WHAT I DON’T understand,” said Percival, pouring a glass of wine for himself in the Lincoln Bedroom, “is that Merlin and I spoke about the Grail ages ago…and he claimed to know almost nothing about it. Now he purports to know all about it. Which is true?”
“Probably all of it…and none of it,” said Gwen. “That’s how wizards, or at least this wizard, acts most of the—”
“Brady.” Arthur interrupted Gwen, which was unusual for him since generally his conduct when it came to his wife was the height of courtesy. At this point he simply wasn’t listening to what she had been saying, since his attention had been focused elsewhere. Brady had been involved in setting out the food that he’d brought in, doing so briskly and efficiently as was his wont. But Arthur, even though he was seated across the room, had perceived that something was out of kilter in the man’s demeanor, and now he was on his feet and crossing the room. His actions naturally captured Percival’s and Gwen’s complete attention. “Brady…is something wrong?”
Brady, normally the most convivial of gentlemen, clearly could not bring himself to look directly at Arthur. “Nothing’s wrong, Mr. President…”
“With all respect, Brady…I think you’re not being entirely candid with me.”
“I just…” With an effort, he turned and looked at Arthur. “I…don’t think it would be appropriate for me to—”
“Devil take propriety. You’re a good man, Brady. You’ve done nothing except live an exemplary life of service to this nation’s leaders.” He squared his shoulders. “If you’re upset with me about something, or want to tell me that you think I’m mad as a hatter, you should not feel any reticence to—”
“Upset?” Brady looked at him in confusion, and then flashed a small smile at the notion. “Mr. President, I have…as you say…served quite a number of our leaders. And I’m not trying to blow smoke up your skirt when I say that, of all of them, you are the single most decent man I’ve ever encountered. The most scrupulously honest, the most…”
Abruptly emotion overwhelmed him. It was as if the strength went out of his legs, and Brady was suddenly sitting before he even realized that he was going to be doing so. It was only through Arthur’s quick movement to slide a chair under him that prevented him from sinking to the floor. “Brady,” he said softly, “what’s really happening here?”
“It’s not appropriate for me to discuss it with—”
“Brady, I’m ordering you to tell me. Not that I’m entirely sure my orders carry any weight, but still…”
Brady shook his head, and now Gwen came forward and crouched so that she was at his eye level. “Brady,” she said, one hand resting upon his shoulder, “Arthur’s just trying to help. And he wouldn’t be asking you if he didn’t want to know.”
“It’s just…ma’am, in all the years I’ve been doing this job, I have never—ever—asked anyone for a single favor. And I’ve been in the presence of a lot of powerful men who could have granted a lot of powerful favors. So I don’t see that it’s right for me to start now…”
“The Grail,” Percival spoke up tonelessly. “This has to do with the Grail.”
Brady nodded without responding.
“Brady…” Arthur prompted him.
At first, Brady didn’t reply. But then, before Arthur could speak again, Brady said with an unmistakable tone of bitterness, “I’m a religious man, sir. Go to church every Sunday. Pray to our Lord. Ask for nothing except His love. Tried the best I could to conduct myself in His teachings, as He would want. Can’t say that I lived a totally blameless life. What man has? I’ve tripped up here and there, but still, I think the scales tip more in my favor than against when it’s all tallied up. I’ve tried to obey all the commandments.” His voice trailed off, but no one in the room urged him to speak, certain that he would continue on his own. They were right. “My wife is dying, Mr. President. Stomach cancer, eating her from the inside out. My Linda is the sweetest woman in the world…”
“I remember her. I met her once.”
“…and she’s never done anything to deserve anything like this. She keeps saying that God tosses you only as much as he thinks you’re capable of dealing with. She says there’s some sort of grand plan to all this. But I’m thinking that if this is a plan, then it’s a damned bad one. You know the commandment about worshipping no other gods…?”
“Of course,” said Arthur.
