by Tom Larcombe
The conversation came to an abrupt end as the door opened and the other three students filed in. Merlin kept a close eye on them but they appeared contrite and tried to act as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Come here Conrad, let me heal your hand. All of you should watch and I'll describe what I'm doing as I do it,” Merlin said
Conrad's eyes showed a brief flash of anger before he regained his composure and approached Merlin.
The rest of the class continued as normal. Before Merlin left for the night, he reminded Dieter to be ready first thing after breakfast tomorrow morning.
* * *
Merlin was eager to go and look through the journals again, keeping Herr Schreiber's recommendation in mind. Anguis was perched on the crystal, ready to start the night's dreams once it was late enough and Merlin showed him what to send.
{Anguis, here is what you'll send tonight.}
Merlin projected at Anguis again. This night's dreams would start with the outside of the research facility and move inside. Once the dreamers were inside the castle that housed the facility, dread would strike. They would follow a path deep into the bowels of the facility. Once in the lower levels, the memories would begin. All of the memories Merlin was shown by the crystal and the remnants of people within it would play through the nightmare, indelibly associating themselves with the research facility's basement. The only memories Merlin left out were those of Plamen after he was gassed.
{Can you handle that Anguis?}
The little dragon nodded his head wearily. Apparently even he was affected by the horror of what occurred in the memories.
Merlin sat back and rested in a light meditative trance. He wanted to conserve his energy since he was sure he would need it over the next several days.
Once it was late enough that most people would be asleep. Merlin asked Anguis to begin. The dragon nodded crisply and began his task.
Merlin split his awareness again and traveled back to the journal room. There were several more books on the table when he got there, the newly added ones were not even under glass. He moved to the last in line and a tiny mental effort opened it. This journal was much newer than the rest and still in good shape. The writing was Nimue's though and the text was in the runic language the translators complained of.
He found the last of the pages with writing on it and began to read.
'After all this time, Merlin's cottage is no more. It wasn't even on the front lines of the war and yet, somehow, a shell managed to destroy it. Merlin himself, the unchanging statue, is still safe. I wonder if a shell would even shift him should it land atop him.
I will leave now and help the French in their war. I shall return to look in on Merlin from time to time but after all these years, I fear that he will never come back to himself. Even within his spell he has aged, he looks much older than I do now. Always he was a man in the prime of his life, now he looks a graybeard. I still appear in my thirties, as I did when the last of the dragons disappeared.'
The date she had noted on the entry was only twenty-five years earlier.
Merlin's mind leaped back to the sketch he'd seen. Nimue was covered in the blood of a dragon. He remembered from what she wrote that she even swallowed some. She'd stopped aging the same way he did. She was still alive.
Merlin found himself back in his cottage.
Nimue is still alive. The dragon's blood must have stopped her from aging just as it did with me. I wonder if that's the twenty-five year old book the man was talking about when I first found that the journals were here? I wonder where they found the journals?
After a quick check with Anguis to make sure he was alright, Merlin sank into his bed, exhausted from excitement. He desperately wanted to sleep but with his excitement, sleep was unobtainable.
* * *
Chapter 16
In the early hours of the morning, Merlin tossed and turned. He began to doubt his plans, doubt his certainty that what he was doing was the right thing. His tired mind turned over one thought after another, wondering if maybe it would have been better had he never woken from his centuries long sleep.
As he lay there wondering if Nimue would be better off never knowing that he'd awoken, an image gently pushed its way into his brain. Nimue, staring at him as he slept his long sleep. Tears streamed down her face as she tried to reach out and touch him. The spell prevented her attempted contact and the tears streaming down her face redoubled.
{Thank you Anguis.} Merlin sent.
Now that his mindset was restored to where it should be, a stronger image intruded.
His former student Horst, peering in a window and seeing... Merlin, tossing and turning in bed.
Merlin roared with rage and sent his mind out. He found Horst immediately outside of his window. His former student was full of the power of the insane dragon.
{So Merlin, I tried to make it easy on you since she insisted. I tried to get you to simply give up and die. But now, this will be more to my taste.}
An onslaught on Merlin's mental shields followed. Images, thoughts, and feelings, none of them his own, went flickering through his brain as his shields were overloaded. He followed them back to Horst and sent his own attack.
He used the memories from the crystal and assaulted Horst's mental shields with them. Horst strengthened his shields and his attack lessened in intensity. Merlin split off the tiniest bit of awareness that he could and sent it to probe Horst's shields. As he thought, Horst never refined them after Merlin's original lesson. The probe slid into Horst's mind and began to search.
If I can just kill this one man, no-one will stand in my way. She said so. I could be second to only the Fuhrer. Everyone would do what I tell them without my having to make them do it.
Merlin went deeper into Horst's memories.
The world is mine. They'll all do what I want, I can make them do it.
The memory was accompanied by a series of images. Woman offering themselves to Horst, men giving him valuables, Horst's father apologizing for the way he'd treated him as a young man.
Merlin went deeper.
