Merlin’s legs gave out on the long pathway to the altar. He crawled across the floor, gasping, wheezing, clawing at his side, clearly in agony. Reaching the altar, he curled up into a ball, shuddered, and was still.
The light in the temple changed and the shadows shifted as though several hours had passed. In all that time, Merlin did not move. Nimue was about to reach out to him when a rustle of skirts distracted her and Lenore, in the blush of youth, knelt beside Merlin. As she touched him, he groaned. “Leave me to the Gods. Leave me to die.”
“You may die outside if you wish, but not in this temple. Not in the house of the Hidden. This is a place of healing.” The sound of her mother’s voice brought fresh tears to Nimue’s eyes. Lenore wrenched the protesting Merlin to his feet, put his arm around her shoulder, and half carried him to an alcove of the temple, where she laid him on top of a blanket.
The light flickered again. Candles now lit the alcove. Nimue saw Lenore in the corner, grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle, eyes darting nervously to Merlin, who was racked with fever, muttering and shouting, “Fie! Let Alaric have these dead monuments! Burn it! Burn it all! Stack the bodies in the basilica!”
Again the lights flickered, and Nimue was following Lenore through the Iron Wood as she captured cold stream water in a bucket and carried it back to the temple. Nimue relished watching her mother, watching her confident strides, her beautiful strong arms, feeling her strength and her goodness.
She could not help but smile as Lenore dunked Merlin’s head in the icy bucket against his protests. She remembered well that her mother’s healing arts came with a strong hand. Merlin was learning this firsthand.
“Why won’t you let me die?” he growled at her.
“The Hidden teach us the spirit is not ours to extinguish,” Lenore countered, pulling off Merlin’s filthy furs and rags. When he was naked and shivering as a babe on the blanket, Lenore’s hand slowly went to her mouth at what she saw.
It was a hideous, pulsing, deep red and violet wound that curled from his hip, around his stomach, up his back, and up to his throat.
A wound in the shape of a sword.
“What is this sorcery?” Lenore whispered.
Her fingers crept along Merlin’s bubbling flesh and pushed down at the top of his ribs. Merlin cried out in pain. For Lenore clearly felt the contours of steel. Probing around his throat, she was able to pull the flesh down so that she could see the outline of a knob like the pommel of a blade.
“What is this?” Lenore asked him.
Merlin answered through shallow breaths, “My burden.”
“It is killing you. This is quite obviously what has poisoned you. If it is not removed, you will die.”
“It is too late,” Merlin whispered.
The lights flickered again. Nimue stood over Merlin, who was ghost white beneath the blanket, his breathing irregular. Lenore knelt over him, tracing a stone blade across the track of the wound. The silvery vines of the Hidden grew up her neck and cheeks. She whispered an incantation, then pushed the stone blade into the flesh above Merlin’s collarbone. Merlin opened his mouth in a silent scream as Lenore reached her fingers into the cut. Nimue could barely watch as Lenore’s entire hand searched beneath Merlin’s flesh. Her mother’s knuckles flexed, and with a grunt, Lenore drew the bloodied Devil’s Tooth from the arterial darkness of Merlin’s chest. Despite her magical protections, Merlin’s agonized wails shook the foundations of the temple walls.
The lights of memory flickered ahead several days. Lenore sat beside a sleeping Merlin. His wound had been treated and wrapped, yet his face and beard were soaked in sweat and he hovered between life and death. Lenore took Merlin’s hand in hers. She put his fingers to her lips and whispered, “Live.”
Nimue’s eyes drifted to the Sword of Power on the ground, stained with Merlin’s blood. Suddenly she felt herself pulled to the sword, falling into the sword.
In blackness she heard tortured cries and saw the faces of women and children begging for their lives. She saw severed limbs and torsos in piles. Lightning and fire. She saw rivers of blood flowing through Roman aqueducts.
Look away from the sword, Nimue! It was Merlin’s voice in her mind. Do not enter the sword’s history. There are only horrors there. Look away! Look away!
Nimue wrenched herself away from the vision, and she was with Lenore again in a secret crypt beneath the Sunken Temple. Lenore carried the sword across the silent stones to a statue of Arawn, King of the Underworld, a fierce bearded warrior holding leashed hounds that hunted the souls of the dead. At Arawn’s boots lay an empty stone scabbard. Lenore slid the Sword of Power into Arawn’s sheath.
Nimue spoke her thoughts to Merlin: This must be where she fetched the sword from.
Merlin’s thoughts answered: I never knew. She told me it was destroyed. She had access to Fey Fire, I assumed. Maybe I just wanted to believe her.
The memories flickered again. Merlin was awake but in a weakened state. Lenore sat beside him with a bowl of porridge. She tried to feed him a spoon of it, but Merlin pushed her arm away. Not to be deterred, Lenore set down the bowl, pinched Merlin’s nose, forced his mouth open, and stuffed the spoon inside. Merlin stared at Lenore in disbelief, porridge on his beard. She snorted with laughter.
The lights flickered again and the spirits moved the memories forward to Lenore supporting Merlin as he took a few steps in the Iron Wood, the color returning to his cheeks.
“What is your name?” Lenore asked.
“I have been called many names over many lifetimes. But in these lands I am known as Merlin. May I ask what you have done with the sword?”
“The sword will trouble you no more.”
“That is not an answer,” Merlin said.
“And you are not my lord, so my answer will suffice.”
Merlin smiled at this. “I have met my match, have I?”
“You think very highly of yourself,” Lenore observed.
Merlin chuckled. “I am glad to be rid of the sword. For longer than memory, I have been consumed by politics, intrigue, and the Wars of Shadow. I am ready for a different kind of life.”
“I have heard this name ‘Merlin,’ and of your role in these Wars of Shadow. They did no favors to the common folk or the Fey Kind,” Lenore offered.
“These conflicts were born from noble intentions,” Merlin said defensively.
“Blood begets only blood. And no peace was ever bought at the point of a sword,” Lenore said.
Merlin paused to study her. Her eyes danced. “It seems fate has brought me to a house of healing and wisdom.”
Lenore lifted her eyes to meet his.
In the pink shafts of dawning sun, Nimue caught the last glimmer of the lovers Festa and Moreii, clutched in a final embrace, lips barely apart, hands caressing necks. It was a tender but fleeting image. They vanished in the morning mists.
Nimue wiped her wet eyes as Merlin fixed a pipe.
“I would tell you it gets easier.” He blew a savory smoke. “But it does not.” He smiled sadly.
Nimue’s stomach made a churning sound. She laughed. “You’ve invited your daughter to this grand castle and brought her nothing to eat.”
Merlin flushed with actual embarrassment. “Gods, I am terribly sorry. Give me a moment, just—just one moment.” He hurried from the gallery.