by Daniel Diehl
The Lady of the Lake pulled herself away from Merlin, cast her eyes left and right in apparent confusion, finally placing one tiny index finger to her pale lips in concentration. “I’m sure she was here just a moment ago; the human woman with hair the color of fire.” Then, looking back to Jason, she repeated the question. “She is your companion is she not? I liked her.”
“Oh, you mean Beverley. You remember her, then? We met you on your island once, but that was a long time ago.”
Shrugging and muttering “You humans come and go so quickly I can never keep up with you” she turned back to Merlin and smiled. “Are you coming to my island, my love?”
Merlin stroked her hair to hold her attention and spoke very quietly. “Not yet, my love, but soon, I promise you. Today I need you to transport my friend Jason and I to Camlann.
Vivian’s pale, watery blue eyes grew large and round. “She lives there, your friend Arthur’s sister.” Obviously agitated, the girl-thing glanced nervously one way then another. “I don’t like her. You should come with me and leave her alone.”
“We don’t want to go there, child. We’re only going because we must. Now, will you take us?”
“You humans insist on meddling in things best left alone. It’s not healthy.”
Merlin stared hard into her face. “Will you take us there?”
“I will take you to a closer shore. But I will not go there. Not even for you.”
“That’s quite alright. I certainly don’t want you to be frightened, my dear. A few miles distant; anywhere along the shoreline will be fine.”
Vivian drew a huge breath, let it out in a ragged sigh and nodded disconsolately. Motioning Merlin and Jason to follow her, the water sprite skipped back to the riverbank, her diaphanous skirts floating around her, and waited for the others to join her. Taking Merlin by one hand and Jason by the other, she giggled and placed one foot in the swift moving current. Seconds later, as the three of them were about to plunge both feet into the swirling water, they were stepping back onto the shore. But unlike the banks of the Og, which were steep and rock-strewn, the ground around them was now a wide expanse of pebble beach. A few hundred feet up the coast was the leading edge of a broad salt marsh covered with tall reeds and saw grass, beyond which lay the mouth of a dark, sluggish river anxious to join the liberating expanse of the sea. Jason slogged through the few yards of shallow water separating him from dry ground, looking back toward Merlin and Vivian as he reached solid footing.
Shaking her head violently from side to side, the Lady of the Lake pulled away from Merlin, refusing to be persuaded or comforted. Finally, Merlin nodded, bent and kissed her gently and held her hand as she turned away and walked into the sea, disappearing beneath the waves a dozen steps later. As Merlin turned around and walked toward Jason he shook his head.
“Wow, your lady friend really doesn’t like this place.”
“She’s terrified. I can call her back whenever we’re ready to leave, but she wouldn’t stay.” Casting a knowing glance toward Jason he added, “She said she could smell the evil.”
Jason lifted his head to the gentle breeze and sniffed. “I don’t smell a thing.”
“Neither do I, but the fae folk can sense things humans can’t even imagine.”
While Merlin was speaking, Jason’s attention had wandered to the shoreline ahead of them. “Not only don’t I smell anything, I don’t even see anything.”
Beyond the salt marsh and the mouth of the of the unhappy looking river, all Jason could see was the hard, rocky face of a low escarpment rising five or six feet above their heads where it turned into a plane covered with gorse, heather and clumps of coarse marram grass. Beyond, in the cloud shrouded blue-gray distance, he could see the heads of the low, rolling Welsh mountains peeking over the horizon.
“Up, boy. Climb up to the meadow but keep your head down when you get to the top. Let’s not announce ourselves. I want our visit to be a surprise.”
“Right.”
With Merlin close on his heels, Jason climbed up the face of the low stone cliff that held the sea safely on one side and the expanse of Wales on the other. When they reached the top, Merlin raised his head just far enough above the crest of the grass to survey the surrounding countryside. When his only reaction was a deep chuckle, Jason crept forward to join him and poked his head upward. From anywhere else in the meadow it would have appeared as though the tops of two disembodied heads were inexplicably floating gently above the endless acres of scrub growth.