Brady looked up at him with quiet passion reflected in his face. “I would be willing to throw aside that commandment. I would be willing to worship you, Mr. President, and throw all my prayers and supplications to you, and sing you hosannas and praise you in the highest. Because in the past six months I’ve been doing that with the God I’ve been worshipping all my life…and I’m tired of his answer to my prayers being ‘no.’ I need to worship someone who gives a damn, and I think that’s you, not Him.”
“I’m not looking for worship, Brady.”
“That may be, Mr. President. But I’m looking for a miracle. And I wasn’t going to ask you, and swore to myself over and over again that I wouldn’t. Guess I don’t have the world’s best poker face,” he added ruefully.
There was silence for a moment, then Arthur said, “Percival.”
“Yes, Highness?”
“Do you have the Grail?”
“Of course, Highness.” Percival produced the Holy Grail seemingly out of thin air. Arthur wasn’t sure just how Percival managed to do that, and he wasn’t entirely certain he wanted to know.
Brady’s eyes widened when he saw it. “Is…is that…?”
“It is. Where is your wife?”
“She’s at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore…”
“Then that is where we’re going.”
“Arthur,” Gwen said nervously, “the White House is locked down. They may not be willing to just let us head off to Maryland.”
“Then we’ll find a way,” Arthur told her. “Come.” With the utter confidence that stemmed from being a warrior king, Arthur headed toward the door. But before he made it halfway across the room, the door opened abruptly to reveal Ron Cordoba and several Federal agents.
“Ah! Ron! Excellent timing,” said Arthur briskly. “We have a situation—”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“We need to get to Johns Hopkins…”
He was astounded when Ron shook his head and realized that there had never been an occasion when Ron Cordoba refused him anything. “That’s not going to happen, sir. We have to get you out of the White House, and we have to do it in a highly visible manner.”
“I know that. I’m not blind, Ron. Circumstances outside have become untenable, and if I don’t get out of the capital soon, things are going to go very badly. But first thing’s first. Brady’s wife—”
“I know the condition of his wife, sir…Brady, again, my condolences,” said Ron, and Brady nodded in acknowledgment. “But right now, the only thing that matters is getting you to a secure location.”
“Where?” demanded Percival.
“The only place that’s not connected with the US government, but that we can be certain no one will be able to find you.”
Gwen looked blank, but Arthur understood immediately. “Of course,” he said, and when Gwen turned to him in bewilderment, he simply said, “The castle.”
“Of course,” she echoed him.
Percival was still confused. “Castle…?”
“Later, Percival. Trust me: Later. Ron…there will be plenty of time for that. But first…”
“Sir,” Ron said sharply, “you don’t understand. There is no ‘first.’ There’s no bargaining. There are no side trips to anywhere except to your destination. That’s all there is to it.”
Arthur’s eyes narrowed, and a sense of danger crackled in the air. “You…are dictating terms…to me?”
“Sir…”
“To me? How dare you…!”
“Arthur! What do you think you’re going to do, huh? Draw Excalibur and cut your way out of here? Kill them? Kill me?”
No one moved. Arthur glared at Ron with such fury that Gwen wasn’t sure whether her husband might indeed yank out his invincible sword and bisect his former chief of staff.
Ron spoke first, visibly fighting to restrain himself. “Arthur…there’s no choice here. None. This order is coming straight from President Stockwell. He wants you out immediately.”
“If it came straight from him, then I will go straight to him and convince him otherwise.”
“He doesn’t want to see you.”
“Unfortunately, the feeling is not mutual. Take me to him immediately, or I’ll find him myself.”
“How do you plan to do that? Hack your way into the Oval Office? Do you want to be the first US president who was shot down by his own Secret Service agents?”
Arthur was about to respond when a gentle hand rested upon his forearm. He turned and saw tragedy in Brady’s eyes. “Mr. President,” Brady said, and his voice was quavering, but there was firmness in it yet. “Mr. President…I…I can’t let this happen. Because there’s people out there”—and he pointed in the general direction of the crowds outside the White House—“who are just as deserving as Linda. Maybe…I don’t know…maybe even more so. It’s not right for me to play upon your sympathy…”
“You played upon nothing, Brady.”
