suddenly felt very cold. "It's something worse. Much worse."

On the island of Hawaii, Mauna Loa and Kilauea both erupted simultaneously, sending a shower of rock and ash high into the sky. A mushroom cloud of fire-charged smoke appeared above each of the volcanos, and within each of them something cried out and stirred the smoke with the beating of large wings. The top parts of the clouds seemed to form themselves into giant shapes, like manta rays, and they started to move northwest, toward the islands of Maui, Mo-lokai, and Oahu.

In South America, a series of huge waterspouts, several times the size of the tallest skycrapers in Rio de Janeiro, rose up out of the waves and rushed across the Baia de Gauna-bara, toward the Ilha das Cobras and along the coast to the Santos Dumont airport, moving on toward the port of Rio de Janeiro, towering over the 1296-foot-high rock known as

Sugar Loaf and gathering momentum as they split and hurtled inland, toward Copacabana and the Morro do Corco-vado. Buildings were leveled, and hundreds of thousands perished as the walls of water struck, churning across dry land like tornado funnels, destroying everything in their path. The altar atop the massive stalagmite began to tremble as tremors formed cracks throughout the rock, sending pieces of it crashing to the floor of the subterranean chamber.

In Moscow, it started to rain fire on Kalinin Avenue. People on the street turned into running torches, and the high-rise office and residential buildings burst into flame. The fire consumed the October Concert Hall and spread to Komsomol Square, igniting the Leningrad Hotel. East of the Kremlin, the Pakrovsky Cathedral and the cluster of onion-domed churches around it, which had stood since the sixteenth century, started to crumble as the flames licked through them, blackening the icons and the Byzantine murals painted on the ceilings. Many thought it was the Second Coming, and they dropped down on their knees, praying even as they burned. It was a second coming in a way, but one that had little to do with prayer. The borders of the ancient pentagram in the subterranean chamber burst into blue flame and became obliterated. A brilliant, hellish glow came from deep within the pit, rising up toward the ceiling of the chamber like the beam from a giant searchlight.

As he sat in the torchlit presence chamber of his palace, Rashid trembled violently, his hands white-knuckled as they gripped the arms of his throne, his face contorted in a grimace of agony. He was dressed in his ceremonial black sorcerer's robes, his black kaffiyeh held on by the gold, cobra-headed circlet on his head, the gem set in his forehead glowing white-hot and blackening the skin around it.

The throne was wreathed in an emerald-green aura, giving his skin a pale, deathly look. The veins stood out sharply in his forehead. His teeth were clenched and bared as the lips drew back from the gums. His muscles spasmed as fierce tremors racked his body. His back was arched so sharply, it felt as if his spine would snap.

Devastating force flowed through him as energy from deep beneath the earth was channeled through his body. He was aging rapidly, his years passing like seconds. His hair had turned pure white, his skin taking on the consistency of parchment veined with capillaries, the flesh sagging and folding into wrinkles, the hands gnarling into talons, green flames burning in the pupils of his eyes.

The metal of the throne started to melt beneath him, softening and flowing like wax on a burning candle as energy radiated from him, passing through the palace walls and making the entire building shake. People ran screaming through the halls. The water in the fountains of the palace courtyard frothed and boiled. Like a runaway chain reaction, waves of searing energy slammed through the building corridors, making tapestries and paintings burst into flame, consuming everything, turning fleeing figures into skeletons that staggered on for a few steps, then crumpled into heaps of charred bone on the floor. The ground around the palace cracked into steaming fissures that radiated outward through the city like jagged wheel spokes from the epicenter of an earthquake.

In the half-renovated shell of the dark penthouse apartment, a voice came out of the air, a voice strained with urgency and effort.

"Morgana, for God's sake, help me!"

"Merlin!"

"Come to me now or all is lost!"

She threw her arms out to her sides and tilted back her

head, chanting in an ancient Celtic dialect, and blue sparks, like hurtling fireflies, shimmered in the air as they spun around her, faster and faster, growing brighter as they started to form a funnel of crackling energy around her, almost obscuring her from view.

Riguzzo hesitated for a moment, staring in astonishment at the sight, then he lunged forward, through the swirling mass of sparks, feeling wind tearing at his clothing and static electricity making his hair stand on end as his arms closed around her waist. There was a roaring in his ears as the blue funnel lifted them up off the floor, spinning them around and around with dizzying speed. He clung to her with all his strength, unable to breathe as the thaumaturgic whirlwind sucked time and space away from them and sent them hurtling through the ether...

... and then they stood in darkness, in a cavernous stone chamber on a rock floor that heaved beneath them, while before them, illuminated in a massive shaft of brilliant light that rose up from deep beneath the earth, Merlin stood atop a towering stalagmite, on a ledge over a pit, his long blue robes billowing around him, his white hair streaming in a hurricane-force wind. His arms were raised high over his head, and bolts of lightning shot down into the pit as chunks of stone fell from the ceiling of the cavern, and cracks opened in the rock walls.

