Free Merlin's Nightmare (The Merlin Spiral) by Robert Treskillard Page A

about keeping our escape route secret except in times o’ war. Anyone would have had to get permission, and there just wasn’t time for someone to do that. Or else — ”
    “Or else someone was on their way to the valley. Maybe spying.”
    “Could it have been the envoy?”
    “No. Brice told me he let the man out yesterday, and he was cursing as he headed north to Urien.”
    Peredur bent to examine the wall above the old pit. “Merlin . . . lift your torch higher.”
    “What?”
    “I want to see . . .”
    Merlin raised the light, and what he had thought were random, unconnected charcoal scratches on the walls were revealed to be, when taken together, a monstrous creature — a dragon. Merlin’s gaze followed the shape from its sharp teeth and horns down to its elongated, muscular tail, which was poised directly over . . . the hiding place for the Sangraal.
    He handed the torch to Peredur and began pulling the rocks from the hole. When he had taken the last one out, he motioned for Peredur to hold the light up. From deep inside gleamed the ornamental gold box that Colvarth had commissioned to house the Sangraal.
    Praises! It was still there!
    Reaching in, he pulled the box to the edge of the hole.
    Peredur looked over Merlin’s shoulder.
    From inside his tunic, Merlin produced a bronze key hanging from a leather necklace. Inserting the key, he pushed it upward and then slid it to the left.
    Click!
    Merlin lifted the lid.
    The box was empty. The wooden bowl was gone.
    Running his fingers frantically around the inside, Merlin groaned in frustration. But what if he were the only one who couldn’t see it? The Sangraal had perplexed him before, with only some able to view and touch its ancient wood. “C-can you see it?” he asked, hoping beyond hope.
    Peredur shook his head, his shoulders slumping. “No one could’ve stolen it without the key . . . and why would a common thief take the Sangraal and leave the expensive box? That’s passin’ strange.”
    Merlin picked up the box. Anger rose in him at his own stupidity. Why had he left it here? “It’s gone,” he yelled. “It’s stolen!”
    But then an odd feeling came over him. His hands . . . he couldn’t feel them, nor the box. His arms began to shake as the numbness crept past his elbows and inched up toward his shoulders. Soon it held him across the chest like a death grip, and the sensation climbed up his neck, as if he were sinking into a cold lake, deep in the depths of the earth. His sight began to fail. Peredur seemed to tilt, and then the torch faded from view.

    Merlin awoke on his back, with a black thorn bush growing beside him. To his left lay the carcass of a deer, its head missing and flies buzzing madly at an open wound in its chest. Far above him he heard the clap of thunder, and a violent wind began to blow through the dark foliage of the distant trees. Merlin sat up and found he was barefoot. He didn’t recognize the place — or the large mound that lay in front of him, round like the shell of a massive turtle, a dark tunnel gaping where the head of the reptile would have hidden.
    “Stand, intruder,” a voice said from behind. Three men jumped forward and leveled their bronze-tipped spears at him. And these men were strong, with sinewy, bulging arms, massive chests, and legs as thick as Merlin’s torso.
    “Get up!” said the man to his left, and then he poked Merlin below the shoulder.
    The wound throbbed in pain, and Merlin scrambled up, fearing another jab. Each of these men towered over him by a foot.
    “Now march. We need to find out what Grannos the Mighty will do with a trespasser like you.” The men pointed toward the mound and its maw.
    Merlin began to march, taking stock of the fact that his dirk was hanging from his belt. It took a long time to reach the mound, it being larger than he’d realized and almost half a league away. There they bade him stop next to the dark opening. Merlin blanched — it wasn’t a tunnel for