by D B Nielsen
At the Archangel’s decree, an arc of white lightning flashed across the sword’s steely edge – a blaze along the blade – brightly, blindingly, reflecting the pure, celestial energy emanating from the seraphic figure above it. And the former knight bowed his head low in supplication, his curly blond locks polished to gold in the ethereal light.
Galgano Guidotti, penitent, humbled, yet on the path to redemption, remained on bended knee before the sword in the stone ...
SAGE
REVENANT
CHAPTER ONE
‘And that’s how the legend of The Sword in the Stone came about, giving rise to one of the most famous episodes in Arthurian Romance.’
Twenty-four pairs of eyes, glazed like the bulbous porcelain jars displayed in the Asia rooms, and as lifeless as the stone statues and funerary masks in the Ancient Egypt Galleries, stared back at me.
I began counting.
One, two, three ... Wait for it ... eleven, twelve ... Wait for it ... sixteen, seventeen ...
SNAP. The first hand shot up. I was impressed – only seventeen seconds this time.
‘But what about King Arthur?’
The question voiced by the freckled, ginger haired boy at the front of the group roused his classmates from somnolence; some blinking owlishly in confusion, as if surprised to find themselves still here; one or two others recovering far more quickly, demonstrating the natural resilience and curiosity of eleven-year-olds. I could almost see the wheels turning in their heads as they organised their scattered thoughts.
‘And Merlin?’ said another. ‘And his magic? And the dragons?’
I was used to the routine now. This was my third and final school group for the day – and they were handling it better than the previous school groups, despite the late hour and the dim lighting of Rooms 40 and 41, which housed the artefacts from Anglo-Saxon England and one of my favourite exhibits, the Sutton Hoo ship burial. I often found that afternoon tours were far more difficult than mornings, even though the questions pretty much remained the same.
Their questioning continued with childish curiosity. ‘Everyone knows that Merlin used his magic to set the sword in the stone so that Arthur Pendragon ...’
Ah, yes. And everyone knows because everyone watches television re-runs of the series, Merlin, and everyone is suddenly an expert on all things related to Sub-Roman and Medieval Britain.
I stifled a sigh, ruefully acknowledging that I was becoming as cynical as Fi, and I hated myself for it. It just wasn’t like me and I needed to snap out of this rut I was in. But ever since the Anakim’s revelation that my twin was expendable, no more significant than a game piece in the Grigorian version of the Royal Game of Ur, and they were willing to ransom her for “the greater good” – or however they wished to term it – my life had slowly begun to unravel.
Matters between St. John and me – our close, intimate relationship – had quickly deteriorated, now remaining tense and strained. To be fair, he had tried to make things right between us, but I was too angry and too hurt to listen. I kept looking for something to hold onto, something behind the martial and political strategising of the Anakim and of the Keeper of the Seed, some sign of the man I’d met by chance here in the British Museum last November who had become part of my own soul, inseparable from me. I wanted to make peace with this knowledge. And with him. I wanted to remember the circumstances under which we existed. That this was war. Yet even now I couldn’t forget the sense of betrayal.
What excuse could possibly justify the Anakim’s willingness to sacrifice my twin sister? I now knew how Elizabeth Bennet must have felt upon learning of Darcy’s interference in her beloved sister Jane’s happiness. The Nephilim were the cause of all that Fi had suffered, and still continued to suffer. And St. John was instrumental in this. No one could say how lasting a damage he might have inflicted.
People often said that “time heals all wounds” but I didn’t agree. The pain lessened with time but the wounds remained. Even though they may have been covered over with scar tissue, they were never completely gone.
Some things even I could not forgive. Or forget. Or survive.
