The Broken Sword (36 page)

"A
mazing."

Dr. Rasheesh Shanipati took notes as he studied Beatrice Reed's electroencephalogram on the monitor above her bed.

"It's looked like that for the past forty minutes," Dr. Coles said. "I didn't want to disturb you during dinner. I know you prefer to be left alone before—"

Shanipati made a small gesture meant to set his colleague's mind at rest. "I'm glad you called me in on this. It is most interesting." He turned to a nurse. "Could you please arrange to have a glass of milk brought up for me? I would like to remain here for a time."

"Certainly, Doctor."

Arguably the foremost neurosurgeon in the world, Shanipati had flown into New York that evening to deliver a talk to the AMA on the brain waves of individuals in states other than consciousness. His research on the effect of prayer on brain activity had been the focus of hundreds of magazine articles and television programs.

He had just sat down to a solitary room-service meal with his papers spread around him to review the talk he would give the following morning when the hospital called.

"The entire configuration is baffling," Coles said, picking up a printout from an electrocardiogram, one of several machines to which Beatrice was attached by wires. "Her heart appears to be beating only once per minute."

"The resting rate of a marmot during hibernation," Shanipati mused.

"Er… yes. And the alpha waves!" He looked back up at the screen. "I've never seen anything like this. Have you?"

"Theta," Shanipati corrected. "Between four and eight Hertz cycles, the reading is for theta waves. And yes, I have seen it before. Once."

Years ago, in his native New Delhi, he had recorded the vital functions of a ninety-year-old yogi. The yogi, who had lived in solitude in the mountains for more than two decades, had agreed to participate in the tests in order to prove that his followers' claims that he could control even his autonomic responses with his mind were correct.

Shanipati himself had tested the equipment and affixed the wires to the yogi, so he knew that the results had been accurate, even though they were later refuted on the grounds that what they reported to be occurring within the yogi's body and mind were incompatible with life for a ninety-year-old man, and therefore must have been erroneous.

The yogi, he remembered, had gone into a trance state fairly quickly, in which his pupils dilated and his reflexes no longer responded to external stimuli. His heart rate slowed dramatically, almost to the rate Beatrice's monitor was showing, while his EEG slowly went berserk.

First it slowed from the beta, or waking, range into the alpha, where the brain waves of individuals in a state of meditation occur. From there it slowed further, into the mysterious realm of dream activity, sudden insight, psychic receptiveness, memory recognition—the theta.

"For most people, the theta range is a kind of no-man's-land to be passed through uneventfully on the way to deep sleep," Shanipati explained. "It is the place where dreams occur, where the dreamer can run or fly or leap from buildings while his body remains locked in rigid safety on his bed. But for others, the theta is the very seat of the mind itself."

The yogi's brain waves did not slow further into the delta, or deep sleep state. Instead, some fifty minutes into the test, they began to take on an entirely different character. They no longer resembled waves at all, but a dense band of solid color from one extreme of the theta range to the other.

This was the condition currently reflected on Beatrice Reed's EEG.

"'Is she
dreaming
?''' Coles asked.

"No, the theta in this structure is not indicative of dreams. Not exactly." Shanipati struggled to find words the American neurologist would understand. "It is more like a perception... a perception of the soul," he said.

"A ... I see." Coles cleared his throat.

He didn't see, of course. What made neurology so difficult to grasp at Shanipati's level was that everything known about the human mind was communicated by doctors, who understood its science but refused absolutely to recognize its divinity.

After his study on the yogi was deemed unacceptable, as Shanipati had suspected it would be, he had not further blackened his name in the medical community by disclosing that twenty-six letters had come to his office after news of the experiment appeared in the newspapers. From all over India, people had written him about having seen a very old man, naked except for a loincloth, who had performed some sort of miracle before their eyes.

