Merlin laid his hand on Valcor’s shoulder. “You have learned diplomacy well, my friend.”
“Not recently, good prophet. Makaidos instructed his offspring in the protocol of human royalty long ago.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised.” Merlin waved his hand across the depressed clearing. “I have chosen this place because the dividing wall between this world and the world to come is as thin as papyrus. Here, creating a portal to that world requires only the paltriest skill.”
Merlin knelt and placed a gem at the lowest point of the depression. Its crimson glow pulsed, like a dragon opening and closing its eye. “This rubellite belonged to Makaidos. As you know, the gem itself represents the essence of a dragon’s soul, beautiful in form, as is the dragon, yet scarlet, the color of the unredeemed. What you may not know is that when a dragon takes the stone as his own, his soul becomes tied to it, and it transforms into his gateway to the dragon afterlife, a place where humans are not meant to go.
“If a dragon has one, as long as there is the slightest glimmer of a dragon’s soul remaining, his chosen rubellite will be red, and when he passes through the gateway into Dragons’ Rest, the gem becomes a pulsing beacon, indicating his presence there.”
Merlin laid his hand on the rubellite, capping its glow for a moment. Then, as he raised his hand, the glow seemed to follow underneath, growing into a vertical column, a rising scarlet pedestal that finally stopped when it reached the prophet’s height. Merlin drew an oval around the pedestal with his finger, and the glow seemed to bleed in all directions, filling up the frame he had drawn until it formed a scarlet ellipse.
He backed away and joined the king and Valcor as they gaped in silence. He waved his hand at the flaming halo and spoke in a resonant tone.
O make the passage clear to men
Who wish to see the gate,
The path no dragon deigns to cross,
For death is not their fate.
From top to bottom, the halo’s red hue faded to pink, then to white. A straw-laden path took shape, and as people crossed from one side of the road to the other, they trampled the straw into a maze of muddy footprints. The scene appeared to be a marketplace. Two young women stood in front of a hut, displaying their handmade wares on the tops of wooden tables; a burly man carried a pole with a deer carcass hanging by its hooves; and a matronly woman bore a fruit basket in each of her meaty arms.
Merlin took two quick steps forward. “There!” He pointed near the top of the ellipse. “See the woman standing next to the nobleman? The one carrying the scrolls?”
The king leaned closer. “The gray-haired lady handing him a scroll right now?”
“Yes! Yes! She’s the one!”
The king stroked his chin. “She is familiar to me, Merlin. Very familiar.”
“She should be. She’s my wife.”
“Your wife? So are we looking upon Dragons’ Rest?”
Merlin’s fingers hovered over the image of his wife, caressing her face from afar.
“Merlin?” The king shook the prophet’s arm. “Is that Dragons’ Rest?”
Merlin tore himself out of his trance and stepped back from the oval. “Yes.” He took a deep breath, now keeping his gaze on the king. “As I told you, Morgan’s food not only kills the body, it drains vitality from the human soul, and this dungeon is reserved for the dead who enter into eternity without a vibrant, human soul. Now my wife languishes in that hopeless village, not knowing who she really is or why she is there.”
The ellipse suddenly shifted to gray, then black. Darkness seeped out of the oval like a night fog. Billowing smoke crawled along the ground and rose into a column, slowly solidifying into a human form, slender and feminine the shape of Morgan Le Faye.
King Arthur drew his sword, but Merlin raised his hand. “Not here,” Merlin said. “Not now. She has yet to fulfill her purpose.”
Morgan, dressed in her usual silky black gown, waltzed up to Merlin, laughing. “I saw you mooning over the gateway. Do you miss your sweet wife, my old friend?”
Merlin clenched his fists. Serrated words slipped through his grinding teeth. “Leave it to you to attack a man by killing his defenseless wife.”
“Oh, but Merlin,” she crooned, “there is no more effective tool. Taking a man’s woman is the same as ripping out his heart and pouring his life’s blood