He'll never find me under the bed. Momma can stay out there, he won't beat her, he'll just do that thing to her that he likes. If he finds me, he'll beat me. He almost killed me last time, I can't take it again.
A hand grasped his ankle and drew him out from beneath the bed. Horst was held upside down as his father stared at him.
“Trying to hide from me? I'm going to beat you hard enough that you learn to never try that again!” Horst's father held him with one hand as he removed his belt with the other.
No, I can't take this again. I just can't.
Horst ...reached... for his father. He felt himself make contact with something. The only thought in his mind was for his father to just stop what he was doing. He stared as his father's motion ceased. Horst was held, dangling in mid-air, by his ankle. His father's eyes were blank and he barely drew breath.
{No! Get out of my mind!} Horst screamed into Merlin's brain.
Horst threw himself at Merlin mentally. Merlin's probe withdrew as Horst sent everything he could muster at Merlin's shields.
{You want to know fear, hopelessness, the surety that you're going to die?} Merlin sent, {So be it.}
Merlin carefully created a tunnel through his shields that guided Horst to Merlin's earliest memories.
I'm almost a man now, Poppa said so. I helped with the harvest and everything. He says we've enough food for the winter now and we'll be good until spring.
Young Merlin gazed at his mother and father. He'd turned twelve just a few days ago, in the middle of harvest, and all was right with the world. As he watched them talking and putting dinner on the table, his world went to pieces.
One wall of the cottage simply disappeared, the thatch of the roof going with it. A vengeful roar assaulted his mind, although his ears heard nothing but the destruction of the cottage. A scaled head replaced the thatch of the roof and a massive claw c
ame through where the wall once stood.
{Your kind killed my son. I'll have all of humankind dead for the blood debt!}
The dragon's claw collapsed the floor and Merlin fell into the basement, to land in the piles of produce he'd helped stack there days earlier. His brain refused to believe what he was seeing when the dragon's head reached in and snatched his mother out of the air. It worried her like a dog with a bone, then threw her to the side. His father was trying to get to the long spear mounted over the fireplace. The dragon saw his attempt and reached for him next.
Merlin's breath was driven out of him as he landed. He could do nothing but lie there and stare. His father climbed the edge of the ruined floor and placed a hand on the spear just as the dragon snapped at him. The spear fell into the basement with Merlin as his father disappeared out of sight.
Merlin never forgot the noises he heard then and was forever thankful that there was no visual memory to go with them. He was in a panic but there was nothing he could do. He regained his breath and began to move, placing his hand on the spear. It was long and unwieldy for his childish frame but he held it upright, point facing towards where the dragon disappeared.
A moment later the noises outside ceased and the dragon's head, blood spattered around its mouth, reappeared. With a childish cry Merlin hurled the spear upwards. It struck the dragon's snout and bounced off, leaving only a tiny scratch.
The dragon leaned farther into the ruins of the cottage.
{So, you would kill me as your kind did my son? You're too feeble, hatchling.}
Merlin's knowledge of dragons was limited to tales and stories. None of them claimed a dragon could smirk. This one could and when it did Merlin experienced a moment of utter terror. His brain screamed for help although his mouth stayed clamped shut. The dragon moved to pounce into the cellar and devour him.
The cottage was of better quality than most, or at least it was before the dragon attacked. A log framework was erected before wattle, clay, and thatch were used to complete the cottage. Merlin's eyes turned down to the floor so as not to see the dragon as it ate him. He focused on a log lying shattered on the basement floor, one portion ending in a jagged point.
If only I could lift that log and let the dragon land on it, was the thought that consumed his panicked mind.
His hand reached for the log, moving as though he could simply grasp it and stand it upright. A burst of pain struck his head and he watched as the log shimmered and stood upright, just as the dragon pounced.
The dragon impaled itself on the log, blood spraying everywhere. Merlin was coated in it. It poured over him as he gasped for breath and inhaled a lungful of blood.
My throat, my lungs! I can't breathe, I'm burning up.
Merlin tried to scream but all that came out was a mouthful of blood.
Now my skin, I'm burning up all over. There'll be nothing left but a cinder.
Merlin could still feel his whole body, much to his regret. The burning sensation passed and, once it was gone entirely, he collapsed to the floor.
He was never sure how long he lay there. He knew it was days but not how many. When he finally came to his senses he was ravenous. He searched until he found some of the food that wasn't spoiled by the dragon's blood and ate until he couldn't eat any more.
When he managed to climb out of the ruined cellar he looked for his parents. His father was nowhere to be found and the unpleasant crunching noise he remembered told him the body's probable location. His mother's body was in poor shape, bitten by the dragon and then worried by wildlife as he lay in a stupor in the basement.
Merlin left his parent's cottage, never to return. He walked to the nearby village.
“Help me, please? My parents, they were killed by a dragon.”
“Oh, go away Merlin. We've no time for your foolishness.”
The villagers refused to believe him when he told them he'd slain a dragon. Finally a pair of men went out to check his parents' farm, just to shut him up. When they returned, pale-faced and serious, Merlin's situation got worse.