“Yes, I did, Mr. President, even if you’re too much of a gentleman to admit it. I should never have said anything. I shouldn’t have put you in this…this impossible position. The bottom line, sir, is…I’m an American. And my commander-in-chief has given an order that Mr. Cordoba and these agents are trying to carry out. If I’m responsible in any way for them not doing that…I just…I can’t allow that to happen.”
“Not even to save your wife? You don’t think she’d want that?”
“With the greatest of respect, sir…was your wife happy that you resigned your office because of her?”
Arthur and Gwen exchanged a long look. They both knew the answer, recalling when she had faced him after coming out of her coma and chewed him out for making such sacrifices on her behalf.
“Arthur,” Ron began imploringly.
But Arthur put up a hand, and simply said, “Ron…would you give us a minute, please.”
Cordoba hesitated, but then said, “Of course, sir.” He gestured to the Federal agents, and they backed out of the room, closing the door behind them.
Gwen wasn’t sure what she was expecting…some kind words from Arthur to Brady, perhaps. Some comments of encouragement.
Instead, Arthur moved as if galvanized into action. “Percival, the Grail. Now.”
Without question, Percival handed it to him, but there was clearly concern on his face. Gwen knew exactly what was going through his mind: He was wondering if Arthur was planning to hand the Grail over to Brady. Percival was far too dedicated a knight to offer protest if that was Arthur’s decision, but it was obvious to Gwen that such a move on Arthur’s part would be crushing to Percival’s spirit. He had vested far too much of himself into the Grail. If it left his possession once more after he had finally reacquired it, Gwen didn’t doubt that—despite his immortality—he might well fade away and die.
Arthur apparently knew what Percival was thinking as well. “Trust me, Percival,” he said with a brief smile.
“As ever, Highness.”
Arthur crossed quickly to the table that Brady had rolled in. He took the bottle of wine, headed over to the sink, and upended it, draining the contents. Then, setting the bottle down, he picked up the decanter of water with his left hand and held it over the goblet. “I have absolutely no idea if this is going to work,” he said. “But I figure a slight chance is better than no chance at all.” Slowly he poured the water into the Holy Grail, filling it nearly to the brim. Then he looked at Gwen and tilted his head in the direction of the wine bottle.
She understood and started to move toward it, but Brady was faster. He picked up the Grail and, ever so carefully, reverently, he expertly transferred the contents from the Grail into the wine bottle. For good measure, Arthur repeated the procedure twice more, and Brady twice more poured it over until the wine bottle was nearly full. Then Arthur put the water decanter down, picked up the cork to the wine bottle, and handed it over to Brady. Brady shoved the cork back into the bottle as best he could.
“I wish I could do more for you, Brady…give you more…”
“You’ve given me hope, Mr. President. That’s all I can ask.”
“All right, then. Guard that with your life. And you have to swear to me that you will not drink from it yourself. At least not while you’re in good health.”
“I swear, sir.”
“Because we’re dealing with strange powers. Powers that are far beyond our understanding. They are not to be meddled with lightly.”
“Yes, sir. I won’t drink from it, I swear. I would never in any event. Because if drinking a portion of this somehow cures my Linda…I’ll want to make sure to keep some of it around in case there’s some sort of relapse.”
“I believe you, Brady.” He gripped him firmly by the shoulder. “Don’t be too much in a hurry to leave. Don’t act as if you have some sort of contraband in the wine bottle. Remember, you are doing nothing dishonest. Godspeed to you, then.”
Then he turned and handed the Grail back to Percival. Gwen noticed that Percival made a little, relieved sigh as he took it from his king and tucked it back into his coat. Arthur straightened his jacket and said, “Percival…Gwen…I believe it’s time to go.”
“What about Merlin?” asked Gwen.
“We’ll pick him up from his room before we leave. Whatever meditating he’s doing will simply have to wait.”
But Merlin was not in his room, nor any of the rooms nearby. This caused a certain degree of consternation among the Secret Service, who were obviously not sanguine about the notion of the strange young boy with the mysterious relationship to Arthur just casually wandering around the White House somewhere. But with minutes ticking by, it was finally decided that Merlin could always be removed at a later date. Right now the main thing was to get Arthur out of there, and as conspicuously as possible.
