(no subject)
Emrys Emergent
Chapter Twelve: The Heir Apparently
by Tonzura123
Disclaimer: There. I ripped the magical, circled "C" from Merlin's precious face. Now he MUST be mine...
II.
Mighty the Wizard
Who found me at sunrise
Sleeping, and woke me
And learn'd me Magic!
Great the Master,
And sweet the Magic,
When over the valley,
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me,
Moving to melody,
Floated The Gleam.
-"The Gleam" by Alfred Tennyson
Time isn't some straight line that you can follow with your finger. Not outside of time.
The world views time as a line. The world can't help it- they're trapped by their own dimension. A three-dimensional world trapped within a fourth- a line that leads to some unseeable place.
But the Otherworld isn't trapped like this world. And I was born there.
My mother is Queen Guinevere Pendragon, wife of High King Arthur Pendragon of Albion. She sometimes told me that, when I was only a thought, something evil wanted to claim my life. This was mostly averted, and I was soon born. But you see, after a time, when the threat was gone, she came back and discovered that my father had vanished as well. I suppose my birth should have been a celebration in such a dark time. But my mother was heartbroken by the loss of her husband. With the help of a great sorcerer, she sent me back to be trained by the creatures of the Otherworld. I saw her often, almost twice a year in her time, which was still twenty-six more times than I had ever met my father.
The Otherworlders fawned over me. They named me Ether, because I was of the air, and heir of Albion.
I grew up surrounded by magic. I played with it, trained in it. For twelve years of time outside of our time, I grew into a novice magician. I could wrestle trolls and race the basilisk and dance with the Seelie court until my legs went numb. I would never been a Sidhe, but I was something different than a human…
Three years ago and a few months from now...
Ether sometimes thought he lived in the moon, because he and the Otherworlders were able to dance like ghosts through the human world when the moon's face was widest. They watched the humans, when the moon was thinnest. There was just enough room for them to press their eye into the white gap and stare down at the reveling nights. The Unseelie liked to encourage the wars. But the Seelie, Ether's Seelie, encouraged the midnight mischief.
In the moonlight, they zipped alongside horses and spooked them with sounds. They stole trinkets and planted them on enemies or lovers. They mimicked the beasts and loped beside them.
Only the craftiest of the Seelie knew how to break into the Second World-- into the dreamworlds that men carried around in their heads. Some men went years without finding them. And most never did. But a clever Otherworlder, if he or she knew the right words, could step in as easily as they stepped in the air.
Ether was not one of the craftiest or cleverest Otherworlders. But then, he blamed that on his humaness.
It was midnight on Samhain and the Otherworlders hovered over his shoulder while he slipped the glamour over his head. It, like all his glamours, was more of a net than a cloth- magic woven over reality, but not really hiding it. It was the strongest that he could manage. He didn't have a lot of natural magic to him to start with, but with a little cleverness, he could make-do.
Below them, in the human world, hundreds of men and women danced around the mighty fire. Ether could feel it where he stood, and was glad of the smoke that helped blot out the moon, because it also hid the small star that fell off the lip of it.
Down, down, down into Albion--
Down, down, down into Man--
Down, down, grievious Wanderer,
Deep down, n'to the pit of the Damned!
Ether shuddered with the spell that they chanted after him. It followed ahead, crushing the ground into a hollow and letting him softly find his feet. He stroked his fingers along it as it raveled back up into the Otherworld, leaving him behind with a thin netting of glamour over his face.
He took a breath and straightened his shoulders.
Otherworlders loved to make mischief with the Men of the World, but they knew that mischief is an artstyle carried by presence and surprise. Mischief is no good to anyone if Otherworlders are always up to it. How could that keep Men on their toes? It couldn't. Men, though dull, adjust rather well to their environments. And too much mischief, the Otherworlders realized, was something that couldn't happen.
So they shortened the nights and they slimmed the groups. And when it came time for Ether to have a turn, he was all alone.
Or he thought he was alone, because the group of Men that Ether landed by had a fortress around them unlike any magic he had seen.
Ether crept close, hiding behind the trees, his eyes glowing as he took in the magic ahead of him.
The foreign magic was so fine that it was almost invisible, like unicorn wool. And the strength of it rolled through him, not a ripple from a single shot of magic, but a stream of it, moving out and out and out from nothing.
At first, he thought it was the Otherworlders playing a prank on him, for he was technically one of the Men. But his sourness passed as he used his Man-eyes on the group around the fire.
Knights, he saw. About a dozen of them, gleaming in their chainmail and armour, all handsome and ruddy and jolly. He edged a little closer, breathing by the worms in the dirt and the moths on the leaves. His glamour shimmered around his eyes, he pulled at the webbing to better see.
There was one man not like the others-- a rippling man, bent over with age. He was withered like an old apple core, brown about the skin with years of sunlight, endless searching in the reflection of humming water. His long white hair whispered down his bowed back, tapering off into a messy braid. He looked about a hundred years old to Ether's Man-eyes, but when he saw the man with magic...
Well. That was another story altogether.
This is hardly fair, Ether mused. Here I am, trying to play pranks on men, and men are playing pranks on me!
And then the rippling man's eyes crossed his.
Ether knew at once, even before the earth beneath him began to lurch, that he was caught. The soft mossy ground rose up and wrapped around his ankles, pinning him in place, and the vines of the murmuring oaks bound his arms. The frogs began to croak, loudly, like an alarm.
The rippling man said, "Ah, so I remembered this time. Just as awkward and certain as your father will be. You've got some of his build, haven't you? But I suppose the Seelie court are to be blamed for the rest."
Ether struggled, bewildered. The knights didn't seem surprised at all with the way the old man was talking. In fact, they froze and flickered like a dream. Then, shockingly, they vanished at once.
"Oh!" he exclaimed.
The rippling man creaked to his feet and hobbled in Ether's direction, flicking his fingers this way and that in the air, sending waves and waves of magic towards him, undoing the spells on the vegetation without so much as a glance or a word.
Ether staggered and regained his equilibrium. "The knights were a mirage!"
"Yes, a mirage," nodded the man. "Of the air, just like you."
Ether looked at him sharply. "Who are you?"
"Who am I," said the man. He thought very hard, tugging fitfully at his beard. "Who I am is a little difficult to explain, I'm afraid. I am what I was and what I will be, but at the moment, I'm more of what I will be, unlike how I will be what I was... Oh bother." He had tugged so hard on his beard that a little bit ripped out. He held it up and breathed on it, and it floated away to be caught up by a nesting owl.
"You're mad," Ether said, delighted. He'd always wanted to meet a madman. The Seelie favored them as company, and Ether was beginning to see why: you could never tell what they would say.
"I'm Emrys," corrected the man. "I've always been like this. I think."