by Daniel Diehl
“Come in Chen.”
He entered the room with a slight bow, closing the door softly behind him before taking his accustomed position a respectful distance from the big desk.
“Judging by that hang-dog look on your face I assume you didn’t find the old man’s body.”
“No Missus, I fear not.”
“Begin at the beginning. I want details, all of them. Don’t leave anything out.”
“The old man and the boy were heading north in my Jeep when they eluded our pursuit cars.”
“Destroyed your pursuit cars, don’t you mean?”
“Yes, Missus, as you say. Destroyed our pursuit cars. As we no longer had any operational vehicles, six of my men and I followed them on foot. It was not until the second day that we acquired a truck from a passing motorist.” Chen grinned slightly in spite of the awkwardness of his situation “The former owner will no longer be needing it.”
“Yes, yes, you hijacked a truck and killed the driver. Spare me the insights into your sordid little pleasure stops and stick to the point.”
“My apologies. We had no difficulty finding the place where the encounter between Dr Fu and the fugitives took place...”
“I assume Ling Chu didn’t make it, or he would be here with you.”
Chen looked down at his muddy socks, studying a small hole, before placing one of the items he had been holding on Morgana le Fay’s desk. It was a round, pillbox style hat covered in fine black Chinese silk; now discolored and caked in dried mud. Sticking out from beneath a large black button in the center of the crown was a bedraggled pheasant feather.
“So I guess he didn’t make it. Tell me about it.”
“It must have been a great contest. The force of their struggle seems to have ripped away the entire side of a hill.”
“Possibly I underestimated Merlin. That old man has obviously been practicing. Did you find him?”
“Dr Fu? Yes. It was very sad.”
“Not Ling Chu, you idiot. Why would I care about his carcass? Tell me about Merlin. I want to see his head, damn it.” She slammed her open palm on the desk so hard it sounded like a pistol shot.
Chen flinched at the noise in spite of himself. “My men and I searched through the debris for many hours, Missus. We found Dr Fu’s body and that of a Buddhist monk but we failed to...”
“A Buddhist monk?”
“Yes. It was very curious. Beneath the landslide which engulfed Dr Fu, my Jeep and its passengers, we found the body of a Buddhist monk. He was further down the slope than the body of Dr Fu, indicating that either he was at some point lower on the hill when it collapsed, or was already near the bottom and simply caught unawares by the landslide. I would have assumed the second of the two possibilities except for this.”
Chen took another object from his hand and laid it next to Ling Chu’s ruined hat. Morgana reached out and lifted the small piece of cloth, which was no more than an inch square, looking at it, rubbing it between her fingers.
“Silk. Good quality orange silk. Where did you get this and what does it have to do with a dead monk?”
“Please forgive the observation, Missus, but it is not orange, it is saffron; and it is a fragment of the sash worn by all Buddhist monks.”
“Hmm.” She nodded thoughtfully, finally looking up to lock eyes with Chen. “This is from the body?”
“No, Missus. I retrieved it from the interior of my poor Jeep, caught on a rear door handle.”
“Stop whining about your bloody car.” Her gaze shifted back to the scrap of cloth. “So the monk was in the car with Merlin and the boy.”
“Monks, Missus. Plural.”
Morgana’s eyes shot back up to Chen’s. “Why plural? What makes you think there was more than one of them?”
“Buddhist monks, like roaches, rats and other vermin, always move in groups.”
“But you only found one body?”
Chen inclined his head slightly in concordance.
“That means that more than one monk was in the car before Ling Chu intercepted them.”
“So it would seem.”
“Why? Why were Buddhist monks in the car?”
Chen shrugged. “Possibly the old man was doing his good deed for the day. He may have given them a ride.”
“But you only found the body of one monk.”
Chen nodded again.
“So maybe everyone in the car wasn’t killed. Since you haven’t brought me Merlin’s head I assume you didn’t find his body, or the boy’s either?”
Chen tossed his last object onto the desk. It was a soiled leather pouch and the sight of it made Morgana smile ever so slightly.
“Well, well, well. Merlin’s handbag. Let’s see what the old bastard had on him when he was sucked down into the mire.”
Loosening the drawstring on the pouch, she tipped the contents onto the desk. There was a fist full of crumpled bank notes, mostly Mongolian but also some British pounds, a few coins and a key. There was something else in the pouch, but it refused to be shaken out. Morgana reached inside and removed the stubborn object. Nearly six inches long and half as wide, it was flat and wrapped in a piece of soft cloth. Once she unwrapped it, Morgana found herself staring at her own reflection in a broken piece of mirror. Morgana’s smile widened as she tilted the piece of glass first one way and then the other. Finally, she laughed.
“Some mornings, Chen, it’s almost worth getting out of bed.”
“Missus?” Chen had been expecting a tirade of abuse when he delivered the news that Merlin and Jason were, in all probability, still alive. This unexpected laughter left him confused, surprised, and a little frightened.
“You don’t know what this is, do you?”
“No, Missus.”
