Merlin's Nightmare (The Merlin Spiral) (13 page)

Peredur followed the tracks backward. “Well, it appears he rested over in the shade, behind those bushes, while Arthur an’ the others didn’t stop.” Pushing through the cracking, dry branches, he suddenly stopped and turned and stared at Merlin. The man’s face had gone completely white. Backing up, he closed his eyes and fell to one knee, looking sick.

“What is it?” Merlin asked, running over and pushing through the bushes.

What he saw made him fear for Arthur, Culann, and Dwin. The remains of a huge deer lay there, bloody and broken, and with the guts ripped out and eaten.

Mórgana held up the purple-flamed orb with the moving image of Merlin and Peredur — and laughed to see such fun. Merlin the timid, that’s what he was.

“Mórdred?” she called. “Present yourself before me.”

The lad stepped forward from where he stood next to his illustrious great-grandfather. His hair was the color of raven’s wings — all except for one white lock that hung down the left side. At his throat rested a silver torc tipped with the heads of foxes, containing eyes made from amber.

“Do
you
mind the sight of blood?” she asked, squinting at him.

He stared at her with his steel-gray eyes and didn’t answer.

“Do you defy me?”

In answer, he raised his forearm, brought a knife to it, and sliced into the skin until it bled.

“I thought not,” she said, pleased. “You will soon be a man, my son, and your fearlessness will make you worth much to the Voice. Merlin, however, is not only worthless, he is ignorant of what is coming.”

Mórganthu nudged closer to get a better look into the orb. “Tell me . . . tell me again, my daughter’s daughter, why we can see Merlin in the orb again — after all these years when we could not?”

She smiled at him — so old and so simple. “Because the time is ripe.”

“And the Voice . . . the Voice told you this?”

“Yes, of course. He tells me everything I need.”

“Everything
we
need.”

Mórgana touched the fang where it was sheathed at her belt, and its secret power flowed up her arm. Should she use it to teach her grandfather a lesson? No need. Simply reaching for it brought out a tremble in his jaw. He flinched away, cowering down.

“Since we can see Merlin,” he asked, “will you kill him? Fill his body with disease?”

“You fool. Have you learned nothing of my plan?” She held the orb upward. “Show me the runaway!” Immediately, the image changed to a man, hooded in a black cloak with a thin plaid stripe. He loped along a dry, rocky streambed, his huge strides eating up the distance between him and his quarry.

“I thought he served you,” Mórganthu said, “like the others.”

She frowned, annoyed at the reminder. “No, he does not. He has partially escaped my enchantment because he had turned against me when I enacted it. But it is no matter, for he will not be able to help our enemies. I made sure of
that
before he escaped.”

“And Arthur? What will we do about Arthur?”

“A very good question . . .” She commanded the orb, and its purple flames burst outward. The image shifted again, and now she could see Arthur and his two companions sitting at a campfire.

Mórganthu rubbed his hands together, a cackle in his throat. “Hurt him! Hurt him, I say!”

“Patience. There is a far greater benefit to be gained by letting him live.”

“But my revenge has waited so long, I can hardly stand it!”

Mórgana ran her fingers through her black hair and shook it out. “There is no worry. He will not escape. Do not forget that I have other servants nearby, ones more faithful than the half-tongue.”

Mórganthu gurgled deep in his throat as he laughed, and Mórdred chuckled beside him.

A
rtorius moaned as his trout fell off his branch and dropped into the fire for the third time. He scratched it out from the coals, but it was covered in ashes — again.

Dwin gave Artorius a playful shove. “Look, this is how you do it.” And then he wedged the handle part of his own fish-bearing branch between two rocks and tried to set a third rock to hold it down. But the fish sank quickly toward the fire, and it, too, fell off.

Culann shook his head as he used two sticks to try to retrieve his own fish from where it had fallen between some logs. “This is impossible,” he said as the flames nearly caught his sleeves on fire.

“Just leave it,” Artorius said. “We can always eat the hazelnuts Dwin brought.”

“They’re burnt and way too salty,” Culann said. “If we only had some water to drink, but no, the mud-stink we caught these fish in isn’t fit to swallow, and every spring on the map ends up either dry or a figment of Dwin’s gaseous head.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Look, a spring, over here! Stop, a spring, over there! Haha-haha!”

“It was my uncle’s map.”

“But you copied it.”

Dwin threw a pebble and it nicked Culann in the jaw. “And you brought the salted pork, boar-foot.”

Culann clenched his fists.

“Now stop,” Artorius said, holding his hands out to keep them apart, “I was the one who brought the rock-hard bread the baker was selling cheap, right? We all made bad choices in the food we brought, so let’s drop it.”

Culann swore. “The fish are all ruined, and we can’t waste any more water washing them off. I say we skip dinner and go to sleep.”

“But I’m hungry,” Dwin said as he tried to jab his fish and pull it from the fire. It broke in half and both portions slipped into an almost inaccessible place beneath the center logs. “Ah, you’re right. At least I can dream about food.”

