Merlin's Secret (A Broken Throne Novella) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Merlin's Secret

  Copyright

  Merlin's Secret

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Want More?

  About the Author

  Merlin’s Secret

  by Jamie Davis

  Copyright © 2017 by Sterling & Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Reproduction in whole or part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.

  The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read our work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help us spread the word.

  Thank you for supporting our work.

  CHAPTER 1

  His mother’s expression scared him.

  She tugged on his arm, pulling him along behind her through the brush at the edge of the park.

  They crouched in the bushes, as if playing hide-and-seek.

  But something told him this wasn’t a game.

  Ricky looked up at his mother’s face and saw the fear in her creased brow, the frown, her wide eyes as she peeked out from their hiding place.

  “Mommy, why are the bad men chasing us?”

  “I told you, dear,” his mother said, her expression softening when she looked into Ricky’s face. “It’s just a grownup game of hide-and-seek.”

  “Why can’t we stay here in the bushes?” Ricky asked, knowing the lie when he heard it. “I’m tired.”

  “Because the men will find us here. We have to keep moving. Now come, and be quiet.”

  He closed his mouth. More questions would only make his mother angry. Ricky looked around from their hiding spot. He and his mother were hiding in “Filby’s Oldest Park!” He knew that much from reading the sign at the edge of his view. But he had no idea where in the United Kingdom Filby was located.

  It wasn’t his home.

  He hadn’t been home in weeks. Not since he and mother had left their apartment in the middle of the night.

  He remembered flames licking windows in the nearby homes and apartment towers. People had been shouting, setting the houses on fire.

  Mother had said it was because they were both chanters, people who could use magic. That was why their town was turning to ash. But Ricky didn’t understand why. People had stopped liking chanters, then he and his mother had started hiding who they were, dressing like middlings in hopes that they could disappear within a crowd.

  He’d been pulled out of school. Too many fights started by his middling classmates aimed at Ricky and his chanter friends.

  He’d cried at first when his former friends started calling him names and shoving him in the hallways. What was a ten-year-old to do when he was the smallest kid in his class and everyone wanted to bully him?

  Mother said that they were only repeating what their parents were saying and doing. “It isn’t their fault,” she’d said. But Ricky didn’t believe her. He thought it was their fault and he blamed them all for making him leave—first his school and then his home.

  They’d been running for more days than Ricky could count. They never stayed in the same place for more than a few days while mother tried to make a few extra shillings telling fortunes or creating simple charms for the few middlings who let them come near. Mother always thanked the people for their help, then she took Ricky’s hand and kept walking.

  Ricky asked her where they were going. She only told him they had to reach Filby. She wouldn’t tell him why the town was so important. He’d never heard of it before. But Mother promised that they’d be safe, and that there was something important she needed to show him.

  Now they were crouched in the bushes in the center of town. Ricky had hoped they’d stop when they arrived, but Mother showed no signs of slowing.

  Ricky craned his neck to look over the bushes. He could just make out the top of the town’s square tower keep looming above the buildings across the street.

  Many of these old towns had a keep or small castle in their center. The towns had sprung up around the ancestral homes of feudal lords who had ruled these lands so long ago. Ricky had learned about that in school, before he’d had to leave. He had always loved history, learning about the way things used to be.

  Ricky heard a car coming down the road around the park. Mother heard it, too, and she pulled him back further into the bushes, shushing him with a finger to her lips.

  He sat there, feeling the damp soil seep into his britches, making them wet and sending a cold shiver down his legs. Through patches of road, barely visible through the leaves and branches, a car came into Ricky’s view.

  There were five men in the small car, all leaning out the windows, searching for their quarry.

  Ricky recognized a few of them. This particular group had chased them as soon as they had entered the Filby outskirts early that morning, when Ricky and his mother had run into the wooded park to escape them.

  “Chanter scum!” yelled one of the men.

  “Go away! You don’t belong here!” shouted another.

  “You’re destroying the world with your magic!”

  When they reached the trees, Mother told Ricky to run. Then they left the shouts behind them.

  Now, at the other side of the park, it seemed that the men might have found them. But then the car passed. Ricky felt his mother exhale once it disappeared around the bend.

  “Come on, Ricky. We have to move fast now. We’re almost there.”

  “I’m tired of running, Mommy. And I’m hungry.” Ricky’s stomach felt like it was getting stabbed, probably because he hadn’t eaten for a day. Thinking of food made the stabbing feel even worse.

  “I know, dear. I have some bread and cheese left from the other day. You can have that as soon as we stop. We’re almost there.”

  “We’re almost where, Mommy?”

  “The keep. That’s where we’re going.” She pointed to the battlements rising above the nearby buildings. “Come on. Let’s go before they circle back this way.”

