by Daniel Diehl
Ignoring the danger showering down from above, Jason scrambled painfully to his feet and tried futilely to grab Beverley but missed her by inches as Morgana nearly jerked her off of her feet and lunged toward the passageway on the far side of the room. Racing after the two women, Jason made it to the mouth of the tunnel just as Merlin tumbled forward, clutching his wounded side. Tripping over each other, the two men landed on the dirt floor in a hopeless tangle of flailing arms and legs. As Jason fought to extricate himself and resume the chase, Merlin lay on his back and pulled one arm free to fire another salvo toward the far end of the banqueting hall where the last of the guards was charging toward them, gun at the ready. With a loud crack followed by a scream and a horrible sizzling sound signaling a direct hit, Merlin shouted to Jason as they scrambled to their feet.
“The keys, Jason. Help me up and give me the keys.”
His mind focused entirely on Beverley’s rescue, Merlin’s order momentarily confused Jason. Finally he understood and dug frantically in his pocket for the Urim and Thummim. Thrusting them into Merlin’s waiting hand, Jason lunged down the tunnel after Beverley and Morgana only to be drawn up short by a searing pain in his right ankle. “Damn. Sprained it.” Limping but undeterred, Jason lunged forward, struggling to keep pace with the halting gate of the battered old man running beside him.
Thanks to Beverley’s furious resistance Morgana’s progress was even slower than that of her pursuers. On more than one occasion the sorceress had paused in her flight long enough to administer a furious backhanded slap across Beverley’s face, but the favor had been returned when Beverley lashed out with one leg, catching Morgana in the back of the knee, causing her to collapse like a broken lawn chair. Shrieking with rage and frustration, Morgana stubbornly refused to let go of the other woman’s hair, fending off a barrage of Beverley’s blows with her free hand long enough to regain her footing and continue her race toward the River Styx and the dragon gate beyond.
By the time Jason and Merlin hobbled into the river cavern Morgana and her prisoner had already reached the far side of the bridge. Now only a few feet from the gate, Morgana was completing the series of enchantments that would finally allow the dragons back into the world. Even as she lowered her arm with a flourish, a screaming maelstrom of fetid air surged out of the opening and into the cavern, a raging horror of blinding, tearing wind whose only coordinates were the point where malignant darkness meets mindless fear. Like a cyclone that descends without warning, a swirling, howling, shrieking whirlwind ripped and pulled at everyone and everything in the cave. Even as it whipped the river into a foaming fury and tried to tear the clothes from those in its path, there was an inescapable sense that it was also trying to release something from deep within its bottomless vortex.
“How do we get across?” Jason’s scream was nearly ripped from his throat by the force of the wind.
Motioning with his hand toward the invisible bridge, Merlin hollered back. “Follow me.”
Heads down against the force of the hurricane, Merlin and Jason plunged forward, effectively blocking Morgana’s only route of escape. Cursing and spitting like an enraged house cat, Morgana fired a salvo of energy bolts at pointblank range but the force of the wind whisked them away and disbursed the flaming balls like motes of dust carried away on a gentle summer breeze. Unwilling to surrender the fight, Morgana made a desperate grab for Merlin as he elbowed his way past her, clutching the two small stones tight against his breast. Immediately behind him came Jason who made a bee line toward Morgana and Beverley.
When Jason lurched forward and grabbed Beverley, the forward momentum of his body, combined with the force of the wind, knocked all three of them off balance, sending them tumbling to the ground and skidding across the rough pebbly, wave-lashed shore of the raging River Styx. Forced to release her captive in order to claw her way back to her feet, Morgana’s first thought was to look toward the bridge and the only route to safety - the only way she would escape the onrushing flight of the Dragon Lords when they realized the gateway to the world had finally been opened. It was only when she caught sight of Merlin standing in front of the gate, waving his arms against the turbulence of the storm, that she reversed course.
