close

attention. I don't want to repeat myself ."

As Billy limped home, Merlin began to tell him a strange and terrifying

story.

There had been a time, he said, before the dawn of history, when another,

older

race of beings had lived on Earth. They had left behind only traces of their

presence—in the ruins of ancient Egypt, among the crumbling temples of the

Incas

and the Mayans, in the huge stone idols of the Pacific islands, and in the

forgotten shrines of Kali in the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Primitive

humans

had worshiped them. They were the terrible deities of Egypt, the gods of

Greece

and Rome, the avatars of India. The Arab tribes knew them as the djinn.

Native

Americans knew them as Kachina. And to the Celts, they were known simply as

the

Old Ones.

There were signs of them in the mythology of every human culture. Warriors

who

were immortal yet who could be killed in battle; supernatural beings who

could

become invisible or transform themselves into other creatures, sometimes

terrible, sometimes benevolent. Werewolves, vampires, witches, spirit beings

who

could mate with mortals, all such tales had their beginnings with the Old

Ones.

They had considered humans an inferior race, and they used them for

performing

labor. And because life energy was one method of utilizing thaumaturgic

principles, the Old Ones had used the humans in their magic rituals as well.

The more powerful the spell, Merlin explained, the more energy it required.

Such

was the price of magic. But while there were many spells that used energy in

such a way that it could be replenished, others depleted it completely. And

if

the source of energy was another living being, that being was destroyed. The

human sacrifices of the druids and the Aztecs, the ritual killings of the

Thugee

cult, the barbaric rites of the Egyptian Pharaohs, all were practices that

grew

from memories of these ancient thaumaturgic rituals. Necromancy. The sorcery

of

death. Black magic.

But as time passed, many of the Old Ones came to believe that it was cruel

and

wasteful to use the humans in this way. They came to feel that the energy

should

be conserved and nurtured, and that energy used for magic should always be

replenished. This, Merlin said, was the beginning of white magic. Yet there

were

still those among the Old Ones who were unwilling to give up all the power

they

controlled. To increase their power further, they slaughtered humans by the

thousands. It led to competition for the human resource. It led to war. A war