Feeling Merlin’s eyes on him Galahad turned and raised his hands in wonder at what was happening all around them.
Galahad and Camelot’s Knight Commander were covered in dirt and blood. Some of it was their own, but there were no mortal wounds there and Merlin almost laughed out aloud as his friend winked at him.
The Army of the Dead was now in total disarray, stumbling over themselves in an effort to turn away from whatever mighty army it was that had thrown itself against them with such a ferocity and hatred.
The dust began to fade away and Merlin saw a sight that he would never have believed to be possible.
There at the head of an army that stretched as far as the eye could see was Grim. For a moment Merlin shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes and then the truth of it struck him.
Far from running away from the Battle of Avalon Grim had done the one thing that could save Camelot, Avalon and the Old Magic, to say nothing of Merlin and the rest of his friends. Grim had raised the Lost Army of the Ghouls.
It was something that had never been done before and Merlin saw with almost total disbelief that the ghouls had accepted Grim as their leader and he had led them straight to the Great Stones of Avalon and into the battle against the Dark Lord and his Army of the Dead.
It was then that Merlin realised just what was happening to the Forces of the Dark.
The Army of the Dead could not be slain by mortal hand for they were already dead, but the ghouls were not mortal for they too had died many hundreds if not thousands of years before.
The Lost Army of the Ghouls could destroy the Army of the Dead. It could blast them out of existence and this it was doing with a ruthlessness that Merlin would never have imagined was possible.
And there was Grim, leading from the front. There was Grim fighting as if he had been born to it and Merlin knew that it was a sight that he would never forget for as long as he lived.
As the boy watched the slaughter of the Army of the Dead in wonderment he was aware that Galapas was looking at him in total amazement.
The High Mage was obviously exhausted and was leaning heavily on his staff but there was a look of total wonderment on Galapas’ face that Merlin thought was probably mirrored in his own.
“What’s happening?” Galapas asked.
“It’s Grim,” Merlin replied finding it impossible to keep the sense of awe out of his voice. “He’s raised the Lost Army of the Ghouls. He has brought them against the Army of the Dead.”
“Did you know?” The High Mage asked as if he too found this impossible to believe.
“I had no idea,” the boy enchanter replied. “I thought that he had run away to hide.”
“You inspire great loyalty, Raven Boy,” Galapas said and there was a gravity in the High Mage’s voice that the boy had never heard before. Even so Merlin shook his head.
“No,” the boy replied, “I’m just lucky enough to have good friends.”
“I didn’t think the Army of the Dead could be slain,” Galapas admitted.
“They can’t be slain by the living…” Merlin said.
“…But the ghouls are already dead,” the High Mage finished for the boy as the truth also hit him.
“Exactly,” Merlin added, feeling that there was nothing else left for any of them to say.
Great holes were now appearing in the ranks of the Army of the Dead and, with one accord, it turned to flee in total disarray away from the Great Stones of Avalon.
Merlin knew that they were running back to the Underworld. Running to Hell where they hoped the Dark Lord could protect them from the ferocious enemy that was decimating them with such violence and revenge. In this they were to be disappointed for the Army of the Ghouls was not prepared to let their enemy escape.
With a battle cry that truly chilled the blood they turned with the Army of the Dead and started to viciously smash into the flanks of the Dark Lord’s demons.
Merlin had never realised that the ghouls were capable of such violence but there was no doubting their intent. First hundreds and then many thousands of the Army of the Dead exploded into bursts of black smoke and then nothingness.
There was very little for Merlin and his friends of the Old Magic to do. The Army of the Dead was being hemmed in and systematically destroyed by the Ghoul Army.
The slaughter was on a massive scale and the boy enchanter knew that it would be many centuries if not thousands of years before the Dark Magic could lick its wounds and begin to recover.
Draago and Firewing had left the Great Stones and flown for King Uther Pendragon’s capital. Tired as they were they were also aware of the death and destruction that was still being rained down on Camelot in the Dark Lord’s name.