From his vantage point, Jason could see that about a quarter mile in front of them the beach grass gave way to a long swath of reeds, bulrushes and tough saw grass. Merlin pointed toward the cattail heads of the rushes, moving his finger from left to right, from the beach toward the range of mountains. “You see that line of rushes?” When Jason acknowledged with a nod, he continued. “That tells us there is a water meadow or swampy area on either side of the river.”
“That’s not good.”
“It only poses a minor inconvenience for us but it provides great protection for Morgana and it will be a serious problem for Arthur’s army. Of course, that’s precisely why she chose this site.”
“I still don’t see anything like a fort.”
Merlin waggled a finger toward a spot next to him in the tall grass, motioning Jason to scoot closer. When they were side-by-side, Merlin pointed across the line of rushes to a gray-brown lump in the distance, nestled into the side of a hill.
“Oh. So, that’s where the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys live, is it?” Merlin pulled his head back and stared at Jason, a blank expression on his face. “Nothing. Just an old movie reference.”
“Impressive. Since it will be a millennia-and-a-half until the invention of cinema you have unquestionably just become the first person in history to make a movie allusion.”
“Oh, right. Cool. But I still can’t see what that place looks like. We need to get closer.”
Together, they crept through the tall grass, keeping their bodies bent and their heads below the crown of the grass. Moving slowly, so their passage would not create suspicious looking waves that might attract the attention of Morgana’s guards, they crossed the meadow at an angle, making their way closer to the river marsh and the distant structure. Their progress eventually brought them to the edge of the marsh itself; a long, narrow field of oozing, gelatinous muck bordering both sides of a wide ribbon of brackish water, hidden beneath an attractive blanket of gently waving grass and reeds. After staring at the soggy ground in disgust, Jason lifted his head to look across the river toward their goal which was now no more than a thousand feet distant.
Jason scowled and stared in disbelief. “Um, I hate to be the one to tell you this, old friend, but I don’t think the lady’s been here in a very long time.”
Ahead of them, slowly rotting away to merge with the low rise of the distant hillside, were the fragmented ruins of what had once been a sprawling Roman military fort. Chunks of deteriorated stone wall with random swaths of plaster clinging to it poked out of the ground like the bones of some sad, long-dead creature slowing sinking into the soil. Here and there amid the ruins, small sections of wall still held a shattered, glassless window or a sagging door, its weight slowly pulling it away from the rusted hinges that held it to a rotten chunk of frame.
“I’ve excavated better looking ruins than this.”
“She really did a wonderful job, didn’t she? I have to admit she’s very good.”
Jason turned from the shattered building to stare incredulously at Merlin. “Excuse me?”
“You should know by now that nothing you see over there is real.”
Jason looked back at the ruin, back at Merlin and back at the ruin again. “You’re joking. You mean to tell me that whole thing is an illusion?”
“Oh, absolutely. That fortress is far larger, and in far better condition, than Arthur’s villa.” Merlin rose from where he had been squatting on his haunches,
removed his sandals, and began moving into the marsh. “Shall we go inside and pay the good lady’s library a visit?”
“Oh, goody.”
Chapter Fourteen
After slogging through knee-deep muck and fording a river that enveloped them to the waist in ice cold water, Jason and Merlin continued their progress through the tall grass at an excruciatingly slow pace. During one of the short rests they took to ease the pain in their knees, wrists and backs, Merlin explained that without the benefit of his scrying bowl, which presented a view of the world unaffected by spells and conjurations, he had no way of telling how complete the old Roman fort might actually be and whether there might be guards stationed along the top of the invisible walls.
More than an hour after crossing the river the wet, tired pair emerged from a clump of bracken and slumped against what appeared to be the surviving corner of stone wall. While catching his breath Jason ran the palm of one hand along the shattered wall. Not more than a foot from his right shoulder he could see the broken edge of the wall, a pile of stones and broken bricks tumbled around it; on the far side stretched an expanse of weeds separating the exterior fortification wall from piles of rubble that indicated the location of a long collapsed building. Eerily, as Jason ran his hand along the wall behind him, he continued to feel a hard, smooth surface where there should have been only air.
