“My”—and she arched an elegant eyebrow—“aren’t we the cranky young man tonight.”
“Nimue—”
“The world, Merlin. He wants to destroy the world. He wants to sweep the entirety of the surface in purifying fire, cleansing it of the disease known as humanity. Transform the world from the leaden presence of people into the gold of nature…”
“Nature that’s been incinerated?”
“What was burned will eventually regrow.” She regarded him thoughtfully. “You seem concerned about it. I thought you believed an alchemist was a penny-ante charlatan.”
“Even a penny-ante charlatan can wreak havoc if he’s given the mystical equivalent of a nuclear warhead. Still”—Merlin stroked his chin and reminisced briefly about the days when he had a beard. It gave him a sense of gravitas that he sorely missed—“the Spear of Luin can only do so much on its own. It’s powerful, yes…but it can’t destroy the world.”
“Can it kill a sorcerer?”
“I should think so, yes.”
“Too bad,” she said.
Merlin thought that was a curious thing for her to say, and suddenly he staggered forward. He looked down in utter shock as he saw the head of the Spear Luin, the Spear of Destiny, protruding through his rib cage.
He opened his mouth in surprise and there was blood trickling from between his lips. Then, before he could say or do anything, he was being lifted off his feet. He thrashed about, trying to find purchase, unable to do so. With dull horror, he realized what was happening: Someone was behind him, had rammed him through with the Spear and was raising him up as if he were a piece of struggling meat.
He couldn’t turn around, but he saw a brief reflection in the pool before him. It was a man, cloaked in darkness, a broad-brimmed hat drawn low, a black cape sweeping out around him.
“Suffer not a wizard to live,” growled the shadow man from behind him.
There were few people in existence who knew precisely what the Spear was capable of, and of those few, Merlin had the clearest idea. He felt an energy surge beginning that, he knew, would skeletonize him in a matter of seconds if he did nothing about it.
Through bleeding lips, he spoke a name. A secret name, one that had not been uttered in centuries.
Instantly the Spear of Destiny shivered, and energy ripped from the head and down the shaft. It knocked the shadow man back, and he lost his grip on the Spear. It sent Merlin crumpling to the ground. He grabbed at the Spear, just below the head, and he knew there was no way to push it back out the way it had come. The Spearhead would rip apart what was left of his torso if he tried it. There was only one option. He gritted his teeth, shut his eyes tight, bit down fiercely on his lower lip to contain the inevitable screams of agony, and yanked as hard as he could. He both succeeded and failed. He succeeded in pulling the Spear all the way through his body, out the front rather than through the back. He failed in managing to contain his suffering. He let out an ear-shattering, long, sustained, agony-filled scream that did not sound like anything an eight-year-old boy would ever have been capable of generating. It was an aged scream, a full-grown man in more pain than he had ever known in his endless life.
Desperately he tried to maintain his grip upon the Spear, but the anguish was so overwhelming that he was in no shape to resist when the shadow man came in from the side and kicked Merlin in the face. Merlin fell onto his back. His entire chest was so thoroughly soaked in blood that his shirt looked as if it were made of scarlet-colored material. He tried to speak, but he felt as if his throat were thick with foul-tasting liquid.
The shadow man advanced on him, holding the Spear with the point downward. “Not bad for a penny-ante charlatan, eh. A poseur. A pretender. When the book on you is finally closed, note well who closed it…and whose story was finished.”
He lunged forward, slamming the Spear point down as hard as he could. Merlin, summoning his last dregs of strength, pushed hard with his right foot and it sent him rolling over and into the Reflecting Pool. The Spear drove into the concrete border that surrounded the pool and wedged there. The shadow man let out a frustrated yell and tried to yank the Spear back out. It stubbornly refused to budge. The shadow man pulled yet again, and this time it came clear, sending pieces of rubble rolling about.
He moved forward quickly and drove the Spear down and into the Reflecting Pool, the water already red where Merlin had fallen in. He leaned forward, putting sufficient strength into the thrust so that he could slam the Spear through Merlin’s body, this time finishing him off. Consequently, he almost fell forward, completely off-balance, because the Spear didn’t go through its intended target. Instead it simply struck the bottom of the pool and, once again, embedded itself into concrete. The only thing that stopped the shadow man from tumbling into the Reflecting Pool was the Spear itself, for he leaned on it to prevent himself from falling in.
All during the altercation, the Lady of the Lake had stood a few feet away, watching the struggle in silence. Her face was impassive, her alliances impossible to discern.
“Where is he?” the shadow man roared. He yanked the Spear out of the water, not without effort. He jabbed downward again, this time with less force, content to use the Spear as a means of finding Merlin first so that he could apply the coup de grace. Even in that application, however, he failed. There was no sign of the young sorcerer. The red-tinted water was the only indicator that the wounded mage that fallen into the water at all. The shadow man whirled to face the Lady of the Lake, and he was holding the Spear in an outthrust, challenging manner. “Where is he?” he demanded once more.
“I hope you’re not intentionally pointing that thing at me,” Nimue said. “I can’t say I do especially well with weapons being bandied in my direction.”
