I jumped back. The boy in the lake started sprouting whiskers. First black, then gray, then white as the quartz on the hillside, the whiskers grew long and scraggly. They covered most of the boy’s face, growing and growing. Soon they fell all the way to his knees. Was it possible? Was the Lake of the Face telling me that I would one day, like him, be a wizard?
I smiled, feeling increasingly confident about peering into the still, dark water. Whatever Rhia had seen had clearly departed. I leaned closer. The boy in the lake, no longer wearing a beard, slowly turned away from me. He ran toward something. No, someone. A huge, muscular warrior, wearing a red band around his forehead, strode out of the depths. Then, as the warrior came nearer, I realized that he had only one eye. One enormous, wrathful eye. Balor!
To my horror, the ogre dodged the boy with ease, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him high. My own throat constricted as I watched the boy being strangled by powerful hands. Hard as I tried, I could not turn away from the terrifying scene. The boy struggled wildly, trying not to look in the ogre’s deadly eye. Yet the eye’s power pulled on him. Finally, he succumbed. With a last jerk of his legs, he hung limp in the ogre’s hands.
I fell backward on the ground, gasping for air. My head whirled. My neck throbbed. With each breath, I coughed uncontrollably.
Rhia reached for me, as did Bumbelwy. She squeezed my hand, while he patted my brow sympathetically. Slowly, my coughing subsided. But before any of us could speak, someone called to us across the water.
“So,” wheezed a gleeful voice, “are you finding the lake’s prophecies difficult to, shall we say, swallow?” A full, breathy laughter followed. “Or are you just feeling, shall we say, choked up?”
Regaining my bearings, I scanned the dark surface of the lake. Near what would be the nose of the profile, I spotted an immense, hairy otter, silver in color except for his face, which was white. He floated leisurely on his back, kicking so effortlessly that he hardly caused a ripple.
I pointed. “There. An otter.”
Rhia shook her head in disbelief. “I didn’t think anyone lived here.”
“I only live where I otter,” he answered merrily, squirting a jet of water from between his two front teeth. “Care to join me for a swim?”
“No chance,” declared Bumbelwy. He waved his long sleeves like fins, causing his bells to dribble water on his face. “I’ve had enough swimming for a lifetime.”
“Then perhaps I should sing one of my water songs for you?” The otter kicked lazily toward us, patting his belly with both paws. “I have, shall we say, a fluid voice.” His breathy laughter came again, echoing over the lake.
Supporting myself with my staff, I stood. “No thanks. The only Song we care about isn’t about water.” Seized by a sudden inspiration, I asked, “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the magic of Binding, would you?”
Rhia frowned. “Merlin,” she cautioned. “You don’t know him at all! He could be—”
“An expert in matters of Binding,” said the otter relaxedly. “My favorite pastime. Next to floating on my back and watching the clouds, that is.”
“You see?” I whispered to her. “He could tell us what we need. And I don’t see anyone else around this lake who might be able to help.”
“I don’t trust him.”
“Why not?”
She pressed her tongue against her cheek. “I don’t know exactly. It’s just a feeling. An instinct.”
“Oh, confound your instincts! We’re running out of time!” I searched the shoreline for any sign of other creatures who could, perhaps, assist us. There were none. “Why would he lie to us? We have no reason to mistrust him.”
“But . . . “
I growled with impatience. “What now?”
She hissed at me like a snake. “It’s, well . . . confound it all, Merlin! I can’t put it into words.”
“Then I’m going with what I think, not what you feel. And I think that any creature who lives in this enchanted lake, all alone, must have some special knowledge. Maybe even special power.” I turned back to the otter, who had drifted much closer. “I need to find the soul—the first principle—of the art of Binding. Will you help me, good otter?”
Tilting his head toward the shore, he squirted a jet of water at me. “Why should I?”
“Because I asked you, that’s why.”
He blew some bubbles in the water. “Oooh, that tickles my ears.” More bubbles. “You need to give me a better reason than that.”
I jammed my staff into the soil. “Because my mother’s life is at stake!”