Though perhaps I wasn’t being completely honest in the part that I had played in all this. I bore the burden of guilt and shame too. In some small but significant way this was my own fault. I had promised St. John that I would trust him. Always. Implicitly. But it wasn’t proving so easy. He’d claimed that we were past all evasions – but I had often wondered if this were true. With St. John, as the bard understood too well, “He thinks too much. Such men are dangerous.” and there were always hidden truths, secrets he kept to himself, buried deep. I knew it was his way of protecting me, but it frustrated – no, it hurt – me deeply. It was the one thing we couldn’t agree upon – and the irony was that I had once thought it would be wonderful to have such an “ideal” relationship.
In all my reading, my fantasising, my dreaming about the chivalric romances, the courtly lover, the knight in shining armour, the Byronic hero, I had never imagined what it might be like, in reality, to have such a man place me on a pedestal and worship me. But the truth was that it was stifling. Suffocating. Patronising.
Now I wondered what Bella Swan was thinking when Edward Cullen stalked her so relentlessly, trying to read her thoughts, appearing in her bedroom without warning, creepily watching her sleep at night – it gave me a chill just thinking about it. Though I supposed it was no worse than Catherine Earnshaw’s strangely asexual, violent and destructive love affair with Heathcliff. Or the dream of attaining the golden girl, Daisy, and Gatsby’s fatalistic obsession. Or Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky. Or Ophelia and Hamlet. I really should have read my favourite books with greater insight and judgment, as it almost always ended badly for, at least, one of them – usually the female, though perhaps I was being cynical again.
Yet once it had appeared to me to be so romantic. So passionate. So pure.
In truth, I hadn’t expected the complete “happily ever after” experience without the hassles and arguments. I wasn’t that naïve. But I wanted what my parents had – a relationship that was near to perfect. Yet the reality lay somewhere in between. Relationships were a great deal of hard work and compromise, and the language of love and loss was utterly new to me, so that I had misinterpreted and translated it into hopelessly wrong meanings. And now I knew. Reality wasn’t quite the same as fiction. It was completely different because the magic was something you had to create yourself.
Love was confusing and heartbreaking. Unimaginably so. Yet I still loved St. John. And the strength of that love had not weakened. I didn’t expect it to. Not ever ...
This time I did give a sigh, one of frustration and pent-up longing, and tried to refocus on the task at hand rather than overthinking things.
The group of school children shifted restlessly waiting for a response to their various questions, so I plastered a smile on my face and continued the tour. I could do this in my sleep. In fact, I probably had. I’d been operating on automatic pilot for the past few weeks, going through the routines, but my mind – and heart – had been elsewhere.
I led the school group back down to the museum’s Great Court; the fidgety eleven-year-olds trailing behind me, spreading out like the tail of a prickly dragon. But as we wound our way through the flood of visitors and tourists and foreigners on cultural tours who were taking advantage of the milder spring weather to travel into London, I felt my spirits revive. The light airiness of the Great Court always had that effect on me. Even in the late afternoon sunlight which played across the inner courtyard and along the pale walls of the central, circular Reading Room, the vista changed with every step I took, accompanied by a current of my second wind.
Bringing my troop to a halt, I nodded absently to a security guard on duty who passed for invisible to all but the museum staff. Behind the scenes at the British Museum were the staff that made the exhibitions possible; curators, conservators, scientists, security, even cleaners. Ev
ery morning before they opened the doors to the public, there was work to be done; dusting and cleaning cases, moving items to be displayed or taking them off, conservation and maintenance work.
Fi had once asked my dad if she could volunteer to clean the panes of glass in the ceiling of the Great Court, abseiling high above the ground like an extreme sport. Dad was initially amused until he realized Fi was serious. Like Dad, I didn’t have much of a head for heights and thought Fi was crazy. Luckily for him, a couple of days and much pestering later, we were told that the museum employed specially-trained abseilers to clean the 3,312 uniquely individual panes. I think that during that brief period, Fi had considered it a future occupation. The memory brought a brief smile to my unpractised lips and I realised that I had been frowning far too often of late.
