Merlin's Nightmare (The Merlin Spiral) (48 page)

M
erlin pulled himself up on all fours. His knees ached and his lungs had only begun to recover.

But Arthur was fuming at the men’s inaction and pulled Percos up by the back of the tunic. “We have to keep running or they’ll catch us!”

“How far?” he asked.

“I don’t know. We need weapons . . . or an island. Preferably both. We run or we die. Up!”

Something in Arthur’s words struck Merlin, and he closed his eyes to think.
An island . . . an island? Where are we heading?

He looked to the moon and, just as Colvarth had taught him, he found its two points and drew an imaginary line down to the horizon. This point was south . . . therefore the moon was in the southwest, which meant that they’d been running . . . where?

The men began to stand. Arthur was prodding them to run again.

Merlin searched his memories. Where was Dinas Hen Felder, the place they had set out from? Named “Old Watchful” by the locals in Kernow, he had heard the name all through his childhood, but couldn’t think where it was positioned on a map.

He pushed himself to a squatting position, and finally stood. As they set off once again — legs aching, lungs tired, and throat raw, he finally realized what lay ahead . . .

Bosventor.

The village where he’d grown up. Where his father had kept a smithy until that fateful night when the sword had been thrust into the Druid Stone. The events flashed before his eyes, each one appearing with the rhythm of his feet —

His father cried out on the floor in pain. Mórganthu gloated above him with the sword of the High King in his hand.

Left, right.

Merlin ran at the druid, cutting off his hand. Mórganthu screamed and ran from the smithy. The Druid Stone roared in anger . . . blue flames so high.

He leapt a ditch. Left, right. Left, right.

Fire. And Natalenya! She was trapped behind the Stone. He tried to drive the sword into the Stone with his father’s hammer, and failed. The flames burned his hands.

Merlin ducked a branch, his strides quickening with the flood of memory.

Natalenya reached in
,
strengthened his grip. He tried again, only to have lightning lash at him from the Stone. The vision. He hammered again.

Left, right.

The flesh on his hands burned away . . . Dear God
,
help! He slammed the iron head down. The blade pierced the Stone and he drove it through and out the bottom.

He nearly stumbled, but kept going. Left, right.

An angel healed Natalenya. Healed him. But his father lay dying.
Dead. Merlin buried him under a cairn of rocks and tears. His old life was gone. Ashes.

Bosventor.

The realization was so shocking that Merlin ran without breathing, and the effort nearly killed him. They might go to Bosventor! If they could keep the path, and not be pushed off course by the werewolf, then they could find the marsh beyond the village. And in the marsh was an island.

Inis Avallow. The Isle of Apples.

There, alone in all this dead wilderness, was refuge from the werewolf and his snarling wolf-heads. A plan kindled in Merlin, and he doubled his speed until he caught up to Arthur.

“Keep running toward the moon!” he said, panting. “There’s an island ahead in the middle of a marsh. We can swim there!”

“Will there be enough water?”

“There should be enough . . . it’s fed by many springs.”

Arthur nodded as he turned his head and glanced at Merlin, a glimmer of hope in his red-rimmed eyes.

Bosventor!

They ran for the better part of a league, following the moon, and all the while Merlin listened for pursuit, yet none came. The land began to drop, the trees thickened, and though the ground became stony they found themselves running on a thin path that snaked downward.

“Water!” someone shouted ahead, but then there was a scream.

The men in front came to a sudden halt, and Merlin had to press through to get to Arthur.

“Wolf-heads!” someone yelled.

Arthur looked to Merlin, as if unsure what to do.

“Forward!” Merlin shouted. “We have to cross the water!”

Another scream, and the men began to trample backward. Someone’s shoulder shoved Merlin, and he tripped on a rock. He tried to climb up again, but there were so many loose rocks that he couldn’t find a grip before another man fell over him.

“Rocks!” Merlin called. “Throw rocks!”

Arthur seconded the call, and order was soon restored as the men armed themselves.

Merlin got to his feet, three rocks in his left hand and two in his right.

“Forward! It’s only a few of them!”Arthur called, and the men surged toward the water, throwing rocks at the wolf-heads until the creatures blocking their way had fallen back, howling. The men rushed through the gap across the stream. The water was hardly over Merlin’s ankles when the man just behind him screamed. Merlin had one rock left, and he threw it at the wolf-head who was pulling the warrior down — who was Mabon! The rock solidly hit the creature in the side, but it didn’t let go. Merlin grabbed his dirk and stabbed the wolf-head low in the back.

The creature screamed and fought back, scratching his human-looking hands at Merlin’s face, jabbing him in the left eye.

Merlin kicked his knee into the wolf-head’s stomach, and it finally fell, twisting, into the water. Mabon slammed a huge stone upon it, ending the creature’s life.

Some warriors helped their injured companion to stand and together they rushed across the stream to dry ground.

Behind them, the werewolf himself arrived with the rest of his army and bellowed in a rage, his shoulders shaking and his teeth snapping.

They ran, slower, for another part of a league until finally Arthur’s strength gave out. He halted them near a mound of large, flat granite boulders. Arthur climbed up and lay down on one as if it were a bed, his chest heaving and his legs splayed out in exhaustion.

