The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

  “Oh, yes, I see,” said Daniels, nodding his head as though he understood, but then, oblivious to the emotional involvements of young people, he rattled on without taking so much as a breath. “It’s just that I was hoping we could have a moment. There are some interesting thoughts on the sphere that some of my colleagues have proposed and I really would like to share them with you while they remain fresh in my mind.” His emphasis on the word “really” made it obvious that Carver Daniels did not want this to wait.

  Jason shifted awkwardly, not knowing what to do. Fortunately Beverley came to his rescue by laying her hand gently on his arm and, rising on tiptoes, whispered into his ear. “He seems like he’s really excited, so maybe you had better humor him. I’ll still be here tomorrow, but if you don’t talk to him tonight I think he might have a coronary.”

  Turning to look at her, Jason knitted his eyebrows and whispered “You sure you don’t mind?”

  Beverley gently kissed him on the cheek, whispering back “It’s ok.” Then, in a normal voice, “I’m sure Liz and Catherine can manage to get me home in one piece. Good night, Dr Daniels,” she said waving to the professor, “It was a lovely evening and your speech was wonderful. Thank you.”

  The old man beamed as he nodded his head in acknowledgement, saying “Just let me get my coat...”

  “Your coat?” asked Jason, now completely baffled.

  “Yes, of course, we need to go to the lab if we’re going to examine the sphere, don’t we?”

  Jason turned back to Beverley, rolling his eyes. It was going to be another long night. “G’night, Beverley. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Jason” she said with a sympathetic smile and stepped through the door to join her friends who were already huddled impatiently against the elements.

  The swirling wind and driving rain forced everyone to pull their heads deep into the collars of their coats and screw up their faces as though squinting would somehow protect them, so Jason and the professor crossed the court yard in silence. Inside the building, as they approached the door to the lab, Daniels mumbled. “Oh, dear me, do you have your key? I seem to have forgotten mine.”

  Jason only had three keys, one to the door of the old house where his apartment was, one to his rooms and another to the lab and he kept them all on one ring. Without a word, he fumbled inside his dripping coat and into his trouser pocket, producing the key and inserting it into the lock. As he turned the knob, he stood aside slightly to allow Daniels to enter first. Stepping into the room, the doctor reached for the light switch and flipped it on. As the two surviving lights flickered to life, Daniels gasped. “Oh, Lord! Oh, my God! Jason, get security. Quickly.”

  Shoving his way past his professor, Jason took a single step into the room. The normally immaculate lab was now a scene of utter devastation. The only outward sign of the anger flaring inside his chest was a quick intake of breath and the two words “Oh, shit.” The light fixtures hung at crazy angles, their fluorescent tubes having crashed onto the floor. Microscopes, magnifying lights, computers and the majority of the electronic equipment that normally stood on the work tables were shattered beyond repair; bottles of chemicals lay smashed, their contents dripping from scientific equipment and irreplaceable antiquities lining the shelves. Chemicals and shattered glass ran down the walls and oozed across the floor, filling the air with an acrid stench. Along the far wall, the bank of metal lockers stood open; dozens of finds from that summer’s digs lay spewed across the floor. The door to the locker containing the glass orb had been wrenched from its hinges and the plastic tray in which the sphere had rested for the past three months lay shattered half-way across the floor. The globe itself was reduced to thousands of tiny, blue-green fragments that lay shimmering on the tile floor, mixed in with chemicals and fragments of other artifacts.

  “I’ll be right back,” was all Jason said before launching himself back into the rain-swept night and toward the security office next to the porter’s lodge. When he returned only minutes later with two excited, uniformed guards, he found Carver Daniels squatting down peering into the empty locker which, until that evening, had contained the object generating so much interest among the archaeological community.

