Evie stood quickly, flushing, embarrassed that she was flushing because she had nothing to flush about. Except that Alex was staring at her like she did.
Arthur carried Mab to the sofa. The dog filled all of it but a corner where Evie sat and stroked her head. The fur there was silky, flat against her skull. She hoped to calm the dog into sleeping, giving her wounds a chance to heal. It hurt to see proud Mab so weak.
Alex stood behind the sofa and watched over them. Arthur had moved away, to look out a window.
Merlin watched Alex closely. “Three thousand years, you said. That would make you older than I am.”
“Likely,” Alex said without facing the wizard.
“How? How does one live so long and survive being run through by Excalibur? You must be one of the old gods. Like her.”
Alex looked at each of them, Evie last. His hands clenched on the back of the sofa. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave, turn and storm out as he’d done whenever she’d asked too many questions. But Merlin was difficult to refuse.
When he finally spoke, he spoke to her. “I fought beside Odysseus in the Trojan War. The day after we entered the city”—he didn’t have to tell that part of the story—“I was taken prisoner by Apollo, who was unhappy with the turn of events. He enslaved me and intended to keep me for all eternity, enspelling me, to make me ageless and impe
rvious to harm. Things didn’t quite work out, but I was stuck.”
“Apollo the god?” Merlin said.
“He wasn’t a god.” Alex straightened and paced along the back of the sofa, his gaze downcast. “Hera isn’t a god. None of them were. They were just people with too much power who used it for their own gains. You, Merlin—you matched her in a fight. You have as much power as any of them. You could have been a god, but instead you chose to serve. That has been one of the worst frustrations of my long life—living among the prayers, the shrines, the temples, the saints and knowing all the while that the gods we worship are just people.”
Arthur had found a cloth dish towel from the kitchen and was cleaning Excalibur. The movements were slow, methodical. He said, “There is the one God. The true God.”
Alex suppressed a chuckle and shook his head. “They died. The gods I worshipped as a boy are all dead. Zeus sacrificed himself to destroy the ancient pantheon and change the world. That’s what it takes to change the world, you know: a person of great power sacrificing himself, trading his own life for the transformation. So he did, and in a few years, the footprints of the many gods faded. When the gods stopped answering prayers in so personal a manner as the myths tell, the myths changed, the many gods became one. A god who was an idea rather than a person was born. He became all gods.”
“Then what of Christ his Son?” Arthur said, true to his own legend.
“Do you know I saw him once?” Alex, brash and insensitive, continued. “He could have been the greatest wizard since Zeus himself. The power of Zeus, the charisma of Apollo—he could have been a god. But a lot of magic had left the world by that time. It’s my theory that he learned somehow of what Zeus had done—the sacrifice of self for power. It’s a story in so many cultures: the hero gives his life to restore his land, and is reborn as the king. That was what he was trying to do, I think. He succeeded, in a sense: I think he’d have been surprised to learn how far his name has spread. And how it is used. But he gave his life for that fame. His followers wait for his coming that never happens. And meanwhile, thousands of minor wizards work their magic in his name and call them miracles.”
“You are a mad blasphemer,” Arthur said.
“Thank you, my lord.”
Evie kept petting Mab’s head. The dog was breathing deeply, sleeping. “Hera lived,” she said. “And magic is coming back into the world. What do we do?”
Merlin turned from the window. “Miss Walker, do you believe that Hera will start a war if she gets what she wants?”
The apple still nested in her pocket, pressed against her hip. Long ago, Discord created the apple for the express purpose of sowing strife. Its power had not diminished. Hera would know how to use that power. Such a little thing, rolled onto the floor of the U.N. General Assembly. Metaphorically, of course. She would offer one or another country weapons, money, political dominance—and see them fight for the prize. She could offer one supremacy in space, another free trade, a third a telecommunications empire. Watch them take her bribes and do her bidding.
“She can manipulate the one that’s already starting,” she said, not certain how she knew, or where her growing confidence came from. Except that her father was dying. He succumbed, and she knew more than she should.
“Then we take our stand against her. Someone must oppose her.”
Arthur gazed at Merlin with a shadowed look in his eyes. Past battles, lost wars—who knew what memories played in his mind’s eye?
“Is that why we’re here, Merlin? To build a new kingdom from the ashes, as we did before?”
“You are here because someone must oppose her. Who better than you?”
Alex crossed his arms. “How? Oppose her how? Do you know where she is? What her next plan is?”
Merlin scowled. “She’ll come here, of course. We’ll wait for her.”
“We’d be fighting a purely defensive battle if we stay here. We can’t win.”
Arthur sided with Merlin. “I’d like nothing better than to take the fight to her, but I have no forces and no knowledge of her position. Here, our position is at least mildly defensible.”
“The house is protected,” Evie said. “No one gets in unless invited. No one gets into the Storeroom except the guardian and his heir.”