Earth Magic: Book One of the Merlin's Gambit Trilogy

By Tally Pendragon

Young Merlin, brought up equal shares Druid and Celtic Christian, has a dream. But, in AD 475, when he’s been sent to Rome by Ambrosius – to study for the Priesthood with The Professionals – this young wizard extraordinaire has other ideas. Because… he also has a vision! It materialises alongside the dream in AD 525 when he meets a fellow traveller on the Via Ostia in post-Roman Italy who gives him a staff with two entwined snakes carved around it. In AD 1876, the vision gets bigger, and it keeps changing shape. Almost as often as he keeps time-slipping into the unexpected…
In AD 2016, an ordinary archaeologist in Glastonbury has an extraordinary experience – which she excavates. She discovers a 9th-century Carolingian monastery that has never been built but matches the 9th-century plan of itself that was commissioned by Emperor Charlemagne to perfection. What’s more, it’s in a 6th-century context in Somerset. In AD 2018, just as excavations of this strange anomaly are wrapping up, much stranger things than its mere existence are beginning to happen with exponential rapidity, and Vanda is forced to give up all thought of control in a life that is spiralling so out of control that it no longer seems to be her own.
Then there’s the fortuitous appearance of Brian and his mysterious legacy… more than sufficient to rebuild the monastery, of course… you know, the one that was never built? But will Vanda’s talents meet this legacy’s peculiar criteria?
Are you brave and steadfast enough to join them all on their roller-coaster ride through history, the discovery of some of Time’s Most Precious Hidden Secrets, and a lot of beautiful scenery? After all, there will be a dragon or two, perhaps a hideous monster, and maybe even a spaceship… it’ll be Magic!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9781446127551

Book preview

Prologue

AD 456, June 21st, Strawberry Moon

The Little Boy on The Hill

Asix-year-old boy called Myrddin Emrys sits on a hillside known locally as The Tor. The Hill, as it’s known to the Little People, who live within, and to the boy himself as Tor Anda, is a terraced expanse of luscious green grass, kept short by the many wild animals of the forest that graze there each day. The locals, who call it The Tor, are unaware of the magic that is within and without; they tend to skirt it rather than go over, and those who do are apt to take longer and lose the memory of having done so.

The animals of the forest are grazing there now as the boy sits, talking to them in a language only he and the animals can understand. He’s trailing his long, pliant fingers through the clear water trickling from the little spring halfway up the hill. It disappears again as fast as it appears, not three feet away from its point of emergence, on the other side of a small dip filled with rough shingle. From where it comes and to where it goes on its subterranean journey is a mystery best left for another day and for the Little People to reveal. But on this day, the boy spies something shiny and bronze sitting on top of the little stones. It’s a key; he can see that. But what all those intricately cast little bees are doing winding their way along its shaft, sparkling in the sunshine as the water trickles over them, he doesn’t know. As with the magpie, the raven and the crow, he likes shiny objects and puts this one securely in the pocket of his robe to look at later and ponder over.

At The Tor’s summit, something beats… slowly and noisily. The boy looks up and waves his dripping fingers in the air; crystal rainbow drops fly from their tips into the sun in two arcs as his hands cross over his head. A large, brightly shining peachy-pink dragon, the colour of the rising sun, with iridescent gold flecks that sparkle like sunlight on the water, rises out of the top of The Tor and looks down at the boy. He smiles back as he wonders – and not for the first time – how she got here from her home in a constellation called the Pleiades far, far away, and so very long ago. What he does know – from the Little People – is that her name is Solarion and that she was sent here to guard the Isle of Britain… to maintain the sovereign equilibrium of the realm. How had they put it? She’s here to orchestrate our salvation in the time of greatest need.

As she soars into a perfect blue sky, the dragon separates herself and becomes two smaller dragons, one red, the other white; one flies to the East, the other to the West. The boy bats not an eyelid… as if he’s very familiar with this custom.

This is his cue… for there is something of equal importance that he must also do here at the top of The Tor. He does it every year, although he does not really know why. He just knows that it has something to do with the sovereignty of the people within the realm and that he must always be here each year at the right time… at the fullest point of the Strawberry Moon.

He begins to climb to the top of the windswept tor, to the secret place at the very centre of this fair isle, from whence the majestic peachy-pink dragon has just emerged to embark upon her midday ritual.

He arrives at the summit with only moments to spare. He looks up, raising his arms and face up to the sky above... not towards the sun, nor to the East or West where the red and white dragons have gone. No! He’s raising them in another direction. He’s looking towards the position in the sky where he imagines the moon would be had it yet risen.

It is 12:24 post meridian, and the moon, having now waxed to its fullest, if unseen point somewhere in the heavens, will wane from here on.

He smiles.

Until next year, Strawberry Moon, he says, this time in a language only the Little People would understand were they there. The sovereignty of the people is protected for another year.

But as he does so, a strange buzzing noise starts up. It makes him look closer at The Tor around him… until he realises that the noise is between his ears and not outside them, that is. A wind stirs, and an anomalous shiny, rippling field of energy the size of a door, only round, appears out of nowhere in the air in front of him. The noise gets louder, the wind stronger, and he is being pulled through the shiny, round door, only to find himself in exactly the same place where he had been sitting with the animals not half an hour since, and Solarion is rising majestically out of The Tor… again!

It’s as if he’s somehow slipped through time and got behind himself. He blinks and laughs. He’s used to the strangeness of Tor Anda’s magic.

He’s used to the tricks the Little People play on him. They came up less and less each year. This year, with the moon’s fullness being delivered so close to midday, there was very little chance they would be seen at all. They would have been there above ground at sunrise, he knew, to dance in the magical dawn of the solstice sun. He would have liked to have been there too, but it was of no real matter. Matters of more importance connected them besides inhabiting one temporal space with one another at the same time. The boy had left presents for them only they would appreciate, in places only they would think to look. It was just one of their little games. It made him smile, as did all things to do with all the creatures he counted as friends here on Tor Anda, where the old magics still ran so deep.

