by Hiatt, Bill
“How are Morgan and Alcina being kept from casting spells?” asked Carlos.
“Ceridwen must have expected opposition from the Order when she first established herself here,” answered Vanora. “Every cell is equipped with chains that will prevent the prisoner from using magic. Ah, here we are.” One of her ever-present security men unlocked the door and led us into the semi-dark cell.
“Who’s there?” asked Alcina, obviously confused by the numerous shadowy forms crowding around her. The fake torch on the back wall of her cell was particularly unhelpful.
“I’m going to need light for this,” I said, knowing I really should be able to look Alcina in the eyes.
“Lover, have you come to rescue me?” she asked, half-mockingly. “Will you be my knight in shining armor?”
Nurse Florence raised her arms and conjured a soft but sufficient light to fill the cell.
The sight of Carla in chains jarred me, but I reminded myself that I was actually seeing Alcina in chains…hopefully not for long, though.
I stepped toward Alcina as she eyed me with interest rather than the suspicion I might have expected. Was she in for a surprise!
My eyes met hers, and I saw her interest turn to horror as she felt the power surge from my eyes to hers. She closed her eyes, and that would slow me a little, but I had already connected, and I could even now sense her feelings changing, softening. I could tell she had already liked me, lusted after me a little, but now the love that she might not be able to feel for anyone on her own was building, spreading to every part of her mind, breaking down her resistance faster than she could rebuild it. Even someone as strong willed as she was could only hold out a few minutes against the power she herself had so painstakingly fashioned. Ah, sweet irony!
“Darling,” purred Alcina. “Can we finally be together? I don’t know why I didn’t realize earlier how much I loved you. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Gladly, Alcina, but I need you to do something for me, something very important.”
“Anything!” I was in her mind far enough to know beyond question that she actually meant what she said.
“Give control of the body back to Carla, and do not take it from her no matter what happens.”
“Are you sure that is what you want?” asked Alcina sadly.
“Yes, I’m sure. Will you do it for me?”
Alcina nodded. “It will be as you have said.” She closed her eyes, and when those eyes opened again, it was Carla looking out of them. Obviously, this was the outcome I had hoped, but I had not expected it to come about so quickly and neatly.
“Tal, you saved me!” she exclaimed, her voice suggesting that she could hardly believe what had happened. “I…I…you have no idea what it was like, being aware of what my body was doing but being unable to control it. Oh, my God! That witch used my body to get to you —”
I took her in my arms as best I could, since the chains had not been removed yet. “You weren’t responsible for that or anything else, Carla. If it was anyone’s fault, it was my own. I let Morgan fool me in a way that allowed Alcina to escape with your body and put you through so much.”
“You couldn’t have known what would happen,” whispered Carla, giving me an extremely fervid kiss on the lips.
Suddenly I found myself pulling away from Carla, staggering away in fact. My head was spinning.
“Tal, what’s wrong? Is it Alcina?” asked Vanora urgently.
“No!” I managed through clenched teeth. “She really is Carla now. I just…I feel ill.”
I had been through a lot in the past few years, but aside from the awakening of my past lives, I had never felt as disoriented as this. I couldn’t describe exactly what was happening, but I knew something was wrong, subtly but unmistakably.
Then, just as abruptly as I had felt lost, I found myself again. It must have been Carla’s kiss. After all, I didn’t love her. Only a few feet away was Eva. I could have Carla but didn’t want her. I couldn’t have Eva but wanted her desperately, wanted her with every ounce of my heart, wanted her beyond reason.
Why torture myself this way when it would be so easy to have her? All I needed was a few minutes alone with her, and she would be mine forever. I could get her to fake a more gradual transition in public, so Nurse Florence and Vanora wouldn’t get suspicious. Child’s play, when I got to thinking about it.