“Hmmm,” he said lazily. “Your mother? I had a mother once, myself. She was a terribly slow swimmer. Oh well, I suppose I could help you. Only with the fundamentals, though.”
My heart pounded in my chest. “That’s what I need.”
“Then pull up some of those vines.” He floated closer to the shore. “By your feet.”
“Vines?”
“Of course,” replied the otter, kicking in a slow circle. “To learn about Binding you need to bind something. Go to it, boy! I haven’t got all afternoon. Get your smiling friends to help you.”
I turned to Rhia, who was still frowning, and Bumbelwy, who had never stopped. “Will you give me a hand?”
Reluctantly, they agreed. The vines, though supple, were thick and heavy, covered with rows of tiny thorns. Hard to grasp, hard to lift. Pulling them up was difficult work. Untangling them from one another was worse.
At last, we succeeded. Several lengths of vine, each three or four times my height, lay at my feet. Bumbelwy, exhausted, sat down with a loud clang, his back to the water. Rhia stayed by my side, watching the otter warily.
I straightened my back, feeling terribly sore in the place between my shoulder blades. Clearly, all the pulling had strained something. “We’ve done it. Now what?”
The otter continued swimming in a circle. “Now tie one around your legs. Tight as you possibly can.”
“Merlin,” Rhia warned. She touched Elen’s amulet of oak, ash, and thorn, still attached to her leafy shirt.
Ignoring her, I sat down and wrapped one of the vines around my ankles, calves, and thighs. Despite the thorns, I managed to tie it with a triple knot.
“Good,” sighed the otter with a yawn. “Now do the same thing to your arms.”
“My arms?”
“Do you want to learn about Binding or not?”
I turned to Rhia. “Help me, will you?”
“I don’t want to.”
“Please. We’re losing precious time.”
She shrugged. “All right. But it feels all wrong.”
The otter, his fur glistening, clucked with satisfaction as he watched Rhia tie my hands together, then bind them to my chest. “Good. You’re almost there.”
“I hope so,” I replied testily. “These thorns are digging into my skin.”
“Just one more vine. You are, shall we say, bound to be pleased.”
The otter put one paw in the water and splashed Bumbelwy. “You there, lazy fellow! Wrap one around his whole body. Make sure you cover all the places we’ve missed so far. Even his head. This is, after all, a delicate enchantment we’re talking about. Everything must be exactly right.”
Bumbelwy glanced at me. “Should I?”
I gritted my teeth. “Do it.”
Somberly, Bumbelwy wrapped me up as tight as a cocoon. When he had finished, only my mouth and part of one ear remained exposed. I lay on my side on the soil, unable to move, ready at last to learn the soul of Binding.
My jaw held closed, I asked, “Whad nah?”
The otter wheezed a little laugh. “Now that you are, shall we say, rapt with attention, I will give you the information you asked for.”
“Meg id quig.” A vine dug into my hip. I tried to roll to the other side, but couldn’t even begin to budge. “Peez.”
“The first principle of Binding, as with anything, is . . . “ He blew a fountain of water into
the air. “Never trust a trickster.”
“Whad?”
The otter laughed uncontrollably, clutching his ample belly as he rolled over and over in the shallows. “That’s why they call me the Trickster of the Lake.” Still laughing, he kicked lazily toward the far shore. “Hope I didn’t, shall we say, tie you up too long.”
I shrieked with anger. Yet I could do no more. However long it had taken to tie me up with the vines, it seemed to take twice as long to untie me. By the time I stood, pacing the shoreline in frustration, the sun had almost disappeared behind the rim of hills.
“I’ve wasted the whole day,” I moaned, tender from the scrapes on my hands, hip, and forehead. “The whole day! I can’t believe I trusted him.”
Rhia said nothing, though I knew her thoughts well enough.
I swung around to face her. “You should never have come with me! You should have stayed back at Arbassa, where at least you’d be safe.”
Her gray-blue eyes examined me. “I don’t want to be safe. I want to be with you.”
I squashed a vine under my heel. “Why bother?”
“Because . . . I want to.” She glanced sadly at the dark water. “Despite what the lake told me.”
