Nightside 02 - Agents of Light and Darkness

ancient designs, his skin was blotchy and discolored and visibly decayed in places. He’d been dead a long time, and it showed. His hair was long and grey, falling past his shoulders in convoluted knots, and stiffened here and there with clay and woad. Upon his heavy brow he wore a crown of mistletoe. His face was heavy-boned and ugly, and two fires leapt and danced in the sockets where his eyes should have been. There was an ancient wound in the centre of his chest, where skin and muscle and bone had been torn apart, leaving a gaping hole. His heart was gone, torn out, long and long ago. He was Merlin, dead but not departed, powerful beyond hope or sanity. Merlin, sitting on his ancient throne and smiling horribly.
    They say he has his father’s eyes …
    He only still existed through an awful act of will. Life and death and reality itself bowed down to his magics. Though there were those who said he was only still around because neither Heaven nor Hell would take him.
    “Who disturbs me at this time?” Merlin’s voice was deep and dark, and grated on the ear like fingernails dragged across the soul.
    “I’m John Taylor,” I said, politely. “I called you. Angels have come to the Nightside, from Above and Below, in search of the Unholy Grail. They threaten this place, and your current descendant.”
    “Damn,” said Merlin. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another.”
    A voice spoke from the top of the stairs; a choir of voices speaking in a harmony so perfect it was inhuman. “We are the Will of the Most High. We are the soldiers of the shimmering plains, and the Courts of the Holy. Give us the mortal, for we have need of him.”
    Another voice spoke, from out of the darkness that had enveloped the windows and was spreading slowly across the walls. Its harmonies were dissonant and disturbing, but still inhumanly perfect. “We are the Will of the Morningstar. We are the soldiers of the Pit, and the Inferno. Do not stand in our way. The mortal is ours.”
    “Typical angels,” said Merlin, sitting utterly at ease and unmoved on his iron throne. “All bluff and bluster. Bullies, then and now. The Hereafter’s attack dogs, only with less manners. Guard your tongues, all of you. I am the Son of the Morningstar, and I will not be spoken to in such a fashion. I could have been the Anti-Christ, but I declined the honor. I was determined to be free, from both Heaven and Hell. I gave birth to Camelot, and the song that never ends. I made a Golden Age for Mankind, an Age of Reason. And then the Holy Grail came to England’s fair shores, and no-one could think of anything else. They all went riding off on their stupid quests, abandoning their duty to the people. And, of course, it all fell apart. What is Reason, in the face of dreams? I still miss Arthur. He was always the best of them. Arthur, my once and future King.”
    “Did you really get to see the Holy Grail?” said Suzie, who would interrupt anybody. “What was it like?”
    Merlin’s smile softened, just for a moment. “It was … wonderful. A thing of beauty, and of joy. Almost enough to be worth losing the world for. Almost beautiful enough… to shame me for the shallowness of my vision. Man cannot live by Reason alone.”
    “And now the Unholy Grail’s come here,” I said. “I’ve been told it would be a really bad thing if either set of angels gets their hands on it. Judgement Day was mentioned, and not in a good way.”
    “The somber chalice…” Merlin raised one rotting hand to the gaping hole in his chest. “I suppose it was inevitable the ugly thing should turn up here. The Nightside was created to be the one place where neither Heaven nor Hell could intervene directly. A place apart, free from the tyrannies of fate and destiny. In the Nightside, even the Highest and the Lowest can only work through agents. Which is why the angels are so much weaker here.”
    Suzie and I exchanged a glance. If these were angels in a weaker form… “Excuse me, Sir Merlin,” I said, with all the politeness at my command, “Did you just say the Nightside was created for a specific purpose? Who created it, and why?”
    Merlin looked at me with his flame-filled eyes, and smiled unpleasantly. “Ask your mother.”
    Somehow, I’d known he was going to say that.
    “If some of these angels are agents of Heaven,” said Suzie, in the manner of someone who had a problem bone, and was determined to worry at it until she got an answer that satisfied