Lancelot's Brother: A Champion's Chronicle

Chapter Nine

Wizard's Counsel

She laid her head back on the pillow that she had propped up between her and the backrest of the chair. Her feet were crossed and resting on the edge of the hospital bed. With her eyes closed, she held David's still hand, gently rubbing it with her thumb. It was as soothing for her as she hoped it was for him. Along with the hypnotic beeps and tones of the monitor, she began to relax a little—except for her simmering irritation with Sean.

Katy wondered how he could leave while his son lay so helpless. How could he abandon her when David and she needed him most? There was nothing from home she had to have, and the neighbors could check on things. No, his family needed him here and now, "Not running away like a coward," she muttered to herself.

"He's no coward, fair Katherine."

The man's voice jolted Katy from the chair, and she moved to put herself between the stranger and David. "Who are you?" she said, looking around the room and toward the door, wondering if a nurse would walk in. "What are you doing here and how do you know my name?"

Katy looked up and down the baldheaded man who was dressed in tattered robes.

"Fear not, fair Katherine," he said, raising his arms to his chest. "I bear nothing save counsel."

Katy grimaced and looked sideways. "And what's with the Shakespearean cadence?"

"Speech is speech," he said, adding, "'tis mine throughout the ages."

She looked around the softly lit room. The monitors connected to David were functioning, but strangely mute. She suddenly saw herself—still in the chair, holding her son's hand. She couldn't speak as she looked at her visitor.

"'Tis no dream," the stranger said in a tender voice. "It is that place of waking slumber."

"I ... I don't understand," Katy said.

"Where exists anything that man can imagine," he said, smiling.

Katy flinched. "Mister Duggan?" she said. Then she straightened up and, with a wary look, added, "Merlin?"

He smiled.

"I am dreaming," she said.

"Nay, fair—"

"Please stop," Katy said, annoyed and showing it. "I'm not some innocent maiden and haven't been one for a long time."

She watched as Merlin took on the appearance of her former philosophy professor. The bowl haircut, wrinkled short-sleeve shirt with button-down collar, and the baggy pants were all his trademarks. Even the scuffed brown shoes made him look as he did then, not as she would have expected him to be now.

"You are as he sees you," Merlin said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. "And that dictates how I see you."

"Okay, wait," Katy said, raising her hands waist level and making them look like claws. "You said you bear counsel—about Sean or my son?"

"There is a reason your husband isn't here with you," began Merlin as he cautiously approached Katy.

Though reluctant at first, she let him lead her by the arm toward the window.

"He's trying to reach young David." He waved a hand and muttered something under his breath. The drapes opened.

The view from the window was of a lake surrounded by high peaks—she recognized it from Sean's drawings. The lake fed a waterfall pouring into a mist. Clouds, some dark and others light gray, hovered above the mountains. What caught her attention was a faint flicker, as if from a fire, by the lakeshore.

Katy looked back at her son lying on the bed, then back to the view, and then to Merlin.

"From the moment Divine breath fired the soul of man, this place was created," Merlin said, seeing the confusion on the mother's face. He sat on the arm of the chair next to the window as he spoke. "It is the spawn of—"

 "Nightmares," Katy said, staring at the flame.

"And more," he said, smiling because he knew she might begin to understand.

Katy found the window latch and tried to open it. Her effort was frustrated until Merlin stopped her.

"You cannot enter."

"You said my son is there," Katy said, trying to force the window.

"That is a mere reflection. Were it a portal, you possess neither the power nor the understanding to enter."

She slapped her hands on the windowsill. "So the devil has my son and there's nothing I can do." She rolled her eyes. "But," she began with protracted and dramatic sarcasm, "Sean has the power and he's there to ... what ... fight some duel?" Katy grimaced thinking this sounded ridiculous.

Merlin chuckled and grinned as he shifted his position on the arm of the chair. "That was many years ago."

Katy did a double take.

