by Tom Larcombe
“I like to think of as the Spooks, Spies, and Sorcerers mess hall,” John said.
Nigel growled at John.
“If you would follow me,” Nigel said.
The mess hall wasn't crowded, it was only at half capacity.
“You can always find something to eat here, but hot meals are served from six to eight in the morning, an hour to either side of noon, and from five to seven at night,” Nigel said.
“Assuming you can keep the stuff down,” John added.
Nigel just sighed.
Merlin and the other men grabbed plates and loaded them with food. As they ate, Merlin found himself agreeing with John. The food left a great deal to be desired. When they finished eating, they returned to the barracks they were assigned to.
“You were saying that you could help with low energy levels?” Merlin asked.
“Oh yes. I'll go grab some of our storage devices,” Nigel said.
He left and returned a few minutes later with a stack of crystals. Merlin could sense that each one held a small amount of power.
“I'll need to use four to teach English to my companions. Then I'd like one for myself so I don't feel so drained.”
“Help yourself.”
Merlin did so and after inflicting headaches, and the English language, on each of his companions he drained the final crystal to begin filling his reserves.
“Did you know there is a ward that will bind the energy within and prevent it from seeping out?” Merlin said.
“What? We need to learn that,” John said.
“I'll show you later on if you like.”
“If you don't mind, we'd like to hear your story now Merlin,” Nigel said.
“Wait one more minute. I want to get something,” John said.
John left and came back a few minutes later carrying a box. He reached into it and handed Merlin a bottle.
“I'm guessing a few of these will help the story along,” John said.
He handed out more beer to the rest of the men in the room with only Nigel declining.
Merlin settled in and told them the story of his awakening and what occurred after. There were several points in the story where Nigel tried to interrupt and ask questions but John silenced him each time.
When Merlin finished, it was late. John turned to Nigel.
“Any of those questions you remember now are important enough to be asked.”
Nigel looked chastened but recovered quickly. He proved that he did remember several of his questions and fired them off one after another at Merlin.
“Are you sure the crystal was destroyed? And the research center also?”
“Can you teach that long range communication to some of our people?”
“How were you able to identify the properties of artifacts you knew nothing about?”
Merlin answered them in like fashion.
“As best as I can tell Plamen did as agreed and destroyed both.”
“I can teach it to them but only if they know the person they are contacting well.”
“The spells used on the artifacts gave me the clue. If I knew some of the spells used, I knew what it was normally used on or in conjunction with and experimented along those lines. If I did not know it, I could sometimes get a clue as to the purpose of the spell by insinuating my awareness into it.”
“Well, looks like this is the last of the beers. You want it Merlin?” John said.
“No thank you John, I am fine.”
“No use for it to go to waste then,” John said.
He opened and drained the final bottle.
“Okay, if you're up to it. I want you to show me that binding to prevent energy seepage tomorrow,” John said.
“Give me ten hours of sleep and I should be able to do so,” Merlin replied.
As Nigel and John left, Merlin and his companions settled into their beds. Merlin felt the comforting feel of Anguis squeezing his neck gently. An image appeared in Merlin's mind: Anguis flying into the dawn light, finding children to play with, then returning and providing Merlin with energy.
{Only if you feel it's safe. Are you fully recovered then?}
He felt the tiny dragon's head shaking back and forth against his neck.
{What do you need to fully recover?}
The same image appeared in Merlin's mind as was there a few seconds earlier.
{Then yes, please do that if it's safe.}
* * *
Merlin spent the next few days instructing John on how to create the binding to prevent energy from seeping out of a storage crystal. The crystals he was offered for energy were charged to a much higher level originally. Frequently, by the time they were used, a great deal of it drained back out. John wanted to learn the binding well enough to teach it to the people who did the charging. As he said.
“If we can double the power we give our wizards it's sure to make a difference.”
Johann was set to showing British and American engineers the JU 88 and explaining everything he knew about it. Gunter would have been at loose ends but when they found out he was wounded during the escape, he spent the next several days in the hospital, despite Merlin's healing.
Anselm and Ernst resumed their lessons under Merlin. After Dieter died, Ernst brought his bag along, not wanting to leave anything of Dieter's to the Germans. Inside the bag they found a copy of every transcript the Germans had given the students. Merlin immediately turned those over to Nigel with the explanation that the Germans were using that information to train some of their wizards.
John left as soon as he learned the binding. He promised to return in a few weeks, as soon as he could. In the meanwhile he asked Merlin to continue training Anselm and Ernst, and to start training a few British and American students as well.
Merlin found himself at loose ends for much of each day so he spent the time with Anguis. The little dragon rarely failed to cheer him up when his grief for Dieter grew too much to bear, and was always trying to obtain more energy for him. Two days after John departed, Merlin was sitting in the barracks watching Anguis perform aerial acrobatics.