But this magic felt different. It didn’t feel like anything the Little People had ever done with him.

This magic felt like his own!

Every year, his mother, Vivienne, brought her magical son here, doing as she was bid by those who knew more about these things than did she. Her sister, the incumbent Lady of the Lake, had told her how his magic would work. She hadn’t understood a word as her sister had enthusiastically explained how it was forged from the two most ancient magics of the earth. The flowing gestures of the Lady’s hands had been lost on Vivienne as she’d tirelessly illustrated how the subterranean telluric currents and mycorrhizal networks of the earth would unite with the light of the silvery moon and how Myrddin Emrys’ magic would be set in motion by the blessings of the seven most glorious stars in the heavens. The only part she’d really taken to heart, and which made her anxious and eager to keep him close beside her at all times, was how his magic would one day be so powerful that even he should be chary of it until full-grown into his wisdom.

Come, Little Hawk, Vivienne urged as she welcomed her cherished son back down from the heights of The Tor. We must go if we are to reach the shelter before nightfall.

A moment, Mother, he replied sombrely. I have one more person to talk to.

At its base, Tor Anda is surrounded by trees. Firs grow tall, straight and dark; Silver Birches provide light and shape in the rare spaces in between; even a Sweet Cherry tree can be seen gracefully waving her branches as if inviting them all to admire her summer fruits. Two old yet ageless Oaks stand as sentinels, one on either side of the space that yields a natural gateway to The Tor’s lower terraces. They are its frontline generals, in command and on guard… in defence of a dwindling way of life.

These are the Ents.

They are the last two remaining on Tor Anda and now known only to a six-year-old boy of doubtful parentage, whose mother calls him Little Hawk.

He shall have many names and many roles throughout this life, but for now, let’s enjoy his innocence for what it is.

He runs the short distance to the other side of The Tor while his mother waits patiently where she is, out of sight and out of hearing.

As he approaches his last port of call before leaving Tor Anda for another year, he slows down and catches his breath.

Most ancient of Ents, he begins with an almost imperceptible bow to the largest of the two ageless Oaks in front of him – the one on his left. I must take my leave of you for another year. But first, I beg an answer of you to a question I have been wondering upon for some time since the last.

In his head, Most Ancient of Ents answers quite clearly, and not at all slowly:

Only the one, young Master? I was growing thicker roots year by year in the hope that I should need them to stand all the firmer in the face of your many questions. But, if only one it is, then please proceed with it indeed.

Why is it that I must be here always on this same day and at this same fullest phase of the Strawberry Moon each year? I ask only because it may, ere times, be most impractical to fulfil this obligation year on year in so perfect a way. Were I to travel long-distance, to give such an example. He had heard his mother say as much to the other ladies of the Glass Isle upon times.

To keep the land in harmony with the heavens and its peoples in harmony with all, the voice of the Ent intoned inside his head. You must learn to be like the leaf and travel with the wind, young Master. Then you will have full mastery of the elements of magic within you. There was a pause and a faint rustling of leaves as the voice became a raspy whisper… "For you are Merlin, and you will change the direction of the world."

It occurs to the boy that Most Ancient of Ents never answers his questions quite as satisfactorily as he might wish, and he opens his mouth to speak again, but…

There’s that noise again… deep inside his head. It’s low at first, the buzzing sound that gets louder, like a hive of bees coming closer from a distance. There’s that shimmering in the sunlight, and Myrddin Emrys can feel himself being drawn towards it as he looks into its centre, as the noisy beehive sound draws ever nearer. A wind is getting up as the Strawberry Moon waxes to its fullest point again… and again, the boy feels himself moving with it.

Is this where I must let myself be like the leaf? he asks, with a sudden discernment of the depth of this particular element of the various forms of magic within him.

It is, young Master.

And with that, he lets himself travel with the wind into The Shimmering… just like a leaf.

He finds himself on the top of The Tor again, just in time to watch the red and white dragons returning, one from the South and the other from the North, and laughs gleefully as he realises he’s gone forwards in time to the exact point of which he had been thinking. The dragons, he knows, take about an hour to complete their circuit of the Isle of Britain before joining together again as one magnificent peachy-pink iridescently flecked beauty called Solarion… and his mother, he knows, will be fretting. He wonders what role the tiny filaments of purply-green and silvery-gold are performing in this cosmic ballet, escaping silently as they are into the air as the two dragons join, but he’s sure he’ll know that too… when he’s meant to… when the time is right.

Part One

Glastonbury Seeds

Chapter 1

The Boys & The Press Conference

AD 2018, September 5th, Wednesday

H ow it came to be here, in this sixth-century context, we don’t yet know. That it was built at all and to such perfect specifications when compared to Charlemagne’s ninth-century plan would seem at present to be nothing short of a miracle. That it overturns archaeological theories concerning what we thought we knew about the technological capabilities during these centuries, we do know.

The tall, dark-haired young woman turned from the image on the portable screen she had been pointing to, pressed a button somewhere on the lectern in front of her and, for several long seconds after the next image had filled the screen, appeared to be praying.

This is an artist’s impression of what we think the buildings of the monastery would have looked like, she continued, adjusting her large, round and black-rimmed spectacles, raising her head and looking straight into the audience. And this… another image blinked into place as she did so, is how I intend for it to look once it has been rebuilt. But for that, I need money and lots of it!

Wow! She’s remarkable! A young man remarked to no one in particular as the woman stopped speaking, and the audience, made up of locals, press, archaeologists associated with the project, and other vocationally interested parties, began to applaud… a little too politely.

