Merlin's Ring

by H. Warner Munn

  He raised his weak hand to his face. His beard, always scanty because of his Aztec blood, was thin, but long. Dust lay thick upon it and upon his skin. His hair was long and matted with dust. How much time had passed since he had been laid here? How many years since he had been—forgotten?

  No! Not forgotten, for he felt that h’e had been watched and tended. Those faces he had seen! Surely, they were real, if all else was fancy!

  In the past, he had met and mastered other illusions, but none like these last. He had spent much time in a place that must have been real. He could map and chart it. He could still smell its sweet scents. He would never be able to rest until he visited that mystic bourn again.

  He turned upon his side and groaned with the electric tingling of renewed circulation. He struck his palms against his thigh and the pain seemed more than he could bear. He massaged his legs, kneading out his iron cramps, and rubbed his hands together.

  His fingers felt like brittle sticks and were covered with oddly shaped lumps. Then it came to him with his increased-ly returning awareness of the present, that these were rings that covered almost-solidfy his fingers and his thumbs.

  Memory came back. Was Merlin’s Ring among them? His finger tips searched among the other jewels. Yes!

  He searched his remembrance for the proper spell. His slow thoughts stumbled. He concentrated with a terrible effort of will and the words came haltingly out. He rubbed the engraved opal that was the bezel of the ring and it began to glow like a brightening ember, smoky crimson shot with livid green at first, then kindling to a vivid scarlet.

  Now the cavity in which he lay could be dimly seen, and as the ring stone ran through the intermediate shades of orange, yellow, and brilliant argent light, the circle of his vision widened.

  Across a narrow corridor were other recesses in the stone. He looked up and counted five tiers of them in the opposite wall, some empty, others cemented shut as though other bodies than his lay within. Names, crosses, pictures, and murals were painted on the slabs that concealed those entombed.

  How was it that his lay open to the air? Was it known to someone that he was not truly dead, although he lay hi what he could only consider as being a vast underground ceme-tery? He directed the beam from the- ring upward. The ceiling of the corridor was also stone, rough and gashed by chisel and pick. He was only inches from the floor. Now he had the strength to roll out of his cavity. He did so, fell heavily and lay there panting, but he felt that his strength was fast returning.

  Something had fallen crisply with him. He clutched it and found it to be a tightly rolled parchment scroll upon a knobbed spindle.

  He breathed deeply, feeling his lungs creakingly expand within their pleural chamber. It was painful, but he raised first to his knees and then his feet. He ran his hands about the confines of the niche and then over his body.

  Now he remembered the appointment he had sought with the Pope. It all flooded back. How he had hoped to divert the Pope’s interest from the dubious venture in the East, called a Crusade, to the certain benefits available in the West, which knowledge about the twin continents of Alata and Atala only he could impart to the man who gave imperious orders to Kings and Emperors.

  How, at the very moment of the approaching interview, he felt the curse of his long sleep come upon him, the main drawback to the long existence his draft of Merlin’s Elixir of Life had conferred upon him.

  How long this time? A day? Centuries? Where was his lost love? His Corenice?

  He had not worn his sword when he went to his appointment with Pope Urban, but he had tucked his little flint hatchet hi his belt, under his outer clothing, for he had noticed that others wore ceremonial daggers. As a prince of Alata, lacking a dagger, the tomahawk had to do.

  During his incarceration, and it was coming home to him that it had been very long, his clothing had been changed. He was now dressed in loose, flowing robes of coarse brown linen and shod in sandals. Beneath it he felt himself cinctured by his old leather belt, studded with Roman corns, which his mother had given him when he left Aztlan.

  Nothing else. He had been disarmed but not robbed, for, running his hands around his pallet, he found that the little ax lay in the niche. He jammed the scroll in the rough cord that bound his robes and slipped the ax into it also. Now he had a more secure feeling than before.

  Something dangled around his neck and struck against his chest. He felt that it was a crucifix. He tucked it into the bosom of his robe, thus doubly guarded.

  As he faced the wall he saw an inscription over his resting place. “Arcanum Sacrum” he spelled out—Sacred Mystery.

  He wondered painfully who had painted it while he lay there lost in dream, but there was nothing to tell him.

  Now that he was erect, he felt an infinitely faint waft of air against his face. Probability to the contrary, for it would seem that his body should be completely desiccated if his fears were to be found correct, his efforts had caused him to slightly perspire.

  Thus more easily sensing the direction from which the draft was coming, he followed it down the long corridor he was in, passing row upon row of sealed tombs. How many miles if one traced all of the intersecting passages to their ends? How many dead lay here in their thousands upon thousands, awaiting the Resurrection that he had alone so strangely experienced?

  He went on, trusting his ephemeral guide. Occasionally he flashed the beam from his ring upon some of the inscriptions that he passed, mentally translating the faded phrases;

  “Vivas in Deo. In pace Christi.” occurred frequently, but someone, wife or husband, had also written “Here lies my beloved in the Lord.” A little farther on, he saw the picture of a young girl, pretty and pensive, limned in vanishing colors upon the slab behind which she slept. Beneath it was inscribed in straggling letters, as though the writer’s hand had trembled, “She was as sweet as honey,” No name and nothing more.