“Is this”—and he pointed to the area where Merlin had been, but no longer was—“your doing, Nimue?”
“Merlin is perfectly capable of popping in and out on his own,” Nimue reminded him. “After all, you’re talking about someone who vanished from within the most tightly guarded building on the face of the planet. What makes you think that he couldn’t vanish himself from the bottom of two feet of water?”
“Because he was mortally wounded!”
“If he was mortally wounded, then why are you worrying about him at all?”
“A mortal wound,” snarled the shadow man, “is not necessarily the end of the road for one who is immortal. A higher standard of death is required to dispatch such a foe.”
“You mean something higher than stabbing him in the back?”
He scowled at her. “Do we have a problem, milady?”
“A problem?”
“Between the two of us.” He was no longer holding the Spear pointed right at her, but he was still cradling it in his hand with a purpose. “I had thought we were of one mind on this matter. You’re not thinking of…reneging…on your loyalties, are you?”
She smiled fetchingly and came right to the water’s edge. She spread wide her arms, and purred, “Of course not.”
He stepped toward her, and she enfolded him in her embrace. She kissed him passionately, so much so that the water in the pool began to bubble furiously. Then she released him and said teasingly, “A boy should never be sent to do a man’s job.”
“I know of many a pedophile in this sad, pathetic world who would strongly disagree with you,” replied the shadow man. “It is for the likes of those and many others of a similar sick mind that this world must be cleansed. You still understand that.”
“Of course I do. The concept is fairly straightforward.”
“Good. That’s all that matters.”
He stepped back from her, bowing as he did so. “Thank you for your aid in this matter, as you have provided in all other matters, my Lady of the Lake.”
She pressed her palms together and returned the bow. “To a better world…for both of us. A world without Merlin…without Arthur…without people in general.”
“What a wonderfu
l world it would be.” The shadow man sighed, as the Lady of the Lake sank beneath the water’s surface. Within moments all traces of her presence would be gone.
CHAPTRE
THE TENTH
AFTER THE HELICOPTER landed at JFK, Arthur and the others made their way through the darkened streets of New York toward Central Park. Very little was said once they were in the unmarked, nondescript sedans. Arthur watched the lights of the city that he had once ruled as mayor, during a time that seemed a lifetime ago. The lights of the skyline, the lights of the streetlamps as they whizzed past. It was near three in the morning, so even the city that never slept was very light on traffic, catching its breath and resting up for the start of a new day.
Gwen was dozing lightly, her head resting against his shoulder. Percival sat across from them on the facing seat and said nothing. He wondered what was going through Percival’s head. It wasn’t all that long ago that Percival had been a hopeless derelict, living in the streets of New York City and not even living, but simply existing in a state of helplessness and hopelessness. Blessed and condemned, all at the same time, by having taken a draught from the cup that he so zealously maintained in his keeping. If there was ever a love/hate relationship in the world, it was Percival and the Holy Grail.
Then the driver of the sedan called back, “We’re here, sir,” as the car glided to a halt. Arthur knew without even checking that the other cars were stopping as well in perfect synchronization. A moment later, the doors were opened for them on both sides by the Secret Service. Their heads were moving back and forth like conning towers, trying to look in all directions despite the lateness of the hour and the fact that Fifth Avenue, which was where they had pulled up, was deserted except for them. This was the exact sort of situation the Secret Service despised. They preferred to have a minimum of a week’s time to secure an area, not mere hours. But they were accustomed to doing what they were told, and so they simply worked with the resources they had on hand.
Arthur drew his greatcoat around him against the chill night air. Truthfully, he’d known much colder weather in his youth and shrugged it off, but lately he was feeling the cold more in his bones. He wondered why that was, and decided that perhaps it would be best not to dwell on it.
“Do you know where we’re going, Cook?” Arthur asked the nearest Secret Service man. Joshua Cook had been with Arthur that awful night when Gwen had become prey to the bullets of a would-be assassin. He was a heavyset black man—albeit with fairly light skin—a shaved head, and thick eyebrows.
“My orders are to escort you to Belvedere Castle.”
“That’s correct. But do you know why?”
“No, sir.”
Arthur extended a hand to Gwen, who was blinking the sleep out of her eyes. She smiled and nodded toward Cook, who returned the gesture. Percival emerged from the other side of the sedan. “Do you have any children, Cook?”
Cook blinked in surprise, clearly not having expected the question. “A little boy, sir.”
“Ah. Good. Well, when the little boy grows up and has children, the things you see this night will be the sort of thing you tell your son’s son.”
“We’re Secret Service, sir,” Cook said stiffly. “We don’t tell others what we see.”
“Trust me…you’ll tell him about this. But fear not: He won’t believe you.”
With that, he gestured for Cook and the others to follow him. He needn’t have done so, since they were going to follow him anyway. The Secret Service wasn’t about to let a former president go wandering into Central Park in the middle of the night all by his lonesome…although Cook secretly had little doubt that Arthur could handle anything they might encounter.
They made their way along the path until eventually they were standing before Belvedere Castle. As always, it retained its timeless quality. What Arthur was about to do had once been his most closely guarded secret. But word was out about him now, so there was little point in skulking around.