“The fort really is still there, isn’t it?”
“Oh, absolutely. I told you she did an amazing job of hiding it.”
Without lifting his rump more than a few inches, Jason turned his head and peered into the ruinous fort, examining the layout of the piles of stone and foundation lines. “So do you think we’re seeing the actual layout of the fort or is this all just made-up?”
“An interesting question.” Merlin scratched his beard, deep in thought. “Knowing the layout would certainly be an advantage to us, now, and to Arthur later. Unfortunately I have no idea.”
Pulling himself to a squatting position, Jason stared around him and upward, trying vainly to locate the top of the invisible curtain wall.
“So what do we do now?”
Keeping as close to the wall as possible, to prevent being spotted by some invisible guard standing on top of an invisible wall, Merlin dusted off the seat of his gown, motioning for Jason to follow him. Together they edged along the wall, feeling their way across the invisible, sun-warmed surface of the stone, until they came to what appeared to be a fragment of wall supporting the shattered remains of a doorframe and a rotting door suspended on a pair of sagging hinges.
“I could be wrong, of course, but I think we can go through here.”
Jason stared blankly at Merlin before shifting his attention to the sad looking door. Leaning slightly to one side he peered around the crumbling wall toward the scattering of ruined buildings and expanses of over-grown streets and parade grounds beyond. His mind told him that if he wanted to get to the other side of the door all he had to do was step over the pile of stone where the wall had once been, but the touch of his hand made a mockery of everything he saw. In response to Jason’s quandary, Merlin waggled a finger, motioning for Jason to step away from the door. Without saying a word the wizard opened the door and offered a low, sweeping bow to indicate that Jason should precede him to the other side.
Beyond the rotting doorframe, occupying the same space which appeared like open air from the outside, was a perfectly intact stone landing which led to a steeply descending staircase disappearing into the blackness. One last time before entering, Jason craned his neck outside to look at the decayed doorframe with absolutely nothing on the opposite side except acres of tangled grass and weeds. Shaking his head he stepped back inside, muttered “Into the rabbit hole” under his breath and pulled the door closed behind him.
The second the door shut, the darkness closed in, but as he had done on numerous previous occasions, Merlin stretched out his long hands, worked his fingers, manipulating the air and muttering quiet incantations. In a matter of seconds four tiny glimmering spots of light appeared in the darkness, swirling, twirling, glowing and growing until they were shining orbs of silver-gold illumination hanging in the air, lighting the staircase and the tunnel beyond.
“You have got to teach me how to do that. That is just so cool.”
No longer blind, Merlin followed his lights and Jason followed Merlin, along the damp length of the passageway. Just as it had been in the tunnels beneath Morgana’s Chinese fortress and inside the Hellfire caves, there was a cloying send of danger hanging thick in the cold, musty air. Jason had been here – or in places far too much like this – before and he did not like the creepy feeling running up and down his spine now any more than he had on previous occasions. Shaking his head, leery of every tiny noise, Jason experienced an unpleasant sense of déjà vu, thinking to himself “This is like being caught in some goofy fantasy novel; lurking around in a stinking tunnel under a haunted castle with a wizard. If I get out of here I’ve just got to get a normal life.”
Although there were occasional doorways, branch tunnels and intersections in the spaghetti-like maze of corridors, Merlin never seemed to hesitate or falter in finding his way toward their goal. Now and again he would, however, hold up one hand, indicating that Jason should stop. Closing his eyes for a few seconds and listening to some inner sense, he would smile, nod and move on, Jason close in his wake.