  Here and there lay husband and wife together and above them, once, the words: “They dwelt always in sweetest wedlock. Pass on, holding them in good memory.”

  Pass on he did, nor could look again at any of them, for now his heart was full of Corenice and the memories were of her and he felt more lorn than he thought anyone who had left a loved one here could have ever felt.

  Then there were no more crypts in the wall and the passageway slanted more steeply upward. There were no crosses painted or cut into the rock as there had been and no more sacred inscriptions. He noticed also, now that he was beyond those deeper regions long sanctified by worship, tears, and prayer, that the air was no longer against his face, even though he should be nearing the spot from which it had originated.

  Instead, the current had reversed itself and was now an almost tangible pressure against his back! It was almost as though some vast body, or piston-like mass, was pushing upward through the black corridor behind him, filling it from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, driving the air against him, first as a breeze and then more rapidly blowing as a wind.

  He cast the light beam backward. There was nothing, but the gust that struck him was fetid and repulsive and distantly a sound became apparent. A swishing, flowing gurgle that came up and up.

  He turned and ran up the slope, but when he came to the place where the faint draft had entered, he found it to be a rough hole barred across by a grating of heavy iron.

  He seized and shook it. It was firm and held by a strong lock. The thought came to him that he was trapped, for the sound of a crepitant rushing was very close. He remembered then the wizard at Roncesvalles, who had warned him against his Master, the Lord of the Dark Face, and had advised him against going underground, where that Lord held great power.

  He shook the grille in desperation. A little rust dribbled out of the lock. Suddenly the tumblers clicked and it flew apart He had not realized that he had touched it with the hand that bore the ring.

  He scrambled out and stared through a clump of bushes into a little cemetery, studded with crosses, sleeping
placidly under aloof and brilliant stars.

  He slammed the grille shut behind him and snapped the lock upon it. The crucifix slipped out of his robe and swung against his breast. At that moment, whatever had followed him up the passage came into view. He saw it as a mass of incredible blackness that surged toward him in a rolling motion, crowded with little sparks of brilliance like a myriad gleaming eyes, which tumbled over and over as the thing came on and yet somehow kept him in their glare.

  No grille could hold that oozing danger back. He ran to the nearest cross and pulled it from the ground. He leaned it against the iron lattice and closed his eyes, praying.

  He heard nothing, but he sensed a withdrawal, a shrinking back, and as fear came upon the monstrous terror in the passage, courage came to Gwalchmai.

  He opened his eyes. The corridor was empty. There was a rosy flush in the sky and a gentle freshness in the air. A little west wind was blowing and he fancied he could smell the sea.

  His knees trembled and he sat down upon a stone in the hallowed plot to wait for the dawn. His hands pained and although his fingers had shrunken during his long incarceration, the rings clustered there so thickly began to feel tight.

  He stripped them off, leaving only Merlin’s ring, whose stone was now darkly no more than any other precious opal. In the strengthening light he could already see that some of the rings were of great value, set with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, with here and there a diamond of price—the hoops invariably of pure, massy gold and the workmanship most elegant.

  He searched his robe, but he had no pockets. Around his sleeves were broad cuffs. Using the sharp edge of his hatchet, he detached one and unfolded it. This gave him a small pouch, large enough to hold the rings. He ripped off a strip from the hem of the robe, tied the little bag tight and hung it around his neck, alongside the crucifix, which in daylight he made out to be silver.

  In addition, what he had taken to be rosary beads were, instead, small golden corns. Someone had provided for him well while he slept and he began to have an inkling of that person’s identity.

  By the time he had finished it was quite light. Now he could look around. The cemetery was situated hi the bottom of a long deserted quarry. The stratas of building stone had been removed most anciently and Nature had labored at healing the wound in the earth. Sandpits had been filled by water, leaves, loam from -above, and other detritus. New soil had been created and there was a sparse growth of bushes and occasionally an flex tree of an umbrella pine. Nearby were a few puddles of water front a recent rain, standing in some of the hollows where discarded slabs of limestone still lay exposed.

  He stumbled over and drank deeply, emptying several. He soaked up water as a sponge might. Now his thickened blood coursed more quickly through his veins. His temples throbbed and he sluiced the liquid over his face and hands.

  There was no one about and no sounds nearby. Distantly there was a murmur of life as though the city was awakening, but he could not determine if he was within its confines.

  He stripped and bathed, using the remainder of the water as well as he could. When he had dressed again, he felt refreshed, but weak.

  The sun had risen above the edge of the quarry, and as he sat down to rest for a few moments in its warmth before essaying the climb along the ramp the wagons had used, he unrolled the scroll and began to read.

  It began: “My beloved and most indolent husband”

  He started violently. How could Corenice have found him here?

  He unrolled the scroll to its full length and scanned it carefully. The language, in its entirety, was Latin, but it was written in several shades of ink, with different pens. In some entries, he noticed that paint and a tiny brush had been used.