Arthur walked slowly around to the far side of Belvedere Castle. The others followed him. Gwen was smiling, knowing that he was looking for a certain portion of the wall. She didn’t offer her aid; generally speaking, she tried to keep out of the way of his pride whenever possible. “Just think, Gwen,” Arthur said as he walked the perimeter. “If we’d come here in the first place, we could have kept your return secret and no one would have known.”
“You said you didn’t want that for us. That it would have gone from being your home-away-from-home to your prison.”
“And yet here we are anyway.”
Finally, he found it: a small cylindrical hole in the wall toward one stone corner. He withdrew Excalibur, reveling as always in the heady sound of steel being drawn from its sheath. The Secret Service men took a step back reflexively upon the appearance of the weapon, and he noticed that Cook’s hand even moved automatically toward his gun. But then Cook overcame the reflex and let his hand dangle by his side.
Arthur took Excalibur and, holding the hilt in one hand and letting the blade rest gently in the other, he slid the point into the hole.
With a low moan and the protest of creaking, the section of the wall swiveled back on invisible hinges. There were audible gasps from the Secret Service men, and Gwen murmured, “I never get tired of seeing that.”
“Magic,” whispered Percival. “Merlin?”
“Yes,” said Arthur. “Merlin.” Before him was a stairway, the top of which was level with the ground in front of him, the bottom of which disappeared down into the blackness that was the castle—or at least an aspect of the castle. “Yes, it’s…”
He stopped and leaned against the door, suddenly feeling dizzy and disoriented. Realizing something was wrong, Gwen touched his arm in concern. “Are you all right?” she asked.
He turned and looked at her, and his face was pale. “Just now…when I was talking about Merlin…I got the…the oddest feeling. Standing here, now, in a place so redolent of magic…something’s wrong…Gwen, we have to go back.”
“Go back?”
“To Washington.”
“Sir,” Cook said urgently, “that’s not really an option. The president…”
“Hang the president. We’re talking about Merlin. When the president’s gone to dust and no one remembers his name anymore, the name of Merlin will still—”
Abruptly another agent, who was wearing a headset, suddenly looked up. He was far too well trained to reflect any alarm he might have felt, but he said, “Agent Cook, we have a situation.”
Cook, who had his own headset, immediately transferred his full attention to it. “This is Cook. Immediate sitrep.” He listened for a long moment, then said to Arthur, “Mr. President…people are coming.”
“People…?” Arthur shook his head.
“We were spotted somehow,” Cook said tightly. “It could be anything, from a leak at JFK to someone just happening to spot us heading into the park and calling a couple hundred of his closest friends. But there’s a crowd of people heading this way, and they’re chanting your name.”
“My God, it’s like something out of a horror movie,” muttered Gwen. “They’ll be wanting to eat our brains next.”
“Sir, you have to go…”
“But, dammit, Merlin…”
“Sir!” said Cook, and there was a look of cold frustration in his eyes. It was obvious he despised what was going on. Apparently he was barely able to wrap his mind around most of it, and circumstances were changing so fast that he was having trouble keeping his mental footing.
Arthur could hear the sounds of people in the distance, heading in his general direction. For just a heartbeat, he imagined fighting his way past the Secret Service men, enlisting these oncoming followers into a great cause and holy quest to get back to Washington, to see what had happened to Merlin, to…
“Arthur!” It was Gwen, looking at him pleadingly, and he suspected she knew everything that was going through his mind just then.
He looked to
Percival. Percival simply stood there, arms folded, and he said, “Your call, Highness.” Cook looked at the unflappable Percival, and Arthur knew that whatever decision he made, Percival would back him up.
But even if he did it—fought his way past these Secret Service men, enlisted the aid of this unknown crowd—then what? This wasn’t ancient Britain, and he wasn’t king. He was a former president, the United States was gargantuan, and the chances were he wouldn’t even make it out of New York. And then what? Criminal charges for assaulting Federal agents? Disgrace? Prison?
He longed for the days when he was an authority unto himself, but those days were not these, and he knew that, at least for the moment, he was going to have to play the hand he’d been dealt.
“Percival, Gwen…in,” he said, with a nod. Without hesitation, they did as they were instructed, dashing into the darkness of the doorway. He called after them, “And be careful of the—”
He heard an alarmed shout, and stumbling, and falling bodies, and then a flurry of profanity from both Percival and Gwen.
“—stairway, remember it’s a bit difficult to maneuver in the dark…”
“No shit!” Gwen’s voice floated from within.
He grimaced apologetically to Cook. “Sorry. The first lady displays an occasionally colorful word choice…”
“Yes, sir, I remember.”
Arthur stuck out a hand and shook the agent’s firmly. “Godspeed, Cook.”
“Same to you, sir,” said Cook. Arthur started to turn away, and suddenly he couldn’t because Cook was still gripping his hand. Arthur looked back at him with an eyebrow raised quizzically.
“Agent Cook!” called one of the agents nervously. The sounds of the people were getting louder.
Ignoring the oncoming crowd, Cook said in a low, tight voice, “Are you really him? Are you really who they say you are?”