Once I had solved that problem, I realized I could easily take care of my other unfinished business: Dan. Jimmie would almost certainly be gone soon…and as soon as he was, I would make Dan pay…and pay…and pay. I wouldn’t kill him or anything that drastic, but he would know the kind of pain I had felt. It would be so easy to find ways to bring that about. So easy…
God, what was happening to me? How could I even daydream about enslaving Eva? As big a scumbag as Dan was, could I actually sink to his level,—no, to far below his level?
I was myself again, but I might remain so for only a minute. I could already feel some…thing surging back into my mind.
“Dan!” I yelled shrilly. “Take Eva, and get out of here! It isn’t safe!” The guys, instantly combat ready, already had their swords out. Even Jimmie had the ice blade out, somewhat awkwardly, and Khalid brandished his dagger.
“What isn’t safe, Tal? What’s the threat?” demanded Dan.
The dizziness was hitting me again, but I managed another warning, though this one was more like a whisper.
“I am.”
CHAPTER 15: LET SLEEPING WIZARDS LIE
Despite all their training, the guys were stunned into virtual immobility by my warning, which they either didn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand.
“Hold on, Tal! Hold on!” yelled Nurse Florence. “Dan, Eva, do as he says!”
“Get…Carla..out…of the chains, and get me into them!” I managed. Swirling darkness kept trying to engulf my mind. It might succeed again any second. If I was physically restrained and couldn’t work magic, at least I wouldn’t be a threat to anyone else.
Vanora yelled at her security guard to get the key—evidently no one had seen the need to bring it to the cell—but long before he got back, Khalid managed to pick the lock.
“Those locks are supposed to be impossible to pick,” muttered Vanora.
Khalid glanced over at her, and in a totally serious tone replied, “I have mad skills.” If I weren’t on the verge of sinking into darkness, I would have laughed very hard. It was good to see that Khalid was adjusting so well.
Carlos moved a stunned Carla out of the way. Gordy and Shar helped me sit on the floor, and Nurse Florence clamped the manacles around my wrists. Their cool weight was oddly comforting. Once they were in place, I became aware of Dan and Eva arguing.
“I’m not going anywhere,” insisted Eva.
“You are if I have to carry you out of here!” replied Dan, reaching as if to grab her.
“Try it and I’ll demonstrate some of the techniques I picked up in my self-defense class.” I could tell from her tone that she meant it, and so could Dan. Nonetheless, he was ready to make the attempt, but Nurse Florence stopped him.
“It’s all right. You can both stay. Tal isn’t a threat now.” Then she looked at me. “Tal, hold on. We all have faith in you. Hang on to yourself, and we will figure this out—I promise!”
“How could he be a threat in the first place?” asked Jimmie incredulously. “He’s a hero, and he’s our friend!”
“Yes, how?” asked Vanora, looking as confused as anyone. “I knew there was a risk, but I was sure he could resist. I have never seen anyone fall to temptation so fast!”
Nurse Florence clearly wanted to say, “I told you so,” but instead she settled for a much more classy approach. “He is strong, Vanora, but he’s been through so much, had so many unusual experiences. There could be any number of reasons. The important thing now is for us to reinforce his good qualities and help him to fight off his inner darkness.”
“I want to help!” Jimmie blurted out.
“I’m a ghost; there must be something I can do.”
Though I appreciated Jimmie’s desire to help, I couldn’t imagine what a ghost could do at this point. Fortunately, Nurse Florence had a better imagination right now than I did.
“If Tal lets you in, you can flow into his mind,” she said, seemingly thinking out loud as much as talking to Jimmie. “You aren’t perfect, Jimmie, but you were a relatively innocent child when you died, and you and Tal have a very real bond. I think you could reinforce his will to resist. No, I know you could. Tal, will you let him in?” I managed a nod. “Jimmie, do you know what to do?”
“I can figure it out,” he said quickly. He sheathed his sword, set the scabbard on the floor, and made himself immaterial. He had been solid for so many hours it took him an effort to return to his natural state. Then he became like mist and surrounded me, creating a pulsing, glowing light—a light that could counterbalance my growing darkness.