Despite his wounds and the effects of long days of torture, the great wizard was standing as tall and straight as a magnificent old oak tree in the face of the onrushing tornado, moving his hands through the torrent, calmly writing images of glowing runes in the churning air, and chanting as fast as he could. “…libera nos a malo…”
The scene at the gateway unfolded before Jason’s eyes like a series of still images, changing and shifting as though it were all taking place in slow motion and somehow removed from the normal flow of time. Trying frantically to regain his feet, Jason watched in deadly fascination as a screaming Morgana le Fay closed the distance between herself and Merlin, whose back was turned and whose concentration was riveted on the work of sealing the dragon gate for all time. As Jason rose and rushed frantically forward, far away, beyond his fingers, which he could see extended in front of him, he watched in horror as Morgana slammed the flat of her hands into Merlin’s back as he stood holding the two ancient stones to the mouth of the surging vortex. Pulled sideways by the force of the blow, but retaining his footing, Merlin simultaneously continued chanting while trying to fend off Morgana’s assault.
As one hand lashed backwards, Merlin muttered “…in the midst of great perils, we beg you, Lord, banish the deadly power of the evil one. St Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.”
Stumbling, pulling and struggling, Morgana and Merlin flailed at each other in the heart of the storm. Just as Jason reached their side, Merlin ended his chanting, shouted “Get thee to Hell, bitch” and threw his entire weight into a massive roundhouse punch that threw Morgana backward, tipping her shrieking form into the vortex as the hole began to shrink in size and definition. Falling, desperately trying to regain her lost footing, Morgana grabbed at the dangling end of Merlin’s sleeve. Already thrown off balance by the force of his own punch, the old wizard twisted around in a desperate attempt not to follow his ancient enemy into the pit.
Terrified by the scene being played out in front of him, Jason flung himself forward, grabbing at Merlin’s hand as the old man was pulled sideways into the rapidly shrinking opening. For a fraction of a second their fingers entwined, grasping, touching, frantically searching, but as a small, blue spark passed from Merlin’s finger to Jason’s, history’s greatest wizard disappeared into the dark abyss as the dragon gate blinked into nothingness and disappeared forever.
Suddenly alone in the still quietness of the river cave, Jason and Beverley stared at each other across the ten feet of shoreline separating them. Too stunned to move, Jason slumped against the rough wall as Beverley stood on shaky legs and came over to kneel next to him.
Slowly, painfully, she helped Jason to his feet. For long minutes they stared at the rock face where only moments ago a gaping hole had reached from the back of a cave in Buckinghamshire County, England into an unknown place that had no business existing in the real world. To all appearances the limestone wall was made of the same, roughhewn mineral deposit as the rest of the Hellfire cave and gave no evidence that it had ever been anything different. There was no opening into the dragon’s realm, no Morgana le Fay and no Merlin the magician. Just two dirty, battered young people standing by a sluggish river running through an abandoned cave. Jason ran the flat of his hand over the wall again and again, mumbling Merlin’s name, until Beverley feared he would tear the flesh off the palms of his hands. Finally he allowed her to pull him away and lead him through the devastation of torn bodies and shattered electronic equipment that were the only remnants of Morgana le Fay’s mad, eons-long quest to conquer the world with the allegiance of a strange, half-mythical life form who were finally sealed inside whatever strange and terrible realm that had spawned them.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?”
In answer, Beverley
could only nod. “I’m sorry, Jason. I loved him, too, you know.”
Taking Jason’s face between the palms of her hands, Beverley looked hard into his eyes.
“Jason, he did what he came here to do. He destroyed Morgana, sealed the dragon gate and kept those things from coming back into the world. In the end, he won the battle he’d been fighting for sixteen centuries. You do understand that, don’t you?”
Jason nodded his head, took her hands in his, gently kissed her fingers and let out a great, exhausted sigh.
“Let’s go home, Babe.”
