Avalon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “No,” George hastened to assure her, “she’s in first-class condition, is Godolphin Girl. You won’t find a better boat this side of Falmouth.”

  “Then why do you keep pestering me with your ridiculous concerns?”

  “It’s dangerous, miss, is all. Now, I know we agreed, but I thought you was only —”

  “Dangerous!” She spat the word with a force that made the seaman wince. “For the amount of money I’m paying you, Captain Kernan, you can well afford to keep your qualms to yourself, don’t you think?”

  Kernan had faced difficult charters before; he drew himself up and gave it one last try. “But diving alone, miss — that’s the crux. We’d got no idea that you was attempting anything like that. We thought you only wanted to see the commotion like.”

  “But I most certainly do wish to see the commotion. I wish to see it close up, Mr. Kernan. As for diving alone, if the site has become as busy as you say, then I shall hardly be alone, shall I? In any case, I take sole and entire responsibility for myself. Is that clear?”

  “Of course, miss.”

  “Now then, if you and your idiot son will simply do as you are told, there is no reason anyone should get hurt.” Her green eyes narrowed. “Do we understand one another?”

  “Yes, miss.” George swallowed. “I understand.”

  “Good,” she said, dismissing him with an imperious flick of her hand. “I do not expect to be interrupted again. You may inform me when we are within a mile of our destination.”

  “Very good, miss.”

  Captain Kernan stood for a moment, watching the belligerent young woman at her preparations. That day on the quayside she had been all sweetness and light, her low, throaty laugh enchanting as he told her how he and his crew had discovered the boiling, sulfurous sea, and recounted tales of various inexplicable doings in those queer waters. Why, she had even made him feel gallant and obliging when he accepted her money for the upcoming charter.

  Still, he had tried to dissuade her. “Two thousand pounds is a lot of money, miss — ah —” He fished for a name.

  “You’re right,” she had agreed, counting the bills into his hand. “And you deserve every penny, Captain Kernan. You’ve been so helpful — agreeing to take me out on short notice — it’s the least I can do.”

  Well, thought George, scratching his head ruefully, there was no ‘you deserve every penny’ today. Women! He should have figured something was up when they arrived on the quayside to find her already waiting for them with her knapsack and diving bag. “You’re late,” she had informed him with a snarl. Throwing a map at him, she had pointed to a red circle drawn on the water north of St. Mary’s. “That’s where we’re going,” she had said.

  I should have given her back her money then and there, he thought. It’s Christmas Day, after all. He returned to the wheelhouse where his son, Peter, was at the helm.

  “Any luck?” asked Peter.

  “I tried.” George sighed. “She won’t have it any other way but that we take her out so she can dive the site.”

  “She’ll get herself killed,” Peter replied. “It ain’t safe. Did you tell her that?”

  “I told her right enough. She’s pretty determined.” He looked out at the smooth, glassy sea. “It’s a good day. It’ll probably be all right. Anyway, seems she paid enough for the privilege.”

  “All the same, if anything happens to her out here,” observed Peter, “it’ll be our butts in a sling, and two thousand pounds won’t seem like so much then. We shoulda refused to leave the harbor.”

  “She paid in advance,” George reminded his son. “What are we supposed to do? You see how she won’t hear a word yer sayin’.”

  “Here, take the wheel,” said Peter, moving around his father. “I’m going to talk to her.”

  His father grabbed him by the arm. “ ’T’won’t do no good, son. Leave her be. Best thing we can do now is pray she don’t get into trouble and we can be home and dry for dinner.” Peter, unconvinced, reached for the door. “I mean it, boy,” his father said, gripping him tighter. “I done what I could. Now just leave her be. It’s her skin.”

  Accepting his father’s caution at last, Peter returned to the helm. “I don’t like it,” he muttered, casting a glance through the window behind him to the aft deck where their strange, auburn-haired passenger had an expensive wet suit arrayed. “Diving all alone an’ on a holy day an’ all. It ain’t right. Look at her. She ain’t no oceanographer, if you ask me. We should never have taken the money.”