Standing almost in the exact spot where St. John had kissed me on New Year’s Eve – which didn’t help to improve my mood – I called to attention my school group to conclude our tour of the museum. But a flash of metal caught in the periphery of my vision had me rapidly turning as the ring of colliding swords echoed inside the vast chamber of the museum’s Great Court, dominating all other noise. A brief roar sounded from behind me as the school children pressed closer to view the spectacle unfolding before us.
Half a dozen tall, burly men dressed theatrically, head-to-toe, in well-worn and tarnished armour – armour that had been scarred with use, evident in the numerous dings and dents of the breastplates and helmets – had filed through the entrance of the British Museum, and immediately proceeded to engage in mock battle. But this was no Cosplay or LARP, even if these men could have passed for dyed-in-the-wool fans of Game of Thrones or Thor. Their movements were clean and precise, almost a blur of the eye, deftly weaving and parrying with an assured military precision that warred with the usual flamboyant, dramatic performances put on by the museum for its visitors. Besides, this was no opening of a new exhibition – the last such occasion that warranted such pageantry that I could recall had taken place weeks earlier with the much-acclaimed Viking exhibition.
I frowned in consternation. What was going on? Was there a Comic-con or Supernova Expo in town? Was this some unexpected bit of theatre for advertising a new men’s toiletry product like the Lynx Excite Angels at Victoria Station London a few years ago?
Something was decidedly off.
A quick glance around the Great Court revealed more warlike figures flanking exits and passageways to the Egyptian and Assyrian exhibits. There was something rather arresting about them. Something that drew the eye beyond the usual drama.
And I wasn’t the only one studying them, as a couple of Swedish backpackers and a Japanese tour group were frantically taking photos and videos to upload to YouTube, Instagram and Facebook on their smartphones.
Then, as one trained body, the warriors moved in perfect harmony. But the rasp of blades being unsheathed, drawn simultaneously from their scabbards, was drowned out by the noise emanating from the Great Court; the sounds of raucous laughter, metal colliding jarringly with metal, and the discordant blending of languages which floated out over the heads of the crowd.
The museum’s visitors had now formed a ring around the six men whose identities were firmly concealed behind their close-fitting helmets. The faces of the onlookers – a mix of cultures; German, Australian, Korean, American and Brits amongst the multitude – were brightly animated in the late afternoon light cascading down from the glass panes above. They cheered loudly, backing their favourite, as one of six – anonymous but for an oddly-shaped marking on the hilt of his sword, reminiscent of an image I knew I had seen before but couldn’t at this moment recall when or where – swept away his opponent’s blade as it descended yet again. Feinting to the right, he swung his own sword upwards in an arc towards his opponent, who swiftly parried the blow.
It struck me as odd that no staff members from the museum seemed in the least bothered by this disturbance in the museum’s forecourt. Certainly no one had shouted a warning, or come running to denounce these intruders, or stop the performance. The security guards instead stood about, along with the other assembled spectators, enjoying the show – perhaps assuming that this was an unscheduled but museum-approved event.
The fighter with the marked hilt kept his weapon locked in front of him as his opponent gave a lusty yell and charged. He avoided the savage onslaught, but the other man pressed the attack, forcing him back with a series of cutting blows, crashing brutally together, swords locked, neither of them willing to give quarter. They edged closer to where I stood with my school group whose innocent fists were pumping the air, barracking blindly, spurring the combatants on, as I futilely attempted to calm them, to remove them from danger.
But as the fighters continued to dance with their blades, I gave a frightened shout as someone grabbed me from behind in an iron-like grip. I was dragged roughly into the middle of the ring; a sea of swollen, excited faces met my eyes, none willing to lend aid, convinced that this was all part of the spectacle. Cheers drowned out my desperate pleas for help. The noise was deafening, the leering faces overwhelming, as I struggled fiercely with my assailant, trying to turn, to run, to kick, to escape, but whoever held me was too strong – and besides, my puny, ineffectual efforts went unnoticed as the man was clad in heavy body armour so that wherever my feeble blows made contact, I did more damage to myself than to him.
