Yesterday's Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

all.
    He struggled to break his speechlessness. “How…how…Heather, this is beautiful. I never knew…. There is so much life and power in this.
Thank you
doesn’t begin to say it.”
    “I wasn’t sure about the wood,” she said, blushing happily. “But the time we all camped in that little oak grove near Oxford, I found this sapling that a storm had uprooted. It seemed right.”
    “Yes, oak has deep roots of power—as, it seems, do you.” Gently he kissed her, then pulled back. “And if I accept this gift, are we officially engaged?”
    She smiled teasingly. “Only halfway.”
    He laughed and pulled out a small cloth-wrapped package. “Then please do me the honor of completing the process and accepting this gift.”
    Even in the faint cold moonlight, the bracelet she unwrapped glowed warmly. The red-gold band showed a delicate procession of running deer—antlers, backs, and legs blending and interweaving with each other in an intricate endless knot.
    “This was my mother’s,” he said quietly. “Remember how at Glastonbury we found that hoard of treasure that the monks had hidden long ago after the fall of Arthur? All I saw at first was my Bowl of Seeing, but after our skirmish with Morgan, I dug up some of the rest to return to Arthur, and this was there. It must have been with my things when…when I left Camelot.”
    “It had been your mother’s?”
    He nodded. “She gave it to me when I went off as a young man to join King Uther. She told me my father had given it to her.”
    “Your father. You’ve never mentioned him.”
    “I never knew him. But he was Eldritch—as is the bracelet.”
    Reverently Heather slipped the bracelet onto her wrist.
    Merlin smiled. “It fits as if it were meant for you. And perhaps it was. The Eldritch see very far indeed.”
    They spent a while longer warmly entwined in each other’s arms. When reluctantly they parted, it was with mutual vows that their own wedding would be a great deal simpler than what they were expecting tomorrow.
     
    The pink of dawn gave way to a rare blue sky, taken as a good omen by people who usually saw blue skies only in ancient paintings. There were many people up to see that dawn. Word had been spreading for weeks about the Royal Wedding. Crowds from within the city and from the countryside gathered early along the royal procession route between the Manor and York’s ancient cathedral. Vendors hawked roasted potatoes and small souvenir stone carvings of Arthur’s Dragon emblem and Margaret’s Scottish Lion. Street musicians played fiddles, pipes, and drums while jugglers and puppeteers entertained the growing crowd.
    At the Manor, all seemed loosely controlled chaos. Everyone was scurrying to put on their best, most impressive attire, groom their horses, and make a thousand final touches to decorations. Heather chose to wear a simple blue wool dress that one of Margaret’s ladies had made for her. The only jewelry she wore was her purple glass ring and the entwining deer bracelet. Gretha, one of the York girls she was rooming with, offered eagerly to do her hair. Heather wasn’t sure whether the end result, a swirled mound with one long lock cascading down her back, made her look elegant or ridiculous. But she admitted it made her look older.
    The procession finally got under way around noon. Drums, trumpets, and bagpipes were followed by banner carriers. Then came troops of soldiers, including Welly, each proudly wearing Arthur’s Dragon surcoat. When Arthur and Margaret appeared on their white and red warhorses, the crowd cheered wildly. Margaret, with her flaming red hair, golden crown, and green tartan gown, seemed like a figure from ancient stories. Beside her, a figure truly from those stories, rode King Arthur Pendragon, his golden beard and hair only slightly less bright than his crown, and his burnished armor and sword splendid in the pale sunlight.
    Behind the couple rode Duke Basil of York and various dignitaries from