  “Mark me, it won’t happen again,” his father vowed, shaking his head slowly.

  The sturdy little boat sped easily towards its destination — a point twelve miles off the southernmost tip of the Cornish coast. They had set off early — at their passenger’s request — and now they knew the reason why: she intended to spend the short winter day underwater.

  The unusual nature of the charter had initially failed to arouse their suspicions, for the simple reason that, because of the curious goings-on around the Scilly Isles, the whole coast had been in something of a mild uproar from St. Austell to Land’s End. Nearly every seaworthy boat had been approached for lucrative charter services since that night when the eruptions first began — mostly by geologists, marine biologists, and other sorts of sea scientists, although there were a fair number of adventurers and well-heeled tourists as well. Godolphin Girl’s uncomplaining skipper had taken his share of sight-seers out to watch the queer, stinking bubbles erupting from the seabed, too; and most of the boat owners he knew were eagerly augmenting their meager winter incomes ferrying thrill seekers back and forth to the mysteriously boiling sea.

  Although the initial flash of media interest in the phenomenon had largely faded, the sulfurous belches continued unabated. Some sailors maintained they were even increasing in frequency, size, and duration. George found it difficult to say whether this was true or not, despite assurances from several long-time seamen that it was. What is more, Germoe and some of the other sailors who had taken a sudden and intense interest in things scientific — seeing that oceanographers seemed to have very deep, grant-funded pockets — maintained that it could be scientifically demonstrated that the little clutch of islands constituting the Scilly Isles was actually rising, albeit very slowly.

  Life at Penzance harbor, as elsewhere along the coast, had definitely become more interesting — especially following the Sun newspaper’s feature article of a week or so ago. George had saved the front-page headline which read LLYONESSE RISES AGAIN!

  As proof of the headline’s somewhat exaggerated claim, the story included a none-too-convincing photo of some boats in the harbor at Hugh Town, and William Taylor, the harbormaster, pointing to a scum line on the seawall indicating the drop in the water level. The scant scientific evidence was little more persuasive, but did support the islanders’ contention that their homes were gaining altitude at the rate of a centimeter or two a day. Citing the almost continual tremors accompanying the ascendance, geologic experts warned that a quake of major destructive proportions might be imminent. Urgent plans, the paper said, were being made to evacuate the islands’ three thousand inhabitants as soon as possible.

  George knew a good many of the islands’ boatmen, and none of them had heard a single word about any urgent plans to evacuate — which just went to show that a body could not believe everything he read in the papers.

  “There’s Saint Keverne,” announced Peter after a while, “half a mile off the port bow.”

  The captain turned to where his son was pointing. The site was relatively deserted — there were only two other boats that he could see; two days ago there had been at least twenty. “An’ who’s that out beyond her?”

  “Don’t know,” answered his son, taking up the binoculars with one hand and raising them to his eyes. “Could be Trafalgar,” he decided.

  “I thought Macky said he was going up Falmouth for an engine bearing.”

  “Maybe it’s someone else th
en.” Peter jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You’d better tell our tourist lady to start getting ready. We’ll be on zone soon.”

  George left the wheelhouse, shaking his head. “On zone” was one of the many terms his son had picked up from the scientists; he didn’t use such words himself, and he was a little surprised that his son — and most of the rest of the Penzance population — seemed to adopt the jargon so easily.

  “ ’Scuse me, miss,” he said, affably enough, considering his brusque dismissal earlier. “We’re coming up to the site. Do you need any help with your gear?”

  “When I require something from you, I will ask for it,” the young woman informed him. With that, she unzipped her blue overall and stepped out of it, revealing a dazzling figure in a brilliant red one-piece swimming suit. Handing the captain the overall, she sat down on the bait box and began drawing on the lower half of a brand-new, insulated wet suit of dolphin gray.

