by Hiatt, Bill
“Don’t even think about it,” thought Vanora so vehemently that the connection between us almost broke. “That is the very thing some of Annwn’s leaders are worried you might try. One of the great protections of Annwn is that technology doesn’t work in it, and they are not about to give up that advantage. Even contemplating such a thing might be enough to have one or more of them send assassins after you.”
“OK, OK, I won’t try that, but let’s make a quick trip to Carmathen and at least see where we stand.”
Making a quick trip with Nurse Florence or Vanora whisking me through Annwn would have been easy enough. It was deciding who else was going to go that made the process hard—and time consuming. Nurse Florence, Vanora, Jimmie—since he was helping to fend off the darkness—and I were a given. Beyond that, consensus broke down almost completely.
Carla wanted to go, even more after someone with loose lips—I suspect Gordy—told her that my love for her had been the product of magic. She desperately wanted to talk to me, so, with Vanora fussing in the background, I gave her the opportunity to talk. Ironically, once she had the chance, she didn’t really know what to say. (Having been there myself, I couldn’t help but sympathize.) Finally, she worked up to saying what she would never have forgiven herself for not saying.
“Tal, I know that somehow, without meaning to, I made you love me. I’m sorry that happened, but it doesn’t change the fact that I do love you—for real—and I have for months. Can we at least date and see what happens?” Carla was beautiful enough to have almost any guy she wanted; why did she have to fixate on me, especially now?
“Carla, I really do like you, and maybe something would happen eventually if we went out, but right now I’m in love with somebody else. Do you really want to be with a guy whose heart is somewhere else?”
“Yes,” she said, tearing up a little, “if that guy is you.”
Crap!
“How about this? Right now there is something seriously wrong with me. Let’s postpone this discussion until I know if someone can fix it. Right now I don’t know if I have anything to offer. I may end up under lock and key in some obscure part of Wales, and you’ll never even see me again.” The last touch of drama, which I intended to be a little tongue-in-cheek, pushed Carla too far, and she started crying, which meant I took her in my arms, which meant Vanora looked nothing short of exasperated—a look that didn’t soften when Carla announced that she was going with me.
“You need to rest,” insisted Vanora, “and this trip could be dangerous.”
“It was dangerous on the roof at Halloween, too,” snapped Carla, “so dangerous that I ended up possessed, or whatever, and then in a coma, and then possessed again…only that time you were fine with it. You even brought some of us on to the roof and into that very danger.”
“At Sam…Halloween you were already trapped,” said Vanora quietly, but with fire in her eyes. “If Taliesin’s efforts on the roof had failed, you would all have died anyway. All I did was bring you up so you could help him and have a chance at survival. Here the situation is different. You aren’t trapped. You can stay here and be in no danger at all. And that is what you are going to do, like it or not!”
“Really?” asked Carla, eyes flashing. “You’re going to have to hold me here by force…and that will make quite a story for the newspapers, won’t it? Especially since I’m supposed to be in the hospital!”
“Don’t threaten me, young lady!” I could tell Vanora was getting pretty close to exploding. “I can erase your memories of everything since you went into that coma and return you to the hospital with no one being any the wiser. That’s exactly what I will do, too, if you don’t stay here willingly.”
Even before her awakening, Carla had a little magic of her own, and I could feel energy building around her, as I was sure Vanora could as well. Though an untrained Carla would be no match for Vanora, the fact that she had magic might make it harder to do a clean memory erasure on her, especially if the erasure was involuntary.
“The way I see it,” began Nurse Florence, “if we can’t get Merlin out, or if he is benign when we do, there is no danger. If, on the other hand, Merlin is insane and attacks us, we will need all the help we can get.”
“No!” I said forcefully. “I made the mistake of letting people come to Awen on Samhain, people like Carla who shouldn’t have been there, and she paid the price. I’m not going to make the same mistake again. I’m with Vanora on this one.”
Carla looked at me as if I had rejected her again, but she was not going to be deterred. “Tal, who made you the boss of me? You do not tell me where I can and cannot go. And guess what? I would have come on Halloween, even knowing what was going to happen to me. I would have come to help you. I will come this time to help you.” She looked around, daring anyone to contradict her.
