Authors' Notes:
Gramarye: "We started this because we were in need of something to do over the
Christmas holidays."
Sweeney Agonistes
: "We were very, very bored. So bored it hurt. And so we got
to talking, and...you know how it goes. It evolved into a scary sort of system -- I'd
write during the day, and she'd write at night, and it was like clockwork. Frightening."
G
: "Very frightening. Because there were some times where an idea or a phrase
would simply...I don't know, I suppose 'resonate' isn't too strong a word to describe
it. In any case, we set ourselves to produce about a typed page a day, and after a few
conversations to work out the mechanics of the plot, things really started to come
together in a way that produced no small amount of glee on both sides.
S: "Like the yeti thing."
G: "And the elderly Parrothead."
S: "Sort of like Faramir -- he walked out of the mangrove forests of the Gulf, fully
formed and singing along to 'Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes.' But. Er.
Yes. It was a fabulous way to make the time pass before school started back up,
and I'm beyond pleased with the results. Although I still haven't made the yeti-and-
Merriman-shaped cookies."
G: "Because really, the mental image of Merriman versus the Abominable Snowman
is simply too priceless to ignore. And I for one could not have had a better partner in
crime for this endeavour."
S: "And god knows Will and Merry think what we've done to them is a crime.
Red hots for cookie!Merriman's eyes, man. That's all I'm saying."
G: "Essentially, this story began as an exercise for us, a writing challenge to while
away a few long winter days. And with that, I think it's time to enjoy a cookie or two."
S
: "Forsooth. And some milk, and a toast to my fellow offender, who makes
everything twelve times tricksier and hence better.
G: "Cheers!
S: "Hee. We rule."

Standard disclaimers apply. Will Stanton, Merriman Lyon, and The Dark Is Rising
Sequence are copyright of Susan Cooper.

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Redeemed From Time
By: Gramarye and Sweeney Agonistes

Part One

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Times have changed for sailors these days.

-Jimmy Buffett

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"Professor Stanton? Is everything all right?"

"What?" Will looked up from the diary on the reading table to meet the gaze of the
undergraduate standing above him. "Mr Carpenter. Yes. Everything's fine." Very
casually he covered the diary's pages with a few stray papers. "How's your research
coming along, then?"

"Pretty well, I think," said Carpenter. "You looked awfully shocked, Professor...and
you're sort of pale...are you sure you're all right?"

"Perfectly fine," said Will. "Good day, Mr Carpenter, and good luck with your research."
He gave Carpenter the Eye until the young man took the hint and bid him farewell.

As soon as Carpenter had vanished behind a few shelves, Will cleared the papers from
the diary and went back to its pages, rereading the spindly handwriting incredulously.

It was still there. It hadn't vanished.

25 December 1875

Snow has stopped for the present. Julia's fever broken at last, thank the heavens,
and she was well enough to come down with the other children for her Christmas
gifts. Nanny looked after her while Marchmont and I attended church with young
Edgar and Peter. Sermon rather uninspired -- surely Dr Wynne could have had
something original, or at least inspirational, to say on this day of our Lord's
nativity?

A most delightful party at Greythorne Mnr. yesterday evening -- Miss Greythorne
a gracious and charming hostess as always. Excellent cold duck at the supper.
A startling entrance by an elderly gentleman by the name of Lyon -- actually
entered the house with the carol-singers, of all things! Lady Cynthia, who was
there with Sir James and Miss Worthington, was quite shocked by the display.
Miss Greythorne, to the contrary, seemed quite delighted at Mr Lyon's unorthodox
entrance, and spent much of the evening in intimate conversation with the gentleman.
Lord Huntingdon did mention at supper that Mrs Ingleby had told him that Mr Lyon
and Miss Greythorne's late father had met during the latter's Grand Tour, though he
regretted that he could not recall the exact circumstances under which the two men
had met. With an entrance such as Mr Lyon's, one can only surmise that they must
have been exceptional circumstances indeed.