The dragon and the griffin dropped out of the sky like Avenging Furies onto the Horsemen of the Dark.
It was as if the defeat of the Army of the Dead had also weakened these Dark Riders. They seemed to have no answer to the fire that scorched across them from Draago’s enormous jaws. Nor could they escape Firewing’s slashing talons and soon the Riders of the Dark were fleeing across the skies of Avalon to seek refuge in the fast retreating clouds of their master, the Dark Lord of the Underworld.
But these Beings of the Dark Magic had wreaked a terrible havoc on Camelot. From their great height both Draago and Firewing could see that at least half the city was burning and that thousands were dead in the streets, lying where they had fallen.
The dragon and the griffin knew that it would be a very long time before Camelot recovered from this Onslaught of the Dark Magic.
Wearily Draago and Firewing landed back in the circle of the Great Stones. The dragon looked down at his Dragon Master seeing how tired the boy was with deep circles etched beneath his dark, almost coal black eyes.
“It was well done, Raven Boy,” Draago told the boy enchanter.
“It was,” Merlin wearily replied for they were all fully aware of just how close they had come to defeat.
Galahad limped over to join them, “Is it over?” The boy warrior asked.
“Not quite,” Merlin said pointing at a large black cloud that had detached itself from the diminishing Storm Clouds of the Dark and was heading at great speed towards the Great Stones of Avalon.
The black etched storm cloud hung over the Great Stones and then a huge shape materialised from it and seemed to step into the Circle of the Great Stones.
The figure was a truly astonishing sight being many times the height of a mortal man. Its body ran with living flames and even the most insensitive could feel the great waves of malevolence that it carried within it.
It was the Dark Lord come himself to the Great Stones of Avalon where the Old Magic was and always had been at its strongest.
“So you are the Raven Boy,” the Dark Lord’s deep voice thundered around the Great Stones but neither Merlin nor his friends were to be intimidated. They had won too great a victory for that.
The boy enchanter looked with utter contempt and anger at the huge figure that stood before him.
“You are a fool to come here,” Merlin told the Dark Lord with disdain and hatred ringing through every word that he spoke.
“No one calls me a fool,” the Dark Lord’s voice thundered out once more so that it reverberated for many leagues beyond the Great Stones.
“I just did,” Merlin reminded the huge figure.
“I will blast you out of existence.”
It seemed impossible for the Dark Lord’s anger to rise still further but this it did with the fire spiralling high from its demonic body.
“I wouldn’t advise you to try,” Merlin told the Dark Lord and in that instance the boy looked once more the very image of his father, the greatest and cruellest of the Elder gods.
“You are insolent,” the Dark Lord replied while looking as if he might strike out at the boy so that Galahad and Sir Lauriston stepped to either side of the Merlin.
Their help was not needed for Merlin never took his
eyes off the Dark Lord for a second.
“So I’m told,” the boy answered. “But I am also Merlin, son of Mithras Invictus, Mithras the Unconquered, Mithras the Bull Slayer.” Here Merlin paused to deliver his next words as a hammer blow, “And I am the Dark Child.”
It was if the Dark Lord had been struck in the face.
For all his Power and Dark Magic he had received no warning of what it was that Merlin had just told him. But he knew that what the boy had said made so much sense.
The Dark Lord looked back on every time that he had been thwarted in his desire to take Avalon and Camelot and rule over the World of Men.
Even so he was not prepared to accept what he had just been told for this would be to acknowledge defeat.
He had so very nearly brought his Hell to Earth and he would not let all his plans be so shattered by a boy.
“Mithras Invictus has no son,” the Dark Lord roared out his challenge feeling his strength coming back to him – at least in some small part.
“He does and it is me,” Merlin’s response was full of all the hatred that he felt for the huge figure that stood before him.
The boy enchanter was feeling battered and bruised throughout his whole body but he was going to see the Dark Lord driven far beyond Avalon’s shores. He was going to ensure that it would be a very long time, if ever, that the Dark Magic of the Dark Lord could threaten the World of Men again.
