The Merlin Chronicles: Box Set (All Three Novels)

by Daniel Diehl

  Remembering the first time Merlin appeared to him at the Archaeology Department reception in the guise of the long-dead Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, Jason speculated aloud as to what form he might take when he visited Fr Marcos. “Are you going to go as God?”

  “Certainly not. I’m shocked that you would even suggest such a disrespectful and blasphemous thing.”

  “Ok. So who then?”

  “I haven’t decided. But I guarantee it will get his attention.”

  Still chuckling, Merlin said his goodbyes as Jason wandered through the gathering purple twilight toward the fence that enclosed Fr Marcos and the long-hidden object that had become the entire focus of his mission.

  * * *

  It was nearing the noon hour when Jason returned to St Mary’s church. Today, rather than leading the way, Ras was following close in his wake. As they approached the compound Jason could see that the heavy wooden doors were again flung wide, but inside the scene was entirely changed. Rather than the sleepy tranquility that had met them the day before, there were now monks and priests running aimlessly here and there, and wandering clutches of churchmen were talking to each other in hushed tones while other groups jabbered excitedly, waving their arms in every direction. As they crossed the dusty courtyard, Jason and Ras could see Fr Marcos pacing furiously back and forth along the raised walkway in front of the treasury building, his white robes billowing out behind him, making him look like a square rigged ship under full sail. Realizing immediately that the excitement had almost certainly been caused by whatever Merlin had done, Jason hurried toward the gate in the high, wrought iron fence. As he approached, Fr Marcos spotted him, waved his arms over his head and ran down the ramp to meet him.

  “Mr Carpenter, Mr Carpenter” the old man shouted. Clearly he was seriously over-wrought. His trembling hands fumbled with the lock on the gate and he nearly jerked Jason off of his feet in the rush to get him inside. “The most wondrous thing has happened. All of the brothers and fathers are talking about it. The bishop was here before dawn and is now holding services in the church to celebrate.”

  “Slow down, Father, you’ll hurt yourself. Let me come in and sit down and then you can tell me all about it.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Come right in.”

  Still pulling Jason by the arm, the guardian led the way up the ramp and toward the door to the treasury building. Turning back over his shoulder, Jason motioned Ras to stay put, offering him a reassuring nod before disappearing into the perpetual gloom of the treasury. Stepping around Fr Marcos, Jason and one of the acolytes helped the old man to his seat, trembling with excitement and completely out of breath. Even as he allowed himself to be lowered onto the pile of cushions, the priest was tugging at Jason’s arm, drawing him nearer.

  “You will not believe me when I tell you, but I have had the most glorious vision.”

  Jason eased himself down on a pile of pillows next to Fr Marcos and leaned forward thinking Whatever Merlin did he really must have outdone himself this time. Looking as innocent as he could, Jason asked “Does this have something to do with the Ark?”

  “Yes, yes. I prayed for guidance and was granted a vision of no less than the prophet Moses himself. Think of it, young man, the greatest of all prophets and the savior of the Hebrews and God chose to send him to me.” The old priest’s leathery black face appeared to be in a state of near ecstasy as he recalled the events of the previous evening.

  “You must tell me, Father, what did Moses look like?”

  Anxiously, Marcos leaned to within inches of Jason’s face and grabbed his hand, squeezing it painfully as he talked.

  “He was quite tall…and very slim. His hair and beard were long, white and flowing and he was dressed in a gown with an over-jacket of some kind of fur…”

  Jason smiled to himself. Merlin hadn’t altered a single thing about his appearance.

  “…and he glowed with the glorious light of heaven.” Laying his palm on his shrunken old chest, the treasurer continued in a hushed, reverent tone of voice. “And he spoke to me.”

  “What did he say, Father?”

  “He only confirmed what I have vaguely suspected for years. That great serpents were about to bring the end of the world down upon us and that it was time to reveal the Ark of the Covenant so that its healing properties could work for the good of mankind.” Raising his eyes expectantly, he continued “Would you like to know what I believe he meant?”

