The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

  The ‘whatever’ turned out to be an ascending staircase and it was located no more than seventy feet from where the attack had taken place. Creeping upward, feeling their way up the heavily worn stone stairs with the toes of their shoes, Jason and Merlin paused behind the safety of a heavy wooden door located at the top of the stairs.

  Slowly, careful that the crude iron latch made no sound when he opened it, Jason eased the door outward a mere crack and placed his ear next to the opening. When he was satisfied that no one was moving around near the door, he pushed it open far enough to peer into the space beyond. The narrow crack gave him a clear view in one direction along a wide corridor, the opposite wall of which was dotted with stone columns. He was looking into a cloister-like area that ran for nearly fifty feet to his left before making a right turn and continuing into the distance. With no one in sight, Jason was left with no option but to open the door far enough to stick his head through to look in the opposite direction. Assured that they were safe for the moment, he stepped outside, motioning Merlin to follow him.

  “Which way now?”

  Merlin took only a moment to get his bearings before motioning along the hallway to their left. Stepping ahead of Jason he scurried to the second door which he opened and stepped through.

  The room looked much like it had in Merlin’s scrying glass but it was far larger than Jason had imagined it to be. To the left of the door, occupying much of the room’s twenty foot width, were dozens of crude boxes and crates, neatly stacked in rows separated by narrow aisles. Immediately to Jason’s right stood a double row of cross shaped wooden frames, each one holding a suit of armor and a helmet. The variety of armor styles was vast and apparently completely random. There was Roman armor, Greek armor and Saxon armor; there was armor made of boiled leather, scale mail and iron rings sewn to cloth and leather jackets. There were helmets of iron, brass and bronze, and on the wall behind this intimidatingly impressive array of ancient armor was a wall filled with weapons. Spears, shields, swords and axes occupied almost every inch of the wall from floor to ceiling, and they ran the entire twenty-five or thirty foot length of the room. While Jason stared in open-mouthed awe at the most impressive collection of Roman and Dark Age weapons he had ever seen, Merlin dashed to the far end of the room and the rows of bookshelves surrounding the big bronze disk.

  “The door.” Merlin hissed over his shoulder as he pulled a large cloth bag from under his tunic and began riffling through the scrolls and books, discarding those he had no use for, scattering them across the floor. “Guard the door, Jason.”

  Snapping his attention back to the job at hand, Jason pushed the door closed, leaving a crack no more than a half inch wide between its edge and the jamb. Leaning against the wall next to the thin opening, he held his sword at his side, its point facing forward, ready to deal with anyone who might disturb them. Watching Merlin reduce Morgana’s library to a total shambles, he called down the length of the room in a loud whisper. “Shouldn’t you put that stuff back? She is going to know somebody was here the second she comes back.”

  “Oh, she already knows somebody is here.”

  “WHAT?” Jason’s voice was no more than a loud croak.

  “When someone breaks a wizard’s spell we always know it. She knew somebody was inside her precious fort the second I destroyed the bats.”

  “Oh, God. Well then, will you please hurry up?”

  The words had no more than left Jason’s mouth than he heard the slap, slap, slap of soft leather shoes moving along the flagstone walkway beyond the door. Easing the door closed and latching it as quietly as he could, he dashed to the far end of the room, calling to Merlin, desperately trying to keep his voice low. “They’re coming. Hurry. Hurry.” Stuffing the last few scrolls into his bag, Merlin whirled around to face Jason. “So what the hell do we do now?”

  Calmly, but without wasting a second, Merlin shoved Jason ten feet toward the door, cramming him into a gap between two suits of armor. Wedging himself into the space next to Jason, Merlin whispered “Grab my sleeve and whatever you do, don’t move and don’t make a sound.”