“David feels strongly that I should go,” said Stan. “He says that is the only way he can watch over you and me properly.”
“You have to take Dan. You and he need to spend time together so you can become friends again!” insisted Jimmie.
“If you might have to face a crazy Merlin, then you need me and Zom,” observed Shar.
“If you are taking some of your…warriors, then you should take all of us, just in case,” insisted Gordy. “What if there are guards to overcome?”
“Merlin has never seen the power in my sword, so he won’t be expecting it,” put in Carlos. Considering Govannon had given Carlos’s sword a custom-made power, he was probably right.
“What if getting to Merlin involves picking locks?” asked Khalid. “You have to take me.” He noticed Vanora was glaring at him and added, “Remember, mad skills.”
“I’m going,” said Eva quietly. Like Carla, she could conceivably lend us her strength if needed, but she would be a serious distraction to me if I had to worry about her safety.
“Carla and Eva need to stay here,” I said firmly. “They are the most vulnerable to attack.” Carla looked angrily in my direction, and I could feel magic crackling around her again.
“Tal, earlier I offered Dan a demonstration of my self-defense skills, but perhaps you would like one as well,” Eva said with false sweetness.
“Eva, I can’t even guarantee you are safe with me, much less with Merlin.”
Well, if Carla hadn’t figured out from earlier who I was in love with, that statement would certainly make my feelings clear, but I couldn’t help that. She was going to find out eventually anyway.
“We are wasting precious time,” said Nurse Florence impatiently. “Tal is fine right now, but we don’t know for how long. How long Jimmie can function inside Tal is another wild card. We need to move now. Everyone is going, and that’s the end of it.”
I could tell Vanora was furious, especially since she had made clear earlier that she outranked Nurse Florence, but she apparently thought better of trying to argue further. After all, if there was any wisdom to be had from Merlin, Nurse Florence was right—we had to get it soon. I could feel spasms running through Jimmie every so often, and my own head was starting to ache.
Once we had reached that tenuous agreement, all that remained was for everyone to gather up what they needed, not a hard task, considering that most of the guys were wearing their weapons. I did notice a little argument between Eva and Carla over who should carry the ice sword, an argument resolved by Gordy grabbing it away from both of them. Was this argument the first fruits of Carla finding out it was Eva I loved? Only time would tell.
When we finally bounced into Annwn and out on Bryn Myrrdin (Merlin’s Hill), I realized we should have brought warmer clothing. The weather had been relatively mild for December the night we visited Glastonbury Tor, but this night wasn’t. The land was blanketed with snow; the wind tore at us like ice fangs, ripping right through our California clothing. Fortunately, Vanora was prepared to do what needed to be done, said the appropriate incantation, and opened the hidden cave in the side of the hill.
“Step through
quickly, everyone,” she said briskly. “Then walk to the back of the cave. There is a fixed portal there that will take us back into Annwn, right at the spot Merlin’s tower is. Once we are there, we shouldn’t feel this cold any more.” Urged on more by the bleak winter weather than by her words, everyone got into the cave quickly and crowded to the back, after which Nurse Florence sealed the cave, and Vanora opened the portal. In less than a minute, we were back in Annwn, looking at the most incredible structure I had ever seen.
The tower rose from the middle of a relatively thick forest and seemed to reach clear into the clouds, though it was hard to tell against the night sky. A moon larger than Earth’s, at least from our viewpoint, was shining full in that sky, and its light made every inch of the tower sparkle as if a million stars had been used to build it.
Knowing the way my life worked, you might have guessed that we couldn’t just walk up to the tower, and you would have been right. We had taken only a few steps away from the portal when the vegetation around us began to attack. Nurse Florence and Vanora both seemed surprised as vines tried to immobilize our limbs, thorns tried to tear our flesh, and tree limbs tried to dash out our brains. Apparently the Order’s records had not alluded to this particular defense mechanism.
