TWENTY-FIVE

Moffat Hills, Scotland

It was early evening when Avery arrived at her destination, Newton Farms, a rustic holiday retreat in the Moffat Hills. She had reserved one of the cottages, paid for online using the Paypal account Jimmy had established for her, but with sunset still a few hours off, there was no reason to delay. The rest of the cottages were vacant, and as near as she could tell, there wasn’t another living soul in a five-mile radius, which was fine with her. She had spent the better part of ten hours cooped up, surrounded by people and on the move; high-speed train from Paris to London, another train to Lockerbie, followed by another Uber ride to the cottage located just a few miles north of Moffat. Now, she was as eager to simply get moving again as she was to find Merlin’s Cave.

She was certain that the cave was the secret Albert Magnus had preserved with his ingenious map. The Brazen Head did not literally answer questions about the future. Instead, for those with the wisdom to read its message, it pointed the way to a place imbued with the power of prophecy. Merlin’s Cave. Leonardo’s cave.

She understood now why the Immortal wanted to possess it.

According to the hiking guides she had downloaded, the cave was situated in an outcropping of red sandstone, just off the trail. The fact that the location was on a well-traveled hiking route concerned her. Although remote, thousands of trekkers and tourists must have visited the cave over the centuries, and to the best of her knowledge, none had reported prophetic visions or any other remarkable phenomena. There had to be more to the mystery, some critical piece of information that would unlock the power to see into the future. Still, it was a place to start.

She hiked up the dirt road to a cattle-crossing bridge and then took the unmarked spur trail that led to the wooded bluff where the cave was located. Along the way she passed through a cloud of what she thought were harmless gnats, but after a few seconds, she felt the first of many needle-like pricks on the bare skin of her arms and neck, and realized that she had just encountered the scourge with the seemingly innocuous name of “midges.” She began swatting at the bites, trying to shoo away the bloodthirsty no-see-ums, and quickened her step, hoping that distance would bring some relief. She was moving so fast that she almost walked right past the cave entrance.

The near miss was understandable. Merlin’s Cave wasn’t much to look at. Partially hidden behind overhanging foliage, the entry was an irregularly-shaped fissure, wider at the top than at the bottom, rising just above the level of her waist. She knelt down before it and shone her burner phone’s built-in flashlight into the opening.

What lay beyond was even less impressive. Instead of an elaborate labyrinth of passages honeycombing the ancient hills, Merlin’s Cave looked more like a cavity in the world’s biggest molar; a fissure just big enough to shelter one person, or possibly two if they were in a deeply committed relationship. While there was nothing visually arresting about the cave, the smell was incredible in the most literal sense.

“They got it wrong,” she murmured, pulling back and trying to draw a clear breath. “Should have been Merlin’s Outhouse.”

The odor was like a cross between rotten eggs and congealing blood. Sulfur with a hint of iron. Drawing a deep breath of relatively fresh air, and stifling her disappointment, Avery crawled inside. As she did, her body filled the opening, blocking out the trace of daylight that managed to filter into the interior though her phone’s light continued to illuminate the gloomy little recess.

A quick glance only confirmed her first impression. The cave was only a few feet deep. The back wall was visibly damp and covered in what looked like white moss. The floor sloped away from the entrance, disappearing into a pool of stagnant water which was no doubt the source of the disgusting smell.

Avery recalled that the nearby town of Moffat had grown up around the reputed efficacy of the mineral rich water drawn from the well located just to the south of her present position. That water in the cave was probably of a similar composition, maybe even more concentrated than that which permeated through the soil and strata to supply the famous well. Was that water the secret of Merlin’s Cave?

That answer seemed too simple, but there was only one way to know for sure.

She frowned, staring at the murky water, dreading the next step and thinking about all the potential consequences. Without thinking, she let out the breath she had been holding and drew another. The stench immediately made her gag, and it took all her willpower to remain where she was.

Just do it, she told herself. Merlin did it. Leonardo did it. You can do it, too.

It was probably faulty logic, but she was desperate to get out of the horrible environment, and she wasn’t about to leave until she tested her hypothesis.

Avery cupped her hands together and dipped them into the pool. She had to break through a layer of slime on the surface to get to the water beneath and that nearly made her jerk her hands back in a reflex of disgust. The water was bitterly cold and thick, but she persisted long enough to ladle up a double handful of the substance. She raised it to her lips and took a tentative sip.

The taste was just about as disgusting as she expected. She tried to swallow, but somewhere between intention and execution, her body rebelled. Her stomach seemed to flip upside down. She retched, spattering the wall of the cave with the unswallowed mouthful, along with the partially digested remnants of her last meal, but the voiding brought no relief.

Oh, God. What have I done?

Her body went numb, the world around her dissolving into a haze. She tried to turn, tried to flee, but couldn’t tell if she was actually moving at all. She threw her hands out to steady herself, but even though she could feel the rough damp stone against her palms, she was still falling.

The sensation passed after what felt like just a few seconds, but it took a few more for her to become fully aware. She had blacked out—that much was obvious—and was now lying flat on her back, which probably explained why she had come to so quickly. With her body more or less level, the blood was flowing to her brain again. She couldn’t see the cave opening, which was strange, but her phone, which lay beside her, was still shining its light up at the low ceiling. By some miracle, it hadn’t landed in the pool.

Nor had she, come to think of it. If she had fallen the other way, she might have drowned.

The taste of the foul water was still in her mouth, but not enough to make her gag again. The stench seemed less oppressive too, though that was probably because she had gone nose-blind to it. Even so, she was eager to get some fresh air.