  Seconds later, the door to Morgana’s library flew open and a smiling Mordred stepped into the room. He had only taken three steps when the smile vanished from his face, replaced by a squint-eyed sneer. At the far end of the room his mother’s precious scrolls and books lay strewn wildly across the floor. Had a windstorm ripped through the far end of the room the destruction could not have been any greater. Drawing his sword, Mordred scanned the room with cold, hard eyes as he stepped backward toward the door.

  “GUARDS! GUARDS!”

  Seconds later, six muscular thugs in leather armor poured through the door, positioning themselves on either side of Mordred, their swords drawn, nasty scowls plastered across their brutish faces.

  Shouting to one group of the men and then, again, to another, Mordred waved his arms to encompass the entire room. Instantly the men divided into three pairs and started tearing the room apart, looking for the intruders who had violated Morgana’s library. For twenty terrifying minutes they tossed chairs aside, peered under tables and rushed up and down the storage aisles, tearing open one crate after another in their quest to find the perpetrators. Even though they repeatedly poked their heads between the double row of standing armor, staring at the spaces behind and between the rows, they never thought to count the number of suits of armor – did they even know that only minutes earlier there had been nineteen armor stands and now there were twenty-one? They also did not look closely enough to see the two pairs of eyes peeking out of the eye slits in two bronze Etruscan style helmets. If they had, they would have noticed that one pair of eyes was a riveting electric blue and the other was bottle green. The green eyes were seated in an invisible face slick with sweat.

  Despite his terror, Jason remained calm enough to pay attention to the orders Mordred kept shouting to the mercenaries. He realized that everything had to be repeated twice; once in a Germanic sounding language which he assumed to be Saxon, and again in something that was obviously Celtic but definitely not the language of the Britons. Could these men have been Scottish…or Irish…or Pictish? He might not have been able to figure out where the men were from, but he quickly deduced that Morgana’s army had a language problem and that fact alone would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to control it on the battlefield.

  While Jason concentrated on intelligence gathering as a means to keep his panic at bay, Merlin was scanning the room, looking for any additional bits of information that might be useful in his campaign to thwart Morgana.

  At one point, as the soldiers were poking their heads between rows of armor, sweeping the floor with the points of their swords, Merlin noticed one small corner of his bag of books and scrolls protruding beyond the thin magical shield which allowed him and Jason to appear like armor stands. Slowly, with infinite care, he extended the toe of one sandal silently beyond the exposed corner of the brown bag and nudged it ever so gently back into place.

  Not more than ten feet away a one eyed soldier with a ragged scar bisecting his face from hairline to jaw, heard a small, swishing, scratching sound and jerked his good eye in the direction of the noise. He stirred the air near the floor with the point of his sword, but could see nothing. Deciding he must have heard a mouse scurrying for its hole, the man shrugged, pulled his head out from between rows of armor and moved to another part of the room.

  Minutes later the guards finally admitted defeat and left, Mordred following in their wake, screaming orders and curses and gesturing in both directions along the cloister. When the noise dissipated into the distance Jason and Merlin stepped out from their hiding place.

  “Remind me to kill you when we get home.” Jason was leaning against one of the armor stands, trying to convince his heart it should stop slamming against his ribs.

  Moving toward the door, Merlin patted Jason on the shoulder and chuckled. “You love this.”

  “No. I’m sa
ne; I hate this. You love it.”

  Leaning against the door frame, waiting for Jason to catch up, Merlin grinned. “I knew one of us loved it.”

  After checking to make certain the guards had carried their search to other parts of the compound, Jason and Merlin crept into the passageway, sliding quickly and silently along the wall toward the door leading down to the tunnels. When they were only steps from their goal they heard the sound of running feet and shouting voices. Momentary panic eased when they realized that the sounds were echoing up the stairwell. The guards were in the subterranean passages.