Lord Huntingdon also mentioned his surprise that Mr Lyon had brought his young
great-nephew to the party -- though dear Lady Huntingdon later told me that she
had heard tell of how Mr Lyon dotes on the boy, the orphaned child of his younger
sister's son. I never saw the boy myself -- Miss Greythorne must have had him sent
up to the nursery for the duration of the party. A most sensible thing to do, in my
opinion. My children have all been taught that their place is to be seen and not
heard. I suppose one must make some small allowance in the case of orphans. But
a delightful soiree, all around. A pity we had to leave so soon -- Miss Greythorne's
parties never fail to entertain one.

Julia fretful again. Must see if Nanny has been giving her the doctor's medicines
exactly as he prescribed them -- her hearing is not what it once was.

And there it was. A single entry in the sixth volume of the diary of Helen Kingsford
Marchmont, wife of the Honourable Edgar Marchmont, Liberal Member of Parliament
for Slough. A single entry, sandwiched in between drafts of bread-and-butter letters to
titled acquaintances and a desperately dull account of the events that had led up to
dismissal of the second footman shortly before Twelfth Night.

He wasn't sure what shocked him more -- finding Merriman in his survey of Victorian
Buckinghamshire, or finding himself there. What was it that Hawkin had told him -- An
Old One hardly ever lets his name be recorded anywhere.

Will leaned back in his chair, the initial shock over with, and smiled in remembrance.
Hawkin had said something else, too: If anyone had written a history recording this
party here tonight, you and my lord Merriman would be in it, described.
He did not
think that Merriman would be half as amused as Will himself was to find that he had
been set down for the ages by such a vapid, supercilious woman as Helen Marchmont.
Making allowances for orphans, forsooth.

His eyes caught a few phrases -- met during the latter's Grand Tour -- he could not
recall the exact circumstances under which the two men had met
-- they must have
been exceptional circumstances indeed. That gave him pause. He read them again.
Of course that wasn't the case -- it couldn't have been, unless Miss Greythorne had
come into her own as an Old One a few years before that -- but Merriman had told
him that there had been a space of five hundred years between Will's birth and the
birth of the second to last of their kind. Will supposed it was merely a story to stop
questions.

That brought his thoughts around to dinner last night. He had taken it in College, and
one of his colleagues had grinned at him and asked him if it wasn't something in his
diet that kept him so well-preserved.

"Well-preserved?" Will had said mildly, spearing a bit of carrot.

"You've been at Oxford for how many years, Will? Thirty? Forty? And yet you don't
look a day beyond thirty-five. Thirty-eight, maybe. How do you do it?"

He had frozen slightly at that, then waved his becarroted fork in the direction of his
colleague. "Clean living," he had said merely, tipping the other man a wink.

But if James Leonard had noticed -- brilliant linguist, but perhaps not the most
observant man around -- then others had noticed, and he couldn't have that.

How many times must Merriman have had to rebuild various identities over the
years? Not very often at the beginning, Will thought. People accepted magic then.
But after...it would be necessary to go underground maybe once every fifty or
sixty years, and then resurface somewhere else. Now it was Will's turn, and he
had no idea where to begin.

Will looked back down at the diary. There was a start, maybe. And then in a
lovely burst, the thought came to him that over quite literally thousands of years,
this could not be the only place that Merriman showed up in history.

It was simple, really. No matter how careful Merriman had been, there would
be records. There would be references. There would be some small indication
of where, when, and how an immortal could potentially exist as an individual
for so long without arousing suspicion.

And to Will Stanton, Watchman of the Light, there was absolutely no question
that those scraps of information would have great bearing on his actions and
decisions in the coming days...months...years...centuries....

He sighed, quietly. This would require much thought. And whilst the reading
rooms at the Bodleian might have been conducive to other kinds of thought, this
kind of thought was the kind that deserved a pot of strong tea, a comfortable
chair, and a roaring fire.

He closed the diary, cautiously returning it and the accompanying papers to the
specially made storage box, one of many that the library used for housing its
fragile collections. He made a mental note of the box's number and returned it
to the Collections desk, giving the student assistant on duty a benign smile and
a quiet 'Thank you' when she returned his University card. On his way out of
the reading room he passed Carpenter, acknowledging the young man's 'Have
a good evening, Professor' with a genial, if understandably absent-minded, nod.