“Then why did I not know?”
Acceptance was now creeping into the Dark Lord’s voice as, very much against his will, the huge fire-driven Being accepted that the boy spoke the truth.
“I was hidden in Plain Sight,” Merlin replied as if he was just discussing the weather. “Neither you nor your Riders of the Dark could scry me. I am my father’s son,” the boy’s voice was now as a whip lash with which he could beat the Dark Lord, “And I did not wish it,” he finished never taking his eyes off the Dark Lord’s face.
“Mithras Invictus has no son,” the Dark Lord repeated his words as if this was the answer to everything but there was a worm of very serious doubt creeping into his voice.
“But I am here,” Merlin spoke as a hanging judge and there was a chill in his voice that was very much of his father.
The boy continued to look with total disgust at the huge figure that stood before him.
“Now hear this,” Merlin continued, “You call yourself the Dark Lord but I know your Spell Name of the Dark, I know you - you are Lucifer the Fallen Angel.”
It was as if the boy had just passed a sentence of death on the Dark Lord. They both knew that there was great Power in knowing the true name of any Great Being of either the Old Magic or the Dark Magic.
“Who told you this?” The Dark Lord’s voice was little more than a whisper now for he knew that every hope of overrunning the Earth and the World of Men had just been denied to him by the young boy who stood so arrogantly in front of him.
“That you will never know,” Merlin almost spat out once more.
The Dark Lord tried to gather his wits to him. To try to take command once more.
“I will crush you,” the Dark Lord’s voice had the ring of utter contempt and loathing in it, but the boy enchanter thought that he also heard more than a hint of fear.
“I will crush you son of Mithras,” the Dark Lord continued as if repeating the words would make it so. “My armies will overrun Avalon and I will see it and you drenched with blood.”
Merlin looked dismissively around.
“What armies, Lucifer? They are all dead or fleeing.”
“The Army of the Dead cannot be slain by the living,” Lucifer spoke as if repeating a mantra.
Once more Merlin gazed past the Fallen Angel as if that huge Being was not there and then the boy spoke slowly as if speaking to a child - or to an idiot.
“They have been slain.” The boy’s coal black eyes bored into the Dark Lord. “They have been slain by the Ghoul Army, the Undead. You have lost everything, Lucifer. You are as nothing.”
Merlin’s final words cracked out like hammer blows and the Fallen Angel took a step backwards and away from the boy for such was the Power than ran over and through Merlin.
“You will not call me Lucifer,” the Fallen Angel said but once again Merlin was totally dismissive.
The boy looked at the Being that stood before him with the look of anger and even cruelty that he had seen many times on the face of his father, Mithras Invictus.
"I will call you whatever I wish,” Merlin spoke sharply and with a deep anger for he was remembering all the deaths and suffering that had been caused by the Dark Lord and his Horsemen of the Dark.
“I am the Dark Child, Lucifer, and I will see that you are driven and hunted far across this world and even beyond the Abyss. You will never return. Camelot, Avalon and this World of Men is free of you.”
“That cannot be,” the Dark Lord tried to roar out the words but he was conscious that his Power was dropping away from him in the face of the Dark Child. “I will leave you now, Merlin, son of Mithras Invictus but I will return and I will see you burn in Hell for this. Burn until the End of Time.”
“I don’t think so,” the Dark Child told him.
In answer the Fallen Angel pointed an accusing finger at Merlin as if marking him down and then with a dramatic gesture called upon the Dark Magic to take him from this place and bear him far away beyond the boundaries of Avalon.
The only trouble for the Fallen Angel was that nothing happened and he knew that this could not be.
He was the Dark Lord of the Underworld, the Dark Lord of Hell, and the Dark Magic could not refuse his order.
Merlin was watching Lucifer and there was an expression of amusement and almost viciousness on the boy’s face.