  She was suited and zipped in moments — donning her headpiece, strapping on her small, neat doughnut-shaped air cylinder, and slipping into flippers of garish green fluorescent plastic. As the boat’s engine slowed and began juddering in neutral, Peter called, “This is where you wanted to be, miss.”

  She stepped to the rail, tested the mouthpiece, and then said, “Put out the buoy, Mr. Kernan.”

  The skipper did as he was told, and threw out the bright orange diving marker and flag. “You sure you got enough air in that thing, miss?” he asked, eyeing the newfangled apparatus skeptically.

  “Plenty,” replied the woman, tying a bag of nylon netting to her diving belt. From what the captain could see, the bag contained a few small bits of underwater gear.

  She turned and sat down on the rail, her flippered feet splayed out in front of her. She drew on a pair of diving gloves. Next, she spat into the mask, rinsed it out, and drew it over her face with both hands. Then, adjusting the mouthpiece, she leaned back, tipping herself effortlessly into the sea.

  Once beneath the smooth surface of the water, Moira rolled over and, with a fluorescent flutter of her acid-green flippers, swam gracefully away from the boat. Free of the annoying fishermen and their stinking boat, the keen abhorrence she felt for the human species began to dissipate in the cold, silent waters. Owing to a mild autumn, the winter water off the coast was clear as glass, allowing her a perfect view of the undulating landmass as it rose from the ice-blue depths far below.

  Somewhere down there, undisturbed for centuries, lay a prize worth all the world. Only two people alive knew its existence. Embries, that fatuous meddler, was the other one, and he did not know where to begin the search. But she knew, and this was her advantage.

  Three times she had faced the self-righteous old fool, and three times he had escaped the fate he so richly deserved. This time, however, she would not fail, because this time she would not strike at him until the Lia Fail was in her grasp. Meanwhile, she would content herself with making Embries suffer by tormenting his precious puppet of a king. She would enjoy that almost as much as destroying the old fusspot himself.

  Directly ahead, she could see the leading ridge of an upward-jutting plateau — a flat expanse, tilted like a table on wildly uneven legs. One glimpse of that distinctive shape rising from the sea’s dark heart and her own heart beat a little faster in recognition. “Llyonesse”… the word fairly resonated in her soul… home.

  It was this area that had been causing the most excitement in the oceanographic community. The water here was shallower than anywhere else between Land’s End and the Scilly Isles, allowing scientists a reliable means of measuring the daily alteration in the depth of the seabed.

  The region was well known in Cornish folklore. Legend had it that bells were sometimes heard beneath the waves; in more superstitious times, the sound was widely believed to presage violent storms or to herald the loss of a ship. There were tales of phantom lights luring the unwary to watery graves and men who were dragged to their deaths in the arms of beautiful maidens. Stories abounded of fishermen glimpsing fair cities under the billows: high walls, towers, paved roads, bridges, and splendid palaces.

  Although no one could ever manage to locate these many-towered palaces once they had been seen, the tales nevertheless gained credence because, in times past, fisherfolk were known to have brought up many curious objects in their nets: small jars and shards of Greek-style amphorae, bits of shaped stone incised with odd markings, beads of black glass and pink coral, metal ingots shaped like twigs melted into clumps.

  It was not melted ingots or amphorae which thrilled the marine scientists now, however; it was that the seabed did appear to be rising at a slow but significant rate. Should the trend continue, they estimated, the leading edge of the plateau would be high and dry in a little over six weeks.

  Geologically speaking, upheavals and inundations off the Cornish coast were so commonplace as to hardly rate a mention. In fact, the whole southern half of the British mainland had been in and out of the sea several times in the ancient past. The famous white cliffs of Dover may tower three hundred feet above the waves at the moment, but schools of fish once swam over those same chalk cliffs, and doubtless would again.