* * *

The tea, chair, and fire were easy enough to obtain; peace of mind, however,
was not. He had not had the time to straighten his flat for a month or so. The
detritus of the academic life had thus not been beaten back into submission for
several weeks, and the scattered books, folders, and papers were slowly
taking over.

"I can't think like this," he muttered to himself, surveying the wreckage, and
spent a further half hour getting things back into some recognizable pattern
of decency. When he ensconced himself back in his chair and poured a cup
of tea, the tea was cold, and with a sigh, he got up to replace it.

Finally, after much travail, he settled back in his chair, adequately heated pot
of tea close to his hand, and began to ponder.

The most obvious thing in the world, Will thought, would be to study Merriman's
own academic career. It had occurred to him some time ago to do some looking in
that direction simply to satisfy his own curiosity about the renowned Professor
Lyon, but then he had been waylaid by a trip to the Vatican and the subsequent
papers, and the thought had left his mind. Now, though -- now there was the time
as well as the necessity.

"Start backwards, then," said Will to the fire. "Start at the end to find the beginning."
St. John's College might have some record of the story Merriman had left behind
him explaining his passage out of Time. That might also be of some use.

But first, there was the Scrapbook.

He had put it together quite some time ago, though he had not looked at it in years.
It had been a quiet project -- a morbid project, one might say -- and for a time, it
had been an ongoing one. But those days had ended a year and a half ago, when he
had picked up his scissors and clipped an article from the obituary section of the
Times
. Dr Simon Drew, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. Renowned
paediatric surgeon. Survived by wife, children, grandchildren. Predeceased by
sister Jane, brother Barnabas.

Will had clippings for them. And for many others as well.The only clipping he
did not have was one for Bran Davies. And that was because he had never looked
for it.

He flipped to the front of the book, then turned the page, past the small fading article
that announced the tragic and sudden death of Mrs John Rowlands in Clwyd, Wales.
On the second pages was another article from the Times. Professor Merriman Lyon,
MA, PhD (Oxon.). Professor of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Missing, presumed
dead. The last report of his whereabouts had come from Nepal, where he had been on
a privately-funded expedition to gather material on the archaeology of the Himalayas.
Tragic loss to the academic community. Long list of accomplishments, writings,
publications, honorary degrees from other institutes of post-secondary education,
etcetera.

Reading over the page, Will was very glad that he had included another article on
the facing page, one he had unearthed in the archives of a now-defunct student
publication at the University. That article had reproduced the Times article verbatim
and then added sardonic commentary after each sentence, ending with the assertion
that the old bastard had finally met his match in the Abominable Snowman -- climactic
final battle, shades of Holmes and Moriarty at the edge of Reichenbach Falls -- and
expressing sympathy for the creature at the indigestion it had surely suffered afterwards.

Merriman's true end had been no less of a climactic final battle, but that version of
events had never left Will laughing. The Abominable Snowman bit, on the other hand,
never failed to elicit at least a smile. It was really rather ironic -- only a creature
whose existence was doubtable could have done in the irascible Professor Lyon,
whose true manner of existence was also doubtable. Or at least it would have been
had anyone known about it.

Grinning to the empty room, Will thought that Merriman would have preferred the
yeti story to the stuffy form-letter content of the Times article.

"They probably looked alike, too," Will commented to the fire. "All that white hair."

The flames dipped forward in acquiescence, then settled again.

He amused himself for a few moments, as he always did when he reread the student
article, with the ridiculous image of Merriman and the Abominable Snowman engaging
in fisticuffs. With a soft chuckle, he looked back to the real article and read the droning
list of Merriman's achievements again. There was Will's summary; now to delve deeper.

Will rose, rummaged in the newly straightened piles for a blank piece of paper and a
pen, and sat back down with an old and boring cookbook that had come in a "mystery
grab bag" of books he'd bought on a whim. Placing the paper on the cookbook -- who
needed a lap desk when one had so many coffee table books to choose from? -- and
gazing back at the Times article, he thought for a moment, and then started to write.