  Jason already knew what Merlin meant and what he had done. He had spoken in vague terms and let the old man fill in all the blanks with whatever he believed. It was the con man’s oldest ploy. “By all means, Father, tell me what he meant?”

  “I already explained to you that it is my belief that the murder of Emperor Haile Selassie, more than four decades ago, marked the beginning of the end of the world.” Jason nodded in agreement. “But I had always thought it would be a religious war that would bring about the end of civilization – something brought on by al Qaeda or some other violent faction - but now I see that I was wrong. It is what Moses said about the great serpents that showed me the way to the truth. You see, there is an ancient Coptic prophesy which says that the end of the world – also known as the Night of the Drop - will come during the month of Paoni – the period between June eighth and July seventh in your Western calendar.”

  “And?” Jason was now completely lost, shaking his head in confusion.

  “And in the ancient Egyptian calendar there was also a month of Paoni and it was during this month that the Egyptians believed that their serpent god, Apep, would rise up and attempt to devour the disk of the sun – symbol of the god Ra. Do you understand now?”

  “No.” Jason could see how the old priest made the connection between this ancient Egyptian legend about the serpent god and Merlin’s vague allusion to the dragons but he wasn’t sure why this seemed so important to Fr Marcos. “I’m sorry but I don’t know the legends well enough to make the connection. I mean, I’m really glad you’re going to give me the access to the Ark, but I don’t understand the connection to the Egyptian gods Apep and Ra.”

  “Then possibly the way to the clearest explanation lies not in telling you, but in showing you. Come.”

  Hauling himself to his feet, Jason offered the old guardian a hand, which he took gratefully, admitting that the wonder and excitement of being visited by a messenger from God had left him exhausted. Moving across the room to an antique trunk, he opened it and produced two flashlights, one of which he handed to Jason.

  “The electricity has been out all day,” he said with a wan smile. “One of the pleasures of living in the third world. It really doesn’t matter; no lights have ever been installed in the place where we are going. Now, if you will follow me, I will answer all of your questions by showing you that which only a handful of men have been privileged to see over the past three millennia.”

  “You’re actually going to let me see the Ark of the Covenant?”

  Making his way to a small alcove in which hung an elaborately embroidered tapestry, Fr Marcos never said a word but nodded solemnly as he drew the tapestry aside to expose a small door made of roughhewn planks. From around his neck he extracted a delicate gold chain with an ancient iron key attached to it. Leaning forward, he inserted the key into the lock of a door so low he would have to duck to pass through it. When the door creaked open he disappeared down a dark, narrow stairway, motioning for Jason to follow.

  With no light except the thin, constricted beams of the flashlights to guide him down a steep set of stone stairs worn hollow by centuries of use, Jason felt like he might pitch forward and fall on top of Fr Marcos, sending them both crashing to the bottom. Throughout the first two flights of stairs the walls of the stairwell were made from cut stone blocks of the same type used in the construction of the treasury building, but after the second landing Jason’s fingers told him that they had now descended below ground level into a subterranean passage hewn from the living rock.
Further and further down he followed the old priest until they finally came to a level floor. Father Marcos stopped long enough for Jason to catch up with him before he started to speak in hushed tones.

  “This is the treasury within the treasury, the sanctum sanctorum. Here the most precious and sacred objects of the Christian faith are kept. There is almost no moisture in the Ethiopian soil so nothing deteriorates here.” Then, turning away again, he motioned Jason to follow him into the impenetrable blackness of the tunnels ahead.

