SORCEROUS SIGNALS
Written by Derek Ivan Webster / Artwork by Lee Kuruganti
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By An Old Oak Tree























The tree held him as firmly as a clenched fist, its wood warped and curved over every surface of his skin.
Oak, by the smell, and ancient. This was a binding of the highest order. Whoever had woven such magic
was a kindred of nature. In this age, at this time, there were only four on the island who could make
such a bold claim, and he was one of them. That left three possibilities: three names to attach to the fall
of a kingdom.

Myrddin left off his bodily struggles against the prison. There was not enough strength in muscle and
sinew to match the power that had locked this living form around him. If he were to escape, if it was
even possible, he would have to use his wits. He set his mind to rest, allowed his body to go limp and
cold. It was the subtler part of himself that he needed now, the part not bound by flesh and blood.

Tell me friend, this other self spoke to the tree, reveal to me how I came to be part of you.

No words were returned. Instead a feeling of warmth and contentment flushed through his slumbering
body. There was no anger in the tree, no sense of triumph or animosity. It was as if the ancient being
was happy to have his company. As if the creature were proud to host such an important guest.

Then you know who I am, his mind expertly translated the words into the sensation of leaves changing
color and falling, you know what is at stake. You must let me go.

Another warm, sap-slow spreading of good will. The tree had nothing but love for him, and yet no
intention of letting him free.

I warn you one final time, his language reached the tree as cold and foreboding as the first bite of
winter frost, I cannot be prevented from protecting the King.

Myrddin waited for a response from this thousand-year-old seed of life. He had no interest in harming
such a magnificent creature. And yet, there was not the slightest bluff in his warning. Tragedy was in the
air, and had been for some time. He would not, could not, leave the King to face such a bitter fate alone.

The ancient oak remained silent. As old and wise as it was, whatever power had enchanted it was simply
too strong. Even faced with such danger, the tree refused to lie to him. Instead, it maintained its silent
nobility.

I am sorry, came the image of an acorn being plucked from a branch.

The tree cracked cleanly in two. No splinters, no dust or ejecta. One moment it was alive and vibrant, the
next it was open to its core and hard with death.

Myrddin stepped through the petrified corpse and took a deep, shuddering breath. Whoever had caused
this could have no idea what they had begun. Myrddin was not happy, and when the kingdom’s greatest
magician was not happy, all of creation was brought to peril.

* * *

The pigeon hawk soared through the air, slicing its way through the bludgeon of an oncoming storm.
There might have been many more comfortable routes back to the castle, but Myrddin felt the time of
determination fast approaching. He was the only one who might sway the fates to favor his liege. He’d
been preparing for this day since the orphan boy had first appeared in his dreams, all those years ago.
Machinations were built up like the scaffold of Babel behind him: a balance of time and chance and
destination so sensitive as to tremble with each breath, and so sharp as to belie the teeth of Caliburn
herself. He must not let the window close. When the time came, Myrddin must be there.

His mind was pulled taunt between ever-shifting timelines. His attention was diverted with each mighty
blow of the wind. Thus was it he never saw the falcon plunging toward him. Claws sank deep into his
back and side. He fought lose of the hooks, only to have his wings buckle, and the storm seize his flailing
form in its own hungry talons. Like a stone he fell, disappearing into a bank of mist and slamming into
the wet, waiting fist of the hidden bog beneath.

When he finally finished flopping and sliding through the muck, an eerie silence fell over the swamp. His
body melted back into human form. His robe was in tatters; one arm and both legs were broken. No set
of wings or bestial haunches would speed him along now. He was lucky enough to have landed in the
mire. The ground had not only softened his landing considerably, but a few feet beneath the bog surface
oozed just the sort of dark, rich soil necessary to help him set his wounds.

He was half-rolled to his side and considering how to best escape the ground when the woman arrived.
Her long tangle of angry black hair wrapped around her coat of slick feathers—their color and texture
making it impossible to discover where the one ended and the other began. Her nightmare black eyes
were shiny beads of excitement.

It had not been a falcon that downed him, after all. It had been a raven. Not just any raven, the raven.
Lady Badb herself.

“Oh, it’s been too long,” the demon sighed with pleasure. “How I’ve waited to stand over you like this. To
watch as the life drained out of everything you’ve worked for.”