“And water.”

“Now that’s the kind of dream I’d like,” Artorius said as he unrolled a blanket near the fire and lay down. The others joined him, but soon Artorius found himself staring at the fire, alone, while the others snored.

His old familiar longings nagged at him. He slid his hand inside his tunic and felt the thick scar that covered his abdomen and lower chest, wondering afresh why he bore it. His father had told him the story, but why would some strange king want to kill him, and how had he survived? Yet there was something there, buried in his dreams, some flash of remembrance that haunted him — a flicker of incomprehensible joy that made his normal life so pale, so common, and . . . pointless.

No, not pointless. It was just that there was something more waiting for him that he could never quite grasp.

And because of this, he didn’t feel alive unless he was rushing toward an oncoming spear, climbing down a cliff using nothing
but his bare hands, or diving deeply into Lake Derwentlin until his lungs almost burst. He just
had
to feel that flash of strength as he ran madly down a hillside, the thrill of slamming an opponent flat, or . . . or was it just death itself? Did he have to feel close to death in order to . . . feel alive?

Why was that?

He closed his eyes, trying to put it all from his mind, but the soreness from riding all day didn’t help, nor did his dry lips and thirst.

A long time later, when the fire had nearly died, he finally found himself on the verge of sleep. As he drifted off, the image of a marsh appeared before his eyes, with beautiful, fresh water, where rushes clacked in the wind and herons flapped off at his coming. He was in a boat, and he was rowing, with a dozen shining fish flopping at his feet, and a dragonfly tousling his brown hair one moment then flitting away the next. He rested the oars, dipped his fingers in, and brought forth a clean handful of water that sparkled with the setting sun’s glorious rays. The water was cold upon his tongue, and its life flowed downward, filling and satisfying him deeply.

Picking up the oars once more, he began rowing, and soon the sun set. The marsh became a gray world of invisible chirps and croaks and the
whisp-whisp
of countless insects.

The next he knew, he was kneeling in the dark upon a shore, with the gray, massive walls of a fortress on a ridge in the distance. A tower soared upward on his left, and near its conical roof a bright light shone from a window.

He craned his neck and gazed intently at the light, and soon the familiar restlessness swept over him . . . only now he somehow knew why. This light, it shattered the darkness with such purity and beauty. He had to see its source.

Standing, he found his feet had left the ground and he rose upward until he floated near the window, where he had to cover his eyes lest he be blinded. The light washed over him, cleansed his fears, cleansed . . . his wound? It stirred within him memories
unbidden. Where had he seen this light before, experienced a touch to his soul this delightful?

He opened his eyes at a dare — and couldn’t close them! A bowl, more solid, more real than anything he had ever seen, floated before him. Or
had
he seen it before? It was beyond beautiful, not because of itself, but because of the one who had made it. Its sides were of wood, ancient as the oldest tree in all creation, and yet young, as if some master craftsman carved it new every morning from the purest and freshest-smelling wood.

He reached out his hand in a desperate attempt to touch it, but it was too far away. Then it brightened and was lost to him. The light coalesced, flashed, and faded.

In its place appeared the image of a woman with black hair. She was sitting on a mat of woven rushes and kneading dough in a large wooden bowl. Her hair was long and pushed to the side so that it completely covered the left side of her face, and she wore a black cloak made from the feathers of iridescent blackbirds, and many others, all woven together.

She was speaking aloud, seemingly to herself, for no one else was near.

“Arthur . . . oh, Arthur, I’ve been looking for you for so long. Where are you? Please . . . please come to me . . .”

Artorius recognized this name as that of the previous High King’s son, who was purportedly either a slave, or dead. Why did she call
that
name?

Either way, a desire to go to her filled his heart, a deep longing that he did not understand. If he could, he would have run to her . . . if he only knew where she was. But who was this woman? What did she want? A fear crept into his heart then, a doubt.

But the more he looked at her, the more he longed to be with her, and his fears and doubts fled away. Why was that? Did he know her? He searched his memory, and couldn’t recall ever having seen her face.

Artorius reached out to her, but just like the glorious wooden bowl that he had seen, the image faded, and he awoke with a start.
It was still night, and he was next to the fire, now completely dead besides a little acrid smoke. The moon’s pale light sent wraithlike shadows from the trees and their swaying branches.

Dwin lay to the left, and Culann to the right. They were alone — and yet . . . The soft sound of rustling leaves caught his attention. Someone approached. It was a man in a black cloak, walking with stealth toward them. Now he hid behind a rock, then he slithered closer, ever closer.

Artorius nudged Culann, but his companion didn’t stir. He wanted to yell, but his voice froze in his throat. In rising fear, he sat up to find his blade and was startled to see the stranger standing not two paces away. And then it occurred to him . . . surely this was his father, Merlin, who always wore black. He had finally caught up on the way to the muster. In fact, Artorius, Dwin, and Cullan had set such a slow pace, it seemed to him, that he had fully expected the whole army to catch up with them on the trail.