“This is the old man’s crystal ball. He uses it to spy on people. The fact that it’s on my desk, means that even if he isn’t dead, he is either hurt or in big trouble because he would never leave this behind. Do you know why?” The question was entirely rhetorical. “He wouldn’t leave this behind because without it he can’t see me. He has no idea where I am or what I’m doing. As far as I’m concerned, he’s blind.” After a pause to check her reflection in the glass, she looked back at Chen. “Where, pray tell, was this?”
“Strangely, it was at the top of the hill; above the road and far above the point where the bodies and the car were.”
Morgana stood up from the desk, smoothed the wrinkles out of her violet and red butterfly-print kimono and began pacing up and down past Chen. “So what do we know? The old man and the boy escaped your pathetic soldiers and headed north. At some point they picked up more than one Buddhist monk before encountering Ling Chu. Chu put up a formidable fight but even with the help of his demons he wasn’t good enough. There was a landslide and somehow the esteemed Dr Fu Ling Chu, along with at least one monk and the car, were caught in it. Why wasn’t the monk’s body inside the car?”
“Possibly because he had gotten out before the Jeep crashed over the cliff?”
“Right. So that means that Merlin, Jason and the other monks must have gotten out of the car, too. Ling Chu seems to have waited too long to execute his plan.”
“So it would seem, Missus.”
“Somehow, at some point, and for some reason, Merlin went to the top of the hill...”
“He was not the only one, Missus.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“There were many footprints leading up the embankment and they were all obviously made after the landslide. Most of them appeared to be sandals which would indicate peasants or more monks.”
“Anything else?”
“A single European style hiking boot.”
“Jason.”
“Or the old man, perhaps? That was where I found his pouch.”
“I wonder what Merlin was wearing on his feet? No matter. We know that some of the monks survived and at least one other person, presumably either Merlin or Jason, did too. You found no other bodies?”
“None. My men were very thorough. If there were more dead, the monks took them away with them to be buried elsewhere.”
“Now that brings up an interesting point.”
“Missus?”
“Where were those damn monks going in the first place?”
“I don’t know, Missus. Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters, you fool. Think, man, think. Merlin and the boy gave a ride to a group of Buddhist monks. That means the monks were going in the same direction as they were - north.”
“Of course. And if either the old man or the boy is still alive...”
“The monks would have taken them along with them.”
“The Missus would have made a brilliant detective.”
“Well, find out where they are, Chen, don’t just stand there licking my boots.”
“Missus?”
“Don’t be so bloody thick. You live here, Chen. Your men live here. Ask around and find out what might attract a group of Buddhist monks. A shrine, a temple, something.”
Chen smiled. “Yes, Missus. I will find this place and my men will kill everyone there. No one will escape. I promise to bring you the old man’s head. And the boy’s if you like.”
“No.” She wagged a cautionary finger in front of his face. “You just find the place and tell me where it is.”
“Are you certain, Missus?” Chen seemed genuinely disappointed.
“Oh, yes, I’m certain. And bring me the keys to the lower levels.”
“No one has gone there in many years except Dr Fu. Even I have never been down there.”
“Well, you won’t have to go there now, either. Just bring me the keys, and then find out what kind of place would attract a bunch of Buddhists. I have to visit a very old friend. I want to extend a little farewell luncheon invitation to him.”
“Farewell, Missus?”
“Yes, farewell. As soon as I’m sure Merlin is dead, I’m going home.”
“We will be so sorry to see you leave.”
“Are all you Chinks so duplicitous, Chen?”
“Missus?”
“There is nothing in the world you want more than to see me leave and we both know it.”
“Just as you say, Missus.”
* * * *
Morgana’s footfalls echoed through one passageway after another as she descended into the labyrinth of tunnels and dungeons beneath the ancient fortress. Walking through the silent darkness, her way lit only by the narrow beam of a flashlight, she hummed to herself. The tune was Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. She thought of it whenever she felt good, and right now she felt better than she had in many, many years. A tiny chill of childlike excitement ran down her back as she stopped in front of a massive iron door. Holding the light at eye level, she unlocked the peephole and pulled the small shutter open, shining the torch into the inky darkness beyond.
“Are you asleep, you poor old thing? Wakey, wakey. Do you recognize my voice?”
Deep in the darkness, much further back than the beam of light could reach, there was a faint stirring. A heavy, ponderous rustling and a slapping thump echoed in the blackness.
“Poor beast. How long have I had you locked up in here? Centuries. You’ve missed so much. I thought of you so often during the Spanish Inquisition. All those people sizzling and burning and screaming. And the death camps during the last big war, tens of thousands of people incinerated. You would have loved it; I know I did. And all this time you have been locked up here, going to waste.”
By now the sound of her voice had awakened the thing in the space beyond the door. Finally, it opened its eyes. Even in the dark they had that dangerously hungry glow that can sometimes be seen in an animal’s eyes just at the point when dusk calls out to things that hunt in the night. These eyes were a lot like that, but much hungrier and far more evil. They were also much, much bigger.
