The Angel's Fall (The Fay Morgan Chronicles Book 6) (3 page)

4

The Light Bringer

Cerberus trotted down the hill, wagging his tail and pushing his nose into the man’s outstretched hand.

“Good boy. Good dog. And you two? Come in, come in,” the old man said. “I’ve just gotten everything ready. Welcome to my home. My sweet domain within the damned realm.” His voice was soft and kind. He sounded
…
familiar. How or what that meant? I had no idea.

The man stood twenty feet away from us and shadowed by his doorway so I could not see him clearly. The shape of him and the way he stood? They were familiar as well.

An electric nervousness coursed through me. Behind me, Azurez chuckled. I turned to see a huge tentacle thrash about above the trees.

I turned back to Merlin to discuss our next move. But he no longer stood beside me, instead drifting down the hill toward the man.

I followed.

There was something about the man’s flyaway hair and the uprightness of his spine that itched and nagged at me. And the way the light haloed him, as though light particles liked him and curved toward him, as though the universe adored him: that, too, was familiar.

Behind us came a great thumping sound.

A massive wolf bounded out of the forest. He held an old growth tree in his teeth and tried to drop it on Azurez.

“Really, Kthonk,” the demon cried out, leaping away at the last moment. “That cannot be your best. I’ve fought haunted dolls that were more spirited than you.”

The creature howled and ground his teeth together.

I turned back around, and Merlin was almost all the way to the house. I hurried to catch up.

As Merlin came up to the old man and stood in front of him, I suddenly understood who he was.

“Hello, Father,” Merlin said with an uncertainty in his voice that I had rarely heard.

I strode up to them and stood beside Merlin. I studied the man. If any in Hell might help us, it would be him. Though fathers often proved to be weights around the ankle, rather than rafts to cling to.

“We have a friend we need to find,” I said, speaking into the silence as father and son stared at each other, near mirror-images of the other, separated by decades. “Her name is Lila.”

“Lila?” the man asked and blinked slowly.

“The Marid,” Merlin said.

The old man shook his head. “A Marid friend? What a terrible idea. I suppose you are here to free her? Another terrible thought. Though I know the middle part of this day’s journey for you will be spent with that dreadful Queen and her King. Perhaps for that reason? But that comes later, later. Give an old man some grace and let this day unfold how it must. Come in, let me feed you. Let us share a quiet spot to speak, while there are still quiet spots left in the realm.” The man’s blue eyes were the same shape as Merlin’s, but came in the shade of clear winter and not Merlin’s late summers day.

A high-pitched scream sounded from behind us, followed by Azurez’s low chuckle.

Merlin’s father turned and disappeared into his house. Merlin followed a footstep behind. I sighed and checked my compass. The needle within still spun around and around. I ducked into the house as well.

Inside the threshold of the house, the sounds of Azurez’s battle fell to a whisper.

“You look hearty and hale. You look vastly improved from last time we met,” I heard Merlin’s father say.

They had met only once before, when Merlin had been near-suicidal and chasing any dark path he could find, including entering Hell. His father had told him to come back later.

“I am better,” Merlin replied, “Life is long. Things change. And you. You look older.”

I walked down a short hallway that led into a kitchen where the old man stood beaming. “Older? Do I really? It’s good to hear that from someone honest. It’s hard to trust any of the monsters down here. Hard to find any good people at all. Which is why you are here.”

“We’re here to free my friend Lila,” Merlin said. “I’m sorry if you have some other idea.”

“Sorry? No need. I am and should be sorry. Always. And…” A puzzled look fell across his face and he stopped talking. He shook his head. “But it’s tea time, isn’t it? We haven’t eaten yet, have we? Yes. For I have tea and we have time.” He laughed and gestured toward his table. “You have just arrived?”

“Yes,” I said.