Certainly is, replied a chap sitting diagonally behind him in the next row. He applauded more vigorously in emphasis and gave a low whistle, which had the effect of breaking the polite applause into something more vigorous, too. "Magnificent, isn’t she? Haven’t seen you here before. New to the cause? Or just passing through?"

Not sure yet. Looking for a new direction.

And you ended up here? That can’t be coincidence. Meant to be, fella, take it from me! No one ends up here unless there’s a jolly good reason for it. Just have to find out what that reason might be, and there’s your direction. Jolly good reason for it. Take it from me. His voice trailed off with this repetition as conscious thought became lost in memory and reverie, and the last of the applause died out.

Name’s Williams, Tudor Williams. He regrouped and purposefully thrust his right hand across the row of chairs towards the younger man’s right hand, without any other extraneous movement and in somewhat military fashion.

Mine’s Ambrose, the younger, slighter, fairer man replied, turning slightly to take up the extended hand of friendship in like manner, a warm smile on his pleasant-featured face, "Brian Ambrose. So, tell me, Mr Williams, what on earth that remarkable woman was talking about!"

Questions were beginning to be asked, and as the remarkable young woman began to answer, Tudor Williams took hold of Brian Ambrose’s left elbow. Let’s get a beer, he said and led him deftly out of the hall – an impressive manoeuvre, given that the younger man was still seated at its onset and proved an easy match to his six feet in height at its conclusion.

In the foyer outside the lecture theatre, a makeshift bar had been set up. Right, here we are, said Tudor Williams. Après-lecture drinkies, to impress those the lecture was designed to impress, only a bit more, and in the hope that the age-old tradition of easing the stumping-up psyche with the application of free alcohol might open a few bulging pockets. Fat chance! By the looks of that lot in there, you’d need to spike the bottles with ecstasy first.

I can assure you there will be no such goings-on in my bottles, Dr Williams, came a severe and frosty voice laden with Scots lilt from behind the bar.

Ah, Edna, Tudor Williams laughed. So sorry. You caught me being abominable yet again. Do you have anything so simple and good as a beer behind that infernal plank of inducement?

Once they were both seated at a table on the far side of the foyer directly opposite the lecture theatre door, beers in hand, Tudor Williams became more serious: "So, tell me, Mr Ambrose, what is it that you need me to tell you?"

"What Professor Nestor was talking about! I’m not an archaeologist; I’m a mathematician. I mean was! I was a mathematician. That’s what I meant about looking for a new direction. And I only understand architecture from a mathematical perspective. You know, geometrically. She made it all sound brilliant, really good fun, but I didn’t actually understand much other than that she uncovered a monastery and wants to find the money to rebuild it for some reason."

"Ok, first things first. Her name’s Vanda! It’s a hybrid of Vivienne Andromeda, her whole name thus being Vivienne Andromeda Nestor. Hates to be called Professor anything. Hates to be called Vivienne even more. Just so you know. I’ve seen men killed for less. Next, she’s an archaeologist and historian specialising in late Antiquity and the early medieval, with extra special interest in the sixth century, your barbarian successor states… Arthurian and Merovingian stuff, and, strangely, anything to do with Charlemagne, which, she says, goes back to a throwaway line in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade…. You know, that moment when Sean Connery thrusts his over-stuffed briefcase against Indie’s chest, draws his umbrella from it like a sword from its sheath, opens it and says, ‘I suddenly remembered my Charlemagne!’ as he frightens a flock of seagulls into the oncoming propellor of a Messerschmitt intent on killing the two of them. She said that one line made her search through every programmatic capitulary ever to flow from the Charlemagnic quill to find out what it meant."

Wow! That Messerschmitt was a BF109, you know. Brian Ambrose paused momentarily to let the misty look in the other man’s eye run its course and dissipate. It was watching Indiana Jones’ antics that brought me here… well, partly… all that excitement and adventure. He paused again as if collecting his thoughts from the wondrous world of fantasy before returning to the merely worldly. And did she?

Tudor Williams looked askance at his new young friend, pursed his lips as if caught up in thoughts of his own, then shook his head. "She says not, but she did end up knowing a hell of a lot of gratuitous fluff about the Carolingians, and particularly about this monastery called St Gall."

That’s the one she found in Glastonbury?

"Well, no, not exactly. Well, yes, exactly… that’s the problem. Oh, dear, he sighed with exasperation. Mr Ambrose, I’m not putting this very well at all, am I? Let me start from the beginning again. Ok, now you know what she specialises in, let’s take it from there."

Tudor Williams took a large enough gulp of his beer to empty half the glass. As he mentally flipped to page one of the story he was about to tell, he leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands briefly behind his head, flexed his elbows until several knuckles and a shoulder joint cracked, then set them down flat on the table framing the beer glass. He drew in a long breath and began:

It all started one fine day in the early spring of last year. That would be April AD 2017, he added imperiously and quite unnecessarily.

He used a curiously eccentric story-telling technique, one that would have made the younger man splutter over his stifled giggles like a schoolboy in the back row of the classroom, had he not been so intent on hearing every detail of the story until full understanding of the subject matter had soundly dawned upon him.

While taking routine aerial photographs of the Glastonbury area, she saw something odd. Something that hadn’t shown up on each aerial reconnaissance for the past decade beforehand, mark you. Something that has subsequently changed everything for the Glastonbury Archaeological Unit and everyone even remotely connected with it.

And here he stopped, picked up his remaining half glass of beer and polished it off, with far more consideration than he had the first half and a lot more obvious enjoyment of the amber liquid as it slid slowly down his throat.

