Nightside 05 - Paths Not Taken

silence and an impenetrable darkness. Anywhen else I would probably have been worried, but I was more concerned with Suzie. She knew I was hiding something from her, but how could I tell her? What good could it do? And I couldn't escape the feeling that simply by talking about it aloud, by accepting it, I might make that future more possible, more probable. I strode straight into the dark opening, while guilt twisted in my gut like a living thing, and Suzie and Tommy followed right after me.
    The darkness quickly gave way to a friendly amber glow, the bar itself just a sprawling, smoke-filled room, roughly the same size as the bar back in my time. There were no windows, and the oil-lamps and torches filled the hot sweaty air with a thick, defusing smoke, but the general effect was not unpleasant. Once I was inside, it was clear the bone tower exterior was a glamour, designed to scare off unwanted visitors. I wandered unhurriedly between the packed long wooden tables, and everyone else ostentatiously minded their own business. Just as in my time, this was not a bar where you went for company and good fellowship.
    Over in one corner, a number of musical instruments were playing themselves, providing basic but pleasant background music.
    The customers were the usual unusual suspects, the men and women wearing a collection of clothing from all kinds of cultures and backgrounds. Anywhere else they would have been fighting each other to the death over religion or customs or plain foreignness, but not in Avalon. Humans stuck together in the face of so many other alternate threats. Three witches in embroidered saris sat huddled together, giggling like nasty children as they animated a number of stick figures and made them dance madly on the tabletop before them. Two seriously ugly Redcap goblins were knife-fighting, while a circle of onlookers cheered them on and laid bets on the outcome. Two lepers were playing knucklebones with their own fingers. Two heretical priests were arm-wrestling each other over the true nature of the Holy Ghost, and spitting obscenities at each other through clenched teeth. And in the middle of the bar-room floor, two smoke ghosts were dancing together sadly and elegantly, their smoke bodies blown apart by every passing breeze, but always re-forming.
    And sitting very much alone in a corner, with his back to two walls, that mighty and renowned sorcerer, Merlin Satanspawn. The greatest magus of this or any other age. Who was born to be the Antichrist but declined the honour. You couldn't miss him. His sheer presence dominated the whole bar, even sitting there quietly, staring into his drink. Having him around was like sharing the room with a bloody street accident, or a man slowly hanging himself.
    He didn't look much like the Merlin I knew, the dead man with a ragged hole in his chest where his heart used to be. Who had been buried for centuries in the cellars under Strangefellows but occasionally deigned to manifest through his unhappy descendant, Alex Morrisey. This man was whole and hale and bloody scary with it. He was a big man in an age of small men, easily six feet tall and broad-shouldered, wrapped in a long scarlet robe with golden collar trimmings. Under a thick and tangled mane of bright red hair, stiffened here and there with clay, his face was heavy-boned and almost aggressively ugly. Two fires burned brightly in his eye sockets, leaping crimson flames that licked up past his heavy eyebrows. They say he has his father's eyes... Most of his face and bare hands were covered with curling Druidic tattoos in dark blue hues. His long, thick fingernails looked a whole lot like claws. And I realised that the Merlin I'd known before had only been a pale shadow of the real thing, this huge and vital man crackling with power and awful presence.
    I'd meant to walk up to him, introduce myself, and demand his help; but suddenly I didn't feel at all like doing that. I felt much more like slinking away before he noticed me, and maybe hiding under a table for a while until I got my confidence back. The man was dangerous. You only had to look at him to know he could blast the soul right out of your body with a single Word. A quick glance at Suzie and Tommy showed they were having serious second thoughts, too, and that immediately put some backbone back into me. Gods or sorcerers or Things from Elsewhere, you couldn't show fear in front of them or they'd walk right over you. You had to find their weak