Merlin’s father nodded a couple of times. “Well then, welcome to Hell, Hell, and more Hell.” He turned toward his table. “The way here will have been more taxing then you realized. Not all the rules of this realm are the same, you see. And then there’s all the instability. You must eat, while you can, on this day of days. You will be in my house for a short time, seething with the need for action, but trust this and be patient with an old man. I will help you find all that you must find today.”

He walked to his table and sat down.

“The only thing we need is information on how to rescue Lila. Quickly,” I said. I knew my words were unfair: Merlin should have some time to speak to his Father about whatever he wished. This might be their only meeting. Yet our day’s quest would take all of our wits, and tarrying here might mean whatever slim advantage we had would disappear.

“Sharp as glass, sweet as a lemon, isn’t she?” the man said to Merlin. “Trust, children, that I will help as I can. Now we break bread. We haven’t done that yet, have we? Eat.”

“Have you future sight?” I asked. “Is that why you’re a bit… confused?”

He frowned and took a long moment to respond. “No. But I have come unmoored from time, which can happen to the truly ancient. Did I already say that? Let me feed you.”

“Have you seen us rescuing Lila?” I asked, not moving from where I stood.

The man didn’t answer but pointedly unfolded his cloth napkin and tucked it into his collar.

“He’s not wrong,” Merlin said. “I am hungry.”

My belly ached as though I hadn’t eaten for days. “Very well.”

The old man smiled. “Eat and have no worries. The food I offer is merely food, much like on Earth. There is no spell wound through my pomegranates that will make you stay here.” He chuckled. “There are far greater powers that will see to that.”

I sat and inhaled the smells that filled this small cottage. Baking bread, roasting fish, and the hint of sweet apples. There were other more subtle odors that reminded me of a long past coming from the rough-hewn wood beams on the ceiling and the mud floor, well-packed and well-swept. The plain wooden table wrought of thick-planked wood lay set with coarse ceramic plates and cups, along with woven napkins. All of it reminded me of Wales and Avalon.

As we filled our plates, the old man watched Merlin with a gaze that did not waver. “I made this repast thinking about the one time, very long ago, when I lived on Earth.” The man broke open a still-warm loaf of brown bread. Steam rose from it as he tore off a hunk and passed it to me. I took some and tried to hand it to Merlin, but he didn’t take it.

“Your time on Earth?” Merlin said. “You mean when you lived in Wales? When you impregnated my mother and left her to die several months later in childbirth? When you left behind an orphaned bastard? That time?”

I put a hand on Merlin’s thigh beneath the table to remind him I was here, however he might need me. His muscles were tensed and taut.

The old man nodded slowly. His face was a study of age and sadness. “Yes. That time. Everything you say is true, but not the only truth.” He sighed. “There are times in life when one is surrounded by bad choices, and tries to find a way out. In all of my days, son, people have always told stories about me in the worst possible light. Perhaps I deserve that. But I would have you know, at least, why I chose to do what I did.”

Merlin nodded and clenched his jaw. “Fair enough.”

The man sighed again. “My Merlin Ambrosius. Son of sons. Your mother was a true love of mine, and if I could have I would have protected her and raised you.” A tear fell from his eye and slowly coursed down the wrinkled folds of his cheek. “But it was either leave you behind or bring you to Hell. And this realm has a way of warping us all. I’ve imagined raising you here, often and vividly. I’ve imagined how it all might have gone well. How we could have been enough for each other: you, your mother, and I. But even the paper people that I conjure and pretend are you and your mother always grow ragged. I made the choice, long ago, to leave you and your mother to fend for yourself. I let Sigrid die young. I gave you merely a silhouette of pain where your father should have been.” His steady gaze stayed on Merlin, even as another tear fell.

Merlin fidgeted where he sat. His hand reached across the table but then dropped before he touched his father’s hand. My wizard was a forgiving man, but a father’s failure was a weight not so easily cast aside.

