The Book of Avalon Eternal

'Where is my brother?' Morgan asks Gawain calmly, her voice resonant and firm.

'He is there, my lady,' Gawain replies, pointing in the direction from which he and Lionel had come. Morgan moves away from him and quickens her pace.

She reaches Arthur several moments before Gawain. Morgan speaks softly to Owain with her head bent close to his ear. His head is twice the size of hers. Gawain, with Lionel at his heels, reaches the trio of Morgan, Owain, and Arthur.

Gawain's thoughts swirl. Arthur is dead. He is dead, and he has not named an heir. Not with any certainty. He cannot die today, he cannot die. And then another voice in Gawain's mind, from further down: Everyone dies. You know this. And he did leave an heir. You are the heir, Gawain. You are the heir.

Arthur is still breathing, but lightly. His wound is exposed as Owain removes Arthur's armor and shirt, in a futile attempt to clean the wound.

Morgan throws aside the folds of her robe and kneels in the mud. Her fingers trace the edges of Arthur's wound, which is jagged and bleeding. She gently inserts her fingers to feel the inside of the wound. Gawain looks at Arthur's face as Morgan does this, but he makes no response, not even a twitch of the lips or a flicker of the eyelids.

Morgan reaches inside a pouch that rests underneath her robe to produce a small vial of liquid that is the color of dark urine. She removes the cap, places her finger over the mouth of the bottle, and quickly turns the bottle upside down and right side up again, wetting the tip of her finger. She traces the edges of Arthur's wound with the liquid, and reinserting her fingers into the wound, she coats the interior of it with the liquid.

'Will he die, my lady?' Owain asks tentatively. Morgan flicks her eyes over at him in irritation.

Then Gawain hears an abrupt noise behind him, and he turns reflexively, hand reaching for his sword. Nimue has carried the corpse of the legless Briton to their small circle around Arthur and dumped him headfirst onto the ground. Gawain is surprised that Nimue could carry a man of that size, even a legless man, but Gawain has gradually stopped being surprised by the things that Nimue does.

Morgan now withdraws a small tin container from her pouch. She smells the contents of it and pours a small pile of thin brown powder into her hand. Nimue approaches and squats beside her, taking a pinch of the powder and placing it into her own palm, which she then raises to her mouth and licks off, glancing up at Gawain as she does so.

Nimue walks back to the legless Briton and reaches down to where his stumps still bleed. She runs her fingers across the wound so that her right index and middle finger are coated with blood. Then she dips those fingers into a wet puddle of mud beside the Briton's head and rubs them together to make an ochre paste.

Now she straddles the chest of the dead Briton and uses the paste to draw a single strange rune upon his face that Gawain finds unsettling. It looks like a combination of runes he has seen before, but this rune is new to him. Then again, I do not know many runes. Nimue finishes the proceeding by spitting three times, once on each eye of the corpse and once into the mouth.

After this initial preparation, Nimue reaches under her shift to withdraw a small dagger. She presses it into the eye socket and wedges it there, moving the blade back and forth. There is a soft sucking sound as she pulls out the tiny orb: tendrils trail it like a dread star with long fiery hair, of the kind that fly through the upper heaven on pitch dark nights, the ones the Romans call cometa.

Nimue rolls the eye in her right hand with her left, avoiding the ochre paste on her fingers, and squeezes her palm tightly shut. The eye bursts, and thick translucent fluid runs out between her fingers. Gawain sees that Morgan is also watching the working of this spell with the same level of attention that he is. Lionel and Owain look on uncomfortably, as Lionel stands guard and Owain holds Arthur in his arms.

Nimue takes the dagger in her left hand and makes an incision in the vein inside the bend of her elbow. Her blood rushes through the small cut, more than Gawain expected. It soon covers the upper portion of her forearm and drips to the ground. Her face is impassive.

She replaces the knife under her shift and rubs her right palm soaked in the translucent bloody mixture together with her left palm, covering her hands. Carefully she grips her right elbow and covers the incision with the mixture. Finally, she paints two bands encircling both of her biceps. The flow of blood from the incision thins out and spreads into multiple streams down her arm, making an intricate webbing. It is a dark crimson against the white of her skin.

Nimue extends her arms to Morgan, palms up, and Morgan takes blood from Arthur's wound, covering Nimue's hands in it like red gloves. Then, to Gawain's shock, Morgan produces her own dagger seemingly out of nowhere and makes two slashes across Nimue's fingertips on both of her hands. Nimue winces at this, but Gawain is not sure if it is from the cut, or from what happens next.

When Arthur's blood enters Nimue's body, frothing bubbles rise from the cuts. Nimue squats on the ground and with her bleeding hands draws a circle around herself. When she completes the circle and the one end touches the other, Gawain sees a flash, bright enough to cause a repeating flash before his eyes which he has never seen before. He shakes his head to clear the strange image from his vision, but it remains until it diminishes of its own accord. The circle around Nimue is now a pulsing silver glow.

Nimue closes her eyes and turns her white arms outward, palms open and facing the sky. Gawain watches her intently, but she does not do anything for a long time. He realizes after many moments that he has been holding his breath. He looks at Morgan, her firm jaw set, eyes ablaze with something that Gawain cannot identify, and he is frightened by it.

The flashing around Nimue gradually subsides and when it is completely gone, she stands up in the middle of the circle, stance solid and wide. Suddenly she raises her head skyward and blows upward a cloud of the brown powder which Gawain realizes she has kept in her mouth since she licked it from her palm. Gawain sees the workings of the muscles in her neck as she does this.