By Jason’s estimation they had been moving through one passageway after another for nearly ten minutes when he first heard the soft chittering, squeaking sound somewhere behind them, back along the way they had just come. By the time he turned to look over his shoulder the volume had increased and the profusion of tiny squeaks had been joined by a dry fluttering noise that increased in intensity by the second. Sensing Jason’s distraction, Merlin whirled around only seconds before hundreds, possibly thousands, of bats came shrieking toward them.
The hoard of flying rodents was so tightly packed that it filled every inch of the tunnel’s vault, ceiling to floor and wall to wall, like a solid mass of quivering fur. Rushing toward them far too fast for Merlin to decide whether they were real or just another of Morgana’s conjurations, it was too late to cast a counter spell.
With no time to look for a place to hide, and no way to escape, Jason grabbed Merlin, threw him to the ground and flung himself down next to him, pressing his body so close to the ground he could taste the dust against his lips and feel a tiny cloud of it being pushed into his nostrils. The hoard of nasty little creatures passed over their heads in a matter of seconds, but to Jason it felt like they continued to flap against his legs, back and shoulders for days.
The instant the fluttering wings stopped caressing his neck and hair Jason raised his head, blinked and spat, clearing the dust from his eyes and mouth. As he and Merlin scrambled to their knees, it only took an instant to realize that the bats had not simply continued down the length of the passage to disappear into the distance. Not more than thirty feet ahead of them the creatures had begun to coalesce in midair, twisting and turning, closing in on each other, congealing into a whirling mass. As the quavering cloud of tiny black creatures moved tighter and tighter it melded together, transforming into something new, different and terrifying; a hideous humanoid shape that slowly revealed itself to be a towering, faceless warrior clad in black armor and wielding a great, black sword. Staring down at Jason and Merlin with its eyeless countenance, the thing raised its sword, preparing to move forward.
Without thinking, without hesitating, Jason scrambled to his feet, pulled his sword and leapt forward, lunging at the thing before it could land the first blow. His blade scything through the air, slicing deep into the entity, Jason lost his balance and nearly toppled forward. The thing’s body offered absolutely no resistance. As his weapon passed harmlessly through the phantom warrior it dissipated, breaking into thousands of flapping bats which battered Jason from all sides with their little wings, squealing and squawking, nipping and biting, leaving Jason
with nothing to show for his act of foolish bravery except one very small, very dead bat impaled on the end of his sword.
“Son of a bitch.”
As the creatures shot past him, Jason whirled around to follow their flight. When it reached a position directly between Jason and Merlin the torrent of bats reconfigured itself into the indestructible warrior. Ignoring Jason entirely, the thing took two gigantic strides toward the wizard, raised its black sword and swung. But Jason’s action had bought Merlin the precious seconds he needed to understand the exact nature of the thing and begin casting a counter spell.
When the black knight swung its sword downward, Merlin ducked and whirled to the side but he was not quick enough to avoid the razor sharp blade as it slashed through the sleeve of his gown leaving a nasty gash in his bicep. As Merlin instinctively grabbed his wounded arm the thing lifted its weapon to deliver the killing blow, but before it could swing Jason lurched forward. The instant Jason’s sword connected with the monster’s back it again broke apart into a cloud of bats. As the thing dissipated, Merlin discharged a glowing bolt from his fingertips and a matter of seconds later it was gone, leaving nothing in its wake except the acrid stench of burnt fur and a few moats of ash settling gently to the ground.
Helping the old man to his feet, Jason offered a wry smile. “You do realize that the minute this dragon mess is sorted out I’m going back to my day job. I like archaeology. It’s fun and it’s safe.”
Glancing up from his bloody arm, Merlin grinned. “What, and miss all the fun we have?”
While he bound Merlin’s arm with a section of cloth torn from his own shirt, Jason ignored Merlin’s swearing and grumbling about the senseless loss of his first new gown in more than sixteen centuries. As he finished tying the bandage, Merlin motioned along the tunnel with his head. “It has to be right up there somewhere.”
“What does?”
“Whatever Morgana doesn’t want anyone to find. Otherwise that thing would have been stationed somewhere else.”