"It was over an area of agricultural land, a little over twenty-one acres. About eleven football pitches, to put it another way. Quarter of a mile square. Right in the middle of prime agricultural land. Some quirk of the light that day showing anomalies not spotted previously, perhaps? New crop growth and colour variations showing up more than usual in the soil, even? Oh, who knows? Been through all the possibilities ad nauseum! But there it was. A monastery… where no monastery had been before. At least to the knowledge of every archaeologist who’d ever field walked, aerial photographed or sunk a trial trench there. The moment she loaded the images onto her laptop and expanded them to full screen, she knew exactly what it was. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that expression on a woman’s face before; more’s the pity. Probably never will again, but it was the closest thing to perfect ecstasy that one could imagine. Then, the tears of purest joy began to roll down her lovely cheeks, and I had to take a look myself.

"I’ve seen The Plan myself many times. Tudor Williams used his voice to italicise the words just a little bit more. Even studied it cursorily. But nothing can prepare you for seeing a monastery there like that, in those fields where no monastery should be. Rather disturbing it was, to tell you the truth… the look on Vanda’s face and the monastery’s presence there." Tudor Williams, big, strong and the image of masculinity that he was, despite his dark purple jumper and bottle green cords, seemed to drift off into a dreamy wonderland of contemplation with this last disclosure. It was as if he’d somehow betrayed the deepest level of his own confidence, and it pained him even more deeply.

Why? What’s so special about it? Surely, an archaeologist would be glad to find something so fascinating and worthy of note. Brian Ambrose was becoming irritated with the dramatic breaks that impeded his complete understanding and wanted normal service to be resumed as soon as possible.

Yes, of course, Williams continued irascibly, his trance thoroughly trounced. He continued to rattle on like an unstoppable locomotive: "But it’s really not quite as simple as that. You see, the monastery of St Gall, as an actual bricks-and-mortar complex, has never actually existed. It’s a utopian dream existing only as an architectural concept. A bloody good one, too: ‘sophisticated architectural blueprint for a utopian monastic community’ is how someone put it in an article I once read in some journal or another. I forget which. Never forget such a perfectly coined phrase, though. Commissioned by her man himself. Charlemagne, I mean, of course! Commissioned sweeping monastic reforms throughout his Frankish empire, including this monastery complex as the vehicle for blanket Benedictine Rule. Died before the final blueprint was drawn up. Must’ve taken those monks a good few years to produce a plan so perfect in every detail. Every part so complete the whole was a work of art up there with the best of ’em. Work on the final edit began around AD 820. Old Charlie dead some six years by then, his son, Louis the Pious, leader of a fracturing empire in his place. Didn’t do things on quite the same heroic scale as dear old daddy, but at least he did still do them. Particularly monastic reforms. Existing blueprint completed AD 830-ish."

But why is it so strange to find a monastery in Glastonbury? Brian was determined to drag him back to the story’s main highway before the man could continue down this track and lead him any further from the tantalising moment of clarity he so wished for. I would have thought it would be the very place you’d expect to find one.

Tudor Williams threw back his head and his arms in one expansive movement and laughed. You really weren’t kidding when you said you weren’t an archaeologist, were you, he said once he’d managed to bring himself under control again. Two things, Brian Ambrose, he continued affably. "One: the monastery has never been built. Never got beyond the blueprint stage, which is why the blueprint is so valuable. It’s widely recognised as one of Western civilisation’s greatest original documents; it represents a masterpiece of design that, since its completion, has held both religious and secular architects spellbound for hundreds of years with its pure brilliance. It was only in the latter half of the last century that an art historian and an architect spent twenty years painstakingly constructing detailed architectural plans and designs for each and every building and space in that blueprint. And what they ended up with filled three folio volumes… from just one piece of vellum measuring some thirty by forty-four inches. Just how complex a matter do you imagine state and society to have been back then that those two monks could have produced such a thing?

"And two. How exactly do you imagine this utopian dream of a monastery that was produced by these two Frankish monks in Reichenau, and that was so immortally idealised in AD 830 only in this blueprint, came to be so fully realised in the ground in a context that has been expertly dated to no later than the early sixth century? No, I’m sorry, but that’s not gobsmackingly providential; that’s just downright weird! And I just wish I had whatever it’s got that can put that look on her beautiful face," he concluded as the frustration in his demeanour reached its true emotional peak.

That’s quite a big crush you’ve got on her, isn’t it, Brian Ambrose teased, pleased that his penny had finally dropped and he could, at last, understand what all the fuss was about.

I wouldn’t lie to you about a thing as serious as that, young Ambrose, Williams replied rather contritely. Something I’ve learned, through years of blood, sweat and tears in the trenches, to deal with. Usually, somewhat more admirably than I seem to be doing at present, I must admit.

And now she wants to rebuild it? Brian Ambrose asked, determined as he was to keep him on track to the final destination now that he’d managed to steer Tudor Williams this far down a more or less straight information highway.

Hmm, Williams mused dramatically, looking at the good-looking youngster quizzically over his steepled hands, elbows resting on the table’s edge. I’m wondering if you see the irony in that question. His attention shifted from Brian to something directly behind him, and any whimsy left in his face from their conversation to this point quickly vanished, replaced with a solid-chinned sombreness more befitting his station as a senior lecturer in a university department. You can ask her yourself now. Question time appears to be over, and here come the dancing bears. They appear to have worked up quite a thirst, too.

Brian turned in his seat to see what was happening behind him. Just in time to see Vivienne Andromeda Nestor gesturing expansively with her arms to a chap with a very large camera and an assistant who appeared to be trying to stick a large, fluffy grey sausage in her face. By the time Brian had put this mental picture into context, Tudor Williams had bounded over and rescued Vanda with the same elbow trick he’d used to get Brian himself out of the lecture theatre; he could hear his new friend telling her about their new friend, whose name was Brian, as he pointed her towards their table.

Before he knew it, she was coming towards him, hoisting the tight and strapless bodice of her full-skirted black dress with a tiny shimmying movement intended to adjust its fit correctly in the vicinity of her Junoesque bosom. She was also completely unaware of the effect this simple movement may be having on a young man sitting directly in front of her.