He heard the door open and assumed Anselm or Ernst was returning for some reason. As he watched Anguis his nose was aroused by a familiar scent, one that had stayed with him throughout his long sleep. Anguis darted across the room and when Merlin turned, he saw the little dragon sitting on the shoulder of a woman.
Her hair was shaded darker so it contained nearly as much brown as blonde. Her figure was thicker than he remembered, but that happens to everyone as they age. She and Anguis were staring at one another, locked in communication. When she turned away from the dragon Merlin saw that her eyes were the same as he remembered, bright and alive with curiosity, although they held an additional depth now. She appeared to be in her early thirties but one look at her eyes betrayed the lie to that.
“Nimue?”
The woman smiled.
“Merlin.”
They stood apart for a bit, each staring at the other. When Merlin opened his arms, Nimue slid into them. The embrace lasted a shorter time than Merlin desired. When Nimue stepped back from him, his regrets grew.
Nimue hit him in the stomach, hard.
I'm sure she used some magic to back that up, Merlin thought as he gasped for breath.
“Never do that to me again Merlin. Never!” Nimue said.
“What?” Merlin gasped.
“Never leave me again, not even for thirteen days, never mind thirteen centuries. When you contacted me I was slipping into senility. There was nothing for me, no-one. When everything ages and dies or keeps changing, there is no anchor for your sanity.”
“I'm sorry?” Merlin said.
“I thought I was finally senile and falling into my dreams when you first contacted me. When you contacted me the second time I gained hope. Whatever you did was felt by wizards around the world. I knew then that it was truly you. Never was there a man more suited to disrupting things than yourself.”
Merl
in grimaced.
She may well be right, he thought.
“Now, we've an appointment to keep.”
“What appointment?” Merlin asked.
“You told me that when you returned we would handfast. That tradition has gone out of style, its modern equivalent is marriage. So I took the liberty of contacting a clergy member at this airfield. He'll perform the ceremony this afternoon.”
Merlin was losing ground. The conversation had left him behind and he was making no progress towards catching up.
“What?” he said.
“You said that our apparent ages would match better. You look to be in your early to mid-thirties, as do I. So your conditions are met and I intend to hold you to your offer. You aren't trying to back out, are you?”
The gleam in Nimue's eyes told Merlin that backing out would be a poor choice.
“I'm not trying to back out Nimue. I'm simply trying to catch up.”
The old Nimue peeped through for a moment.
“Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you'd be eager for this after all these centuries.”
“I am eager, Nimue. But in my own personal time line it hasn't been centuries, not even years. I'm still trying to adjust to a fully grown, mature you. When I first woke I was sure you must be dead after all this time. Then I found you were alive, and now I find you are spectacular. My mind reels and I'm trying to assimilate it all,” Merlin said.
A smile peeked through the sterner expression on Nimue's face.
“You always were a silver-tongued bastard. I can tell that what you said was mostly true so I'll forgive the exaggerations.”
Merlin's face broke into a smile. The expression was contagious and shortly spread to Nimue. This time their embrace lasted much longer. When they finally disengaged Merlin felt more energized than after any of the times he indulged in sex since awakening.
All this from only an embrace. I begin to think that she sheds magic like the dragons, he thought.
“We can postpone the wedding for a few days. I didn't really ask the clergy to perform the ceremony today. I just wanted to see your reaction,” Nimue said.
“I'm willing but I would prefer to find out more about marriage before committing to it with you. How similar is it to being handfasted?”
* * *
When Anselm and Ernst appeared later on, Merlin introduced them to Nimue. She discouraged any great familiarity on their part with her biting speech but was willing to converse with them about anything of a non-personal nature. Merlin informed the two men that he would now start using the separate room in the barracks that was normally reserved for non-commissioned officers.
Nimue was charmed by Rein, even if she kept Anselm at a distance. The owl was as willing to perch on her as he was on either Merlin or Anselm. As the two wizards and the two students spoke, Anguis and Rein played a game of musical shoulders, drawing laughter from all present.
Merlin and Nimue talked late into the night. By mutual agreement they spoke about nothing of great import besides their possible wedding. When it was time for bed, Nimue grew silent. Merlin took her hand and gently pulled her towards his room. She sighed in relief and allowed herself to be guided to Merlin's bed.
* * *
In the morning they discussed other things. Nimue gave him the highlights of her past thirteen hundred years.
“I know some of this. The Germans were in possession of your journals and I skimmed them as I could,” Merlin said.
Nimue blushed.
“Merlin, how could you?”
“I thought you dead, I wanted to know what had transpired for you. As far as I knew that would be the only contact I ever had with you again.”
“I'll forgive you, this time. Yes, the journals were hidden near your cave. If they found you, they could surely have found them.”