  Once a few lines had been added without stain or pigment, as though these had been scratched into the parchment with a sharp point, by someone lacking anything else to write with. It was apparent that the long letter had been inscribed by several hands and at different times, yet the handwriting was always the same—precise, clear, and feminine.

  It continued:

  “I sometimes think that we must be the playthings of the gods and that they move us about for their pleasures as they obey other forces, perhaps beyond their comprehension.

  “It is true-1—as Ahuni-i told Thor—his days were numbered.

  “No one really believes in him any more. When the thunder peals, people no longer look up to catch a glimpse of his chariot, for he has lost his power and none fear his hammer.

  “Instead, they kneel everywhere to the Cross upon which your Lord suffered and so address their prayers.

  “What a strange thing! I am told that He preached only love and mercy and forgiveness—yet I have seen cities drowned in blood to do Him honor!

  “No one ever hurt another person to please my sweet Goddess—my Spirit-of-the-Wave. Can you wonder that I give her my worship?

  “She watched over you for my sake in your travels and brought my spirit over those weary miles of yours, when that curse of sleep fell upon you that has parted us.

  “How long will it be, my darling, before we can hold each other as we did?”

  The next entry was in another color of ink:

  “The body I was using became restless and afraid to be underground and I had to leave it. I do not seem to have the power to assume control here for the time I can possess a body on the surface.

  “Something fights against my possession of it. I have not often known fear, but I feel a dread of this place. I do not think you are in danger. I felt of your ring and it was not hot.

  “Be careful when you leave this sacred place. It will be then that Oduarpa will strike, if it is he and if he can.

  “I think that when his body was killed at Gebira in that war of the magicians of Atlantis against his dark hordes, his spirit was released to do more terrible things. Please be careful—for me!

  “They were going to bury you in the ground, where there would have been an end to our love forever, but I would not let them.

  “I saw you fall and I knew that what your godfather warned you against had come to pass. I entered the body of the doctor who examined you and how I convinced them that you must not be buried!

  “You would have marveled to hear me. I was eloquent!

  “Finally, they came to believe that you were a saint, for you went on sleeping. For a long time, people came to look at you.

  “Can you credit that they actually prayed to you and some went away healed? You have powers I would not have imagined, knowing you as I do.

  “I know where you are, because I can see your eyes move under their closed lids. You are always watching something. You smile, so I know you are happy.

  “Do you remember how our friend, Flann, thought that when a person’s eyes moved like that, he was wandering in the Land of Dream and looking upon the beauties of it? How I wish I could be with you!

  “I cannot stay with you very long. I have to hasten back to my body in France, for fear something might happen to it, but I can came again, in the night, when our friends think I am sleeping.

  ^They took such good care of me when I was sick and could not go to Rome with you. I think they almost thought I was the daughter they wanted and never had.

  “I came so many times, to see you. Did you know when I wept over you, so lonely I was for you then? Other eyes, but my tears!

  “So lonely I am for you now, my very dear! My only love!

  “In the end, such crowds came to see you that you were taken away secretly and placed in this sanctuary underground and after a long while you were forgotten, because no one remembered you but me, who cannot forget you and who will wait for you till you wake.

  “Others do not remember the things they do not see, but I shall see you often.

  “He was such a beautiful little boy. I wish you could have seen him, my darling who sleeps and sleeps and never answers me. He was strong like you and his hair was brown like yours. He had blue eyes. There were n
ever any tears in them—not even when he fell and hurt himself. He was always brave.

  “I wanted so much to hold him at those times and comfort him, but I could only watch over him as I watch over you.

  “I died when he was born.

  “My body is gone now. I waited so many years to have one with which to love you and now again I must be only a transient upon the earth, but you will wake and I shall have another—Ahuni-i has promised me. So sleep and rest and I will care for you and keep you well and unharmed, but now I am torn between two who are part of me and you are so far apart!

  “Would you believe that he is a grandfather now and I sometimes hover as a hummingbird over the playing babies of his son?

  “How long the years are, but how fast they sweep over us! Down here, nothing ever changes, but much has happened in the world above. It seems there is no end to war and trouble, yet somehow people managed to live and work and many.

  “I watched the eons pass, when I stood as an orichalcum statue in the swan-ship that floated above my drowned Atlantis, but those years were not like these. I watched nations born, and thrive, and die. I did not care then. It was all like a play, an entertainment arranged for me to watch! Ah! I was not waiting for someone then—there was no one whom I loved.

  “So much has happened in these-seventy years.

  “You would never have been given those ships. The Pope we heard speak at Clermont died and there have been nine others since.

  “None of them, I think, would have cared about Alata or wanted it. They have been so concerned with events in the East.

  “The Crusade Pope Urban preached went out in its iron strength and conquered Jerusalem, but it was a dreadful thing to watch. Your Lord could not have been pleased by it.

  “Since then there has been another one, but it failed and there has been fighting ever since: little wars that may not stop for a long time.