“The Dark Magic has no place here in the Great Stones of Avalon,” Merlin once again almost spat the words into Lucifer’s face. “It doesn’t work here. I told you that this was a dangerous place for you and so it shall be. Not just here at the Great Stones of Avalon but throughout the whole of the World of Men and for All of Time.”
“You cannot do this,” the Dark Lord howled at the boy with something of his previous command.
“I just have,” the Dark Child told him grimly.
Even as Merlin spoke a huge pair of bat-like wings grew out from Lucifer’s back and the Fallen Angel rose high into the sky over the Great Stones. The demonic figure could not refrain from hurling one more insult at the boy who had stripped everything away from him.
“We will meet again, Raven Boy.”
With that and before Merlin could answer the Dark Lord, that was Lucifer the Fallen Angel, stretched out his wings and drove hard for the boundaries of Avalon and escape.
“Merlin, he’s getting away,” Galahad was the first to recover his voice after witnessing the titanic battle that he had just seen between the Dark Magic and the son of Mithras Invictus.
Merlin turned a face towards the boy warrior that, once more, was full of the cruelty of the Elder god his great father and Galahad didn’t like what he saw there.
“I was counting on it,” Merlin bluntly told the boy.
“Send the unicorns – or Firewing or Draago after him, he cannot be allowed to escape. There has been too much killing just to permit him to just return to the Underworld and lick his wounds before once more trying to turn the World of Men into a Living Hell.”
“Just a little bit longer,” Merlin spoke as if he had not heard a single word that Galahad had said.
“I don’t understand,” the boy warrior said despairingly as he watched the figure of the Dark Lord fast disappearing into the distance. “This is everything that we fought for.”
Merlin turned to face his friend, “Do you trust me, Galahad?” He asked.
“Of course, I do,” the boy warrior’s response was immediate for he knew that he would trust the boy enchanter with his life.
“Then wait,” Merlin said turning back to see that the Dark Lord was now but a
speck on the distant horizon.
Merlin was conscious of Galahad’s impatience as the boy fidgeted by his side, even so he held back just a short while longer.
“Now, I think – it is time.”
Merlin’s voice rang out loud and as clear as a bell over the Great Stones and far beyond. “Herne, now is your time. Here is the Hunting that I promised you. Here is great sport. Let the Hunter and his Hell Hounds come to Avalon. Let them HUNT.”
In answer the truly enormous figure of Herne the Hunter grew in the skies.
The Hunter was far larger than he had been when Merlin had summoned him at Druids’ Stones. Here was a demi-god who came with all his Strength and Power and he was an awesome sight.
Merlin felt Galahad gasp alongside him and even the seasoned warrior that was Sir Lauriston du Lac drew in a short, sharp breath in shock at the figure that he saw towering over the Great Stones of Avalon.
Herne seemed to quiver in the sky and then he turned his head quickly as if scenting the breeze for the trail of his quarry.
All around the Hunter ran the pack of Hell Hounds which appeared to be without number. They were many times the size of an ordinary hound and Galahad instinctively knew that only a being such as Herne the Hunter could control and manage them.
The barks and howls of the Hell Hounds bayed across the skies for they were anxious to hunt and to kill. It was all that they existed for as did their half-insane master.
Galahad noticed with a jolt that every one of the Hell Hounds had burning red eyes that brought a chill to his blood. He realised that once these Hell Hounds chose you as their quarry there would be no escape.
They would hunt you to the very Edge of the Abyss and beyond.
Herne turned his huge head that was mounted with the horns of a stag and gazed at Merlin with his strange, unblinking yellow eyes that were very much like those of an owl or eagle.
“I am here.”
Herne spoke only the three words but they crashed around the Great Stones as a thunderstorm would and his eyes never left Merlin’s face.
“See Herne,” Merlin pointed towards the distant horizon where the Dark Lord was now only the smallest of spots.
Merlin and the Land of Mists: Book Five: The Battle for Avalon Page 13