  Looking up at Jason and the startled guards, a gray-faced Daniels was obviously near tears when he spoke. “I initially assumed this must have been some mindless act of vandalism; that some brute of a philistine had destroyed our work, but I was wrong.” He paused momentarily to gather his thoughts. “You see how everything has been broken outward, in that direction,” he said, waving his hand in an arc toward the center of the room. “It’s as though everything were pushed forcefully away from this locker. It would seem that our sphere has exploded with a most impressive force.”

  Daniels stood up, rubbing a hand against each temple, mussing his sparse hair until it stood out in all directions. Walking slowly toward the men standing wordlessly at the door, he said to the guards, “You young men can go back to your office and make whatever report seems appropriate. If you need me to sign anything tomorrow, I will be here or in my office. But I’m certain there has not been a break-in. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

  Shaking their heads and mumbling between themselves, the guards only intelligible words were “No problem, professor. Sorry about your mess. Let us know if you need anything.”

  Wiping his hands distractedly on his trousers, Carver Daniels finally turned to Jason. “Well, Mr. Carpenter, we may no longer have the sphere, but its departure seems to have left us with yet another mystery to ponder. Now, like good scientists, we will have to examine the remaining evidence and try to determine precisely what happened here.”

  “Anything I can do, Doctor. You know you can count on me.” Jason said, feeling almost as bad for the old man as he did for himself.

  Laying a hand on Jason’s shoulder as he walked out of the room, Carver Daniels could only reply, “Thank you, my boy. Thank you.” Left alone to stare at the mess, without realizing it, Jason repeated his exact words of nearly three months earlier “What in the hell are you?”

  Chapter Three

  Both Professor Daniels and Jason Carpenter were back at the lab, picking through rubble and mopping up the acrid soup of spilled chemicals before nine o’clock the next morning. They started immediately inside the lab door, carefully collecting each broken piece of glass and metal between rubber-gloved fingers and tossing it into a black plastic trash bag, searching through the mess for any salvageable pieces of equipment or artifact that might have survived being hurtled across the room by the mysterious explosion. More than once Jason offered to call in other students who had worked on the cataloging process to give them a hand, but Daniels rejected the idea, saying that too many pairs of feet stumbling around the room would only increase the chance of destroying anything that survived.

  At eleven o’clock Jason excused himself long enough to ring Beverley as he had promised to do the night before. Despondent and frustrated, he found it impossible not to tell her about the disaster. Against his repeated protests she insisted on coming over to help with the clean-up. When she arrived less than half an hour later Carver Daniels voiced mild protest against a third person in the room but seemed genuinely appreciative of Beverley’s concern and willingness to help.

  The three of them continued the slow sorting process, rescuing the repairable and making a list of each piece of equipment that would need to be replaced and every antiquity irrevocably lost. Through much of the afternoon, Jason worked in almost total silence, brooding over the loss of the sphere. Occasionally Beverley stole a surreptitious glance in his direction; his face appeared even longer and thinner than normal and his eyes looked sunken and ringed with dark circles. Finally, when their hands and knees examination of the floor brought them to within a few inches of each other, she reached out and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s not the end of the world, Jason.”

  Without even looking up from the flo
or he mumbled “Not of the whole world, maybe; just my world.”

  “Oh, really, now.” She sat back on her haunches and stared at him. “I know the globe was important to you, but you’ll make other discoveries.”

  “That globe was my ticket to becoming somebody...to being recognized.”

  “Look, if that thing was going to be the only big discovery you were ever going to have, how long do you think the fame would have lasted? Certainly not long enough to get you a full professorship.” Jason straightened up and stretched his back, shrugging, as he listened to her, only half hearing her words. “Jason, if you had discovered what the globe really was, then and only then, it might have been important to your career. But you didn’t. There are drawers full of unidentified objects in every storage room in every museum in the world. They make a splash for a few days and then they are forgotten. Why? Because nobody knows what they are, so they can’t be worked into the big picture of history. Right?