So it was that the thousands of people gathered outside the White House, waiting for their shot at a miracle…waiting for an appearance by their latest savior…were surprised to see a large helicopter, a Sikorsky VH 3D, lifting off from within the White House grounds. It stayed relatively low as it glided forward, and as it hovered above the crowd, the powerful beating of its propellers caused all manner of shouting and confusion below. Hats blew away, people struggled to keep their coats wrapped around themselves against the brisk night air, and errant newspapers and discarded trash swirled about.
Then the side door of the Sikorsky slid open and a cry went up as Arthur Penn appeared in the opening. It was easy to tell it was he, because the army personnel who were keeping the people back had sweeping searchlights swinging through the night sky, and one of them was trained on the copter. This hadn’t occurred by happenstance. The men on the ground had been informed of what they were to do because the people in the White House wanted to make damned sure the people on the ground knew that Arthur was aboard the chopper.
He was locked into place via tethers, and he addressed the crowd through a loudspeaker.
“My friends…as you can see,” he called down, “I am departing the confines of the White House! Therefore, I am now asking you to return to your homes! No good will come from your extending your stay here! Someone will get hurt, and I would not wish that for all the world!”
The crowd was not uniform in its response. There were some who waved signs that said, ANTICHRIST! and CHRISTIAN HATER! and BURN IN CAMELOT! plus more that were even more emphatic in their condemnation of him. He supposed he couldn’t blame them. He had openly challenged their core beliefs. After the mess of a press conference, he had told Gwen that he had simply been asking questions, nothing more. To which Gwen had replied that maybe there were some questions that shouldn’t be asked, ever…because not only could they not be answered, but people didn’t want to know the answers in the first place. He had thought at the time she’d been wrongheaded in her thinking, but now he wasn’t so sure.
Nevertheless, interestingly enough, the supplicants vastly outweighed the Arthur-haters in the crowd. Their voices quickly overwhelmed those who were shouting abuse, and some of them even knocked the protesting signs out of the hands of the critics.
And those people shouted up at him. “Save us!” they cried out. “Help us!” “Cure us!” Children were thrust into the air, clutched in the hands of their desperate parents. Arthur looked down and saw them all, with all manner of defects ranging from a baby with no eyes to a toddler with horrific burns upon his body.
There were others as well. Not babies, but adults, all of them in various stages of walking decay. In his time as king, he had toured leper colonies. In his time as president, he had inspected and investigated areas where the poor congregated. He had witnessed firsthand their frustration and misery. On those occasions when a natural disaster had arisen, Arthur had been the first one on the ground to help provide aid and succor wherever he could…a tendency that his supporters had labeled heroic, his critics had dismissed as grandstanding for the TV cameras, and his security people had called “aggressively suicidal” since they were never able to secure fully the environments into which Arthur was thrusting himself.
But he had never, in all his days, encountered anything like this. Truly pitiable, they had come in wheelchairs and wagons, on crutches or on dialysis. The sick, the needy, the wanting, the dying. So many pleading for his help and far too many to help…and no absolute certainty that aiding them would do the least bit of good. For every one that he helped, there were a hundred more. It was the same old problem as before: He couldn’t help everyone, and so he was frozen into impotence, unable to aid anyone.
So many were shouting and screaming his name that they all blended together in a cacophony of desperation. Looking back into the chopper, he made a circular gesture with his pointer finger. He could hear the disappointed roars from below. They were crying out to him, raising their voices in entreaty.
They were doing in actuality what Brady had said he would be willing to do in theory. They were praying to him, begging him to help them make their lives better. They were treating him as if he were some sort of god who could, with a wave of his hand, make their lives better somehow.
Except…well…wasn’t he? He knew he was no god, to be sure. Despite his long age, despite the two worlds of magic and mundane that he straddled with moderate success, he was still human. Still capable of being killed just as easily as any other man.