  Grabbing Jason by the arm, Merlin pointed to an adjoining wall of the cloister where sun light streamed through a broad archway. Pointing and gesturing furiously, Merlin shoved Jason forward, moving hard on his heels, until they reached the passage. At the last instant they both dived in and threw themselves against the wall. Pausing only for a second, they ran to the far end, skidded to a stop and peered into the open area beyond. There was no sign of soldiers but there was also no escape to the outside. The passage had led to a large grassy area now overgrown with weeds and bracken. On three sides were buildings and on the fourth was the exterior fortification wall. It was a dead end and they were boxed in. While Merlin crossed his arms and stared at the wall separating them from freedom and the world beyond, Jason flung his back against the building and pressed the heels of his hands into his tired eyes.

  “So what now?”

  “I’m working on that.”

  “Why can’t you just levitate us over the wall the way you got yourself out of Morgana’s place in China?”

  “Creating illusions is easy. Levitating small objects, or even myself, is fairly easy. But levitating the combined weight of two men and a heavy bag of books would be impossible.” Suddenly, Merlin whirled around to face Jason. “You can levitate objects. Can you levitate yourself?” Sullenly Jason shook his head wearily. “Well, if we can’t go over the wall then we have to go through it.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Don’t you remember how I got you out of Morgana’s jail cell?”

  Suddenly, Jason brightened. “Oh, right. You melted a hole in the wall.”

  “Correct. Unfortunately, that wall was sandstone and this one is granite. This may take some time.”

  Pulling his sword, Jason moved to a spot next to the tunnel entrance and listened for any sound. “Then you better get to it.”

  “I have a better idea.” Walking toward a corner where one of the buildings abutted the exterior wall, Merlin conjured a large cluster of overgrown hawthorn bushes. Pointing toward it, he turned to Jason and smiled. “Here. We can hide behind these bushes while I work on a hole. All I need you to do is hold the image of the shrubbery intact while I work on the wall.”

  “What? I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Then this is the perfect time for another lesson. Come on.”

  Three hours later they wriggled through a small hole in the six foot thick granite enclosure wall, crawled through the swamp and made their way toward the pebble-strewn shore. There, pacing nervously back and forth, Vivian was waiting for them. When she saw their figures appear at the edge of the low rocky escarpment, she rushed forward, grabbed their hands and dragged them forcefully toward the safety of the water’s edge. Three steps into the rising tide and they were walking up the muddy banks of the River Og on their way back to Baenin.

  * * * *

  While Beverley tended to Merlin’s wounded arm, Jason sought out Arthur, informing him that he and Merlin had returned with important information regarding the location of the dragons and asking him to call a meeting of his military staff. Later, after a bath, a change of clothes and a hot meal, Jason and the wizard attended the king in a great hall that had been returned to its appointed use after Beverley declared the last of the wounded soldiers strong enough to return home.

  Gathered around a large table were Arthur, his uncle, Ambrosius Aurlianus and Griffudd, who represented the army, and Llewellyn and Bedwyr representing the equites. Slowly, over a meeting lasting more than four grueling hours, Jason and Merlin laid out nearly every detail they had learned about the dragons, the proposed site for the upcoming confrontation with the creatures and the fact that there was a conspirator working with the beasts and that this traitor had a mercenary army of unknown size under their control.

  Merlin detailed the location of the cave from which the dragons emerged into the world but explained that because it lay more than thirty Roman miles inside Saxon territory it would be impossible to confront the beasts in their lair. Consequently, he proposed that they should be drawn to another location and explained that the best way to eliminate the double threat of the dragons and the mercenary army controlled by the traitor would be to confront them simultaneously at the enemy’s fortress along the Welsh coast. It seemed obvious that if the traitor felt threatened they would call on the dragons to come to their defense and both armies could be dealt with at once. He also gave a detailed description of the proposed battle site’s topography including the river cutting the fortress off from the long swath of coastline and the difficulty of traversing the marsh to reach the enemy army which would undoubtedly be on the same side of the river as the fortress.

  Jason added that the enemy would be at a distinct disadvantage because they appeared to have been drawn from a number of tribes and did not speak the same language. He surmised that this might also indicate that they lacked a cohesive command structure and might be easy to break into small groups that could be conquered quickly. He admitted that his suggestion that they might lack coordination was as much wishful thinking as a conclusion based on hard evidence.

