by Craig Zerf
The ancient crone absentmindedly stroked the large crow that sat on the back of the kitchen chair while she looked at the body of the man on the floor.
‘Ah, Ambros,’ she croaked. ‘What have you done this time?’
The body had appeared in the old crone’s cottage some few weeks back. Materializing out of thin air to land on the floor in her living area. She had recognized him straight away, even though it had been over a hundred years since she had last seen him. She had also instantly perceived that he was dying. In fact, so close to death was he, that she could literally smell the stench of the River Styx on his clothes.
A closer look at his various wounds and her worst fears were realized. Droch-fhola. The evil blood. Vampires.
Given time a mage as powerful as the man who lay before her could survive. But he needed time. And that he did not have. So the old crone had cast a spell. It was done in desperation but it was all that she could think of.
The spell of Gheimhridh. The winter spell.
And now the body of Ambros lay still, under a two inch coating of ice. His heart in stasis. Not alive but not yet dead.
She had given him time. But it had cost her dearly, for although the spell of Gheimhridh allowed one to live on borrowed time, it demanded payment in kind.
So she had sacrificed years of her own life. And even to one who has lived for so long as to be almost immortal, time is a precious resource and not one to be given away lightly. But she would have gladly sacrificed her every last second for the not dead/not alive man in front of her. For, although she was now known to all as the Morrigan, or the goddess of battle, she remembered well the days when she had been called Morgan le Fay. Then she had been the oft time lover of the man in front of her. Myrddin Ambrosius Ambros Caledonensis, or Merlin the Magician as most knew him.
Since then, the legend of King Arthur and his mage had been twisted and turned into a mere fable of Camelot and the eventual search for the Holy Grail. But the Morrigan remembered the truth. She remembered the battles and the sacrifices that Arthur’s knights had made as they fought against the Nosferatu. The children of the night.
The terror of the villagers as they became mere fodder for the vampires and how, with the help of Merlin and the Olympus Foundation, they had eventually driven the Nosferatu underground so that, once more, the people of Camelot could live in happiness and light.
Since those far flung times, myth and fable had turned the Olympus Foundation into the Knights of the Round Table and Merlin had become known as a mere magician.
But the Morrigan knew – and so she sacrificed her own time for that of Merlin’s.
Because his sageness and wisdom would be needed once again when the dark ones came to the fore.
Chapter 27
