Merlin's Nightmare (The Merlin Spiral) (56 page)

“Let me go!
Midga tiwagged stoulyer!
”

Arthur sat up with Myrgwen’s help, and he held on to her arm while she looked sorrowfully on.

Melwas struggled between Caygek and Bedwir, and he was so violent that he slipped from Caygek’s grip and smashed Bedwir in the gut, then turned and ran.

“I’ll get you, Arthur!” he yelled. “I’ll stick your head on a pike, I will!”

Gogi groaned between them and tried to sit up again.

Caygek came and, with Arthur’s help, rolled Gogi to his side. The big man spit out gobs of thick blood. “Arthur,” he said, choking, “Take care . . . o’ my daughters. Melwas . . . is too hateful . . . ya know . . . he . . .”

“Father,” Gwenivere said, her voice thick with greif, “You’re going to get better. We won’t leave you!”

“I’m so sorry,” Arthur said. “I shouldn’t have . . .”

“Quiet!” Gwenivere yelled, her chin quivering and her teeth bared.

Gogirfan sneezed. With a great strangling, sucking noise, the giant died, his body falling limp and his eyes losing the light of life.

Gwenivere wailed and held on to her father’s belt, shaking him as if to wake him.

“Do you forgive me?” Arthur asked.

“I’ll never forget this. Never forgive you.”

“Do you hate me?”

She spit at him. “Yes. Ever and always.”

“Only me?”

“Yes and
yes
and
yes
!”

Arthur swore that until the day of his death he would never forgot the cruelty of her words.

Gwenivach lifted up her father’s head and kissed his cheek.

Culann arrived then, his boots crunching tentatively on the gravel. With wide eyes, he placed a hand on Gwenivere’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked up and blinked at him through her tears.

“It’s my fault,” Arthur said. “I never should have gotten him involved.”

But no one responded, and Arthur was left alone to his thoughts, a black leech of guilt sucking at his soul.

“Arthur . . .” Natalenya said, breaking the silence. “Where’s your father?”

Arthur wanted to hide. What could he say?

Natalenya stood and took hold of his shoulders.
“Where’s Merlin?”

He hugged her while his own tears began to flow.

“Is he . . . is he . . . ?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“No. He’s not dead. But he was taken captive by wolf-heads. I . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Dear and Holy God . . . have mercy,” she prayed, her words trailing off as sobs overtook her and made her whole body shake.

Arthur locked gazes with Taliesin, and saw fear mixed with exhaustion there. Tinga had fallen asleep in the boy’s arms, and he haltingly stroked her hair.

“You mean Tas isn’t coming back?”

“We will pray,” Arthur said, making every word a vow, “and though I don’t know when or how, I promise you I’ll find him. I’ll bring him back.”

Merlin moaned. The world hurt, that was all he knew. Every blasted, wretched part of it ached. What he wanted was to go back to sleep where the clouds spun in ethereal colors while glowing angels held his hands, guiding him along paths of serene beauty and flowing waters. Fruit grew there in abundance and he longed to eat of it, but their luscious, shiny ovals were always just out of reach.

And now with the vision completely faded, his back hurt, and something painful was pressing at his head. He tried to shift his legs, but they felt twisted and numb.

“Struggle, Merlin . . . yes, struggle,” said a woman’s voice. “But it is quite useless, and there
is
no escape.”

Merlin turned toward the voice and opened his eyes. He lay in a dank-smelling cave lit by a smoking torch. Before him stood Mórgana, his half sister, her eyes aflame with an unholy delight. He fought to sit up but his legs — tightly bound — thumped into a tripod supporting a large cast-iron pot that hung amidst a pile of ashes and half-burnt logs. Merlin’s wrists were also tied.

“It is time for you to weep, my bardic brother, for all the plans of your enemy have come to complete fruition.”

Merlin spit out a few small pebbles that had found their way into his mouth. “It’s over,” he said. “You lost the battle and now your werewolf is dead.”

Mórgana laughed, and the voices of three men joined in from behind her. Merlin blinked and saw Mórganthu — his old nemesis — now old and wrinkled. Another was Loth, whose presence here in Bosventor shocked Merlin. The two had fought atop King Atle’s mountain temple in the northern lands of darkness, and Merlin truly thought him dead. How could he be here?

The third man’s hooded face could not be seen from where he stood in shadow. Shorter than Loth, he was nonetheless strong and had a dangerous-looking sword strapped to his hip.

The mocking laughter continued, louder and louder, as if Merlin had spoken some astounding joke.

Finally, Mórgana kicked him in the chin, knocking his head back. His whole skull rang, making a tender spot on the right side hurt. That’s where one of the two wolf-heads had cracked him with a club.

“Did you think, my dear Merlin,” Mórgana said, sneering, “that you and Arthur came to Bosventor of your own will? No, you were driven here like goats to the slaughter. Oh . . . and I really care nothing about the outcome of the battle, or the ultimate fate of my puny werewolf. He deserves his death for impiously flouting my commands. You see, the entire goal was for either you or Arthur to survive . . . and to force you by my careful plotting to pull the sword from the Druid Stone.
Nothing else mattered
.”

The Stone! Merlin had forgotten all about it since the wolf-heads had attacked him. He had been proud when Arthur pulled the sword out. It was by right the lad’s blade, and it was of such fine workmanship that Merlin had always wanted to retrieve it. His father had made it, after all, and given it to Uther.