“So, it was you,” Myrddin grunted up from the muck. “I should have expected something so obvious.”
The Badb was the last of the Bean Sidhe. Her kind were long gone, nearly forgotten, and her power,
though fading, was likely the greatest magic left on the island. She was easily capable of the binding that
had thrust him into an oak tree.

“What was it you told me when last we spoke?” The Badb crept closer, relishing the moment. “Your time
is past, those were the words that slipped through that smug mouth of yours. As if you alone held the
handle of time.”

The Badb crouched down to her knees so she could take Myrddin’s face in her long taloned fingers.

“Now who holds who?” The stench of carrion death wafted out from between her smiling, black teeth.

“No!” The ringing shout cut through the mists like a ray of light.

Something seized the Badb from behind and yanked her away from Myrddin. She flew backwards as if
pulled by a team of mad horses. Her screams of frustration and anger were quickly swallowed by the fog.

Myrddin let the cold, wired tension unwind from his body along with a relieved breath. In his weakened
state, so far from familiar ground, it would have taken every scrap of his power to deal with the Badb. He
might not have survived. It certainly would have cost him too much time.

“Thank you, my love.” Myrddin spoke with his back to the new arrival. A simple levitation took most of
the weight from his broken legs, but his body was still too ginger to turn.

Nimue ran her hand around the side of his face and tugged playfully at the grey bush of beard he wore.

“Playing the old man, again, are we?” She laughed lightly before pressing her lips to his exposed neck.

“It suits the moment.” Myrddin shrugged. He turned his own face to press lips upon the girl’s smooth
forehead. “Besides, I thought you liked older men.”

“Are you alright?” she asked, the concern erasing her playfulness.

“Of course, of course.” Myrddin tried to smile to set her mind at ease. “Nothing a little herb and rub won’
t fix. But you mustn’t fuss over me right now. We must get to the King immediately.”

“I’m sorry.” She cast her eyes away from his sudden confusion. “It’s already too late.”

“What?” He spoke with great care, he could already feel the dangerous emotions building in him. “What,
do you mean?”

“It is over. The Usurper is slain. La Fay has taken to the lost hills. The Lady prepares our fallen King for
his final journey.” Nimue’s gaze never left the safety of the surrounding fog. “There is nothing more to
be done. All has passed, as it was foretold.”

“Take me to him,” Myrddin said softly.

“There is nothing you can...”

“Take me to him.” The words were no louder, but Nimue flinched from the cold press of what hovered
beneath them.

She turned to finally meet Myrddin’s blazing gaze. She reached out to take his hands in hers.

“You knew, didn’t you.” The steely frost of his voice brought the words near to tremble. “You saw, just
as I did, but you let it happen all the same.”

“No.” Nimue returned his stare with all the intensity she could muster. “I did not let it happen. I made it
happen.”

Myrddin gasped out in pain. Something cracked open inside of him. His concentration broken, the
levitation dissolved in an instant and he came crashing down on his mangled legs. The white-hot pain
was everywhere at once: his bones, his meat, his skin. It overwhelmed his body in an explosion of nerve
quaking terror. His every cell shouted for release. But that storm was nothing compared to the cold
blade that began to grow within his chest and behind his eyes. Where that blade touched, the pain
receded. The storm abated. It left an emptiness in its passing. No pain, no emotion, nothing to do with
human life at all. The vacuum quickly swept through his whole body.

“It was for you. For us,” she continued, wincing from her love’s pain, following him to the ground and
clinging to his hands. “You would have given everything for him. You would have sacrificed all of it.
Everything we had built. I had to protect you. The binding was the only way.”

Myrddin could no longer hear her. He had allowed himself to fall back into the mire. The murky, ankle
deep water was now above his ears. He could see her sobbing now, but there was no sound. He closed
his eyes so even that sight would leave him.

“Away,” he whispered to his heart, the part of him that had ceased to exist. “My trust was misplaced.”

She left him then. Whatever final words she offered, he would never know. He did not care. She had
failed him, and he had failed the King. Myrddin’s body melted into the liquid of the swamp.

* * *

He slithered through the shallow ditches, racing across his belly, the damage to arms and legs a mere
memory torn into the surface of his scaled skin. The water got deeper as he traveled. The sediment
thinned until his path was clear and true. Creek fell into stream, which fell into rivulet, which finally
approached the lake. That’s where he found them, right at the edge of the flat expanse of water,
preparing for the journey that could never be unmade.