  Desperate not to trip over his own feet, and equally anxious to examine his surroundings, Jason flicked the wan beam of his flashlight back and forth from the floor to the walls of the tunnel. In the wavering beam of light Jason saw row after row and rank upon rank of niches carved into the stone walls of the passageways. Like shelves in some mythical museum of the strange and arcane, in each of the hollows he caught fleeting glimpses of objects whose use and meaning he could not even begin to imagine. Sometimes neatly arranged as if they were on display in some Victorian parlor, and sometimes piled in haphazard jumbles, the only thing Jason could occasionally define was the passing flash of light reflected back from some surface of purest gold or the twinkle of white, red, green and blue gemstones. It was all he could do not to scream at Fr Marcos to stop and let him examine some of these wondrously tantalizing things, but he was not here to browse through what might well be the most amazing museum on earth. Somewhere up ahead the Ark of the Covenant stood waiting, and without the anti-scrying ointment every second he wasted put him – and by extension Beverley and Merlin – in ever greater danger of being discovered by Morgana le Fay.

  “Mr Carpenter.” Fr Marcos’ hushed tones floated back through the darkness. “We are there.”

  Snapped out of his reverie by the sound of the guardian’s voice, Jason snapped to attention. “We are?”

  “Please shine your light over here.”

  Jason moved the beam of his light to where Fr Marcos’ light was playing along a section of ancient stone wall. Moving in tandem, the lights fell on the edge of a dusty crimson tapestry. Then, signaling Jason to move closer, the priest slipped around the edge of the cloth, holding it back for Jason to follow.

  The first thing Jason saw were two huge, glowing red eyes staring at him out of the dark nothingness. With panic rising in his throat, Jason fumbled behind his back to find the curtain, ready to make a mad break for the passageway. But once his eyes adjusted, and as the combined flashlights brought clarity to objects in the room, Jason realized he was looking at a pair of hanging votive candles shimmering inside their red glass globes. Letting out a huge sigh of relief, Jason leaned against the cool stone wall only to find that it, like the doorway, was covered with tapestry panels. Shifting his light from side to side, Jason now saw that every surface of the room, including the floor and ceiling, was covered with incredibly fine tapestries, each one intricately embroidered with Hebraic religious designs executed in thread of the purest gold, which caused the light to splinter and sparkle like a fireworks display.

  Jason was so awestruck by the magnificence of the sacred coverings that he hardly heard Fr Marcos’ voice calling him. When he finally refocused his attention, he saw the old man standing between the two votive lights, one hand holding the fringed edge of one of the tapestry panels. Bowing reverently while drawing back the curtain, Fr Marcos muttered the single word “Behold”.

  As the curtain was withdrawn, the weak light from the flashlights was suddenly magnified a thousand times, bouncing back and forth across the face of the massive golden object standing deep inside the nave. Completely unable to move, Jason could only stare in wonder at the most sacred and fabled object in the history of the planet. It was not until Fr Marcos offered him a small smile, motioning him forward that Jason finally found his feet and moved to within an arm’s length of the Ark.

  The body of the Ark appeared to be about thirty inches in both height and depth, and it must have been very close to four feet in length. Around the bottom of the box ran an ornamental molding, beneath which were four large feet in the shape of lion’s paws. Jason allowed his eyes to linger over every inch of the ancient tabernacle, slowly moving his line of vision across the panels of gold which formed the sides of the box, up to the richly carved decorative molding marking the point where the top overlapped the body. Near the uppermost corner of each side panel were large golden rings where the priests of the ancient Hebrews would have inserted carrying poles. Above the rings, on the flat surface of the top, stood a pair of solid gold figurines. The figures faced each other with outstretched wings which nearly met at the tips. Jason estimated that each of the figures must have been slightly more than a foot tall and nearly eighteen inches from the tip of its golden wings to the end of its delicately carved tail.

  Wait. Angels don’t have tails. Why do the angels have tails?

  Suddenly confused, Jason leaned back on his heels for a more objective look at the Ark. Examining the wondrous gilded object with the detached eyes of an archaeologist, Jason could clearly see that the designs and details on the body of the Ark had a distinctly Egyptian look to them and that the winged figures on the top were not angels at all, they were birds; more specifically, they were hawks. Weighing the physical evidence before him against everything he had ever learned about the Ark of the Covenant, Jason recalled what Fr John Cunningham had told him only a few weeks earlier ‘It’s possible that it was stolen out of Egypt…You see, the Egyptians used ark's too.’ If the Ark had actually originated in Egypt then the figures that legend held to be angels were actually representations of the hawk god, Horus. Stunned, Jason looked up at Fr Marcos who was nodding his head sadly.