Brian looked around for Williams, who was already having a quiet word with Edna at the bar. The same Edna who was allowing him to jump the queue that had already formed three deep in front of her. Suddenly he was fourteen again and faced with talking to a girl he already liked very much but had never been introduced to, only this time flight really didn’t seem like an option.

Brian! Darling! How lovely to see you, Vanda gushed uncharacteristically, throwing her arms around his neck as he stood up in alarm. Just go with me here, please, she whispered into his ear as she planted the socially obligatory air kisses on either side of his face.

Holding his shoulders at arm’s length, she continued aloud. How long has it been? It must be years! She looked around her, saw that she was no longer being pursued by the giant camera and its fluffy sidekick and visibly relaxed as she sank into the third chair at the table.

Seconds later, she realised what she’d done. Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. What on earth must you think of me accosting you, a perfect stranger, like that? It’s just news cameras and boom mikes. I don’t cope too well with them. Sorry. Vanda, by the way, she added and offered him her hand.

Yes, I know, he said stupidly, so completely caught in the balmy glow of her headlights as he’d become within the space of those short seconds. No problem. I’m glad to be able to help.

Ah, good, boomed Tudor Williams’ voice, which was much less whimsical now that it was no longer deployed in the telling of stories. He put two more beers and a glass of white wine down on the table in front of their appropriate recipients. Introductions out of the way then? That’s good. Because young Ambrose here has a question or two he’d like to ask you, Vanda.

Oh, please. You can call me Brian. After all, I think we know each other at least that well now.

Of course! Williams replied tersely, his many years of public school and faculty life crashing into each other at the mere mention of a proper forename. And I suppose you can call me Tenpole, as does everyone else.

Brian seemed confused for a second or two until Vanda laughed, Tenpole Tudor Williams pulled a face, and the second penny of the day dropped neatly into place. Brian began to laugh, too, but it was more because the sound of Vanda laughing made him think of fast-running water and magic flutes and seemed to put him completely at ease.

Well, Brian, what would you like to ask me? she asked, removing the large, round and black-framed specs from their resting place on the bridge of her beautifully straight and pointed Roman nose. As she released the clasp from her head, her long, dark and wavy hair fell down her back in loose tresses that caressed her exposed shoulders on their way to her waist. "Please let it be something like, would you like a very large sum of money to build a monastery with? You know, something that would really make all this worthwhile!" She gestured towards the lecture theatre so recently vacated and laughed again as she raised her glass in mock toast before taking a sip from it.

"I think I may have to ask more than one or two other questions before I ask you that one, he replied, his face remaining completely deadpan as he did so. He appeared to be so much older without the youthful smile, and a weight seemed to have settled on his well-shaped shoulders. A weight that was too great for one so young. And get to know you a bit better, too, perhaps."

Vanda and Tenpole Tudor Williams’ faces assumed a corresponding gravity as they registered that he really was not joking.

Ok, spill! Williams commanded. "Since it seems like it’s your turn to tell us what it is that you’re talking about."

No, Tenpole! Vanda raised her arms to make him stop talking. If Brian has something serious to discuss with us, I’d rather not do it here, and I have to be somewhere shortly. May I suggest we meet tomorrow for lunch, say noon, in the coffee shop at The Brothers’ Library? If that’s ok with everyone else? She didn’t wait for an answer from either of them, knowing she’d be late if she didn’t go immediately. And for another reason, although she wasn’t quite sure what it was. Can you explain to Brian how to get there, please!

Chapter 2

Merlin on the Road in Italy

AD 525, September 17th, Monday, Harvest Moon

What day it is is of no immediate importance to me unless it’s the day of a full moon. That’s not to say that the turning of the world in its natural cycles makes no impression on me. For I would be a very foolish wizard indeed not to mark the quarter- and cross-quarter days and an impetuous presbyter to ignore the liturgical wheel of the Church now layered artfully atop it. But I am not yet ordained into the priestly body, merely aspiring to be, and that not of my own accord, but picking up the reins of duty and obligation thrust upon me by reason of my earthly birth. And when I am, it will be within the priestly body of the Roman Rite, not that of our delightfully magical indigenous Church with its mystical liturgy, given us by the hand of the saintly Patrick, some say, on his way from captivity in Ireland. I could, of course, tell the some-sayers how this story really fell about, but in my experience, it is not wise to separate some from the comforts of their sayings.

Balancing these, some others would say, opposing aspects of my spiritual existence between the old ways and the new is a matter of second nature to me. It’s something I’ve always done, like drinking water from a clear spring when thirsty and eating fruit from the trees when hungry. Yet full moons are of a different nature still, that nature which informs and instils my magic as much from deep within as from the farthest corners of the Infinite. Nothing, really, to do with church rites and liturgical observance at all, nor even related to the pagan wheel of the seasons and the turning of the world around the sun, and without which I would neither hold nor understand the balance of anything at all. Ah, Mother Moon! A chain so fine, invisible to the untrained eye, binds me to her and she to me; every cycle at her fullest hour, she enables in me feats that would not be believed were I to reveal to the world her magic powers within me. It does well for me that I was not born under a braggart’s star!

What year it is is of far more importance, and given the story I am about to tell, it would not hurt to inform you of how I am able to travel as I will throughout time. Sometimes space too, if the need is great, so long as I can see clearly the juncture at which I will arrive, and provided I am quick to catch the very fullest point of Mother Moon’s waxing, indeed the very moment before she begins to wane.