Merlin was more than glad for the rest, as his left eye felt swollen and his lungs were like burning embers from his father’s forge.

His father’s forge.

His father . . .

Oh, that his father were there — alive and still working in their family’s blacksmith shop! Was someone else smith now? What had
happened to Troslam and Safrowana? To Allun the miller? To all the good people of the village?

What of Dybris and all the other monks? Were any of them left in the village?

But Arthur was up once more and pushing the men.

“It’s not far,” Merlin told him, “Maybe one more league, and . . .”

“An island. You’re sure there’s an island?”

“Yes.”

Soon they came to a cross-path. Rushing into the woods beyond, they arrived at a clearing, which Merlin entered at first with uncaring, unseeing eyes. Then the realization of where he stood brought him to a standstill. It was the Gorseth Cawmen — the druid circle just outside Bosventor. The stones towered above him against the trees, and silent as a grave. Uther’s grave it was too — for here the High King had been murdered by Vortigern. Memories from the past flooded Merlin’s head.

Druids chanting. Drums pounding. His father’s failed fight with Mórganthu. Brother Dybris yelling as he was captured and thrown into a wicker cage with the other monks.

Mórganthu’s call for the people to bow and worship the Druid Stone. His yell for the crowd to burn the monks:

Flames blaze and burn the witches!

Fire! Flames! Destroy the witches!

Caygek planning with Merlin on how to save them.

It all came back.

“Run!” Dwin yelled, waking Merlin from his thoughts. The man grabbed Merlin and yanked him along.

The circle passed behind him like a dream. Like a nightmare. They descended the hillside where the pines began to thin and were replaced by beeches. Down they went, faster and faster until they came to the Fowaven River.

As they splashed across, Arthur yelled, “Rest a moment! We’re safe once more.”

Merlin knew the truth. “There’s a bridge to the south where the wolves can cross. Run!”

Across the moorland Merlin dashed, and soon came to the withered shore of a once-broad lake, now much reduced in size. He stopped. Lake Dosmurtanlin, the water where he had once thought his mother drowned. Yet it wasn’t so, for she still lived beneath the surface — changed forever by the Stone into a water creature. Merlin longed to —

“Run!” Arthur yelled, for the great werewolf surely had crossed the bridge and, howling, would soon be upon them.

Merlin regretted it, but he started running and left the lake behind. He longed to call out to his mother in hope that she might hear him, but his ragged breath prevented speech. To his left rose the Meneth Gellik — the mountain upon whose southern side his village was built — yet here on the northern side he could see only a hint of the fortress on its western spur. So close, yet he couldn’t stop as the ground descended toward the marsh. Some of the men had already reached it and were swimming for the island.

Most of the reeds on the receded shoreline were dead, and there was a stronger stench than Merlin remembered. Safety was so close. He ran past the dead skeleton of a deer, its skull stuck in the dry mud, through the rattling reeds, and dove into the water. Its warmth enveloped him and filled him with such joy at finally being safe.

The swim across the marsh was farther than he had remembered, and his right calf began to cramp up so that he had to float on his back for a long way, sculling with his hands. His leather-and-scale armor weighed him down, and he was tempted to pull it off, but he persevered and finally reached the rocky shingle of the northern landing. He pulled himself ashore: wet, tired beyond the frontiers of exhaustion — and safe.

It seemed a long time before the last man made it ashore, and many had to be dragged from the water half dead.

Then, across the water came the roaring of the werewolf. The sound sliced through the air and set Merlin’s teeth on edge. And
only after Merlin collapsed shivering and laid his head down on a stone to sleep did he remember the fishing boats over at the village.

If the werewolf found them, then nowhere was safe.

Not even the island of Inis Avallow.

Nowhere.

Merlin forced himself to rise and look for Peredur, but he couldn’t find the horse master among the men. Desperate, he called for him, but the man simply wasn’t present. Somewhere along the trail he had slipped from the group and been lost.

Merlin fell to his knees and pulled on his hair, wanting to rip it out. Peredur — his brave and loyal friend. How could Merlin not have noticed him falling?

To the east, the sun began to trace its lonely finger across the horizon in a streak of red and gray. And with the coming of dawn, Merlin prayed for Peredur’s safety, and that they all might have one day of rest and preparation.
Just one day . . . just one day . . . keep him safe . . . please keep him safe!

Sleep overtook Arthur so quickly and profoundly that when dreams came he didn’t remember where he was. He was flying — flying across a land bespeckled with verdant hills and flowing rivers, where wild roses were knit together with sweetbriar, and the cowslips grew among the violets. A land of peace, where no sword needed to be drawn.

Arthur watched as all these beautiful things passed by, his eyes wide and mouth agape in startled ecstasy.

And then she was there.

The woman in the iridescent, blackbird-feathered cloak . . . and she was flying behind him. Whenever he turned to see her, she flew just out of his sight, and a dark hood hid her face.

“Do you see all this?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It can all be yours, Arthur. Imagine with me a land of peace
and safety. It is within your reach, but you must take hold of it and never let it go.”

“How can I?”

“I will show you . . . yet how does any king reign? How did Uther reign before you?”