  Ricky crawled forward from their hiding place under the bushes and stood.

  She took his hand and leaned close. “Don’t let go. Try to keep up.”

  He nodded and they rushed across the street, then down a sidewalk on the other side. Now that they were up against tall buildings, Ricky could no longer see the keep, and he soon lost all sense of direction.

  But Mother seemed to know where they were going. Her step never faltered and she even began to walk faster.

  Ricky was now moving at a trot, barely keeping pace with his mother’s purposeful strides. They reached a corner, and to the left, down the street, Ricky could see the edge of the old stone keep rising past the neighboring buildings.

  Up close, he felt so tiny.

  Mother pointed across the street to a row of houses. “There, see that blue gate between the buildings? That passageway leads to the keep. That’s where we’re going.”

  She looked both ways and back down at Ricky. “When I tell you to go, I want you to run over to that door and go inside, alright?”

  Ricky nodded.

  A shout sounded behind them.

  Before Ricky could turn around, Mother pushed him forward. “Go, Ricky! Run fast!”

  Ricky had to run forward to catch his balance or he would have fallen. By th
e time he stopped stumbling, he was already in the middle of the street.

  He kept moving toward the blue door, stopping only to look behind him once he reached it. He saw his mother back across the street, waving her arms and clearly casting a spell.

  The screech of tires preceded a scream.

  The car careened around the corner, the passenger compartment ablaze, flames spilling from the windows.

  Ricky wondered if the men inside had gotten out before it caught fire.

  His mother caught him by the arm as she ran past him, pulling Ricky behind her through the blue gate. It swung shut behind them and left them in shadows.

  High walls to either side blocked the sunlight in the narrow passage between them. Ricky stumbled along the uneven ground until his eyes adjusted to the dim light.

  They arrived at the end to the passage. It didn’t open into an alley or even a back yard. It ended against the keep’s high stone walls, with the backs of houses built against them.

  Ricky stood looking upward at the battlements jutting out above. He could see the murder holes where defenders could pour boiling oil onto the attackers below. Birds nested in those crevices now.

  Mother was running her hands over the wall in front of them, muttering under her breath. She wasn’t making any sense that Ricky could understand.

  “It has to be here,” she whispered to herself. “But where?” She slid her hands from side to side, peering at the wall in the darkness.

  Then finally, with a muffled shout of triumph, Mother laughed and Ricky watched her push on a stone in the wall. It moved aside, sliding back a bit before moving to the right behind a neighboring stone.

  Mother smiled. Relieved, she reached into the hole until her entire body was pressed against the building with her arm inside. Her eyes were almost closed, as if she were concentrating on something distant, something that she couldn’t quite see.

  After a small click, Mother drew her arm from the hole and pushed at a section of the wall. Then that part of the stone wall popped open like a door, swinging back to reveal a large, square passageway with broad steps leading downward.

  Mother stepped back, seeming pleased.

  But that didn’t last long.

  Shouts from the street at the other end of the passage behind them became louder, drawing near. A fire truck’s siren or some other emergency vehicle began to scream.

  “Hurry, Ricky, we have to get inside and close the door before anyone sees where we’ve gone. Go inside the doorway, now.” Again, Mother pushed him forward.

  Ricky took a few tentative steps, descending onto the first of the broad treads. Mother followed him and reached into another hole in the stone passageway that matched the one outside. She pulled on something, grunting as she did, until Ricky heard the soft click again.

  The massive stone door slid closed, leaving the two of them in total darkness.

  “Mommy, I’m scared.”

  His hands brushed up against her skirts and he latched on, pulling himself close to her body.

  “It’s alright now, dear,” she said, patting him on the head.

  A bright white light switched on and he squinted into the flashlight’s glow. Mother shined the light down the passage and Ricky saw the stairs descending into the dark.

  “We’ll be safe for a while now, Ricky. No one out there can follow us here.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because once, long ago, this keep belonged to our family. Though others own it now, it still holds secrets known only to us.” Her fingertips traced the walls as they descended the stairs. “My father showed me this place. I can still remember when he brought me here for the first time. I was about your age.”

  She squeezed Ricky’s hand. When they reached the bottom, Ricky saw a short hallway lined with blocks of stone. A few paces down the passage was a wide wooden door with black iron hinges and metal studs embedded in the planks.

  “Ricky, remember how I showed you to watch magic with your eyes?”

  “Yes, Mommy.”

  “Do that now. Watch what I do. You’ll need to do this yourself someday, when you return here.”

  Ricky closed his eyes and used his chanter’s ability to shift his vision.

  When he opened them, the wooden door looked different. Lines of colored magic graced the surface, laced into an intricate pattern like a large piece of multi-colored, woven fabric had been laid across it.