  Repeatedly, both King Arthur and General Ambrosius prompted Merlin to give them the name of the person who had so traitorously raised an army against the king and who was so completely without any shred of humanity that they would work in tandem with the dragons. As often as they demanded the turncoat’s identity, Merlin demurred. Finally he shook his shaggy head and told Arthur to wait until later when he would speak with him in private; what Arthur did with the information would then be up to him to decide.

  Before the meeting adjourned, Jason was ordered to come up with field tactics appropriate to the two fronted battle they expected to encounter when they simultaneously faced the mercenaries and the dragons, taking into account their battery of ballistae. Working in their favor was Arthur’s announcement that both of Baenin’s blacksmiths were working long hours to produce additional stirrups and lances to equip as many of their allies as possible with the latest weaponry.

  When Jason queried the king and Ambrosius about the possible size of their combined armies he was told that enough Cornishmen to form four Roman centuries were already on their way. To prevent Jason from making an obvious mathematical mistake, Merlin leaned toward him and whispered in his ear that a century did not necessarily contain one hundred men, but could be anywhere from eighty to one hundred and fifty, so somewhere between four hundred and six hundred Cornishmen were on their way to Baenin.

  There was no information on how large the other armies might be, but letters had arrived from both King Hoel of the Bretons and Duke Aegidius of the Franks, promising to support Arthur in his cause and insisting that their armies would land on the south coast of Briton as soon as they could be gathered together and the weather cleared long enough to make the perilous channel crossing from the continent. To Jason it all seemed more than a bit vague.

  Later, when everyone else had either gone to bed or were drinking to celebrate the upcoming campaign against the dragons, Merlin and the king wandered alone through the deserted streets of Arthur’s partially built capital. Here, the great wizard explained that he and Jason had obtained their information by robbing the traitor’s library, that the theft had already been discovered and that the enemy would probably guess who was behind it. He explained that the enemy’s response would undoubtedly be to undertake a series of raids in preparation for a major att
ack and that it was only logical to go on the defensive as quickly as possible to prevent the kingdom from being forced into fighting a defensive war. Finally, reluctant to bring even more bad news to his friend and king, Merlin informed Arthur that the traitor was none other than his half-sister, Morgana le Fay.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Morgana le Fay stormed back and forth along the length of the room, waving her arms, shouting and pacing as though she was trying to wear a hole in the flagstone floor. Well off to one side, safely away from his mother’s fury, Mordred stood with his arms crossed over his chest, his scowling face staring toward his feet like a petulant child.

  “I know who did this. By God, I know who did this. It was that shit-for-brains usurper, my dear, dear baby brother; Arthur, the so-called king of the Britons. Ha! That’s a laugh. The man can’t even rule that simpering wife of his let alone rule a kingdom.” Flailing her arms over her head, spittle flying from her mouth as though she were a rabid dog, Morgana turned her burning gaze toward her son. “Oh, don’t you think for one second that brave King Arthur had the courage to do this himself; he was always a gutless wonder. No, he sent that moldy, decrepit old wizard he keeps to do his dirty work. Mark my words, that’s who it was; it was Merlin.” She spat out the final word as though it were physically bitter on her tongue.

  Whirling around, she marched to the far end of the room, stopped in front of the big bronze disk and began caressing it, as though it were the most precious thing on earth. “At least he didn’t steal my communicator. I will NOT allow those fools to use my books to stop me from calling in the dragons. They will NOT stop me from ruling the kingdom and they will NOT stop me from ruling the world.”

  Stomping to the spot where Mordred stood, she grabbed his chin, lifting his face until it was nose-to-nose with her own, squeezing her fingers against his jaw bone as hard as she could. When she spoke, her voice was no more than a hiss. “I will rule the world. And you, my son, are going to find my books to prevent that cheap wizard from closing the dragon gate. Do you understand me?”