Then again…so was Joshua, son of Joseph, otherwise known as Jesus. Wasn’t he? Wasn’t that the entire point?
With no other idea of what else to say, Arthur bellowed through the loudspeaker, “Return to your homes! Await my instructions! If you believe in me…do as I say! I shall return,” said the king, “but not to here. Go home and wait for my word! Bless you all!”
Arthur stepped back into the helicopter, and the door slid closed. As one of the crew helped Arthur off with the rig, he saw that Gwen—belted into a large, reasonable comfortable chair—was staring at him. “Don’t say it,” he warned.
“‘Bless you all? Wait for my word?’”
“You know, once upon a time, when I told someone not to say something, they bloody well didn’t say it.” Arthur sighed.
“Don’t you think you sounded just a touch messianic there?”
“What’s messianic about ‘bless you’? It’s what people say when someone sneezes.”
“No one was sneezing down there, Arthur!” she pointed out. “They were looking for…I don’t know…a sign or something. You blessed the crowd! All you needed was a balcony and some robes.”
“And a large funny hat,” Percival added. “It doesn’t work without the large funny hat.”
She fired him an annoyed look. “You’re not helping, Percival.”
“True. But then again, I wasn’t trying to, so it doesn’t bother me too much.”
“Gwen, I had to say something to them,” Arthur said reasonably as he belted himself in. One of the flight crew checked to make sure that Arthur was secured and, once he was satisfied, gave a thumbs-up to the pilot. The helicopter had, until that moment, been moving very slowly. But once the pilot knew that Arthur was safe in his seat, the Sikorsky angled away quickly, embarking on its journey. “My entire purpose was to get them to leave the White House. To leave Washington and go home…”
“And wait to hear your word.”
“To await my word, yes. A common enough term.”
“Arrrrthur,” she moaned, covering her face with one hand, “don’t you see how it’s going to sound? How it’s going to come across? You meet with a representative of the Pope, you practically come right out and say that not only is everything the Church knows wrong, but you’ve got the smoking Grail to prove it…and then you wind up preaching to your followers from on high and telling them that you will return to them!”
“Well, wasn’t that in a book about me? The Return of the King?”
“That wasn’t Arthurian! That was Lord of the Rings!”
“Oh. Was it?”
“Yes!”
“I think you’re confusing it with The Once and Future King,” Percival said helpfully. “That one was you.”
“Really. Which one had the little people with the hairy feet?”
“The Return of the King.”
“Ah. All right. My mistake, then.”
“Arthur, this isn’t funny,” Gwen admonished him. “You’re setting up a situation that’s, at the very least, incendiary.” Her eyes narrowed as she looked at him suspiciously. “And, frankly, I’m not entirely sure that you’re unaware of that.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. “I don’t want to discuss it now, all right? Please?”
“As you wish.”
“I’ll tell you one thing, though: As soon as he turns up, Merlin’s going to chew your ass over this.”
Arthur chuckled. “This is one of those moments where I’m relieved to have picked up some of your vernacular. Otherwise, that would have summoned for me a most disturbing image.” He looked out across the rapidly receding landscape of DC. “I hope he catches up with us soon.”
MERLIN GLANCED UPWARD and saw a helicopter flying low over the city, angling upward and gaining altitude with every second. It struck him as a curiosity, but nothing more than that.
The Washington Monument stood strong and proud against the moonlight. Merlin had never quite understood the design point; it was a touch too phallic for his tastes. Still, even he had to admit that, at certain angles, it could look impressive. Amazing what mere mortals were capable of accomplishing when they put their minds to it.
Part of him thought that he was wasting his time as he approached the Reflecting Pool. This was a long shot at best. Still, he had to admit that the Secret Service agents might well have had a point. It was the exact sort of body of water that the Lady would have preferred. Flat, unmoving, almost like a vast sheet of glass. As was always the case with her, the fact that it was only a couple of feet deep would have made no difference. There were mystical forces at work when the Lady of the Lake chose to make her presence known, a warping of space and time. The truth was even though they had been lovers an age ago, there was still much about Nimue that Merlin didn’t fully comprehend. He supposed that that was as it should be. The oceans that covered three quarters of the world remained an endless mystery, and women as a gender were mysterious as well. Nimue was the incarnation of both, so her nature demanded that she be damned near unfathomable.
