The Iron Tempest by Ron Miller

atop a low, drum-shaped altar in the center of the chamber. The flame was uncanny; it was greenish, soundless, rising ten or twelve feet into the air, wavering and twisting slowly, like a ship’s pennant, but with a sinuous deliberation that reminded Bradamant of a snake. She suddenly had the uncanny premonition that the flame was in fact alive, intelligent, and in a rush of backlogged guilt and religious fervency she dropped to her knees and began to pray, which seemed to be the safest thing to do whether she be in the domain of God or Satan. But as the first words were leaving her trembling lips, she saw that a figure was standing just behind the flame—or perhaps within the flame, for all she could tell. The green sheath poured over the pale body like absinthe, flowing silkenly up the long legs, curling over the ivory stomach and breasts, as a mountain stream reluctantly parts for the sleek and mossy stones in its bed, like the caressing and curious tongue of the serpent. The figure took two or three steps toward the knight, emerging from the flame that parted as harmlessly as a silk curtain, and stepped to the edge of the altar and looked down upon the armored girl kneeling on the floor. Bradamant saw to her amazement that the figure was a woman, as white and slender as a tallow candle. She was clothed only in the billowing aura of her pale, golden hair, in much the same way that a blazing brand is clothed in flame or a ship’s mast with St. Elmo’s fire. At first she thought herself victim of yet one more illusion wrought by the deceitful illumination. Then she decided that she must be in the presence of an angel, for nothing demonic would dare be so beautiful; nothing evil could possibly be so full of light and grace. Perhaps that was not golden hair that floated around her shoulders and arms; perhaps it was her wings. She shuddered; somehow Bradamant found the possibility of confronting an angel no less frightening than a demon would have been.
    In the glare of the woman’s pure light, Bradamant saw that the orgy she had imagined was in reality only a collection of tattered, stained tapestries, sooty old paintings and cold, crude carvings. The chamber now seemed dark, dull, tawdry and chill and the great fire that had raged within her was banked so that the heat of not even a single coal was left to warm her. She remembered that brief touch of passion no more than one might awaken from a long illness and remember the fever dreams.
    “Please rise, Bradamant of the Great Heart,” the faerie woman said pleasantly, in a voice not at all unlike an articulate cello. “Have no fear: you have been led here by the will of God. When I spoke last with the spirit of Merlin, the great magician prophesied that you’d be taking an unusual path in order to visit his holy relics. He wishes to reveal to you something of your future.”
    “Pardon?” said Bradamant, not making any sense of what the woman was saying. “I beg your pardon. What is this place? Who are you?”
    “Welcome to the Valley of Joyousness, sometimes known to others as the Valley of Delight.”
    “It seems somewhat misnamed to me, if you’ll pardon me for saying so.”
    “Of course I do. Admittedly it was not always the dreary place you see now. There was in all the world no rival for its beauty when Merlin and Vivian first saw it. They didn’t know whether it was lovelier in the daytime, or at night when the moon shimmered full into its shadowy depths, like milk splashing into a deep pewter vessel.
    “This place is the work of Merlin. Surely you have heard of him? This is his holy tomb.”
    “Of course I know who Merlin was.”
    Everyone knew the story of King Arthur’s fabulous magician, advisor and seer—of how he had been cozened and entombed by the treacherous Vivian—what Bradamant didn’t understand was what his tomb was doing in Frankland, and said so.
    “There was once a palace on this spot,” explained the luminous woman, patiently,