* * *
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
Merlin knew he was falling, but whether he was moving up, or down, or sideways it was impossible to tell. When he tumbled through the dragon gate he had entered a cloying, festering blackness as deep and fathomless as the space between the stars. For a few seconds he could hear Jason screaming his name from somewhere far in the distance, but the sound ceased when the gateway closed. With Jason’s shouts cut off, Merlin was still vaguely aware of Morgana le Fay’s shrieking voice cursing, swearing and shouting oaths somewhere in the distance, but he could neither see her, nor anything else. And yet, somehow, he was not sure if this place he was in existed without light or if there was simply nothing to focus his eyes on. All he knew for certain was that he was in a place of mind warping confusion. There was absolutely no point of anchorage to which his mind, or body, could attach themselves. All directions had simultaneously become one, and yet none at all. Arms and legs flailing, he grappled for purchase where there was none, like a drowning swimmer fighting to break through the surface of the water. And then the terror closed in.
From all sides arose a cacophony of rushing noises, unbearable stenches and kaleidoscopic colors that were maddening in their intensity, threatening to crush his mind, spirit and his very soul. From every side and direction came a relentless assault of horrific smells, insane visions and flashes of blinding light that engulfed him like a shifting, quavering aurora borealis. From above, around and below, the shuddering images descended. Waves of red, blue, gold and green interspersed with white-hot firework-like explosions pressed in from everywhere with blinding, deafening intensity. Then, suddenly, from out of its midst rose images of sheer, gibbering madness; shrieking wraiths, clanging bells, dancing mice, bloody entrails and grappling claws that streamed forth from the hands of shrouded figures mounted on skeletal horses. Mindless insanities and ancient terrors beyond description surged both toward him and away from him, reaching out and fading away to be replaced immediately by others even more nightmarish.
Mingled with the visual torture was a mind bending wall of sound. The shrieks and screams of the damned were overlaid with garbled voices speaking in a thousand, thousand tongues, some known and some unknown, while all around him the roar of thunder as loud as a thousand jet planes smashing through the sound barrier tore at his mind. The noise of crackling fires mingled with the stench of rotting flesh and burning sulfur, while rushing wind as fierce as a dozen hurricanes, and sticky, moist tearing sounds like the rending of flesh filled his head until he thought his brain would explode.
Struggling to escape the devouring madness, Merlin winced, pulling his head deep between his shoulders and covering his eyes in a vain attempt to stave off the mind and stomach churning effects of an encroaching panic that could only end in complete insanity.
Then, out of the confusion, arose the shrieking, inhuman roar of the dragons followed by a single, thunderous voice that brought the old wizard’s attention back into sharp focus. By the time he calmed his shattered nerves enough to open his eyes, the echoing words were becoming clear.
“You disappoint me deeply, Morcant le Fay. I have been patient with you for endless eons, but I am Astaroth the eternal, lord of this realm; I am legion and my numbers are many and we will not be denied by the incompetence of a mere human.”
From out of the nothingness descended half a dozen massive dragons, their wings beating like dark, leathery nightmares, massive crocodile-like mouths surrounded by dozens of sparking, prehensile tentacles and filled with row upon row of twisted yellow fangs. Closing in from all directions, the creatures rushed past Merlin, closing in on some invisible point in the distance that Merlin could only vaguely identify by the sound of Morgana’s blood curdling screams which were quickly cut off in a wet gurgle.
Astaroth. Merlin knew that name. From where? Frantically twisting his head in an attempt to locate the source of the voice, he saw the nightmarish face of one of the Dragon Lords loom indistinctly, gigantic in form, out of the cacophony of sounds and images. It was huge, distorted and disgusting beyond any words he could think of. Astaroth. Yes. Now he remembered. Astaroth was the name used by one of the chief warlords of hell, commander of sixty legions of demons and patron of all corrupt and politically powerful humans. Finally, after more than sixteen centuries of guessing, fearing and wondering, Merlin finally knew beyond all doubt who and what the dragons were, where it was they came from and where he was now trapped.
