The Book of Avalon Eternal

A sliver of light like the faintest crescent moon widens to become a half-moon, and then a full opening to reveal the world as a cascade of light, and the objects around him are only barely perceptible underneath the blinding glow. He blinks several times and tries to move, unsuccessfully. He tries to speak but only a croaking sound comes out. Gradually the objects around him resolve into his familiar bedroom, the stone walls with burgundy tapestries, the elaborate candelabras lighting dark corners, and the high arched windows letting in what appears to be the full extent of mid-morning sunshine.

His throat is parched, and his lips feel cracked. He tries to look around him, above him, behind him - and finding that his range of motion is very limited. He becomes aware of straps on his wrists and upper arms, binding them fast to the bed. His lower body is similarly bound. Jerking his right arm and right leg back and forth, he finds that the straps are so tight that he cannot move them even a little. He tries with his left arm and then left leg, and the world explodes in searing pain, the type that looks white with falling stars and fades into a gray-blue mist as it subsides from unbearable to merely excruciating.

When the pain fades enough to move again, he sees he is wearing a set of clothes that are not his own. As he examines the straps on his legs, he is suddenly overcome with an irresistible urge to urinate. The pain in his left leg, and the sensation of being utterly restrained, and the building and surging urge to urinate - it all combines to induce a feeling of immediate panic. His breathing speeds up, his vision starts to circle and spiral, the room spins and he feels nauseous from the spinning. He starts to hyperventilate until the urge to urinate is so strong that he cannot hold it any longer, and the release feels hot and soaks the unfamiliar garment he wears as it runs down his right hip. Now a cold shame washes over him, as though he were again four years old and has wet the bed and must now tell his mother Anna, the person in the world he loved the most and was most mortified to disappoint.

He ceases his struggle and sinks into the soft bed, feeling exhausted from the exertion and panic, and pressed further and further down by the shame. His senses are immediately sharpened by a noise coming from the other side of the door. A scratching noise. His imagination starts a rapid shuffle of images, all horrifying in his bound state: a wolf, a bear, a lion...

Then a thought occurs to him: perhaps it is none of them. Perhaps it is the Glatisant itself, who is named Andrógoinos Garmileguth, the ancient name for what the druids of old called the Unholy One that Screams with a Thousand Voices. Not even a druid will pronounce this name after sunset, and even the slightest sign of its passing sends all druids to the spot where it came, and a fence of skulls is made with the greatest haste and the most profound spells of binding and cursing that are known.

And not only human skulls: Garmileguth holds trapped the souls of many animals, and this is why it is so difficult to bar it from a place. And so, the druids bring the skulls or bones of bears, stags, wolves, lions, even smaller animals like rodents or fish. For there is no way to know what Garmileguth has trapped within itself, or whether it is alive, dead, or something in between. But bone spells block them all, if the spells are complete enough.

In all the years of Gawain's life when Garmileguth has come near, only Merlin has set bone spells strong enough to turn it away when it was coming directly to Camlann. More often, Garmileguth lurks and wanders in the forest and simply turns away from the source of the spells, having had no intention of coming to Camlann at all.

So once when Gawain was no more than five years old, the Unholy One could be heard miles away in the forest around Camlann, and the screams echoed and reverberated so strongly that it was impossible to tell from which direction it came. It seemed like the Unholy One divided its thousand screams to surround Camlann, and the screams were like human screams of anguish and agony, mixed with the sounds of a dog yelping and a wolf howling and the rumbling roar of a bear. And underneath these was woven a deeper scream that could not be identified but that was most certainly not human nor of any animal that lives in this world.

Merlin was away from the palace but appeared within the hour after having not been seen for several weeks, as he often left and stayed gone for lengths of time without explanation. He stood on the rampart and listened for the Unholy One: he seemed to hear it, or to hear something, long before the next scream. His face was turned upward, soft brown unbound hair gently pushed up and down by the wind. He was motionless for a long time, and then his eyes lit up with a burning spark, and he turned his head to the south. And several beats later, the Unholy One screamed so loudly that Gawain had to cover his ears.

The skull and bone wall that Merlin built was only five feet long and made of single or double skulls linked by a fencing of bones. It was only a foot and a half tall at its tallest point. He stood behind it with his staff planted firmly in the ground and watched the forest intently. Arthur made Gawain come with the party that accompanied Merlin to the edge of the forest. Arthur held him in his arms, standing behind Merlin. He remembers that Ector, Pellinore, and Morgan also came. And so did Lancelot.

A sound of branches cracking followed by something disturbing the thick undergrowth so that it moved back and forth. A snuffling sound coming from a great snout. And the most horrible aspect, burned into his memory and unforgettable, was the scent that came to his nostrils: the vilest, most pungent odor he had ever smelled, before or since. The smell of the latrine mixed with the way an animal or a person smell after they have been dead for only a short time and are newly rotting. Underneath that the sweat and stink of a creature that has never washed or been purified. The terrible scent of a beast in the forest, inhuman and with no regard for anything except the desire to consume.

Gawain, his whole body trembling, pushed back from Arthur and looked into his palest of blue, almost gray eyes, gentle but deep and concealing many things that Gawain did not yet know or understand. Arthur looked down at him and smiled, kissing him on the forehead. But in his uncle's eyes he did see something he could not name at that young age, but he sensed it; and he came to both name it and have it as the years wore on. in Arthur's eyes, there was doubt.

Then there was silence and stillness. Only the gruesome smell remained. He saw Merlin shift his stance slightly, and his right hand twisted around his staff. The silence stretched on, until Gawain could hear a faint buzzing, which he first thought was coming from the Unholy One - some new and horrible noise its unnatural form had learned to imitate from nature. But as the buzzing continued, he realized that the sound came from Merlin. Unsettled, he looked first to Merlin, and then to Arthur, who leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear: 'Do not be afraid. Merlin is praying.'

Then there was a final scream, louder and more grotesque than the ones before. It rose to such heights that it caused Gawain's ears to physically hurt as he let go of Arthur's neck and hastily covered his ears. And the scream diminished as the Unholy One moved away from Merlin, faster than was possible for a natural creature.

Gawain's reverie is shocked awake by a new noise. The bolt on the door is turning, is being turned from the other side. He realizes that he slipped into the vision of the Unholy One partially from the pain and partially from some type of sedative he has been given. His eyes roll over to the door where the bolt continues to turn, and finishing its rotation, it snaps into place with a loud click. The hinges of the door creak as it slowly turns inward. His fear is turning to terror. He flails at the straps on his right arm and leg, being as careful as he can not to move his wounded left leg again.

Craning his neck as far as it will go, he can see the doorway now. The sedative is starting to take hold of him again and he feels his thoughts start to slow as his sight grows dim. He fights to stay awake but knows that this is a battle he will lose. The last thing he sees before he goes under again is the sight of two figures in the doorway: one huge and one small. The terror he feels surges to unbearable intensity, because he knows that the two figures are the same ones that he saw on the battlefield summoned by the power of Nimue's magic. The beast-man with horns, and the horrible creature that accompanied it - bald, naked, unsettlingly small in stature, and smelling of long-sealed crypts. Is this the Horned One itself? And what of the other small and terrible creature?

The last thing he hears before the sedative takes him is the sound of feet stepping into the room, with the door slamming behind; and some of the footsteps sound like hooves.