Bruised, I was harshly flung against another warrior, one of the six, who held me tightly. There was no loosening of his grip, no opportunity to escape. And I froze in dread when something cold, hard and sharp was pressed against my vulnerable, exposed throat.
I stared up at the man who had thrown me unceremoniously across the marble floor whilst his comrade held the dagger tight against me, yet I barely felt its sharp, merciless bite. Instead, the pungent smell of sweat and adrenaline assailed my nostrils, laced with something far more disturbing; the fecund, fetid smell of ashes and loam and death. The dark figure, dressed like the others, only taller, seemed to rise before me as if called forth from the bowels of hell. Clearly the leader, he carried no weapon as he strode boldly towards me, black eyes gleaming between the slits of his visor.
Briefly closing my eyes, I battled an increasing nausea, as two thoughts hit me simultaneously; the intuition that St. John was nowhere to be found in or near the building; and the knowledge that the winged bull monumental sculptures – my protectors, the Lamassu in the adjoining Assyrian rooms – were stirring to life.
‘Where is it?’ The man who was holding me hissed demandingly in my ear, pressing the blade harder against my flesh until it drew blood, making me wince. ‘Answer!’
‘I-I d-d-don’t know what you’re talking about!’ I stammered in terrified response, staring down at the dagger and up again at the leader, forcing myself to meet the man’s hard glare.
‘Of course,’ said the other, a humourless smile raising the corners of his mouth. ‘What would the Wise One know of the location of the Seed?’
Startled, I remained silent for a long moment.
The Wise One? So they knew who I was – and all this was simply to get to me. I was their target. And the Seed. They wanted the Seed.
Who were these men? Surely not the Grigori! Rephaim? Emim? It would make sense, I thought, seeing that they already held part of the Scroll. But to expose themselves in this manner? It was insane!
From what seemed to be a vast distance, the ring of metal meeting metal echoed sharply. The threat remained unvoiced, hanging in the air. A shadow fell across me as the leader drew up close; so close that I could feel his foul breath fanning my face. I stared up at him with wide eyes.
Finally, I shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Do not mistake me for a fool, Wise One.’ This from the leader, his words low and vicious with the trace of an accent. I swayed unsteadily on my feet, trying hard to concentrate. My mind was busily processing this new information – hazarding a guess, I would have said it was one of the Romance
languages. Spanish? Portuguese? Italian?
‘Speak up, girl!’ barked the holder of the dagger, his voice lashing out like a whip.
‘I’m telling you, I don’t–’ My forceful denial was cut off, stopping abruptly as the large company of warriors flanking the Great Court moved with singular purpose. As one, the company sprinted towards the west door to the centre of the Egyptian Sculpture Gallery. Beyond were the rooms of the Lamassu and the Assyrian sculptures.
‘Don’t be brave, girl. Bravery can get you and others killed. We just want what we came for. We just want the Seed.’ There were equal parts superiority and scorn in his tone.
My mouth went dry. My legs were shaking. I longed for a weapon but my hands flexed and fisted on nothing more substantial than air. Empty. The hopelessness of the situation weighed me down. What I needed now was some way to avert an all-out war in the middle of the British Museum without compromising the Seed.
But I was not now, nor had I ever been, alone.
My right palm began to tingle then throb where it had been marked by the Seed, and I experienced the strangest sensation of heat and cold at the same time. The feeling was sharp, scorching. And when I breathed in, my throat felt as if I was swallowing shards of ice or red-hot coals, similar to that strange sensation when your hands felt frozen yet running them under cold water made them burn. The cold heat seemed to spill through my veins, through my limbs, and along my spine; bringing to full awareness all my nerves.
I broke out in a sweat, perspiration clinging to my uniform and trickling down the valley between my breasts, but I was unaware of any further discomfort as I my anger began to rise like a fire smouldering deep within, erupting to a conflagration.