For all his great dramatics, the work I must do to grasp the horrors of necromancy and the rest of the Forbidden Arts mainly involved reading. Merlin guided my course, piling my workbench with volume after volume of writings, often scribed and bound by his own hand. Some I had read before and some I hadn’t, the most interesting those that were strictly prohibited, like the black book I had discovered in St. Brigid’s that was subsequently burned.
So I read, intensely, endlessly, until the words blurred and the diagrams became meaningless shapes, and I had to rise and walk about just to recognize language again. Never in my life would I have said there was too much reading before the sorcerer’s tasks, but if the key to saving Arthur was within, then I would push beyond my fatigue and find it.
Merlin lingered at my edges, his quill scratching, or fussing with various implements, occasionally drawing me away for something that amused him—whispering to his purple quartz to show me the smoky shapes the spirits sent, or demonstrating how he cast bird bones to bolster his prophecies.
The purpose of the wooden perch by the window also became clear. Late one afternoon, as I read a scroll on blood rituals with grim fascination, there was a muffled thud and an orange-eyed owl alighted there, dropping a dead starling on the sill beneath. The owl gulped at the sorcerer’s fresh meat, then flew back into the woods.
“You have a trained owl?” I exclaimed.
Merlin scooped the starling from the bowl and examined it. “Of course not. A waste of my time, training one creature so I can wander the woods with it, hoping it catches something relevant. Instead, preying birds know they can find easy meat here, if they leave their kill behind.”
He carried the corpse up the stairs, presumably placing it in a great bird graveyard somewhere, its bones awaiting the privilege of divination. Thereafter, various owls and hawks continued to bring gifts of finches, thrushes and even a dead duck—along with a few voles which Merlin discarded with distaste—and their swooping arrivals ceased to be particularly diverting.
So I persisted and read script in increasing frustration, while he read bones and ashes. But as the year crept beyond autumn, burnished leaves giving way to creeping frost, the stars came out for longer in cold, clear skies, and Merlin chose to send me from his presence so he could consult with the talkative heavens alone.
“Go and rest,” he would say. “You will need your strength in the morning.”
“For what?” I argued one day. “It costs me nothing to read other people’s words, when I should be exploring the means to write my own.”
The sorcerer regarded me with faint scorn. “Why, my lady? What have you discovered that we can explore? An incantation to regrow bone, perhaps? An enchantment that guards the body from sword strikes? A method to persuade a stilled heart to beat again?”
Again, the concept tolled within me. “No,” I said petulantly. “But perhaps practising other arts––”
“Other arts were not what you wanted, Lady Morgan,” he cut in. “They bored you. You wanted to serve King Arthur’s interests, and this is the work at hand.” The threat of a smile curled at his mouth. “Of course, we could always return to our more general studies. I will show you how to make a hen appear as a rabbit, if you wish.”
There was nothing to do but put my back to his taunts and keep reading.
Only in the dark, lying awake in the witching hour as the cold winter moons rose and fell, did I let myself think of Accolon, of the library and our idyllic month in Camelot; of the two hearts now inside my body, and one recurring phrase.
Every life, in its entirety, can be found written upon the heart.
After weeks of these words from the past echoing across my sleepless mind, eventually came the night where I could no longer lie still. If I was awake, I might as well work.
I hoisted my rounded body up the tower stairs, child kicking fitfully against my lower back, and entered Merlin’s study. His enchanted hour candle showed three hours after midnight, and I wondered if I would find him there, poring over star charts or nightingale bones. But the sorcerer was nowhere to be seen; even demons needed to sleep, it seemed.
The oriel window stood open, fanged with icicles, though it would soon be the equinox, and spring should have been due. A low glow still battled in the hearth, so I churned the embers and added kindling until it burned high and yellow. My abdomen gave another wrenching twist; I pulled my work chair to the fireplace and let the resurgent warmth soothe the stretching pain in my belly. Alys would have ordered me back to bed, I thought, and it occurred to me that in my fervent state of work, I had barely seen Ninianne for weeks.
I turned to my reading pile: volumes on anatomy; so-called blood magic; forbidden scrolls on necromancy; anything I could find on the heart. Checking that I was alone, I drew out my notes from where I had concealed them between the pages of a large lapidary, knowing Merlin would never look there because he considered himself an expert on stones.
Halfway through rereading my fledgling theory on the curative properties of various bloods, there was a scuffle at the bird window. Usually, I would have ignored the sorcerer’s macabre altar, but something turned my head; whatever had fallen was so large it filled the empty bowl. I rose and went to it, candle shining upon a long patrician beak and reticulated feathers black as night, belonging to a large raven of great beauty.
There was no sign outside of the bird that had left it, only bare branches and a gust of lingering winter. The bestower of this unusual prey had not even paused to take its meat.
I shut the window and carried the raven’s half-frozen corpse back to my worktable. It bore no visible marks of violence, and I decided to take the longest flight feathers as quills before Merlin reduced the poor creature’s regal darkness to dust.