“Now do you believe me? I need your help.”
“Get out of here. We'll have nothing to do with you. You must be possessed by a demon, how else could a scrawny runt like you have killed a dragon? Go away.”
The words hurt worse than the rocks and manure they threw at him to drive him out of town.
Merlin dragged Horst through the next two centuries of his life.
It was a generation before Merlin appeared old enough that others would treat him as an adult. When that finally occurred, Merlin tried to settle in one place. Ten years later, he was driven from the village with stones and curses. His apparent age was still the same as when he settled there and once again he was accused of consorting with demons.
Merlin's weakness was that he craved companionship. Both that of people in general and more specifically that of women. So once again he attempted to settle near a village.
The story repeated itself over and over through the years. He'd settle and become comfortable, only to be driven out when his eternal youthfulness was discovered. His apparent age was somewhere in his late twenties. For whatever reason, he'd stopped aging once reaching that point.
He tried to artificially age his appearance and his efforts bought him an additional decade anywhere he tried to settle. The price he paid was that when he was finally driven out, there tended to be more anger and violence. The people of the area assuming, rightly, that Merlin was deceiving them.
He took up with widow after widow. He dared not have children of his own. What would happen to them when he was driven out of his home. Would they age and die as he stayed the same? He didn't know the answers to these questions so he looked for women who had lost a husband and courted them. Those he chose were past the age where they could bear children. Even so, it was agonizing to watch them age as he remained unchanged.
It was a full two centuries before that pattern was destroyed and Merlin began learning to consciously control his magic.
With that memory, Merlin let Horst's efforts to wrest free of Merlin's mind succeed.
{You think that you're unique, that you're the only one something bad happened to when they were young? No, you aren't. You think you're entitled to whatever you want. No, you're not.} Merlin sent.
{It can't be. She said you must be a fraud, that Merlin would never awaken from his spell of sleep.}
{You've seen inside my mind. Make your own decision, don't let her do your thinking for you. What do you think?}
{You can't be Merlin, she said you weren't, that you were just some hedge wizard trying to play on his reputation. But, those were memories, real mem...}
Horst's sending broke off mid-thought.
Merlin, freed from having to use all his concentration to fend off Horst, jumped out of bed and raced to the window. Horst stood there, pointing a pistol at the sky. Blood streamed from claw marks on his scalp. Merlin slid through the open window so he was no longer trapped inside his cottage.
“Damn you bird. Who the hell are you, anyhow?” Horst yelled.
Merlin saw the gun and remembered the basic description Gunter gave him shortly after they met.
I need him to drop the gun. I'd just heat it up but that might cause the ammunition to explode. That would draw attention, which I don't need. Perhaps his hand then?
Merlin brought a small ball of fire into being immediately beneath the hand holding the gun. He flared it, concentrating the heat on the bottom of Horst's hand. The hand flew open reflexively and the gun fell to the ground. Horst spun to face Merlin.
“You, you're the cause of all this,” he said softly, “I get rid of you and all my problems are solved.”
He pulled a knife and advanced on Merlin. With Horst's attention focused at ground level again, the owl swooping down to open his scalp with its razor sharp claws came as a complete surprise.
The owl struck, tearing another long strip of flesh from Horst's scalp, then flew off into th
e darkness again. Horst howled in fury but kept his concentration focused on Merlin.
“Horst, you know that you can't touch me with your knife, right? Just as I shielded your first attempts to control my mind, I'll simply shield myself from your knife physically,” Merlin said.
Horst ignored him. Merlin shook his head and raised a physical shield. He stood calmly and watched as Horst approached. Unworried by the threat, Merlin again sent a probe towards Horst's mind.
There it is. He's spell-ridden worse than Herr Schreiber was. I can sever the connection but I don't know what it would do to him. The spell is tied to his magic. The more he tries to control someone, the stronger the hold of the spell on him grows. After his attempt to dominate me, it seems he has no control of his magic any more and little control over the rest of himself.
Horst leaped forward and struck at Merlin with his knife. Merlin was unworried, until he saw the knife penetrate farther into the shield than it should have. He glanced at the knife with his probe.
Demon shit! How did he find a draining weapon? I was sure they were all destroyed, Merlin thought.
Through his probe Merlin watched as Horst struck again. He saw the knife drain energy from his shield and feed it to Horst.
Well, so much for that plan, Merlin thought.
The only item in reach was the staff with its delicately unfurled leaves. Merlin left it sitting right inside the window so it would receive sunlight. He reached into pick it up and prepared to defend himself with it.
Merlin waited. When Horst struck at his shield again, he swung the staff at the hand holding the knife. When the staff touched Horst's flesh, there was a flash as bright as sunlight. Horst winced and retreated, clutching his knife hand to his chest. He still held the knife though.
Was it the light or something else about the staff? Merlin wondered, Let's check the light first.
Merlin reached in his pocket and withdrew the sun crystal. He held it out in front of him, catching Horst in its illumination. His former student backed out of the range of the light, whining as he did so.