  “Yeah.” He nodded, forcing a feeble grin. “I guess you’re right. Still…”

  “You know I’m right. Look at Dr Daniels...” she said, rolling her eyes across the room to where a cloud of white hair bobbed near the floor. “...if this globe was that important, it might have been his last chance to make another big contribution. He doesn’t have much time left; you do. So try to keep that in mind, alright?”

  Jason nodded again and went back to work with a noncommittal, “Ok.”

  By five o’clock it was obvious that the losses were not as bad as they first appeared to be. Two computer monitors, one hard drive, an electron microscope, several ceiling lights and desk lamps, and an array of small items were beyond salvage but less than a dozen of the summer’s archaeological finds had been destroyed and most of these were no more than pottery shards. On Daniels’ orders, even the tiniest fragments of the glass orb had been sifted out of the muck, washed clean and placed in a plastic storage box. Later, they would be examined for any lingering evidence of what might have caused the explosion.

  With the mopping up process nearly complete, Dr Daniels told Jason to call out for sandwiches and drinks. While they were waiting for the food to come, Jason proceeded to mop the last of the chemical goop and glass fragments from the floor as Daniels and Beverley transferred the handwritten list of lost and damaged property into the data base, a print-out of which would be submitted to the insurance company.

  By eight p.m., as the last of the pale autumn light filtering through the windows slowly died away, the work was finished. While Daniels cleared away the remnants of their meal, Jason and Beverley carted cleaning supplies back to the janitor’s closet at the end of the hall.

  Still drawn and haggard looking, but not nearly as depressed as he had been ten hours earlier, Professor Daniels surveyed the room and said, “It could have been a lot worse, I suppose. I want to thank both of you for your help.” Beverley started to protest, but Daniels raised a hand, cutting her short, and continued “No, really, it was very kind of you both. Now, I suggest you young people get out of here and salvage whatever you can of the weekend, and I will see both of you on Monday.” With that he gently shooed them out of the room, reached for his coat and followed them into the hall, locking the door behind him. As the elderly professor headed down the corridor toward his office, Jason and Beverley headed up the steps to the main entrance, calling goodnight over their shoulders.

  Once back outside in the windy drizzle, Jason turned to Beverley and, laying a hand on her shoulder, said, “I don’t suppose this was how you planned to spend your day, was it?”

  “No, not really.” she said, “but I am glad you called and I’m glad I could help. Poor Professor Daniels, he really looks old tonight.”

  “I know.” Replied Jason. “I think his assumption that the globe exploded and did all that damage depressed him as much as the damage itself.”

  “He really thinks that’s what happened?”

  “Well, considering that all the damage was spread out in a fan-shaped area directly in front of the cabinet where it was stored, it would sort of verify the assumption.”

  “So now the globe is gone and you’ll never be able to find out what it might have been.” She said, shaking her head in wonder.

  “Yeah, my big find, literally gone up in smoke.” he chuckled ruefully. Then, brightening a little, Jason suggested they stop somewhere for the cup of coffee they had promised each other at the reception.

  “Oh, I’d love to, Jason,” Beverley said, “but, believe it or not, I really did have work to do today. At least if I go home now I can get in a few hours before I go to bed.” Looking up at him with a sad, gentle smile, she added. “I don’t think this is going quite like either of us had planned, is it?”

  Jason mused, “I don’t think I know how I planned for things to go, but I do know this wasn’t it. How about I at least walk you home?”

  “Sure. I guess that was part of the original plan, wasn’t it? We can just pretend today didn’t happen and we’re picking up where we left off last night. How’s that?”

  “Great.” With that, he put his arm comfortably around Beverley’s waist for the first time as they walked silently through the city’s dark, rain drenched streets. Half an hour later, Jason trudged up the steps of his house on St Mary’s Terrace. On the upper landing, leading to his flat, he fumbled in his pocket for the keys. Locating the right one, he squinted against the dim glare of the single bulb illuminating the high-ceilinged hallway so he could get the key into the lock.

