scratched at the blade with its claws, pried it out, and flung it away, along with a gory, glowing mass that was once its eye.
Snorting purple flame, the beast convulsed and clawed the ground.
Merlin’s blood poured from his wounds as he staggered to his feet. Natalenya moaned beside him, and he turned to her and took hold of her hand.
Then his eyes failed and the cavern disappeared.
My hands … like searing fire.
Merlin opened his eyes and saw the haze of white-blue fire engulfing him. In his right hand, he felt the dead weight of the hammer, and in his left he held the handle of the sword — point down upon the Stone — with Natalenya’s flinching fingers wrapped around his.
The smithy! The Stone!
With the pain fierce beyond imagining, Merlin raised the hammer and struck the hilt of the sword again with all his strength. Twice more, until the blade pierced and inched into the Stone. A great rumbling filled the room even as the fire swirled back inside, bringing relief to his burning skin.
He smashed the hammer down four times more, and the sword thrust through and out the bottom. A furious wind blew, roaring away from the Stone as if all the storms that had ever blown upon the moor had been hoarded inside and released in an instant.
Merlin tried to hold on to the blade’s hilt, but the wind blew him backward and across the room. The hammer dropped from his fingers, and he fell hard against the broken doors of the smithy.
His head ached, and he gripped the splintered bar of the doors as the pain intensified. Merlin shut his eyes tightly. Even so, stars swirled and danced, blazing such bright and painful arcs that soon the pure light of the sun seemed to fill him.
The light came together and formed the shape of a man — no, the angel — who stepped near the forge. and, with a shining bowl, poured crystalline water upon Natalenya. Walking to Merlin, he poured more water upon Merlin’s head and hands. He called forth words that shook the air. “BY THE WILL AND POWER OF THE LORD GOD, YOU ARE HEALED.”
The burnt skin on Merlin’s hands mended. He opened his eyes, and colors swirled and danced before him. Bright red and blue. Orange. Even green. The tints blended and separated, coursing past him until finally coming into focus. Clear and bright the world seemed at first, and even as his vision of the angel faded, his new eyesight remained.
For the first time in seven years, he could truly see in the waking world. There was neither blur nor haze nor confusing shadow. He touched his eyelids and cheeks and felt his same old scars, but the wounds upon the eyes themselves had been healed.
His joy and wonder faded as the dark scene before him appeared. The broken smithy. The fire consuming the timbers and thatch of the ceiling. Natalenya pulling herself up from the ground with shaking resilience. The Stone, dark and silent, with the High King’s sword thrust through.
Dybris lay near, groaning and gripping his head. And Merlin’s father! Four feet from Merlin, he lay deathly still in a green druid robe, with blood draining from a deep cleft at his neck.
The angry tongues of fire spread upward through the thatch, and while smoke began to fill the room, the heat threatened to burn Merlin’s newly healed skin.
“Natalenya!”
She looked at him in shock, her dress charred and soot-stained from their ordeal.
“Go to Dybris,” he said. “We need to get out!”
Merlin grabbed his father’s wrists and dragged him out the broken doors of the smithy. Natalenya was close behind as she tugged at the monk’s legs.
All around them lay the druidow and villagers, thrown down where they had stood, their torches snuffed but smoldering. For a moment Merlin feared that the destruction of the Stone had slain them, that he and his companions alone survived. But no, they were moaning, barely stirring. Lord, let them finally be free of the Stone’s enchantment.
The thunder-driven wind fed the roof’s crackling flames. His father coughed weakly, and Merlin pulled him into the garden just far enough from the smithy to be safe from the fire. Natalenya followed with Dybris.
Merlin ran his hand through his father’s red-slicked hair and pressed his ear to his father’s chest. “Stay with me, Tas.”
His father opened an eye. “Merlin … failed you again.”