Many of the letters reported healings: A twelve-year-old boy who had collided with a truck while riding his bicycle and suffered a concussion had sat up, smiling and hungry, after the yogi's visitation. A woman, suffering from bone cancer, told her family that the old man had taken away the horrific pain with which she had been living for years. The headman of a remote village in Uttar Pradesh wrote to tell Shanipati of an ancient stranger who had stood ringing a bell in the marketplace, warning the villagers of an avalanche. Despite the fact that the area was not mountainous and a heavy rain had begun to fall, the villagers heeded the stranger's warning and fled upcountry in time to see most of their homes destroyed by a massive mudslide.

In all cases, the mysterious old man's arrival had coincided with the period of the yogi's trance state during the experiment; and in all cases the stranger disappeared after performing his miraculous acts.

Twenty-six letters, Shanipati remembered. How many other occurrences involving the yogi had not been witnessed, how many letters not written?

A perception of the soul,
he thought, drinking the milk that had been brought for him. He sat down, a notebook on his lap, to watch the theta waves of the comatose girl in front of him, and wondered to what distant realms she was travelling.

A
river of silver.

Taliesin saw it stretching over miles of highway to the place where Hal rode with the Knights of the Round Table in search of their King.
Light
! he commanded, and the band which he had forged in the Summer Country glowed bright as his strengthening soul.

He trembled with the power that surged through him, filling him, dispelling the drug in his body and the magicians' dark spells. The whirling vortex which had threatened to strangle him dissipated to a mere breeze. Beyond it, unaware, Thanatos began the complex and subtle ritual designed to kill a being such as himself, a human versed in magic. It was the ritual that had been performed on the body of the Innocent, though she had willed herself to death before the sorcerers could take her soul.

Nor will they take mine, Taliesin thought. He raised his hand, knowing that with one thought he could shatter these magicians' puny spells. With one…

Yes, Merlin.

He pulled back. The magic that grew inside him could not be coming from the room around him. This place was dead, contaminated by evil. Nothing but the filthy spells of the demon gods could thrive here. Yet something was moving, swelling, shooting directly into his mind from some other source. Someone was sending it to him, someone of great power.

Innocent?

Use my power, Merlin. You have need of it.

He remembered the magic he had made in the cave. To achieve it, he had destroyed himself. After it was done, he had slept for sixteen hundred years.

I cannot do this thing to you, Master—

Do it!

But Beatrice… She will die. She is no more than a child…
Taliesin pictured the young English girl whose life he had saved in Tangier. For what had he saved it? To take it away for his own uses, like one of the black magicians' sacrifices?

He had never taken a wife. He had never had a family, or enjoyed the simple, profound pleasures of an ordinary man's life. He had given up these things without a thought, because what he possessed in their place had always been of greater importance.

He had the magic.

You became the Merlin,
Beatrice had told him. Beatrice, who did not even know whose magnificent soul she carried within her. Yet she had asked the great question:
Was it enough?

That question had been a test, he knew now, as the Innocent had always known.

Was the magic enough to give up the life of another for it, the physical life of one whom he had loved for sixteen centuries? The Innocent had been his master, his friend, his mother. It was she who had taught him the mysteries of the druids, and the magic of the immortals. She had given him everything, made him everything he was. She had come back from death itself, from far beyond the Summer Country, to be with him.

And now she was asking him to send her into death again, for the sake of the magic.

Was it enough? Was it?

No, he thought. It would never, ever, be enough for that.

Then you betray the gods who entrusted you with their existence, for it was through you that they died, and only you can bring them back.

Through me? How could they have died through me?

Their assassin was your son, conceived during the rite of Beltane. He has come back here, to this very place, to complete the circle, as you must… if you are strong enough.

My son?
Through eyes glazed with shock and horror, Taliesin watched the dark magician perform the first incantations upon him.
This evil beast?

Thanatos. His name is Thanatos, god of death.

My son...

Use my power to close the circle.

Please! Do not
—

I have come into this life only for this moment. I have come to offer you my gift, and you must take it, Merlin, for Merlin you truly are.

Oh, Innocent, what you ask of me!

A force like a thunderbolt entered through the top of his head and surged through his body.