But now a new thought struck him. Had Arthur, by removing the blade, somehow revived the Stone? His stomach twisted.

“I see the confusion on your face, dear brother, so let me clear things up a bit.”

“Don’t listen to her,” came a voice from behind Merlin. “She’s been telling me lies ever since — ”

“Quiet!” Mórgana shouted. “I will not have such insolence from a monk.”

Merlin rolled onto his back and turned his head to see who had spoken, and the sight filled him with both joy and sorrow.

“Dybris?” Merlin exclaimed as a familiar, grim face peered at him from a dark corner of the cave. Dybris was the monk who had brought Garth to the moor sixteen years ago and had helped fight Mórganthu and destroy the Stone. But Dybris was in poor shape, now, with his right eye was badly swollen, and an infected gash marred the skin on his neck.

If Merlin were free, he could have hugged the man. “What are you — ?”

“This part of the cave is my home, and I was taken prisoner yesterday.”

And it was true. This must be the storage cave behind the old, burned-down abbey. Garth had once bragged to Merlin about sneaking in here and pilfering a few snacks from the barrels. Merlin had admonished him, sure, but the boy had been proud of it. How he ever got past the locked door, Merlin never knew.

Dybris struggled, but his feet were tightly bound with rope, and his arms were tied behind his back.

“And so, my lucky prisoners, behold the Druid Stone in its last, final glory!”

Mórganthu struck his staff at a dark spot of the cave. A blue flame exploded from the Stone, which had lain hidden there. But there was something different about the Stone now, for it was larger than Merlin remembered it and its surface was no longer a weird mixture of black and silver. No, it was a translucent blend of weird, swirled colors: the black of coal, the green of algae, and the white of grub worms.

And something moved inside of it. Squirming. Writhing. Twisting. Humming.

It was alive!

“Ah, what joy to see the horror on your face, dear brother! For what has long been concealed inside the Stone is now hatching. Your error, and everyone else’s, was thinking it a Stone, for it was never such.
It is an egg.
And from its glorious crust shall be born twins that shall terrorize the earth and bring ultimate power to the Druids.”

At these words the humming increased until Merlin felt the stone floor beneath him vibrate and shake.

Mórgana knelt, placed her hands lovingly upon its pulsing surface, and began to sing.

O hatch thou, my master’s drakes; Now break forth, ye flaming snakes.

Hewn of rock — the Voice’s bud, cleft from stone — with thirst for blood!

Speed thy birth, my awful drakes; Split thy shell, ye ghastly snakes.

Break the bones — as dreadful beast; Crack and kill — for frightful feast!

O come thou, my fearsome drakes; Take and rule, ye blazing snakes.

Brood of wind — with brutal sting; Spawn of night — to slay the king!

But as her voice rose in ecstatic singing, the Stone calmed and ceased to vibrate. The itching hum fell away, as if whatever lay hidden in the Stone were listening intently. “Your sword, dear brother, prevented these two from hatching — but now that the blade has been removed by a hand that was able to claim it properly, they will come forth. Watch and tremble!”

Merlin couldn’t take his eyes off of the egg, for she spoke the truth. Under her hands the shell began to crack, quiver, and convulse. Then with a jerk that surprised even Mórgana, a small section broke away and slipped to the floor. The scaly nose of a creature pushed through the hole, bubbles forming in the green, gelatinous slime that spewed forth as the creature breathed in and exhaled for the first time.

Merlin watched in horror, his heart beating so hard that it would surely burst.

The creature fought against the shell and finally broke through, its entire head slipping out into the cold air of the cave.

It was a lizard . . . a dragon!

The skin was white, it had curved horns like a goat, and the tips of its teeth were sharper than needles. But there was something odd . . . the dragon was missing one of its four longest fangs, and where the tooth had been there was only an uneven scar. The blade that Merlin had thrust into the Stone must have cut it off.

Soon, the rest of its snakelike body slipped from the egg.

A sulfurous cloud belched outward, and Merlin almost choked on the stench.

For the dragon’s size, the creature had small arms and legs, each ending in a claw-like hand. The dragon was six feet long from the tip of its tail to the curve of its wickedly sharp fangs. On its back lay a set of scaled wings, folded now and sodden with slime.

Mórgana began petting it.

“Poor dragon . . . you’ve been through a lot, haven’t you? Now to birth your brother.”

She reached into the egg and searched amongst the slime.

“Where has your brother gone?” she shrieked. “There were two here . . . a white dragon and a red one. But — but — ”

Loth bent down and turned the egg on its side, emptying it. “He’s nay here. Are ya sure you weren’t imagining it? Could you have misunderstood the Voice?”

“NO!” she screamed, and struck him in the face.

Loth fell backward with the smoking outline of Mórgana’s handprint on his cheek. “Th-then . . . perhaps the blade slew ’im, and his body dissolved.”

“That must be it,” Mórgana said, scowling. “But ultimately it is no matter. This was the larger, and shall soon be strong enough for all of our purposes.”

Mórganthu stepped near, smiling as he stood over the dragon while shaking his druid stick with all its tinkling strings of little seashells. “But now — but now the dragon needs its first meal, does it not?”

“Yes it does. I had almost . . . forgotten, shall we say.”

Mórgana stood and glared at Merlin and Dybris.

“You, dear brother — along with the foolish monk — shall be the dragon’s very first meal. This doom of yours was requested by the Voice and I have endeavored to deliver you both. Yes, a tasty snack!”