The powder descends around her and when it lands on ground, the brightest flash of all blinds Gawain completely. He hears a loud rumbling sound that reminds him of great boulders coming loose and rolling to a valley floor, crushing everything in their path. His sight returns dimly, and he can see Nimue standing in the middle of the circle still, but now her slight body trembles. She seems to be pressed by a great force that is invisible to Gawain. Her trembling increases until she is driven to her hands and knees.

After a few moments she pushes herself up to her knees and extends one thigh forward so that her right foot is planted before her, steadying her balance. Nimue bends her fingers inward like the talons of a falcon. And at the tips of each finger a flickering streak of opal appears that looks like a shard of the jewel.

She brings her clawed hands down before her in a deliberate and careful motion. Gawain feels a strong vibration that seems to go into the very center of his head. He bends over and vomits. A crack opens before Nimue, and the darkness beyond it is terrifying. Gawain has never seen a darkness so complete, so empty.

He moves back a pace as he feels an inexplicable and increasingly urgent desire to dive headfirst into the darkness beyond the hole that Nimue holds open, the taut muscles of her arms straining as she widens the gap. Slowly and with what appears to be immense effort, she stands to her feet. The opal shards at the end of her fingertips extend now into the darkness and form a sort of prism of living glass. Blood streams from her hands down her arms and from her nose down over her lips to drip from her chin. Nevertheless, she holds her eyes tightly shut and maintains the position. And a thought comes unbidden to Gawain's mind: Nimue has torn this hole with nothing but her own magic and her own physical strength, and it has become a Gate. The hole has become a Gate.

The opal prism is now a circular passageway, blocking out the awful darkness beyond. Gawain turns back to Arthur and is surprised to see Morgan holding him across her lap, his arm limply falling to the ground, his hair draped back over the hem of her robe. Morgan stands to her feet, effortlessly holding Arthur's considerable weight. She slowly steps forward, towards Nimue and the gap.

Nimue's trembling is now nearly convulsive, like the trembling of those to whom the gods speak when their minds pierced by divinity. Morgan reaches the brink of the gate and leans over to kiss Nimue on the lips. Nimue rises to the kiss, and her trembling lessens. Nimue's blood now colors Morgan's lips a deep red. She takes one step forward to stand before the gate, which is now held to its widest point by Nimue who is clearly at the fullest extent of her power. Morgan pauses at the precipice and leans down to kiss Arthur on his forehead, leaving an imprint of Nimue's blood. And then Morgan steps forward through the gate and into the opal passageway, with Arthur in her arms.

When Morgan and Arthur are surrounded by the walls of opal, Morgan turns to Nimue who has lost the fortifying effect of Morgan's kiss and appears on the verge of collapse. Morgan smiles, but it is a grim smile full of secrets. The edges of the gate begin to fade and shift towards each other like smoke. Nimue has turned her hands inward now and positions them as if she is trying to pull the gate back open, but Gawain senses she is doing the opposite: trying to prevent the two sides from crashing shut. What would happen if they did crash shut? On second thought, I don't think I want to know.

But Nimue's strength is now totally exhausted, even as her magic causes her whole body to shimmer, white shift now lost in the light that fits tightly to her form. The two sides of the gate slip from her grasp and slide the last foot or so into each other with an earsplitting noise. Blue flames like those at the base of a candle's flame slip through the gap before it is finally closed, seeming to light the air on fire. The flames leap and spread rapidly, forming a dome over them, and they change from blue to burn a sickly red like the sores of plague.

Nimue collapses into the circle but then sits up, knees apart and her shift bunching at the crease of her thighs. She stares into the middle distance where the red and throbbing flames still leap through the air, pushing further and further outward until there is a forest of flame, and above, the sky now appears dark as the flames outshine the sun.

Gawain, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes, can make out a shape in the middle distance: a huge figure, wide shoulders, at least ten feet tall, with the shape of beast body and the head of a man. And from the head extend upward two majestically curved horns over a face that Gawain cannot see. He glances at Owain and Lionel who stand transfixed. They too see the apparition.

When he turns back towards the forest of flame, he sees that the horned one is joined by a small figure one third of its size, completely bald and naked. A wrapped bundle of cloth lies at its feet. Gawain does not know why, but he feels certain that this apparition is feminine, and it is not of this world. Suddenly an odor so solid it feels like a strike in the face: the smell of a crypt when it is opened and the trapped air rife with the scent of decay rushes outward.

Gawain now becomes aware that Nimue lies prone on the ground. Alarmed, he bends down to wrap his arms around her, feeling the sharpness of her shoulder blades and the thinness of her body. She feels lighter than a feather. And yet she has torn this hole and made a Gate. The thought repeats, faster and faster: And yet she has torn this hole and made a Gate.

Nimue's eyes open, and her pupils focus. She looks past Gawain towards the apparitions. He is too afraid now to look at them, but he can tell from the look in her eyes that she can see them, and for better or worse, they can see her. He leans closer to Nimue and brushes a lock of hair from her forehead.

'Where has Morgan taken Arthur?'

'They have passed to the other side,' she replies.

'They are dead?' Gawain asks, tremblingly.

'They are not dead.' Gawain shakes his head uncomprehendingly, and Nimue says again: 'Arthur is not dead.'

'Then what has become of him?' Owain asks, he and Lionel stepping forward. The three knights stare intently at Nimue until she replies: 'I could tell you the answers to your questions, but you will not understand them, and you would be greatly troubled in your souls by what I would say. But I can tell you that Arthur crossed the veil between the living and the dead, and he was wrapped in Death's embrace, but Death rejected him. For though he no longer lives, now he will never die.'

Then the forest of flame dissipates, and a weak sun returns overhead to illuminate the carnage around them, and Nimue curls into Gawain's body to be held by him, and she does not awake for a very long time.