Take my fire, take it, and with it light the world.

Her voice fell silent.

The old man knew what he had to do.

With tears streaming down his face, Taliesin raised himself up off the floor to his full height until he stood rigid, filled to bursting with the Innocent's profound energy. The cords binding his arms and chest fell away like ash. "I will do as you bid me, Master," he whispered.

The power exploded within him. He felt it burning from the inside out, a force like the fire of a thousand suns, searing away his thoughts, his emotions, his soul itself. Taliesin stepped out of the vortex of the dark spell and quelled it with a gesture. Then, fixing his gaze on Thanatos and his sorcerers, he made a sound like the roar of the sea.

Aubrey looked up from his work, startled. The magicians with him cowered, shielding their faces. The curved dagger flew out of Aubrey's hand to shatter against the wall. The bowls of blood and other accoutrements of ritual smashed to fragments. The carcasses of the dead animals that had encircled the old man scattered to the corners of the room as if a great wind had swept them away. The blood on the floor was blasted clean. The candles blew out, leaving the room in darkness except for an eerie, otherworldly glow that surrounded Taliesin like a halo. The magic burst like starlight from him.

He was the Merlin.

"The cup," he commanded.

Inside Aubrey's sleeve, the metal sphere glowed red, burning through the fabric of his robe until he cried out in pain, his garment ablaze. As he struggled to put out the flames, the cup floated over Kate's body, then came to rest upon the great wound that had stilled her heart.

Immediately her flesh knitted, the skin growing smooth over the place where the deep marks of the pentagram had been. She opened her eyes. Her cracked lips moved.

"Mother, bring us life from death," she whispered, holding the cup in her hands like precious water. She sat up, transfixed. "Mother bring us..."

"... life from death," the Merlin finished, understanding the prayer at last. This was why the Innocent had given him her power. For this single moment, when the destiny of mankind would change forever, healed by a cup which had been forged in the depths of the universe by the ancient gods.

It was their time to live again.

"Mother, bring us life from death," he breathed.

Kate repeated the words. "Mother, bring us life from death."

Aubrey lunged at them. A wall of fire rose to stop him. Gasping, the black magicians recoiled into the shadows, fleeing from the flames that licked at them.

"Mother, bring us life from death."

Kate stared, slack-jawed, at the inferno rising up around her. "M—mother, bring us life from death."

The magicians scrambled for the ladder leading out of the building, tearing at one another like wounded vultures, but the fire was always a step ahead, extending, traveling where the Merlin bade it, encircling them finally in a ring of fear.

"Mother, bring us life from death."

"Mother..." Kate staggered backward. Along the far wall, a long human bone was slowly ascending toward the ceiling.

Mother bring us life from death

The earthen floor beneath them shook.

Mother bring us life from death

The Merlin closed his eyes. The prayer came no longer from him, but from the earth itself. The souls of the dead gods had stirred at last.

Mother bring us life from death

Mother bring us life from death

It grew louder, reverberating through the chamber, thundering. The black magicians quaked behind their wall of fire as Merlin called out the names of the vanished gods:

"Mithras! Cerridwen! Arianrhod!" he shouted. "Hearken to me, for I am the Merlin come to resurrect you with the souls of the long faithful! Rise, Scathach, Mannannan, Dagda, Bran! Rise, LlewLlaw Gyffs, Eostre, and the Cailliach! Selene, Gwion, Elphin, Forgall, rise, for the wheel has turned and your time has come at last!"

With a keening wail, the walls began to craze and crumble. Huge cracks appeared in the old stone masonry, and from them poured forms like zephyrs, the ghosts of the desecrated dead. They had been druids, each of them, killed as the old gods themselves had been killed, by the followers of the darkness. Their bodies had been defiled, their bones brought from their sacred island across the ocean to this subterranean place; but their souls were free now. Sighing, they rose, reaching up with skeletal fingers, flying upward, filling the room, twisting like smoke among the screaming black magicians.