  “That’s why you’ve kept it hidden all these centuries, isn’t it? It’s Egyptian.”

  “It would be rather embarrassing for people to find out that the most sacred object in the Hebraic-Christian tradition was actually stolen from a pagan temple.”

  “But you still think this is the original Ark?”

  “Oh, without doubt. The provenance is unquestionable.” With a small jerk of his shoulders he added “And if it really contains the tablets of the law it is no less sacred to God than it would be if the Hebrews had built it themselves.”

  “Then the Ten Commandments and the other things are still inside it.” Jason said it as a statement but his eyes questioned Fr Marcos.

  “If they were in it when it arrived in Ethiopia with Menelik at the time of Solomon, then they are still in there. We have never discovered how to open it.”

  Wishing he could shake it to see if anything inside rattled, Jason returned his attention to the Ark, leaned forward and bent low enough that he could peer underneath the top’s decorative edge. Shining the beam of his flashlight upward, he could see that there was a slim gap between the side panel and the inner edge of the lid; which meant that the lid must come off somehow. But how? Where was the latch, or the lock, that had kept the lid so firmly sealed for thousands of years? Jason ran his hands gently around the edge of the lid, up and down the side panels, around the feet and under the bottom, pushing and prodding as he went, but he found nothing that moved, depressed or pulled even a fraction of an inch.

  Refusing to admit defeat he turned his attention back to the statuettes on the lid. The birds were finely worked, exhibiting amazingly lifelike detail in every feather. The only thing that seemed in the least unnatural was the position of their wings. While a bird could extend its wings outward in flight and slightly forward, Jason was not aware of any bird that could bring its wings completely forward until they nearly met over its head. Craning his neck up and over the hawk figures, Jason looked directly down on top of them for the first time. Immediately he noticed that while the rest of the birds’ figures were naturally rendered, the space between their wings looked artificial; the gap being clean, straight and knife-edge smooth as though something had once set between them.

  Staring down through the three-quarter-inch wide gap between the wings,
Jason’s gaze fell on the smooth surface of the Ark’s lid. There, incised on the perfectly smooth, reflective surface of the gold, he could just make out a pair of nearly indistinguishable lines. They appeared to be the same distance apart as the slot between the birds’ wings was wide. Strange. Leaning back to look at the birds side-on, Jason cast his mind back to the picture Fr Cunningham had shown him of an Egyptian ark. In the illustration the hawk figures had supported a large disk – the disk of Amun-Ra, the sun god – the symbol of the sun that the serpent Apep was supposed to eat at the end of the world. He held his hands up, trying to gauge the physical size of the missing disk. Assuming the widest point of the disk was about as large as the distance between the birds’ tails, it would have to be about three feet in diameter. Somewhere, Jason had seen a disk just about that size. Where did he… Shit. Morgana’s library. The communication disk. Jason jumped to his feet, grabbing Fr Marcos by the shoulders and staring hard into his deep, black eyes.

  “Father, do you know there is a part missing from the Ark?”

  “We have long assumed that the disk of the sun god Ra may once have rested between the creatures’ wings.”

  “But did you see the hidden slot where the edge of the disk goes down into the lid?”

  “No. What are you talking about?”

  Jason kneeled back down, signaling the priest to squat next to him. When they were side-by-side Jason instructed him to look down between the birds’ wings while simultaneously feeling for the edge joints on the surface of the top. It took the old man’s aged eyes several minutes to see what Jason had seen almost immediately, but eventually he located the tiny incisions in the golden surface.

  “Look, I could be completely wrong about this, but I think the disk is the key. If I’m right, when the disk is inserted between the birds’ wings, its weight depresses that section of the top and unlocks the lid.”