“The Lady of the Lake. Unfathomable.” This prompted Merlin to laugh slightly at his own inadvertent joke. But then he wiped away his amusement and faced the Reflecting Pool. “Nimue!” he called out to her, and there was more than just the speaking of her name in the summons. There was the feel of magiks that were old when the world was young. “Nimue, I summon you here! I summon you to this place, at this time! In the name of the unnamable, by the power and presence, I summon you! I summon you!”
He waited.
Nothing. Not a ripple.
“Nimue! Get your flabby ass out here, now!”
That did it. The center of the pool suddenly began to roil fiercely, to bubble and foam. Merlin was sure that he heard the faint sound of trumpets in the distance. He folded his arms and waited, and the water seemed to peel back upon itself, folding and twisting, then there she was, lifted up dead center with her arms outstretched in a most dynamic pose. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but she was certainly a splendid creature. The last thing he wanted to do, though, was give any hint that he thought that.
There was vast annoyance in her face, and she placed her hands on her hips, her head tilted slightly.
“Flabby?”
“I needed to get you here…”
“Flabby?”
“You told me about the Spear, but you didn’t—”
“You want my help and you’re calling my ass flabby? My ass is taut, Merlin—”
“As I know from personal experience, Nimue. I just said it to get your attention, and by the way, considering how you’ve been fiddling with me, it was as much as you deserved.”
She looked as if she were about to shout at him some more, then her ire evaporated and she smiled with thin lips, as green as seaweed. “Well, aren’t you just the little trickster. And I suppose I have been a bit naughty…”
“Just a bit, yeah,” Merlin said sarcastically.
“Still…you could at least apologize for—”
Merlin threw up his hands in exasperation. “I apologize, all right? Satisfied?”
She walked across the water to him, her feet making little splish splash noises as she did so. “It’s a grudging, halfhearted apology, but I suppose for you, that’s better than nothing. All right, Merlin, you’re forgiven.”
“I’m relieved. Now will you please, in the name of all that’s unholy, tell me what—if anything—you know about the Spear? And how do you know it?”
She stopped a few feet away from him. “You don’t have to sound so huffy about it, Merlin. If you hadn’t lost the thing in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”
“And if you hadn’t imprisoned me in the second place, I’d have had a thousand years or so to find it again.”
“A valid point,” she admitted. “That was rather mischievous of me, wasn’t it.”
“It’s in the past. Forgive and forget, that’s my motto.”
Nimue laughed at that, and the water beneath her foamed in sympathy with her. “Since when is that your motto? I would have thought it would be ‘lie in the high weeds and seek revenge.’”
“That’s my backup motto. Nimue—”
“Very well, very well.” She sighed. “The Spear…”
“Yes. The Spear.”
“The Spear of Destiny is in the hands of a very powerful necromancer. Not just a necromancer…an alchemist.”
“An alchemist?” Merlin made a face. “One of those fools obsessed with transforming lead into gold?” He made a dismissive wave. “Penny-ante tricksters, dime-store charlatans, the lot of them.”
“This one is far more than that, Merlin, and he’s thinking about a good deal more than transmuting chemical elements.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really.”
“All right, Nimue, I’ll bite. What is he thinking about, then?”
“Basic elements. Purity. Purifying things through basic elements.”
“Do you have to speak in riddles, woman?”
“I don’t have to, no. But it amuses me to do so, and it’s kind of fun to watch you squirm every now and then.”
“Really. And how fun do you think it would be,” Merlin inquired, “to suddenly find yourself laboring under a spell of absolute veracity? They’re not a lot of fun, Nimue. They tend to split the mind open like an overripe cantaloupe, and the person subjected to it doesn’t always quite return to normal. And if you think your status as the premiere water elemental of this sphere somehow renders you immune to it, I am perfectly willing to show you that you are tragically mistaken.”
“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 wonderful 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.