"Sweet Jesus..." said Riguzzo.

"You fool!" said Morgan, grabbing him by the shoulders. "What have you done? You're going to die!"

"/ can't hold them, Morgana!" Merlin cried. "They're channeling their strength through Al'Hassan! You've got to stop him!"

"Come on!" said Morgan, grabbing the dumbfounded Riguzzo. "I can't leave you here!"

"What's happening?" Riguzzo shouted over the noise, but his words were lost on the wind that swept them away

as Morgan's fingers closed around his wrist and he was yanked into a maelstrom of swirling particles of light that left an afterimage on his retinas like tiny fireworks exploding, and then everything went black as he lost consciousness.

CHAPTER Fourteen

They suddenly shared fragments of memories that had never been their own, memories belonging to a race that lived before the dawn of history. They remembered the great war of mages and the millions who had died. They remembered an upheaval the likes of which the world had never seen: cities bursting into flame, islands breaking apart and sinking beneath the waves, tempest winds of pure thaumaturgic energy sweeping across the land and leveling everything standing in their way.

They saw glimpses of a solemn ceremony, held deep beneath the earth, and they heard the screaming of the renegade mages called the Dark Ones as they were lowered into a black pit, imprisoned in a shimmering funnel of whirling, crystalline blue fire shaped by the combined powers of the most powerful of the surviving white magicians; robed, hooded figures marshaling the last ounces of their strength to hold the black magic of their antagonists at bay.

They saw two of their number carrying a heavy golden chest inscribed with mystic symbols and placing it upon the lip of the rock ledge over the pit, welding it in place forever with beams of thaumaturgic force. And there they gathered,

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one last time, to shoulder the responsibility of the knowledge that they bore and shared with those they had imprisoned deep beneath the earth. They placed the runestones inside a small jewel box made of bronze, where they lay upon black velvet trimmed with gold, arranged in a triangular pattern. Then all save one of them gathered around and joined to form the living triangle, flooding the cavern with white light as they gave up their lives to the spell of self-transmogrification, infusing the runestones with their own life energy, giving vitality and sentience to the inert gems that would become the three-in-one, bounding time, space, and the ether into a dimensionless congruity contained within the pentagram, inside the circle of the cavern that would be their tomb.

Then only one stood, alone atop the towering stalagmite. He bent down and picked up the small bronze jewel box and placed it within the golden chest, sealing it inside for all eternity, for that had been their plan. He then descended to the floor of the cavern and walked out through the tunnel they had blasted in the rock, sealing it behind him. He went out to join the others of his kind, those few who had survived, scattered throughout the world, the weaker, younger ones who had not ,yet mastered the abilities they had been born with and now never would, not fully, for the Age of Magic had ended in a holocaust, and there would be only brief flickers in the coming years of the flame that once burned brightly, before it finally would be extinguished.

He took off his sorcerer's robe and left it on the ground where it fell, never to put it on again. He banished his mage-name from his memory and went out into the world under his truename, Gorlois, the youngest and the last of the ruling council of white mages. He made his way to a windswept island to the north and found a home among the tribes there. For years he lived alone, a hermit treated as a sage by the primitive nomadic tribes, but in time his solitude became too much to bear, and he took a wife from the tribe known as the

De Dannan. She bore him a son named Merlin. Being human, time passed more quickly for her, and with the hard life that they lived, she seemed to age before his eyes. It became painful to watch, and one day he left her, telling himself he had no business taking human wives. He vowed never to take another. The years passed, the world changed, and Gorlois changed with it. He became a warlord, forgetting his past as he embraced his adopted human future, and soon his loneliness made him forget his vow and he took another wife, a beautiful young woman named Igraine. With her he had three daughters—Elaine, Morgana, and Morgause. And he continued to forget until one day a man named Uther, aided by the son he had abandoned, gave him what he really wanted all along, the only forgetfulness that's final.

"So now we come full circle," Modred said, touching the gem over his heart. He looked up at Wyrdrune and Kira. "My cousins," he said softly. "One descended from Morgause, one from Elaine. And now my brother and my sister. To think I might have killed you."

"I don't think you could have," Kira said, looking up from the softly glowing jewel set in her palm and meeting his gaze.

"Oh, yes, I could have," said Modred. "I killed my own father, whom I never understood—perhaps because I did not choose to—and I've been killing ever since. I've become quite good at it. Perhaps it was meant to be."

"It's started," Wyrdrune said, staring out the window at the lighfless city. "God, I can feel it." He looked to Modred. "Damn it, why did they wait so long? Why bring us together only at the last minute? There isn't enough time! I don't know what to do\"

"Pull yourself together," Modred said. "It would have made no difference if we'd had more time. There was no way to prepare ourselves for what we're about to do."

