Read Earth's Magic for Free Online Page B

without the other, you know. It is part of the world’s balance. We two, different as we were even then, we loved each other, we completed each other. But he insisted that we must have no children. I was saddened by this. When I pressed him for a reason, he said an ancient prophesy foretold that our child would hold the key to ending the growing power of Arawn’s dominion. That dark power was what he and others craved, and its strength was drawing him away from me even then.
    “But in most ways we Eldritch women are no different from humans, Merlin. I longed for a child, and finally I let one happen. By then Arawn was having little to do with Avalon or the other lighter areas of Faerie. He was elsewhere when I gave birth and never knew it had happened. The baby grew to manhood among the Eldritch in Avalon, and few suspected who his father was. But my son had an adventurous spirit, and though I cautioned him against it, he ventured often into the mortal world. There he met a human woman whom he came to love as deeply as I loved Arawn.”
    The Lady was silent a moment, twisting a bronze band she wore around her wrist. Then she continued. “Together those two had a child of their own, half mortal, half Eldritch. The knowledge of that birth was kept from all in Avalon but me. However, shortly afterward, through a careless word among the folk of Avalon, Arawn learned that he himself had a son. In his black rage, he sought him out and would have killed him. I begged Arawn, in memory of our love, to spare him. So, relenting, Arawn enchanted our son, binding him into a form in which he could never fulfill the prophecy. He bound me too under this
geis
, on pain of unleashing havoc on Avalon, to never reveal the form of our son’s entrapment nor its location. You see, Avalon’s very survival is in my hands. I cannot break that
geis.”
    The two stared at each other a moment. Then the Lady asked, “Merlin, are you beginning to see where my tale is leading?”
    Merlin felt his flesh ripple with cold. His throat was so dry, he could barely force words from it. “Lady, say more of the woman whom your son loved.”
    She smiled. “A mortal woman, lovely and kind. She was the daughter of a Welsh chieftain. To him and her people, she never revealed who was the father of her child. The Eldritch, after all,were feared by most mortals, and she wanted to protect her child from that fear. But for the shame it caused her family that she had this child of an unknown father, she was sent away to live with nuns and raise her son there.”
    A sob broke from his throat as Merlin struggled to hold back tears. Finally, he whispered, “Yes, she was lovely and kind. But she never would tell me who my father was, though I begged her to. Once, though, perhaps to ease my confusion when my strange powers were coming to me, she revealed that he was Eldritch.”
    Slowly Merlin looked up. “That means, Lady, that you are my grandmother.”
    Her smile was soft. “Yes, child, though that is another secret no one shares. And I have been so proud of you, little hawk, for all you have endured and all you have done.”
    Impulsively, she enfolded Merlin in an embrace that melted him with all the love he had seldom known. Then, looking into his eyes, she said, “Merlin, do you know now what you must do?”
    “Find … my father.”
    She nodded. “The key which the prophecy says he holds, I believe, unlocks more than the fate of one realm. It could hold the solving, one way or another, of the crisis to which all our worlds are heading. But surely he must be freed to use it.”
    “But how can I free him? I don’t even know—”
    “Merlin, listen. When Arawn bound our son into this enchantment, he made it so that it could be broken only by one of his own flesh and blood. And as I was prevented from breaking the enchantment by the terrible pledge, Arawn felt safe. But he does not know of you. He never learned that our son had a son of his own.”
    The light