Tonight, she is full, a Harvest Moon, as it is September. I’m seeing her cast her spell over unfamiliar territory; thus, the shadows she makes are strange ones which I have to use magic to see into, to see what they may conceal, should I perceive the need. I sit under cover of a large and, gods be praised, leafy tree which affords me shelter and hiding without having to resort to magic. It’s a little distance away from, and some feet above, the old Roman road, and I have a good view both up and down. The road is a little bumpy and in need of repair, but peasants, I’ve seen, keep the verges clear of overgrown vegetation.

Their interests are vested, I would suppose, in the stopping of traffic in its various forms to leave offerings at the many mausolea and shrines along the way, which no doubt fatten their meagre income a degree or two above starvation. Whom are they robbing? The dead have no need of sacrificial beasts, cooked or otherwise, or libations, and the life-giving force of a meal is a far more potent spirit when measured against their own death. Thus, the ever-revolving wheel of life turns on, enabling the Roman legacy yet one more lingering lease of life. Poetic, but I digress.

Let me tell you something of my journey and purpose before I continue with Mother Moon’s plans for me and mine for her this particular cycle. Understanding these may give you valuable insights that I would be unwise to deny you at this stage of your perception of me. As I have said already, I am to be ordained.

My present destination is indeed Rome, it being the place where, one could be forgiven for thinking, the Christian journey of our current time appears to start and finish in its own endless cycle, regardless of its elsewhere origins. It’s where I shall be given the requisite training before being subsumed into the process of the Roman Church, entering as a chrysalis with all the promise of a brightly coloured butterfly, only to re-emerge as a dun moth if the process manages to take ahold to the satisfaction of the Holy Roman hierarchy.

Note that I do not say to the satisfaction of the Almighty.

Nothing I’ve seen so far has convinced me that their God, or indeed any god at all, is involved in this process, merely men in expensive mantles stepping out in the name of a god of whom they have no understanding. This might sound unfair, but it is not a process I have much belief in, and, as I have already intimated, this is not a decision I have been allowed to make for myself. But events have a way of falling out as they will around me, despite the input from others who think they control me to their advantage. I shall be far more content with the plans that Destiny has for me than those of mere mortals wishing to use me as a pawn to manipulate events to their own ends, however laudable to their masters those plans may be. So, shall we not just watch and see what befalls on that matter? I have, of course, played one card that turns the situation a few years in my favour, but more of that a little later.

And that brings me to the subject that empties rooms quicker than a spraying polecat and causes all manner of allusive epithets to spring forth from those brave enough to remain: my parentage! I know all too well who my mother is as she’s never once let me out of her sight for more than a few hours at a time since I was born. How I got her to agree to let me come all the way to Italy without her is still a mystery to me, she being relatively impervious to all manner of glamours and seeing through false inducements in no time at all. I can only conclude that it is a process in which she has great belief!

Her name is Vivienne, and before her conversion to the Christian religion, she held the title of Lady of the Lake. She gave up this title, conferring it on one of her younger sisters as she took up her beloved Celtic cross. Of course, we have still spent every summer since on the Isle of Avalon with all of her sisters, as well as the much-vaunted Bard and Druid High Priest, Taliesin, in one happy fusion of cross-pollinated religion all of our own making.

Now, my father is an entirely different proposition. In truth, the subject of his identity presents a very tricky matter not often alluded to in more than guarded whispers. But it’s a matter that does not require absolute proof of his identity, more an intimation of acceptance of a set of circumstances worked out many years ago and given to the court rumour machines in only those carefully guarded whispers which could best control the desired outcome. I’ve heard all manner of whispers. My favourite is that an angel came to lie with my mother when she took herself off to live in the convent for Christian instruction.

Or was it a demon?

Of course, I need no more than my own instinct and intuition to know the truth for myself. Suffice it to say that I know without a doubt who my father really is; the thought has never fired itself further than the end of its original synapse, and his identity has never once slipped off my tongue nor ever will.

In this instance, it is my father who has given me the undertaking of Holy Orders. Or should I say, the man my mother and I visit at his court in Caerleon – which you may know as Isca Silurum or Newport – twice a year, on our way both to and from Avalon, whom the rumour-mongers think I have been subtly persuaded to believe is aptly named so?

Ambrosius Aurelianus is an ambitious man, and when he sees the need within his household for a priest trained in the Roman Rite, whom he wishes to send to Rome for the purpose, who am I to argue? I understand the concept of long-term political leverage, even if I think it a somewhat foolish one. In any case, it’s time for me to get away from home, see something of the world I live in and prepare myself for whatever my part in its perpetuation might be. One thing Ambrosius does not know is the extent of my magic powers and, for all the time that he does not, all the better I am at long-term political leverage than he.

No one explicitly stated that I was to train in the Rome of my own present timeline. I’m sure your infinite sharp-witted intelligence has no doubt already calculated the date of this entry to be fifty years in excess of my twenty-five years. So you will already have shaken the finger of mathematical exactitude at me for allowing such an error. But be assured that the error is only one of omission to this point, and I now offer the extenuating explanation.

I have indeed manipulated the whole process of this ordination thing forward some fifty years.

The reasons are manifold. I can experience developments I consider to be far more pertinent to world progress and thus stay ahead of others in their thinking. Best of all, the events at the Rome of this timeline promise to be a jolly sight more interesting than they would have been should I have stayed in my own.

Not to mention safer!

Had I arrived in September of the year 475, as you are aware, it would have been only 12 months ahead of the collapse of the order of the known world. Whereas fifty years forward, barbarian tribes have already carved out pieces of what will become the nation-states of the future.

Forewarned is forearmed! Is that not the stock phrase in any and all timelines? Besides, if you figure you know me at all by now, you’ll appreciate my inability to do anything inside the straight lines provided; perhaps even understand how my inquisitive powers simply must be allowed to break free if they are to fly.

A wise Ent once told me that I must learn to be like the leaf and blow in the wind, for I am Merlin, and I will change the direction of the world. Therefore, the tasks I must undertake must be undertaken as the path leads me, yes? Yes!