“What did it tell you?”
She sighed heavily. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Remembering my own vision of Balor’s eye, I nodded. “All right. But I still don’t know why you want to stay.”
Something in the sky caught her attention, and Rhia looked up. Following her gaze, I found two distant shapes, weaving their way across the horizon. Although I could barely see them, I knew at once what they were. A pair of hawks, riding the breeze together. They flew almost as one, bobbing and turning in unison, in the way Rhia and I had moved as fishes.
“Aren’t they lovely?” she asked, her eyes following the birds. “If they are like the hawks in the Druma, they not only fly together, they build a nest together, a nest they share for their whole lives.”
All at once I understood. What tied the hawks to each other, what tied Rhia to me, had nothing to do with vines. Or ropes. Or chains of any kind.
I turned back to her. “I guess, Rhia, the strongest bonds are invisible. Maybe . . . the strongest bonds are of the heart.”
With a flash of blue, my staff ignited. As the flame disappeared, I discovered a new marking engraved on the shaft, not far from the butterfly. It was a pair of hawks, bound together in flight.
18: LIGHT FLYER
The blue light had barely faded from my staff before my thoughts turned to the third Song, that of Protecting. I turned from the lake, its smooth surface gleaming darkly, to the forested valley surrounding us. Crossing the steep, thickly wooded ridge would be only the beginning. For the third Song would require yet another long voyage. The skill Protecting be the third, Like dwarves who tunnel deep.
To the land of the dwarves! Their realm, Rhia explained, was visited only rarely—and almost never by choice. For the dwarves, while peaceful to their neighbors, did not welcome any intruders. All that was known about their underground realm was that its entrances lay somewhere near the origins of the River Unceasing, on the high plains north of the Misted Hills. This time we had no choice in how to get to our destination. We would have to walk.
Even pushing ourselves each day until long past sunset, it took the better part of a week to work our way over the hills. Our meals consisted mainly of wild apples, crescent nuts, a sweet vine that Rhia discovered, and the occasional egg or two from an unwary grouse’s nest. While we avoided any more encounters with living stones, the trekking proved arduous. Vapors swirled constantly, wrapping us in misty shawls, inhibiting our views from even the higher ground. During one swamp crossing, Rhia lost one of her shoes in a pit of quicksand. We spent much of that afternoon searching for a rowan tree so that she could weave a replacement from its leathery bark. Two days later, we crossed a high pass, slick with ice and snow, but only after walking the entire night of the full moon.
Finally, bedraggled and exhausted, we came to the high plains of the river’s headwaters. Countless star-shaped yellow flowers blanketed the plains, filling the air with a tangy scent. In time we reached the rushing River Unceasing itself. There we encountered a pair of cream-colored unicorns, grazing along its banks. Heading north, we followed the river’s serpentine path up a series of wide, alpine meadows that ascended like bright green stairs.
As Rhia reached the edge of one of these meadows, she stopped, pointing at the line of snowy mountains in the distance. “Look. Merlin. Behind those peaks lies the city of the giants, Varigal. I’ve always wanted to see it, even now that it’s only a ruin. Arbassa says it’s the most ancient settlement on Fincayra.”
“Too bad dwarves, not giants, are our goal.” I bent down, pulling up a handful of fluffy-tipped grass. “Giants will have to wait for the fifth Song, the one that involves Varigal somehow. If we make it that far.”
As we continued trekking after sunset, a gleaming disk emerged from the layers of clouds. Clipped along one edge, the moon was now waning. I pushed harder, practically running along the grassy bank, knowing full well that more than half of my time had vanished, and I had unraveled only two of the mysterious Songs. How could I possibly complete the remaining five, climb up to the Otherworld, obtain the Elixir, and return to Elen, all in less than two weeks? Not even a real wizard could hope to do so much.
By the glow of the moon, we scrambled over yet another steep rise, grasping at the roots and shrubs to keep from tumbling over backward. The River Unceasing, now only a splashing stream, flowed down the slope beside us, its little falls and pools sparkling in the silver light. At last we topped the rise. Before us stretched an enormous, moonlit meadow, split by the shining ribbon of water.