While floating aimlessly, simultaneously falling upwards and downwards, contemplating what it might actually mean to be in hell, Merlin saw another of the dragon creatures float toward him on leathery wings, its slimy black tail lashing the air behind it. Would this be how his life ended? Had he somehow displeased God so much? As the thing came closer, it opened its hideous mouth and spoke.
“This place is not for you, sorcerer. The righteous do not belong here, nor is there any place for your kind in our realm. Take your sanctimonious stench and be gone. Leave us in peace.”
Epilogue
The initial promise brought by the warm, gentle spring slowly dissolved into a cold, nasty summer that turned out to be depressingly damp even by British standards. The season’s only distinguishing feature was an almost perpetual pall of heavy grey clouds that remained stubbornly closed over the English sky like the lid of a lead coffin.
Jason’s mood was every bit as dark and unhappy as the weather. Deep down he knew that Merlin had ended his life accomplishing what he had set out to do more than a thousand and a half years earlier, and for that Jason was grateful. He also knew that the old man had never belonged in the twenty-first century and that he had never felt comfortable here. But Jason’s overriding emotion was one of bitterness; for seven months he had been in almost constant contact with one of the greatest, most legendary figures of history, and he had never had the time to really get to know him or learn the thousands of facts, both small and large, about Dark Age Britain that historians and archaeologists had been pondering over for centuries. The greatest archive of firsthand historical knowledge in the world had slipped through his fingers because of one insane, bitter woman. Worst of all, he felt bad because Merlin had been his friend, and life didn’t offer an abundance of real friends.
Beverley missed Merlin too but because her involvement with the old wizard had not been as close, as constant or as intimate as Jason’s had been she did not feel the pain of his death as acutely as Jason. She knew the best route through grief lies along the road of distraction and hard work, so she kept Jason busy, convincing him to start catching up on his lost year of school by taking summer classes and pre-registering for the makeup classes he would need to schedule for fall term. Some of the bureaucrats in the admissions office insisted that Jason should not be allowed to re-enroll at all because he had not filled out the proper withdrawal forms the previous November. Dealing with the turmoil of salvaging his academic career helped keep Jason’s mind occupied; and eventually Dr Carver Daniels not only convinced admissions to allow Jason to re-register, but he waved the final papers that Jason still owed him from the autumn term, relieving Jason of the burden of repeating one of his uncompleted seminars. While Jason worried over his classes and autumn schedule, Beverley struggled to catch up on the seemingly endless task of completing her Doctoral dissertation.
Without Merlin to clutter his small student flat wit
h noise, confusion and a mountain of moldering manuscripts and scrolls, Jason felt more and more alone and uncomfortable. The books and papers were still there, of course, now neatly stacked underneath the old table that served as Jason’s desk and covered with a disused bed sheet to keep them safe from dust and sunlight. But every time Jason looked at them they looked like a sad, crumpled ghost, huddled forlornly under the old table, afraid to come out and unable to vanish back to the netherworld from which they came.
Jason avoided dealing with the bleak unhappiness of his apartment, and the question of what to do with Merlin’s papers, by spending more and more time at Beverley’s tiny flat where he felt needed and loved. Even more cramped than his own digs, Beverley’s student accommodation was simply too small for two people to inhabit without tripping all over each other and getting on each other’s nerves. It didn’t take them long to decide the best solution was to pool their resources and take a larger flat which would cost less than the combined rent on their two small ones.
After looking at dozens of places – most of which were either too small, too expensive or too dilapidated to consider – they found an attractive two bedroom flat on the ground floor of a big, old red brick building on the Bootham Road, less than a half mile from Jason’s old flat. With the high ceilings typical of buildings from the late Victorian era and large, south-facing windows that invited the afternoon sunlight to flood into the main room, it was both spacious and cozy.