Chapter 3

An Evening of Magic

AD 2018, September 5th, Wednesday Evening

Vanda had anticipated a short turnaround between the press conference and her next meeting. In readiness, she’d left a sandwich and a bottle of water in the fridge at the studio that was her team’s headquarters. She wished she’d thought to bring a suitable change of clothes too, although she barely had time to sit down and eat, much less change as well.

She’d been putting off thinking about this next appointment ever since she’d decided to go. She wasn’t sure why... something to do with the hysterical laughter she kept having to suppress every time she did so, probably. It wasn’t really an appointment at all, more of a... More of a what? An exploration? A therapy session? She really didn’t know what to expect at all from the next few hours of her life. No template in her experience could prepare her for whatever this was.

But, within the past year and a half, so much had already changed beyond recognition. If she were to avoid turning into an automaton completely at the mercy of these strange forces that now seemed to control her, she simply had to do something that would help her to decipher at least some of the mysteries behind the strangenesses that now routinely dominated her life.

She had always been very sure about everything, right up to that point when she’d loaded those aerial photographs onto her laptop. There it was, the ninth-century monastery so familiar, so real to her, and yet so hypothetical that it surely could not possibly exist, not anywhere… right there in the pictures on her screen. After that, life had changed!

It had become intense and exciting, scary and confusing.

It had morphed into an extraordinary muddle of earthly impossibilities and supernatural incongruities... some kind of inter-dimensional puzzle laying itself out in a strange land she’d been trying desperately to navigate ever since; it was a puzzle to which she had as yet been unable to find a key.

Except in terms of mild amusement and secondhand historical empathy, the supernatural was not a phenomenon Vanda had had much truck with prior to that. After all, wasn’t the supernatural just a whole load of weird stuff that appeared to happen to others?

But then, the weird stuff had started happening to her.

As a consequence, nothing seemed to surprise her any more.

Accordingly, these days, she found herself living on a schizophrenic knife edge, each day wondering how much wider the gap between breathtakingly sensational and downright weird could wax. These days, she was even taking things like pleasant, good-looking young men offering her foretokens of very large sums of money with which to build monasteries completely in her stride.

The more she thought of that, the more it, too, made her want to laugh. He probably wouldn’t even turn up at The Brothers’ at noon tomorrow anyway.

As she swallowed her last bite and washed it down with a final gulp of water, she glanced up at the corkboard on the wall that Tenpole facetiously described as The Crime Board. Her eyes fell on the photographs showing the monastery excavations from start to finish. On the left were the zoomed-out ones of the newly ploughed and sown field with its colour variations depicting the shapes of all the buildings composing the monastery she knew so well from the drawings on the ninth-century vellum artefact known as The Plan of St Gall. On the right were the zoomed-in ones of the excavated archaeological remains of an impossibility, a sixth-century monastery that exactly mirrored that plan. She was mesmerised… as if she were only now realising just how strange her discovery actually was…

It had certainly been a roller-coaster of a ride since that aerial photo session in the spring of last year, but also a surprisingly liberating one. And here it was September already… the summer season’s digging winding up, and students already beginning to trickle back for the start of term in a couple of weeks to find rooms before the new intake arrived.

She looked around the rest of the large studio, still mildly entranced, pleased to be in there alone for once, to have the place to herself, even for just a few minutes. Yes, it had been a crazy eighteen months, yet not altogether scary… unearthing the most exciting find of her life, her strangely anomalous monastery that had the archaeological world so puzzled and, yes… so divided! On that premise, it certainly promised to be an interesting new academic year, too.

And there was something else that was beginning to twist colourful threads into the patchwork of her strange new life, some feeling that she couldn’t yet define, much less hold on to. She may not yet be able to pinpoint the source of each and every one of her supernaturally weird experiences nor unravel their implications; but she was pretty sure she could feel when a new tendril was attaching itself… if only she could hold on to the sensation long enough to process it through the relevant emotional software.

No! It was gone.

Wondering again what the night ahead may bring, she suddenly realised that she’d finished the sandwich and needed to get there for it to bring anything. Grabbing her bag, Vanda made a rather graceless dash for the door.

The flyer had read:

An Evening of Magic

For Those Who Wish to Explore The Gift

with an introduction to

Marjorie’s Magic Circle

in the

Chalice Well Meeting Room

7:30 – 10:00 pm

(come earlier if you wish quiet time in the garden)

Vanda had seen several of these flyers on notice boards around the Institute in the past week or so but hadn’t paid particular mind to them, at least not until she had overheard Kathy Casey – one of her more seasoned students – talking about it on site to a girl working alongside her. Despite the long strawberry-blonde cane row plaits bundled up in a green and purple spotted bow, tie-dyed patchwork tunic, and purple DMs with bright daisies painted all over them, this was a girl she particularly liked and whose practical and well-balanced opinions on a wide range of cultural phenomena she respected… so she’d listened and taken note of a few salient points.

I’ve met Marjorie, the tie-dyed and brightly be-daisied Kathy had commented when asked if An Evening of Magic would yield good woo-woo. "She’s one of those happy people who always seems to have a twinkle in their eye, and she makes it all so easy to understand. You should go… defo!"

Vanda had recently heard the term spiritual woo-woo bandied about many times and still thought of it all with a guarded and far from open mind. But, as Kathy Casey had given voice to the fashionably contracted form of the word definitely, she’d looked directly over at Vanda and nodded her head so vigorously that a riot of the intricate plaits had escaped the confines of their green and purple captivity… she’d laughed joyfully as they’d sprung free and tumbled down over her patchwork tunic.

This one look had given Vanda such a shock that it had brought her up short, indeed so short that it had made her think… and it had made her take an interest, which had made her want to attend the meeting, even though she’d had no idea why. It was simply as if something had spoken – rather curtly, she had thought with a degree of umbrage – directly to her heart… as if by magic.

