“No Native American says that,” Raven chirped as he hopped to the edge of the pit. “It is big down there, isn’t it?”
“It held all the magic in the world at one point,” Marci reminded him. “But I promise it won’t be for long this time.” She turned to the doorway where the other spirits were waiting. “We won’t even put the seal back on. I just need you to lend me your magic for a few minutes, and then you’ll all be returned to your vessels.”
The dark shapes shuffled nervously, but Vann Jeger pushed his way to the front. “Enough coddling,” he growled, shoving Raven aside. “I am not afraid.” He glared down at Marci. “I am the immortal hunter, and I will be back to hunt you and your dragon again, in this life or the next. For now, though, I will do what must be done.”
With that, he stepped off the edge, dissolving into water as he fell into the dark.
Marci held her breath, waiting for the splash at the bottom, but she didn’t hear a thing. The spirit was simply gone, eaten by the mountain below.
“That was anticlimactic,” Raven said, fluttering up so the other spirits could see him. “All right, you all saw where the Geirangerfjord went, so let’s hop to! The world won’t save itself.”
“Who are you to give us orders, thief bird?” Wolf growled, pushing his way through the door. “If you’re so sure, let’s see you go in.”
“I was about to,” Raven said, fluffing his feathers as he landed at the edge of the pit. Then, as he was turning to go in, he paused to look up at Marci. “We’re betting it all on you,” he whispered. “Don’t fail us, Merlin.”
Marci opened her mouth to swear she would not, but Raven was already gone, the beat of his wings vanishing as he plunged into the dark.
After that, there was nothing else to be said. One by one, the spirits marched through the Merlin Gate, their huge forms shrinking to human scale so they could squeeze through the doorway and jump down the well inside. The bloody man went after Raven, then Wolf dove in, then the crone with the nettles, then a tree Marci didn’t recognize, then something that looked like an eel with a man’s face.
On and on they came like a silent parade of imaginary monsters. Some—the animals mostly—were easy to recognize, but most Marci couldn’t have named if she’d tried. Word must have spread while she’d been waiting on Myron, because there were even more spirits waiting outside than she’d seen while she was pleading with them. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of spirits tromped through the door she held open. Every time Marci thought that must be all, more would appear, and as they jumped one by one into the holding circle that was the Merlin’s mountain, the raging sea outside began to retreat.
It happened so gradually, Marci didn’t notice the change at first, but after an hour of watching spirit after spirit disappear down the hole, she looked up to see that their tiny island was no longer tiny, or an island, but a mountain once again. Down below, the cliffs were back, and the tops of the green trees were visible beneath the churning water. Bit by bit, the sea fell, retreating down the Merlin’s green mountain until she could see the white courtyard where they’d first entered, and then the Merlin Gate itself.
But it didn’t stop there. As more spirits poured themselves into the Heart of the World, the Sea of Magic sank lower and lower. By the time her hands began to burn from holding open the door so long, the water was shallower than Marci had ever seen it, leaving the Leviathan’s gnarled roots exposed like black worms across the seabed from horizon to horizon. She was trying to wrap her head around just how much of the Nameless End was down there when Shiro hauled himself up the now dry stairs looking like he’d just lost the fight of his life.
Marci handed the door to Ghost and ran to him. The shikigami fell over when she reached him, collapsing to the stone like a pile of wet cloth. “Are you okay?” she cried, rolling him onto his back.
“No,” he gasped, grabbing her hands. “I kept him out of the Heart of the World, but…” His dark eyes met hers. “He is bigger than anything I could have imagined, Merlin. Bigger than all of us. What we see here, what he’s done, it’s just a fraction. He will crack this plane open and eat us whole. We cannot stop him.”
“Don’t say that,” Marci said angrily. “We can still win.”
“Nothing can win,” Shiro said, shaking his head. “This pillar reaches to the very bottom of the Sea of Magic, its base anchored in the wall of our plane itself. When I went down to make sure he did not enter, I caught a glimpse of what waited outside.” He started to tremble. “I saw him, Merlin. Saw what should never be seen. And now—” He cut off with a shudder, his hands desperate as they grasped hers. “No one can beat this. He is the end of all.”
Marci cursed and looked back at the line of spirits, which seemed to be winding down at last. Below her, the pillar-shaped mountain of the Heart of the World stood as high and dry as a dock post at low tide, its spellwork stretched tight as a drum trying to hold all the spirits that had crammed themselves inside. There were still a few puddles left in the black-riddled seabed outside—spirits who’d been too afraid or stubborn to come—but for all intents and purposes, the magic of the world was here. The spirits had answered her call, and Marci had to believe that was enough.
“I don’t doubt what you saw,” she said, turning back to the guardian. “But you’ve been claiming things were impossible since I met you, yet here we are. I didn’t come this far to fail now. We will beat this, Shiro. We will banish the Leviathan and take back our plane, and there’s nothing anyone—not Algonquin, not the Black Reach, not even the End itself—can do to stop us.”
“I hope you are right,” Shiro said quietly. “I know you are not, but I hope.”
Marci squeezed his shoulder and rose to her feet, turning around to see Myron standing between the Empty Wind and the DFZ, the only two spirits left.
“So,” the mage said, looking down at the well, which was now filled to the brim with magic. “What now?”
“What do you mean ‘what now?’” Marci asked angrily. “We hammer the Leviathan.”
“That was the plan,” Myron said nervously. “But now that we’ve got all the magic, someone has to actually cast the banish, and I’m not entirely sure how that’s going to happen without one of us burning themselves to a crisp. We’ve got the most sophisticated casting circle ever constructed, but even the best spellwork still needs a mage to operate it, and no one’s ever handled magic on this scale before.”
Marci gaped at him. “Shouldn’t you have brought this up earlier?”