“So I left you, and you have lived a long and interesting life on Earth. For that I am glad. Though I am sorry your life has been plagued with rumors of your demonic father, and the whispered story that you were born to greatness but also darkness.” He looked down at his plate, and speared a piece of cod on his fork. “I wanted you free of any and all of that. Free of me. If I could not be your father, at least I could have not been a weight to pull you down.”

Merlin shrugged and cut into his fish. “It was not so bad to live out my fate of serving King Arthur and all the rumors that surrounded me. All of that is so long gone and over that I’ve had plenty of years to live beyond any stories of my birthright.”

Merlin’s father blinked. He shook his head. “Arthur? The young king? No. He has nothing to do with your destiny.” He blinked slowly. “Tell me, you are truly here, yes, and not the daydream of this aging father?”

“Yes, Father,” Merlin said.

“Father! Honey on my tongue, and yet….” The old man chewed slowly. “That’s exactly what one of my delusions would say, but never mind that. You both stink too much of sweat and fear to be delusional.”

I ate a large bite of fish, salted yet otherwise plain. Simple and perfect.

“Yes. Good. Eat!” the man said. “Give an old man the pleasure of starting two young ones out right upon their day’s long and hard quest.”

“About that,” I said. “Tell us of the Queen and the King. What are their weaknesses? What kind of tricks and traps will they have laid out for us?”

The man shrugged and stared passed us. With palsied hands, he poured tea into small ceramic mugs. He seemed to drift in and out of the conversation, like many of the old.

I repeated my words slowly and loudly.

“I’m not sure who sits on the throne at the moment. It is hard for me to take this Marid business too seriously. Though I know, I have known, I will know that it is to you of utmost importance and I respect that. Good friends, you are, to this ferocious creature.”

I sipped the tea and didn’t say any number of biting things that entered my mind. The strength of the tea, cut with the slightest hint of rose honey, turned my breath sweet. I looked around and wondered about this place. Where in the hierarchy of Hell did this house sit? Merlin’s father was an ancient yet lesser demon, I guessed, living in the hinterlands, keeping to himself. Which made me notice something. “Your house, it does not shift and go gray, as everything did on the way here. Why is that?”

His face lit up, and again I had the sense that all the light in the room was drawn to him. “Oh, sweet woman, you speak true?” He clapped his hands “Most excellent! Things fall apart, as they must. It has been that way, ever faster and faster, ever since….” He blinked and looked confused.

“Ever since Lila was dragged down here?” Merlin asked.

The father nodded and spilled tea as he raised his teacup toward his mouth. “An inevitable series of events,” he muttered.

“Perhaps she is more important than you think,” Merlin added.

“Correlations is not causation, son,” the old man said. “The realm was bound to fall apart sometime. I’ve thought so and hoped for it, ever since I fell here.”

“You… fell?” Merlin asked with a whisper.

The old man shrugged. Light danced across his face. “Fallen is always how they tell it. In truth? I jumped and my wings carried me down as my feathers caught fire and burned. I came here blazing as bright as the North Star, and I have stayed within the borders of Hell ever since, except for the short time I was allowed to go to Earth and….” The old man rubbed his eyes and looked confused. “Did you know I traveled to Earth once? To Wales?”

“Yes, you told us,” Merlin said.

“The order of things gets confused,” he said. “Did I tell you yet, that the story of Lucifer is rarely told in Hell? It is more common on Earth. I have been down here so long, doing what I do quietly and patiently, that the citizens of Hell have forgotten I ever existed. Sometimes I’ve wondered if I’m real.”

Merlin paled. “Do you mean to say that you are….”

The man flashed him a troubled smile. “The light bringer. The darkest angel of Hell. Yes, son, I am Lucifer.”

5

Bastard

The name filled the room and the father and son stared at each other.

“But why?” Merlin finally asked, breaking the silence that filled the room. “Why do you stay here, if you are an angel? You hate it here. I hear it, in everything that you say. I don't,” he said, swallowing. “I don't sense that you must stay because you are the worst of the worst.”