“Find me they did. At the start, I didn't know how the spell was broken. After speaking with Gunter, another of my companions I've yet to introduce you to, I determined that the most likely cause was an artillery shell detonating on top of the hill my cave was in. Several of the crystals were destroyed and that broke the spell.”
“So what happened to you after that?” Nimue asked.
Merlin related his story to her, leaving out some small parts that he felt might disturb her.
“Merlin, you aren't telling me everything.”
Merlin sighed. He wondered if living with a woman that he couldn't conceal anything from was a good idea. He resolved to take it as a challenge and discover some way to do so.
“There were a pair of women as well. The first was a spy, they tried to use her as a hook to ensure my cooperation. The second was just a willing barmaid trying to earn some extra money. I thought you were dead. Even so I felt guilty, which was a new experience for me when it comes to friendly sex.”
Nimue smirked.
“You've always been a randy goat Merlin. Did you think that all your visits to the widows while you were training me went unnoticed? Perhaps by other people but not by me.”
“There you have it then, that's my tale. I have some questions for you if you don't mind.”
Nimue nodded.
“You said the dragons disappeared. I don't think they're dead, I came across some evidence suggesting that some, at least, are still alive.”
“Several of them are still in the world at large. The rest are, as best as I can tell, trapped somewhere else. Their trail led to a cliff face where the entire thing showed signs of enchantment. The magic was tied to the caster so I couldn't dispel it. I believe that the dragons lay behind that enchantment. I don't know whether it leads to a cave deep within the earth or some sort of pocket dimension created by the caster.”
“Were the dragons still on this planet, even deep within it, their magic would filter to the surface. I think your latter theory is more accurate,” Merlin said.
“I discovered more about the caster, parts that I didn't dare commit to writing. The creature that created that spell was a dragon and she was also insane.”
Merlin paid close attention, suspecting that he might have knowledge of this dragon's whereabouts.
“Her mate was slain by knights, knights from Camelot. Although Arthur was long dead by then and the priests of the Christian God were in control.”
Nimue stroked Anguis fondly.
“The blood of that dragon was used to create Anguis. He died trying to help me break the spell on you Merlin. The dragons felt that were you active in the world again, you could ease, or even stop, the violence against them. Several of them lost their lives trying to help me break the spell.”
Merlin shook his head sadly.
“None of them should've risked their lives for me.”
“They said that one of their kind had done an injustice to you and that they were attempting to balance the scales.”
“The story of my childhood. I can tell you some other time if you like. Please continue.”
“There isn't much more. I tracked the dragon who entrapped the others to Camelot. Camelot was gone, completely. Not a trace remained. The land it was once located on looked as though it were wild growth, old wild growth at that.”
“I can't say the concept bothers me too much,” Merlin said.
“The dragon then returned to the area near where the others are imprisoned. One other thing I found out about her was the name she uses for what little human interaction she has. She allows humans to use the name Ave for her.”
“A literate, insane dragon with a sense of humor? That's worrisome.”
“More worrisome still is that she can either shape-shift to human form or possess a human body. She spends most of her time in human form nowadays from what I've been told. I was keeping track of her from afar but she disappeared about ten years back.”
Something was nagging at Merlin. He reached to tug his beard, but his hand grasped only empty air.
“There's something...”
He shook his head.
“There may be som
ething we can do about this...”
* * *
Merlin and Nimue spent the day together. They were aware that they would need some time to adjust. Nimue wasn't the same person after thirteen hundred years and Merlin wasn't as she remembered. Each of them had many questions for the other, both about their tales and about things that weren't mentioned in them. Their time together was interrupted when a hesitant Johann entered the barracks.
“Merlin? I hope I'm not intruding.”
“No, you're fine. Johann, I'd like you to meet Nimue.”
Johann looked at her.
“I'm pleased to make your acquaintance. But I need Merlin for a bit.”
Nimue gestured towards Merlin, her palm raised as though putting him on offer.
“Merlin, can you undo whatever you did to the wing? The British engineers are trying to repair the plane but they can't get to the damaged section of the wing.”
{Anguis, is that shield still anchored there?}
Anguis sat upright, looked at Merlin, and shrugged. His shoulders rolled and his wings flared as he tried to copy the human gesture.
Nimue and Merlin both broke out in laughter. Johann, who didn't see Anguis shrug, stared at them as though they were insane. Merlin replied when he caught his breath and could speak again.
“It will all work out Johann. Let me come see what I can do.”
To be Continued in:
Merlin's Travels
An Untimely Error
#2
Other books in An Untimely Error:
Merlin's Travels - Book #2
Merlin's Target - Book #3
Other books by Tom Larcombe:
Crystal Beach - Crow Hill #1
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