He nodded. "Yes, your husband fought a duel, as you put it, with the master of that realm," he said, tilting his head toward the window.

Katy's expression was a doubtful one—the kind that moms get when they know their kids are telling a story.

Merlin explained that the evil residing within that far-away place is fed by the fears of a collective consciousness. "But its true power comes from the weakest," he said, looking at the boy.

"Children?" Katy said.

Merlin nodded. "Their fears, mostly, as well as the regrets and remorse of the old."

He took a breath and went on to say that when those feelings become potent and dominant, the victim's soul is vulnerable to the Dark Master's grip.

Katy was trying to wrap her head around what Merlin was saying. "But why is it I can't do anything and Sean can? I mean, he's obviously no child at thirty-two."

Merlin smiled. "Dispense with your mother's pride and wife's indignance, and you might understand."

"I understand you're saying Sean is some kind of Luke Skywalker," Katy said sarcastically.

"No. Skywalker was the alter ego of the Champion for another generation."

"What!"

Merlin said that with each generation there is a champion to quell the Dark Master. He leaned forward a little and whispered, "But only for a time. It is never defeated, never conquered—only rendered temporarily weak and powerless."

Katy shook her head as she turned to her son. "Sean wasn't even a Boy Scout, much less some kind of mythological hero or something," she said. Turning dramatically, she added sarcastically, "Besides, the only thing epic about Sean was the volumes he drank at frat parties. So how could he be ... be a Jedi, or Musketeer, or Knight of the Round Table, or ... or champion?"

"Why should a woman who's seen his chivalry find it so difficult to believe?" Merlin asked.

"Chivalry? I don't think I've ever seen Sean be chivalrous."

"Haven't you?" Merlin gave her a moment, knowing she had tucked away the experience in lieu of others. "Do you remember the first time you lay with Sean?"

"Excuse me?" She was taken aback. "That's none of your business."

Merlin nodded to the window.

The scene of a naked couple formed on the glass. Feeling the flush of embarrassment, Katy put her hands to her cheeks. She recognized what she saw—a night in her dorm room with Sean. Katy was a college freshman, barely seventeen because she skipped a grade. And he was a sophomore who was about to turn nineteen when the summer break started.

That day had been the worst of her life—the day Sandy died. There was only a three-year difference between Katy and her sister. And while Katy would see the end of her first year in college, Sandy was too ill to even start the second half of her freshman year in high school.

The next flight home wasn't due out until early the following morning. Katy remembered feeling trapped, unable to get home to her parents—and her sister. But there was Sean. He'd been with her when she got the news, and he had stayed with her all day and through the night.

"What was it you wanted of him?" Merlin asked.

"To take the hurt away," she said—unable to look her counselor in the eye—feeling her cheeks flush again.

"But he knew he would have taken much more, and the hurt would have remained."

Katy nodded, still not looking at Merlin or the scene reflected in the glass.

Merlin's hand motion made the image of the nude couple go away—returning the view to the mountain lake.

Katy glanced at Merlin, who looked straight at her.

"As I recall, you never came back," he said.

"The Dean felt my grades were strong enough to grade-out the semester," she said, nodding.

"Except for the Incomplete in my class," Merlin said sarcastically as Duggan.

Katy's expression was an irritated one. She took a breath as she closed her eyes. "What is the point of all this?" Trembling with intimate vulnerability, she held herself. "So he didn't take my ..." Katy paused to rub her arms, then whispered, "so he didn't take my virginity."

"And that made you angry."

"I guess so," she admitted. "At the time I felt rejected, maybe even abandoned." Katy stared out the window and added, "But now that I think about it, I guess it was the right thing that we didn't." She sighed. "The next day woulda been worse."

"By adding more guilt and remorse for something for which you weren't truly prepared," Merlin said.

"Yeah," Katy whispered, pursing her lips.

"That is chivalry," Merlin said.

---

 

Copyright 2005 by David Falloure