Having him in my head was a little like being nine again. Aside from the accident, Jimmie had a very happy childhood, and that joy radiated from his soul like sunlight shimmering on water. With him at my side, I felt I could stand against any threat.
Then came the awkward part. “Tal, you and Dan lied to me! You aren’t really becoming friends again!”
“We may,” I replied lamely. “Jimmie, we both want to, for you, but it isn’t that simple.”
“Make it that simple!” demanded Jimmie.
I wondered what would happen if he started having a temper tantrum in my head. Instead, he opened his mind to me, and I saw Dan the way he saw him: larger than life, dependable as a rock, loving unconditionally. I had seen him that way once too. It seemed so long ago now.
“Jimmie, right now I need to focus.”
“Oh, right. We’ll talk later.”
For the moment, the darkness was being held in check. I no longer had the sickening feeling that it would overwhelm me.
Nurse Florence and Vanora had organized everyone else for energy sharing, and they stood ready to channel all that energy, including their own, straight at the darkness. They relaxed, however, when they realized that, with Jimmie’s considerable help, I was now back in balance…for the moment.
“I think we can get you out of those chains now,” said Nurse Florence, bending over me. She unfastened them with surprising ease, and I looked at her quizzically.
“They weren’t really latched all the way, Tal. For you to be able to beat this thing, you have to realize that you don’t need to be locked up, that you can control the darkness on your own.” My jaw dropped. “Well,” continued Nurse Florence, “I guess you aren’t the only one who ever takes risks.”
“But I couldn’t have controlled it…without Jimmie, and he won’t be here forever.”
“You have to keep telling yourself you can control it, Tal. Yes, Jimmie will have to move on, and I think sooner rather than later. But you have taught yourself so much else. You can teach yourself Jimmie’s light as well.”
She said that with such absolute certainty that I was almost tempted to believe her, but the process seemed too easy somehow. I had gone through so much more than Jimmie! If I had ever had that kind of pure light, I felt it must have faded long ago.
“No Tal, you still have it!” Jimmie thought encouragingly. “You just don’t realize it.”
“His light isn’t like a spell I can just duplicate.”
“How do you know?” asked Vanora. “You haven’t tried.”
She had a point, I supposed. I didn’t know I could learn spells just by seeing them done, either…until the first time I did it.
“I’m willing to take a shot at it, but we have to have more of a plan than that. I can’t risk putting other people in danger. I need to be sure that whatever I am going to do will keep the darkness in check, not just for now…but forever.”
“Gwynn would help, I’m sure,” said Nurse Florence, “but I am a little reluctant to take your problem to anyone in Annwn, at least right now. Some of the leaders already worry about you. If they learned that you were potentially unstable…”
“Got it,” I said. “He’s got thousands of faeries in and around his castle, any one of whom might conceivably be a spy. Better not to risk it. ”
“The Order can study the problem and help you come up with a solution,” suggested Vanora.
“But the Order has never dealt with anything like this,” countered Nurse Florence. “Their orientation is more the scholarly accumulation of data than prescribing cures for unusual mystic conditions.”
“I think they’re up to it,” replied Vanora somewhat stiffly, “but it is true that it is not what they normally do. The process might take months, and it would be hard to explain Taliesin’s frequent absences from home. Still, what else is there?”
“Merlin,” I said quietly.
“You know where Merlin is?” asked Stan. “But I thought—”
“No,” I corrected, “I don’t know. The Order does, though, doesn’t it?” I looked at Nurse Florence and Vanora. Neither answered immediately, presumably because Merlin was a highly classified subject.
“What makes you think Merlin could help?” asked Vanora evasively.
