The Iron Tempest by Ron Miller Page A

“of unprecedented grandeur, erected by Merlin magically in a single day for the woman he thought he loved. This is all that remains.”
    “Are you Vivian?”
    “Good heavens, no!” she laughed, unoffended. “My name is Melissa, and I came from a country very far from here in order to consult the legendary wizard. I am myself a sorceress of no small ability, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, and I wanted Merlin’s opinion on a small but important detail of my craft. In any event, I discovered, through him, that you were soon to arrive, so I waited here a month longer than I originally intended, just in the hope that I would meet you.”
    “ Me? Why?” said Bradamant, thinking that perhaps she was in fact still lying, unconscious, at the foot of the cliff and that this impossible conversation was entirely the product of a fractured skull, a bruise on her brain. “Why am I so important that there’d be prophecies about me or that you’d hang around this lonely place waiting to see me? It’s nice enough, I suppose, in its way, but in all honesty I can’t imagine that Merlin could be very good company, all things considered.”
    “You’re much too modest, Bradamant,” replied the sorceress, stepping down from the altar though it was much too high for the single step she appeared to take, “and you underestimate Merlin.”
    Bradamant was only half-listening. There were two things she had just realized about the woman who now stood not three paces from her: the first was that she was taller than Bradamant and she disliked women who were taller than she, and the second was that the woman was completely nude. Bradamant had never before seen another human being unclothed, let alone another woman—indeed, she had never even seen herself unclothed—and she was speechless and distracted with mingled consternation, embarrassment and fascination.
    “Will you come this way, please?” Melissa said, “I’ll try to answer your question, though the answer will not be a simple one.”
    Bradamant, thought that, dream or not, this was an interesting adventure and since adventure was adventure after all, followed more or less eagerly. If she had been meant to come to harm in this place, the harm would surely have befallen her by now. She trailed the shimmering woman into the dark recesses of the chapel. The sorceress had need for neither lantern nor torch: her phosphorescence was sufficient. Bradamant looked with some jealousy at the sinuous figure that glided ahead of her, as graceful as a meridian of longitude, her lustrous buttocks like twin pearls, undulating as rhythmically as the reflection of the moon in a trembling pond, the impossibly long legs, like ivory spindles, like dagger blades white-hot from the forge, swinging like lazy pendulums—it made her feel gross and clumsy and carnal in her armor. She wished she could tell whether or not Melissa’s feet were touching the tiles; she feared that they did not.
    They crossed what seemed to be the apse of the subterranean cathedral, though its soaring walls and vaulted ceiling were all but lost in the gloomy, silent darkness. Soon Bradamant became aware of another light, a lambency against which even the sorceress’ aura seemed like a painter’s feeble attempt to duplicate sunlight with coarse, opaque pigments. The source was a great block of marble, as large as a cottage, glowing like an ingot in an ironworker’s furnace. It illuminated the surrounding chamber and the towering statues that circled the block. These cyclopean figures supported the looming roof on their bent shoulders, leaning over the mausoleum like the curious, gloomy spectators surrounding an accident victim. They were the images of the great knights who had formed Arthur’s round table.
    “This is the tomb,” said Melissa, “created by Vivian after she had placed Merlin into a sleep that was deeper than death itself. His uncorrupted body still lies within, as cold and stiff as that day the