I would have liked to charm the vegetation to stay away from us, but I sensed it was under the grip of too powerful a spell, and in any case, there wasn’t really enough time, so I drew White Hilt and started burning through our leafy opponents. Gordy, realizing the ice sword was more effective in this case than the fear one, froze everything he could hit. Shar broke the enchantment on whatever he hit, rendering it immobile. All the other guys just hacked away, but since faerie weapons could cut pretty much whatever they hit, they still made good headway. Even Khalid’s faerie dagger did its share of damage.
I didn’t have the nerve to point out that Eva’s self-defense course wasn’t helping her much in this situation, but I’m sure she realized that herself. She and Carla were constantly getting into trouble and having to be rescued, much to the embarrassment of both of them. (And no, I’m not being sexist. If they had decent weapons, they could probably at least have protected themselves, even without training. This wouldn’t have been a good place for anyone to be unarmed, even a guy.)
After two hours of hard fighting, we had cut a wide swath through the forest, leading from the portal to the base of the tower. Fortunately, the immediate area around the tower was clear of vegetation, and no wandering vines tried to grab us once we had reached that area. That, at least, was something.
My muscles ached by that time. Jimmie, probably unused to being in someone else’s body, was having a hard time holding on, my headache was getting to be about the size of San Francisco, and I could feel the darkness stirring, sensing an opportunity.
Yeah, it was something to be “out of the woods”—until the ground next to the tower turned suddenly into water, and we all dropped into it like rocks.
Clearly, this was not normal water. It shined like water in the moonlight, but it seemed thicker somehow, harder to swim through, yet also easier to sink into: a magical concoction that was simultaneously lighter and heavier than ordinary water.
Since it was hard to swim and cast spells at the same time, and since I wouldn’t have known what to do with this arcane muck anyway, magic was not much help in this situation. Some of us might have drowned if not for Carlos. He had said to me recently that he sometimes felt “like a fish out of water” on our adventures, because he wasn’t quite as good a swordsman as the others and didn’t feel as useful. This time, though, his experience as an aquatic athlete was all that stood between some of us and death.
Shar, probably because of Zom’s anti-magic properties, stood on one lone piece of solid land, and he could get the water to pull away from the blade, but the water filled in right after. He was safe, but he was unable to help others. Gordy, Dan, Stan (with his muscle-enhancing sword) and I managed (just barely) to keep ourselves from drowning, but we couldn’t have simultaneously rescued someone else. Our two ladies of the lake found themselves powerless against this not-exactly-water, and Eva and Carla were just not strong enough swimmers. Carlos was the only swimmer powerful enough to rescue the ladies and then help the rest of us get to shore. I managed to magick up his stamina, and he fell down exhausted right after, but he had gotten the job done somehow.
Well, we were still alive, but we had no obvious way to approach the tower. Khalid could have jumped over the water, but then what? Climb up the tower? The surface was too slippery, and anyway climbing the surface would have done no good. I could have flown over, but then what? We needed to be able to stand next to the tower and really examine it. Or did we?
“Vanora, has anyone ever tried hitting the tower with two extremes simultaneously, like very hot and very cold?”
“Not that I know of,” replied Vanora.
“Gordy, please give me the ice sword.” He handed it over, and I held it in my left hand, with White Hilt in my right. It took me a few minutes to manipulate both swords at the same time, especially with my intensifying headache, but I managed to do it, and then I sprayed the left of the tower with ice, simultaneously engulfing the right in flame. The tower had resisted the two opposite forces individually before, but never both at once—until now.
My best efforts, cold enough to freeze a big lake, hot enough to burn a forest, produced no visible change in the tower. I had been hoping that opposing tendencies to expand or contract, depending on temperature, might have caused cracking, but if so, it was undetectably small. After that I had to take a rest and have Nurse Florence and Vanora reinforce my control. My exertion had almost weakened me enough for the darkness to have another shot at taking over, and Jimmie, still hanging on valiantly, was putting out a much more pale and flickering light than the pure radiance he had started with. If there was an answer here, we needed to find it quickly.
Then it hit me. “Vanora, how about sonic vibrations?”