“Oh, there you are sleepy head. You’re like that poor Caliban creature in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; all that fury held in check by that nasty Prospero. Well, aunty Morgana is about to set you free. Just for a little while, this time. But once you clean up this little mess for me, I promise I will let you out again and then you can go play with your brothers and sisters for as long as you like. I wonder if the old bastard will recognize you. I’d give anything to see the fear in those big, blue eyes - just that one second of stark, blinding terror before you roast the hide off his bones.”
Chapter Thirty
It was one of those days when nature conspires to create a spectacle that no painting or photograph could ever reproduce; once the image has been captured, the drama of the moment is lost. Jason had been standing on the outward-facing balcony of his room for nearly half-an-hour watching the light show caress the face of the valley. A light snow had fallen during the night, blanketing the hillsides in a layer of white that was being transformed into a soft mist rising to meet a lemon yellow sun as it broke through the low lying clouds. The bottom of the cloudbank was painted a deep, battleship gray, but the tops were as huge, white and fluffy as cotton candy. Through breaks in the clouds sunbeams drew moisture from the mist below, making the valley look like a renaissance painting of the Annunciation.
It was rare for Jason to have time to himself in the early morning. Usually, Merlin was already up and working by the time he crawled out of bed, and Jason knew he should be enjoying this extraordinary moment more than he was. But his mind kept drifting back to the evening before. Merlin had become completely obsessed by the cryptic passages in the Gnostic book and refused to talk about anything else. Rubbing his head and pounding his fist on the table, Merlin muttered incessantly about bogus holy men, fake warriors, doors, windows and waters of oblivion, as though repeating the sounds would bring understanding. The Lama tried to distract the old man by plying him with one cup of hot rice wine after another. While most men would have become insensible, Merlin only became more and more engrossed - not so much with the meaning of the cryptic passages but with his inability to interpret them.
“I should have known there would be a cave involved.” Merlin had shouted at one point.
“Why should you have known that?” Jason tried to alleviate the self-blame that had descended over Merlin like a shroud.
“Because to save the earth you must go into the earth. The underworld is the natural home of dreams and nightmares and only there can they be confronted and conquered.”
The Panchen Lama nodded silent assent, but to Jason none of these esoteric ramblings made any sense. “I don’t understand, Merlin. What does the ground and holes in the ground have to do with dragons who may, or may not, come from outer space?”
“The earth is the giver and source of all life.” Merlin stared hard at Jason, trying to make him understand ancient Celtic concepts of nature that no longer had any place in the cosmology of the twenty-first century.
“That I understand. But what does it have to do with the dragons?”
“As the source of life the earth is also the source of all mystery; life itself being the greatest mystery of all.”
“Ok.” Jason was just managing to follow this obtuse line of argument.
“And as the center of all mystery, the earth is also the holder of all secrets, including the gate to the underworld, what my Celtic forbearers referred to as Anwyn.”
“You mean like the Biblical hell?”
Merlin shrugged. “Possibly, but not necessarily, and certainly not exclusively.”
And so it went, hour after hour; Merlin insisting he should have known a cave was involved with the dragons, but admitting he had no idea where this cave might be. He was sure the answer lay in the convoluted passages in the book, but had no insight as to how to interpret them. Finally, in sheer frustration, Jason went to bed shortly after one a.m., leaving Merlin, Sun Wang To and the third bottle of sake to sort it out among themselves. Now he stood on the balcony, staring up at the sky, enraptured by the scene, particularly by one cloud, half a mile down the valle
y, which seemed to be moving at a slightly different speed than the rest. That’s when he saw the foot.
When confronted by something incomprehensible, the human mind tries to fit the unknown thing into an identifiable pigeon hole. That was what Jason’s mind did now. His first thought was Why is there a giant chicken foot in the sky? But almost as soon as the thought formed, three more feet broke through the belly of the cloud. They were not really like chicken feet at all. They looked more like the talons of some gigantic bird of prey - huge, grasping and invasive. Seconds later, a leathery tail shot out of the cloudbank, slapping and twisting like an immense worm skewered on a fishhook. By the time the snapping head and beating wings appeared, Jason was frozen in fascinated terror.
The wings thrashed through the clouds, rending and disbursing them with slow, rhythmic beats. The noise sounded like a wet blanket on a clothesline, snapping in the wind: whump, whump, whump. With a spread exceeding a hundred feet, the wings were dark, leathery nightmares, but they were not nearly as frightening as the thing’s head. Long, crocodile-like jaws surrounded by an irregular fringe of hideous yellow teeth sat on the end of a massive, horned skull. Around the mouth were dozens of twisting tentacles like those of a catfish, each one bright with electrical charges as sharp and alive as tiny lightning bolts. Then the thing opened its mouth. Like a jet’s afterburners, the noise slammed the air with a solid wall of sound. A second later, the roar was followed by a wave of flame and smoke that would have been the envy of any volcano.
This was not the sympathetic dragon of a cartoon or fantasy novel and it was not some misunderstood friend of mankind. This was a malign, demonic nightmare straight from the bowels of hell, complete with savage red eyes and slavering, fiery breath - a creation of pure, unmitigated evil - and it was headed directly toward the monastery.
