Draw the mighty sword and he will come.
He who will lead.
He who will bring back the glory of Atlantis to us.
A king among men.
It was not clear who had written those lines. From the language and the placement in the racks, Merlin estimated that it had been penned about three hundred years previously. One of the candles sputtered and went out. Merlin slowly got to his feet and stretched out his back, sore from so many hours bent over the reading table. He picked up one of the candles still burning. He left the room and walked down atunnel, exiting into a larger cavern. The light from the single candle was magnified a thousand times over by the crystals embedded in the wall.
Away from the wall, set in a red crystal that jutted up from the floor, was Excalibur inside its sheath. Merlin, as he had done many times before, ran his hand over the pommel of the sword. He felt a surge into the hand, up his arm, and into his chest, igniting a warm glow inside of him despite the constant chill of the caverns.
A king.
Unnoticed, tears were flowing down his cheeks. He had no son. Not any longer. Just a week ago he had been summoned to the cluster of shacks where his own family eked out a living from the swamp. His son was dead, was all the dirty scrap of paper said, most of the words spelled wrong in the handwriting he recognized as his wife’s.
He’d traveled there. By the time he arrived, his son was already in the ground and his wife was well on her way to joining him. Merlin knew he was the last of his line. The instructions he had been given by his father indicated he should do one of two things — find another woman to marry to bear another son — a chancy proposition at best — or find an orphan to bring into Avalon to be taught the ways of the Wedjat.
To what end though?
To sit there and spend a life doing nothing, passing down rules that accomplished nothing? What if no more reports came? What if there were no other Watchers remaining? And all to end up in a hole in the ground, the next in a long line of graves?
And even if there were other Watchers, to what good? There was only death and despair all around.
A king.
Could things to be like they were back in Atlantis, but without the Airlia? That was how Merlin read the parchment. The sword would allow a man to become king.
Merlin’s other hand was now on the handle of the sword. With one smooth motion he pulled it out of the crystal, the sheath still guarding the blade.
Merlin was perfectly still, feeling the surprisingly light weight of the weapon in his hands. Keeping one hand on the grip, he put the other on the sheath and freed the blade. It glimmered in the light reflected in the crystals.
Nothing happened.
Not in the cavern under the tor of Avalon, at least.
Inside the mothership hidden inside what would one day be called Mount Ararat, the bloodred twenty-foot-high pyramid that was the Airlia Master Guardian came alive. The surface pulsed with power, stirred from its hibernation by the freeing of its control key, Excalibur.
The first thing the machine did was reach out and contact all of its subordinate guardians. And they in turn contacted those whom they were instructed to.
Aspasia’s Shadow did not move when the top of his deep sleep tube swung open. He instinctively knew it was not the time he had scheduled to be brought into consciousness. His instinct was confirmed by the dull red flash that met his eyes as he slowly opened them. Something had happened. Something that demanded his attention.
Still Aspasia’s Shadow did not leave the tube.
It could not be good news. That was a strange revelation that slowly seeped through Aspasia’s Shadow’s thoughts. An awareness he had been coming to for millennia. There was no positive outcome to all of this for him. At best, Aspasia, once he took the reins of this planet and these people, would allow his Shadow access to the Grail and a place on his council. At worst, Aspasia would dispatch him as a tool that had served its purpose and now was no longer needed.
Aspasia’s Shadow roused himself from these morbid thoughts and climbed out of the deep sleep tube. He slipped on a heavy wool robe and left the deep sleep chamber. He descended to the chamber that held the guardian computer that had been deposited there, like Aspasia’s Shadow, so many years ago.
As soon as he entered the chamber, Aspasia’s Shadow had a good idea what was wrong: The golden surface of the computer was glowing vibrantly. He walked to the alien machine and placed his hands on it.
The Master Guardian was active. Which meant that someone had unsheathed Excalibur — the sword that was so much more than simply a sword. Throughout the hundreds of thousands of years of war against the Swarm, the Airlia had, naturally, lost many worlds and ships to their enemy. Guardian computers, including system masters, had also been captured. Because of this the Airlia had learned to safeguard their computer systems. The sword transmitted an authorization code that allowed the Master Guardian to power up and link with all subordinate guardian computers. But the sheath blocked the transmission, allowing someone far away from the Master Guardian to keep it shut down. There was also a destruct built into Excalibur that could be triggered, resulting in the complete cleansing of all memory data in the Master Guardian and subordinate guardians and shuttingthem down forever. This destruct code was something that had not been transmitted to Aspasia’s Shadow from Aspasia.
There was something else built into Excalibur.
Aspasia’s Shadow had his guardian link with the Master Guardian and then routed his inquiry to the guardian on Mars and sensors built into the base there, which were oriented toward Earth. Aspasia’s Shadow could “see” the surface of Earth and a small red dot. He increased the image, zeroing in on it until he recognized the location.
Aspasia’s Shadow stepped back from the guardian computer, cutting the connection. He had a long journey ahead.
Ts’ang Chieh, once known to the outside world as adviser to the Great Emperor ShiHuangdi, ruler of China and all the known world, came out of the deep sleep with more vigor than Aspasia’s Shadow. He had been born of a slave girl in the royal court and been taught to obey without question his entire life. So great was his obsession with duty to ShiHuangdi that he had been brought into the elite inner circle of those who knew the true nature of the First Emperor. For ShiHuangdi was not a human, but rather Artad, consolidating his power in this part of the world so he could rest in peace as the Atlantis Truce wore on.
Ts’ang Chieh was delayed slightly after getting out of the tube by the necessary ritual of donning the full regalia of his office as the voice of the Emperor. Once all the accouterments were in place he paused and turned toward a shimmering black wall that bisected the large chamber in which his deep sleep tube was located. He bowed toward the wall, for he knew on the other side of the power field lay Artad and the rest of the Airlia, who were in the deep sleep.
Ts’ang Chieh then left the chamber and went to where Artad’s guardian computer was located. He immediately noticed the same thing that Aspasia’s Shadow had — that the computer was active. Placing both hands on the shimmering, golden surface, Ts’ang Chieh accessed the alien device.
Excalibur was unsheathed.
Ts’ang Chieh crossed the chamber to another control panel. He passed his hands over it and a series of hexagonals were backlit with High Runes written on them. Ts’ang Chieh tapped out a sequence on the hexagonals. A holographic image of Earth appeared in the air above the control panel. A small red dot flashed on the screen.
Ts’ang Chieh sighed. He had received a report from one of the Ones Who Wait that Excalibur, along with the Grail, had been removed from Giza long ago. The Human-Airlia clones that Artad had left on the planet’s surface to look after his interests had tried to keep track of both artifacts just as Aspasia’s Shadow had. And had lost track of both for a while, until they learned by torturing a Watcher that both were located at Watcher headquarters in Avalon, where the glowing red dot indicated Excalibur was still situated.