She froze for a second. “Well, no, I don’t think so. There was no real way to weaponize sound that way in earlier times. I suppose spells could have been designed for that, but sorcerers typically went after more obviously destructive forces like fire. People knew the story of Joshua and the trumpets at the battle of Jericho, but everyone assumed that feat was done by the power of God and could not be replicated by men. I doubt it would have occurred to Nimue to defend against that kind of attack.”
“Great!” I could see light at the end of the tunnel now. “Vanora, could you and Nurse Florence enclose everyone else in a soundproof bubble. What I want to try could be deafening.” I waited until they figured out how to do that, and then I went to work.
I began by singing a song of liberation in Welsh, letting magical power build as I did so. I had to experiment to figure out how to do what I wanted, but it did not take me too long to figure out how to modulate the sound of my voice, making it progressively louder and higher in pitch. It wasn’t long before I was hitting the tower with wave after wave of extremely high-frequency sound far more powerful than anything a human voice could ever produce naturally.
From Taliesin 1’s studies of magic I knew that even the most powerful magic could not produce an object that was truly indestructible. The universe always seemed to insist that there be some flaw, however small, in that invulnerability. Since the magic was shaped by the mind using it, Nimue’s world view might determine what kind of flaws existed in the tower; if she didn’t see something as a threat, she might not have protected against it specifically.
Great…in theory. However, she could have taken the Jericho story to heart and sound-proofed the tower, in which case I was wasting my time. For all I knew, throwing pomegranates at the tower would bring it down. I could spend years testing different methods—except that I didn’t have years. More like minutes. I could feel the darkness rising again, and Jimmie was hanging on by his fingernails.
Then, just when I was about to give up, I began
to see the tower vibrating, and I knew there was a chance. The chance became a certainty when I could hear a cracking sound, and shortly afterward, cracks became visible, weaving their way across the entire tower. Finally the tower gave way in one highly satisfying crash, making the most enormous pile of glass shards I could imagine. They still sparkled in the moonlight, but they were no longer a prison. Assuming the crash hadn’t killed Merlin—yeah, that thought did cross my mind—then he should be free now.
The others, finally able to leave their sound-proof bubble, cheered. We had accomplished the first part of our mission.
Much to my relief, I could see a figure rising from the ruined tower. Who could it be but Merlin?
As the figure flew closer, my relief crashed as completely as the tower.
He was Merlin all right, or at least what little was left of him. His robe was tattered, his hair wildly uncombed, his eyes lit not by insanity but by hellfire. During his fifteen hundred years trapped in the tower, his demonic side had apparently taken over completely.
Yeah, you heard right—we were facing the dark version of perhaps the most powerful wizard who ever lived, and from his facial expression, he was not putting out the welcome mat…unless he intended to make one out of our skin!
CHAPTER 16: DARKNESS IS THE NEW LIGHT
“Prepare to die!” yelled the demonic Merlin in a booming voice as he shot toward me. Yeah, nothing like the direct approach.
My best bet was to reach Shar and get my hands on Zom. A couple good blasts of anti-magic should render even Merlin helpless, at least for a short time. Unfortunately, we hadn’t moved into a tight formation as we should have, and I was some distance away from the others. Merlin saw which direction I was running and sprayed the area between me and the group with fire bursts, creating a wall of flame between us that burned so hot I could feel it from yards away.
Having isolated me, he started aiming the fire directly at me. I used White Hilt to surround myself in my own flame and absorb the hostile blasts, but the strategy just barely worked. Just as the water around the tower had been unlike normal water, Merlin’s fire was unlike normal fire. It burned hotter, yet it seemed somehow to move more slowly, almost as if it were heavier. If I wasn’t careful, the stuff would drip right through my fire shield. Preventing that result required considerable maneuvering, and I was already so tired from shattering the tower, a situation complicated by the darkness within me, which seemed to be doing flip-flops as Merlin got closer. Jimmie? He was still there, his light flickering like a single candle. I guess ghosts could become exhausted in this kind of supernatural struggle, and his strength was pretty close to gone.