She sat up slowly, retrieved the light, and shone it around until she located the exit, but daylight no longer seeped in through it. She glanced at the clock on the phone and realized that it was nearly ten p.m. She had been unconscious, not for a few seconds, but for a few hours.

Crap, she thought, but then realized that things could have been a lot worse. She was still alive, after all.

She crawled through the opening and out into the cool night. That fresh air was amazing. She leaned back against the sandstone wall and greedily drew it in until her head felt clear again.

Drinking the water had been a huge mistake, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t somehow connected to the mystery. Maybe there was another way to tap into its properties, perhaps by bathing in it as spa visitors had done for at least a couple centuries. Maybe the water had to be heated in order to....

And then it hit her.

Vapors.

Ingesting the water was clearly impossible—possibly fatal—but prolonged exposure to the vapors might produce a trance state, not unlike Nostradamus breathing nutmeg-laden steam from his scrying bowl.

The cave would act as a natural evaporation chamber and sleeping in it, as Myrddin supposedly had, would have the same effect. There wouldn’t even have to be anything particularly special about the chemical composition of the resulting gaseous mixture; if the amount of oxygen in the air dropped below a certain threshold, brain activity would be impaired, producing vivid dreams and possibly even waking hallucinations. And if there was something in the water, some naturally occurring psychotropic substance, the effect would be even more profound.

There was nothing supernatural about it; just wild hallucinations, mistaken for prophecy.

In her mind’s eye, she saw Myrddin, not the Tolkien-esque wizard with a flowing beard and star-spangled robes, but a half-naked painted Pictish shaman, roaming the boreal forests, communing with the animals, and retreating to the shelter of the cave at night where the vapors from the pool filled his brain with visions of parallel lives unlived and futures that might never come to pass.

Five hundred years later, Albert of Cologne, inspired by romantic poems of the tales of Arthur and his court, traveled to Glasgow to see the cave of Merlin, and discovered the same magnificent secret, which he preserved in his marvelous talking automaton.

It would be more than two hundred years before the young Florentine genius, Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, would unlock Albert’s riddle and follow it to the cave to receive his own vision of the future that would someday come to be. Fifty years after that, Michele Nostradame...

No, she realized, Nostradamus had not come here.

The connections were coming almost too fast for her to process, and with each one, her brain seemed to light up.

Nostradamus had not traveled to Scotland to visit the Merlin’s Cave. Instead, the cave had gone to him, or more accurately, some of its unusual water carried in a unique receptacle.

The Brazen Head.

Albert’s automaton was more than just a map to the cave.

It was a vaporizer.

In another flash of intuition, she realized the story of Nostradamus’ scrying bowl was only partially true. The seer had not been breathing from a bowl, at least not at first, but rather had inhaled hallucinogenic steam issuing from the Brazen Head. He had probably replenished it with fresh water, and when he noticed the potency of the visions diminishing, had added other substances—like nutmeg—which he knew would produce a similar effect.

Hess had figured it out as well. His true motive for flying to Scotland had been to reach Merlin’s Cave in order to refill the Brazen Head and unlock its full potential.

Almost before she knew what she was doing, she was back inside the little cave, crawling forward on hands and knees to the murky pool where she set her phone down, letting its light shine up at the ceiling. The atrocious smell barely registered as she unzipped the backpack and brought out the Brazen Head. The bright brass caught the light from the phone, casting weird patterns on the walls of the cave.

“Welcome home, old boy,” she murmured, and then proceeded to plunge the head into the pool.

A series of faint pops were audible. Bubbles of air, displaced from the reservoir inside the artifact by water rushing in, were rising up and breaking the surface. She kept it submerged until the bubbles stopped, and then drew it out, turning it right side up to let the excess run back out. After a few seconds, the dribbles stopped. It was noticeably heavier now, about a kilogram—two pounds—which meant the reservoir held about a liter of the water.

She tilted it back and forth, but nothing came out. Albert had probably designed it with a one-way gate valve to make it easier to transport.

Now all she needed was a heat source.

She stuffed the head into the backpack, retrieved her phone and headed back out into the night. In the distance, she could make out the lights of Newton Farms, less than a mile away.

Only that wasn’t what she was actually seeing. The cabins were dark, a barely discernible silhouette against the starlit sky. These lights were closer, floating in the foreground and moving toward her. Three tiny points of illumination bobbing and flickering like fireflies or fairies...

Or flashlights.

Somebody was coming up the trail.

There was probably a reasonable explanation for what she was seeing—a visiting tourist out for a late evening stroll, a local shepherd trying to track down a stray member of his flock—but Avery’s instincts told her that it would be better not to wait around and find out.

She shut off the light on her phone and was immediately plunged into darkness. The flashlights were definitely moving in her direction and getting closer with each passing second. She considered ducking back into the cave but discarded that idea. The cave wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret; it was the first place they would look.

She turned away, staring into the near total darkness of the woods around her. Strangely, she had no trouble at all visualizing her immediate surroundings.

Her mind’s eye had just gone blind. Her recollection of the terrain she had traversed to reach the cave was startlingly detailed, but it was just that—a recollection. She had not gone past the cave, so that was where her memory map ended.

Voices became audible. Avery couldn’t distinguish what was being said, just fragmented sounds carried on the breeze, but growing louder.

A man’s voice. A woman’s...

She cocked her head sideways for a moment, listening intently and then breathed a sigh of relief. She switched on her phone and held it over her head. “Tam! Billy! I’m here.”