Myrddin came to rest at the prow of the open wooden vessel. He coiled his snake form around itself and
breathed out long and hard. The snake part of him was exhaled along with the air of his lungs, leaving
only the human part behind.

Myrddin sat and stared up at the Lady. She hovered at the side of the fallen King. He looked peaceful,
even sleeping, as he rested atop the funeral bed.

“We almost thought you wouldn’t make it.” The Lady offered him a small smile. She gestured back lightly
and the boat began to move away from the edge of the Lake.

“Your sister was little help,” Myrddin muttered, standing up slowly. He’d been able to absorb enough life
from the mud and water to reset his bones, but the surrounding flesh was still red and swollen.

“Don’t deal too harshly with her,” the Lady spoke with a knowing sadness. “She wanted only to preserve
your love.”

“And thereby lost it.” Myrddin shook his head as he knelt down at the dormant King’s side.

The Lady only continued to lightly smile. Whatever she knew of Nimue and Myrddin, and what their future
held, she saw this as no time to linger on the subject.

“Can he hear me?” Myrddin asked, taking the King’s strong hand in his own more delicate fingers.

“In the way of such things. Most of him is already across the water. I only take the body now out of
respect.”

“It would seem we were both bested by the same enemy,” Myrddin told his lifelong student, speaking
with the same warmth and devotion he’d shared so many times before. He offered the Lady a sly glance.
“History will suppose it was a woman who proved our undoing. But this is not true. It was our love. The
love we gave to them, freely, that the kingdom could not bear. Your Guinevere, my Nimue, even
unfortunate Lancelot, La Fay and Mordred in their own way, they all fell guilty of a single unforgivable
trespass. They loved us more than they loved their kingdom. Today, our shining Camelot has fallen. She
has died of her own jealously inflicted wounds. She has died of a broken heart.”

The Kings’s strong hand returned his grip for a moment, and Myrddin almost expected him to reply. It
was enough he had heard. That he knew not to blame himself for what had transpired. Perhaps the next
time they would get it right. How ever many eons must first pass, when Camelot finally rose again,
gleaming against some distant horizon, perhaps they would carry this one simple lesson with them: love,
true love, is not the end, but the beginning of something more.

“Take good care of him,” he told the Lady, before diving off the side of the boat. He would leave Arthur
to his Avalon, to the great halls filled with fallen heroes and unceasing echoes of legend undone. There
was another place waiting for Myrddin. He had realized it even as he spoke his last words to the King.

* * *

He was a herring, a bumblebee, an iguana, a lynx. He darted from water to air to ground, morphing from
tail, to wing, to paw. He was alive again. The cold steel had melted away, replaced with a mad rush of
thoughts and feeling: glimpses of the future, lessons of the past. He was the magician, the prophet, the
harbinger, the king builder, the fated wanderer. He was everything and nothing and each shade that
stretched between. He was eternal and his time had come to an end.

Thus did Myrddin make his way back to the glade.

He stood before the wide-open tree. The dream was quickening within him. He would have to hurry if he
was to accomplish the task before his magics were forgotten.

“I’ll do it,” came the clear, ringing voice from behind him.

“Thank you,” he said, with a warmth of understanding that took her by surprise.

He stepped into the cracked opening of the tree and turned to face her.

“I love you,” he said simply. It was the strongest spell he had ever cast.

“I love you, too.” her voice remained true, even as it glistened atop the sudden rush of tears. “Someday
will be for us.”

“When next we meet.” he smiled and held his hands out above his head, the fingers splayed in all
directions.

Nimue held her own fingers outward, reaching for the fading magic of their love. But it was already gone.
She could see it in his eyes. He had forgotten. The warm, healing madness had filled him up and left
nothing but a sleepless dream.

She closed her eyes and fingers together. When she opened them again only a tree stood before her. A
beautiful, ancient oak. Its limbs reached up toward the heavens, branches splayed in every direction.

Soon it stood alone, watching over an abandoned glade. Time would pass; new kingdoms would rise and
fall. The oak tree would remain, forever watching, forever waiting. Dreaming of the day when fate would
at last relent, and love might have another chance. The day when the fist came unclenched, and the
world, once again, knew Camelot.
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Raised in a tiny Alaskan fishing village, educated at Yale University,
Derek Ivan Webster is a writer who appreciates a good contrast. A
victim of the freelance lifestyle, it is only his sage wife and
precious/precocious little girls that keep him sane.

Read more at www.ivanhope.com/blog