Children of the Knight, Michael J. Bowler [classic book list txt] 📗

to the right ‘City Council Chamber’. The paramedic nodded to the latter.

“In there,” he urged, already beginning to walk in that direction. When they had stopped before the ornately carved double doors, Arthur reached out and pulled the handle on the right. The door opened out, and the dimly lit emergency lights illuminated the chamber within. They scuttled through the door with the stretcher, and it closed behind them.

Jack gasped at the grandeur before him. It felt like he was inside of a church. There were enormous high ceilings, benches that looked like pews lining both sides of a long, a tiled walkway with each side flanked by huge marble columns and rounded arches. At the end of the long aisle was the raised dais and seating area where he figured the council members sat for meetings. It looked like huge judge’s bench on steroids, with huge black leather chairs behind it for each council member to sit.

He had little time to gawk, however, because the paramedic was ushering them forward. He indicated that they should lay the stretcher down on the floor right in front of the seat of power, as though offering Lance up to these feckless politicians who had failed this city and its children.

As Jack released his hold on the stretcher, he rose to his full six-feet and glared at the opulence around him. Lance was dead. Lance, the most amazing boy in the world, who’d done more for this city than these clowns ever had. His blood began to boil.

“Sir.” The feeble light from the night lamps caused the bloodstains on Arthur’s tunic to look dark and blotchy. “I still know little of your legal system and procedures, yet this action we have taken seems highly unusual.”

Now that they were alone, the middle-aged man with the salt and pepper hair turned on Arthur in anger. “Dammit, Arthur, do you not recognize me yet?”

Jack was taken aback by the man’s tone, and so, clearly, was Arthur.

But the king said nothing. He studied the shorter man, squinting in the dimness to see into the man’s eyes. His eyes suddenly bulged with astonished recognition.

“Merlin!”

Jack gawked at the small, skinny man with the almost nondescript face, and frail physique This was Merlin? The Merlin?

The little man looked blustered, “Of course it’s me, Arthur!”

Arthur stepped back in shock. He looked stunned, yet somehow not completely surprised.

Jack watched the reunion with deep uncertainty.

Arthur gazed long and hard at the man, his face finally softening. “You look…different. Younger than when last we were together.”

“As do you. The mysteries of Avalon are unknown, even to me.”

Arthur attempted to embrace the smaller man, but Merlin brushed him off.

“There’s no time for this, Arthur,” the man snapped, his voice sharp and clipped, his accent similar to Arthur’s own. But the tone of his voice was different, Jack noted. It was the tone of a man who’d seen it all, and for whom nothing new could be a surprise.

Except he did seem surprised.

“Have you been watching me this entire crusade, Merlin?” Arthur asked sadly. “Did you set it all into motion?”

The man looked about to bust the buttons on his white paramedic shirt. “Of course I did, Arthur. And it all should have gone according to my vision. But no, you had to repeat the same errors of the past!”

Arthur bowed his head, like a scolded schoolboy might to his father after getting suspended. “I know. I failed, Merlin. I have lost my First Knight, my son.”

Merlin gesticulated toward the ever-more nervous Jack. “Arthur, this boy discovered what you knew centuries ago, what you should have avoided at all costs. And yet you did not heed your own past experience!”

Arthur glanced quizzically from Merlin to Jack, who just shrugged with confusion.

Merlin released an exasperated sigh, looking at Jack with those piercing gray eyes and seeming to see right through him. “Tell Arthur what you realized, young sir, what you verbalized to Lance in that rather appalling alley where Sir Mark was found.”

Jack pulled a startled face, recalling vividly the conversation he’d had with Lance, right before they were kidnapped and everything went to hell. And then he remembered this guy – he was the paramedic who’d come to take Mark away!

Jack cleared his throat. “I, uh, I told Lance that the things we don’t say to each other were the most important.”

“Exactly!” Merlin exclaimed. “And you knew this, Arthur. You knew. After all the words you left unspoken to Guinevere and Lancelot and Mordred, still you blew it!”

Arthur frowned. “Blew it?”

“Modern street vernacular, Arthur, for ‘you failed’.”

Jack opened his mouth to come to Arthur’s defense, but the older man kept on with his diatribe. “All you needed to tell the boy, Arthur, was that you loved him, that you took great pride in his accomplishments, and all of this would have been avoided.”

He pointed at the unmoving body on the stretcher beside them.

Arthur bowed his head in shame. “You are correct, Merlin.

And it hath cost me everything, has it not? Tell me true.”

The older man showed no sympathy whatsoever, which surprised Jack. “If by that you mean was Lance the only one to carry your crusade through to the end, and succeed where no one else could? Yes, Arthur, that is what I mean.”

Arthur bowed his head again and Jack reached up to place a comforting hand on the man’s shoulder. Arthur turned and cast a grateful look his way.

Jack turned to Merlin and extended a hand. “I’m Sir Jack.”

“I know who you are,” Merlin snapped. “And no, it cannot be you to lead, either.” He must’ve seen Jack’s hurt expression, because he softened a bit. “It was my vision, Sir Jack, which propelled this crusade forward in the beginning. But in that vision, Lance grew to manhood and remained in command. Alas, even you, as good a man as you are, do not have the requisite qualities to see this crusade through to its finish. You know what I’m saying about Lance, do you not, young Jack?”

Jack nodded. He knew, indeed. “Lance was the only one who could talk to everyone, who could be a badass one minute and caring the next. He found something good in everybody. That’s why it had to be him, right, Merlin?”

The middle-aged wizard nodded. “The boy possessed leadership abilities coupled with immense compassion and empathy. A once-in-a-generation individual. That’s why he was chosen. And that’s why he was never slated to die like this, Arthur.”

Arthur raised his head and met the older man’s gaze. “Then how, Merlin?” He indicated the body at his feet. “How did this happen?”

Merlin blew out a breath, almost like he was spitting. “Call it Fate, the Devil, a cosmic monkey wrench. Call it whatever you choose, Arthur, but the forces of chaos always seek to undo the forces of order and goodness. Had you simply told the boy what he meant to you––”

“I know, Merlin!” Arthur spat, his deep voice echoing off the cavernous ceiling. “Do you not realize what I must live with, the mistakes I must now strive to undo? I loved that boy with all my heart. Torment me no further with my failure!”

“The crusade is doomed, Arthur, unless you act immediately.”

“There is for naught that I can do, Merlin! You said so yourself. Without Lance, the crusade is doomed. And he is dead.” He paused, his tearful eyes lowering to take in the covered boy at his feet. “My son…is dead.”

“No, Arthur. He isn’t.”

Arthur’s head whipped up like a gunshot, and Jack gasped in astonishment.

“What?” Arthur choked, his voice a stunned whisper, his face a mosaic of shock.

Merlin’s gaze passed over Jack’s beseeching eyes, before diving straight into Arthur’s. “The boy yet lives.”