  Mother pulled in some magic, then placed her hands at two spots on the door. Power swirled into a circular pattern under her palms.

  She said two words — and pushed her magic through her hands, into the door.

  The words sounded like the old tongue she was trying to teach Ricky, but he couldn’t remember what these ones meant.

  There was a rumbling from the door followed by a dull thud, and then it swung open a few inches. Mother reached up and pulled the door open the rest of the way, swinging it toward them without a sound.

  That disappointed Ricky. He’d expected a satisfying screech from rusty hinges, like something from an adventure on the telly. The room on the other side opened into a larger room, with thick stone buttresses supporting the rock ceiling arching high overhead. Strange objects occupied the shadows, teased by Mother’s light.

  Ricky gasped when he saw a great stone chair … or throne.

  Jutting up from the back of the chair was the hilt of a sword. It was as if someone had pushed the blade of the sword down into the stone when it was as soft as clay and then waited for it to harden.

  Ricky walked behind his mother as they entered the room.

  The door swung shut behind them and he jumped. How would they ever get out again?

  “What were those words you said to open the door?”

  “Those were the words of our family, Ricky. ‘Enak Merlin.’ It means ‘child of Merlin’ in the old tongue. I’ll teach you more while we’re here.”

  Ricky looked around at the room and the many strange objects inside it. “Where is this place, Mommy? Are we safe here?”

  “We’re safe now, Ricky. This is the chanter wizard Merlin’s home — our home.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Ricky loved the secret room. Years in the future, he would look back and consider the thirteen months spent in Filby Keep the only time in his life when he’d ever been truly content.

  He rarely left the secret room.

  Mother would leave on occasion to forage for food, or to see what was happening in the collapsing world beyond their thick stone walls. She would sometimes tell him about the atrocities outside. But usually, Mother said nothing.

  The time spent there was magical. Ricky read the old books stored in the room; he learned to read and write the ancient tongue from his mother’s patient lessons.

  The rest of his time was spent practicing his magic. Mother said that was the real legacy of being a descendant of Fenris, child of the great Merlin. Their family possessed the ability to create magic that no one had managed in centuries.

  “Why can’t other chanters do this, Mommy? Isn’t all magic the same?”

  “I think, once upon a time, it was all the same, and those who received the gift of magic could all do many of the things our family can do now. That changed over the years. Most chanters now can only do simple spells, or cast charms on inanimate objects. They could never use Sable like we can.”

  “What makes us different? We’re chanters just like everyone else.”

  “But we’re not like everyone else, my son. We are the children of a great and powerful birthright, descended in a direct line from Fenris, the eldest child of Merlin himself.”

  “And Merlin was the one who found the magic first,” Ricky said, proud that he remembered that part of his lessons.

  “Correct. But Merlin betrayed his family. He wanted the magic for a middling king. He wanted to keep it from his own children. In the end, Fenris had to take the magic from his father. That was the only way to ensure all chanters kept their powe
rs. And it almost worked. Fenris prevented his father from investing the magic in the young king that he’d groomed for the task. But Merlin was able to hide the strongest sorcery of all inside a magical blade called Excalibur.” Mother pointed. “The very blade you see over there, embedded in the stone throne.”

  Ricky stood and walked to the throne. He faced the sword’s hilt, jutting up from the back of the stone throne. The day of their arrival, months before, she’d asked him to try and pull the sword from the stone. He’d tugged with all his might, but it hadn’t budged so much as an inch.

  Blade and stone seemed to be one with each other.

  Ricky turned back to his mother. “Why did he put the sword in the stone to begin with? That seems like a silly place to keep a magic blade.”

  “It was the perfect place to keep it. Some say he placed it there so that when his chosen middling king came along and removed the unmovable sword from the stone, people would see it as a sign and rally around the king.

  “Merlin’s misplaced loyalty to the middlings he served stole the legacy of magic from his own children. It was Fenris who first discovered his father’s treachery. He raised the rebellion of chanters against Merlin and the middling lords. Merlin locked the sword in the stone so that even Fenris’s magic could not free it. That was the father’s final act of defiance against the son who sought his birthright.”

  She drew a deep breath, then continued.

  “Though Fenris eventually managed to capture the sword, he could never free it, or tap into its immense powers. Legend says that he tried his entire life. He was never successful, though he did discover one thing: One day, a child of Merlin would be born, able to pull the sword from the stone and fulfill the family’s destiny. Each time a new descendant was born, at a time when they were old enough, they were brought here, as you were, to try free the sword.”

  “I couldn’t do it.”

  “I know, my son. I believed it would be you because I had a vision, a premonition. It told me you would be there when the blade was drawn from the stone. Perhaps you will be able to do so one day, when you become more powerful.”