  All the same, the appearance of a new landmass in British waters had not happened in recorded history; thus, the scientific boffins were understandably excited. They were trying by all possible means to keep their excitement to themselves, however. Already the zone was getting too crowded with tourists; the British Oceanographic Trust did not need dozens of international research teams on site as well. So, for the time being, they were keeping their findings secret, allowing the sight-seers to content themselves watching the gaseous bubbles which erupted at unexpected intervals in various places around the area. Meanwhile, they were accumulating data and building a profile of the entire underwater region.

  Moira’s own interests could not have been further from surveying or bubble spotting. For her, the resurgence of Llyonesse meant her long vigil was coming to an end. Soon she would possess again the power that had once made her name a byword for fear in five languages. When she took up that power, she would resume the name. Until then, it must sleep a little longer among the legends of an older time.

  She gained the ridge, and continued on over the plateau, swimming with smooth, rhythmic strokes of her long legs. The upland rising beneath her appeared an ordinary example of the typical sea floor: a murky expanse of muddy sand supporting scattered bits of oceanic vegetation. Here and there, rocky outcrops broke the green-gray monotony, providing shelter for the fish and interest for the searching eye.

  One such outcropping appealed to Moira more than the others, and it was to this one that she was instantly drawn. She swam down towards it, descending further into the silent blue-green half light. The rocks in this particular grouping were oddly uniform in size and shape and, on closer inspection, did seem to be slightly out of place with their aquatic surroundings. They were large — boulder sized — and roughly cubic, the edges blunted but still traceable, like great, shattered building blocks.

  Reaching the stones, Moira swam around and over the heap, looking at the shapes; she put out her hands and touched the pockmarked surfaces of the nearest blocks. Rough and pitted though they were, the stones stirred her in unanticipated ways.

  Resuming her search, she swam in a wide circle around the heap of stone, examining the seabed. On her second pass, she found what she was looking for: a slight, yet still identifiable, wrinkle in the mud of the seafloor. Little more than a pucker rising a few centimeters from the muck, it would not have been noticed by anyone who did not know it was there.

  Once seen, however, the discoverer would have been struck by the unusually straight line of the thing. At this point, the casual explorer would have concluded that he had happened upon a man-made feature of some kind and, indeed, it looked more than anything like a cable, or pipeline, had been laid down; silt and mire had covered it in the intervening years, reducing it to a mere bump on the ocean floor.r />
  However, had they followed the line of the supposed cable, as Moira did, the curious diver would have learned that it ran unswervingly east to west and that it gradually grew larger. As it grew — widening and thickening — the straight line became less coherent. Gaps appeared and blocky protrusions jutted up at angles.

  Moira pursued the increasingly rough line across the plane of the tilting plateau, following its descent into deeper water until… all at once, the line ended in a cairnlike heap of jumbled stone. Directly ahead, she could see the darker blue of the void where the landmass shelved away as if carved off by the blow of an axe.

  Her heart writhed in frustration. So close, so very close… but not yet.

  She swam nearer and looked at the sloping edge of the plateau disappearing down and down into the inky blue darkness. She would have to wait until the uneasy seabed lifted the island higher before she could get her hands on the prize. Patience, she told herself. You have waited so long already; you can wait a little while longer. What is time to you?

  Still, she could not bear to go back without at least touching one of the stones, making contact with the home she had lost so long ago. Glancing at her diving watch, she noted the time remaining on her air tank, and dove towards the heap.

  She reached the top of the mound, thrilled by the uniform size and shape of the massive stones. Looking back the way she had come, she followed the straight and unbroken line. From her vantage point, it was clear what that line represented: the remnant of an enormous wall. And the mound of tumbled stone had once been a high tower on a corner of that wall.

  An image of that wall and tower came into her mind’s eye, and she saw it as it once had been. The wall was not high, but it was broad and wider at the bottom than the top so that the wall face slanted inward as it rose. The breastwork at the top was a single solid rim of stone; there were no crenellations, only pyramidlike projections, roughly man-sized, at regular intervals along the top.