The Secret of Excalibur

The pressure in Nina’s chest began to rise. Thirty seconds had passed since they entered the tunnel, she estimated. She wasn’t sure how long she could hold her breath; she had once lasted for over a minute, but that had been a long time ago, when she was still a kid . . .

Mitchell seemed to be slowing, the force of the water over her face lessening. Another turn, still going down. Not good. She wanted to go up. Close to a minute by now, surely. A burning sensation was spreading through her lungs . . .

Mitchell stopped suddenly, Nina drifting into him from behind. She held out an arm to steady herself and touched a wall. She could feel him twisting in the water, searching for the turn in the passage.

Shit! What if she’d made the wrong choice, if this were the dead end meant to trap and drown those who didn’t know myth from history?

A gulp of air tried to escape from her throat; she choked it back, her body twitching. Mitchell felt it. He swam to the right, then the left, still groping blindly for the way forward.

A hissing sound, not in the water but in her ears as her heart beat faster, struggling to extract what little oxygen remained in her lungs. She bumped against Mitchell again. Well over a minute, and she could barely hold out as it was, never mind swim all the way back through the darkness.

He moved. Not upwards, or back to the entrance, but down, deeper into the murky water. Nina wanted to protest, but all she could do was hang on as the hissing rose to a roar . . .

Mitchell changed direction again - and went up.

His strokes became harder, less precise, more frantic. Nina felt the tunnel narrowing as it rose, her limbs brushing the walls as they ascended towards either a fatal dead end or—

Air!

Mitchell broke the surface, immediately grabbing Nina’s arm and pulling her up beside him. She whooped for breath, water streaming down her face as she filled her lungs.

And coughed. The air was anything but pure.

The chamber they had emerged in was full of gas.

18

Chase was in a very irritable mood by the time he reached Glastonbury Tor. Still unable to persuade Elizabeth to lend him her car, he had been forced to take the train from Bournemouth, a tedious journey requiring two changes en route - and Glastonbury was almost ten miles from the nearest station, requiring an expensive taxi ride for the final leg.

Adding to his annoyance, he realised on arriving that he didn’t know where Nina was. Somewhere under the Tor, presumably, but seen in person the hill was considerably larger than it had appeared in Elizabeth’s road atlas. Picking his way through the squishy minefield left by the wandering cows, he strode round the base of the strangely terraced hill until he spotted something on the next level up. He climbed past another couple of cows to find a plump blonde woman sitting inside a cordon of stripy tape. She stopped eating her sandwich and regarded him uncertainly as he approached.

‘Hi,’ said Chase. ‘You haven’t seen an American archaeologist round here, have you? About yea high, red hair, pain in the arse?’

The woman stood. ‘Would you be . . . Eddie, by any chance?’

‘I would,’ Chase replied. No sign of Nina or Mitchell - but the hole the woman was guarding gave him a pretty good idea where they were. His displeasure returned. Nina had completely ignored him. Again.

‘Hi. I’m Chloe, Chloe Lamb. Dr Chloe Lamb.’ She extended her hand.

Chase shook it. ‘Eddie Chase,’ he said curtly, glancing at the hole. ‘So, she’s in there, is she?’

‘Yes, with Jack.’

‘Oh, with Jack. Great.’

Chloe shifted uncomfortably, wanting to stay out of any personal disputes. ‘Yes, they’ve made some very interesting discoveries. But I haven’t spoken to them for a bit. They’ve been out of contact.’ She held up a walkie- talkie.

‘How come?’

‘Well, she said they’d reached a flooded tunnel and were going to swim through it.’

‘It’s flooded down there? Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ Chloe was taken aback at his swearing, but he ignored her reaction. He noticed a torch amongst the pile of equipment beside the hole, and picked it up. ‘Really can’t bloody take her anywhere.’

‘Um, Eddie? Mr Chase?’ said Chloe nervously as he moved to the hole. ‘You’ll need to be careful too. There are traps down there.’

‘Traps?’

‘Yes, apparently they were designed to catch people who took the wrong route to the trial of Nivienne—’

‘Wait, what?’ Chase spluttered. ‘The place is full of traps, there’s some kind of trial, and you haven’t heard from them for ages? Jesus! They could be dead already!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ wailed Chloe. ‘I didn’t realise, Nina just seemed to know what she was doing!’

‘Yeah, she usually does - until stuff starts exploding!’

‘I’m sorry, really,’ Chloe repeated.

Chase took a breath. ‘That’s okay, it’s not your fault.’ He shone the torch into the hole. ‘Just tell me how to catch up with them.’

Hacking in the foul air, Mitchell climbed out of the water and hauled Nina up after him. The ground was soft and muddy, squishing revoltingly.

The flashlight was still lit, having survived its submersion. The beam revealed another chamber, smaller than the one at the other end of the passage - with a huge stone face set in the rear wall.

‘Merlin,’ Nina realised.

The wrath of Merlin, which strikes only those who see his face . . .

But she had seen his face, which was curled into a mocking sneer. And so far, nothing had happened.

Still coughing, she staggered towards the carving, feet sinking inches deep into the mud. The stench of methane grew worse, gas belching out from the decomposing muck with each step.

‘Man, this smells like a sub after the mess serves beans,’ Mitchell wheezed, squelching up behind her. ‘I guess this is Merlin, huh? So where’s his wrath?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Nina used the torch to survey the chamber. At one side was a stone door, firmly closed.

And there was something on the floor, half buried in the oozing mud . . .

‘Is that a skull?’ said Mitchell, spotting the discoloured object.

‘Wait here, don’t move,’ Nina ordered. She carefully crossed the room, trying to disturb the disgusting sludge underfoot as little as possible. The object was indeed a skull, blackened with soot, all but a few lumps of charred flesh long since rotted away. Other bones poked through the mud around it.

Including a hand, clutching something. A piece of wood.

She turned back to Mitchell. ‘I know what the wrath of Merlin was. And it’s kind of ingenious, in a sadistic sort of way.’

Mitchell eyed the chamber. ‘Are we safe?’

‘We should be. But if we’d come in here a couple of centuries ago, we’d be dead by now.’ She held up the torch. ‘This whole room’s one big trap. If you don’t have a sealed electric light, any torches you’re carrying are going to go out during the swim, right?’

‘I guess.’

‘So let’s say you’re smart enough to have planned ahead, and wrapped up another torch to keep it dry. What’s the first thing you do when you come out of the water in here?’

‘You light it . . .’ said Mitchell, realising.

‘Exactly. You light it - and create a flame. In a room filled with methane gas. Whoomph! ’ She threw out her hands to mimic an explosion. ‘The last thing they saw before they got toasted was Merlin’s face, just as it said on the stone at the entrance.’