Bumbelwy fell in a jangling heap by the stream. “I can go no further without rest. And also food. A jester needs his strength.”
Panting in the night air, I leaned against my staff. “It is your audience who needs strength.”
“Too true, too true, too true.” He mopped his brow with the edge of his heavy cloak. “On top of everything else, I am baking to death! This cloak has me perspiring even after the sun goes down. And during these hot days we’ve been enduring, it’s sheer torture.”
Perplexed, I shook my head. “Then why don’t you leave it behind?’
“Because without it I may freeze. Turn to ice! Why, it could snow anytime. This hour, this minute, this second!”
Rhia and I traded amused glances. Then she bent down and sniffed the star-shaped flowers. Grinning, she picked a fistful of stems, rolled them into a compact, yellow mass, then handed the roll to me.
“Taste it,” she implored. “The astral flower is a trekker’s sustenance. It is said that lost travelers have lived on nothing else for many weeks.”
Biting into the roll of flowers, I tasted a sweet yet sharp flavor, almost like burned honey. “Mmmm. You know who would like this? Our old friend Shim.”
“Yes,” replied Rhia. “Or, as he would say, certainly, definitely, absolutely.” She handed a fresh roll to Bumbelwy, sprawled on his back by the stream. “Shim loved honey as much as I do! Even before he grew into a giant, he ate enough honey for one.” With a sigh, she added, “I wonder whether we’ll ever see him again.”
Kneeling, I placed my cupped hands into the shimmering water. As I brought the water to my face, however, the moon’s wavering reflection appeared within my hands. I jerked backward, drenching my tunic.
“Did you see something?” Rhia studied me with concern.
“Only a reminder of all the damage I’ve done.”
She considered me for another moment. Then, in a voice so soft I could barely hear it above the splashing stream, she spoke. “You still have the heart of a wizard.”
My hand slapped the water, splattering us both. “Then give me the simple heart of a boy! Rhia, whenever I tap into those . . . yearnings, those powers, those arts of wizardry, I do something terrible! Because of
me, my mother lies at the edge of death. Because of me, much of the Dark Hills remains a waste, just waiting for Rhita Gawr and his warrior goblins to return. And because of me, my own eyes are blind and useless.”
Bumbelwy propped himself up on one elbow, clanging his bells. “Such despair, my boy! Could I offer my assistance? Allow me to tell you the riddle about the—”
“No!” I shouted, waving him away. I turned back to Rhia. “The truth is, Domnu is a thieving old hag. But she had it right. I could be the worst disaster ever to come to Fincayra.”
Rhia said nothing, and bent to take a drink from the stream. As she raised her head, she wiped the water from her chin. “No,” she declared at last. “I don’t think so. It’s not anything I can put my finger on. It’s more . . . the berries. I mean, the Harp actually did work for you, at least for a while. The speaking shell, too, did your bidding.”
“All I did was find the right shell. Then it used its own power to bring my mother here.”
“Even if you’re right, what about Tuatha? He wouldn’t have allowed you to read the Seven Songs unless there was at least some chance you could master them and travel to the Otherworld.”
My head drooped. “Tuatha was a great wizard, a real wizard. And he did tell me that someday I might become one, too. Yet even wizards make mistakes! No, the only way I’ll travel to the Otherworld is when I die. And by then my mother will have died, as well.”
She hooked her finger, still wet from the stream, around my own. “There’s still the prophecy, Merlin. That only a child of human blood can defeat Rhita Gawr and those who serve him.”
Turning away, I gazed at the wide meadow beyond the stream. Though some of its grasses glimmered in the moonlight, most of the meadow lay shrouded by shadows. Somewhere out there, I knew, lay the realm of the dwarves. And somewhere beyond that lay the secret entrance to the world of the spirits, guarded by the ogre Balor.
I pulled my hand away. “That prophecy, Rhia, is worth no more than the person it refers to. Besides, I only want to save my own mother, not battle the warriors of Rhita Gawr.” Reaching for a pebble, I tossed it into the silvery stream. “And I doubt I can even do that.”