“You mean aside from the fact he is the only one I know, not counting high-level Annwn faeries, who might know more about magic than I do? Because of his unusual dual nature. His father was a demon, remember. In fact, Merlin told the original Taliesin once that Satan had intended Merlin to be an Antichrist, or at least so his mother told him. She thought she foiled that scheme by having him baptized, but Merlin knew better. The baptism helped, but he told my earlier self often that keeping his demonic side in check required constant self-discipline on his part.”
Nurse Florence nodded. “I’m not as expert as you are at interpreting this kind of thing, but looking into you, I can see the darkness. It looks to me much the way the past-life personality looks in Stan and Carla. Aside from being at the other end of the spectrum, it also looks like Jimmie inside of you—a totally separate personality.”
I did a quick check myself. “You’re right—and that may explain why my case is different from most. When I was first struggling with the chaos in my head following my awakening, Taliesin 1 appeared to me and told me, among other things, that my brain, not knowing what to do with all those memories of past lives, was interpreting each set of memories as a separate personality. What if my brain, having had that kind of experience already, is interpreting the darkness, which would just be temptation in most people, as an entirely separate personality?”
“Or your high power level is endowing the temptation with personality,” suggested Vanora. “Either way, it sounds as if it might be worth consulting with Merlin.”
“I agree,” said Nurse Florence, and then each looked at the other as if both were surprised to find themselves on the same side.
“There is just one problem,” continued Vanora.
“Only one?” I said facetiously.
“Yes…but it’s a big one. As you guessed, the Order does know where Merlin is, though we aren’t supposed to reveal that location. In this case, however, I think the urgent circumstances would justify our doing so.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a problem.”
“Oh, that isn’t the problem. Bear with me. I’m sure you recall that it was Nimue, a renegade lady of the lake, who imprisoned Merlin. She used a combination of a confinement spell Merlin created himself and some of her own touches to trap him. No one has ever been able to figure out how to break the spell, and frankly the Order no longer tries, their assumption being that Merlin is probably insane by now and too dangerous to be let out.”
“That’s actually two problems,” I said dejectedly.
“Count them as you wish,” said Vanora. “Actually, I believe that healers as accomplished as Viviane and I, aided by your unique insights into mending shattered minds, could probably cure him if he proved to be insane. That still leaves us with the problem of gett
ing him out in the first place.”
“Well,” said Gordy. “What’s the old expression? ‘The impossible just takes a little longer.’”
“I don’t know,” said Shar. “The problem is, Gordy, it sounds as if we don’t have much time.”
“Where and how is Merlin imprisoned?” I asked. “Let’s at least see if the situation provides any clue. Even if people have worked on it for centuries, it can’t hurt to have some fresh perspectives.”
“We can only have one, I’m afraid—yours!” thought Vanora. “The Order might understand why I have to tell you about Merlin, but they won’t understand my telling a large number of civilians, even if some of them are your men.”
“OK, then. Tell me what you can,” I said reluctantly. I would have like to share the information with everyone, but I knew better than to try to argue Vanora out of her caution, and I was getting little jolts of pain from Jimmie, a potent reminder of how limited our time might be.
“The physical location tied to the trap is Bryn Myrrdin, to the east and a little to the north of Carmathen, where Merlin was born. He is said to be trapped in a cave there, but the cave is just a portal to Annwn, where the real trap is: an enormous tower of unbreakable glass, utterly without any imperfection through which Merlin could have escaped by shape-shifting.”
“When you say ‘unbreakable,’ what do you mean? What have people used on it in the past?”
Vanora gave me a laundry list of every destructive force known to humankind.
“What? No one tried to nuke it yet?” I thought.
“You know perfectly well that complex technologies don’t work in Annwn,” replied Vanora. “But as you can see, pretty much everything except weapons of modern warfare has been tried on the tower.”
“I can get magic to work on technology; perhaps I can get technology to work in a magical realm. It might not even take a nuke. For all we know, a machine gun might do the trick. Anything Nimue didn’t anticipate could conceivably—”