No Quest For The Wicked

I returned to Owen just as another elevator finally arrived. “Who needs magic?” I said with a grin. “Lyle may have a head start, but we know who bought it.” When the elevator let us out on the ground floor, I grabbed Owen’s hand and tugged. “Come on, the subway will be quickest for getting back to the office.” While I guided him through the crowds on the sidewalk, he called the office to explain the situation.

When we got into the subway station, he kept staring up the tunnel, his fingers twitching like he was trying to magically summon a train. “Come on, come on, come on,” he muttered under his breath.

“That spell doesn’t work, trust me,” I told him, taking his hand so he’d quit trying to use magic he no longer had. “I use it all the time, and for most of us, the more we want a train to come, the slower it will be. What did the boss say?”

“We’re to see him as soon as we get back.”

“You’re not in trouble, are you?”

“I can’t tell. I probably should have said something before we went, but I didn’t know then, and it wouldn’t have made any difference.”

A train did finally arrive, and when we got back to MSI headquarters, we headed straight up to the executive suite, where Merlin was waiting for us in his office doorway. And, yes, this was the Merlin, the great wizard of legend. He’d been in a kind of magical coma for a long time, waiting to be revived for the magical world’s time of great need. It turned out that he’d been revived for a bogus reason, but it looked like he was planning to stick around instead of going back into magical hibernation.

I’d seen Merlin go through a lot of stuff in my time with the company, some of it pretty hairy, but I’d never seen him quite so shaken. He appeared almost feeble. If I’d seen him around town looking like this, I’d have offered to help him cross the street. “Good, good, you’re here,” he said. “Come in, and we can make plans. I’ve already got Prophets and Lost tracking down the purchaser.”

As soon as we were inside the office, Owen said, “I should have told you when I found the change in the Ephemera.” He sounded like a schoolboy who’d been called to the principal’s office.

“And I should have taken action when I sensed the Eye’s arrival early this morning,” Merlin said. “I thought I was mistaken. I’d hoped it was impossible.”

“You sensed it?”

“You think I wouldn’t have felt my own creation?”

Owen looked genuinely surprised. “You?”

“My greatest mistake,” Merlin said with a sigh as he lowered himself onto a chair. “In the days when I was a young, inexperienced, and very foolish wizard, I planned to create a gem that would exude a subtle sense of power, so that when set in a crown, it would validate a king’s authority. But the spell went horribly wrong. Instead, the gem created a thirst for power while giving its holder great power over others. I was initially able to resist its lure because my spell created it, but before long, it was even affecting me, so I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t break the spell or destroy it magically. I tried every physical method I could find at the time to destroy it, from smashing it between rocks to throwing it in a blacksmith’s forge, and it survived everything. By the time I created a container that dampened its effects and buried it where it could never be found—or so I thought—war had already broken out over it.”

“And now it’s back and loose in Manhattan, combined with a brooch that makes the wearer invulnerable,” I said, wincing. “This should be fun.”

“We must get it back before it does too much harm,” Merlin said. “Technology has advanced significantly since my time, so perhaps it can now be destroyed once and for all. If not, it must be hidden again.”

“What about the Knot?” Owen asked. “The elves do have a claim to it, and they won’t want it destroyed.”

“I’m sure they’ll survive the disappointment,” Merlin said dryly. “They’re welcome to file a complaint against me if they have a problem with my decision, but holding on to the Eye long enough to find a way to break the enchantment that binds it to the Knot would be a bigger risk than I care to take.”

“If the elves get it, they’ll keep it, and I’m not sure I trust them to hand over the Eye—especially once they possess it,” Owen said.

“That is why we must find it first. Even there, we will likely have to take it by trickery. The invulnerability of the Knot makes it unlikely that force would be effective in taking it from its new owner.”