"I've never killed anyone," said Wyrdrune. He swallowed hard. "I'm afraid."

"So was I, when I went into my first battle," Modred said. "And the second and the third. The fear lessens with time, but it never goes away completely. It's always worst just before a battle, but once the fighting starts, there's no time for it anymore. And there's no time now."

A bright red beam shot out from the glowing ruby in Modred's chest, striking the jewel in Wyrdrune's forehead. A thin shaft of emerald light came from Wyrdrune's gem and struck the stone in Kira's upraised hand. A brilliant sapphire light came from the gem set in her palm and struck the ruby in Modred's chest.

The triangle was formed.

The room seemed to become insubstantial all around them. It faded away, and they stood amid a field of stars, standing still yet moving, turning around a central axis, their former position marked in time and space by the blue, green, and red glowing borders of a triangle. They came full circle, forming a second triangle to intersect the first, and the pentagram became complete, its borders erupting into flame, burning with multicolored fire. As the flames subsided, the rock walls of a giant cavern faded into view around them, and as they stepped forward, inside the borders of the pentagram, the rock ledge above the pit collapsed and Merlin plummeted down....

Riguzzo felt a cold stone floor beneath him as he gasped for breath and struggled to push himself up to his hands and knees. Through blurred vision he saw a garishly illuminated throne at the far end of a long room with a high ceiling. A light that Seemed to pulse and throb came from the body of an emaciated figure writhing on the throne. He shook his head to clear his vision as he sobbed for breath like a half-drowned man.

Above him, Morgan stood with her arms raised, a blue aura crackling around her outspread fingers. She flung her arms out straight before her, and a bolt of blue fire leapt from her fingers and lanced out across the room, striking the figure in the throne. The old man seated there was bathed in

violet light and he jerked hard, becoming rigid, and for a moment the pulsing waves of light that were shooting out from him wavered and dimmed.

"Merlin!" shouted Wyrdrune as the old mage fell. He stood motionless, unable to believe what he had just witnessed, and then the shaft of light coming from the pit began to flicker as Morgan struck out at Rashid, and Wyrdrune and Kira both felt, rather than heard, Modred's voice.

"Now! Now, while they weaken!"

Beams of thaumaturgic energy linked them together as they raised their arms and the borders of their glowing triangle extended outward, rising up to form a pyramid of light over the pit. They heard screams echoing up from its depths as their combined strength suffocated those widiin and in that moment—

—Rashid rose up from his throne, his gnarled hands clutching the arms for support as he fought against Morgan's power. The jewel set in his forehead blazed, sending a searing bolt of white-hot energy slamming into Morgan. It caught her squarely in the chest and flung her clear across the room. She struck the wall and fell—

—and Modred gasped with pain and collapsed, clutching his chest. The spell broke, and the Dark Ones came streaming from the pit.

"Faye..." said Riguzzo, pushing himself up off the floor.

"Modred!" Wyrdrune shouted.

"No!" Kira screamed with rage and frustration, and her instinctive fury opened up the way for Rashid to take control. Unable to resist him, her mouth twisted in a snarl and she spun toward Wyrdrune, the sapphire in her outstretched

palm blazing forth a beam of energy that struck Wyrdrune full in the back.

Riguzzo reached inside his jacket and drew his service revolver, emptying it into the figure on the throne. Rashid jerked as each bullet slammed into his chest—

—and Kira staggered as he lost his hold on her—

—while Riguzzo stared, still holding his empty gun aimed at the old man on the throne, who clutched spasmodically at his bleeding chest with one hand while he raised the other toward Riguzzo, fingers trembling and outstretched-----

And suddenly Rashid was bathed in a bright crimson aura. He screamed as his white hair burst into flame. His robes caught fire, and his deeply wrinkled skin blistered and burned, and the throne beneath him melted into slag as the heat consumed him until nothing but a charred skeleton remained, slumped in a steaming lump of molten metal.

Kira knelt down beside Wyrdrune, cradling his head in her lap as he grimaced in agony.

"Oh, God, what have I done? Are you all right? Please, please tell me you're all right!"

"I'll live," he said, wincing with pain. "I think. How's Modred?"

"I don't know, I—" She glanced around. There was no sign of him.

Modred stared for a moment at the blackened bones of Rashid Al'Hassan, then he turned and walked over to where Morgan lay motionless upon the marble floor. He crouched down beside her and turned her over. Her face was ashen. She had aged incredibly. Her eyes flickered

open and she stared up at him, a dying old woman breathing her last.

"My son," she said.

"Mother."

"Forgive—"

And she was gone.

He closed her eyes and stood, looking down at her, wishing tears would come, but he had no tears left, not even for her. "There's nothing to forgive, Morgana," he said softly.

He turned and saw Riguzzo standing there, holding his revolver at his side.