  Opening the door he stepped into the first of the rooms that served as his student’s accommodation. Like many buildings in the area, it had once been a grand old Georgian townhouse. Subsequently, with the increasingly high cost of housing and steadily rising demand for city living, the house had been broken into numerous small apartments and eventually purchased by the university to house the archaeology majors who had classes in nearby King’s Manor. The main room served as living room and dining room, the other functioning as both his bedroom and office. The kitchen was tucked behind a walled-off corner of the living room and the bathroom was little more than a closet in which a tiny shower stall, toilet and sink had been installed. Because the building’s electrical system had only been installed in the 1920s, there were no ceiling lights and until he got to the nearest lamp, the apartment remained in total darkness except for a sickly glare drifting in from the hall. At least it should have been dark, but tonight there was a soft, wavering light filtering through the partially open bedroom door. Jason realized instantly that it was the light from his computer monitor.

  “Shit,” he said aloud to himself, throwing his coat over the old hall tree inside the door. “Left the damn computer on all day.” As he was about to step into the bedroom he stopped and scowled to himself. He couldn’t have left the computer on all day. He hadn’t turned it on this morning; he had gone straight to the lab after breakfast. He hadn’t left it on last night before he went to the reception either, or he would have seen it when he came home. He was about to storm into the other room expecting to catch some crazy neighborhood kid who had broken in to play with his computer when he heard the distinctive plastic click of computer keys and a rich, musical voice calling to him through the gloom of the darkened apartment.

  “Don’t just stand there, boy. Turn on a light and come in here so I can see you.” It was followed by the sort of self-satisfied chuckle that a child might make when he succeeded in terrifying his older sister with a rubber spider.

  Jason lunged through the bedroom door with no idea what to expect next. Against the opposite wall stood an old table which served as his desk. Pulled up to the table was a high backed office chair, over the top of which he could see the dome of a head. In the glow of the computer monitor, sparse white hair flickered in the light of the monitor. Very slowly the chair spun around as the half-light from the screen revealed the figure of a skinny old man with an incredibly long beard and straggly hair hanging well below his shoulders. “Well,
are you going to turn on the light or stand there in the dark all night?” the figure asked him in an even voice that was rich and full; the voice of a young man despite the obvious age of the throat from which it issued.

  Hovering furiously at the edge of the door, Jason shouted, “Who the fuck are you and what the hell are you doing in my house?” Fumbling frantically, Jason reached toward the small lamp sitting on a side table next to the door. When he switched it on, the figure in his desk chair was washed in bright, artificial light. Vaguely, as his eyes adjusted to the light, Jason thought to himself that this was either the strangest thing that had ever happened to him or he was losing his mind. The man in the chair was old; at least seventy, maybe eighty. His beard and hair were marshmallow white and his long, thin hawkish face was deeply lined and creased. His skin looked like it was made out of old leather in the way of people who spend a lifetime in the outdoors. And if his face was strange, his clothes were even stranger. A long gray robe of coarse cloth covered him from neck to ankles, the sleeves ending in huge cuffs that dangled nearly to the floor. Over the rough gown he wore a vest made out of gray and white animal hides that reached well below his knees. His only other clothing was a narrow leather belt with a soft leather pouch attached to it. The pouch now rested in the old man’s lap where his hands were folded neatly on top of it. He was kneading his fingers and staring down at them. He didn’t even bother to look up at Jason.

  “Oh, my,” he said with a mildly self-mocking edge to his voice. “I thought you would be happier to see me. If it’s the mess in the laboratory, I really am sorry about that, but I had no alternative.”

  Too furious and disoriented to take in and absorb what the intruder was saying, Jason could only blurt out, “Happy to see you? I don’t know who the fuck you are, and how the hell do you know about the lab?”

  “Do you remember me now?” said the old man and, for the first time he raised his head and stared directly into Jason’s face with eyes of the most shocking blue he had ever seen. They were as bright and sparkling as the eyes of a child, and they looked very, very wrong set in this ancient face. Worst of all, Jason had no doubts they were the same eyes that had been in his dreams.