The Third Magic - Softcover

CHAPTER ONE
 
THE BLUE MOMENT
 
 
JONES COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA
 
At the end of every day there is a fleeting time, easy to miss, when the sky is so deeply, purely blue that it casts its color on everything around it. The grass is blue. The hills are blue. The rock fingers jutting out of the earth, the crooked creek, the pines that shield the full moon like lacy curtains, all stunning, eerily blue.
And then, in an instant, everything becomes black. The trees cease to look real, transforming instead into silhouette cutouts, crisp, intentional, bearing leaves etched starkly and perfectly against the sky.
Arthur Blessing had been watching the mountain, and the man dancing upon its summit, since the blue moment. The figure looked like a Kokopelli drawing, made up entirely of knees and elbows, his long hair standing wildly out from his head. An old man; that had been obvious even from a distance. A blanket was sometimes clasped over his bony shoulders, sometimes cast away as the figure, stiff and knobby with age, danced steadily, ecstatically, into the darkening night.
He might have been a Lakota shaman, Arthur mused, admiring the dancer. The Lakota were populous in this part of South Dakota, and the mountain, known to locals as "The Puma" because its shape vaguely resembled a sitting cat, was sacred to them. At certain times of the year, only Native Americans were permitted to climb the Puma's rounded flanks. Most of the Lakota ceremonies were held then.
But this was not one of those times, and the old man was not a shaman. He was something much more.
After a time, the dancing man crouched on the ground. When he stood up again, a bright rag of fire blazed behind him. Arthur smiled and leaned comfortably against a low-hanging tree branch as the moon rose full.
This was a gift, Arthur knew. It was his eighteenth birthday, and this performance was the old man's gift to him.
Now the dance began again, this time against a background of brilliant flames. Sparks shot up out of the blaze like fireworks so that, from Arthur's perspective a half mile away and a thousand feet below, it looked as if a fountain of light were streaming out of the moon-dancer's body and spilling over the Puma's haunches. As the spark shower reached its peak, the old man stopped stock still in front of the fire, his legs wide apart, his arms spread out to his sides, so that he was surrounded by a nimbus of moving light.
Then, gone as quickly as the blue moment, the spectacle vanished utterly: the sparks, the fire, the old man…all of it was gone, plunged into darkness.
In the awesome silence that followed, in which even the insects grew still, the full moon floated out from behind a cloud and shone again, huge and silver beyond the crouching shape of the Puma. An owl called; the stars reappeared. A hundred thousand cicadas recommenced their hypnotic drone. The meadow pulsed with the soft light of fireflies. But the mountain was bare now, still, empty.
Arthur licked his dry lips. "Thank you," he whispered.
"You're welcome," a voice answered back. A moment later a tree limb crashed behind him.
Arthur whirled around, startled. The old man stood behind him, scowling, picking twigs out of his white hair.
"Taliesin!" Arthur grinned.
"Hello, Arthur." In the moonlight, his snow white beard, which curled softly down to the middle of his chest, almost seemed to glow.
Somewhere between his dance on the mountain and his appearance in the woods, he had acquired clothes. Arthur plucked a sizeable branch bushy with leaves out of his collar. "Where have you been?" he asked. "And how did you get here? You look like you fell out of a tree."
"Nonsense. One just got in my way. As to where I've been…" He looked about him, as if he were trying to get his bearings. "Oh, I don't know. Here and there, I suppose. Why, has it been a while?"
"Four years."
The old man stepped back a pace. "Good heavens, that long! Are you certain?"
Arthur laughed. "I'm sure. I've looked for you at every full moon."
"Hmm. Well, you do look considerably bigger. How old are you now, Arthur?" He squinted at the boy. "Oh, of course. It's your birthday. I knew that."
Arthur gestured with his head toward Puma mountain, awash with moonlight. "I enjoyed the show," he said.
"I didn't come out of it very well, I'm afraid." Taliesin plucked more twigs and leaves off his clothing. "Would you care to accompany me the next time?"
"To the mountain?" Arthur cocked his head. "Any special reason?"
"Most special," the old man said. "The Lakota called the sort of foray I have in mind a vision quest. I'm sure you've heard the term."
"Yes," Arthur said, feeling his heart beat faster. He had not been out of Jones County for four years. "I've heard of vision quests. They're rites of passage, I think. You go to some solitary place--"
"I'll be with you," Taliesin said. "I'll have to direct the vision, you see."
"Oh. Yeah, that'd be fine." Arthur could hardly believe it. What sort of vision would a being of Taliesin's power conjure? And why? There could only be one reason. "Is…" He groped for the right words. "Is it time, then?"
"Time?" Taliesin arched an eyebrow. "Time for what?"
"Time for me to leave," Arthur said with quiet insistence.
"Leave?" The old man shook his head so vigorously that his hair nearly stood on end. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I can't just release you like a trout in a stream, boy."
"I'm eighteen now. I can get along by myself, get a job--"
"Don't be ridiculous. A job!" His beard trembled with agitation. "Have you spoken with Hal and the…er, the…"
"Uncles," Arthur finished for him, trying not to sound disappointed. He had lived by the old man's rules for nearly half his life. "We call them uncles now."
"Ah," Taliesin said. "And what do they think of your plan to run off and find work, like some itinerant laborer?"
"There's no point in even talking to them." Arthur felt hot with frustration. "They'd never let me leave without them."
"Good. Although you're alone now," the old man added suspiciously. "Where are they?"
Arthur took a deep breath. Everyone treated him as if he were some kind of trained monkey, amusing, even cherished, but not trusted to spend five minutes alone. "They're in the house," he said patiently. "Except for Hal. He's getting ice cream. They want to have a party for me."
"Oh, jolly good! Am I invited?"
Who could stop you? Arthur thought. "Sure," he said. "They're probably ready by now, if you'd…"
But by then the old man was gone. In an instant, like the fire on the mountain, like the blue moment, he had simply vanished.
* * *
He's nearly ready, Taliesin thought as the boy looked for him. The old man was actually standing in the same spot where he had been during his conversation with Arthur; it was just that he had chosen not to be seen any longer.
It was for the best. Arthur was showing signs of teenage rebellion, or whatever they called it these days. Get a job, indeed! It had been all Taliesin could do to keep from laughing aloud after that announcement.
"Taliesin?" Arthur peered into the darkness once more, then sighed and turned away. "Nice talking to you, too," he said, breaking a twig into pieces.
Oh, Arthur, Arthur. Taliesin stroked his beard, smiling. What a long way we've come.
* * *
The legend: Uther Pendragon, disguised by the Merlin's magic to resemble his rival Gorlois, enters Gorlois's castle and seduces his wife, Ygraine. As payment for his part in the deception, the Merlin takes the child born of that union.
The fact was that Ygraine, widow of the tribal chieftain Gorlois, was forced to marry her husband's enemy Uther Pendragon after her husband's death in battle. Uther had long lusted after both Gorlois's rich lands, which abutted his own in the far south of Britain, and his...