Splaying out a wing, I felt a tiny judder against my palm, soft as a landing butterfly. I lifted my hand, but the bird remained motionless, the depression of my fingers still imprinted on its breast. I lay my hand over it again and felt the same narrow, coruscating shiver—not a life sign but something else: a trace, a suggestion, a bright whisper of an existence that had once been. Guided by the sensation, I held the dead bird’s fragile chest to my ear, reaching past the silence for something unknown.
When it came, it was not in sound but in visions—the soaring view of treetops, a tangled nest of twigs lined with feathers, the sun-glint of metal on a horse’s bridle—the record of a life once lived, carved across a stilled heart, and the slightest sliver of proof for my unsleeping mind.
My hands worked automatically, sifting through the weeks of notes I had written until a page caught my eye—an experimental combination of new knowledge and words of magic I had been trying to fit together with my strongest method of healing. I reread the page, checking the incantation I had tentatively designed and the order of requirements I felt had the most potential.
A place of rest was first, and my eyes fell upon a fair-sized wooden box of crystal shards on Merlin’s desk. I emptied the box, lined the interior with a sprig of yew leaves and a bunch of dried sage, and placed the raven within, wrapped in a small bolt of linen.
Securing the box’s lid, I gripped the makeshift grave to my chest and intoned my invented nine-word incantation over and over again. The sphere of my abdomen constricted, making me cry out in interruption, but I clutched the box tighter to my racing heartbeat and restarted my chant. At the third saying, the box gave a violent rattle, fighting my hold as if the very essence of life was contained within. Another spasm gripped my body but I ignored it, wrenching the lid off the box.
The raven burst forth with a scream, wings scything the air. It skimmed across the ceiling beams like an unchained wraith, giving another shriek of protest before landing on the oriel windowsill. I watched transfixed as it tore at the raw meat, armoured feathers gleaming blue-black with the renewed light of life. Upon hearing my gasp, it regarded me with unhurried scrutiny, flesh dangling from its sharp beak. I grinned back, my bones thrilling with awe.
“It’s alive.”
A wiry hand grabbed my arm. Merlin, too, was smiling in wild rapture.
“The bird was dead, and now…My remarkable Morgan, what have you done?” His eyes flickered across my face, a devouring look that I felt like teeth grazing my flesh. “How did you do it, my beautiful, clever one?”
I strained away from the intensity of his gaze, but he held fast to my arm. Then his hand was at my face, cool fingers exploring my cheek. “What did you feel when you held that creature close to your body? What did you give to afford it new life?”
The shock of his touch froze my limbs. My belly gave a jolting twinge. “I—I don’t know,” I said. “Perhaps we should look at the bird.”
“Whatever it is will still be coursing through you.” His hand moved to the back of my neck, fingers pushing into my hair. His eyes burned red, estranged from reason. “I must possess all of you in this moment, or risk the essence, the magic, being lost.”
Another bolt of pain kicked through my gut, affording me a rush of outrage. “Stop this,” I snapped. “I am with child.”
“It doesn’t matter, don’t you see?” His voice was desperate, unmoored, far away from his usual waspish precision. “You have enraptured me—your gifts cry out. We must share this power for the sake of greatness.”
He was not himself—or perhaps he was, this hungry, febrile, uncontrolled side of Merlin as much part of him as the bored, all-knowing master sorcerer. He had spent weeks in a state of trance, inhaling vapours, eschewing food and sleep, and watching me work with a growing keenness. It was a state he had cultivated and relished, and no more acceptable than a bandit snatching women from their beds.
His bruising fingers caressed my neck, and my vision filled with red at his presumption. In the window, the raven spread its wings and screeched, echoing my fury. I wrenched the sorcerer’s arm away and broke myself free.
“I have done this, not you,” I said fiercely. “This bird could be the answer, but I will do or say nothing more if you ever think of touching me again.”
Merlin stepped back and exhaled, eyes still smouldering with want. “Withholding will not serve us. What you have achieved is already done.”
“It isn’t enough,” I said. “That is a bird, not a man. You cannot believe that a mild, imperfect spell that restored a mere raven could resurrect a High King? It would be madness to even claim it.”
The sorcerer said nothing, long fingers stroking the collar of his robe. I sensed with unwelcome certainty that he was torn between another lustful lunge or trying to out-argue me, and was alarmed that I had come to know such a creature so well.
“You need me, Merlin,” I said. “Arthur’s reprieve from death doesn’t depend on what I’ve done, but on what I do next. I can cease to work until I leave, then tell my brother how you threw away his salvation for a selfish obsession. Where will your legacy be then?”
Merlin stared at me, red eyes settling to their usual liquid black. He pointed to his desk, at a fat wood pigeon corpse that a buzzard had brought earlier that evening.
“Do it again,” he said.
“Absolutely not.” A fist of pain gripped the base of my spine, snatching my breath. “I don’t…work on your…command.”
Another crushing spasm encircled my body, so searing I doubled over. I fought it, pushing myself upright and heading for the door, when a bolting horse kick crashed inside me. I felt a warm rush of fluid down my leg, and the last thing I saw was the dizzying staircase beneath me before everything was sucked into black.