But it was the weird thing that had happened only the previous evening that had swayed her decision to actually go. When the strange dreamy spells she had been experiencing while relaxing in her one comfy chair had taken a leap that left her stranded on the ceiling, she’d figured it was about time to get some help. To feel herself floating around as if she’d left her body and gone off for a jaunt around her living room without it was one thing, but watching her body talking to itself while she was most decidedly not in it was something else entirely. She wanted to draw a very definite line somewhere that would put a stop to that or, at the very least, find someone who could tell her why her own body was behaving in this ridiculous manner.

And then there was that feeling, no more than an hour since… the one that had made her skitter out of the press conference quite so rapidly!

Walking from her house at the top of Bove Town to the Chalice Well at the end of Chilkwell Street gave Vanda another fifteen minutes to herself. She put them to good use, reflecting on all the weird stuff that had happened to her since the monastery’s discovery. It felt as if she were creating an inventory of evidence in her head that would prove useful should anyone ever ask her to explain herself. She was very used to doing this type of analysis in a professional capacity, just never thought to have to apply the same analytical skill set to her personal development, nor indeed who would ever be likely to be interested enough to ask her to do so…

First, there had been the feeling that she was being watched and guided by someone… or something. It had started immediately after she’d viewed those aerial photographs of the monastery’s outline. Discovering something like that – something so perfect – had been emotional. So much so that it had knocked her off-balance, and she’d failed to notice just how odd finding an outline of the ninth-century Plan of St Gall just sitting there so fortuitously in a field not half a mile away from Glastonbury Tor really was.

The excavations had also started immediately – something that never happens!

Unless archaeological remains are in danger of being lost to the jaws of a JCB, which means that some building contractor or another has to down tools until all the archaeology has been rescued, all excavations are scheduled. And the scheduling process is much like all other forms of bureaucracy: slow and painfully tortuous. Lots of people have to talk to lots of other people, bursaries and grants have to be arranged, digging crews found, and all manner of logistical hurdles tackled before a single blade of grass can ever be removed.

Yet her monastery excavations had begun as soon as was humanly possible, almost as if someone had waved a magic wand over the whole process.

It had been the same throughout the whole eighteen months they’d been digging… feeling watched and guided. It felt as if her discoveries were somehow pre-determined; she always seemed to know where to dig and what she’d find… as if some form of external influence were putting the ideas straight into her head. Still exciting, even more so, in fact, but it was nonetheless weird for that. Supernaturally was the only way she could describe it. If she’d had to put the overall impression of her feelings into words, she would have used the phrase as if by magic, a lot… without even stopping to think just how incredibly strange that was.

But was it magic? And is magic even a real thing?

Was that what she was going to find out this evening at Marjorie’s Magic Circle?

It made her want to laugh even more hysterically just to think of it all.

Her aerial photographs had been strange enough in themselves…

But…

As she was entering through the gatehouse of the Chalice Well Garden, the chaos of her thoughts reaching a natural crescendo, she remembered the farmer who owned the land in which the anomalous monastery was so propitiously placed. It struck her now just how strange his reaction had been. After all, she knew of no other farmer who, when faced with having his prime agricultural stake excavated and therefore out of regular action for who knew how long, would have just rolled over and let the Institute’s archaeologists do whatever they liked with it. All in the name of best excavational practice was how the farmer in question had put it, in his broad west country accent. Not the typical behaviour of any landowners she’d ever encountered.

She had reached the swing seat overlooking the meadow, and it was with a feeling of victory that she sat down on its firm wooden surface and kicked it gently into action, almost desperate for the hypnotically calming motion her feet generated.

Time to slip into a less entropic gear and make sense of the reigning chaos.

What had the flyer said? Explore The Gift.

What was this gift? Was it something she’d miraculously acquired within the past eighteen months? Something that made her capable of knowing where buried treasures were going to be, where before she’d had no idea whatsoever and had been happy to rely on more mundane knowledge like archaeological techniques to unearth them?

She wondered what kind of magic she was going to be introduced to, what magic even was.

Was she going to find answers to her many questions?

Did she even want to?

Then there were today’s as if by magic events, and the strange feeling she’d had that had prompted her to flee the press conference when she did… even though she didn’t know why! On the way there, she’d felt the familiar feeling of being watched and guided, as if her actions and thoughts were prescribed rather than autonomous. Then there was Brian, perfect and apparently rich Brian Ambrose, with whom she and Tenpole would be meeting tomorrow to discuss how rich.

And then, there it was again... that feeling.

Something that made her stomach lurch.

What was it?

Fear? Excitement?

And she knew that the odd things had not finished happening just because the excavations had finally reached their year-and-a-half-long conclusion. The knowledge that the strangeness had actually only just begun was what had made her take that quantum leap to the gatehouse of the Chalice Well this evening. And, she had indeed been early enough to be able to sit in the garden to take a few minutes of peace for further reflection on it all… before it should undoubtedly get even stranger.

"Well, fancy meeting you here!"

The voice reached Vanda through her reverie as she sat swinging in the seat, still reflecting. She recognised it as Brian’s before she’d had time to turn and react to it. He sounded as surprised to see her as she was to hear him.

Dare I ask? he ventured.

Trying to make sense of odd things that have been happening around me, she replied, possibly a little testily. Was it merely the interruption that irritated her? Or was it something else entirely? You?

People talking to me who ought not to have a voice any more on account of them having been dead for more than a hundred years, he replied with a tight smile. Apparently, it’s fairly normal around here.

"Well, you are in Glastonbury," Vanda quipped, forcing a sociable air she wasn’t sure she could maintain.

Brian looked briefly at his watch. It’s almost half past, he said. "We