"You're her son," Riguzzo said.

"Yes," said Modred, frowning. "Who are you?"

"Detective Lieutenant Dominic Riguzzo, NYPD. You're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent..."

Modred started walking toward him, the sound of his heels echoing in the torchlit chamber.

"You... you have the right to..." Riguzzo swallowed hard and raised his gun.

"It's empty," Modred said, gently taking the revolver out of the policeman's hand.

Riguzzo sighed. "Oh, hell... what am I doing?"

"Come on, Detective Lieutenant Dominic Riguzzo," Modred said. "I'll take you home."

EPILOGUE

The fires slowly died in Moscow and they began to count the dead. The tally would take a long time to complete, and explanations would be slow in coming, ranging from theories about some sort of freak volcanic eruption to a meteor shower to a spell by some government sorcerer gone out of control. One government would furiously accuse another, but as the news came in from all around the world, news of the tragedy in Peking, of the disaster that had occurred in South America, of the slaughter in Washington, D.C., and the cataclysm in the U.S.R., the accusations dwindled and became replaced with dread, and with relief, that somehow something far worse had been averted, though no one was quite certain what it was, what had begun it, or what had brought it to a halt. It had been magic. Of that much they were certain. And as the people on the Hawaiian islands watched two impossibly huge, wing-shaped clouds dissipate above them and rain ash down upon the sea, some thought they heard cries, like those of wounded beasts, and old fears started to return. In a small apartment on East 4th Street, Wyrdrune lay

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stretched out on his stomach on the bed, wincing as Kira applied bandages to cover the burn ointment on his back.

"I still say you should go to a hospital," she said. "You're hurt bad."

"I'll be all right," he said. "No hospital." He sat up slowly as she finished, and he winced with pain.

"That's got to hurt like hell," said Kira, looking at him with concern, feeling awful that she had been responsible.

"It stings a bit," he said, gingerly putting on a bathrobe, "but I'm not about to try explaining what happened to a doctor."

"Don't be ridiculous," she said. "We could make up a story that—"

'Wo. That's final. I'll be fine. Thanks."

"For what?" she said miserably. "I did it to you. I almost killed you twice."

"Rashid almost killed me twice," he said. "And Rashid is dead. You won't have to worry about him anymore." He sighed. "But it's not over. Between the four of us—Merlin, Modred, you, and I—we managed to kill some of them, but some escaped. That's why I'm not going to.a hospital. We have to find them and finish what we started."

"Forget it," she said. "You're not going anywhere for a while. You're going to stay here and eat broom's chicken soup and let me change your bandages until your back is healed. I'm going to stay right here and take care of you and that's final."

Listen to her. Modred's voice came to them from somewhere. She's right. We've hurt them, and they've fled to hide and lick their wounds. As long as we remain alive, they'll never be as strong as they once were. They'll be vulnerable. We'll find them. And when they're ready, they'll try to find us.

"Where are you?" Wyrdrune said aloud.

/'// be there when you need me, wizard. But for now, eat your chicken soup.

Modred lit a cigarette and gazed out the window of his hotel as the sun came up over the city. He was looking toward the Village, in the direction of East 4th Street. He smiled. He was the last survivor of the Age of Camelot, but he was no longer alone. He turned from the window, picked up the phone, dialed room service, and ordered a big breakfast.

"Where the hell were youT said Cleary as Riguzzo came shambling into the squad room and slumped down into the chair behind his desk.

"Morning, Al," he said distractedly.

"Morning, AIT Cleary stared at him. "What do you mean, morning, All Where the hell have you beenl Where's Faye? You never showed up at the hospital, and I didn't know what the hell to think! I've been up all night trying to figure out where in hell you disappeared to! Do you have any idea what's been going on? Christ, look at you, you look half dead! What the hell happenedT

"I don't know," Riguzzo said, shaking his head.

"What do you mean, you don't knowT'

"I mean, I don't know. I can't remember a damn thing. You got a cigarette?"

"A what?"

"A cigarette."

"You're going to smoke?"

"Yeah, I mink so."

He took out his pack and tossed it on Riguzzo's desk. "Dom, are you okay?"

"Yeah." He lit a cigarette, inhaled, coughed, men reached inside his jacket and pulled out his gun. "I seem to have fired my weapon," he said vaguely, "only I don't remember doing it." He frowned. "I'm going to have to make out a

report, but I haven't got the faintest idea what I'm going to say in it."

"Faye, Dom. What happened to FayeT'

"Faye?"

"Jesus, Dom, don't tell me you forgot about her too?" . Riguzzo stared at him blankly.

Cleary came around the desk. "Dom," he said, "you don't remember anything?"

Riguzzo looked up at him with a dazed expression. "Not a goddamn thing," he said. "It worries me." He looked around the squad room. Everyone was staring at him. "It must've been some night," he said.