Places to Look

1. His books
2. His articles
3. Talk to Jack Clairmont
4. The Bod
5. The things in his office?

He stopped after the fifth item and tapped his pen on it, eyes narrowed. That might be the
best indicator of where Merriman had been before Oxford -- how many faculty members
had various artifacts from their personal lives lying around their offices? Jim Leonard
had a selection of fishing lures; Jack Clairmont, the only don left at St. John's who had
known Merriman as more than a passing acquaintance, had a hat shaped like a parrot's
head. (Will had never understood why, and had only become more confused when
Clairmont had insisted on playing him a song called "Cheeseburger In Paradise".)
He himself kept the hunting horn Miss Greythorne had given him on a small table in
the corner of his office.

The hunting horn.

He set aside the pen and paper, and stared into the glowing embers of the fire. It was
highly unlikely that Merriman had kept any particular object with him throughout his
extended existence. And yet Will knew, then and there, that the little horn would stay
with him always -- no matter where he was or what he chose to do.

Continuity. With a thousand lifetimes before him, that was what he would crave, by
the end.

* * *

His research began early the next morning. Professor Lyon's books and articles were
the easiest things to obtain, especially in a University town where used bookstores were
as plentiful as intoxicated students on Boat Race night. A few hours' search turned up
the few books that Will didn't already own in one form or another. By lunch he had
returned, weary but triumphant, to his rooms. He fixed himself a sandwich, polished
it off in minutes, and settled down to reading.

By the time the shadows in his study-office had lengthened enough for him to switch
on the reading light, he had come to the conclusion that the books were telling him
little that he hadn't known already. One expedition was very like another, and there
seemed to be no discernable pattern to the digs. A group of Neolithic dwellings in
eastern France. A Roman mine in northwestern Spain. An ancient city in Persia, a
Viking ship off the Scottish coast, an early Coptic Christian monastery in Egypt.
No real pattern, unless...unless....

This was leading him nowhere. He had to go to a real person first, talk to someone
who had actually known Merriman in a professional capacity. And John Clairmont
wasn't getting any younger.

He knew that John had been Merriman's research assistant back in the early 1970s.
John was now an emeritus, formerly University Lecturer for Archaeological Science,
resided at St John's College -- and was due to leave his rooms in College at the end
of the term.

Will checked his watch. Clairmont would likely still be in his office. There wasn't
any reason he couldn't leave the man a note, even if he wasn't. Will turned off his
lamp and left.

Dark clouds loomed as he walked over to Clairmont's office in the Sir Thomas
White Building. Right as the first drops of rain began to fall, Will entered the
building. Clairmont's office was on a corner of the second floor. Light spilled
out into the dark corridor; Will knocked on the half-open door.

"Come in!" a strong voice called.

Will pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was so organized as
to be austere; it was, in other words, nothing like Will's own. The only somewhat
offbeat point to it was, of course, the parrot head hat. Clairmont had music playing
softly as he worked at his desk. "Take a chair -- I'll be with you momentarily." He
kept writing without looking up.

Will waited, and amused himself by examining the titles on Clairmont's shelves.
There were the usual dry and dusty works, including, Will was glad to see, a few
of Merriman's own. On the same shelf as the parrot hat, however, rested two elderly
books in a place of honour: A Pirate Looks At Fifty and Tales from Margaritaville.
Will thought it was perhaps better not to ask.

The song ended, and Clairmont reached over to a low shelf and turned off the music.
He looked up at Will; his turtle-like features disappeared in a mire of wrinkles as he
smiled. "Young William Stanton, unless I miss my guess."

Will returned the smile automatically. "You're looking well, John."

"And I'll be even better once I get out of this icebox of an office -- thank God I'm
retiring in Key Largo. And it's Jack, Will. You know better than that."

"Yes. Sorry." Will looked down at the selection of CDs on the shelf and said, "Don't
tell me you're still listening to that stuff."

Clairmont looked at him reproachfully. "Once a Parrot Head, always a Parrot Head."
Then he gave a dry, dusty laugh. "What are you here for, Will?"

He hesitated. "I need information about Merriman Lyon."

"Really." Clairmont's voice became slow and thoughtful as he leaned back in his chair,
tucking his hands behind his bald head. "And what would you want to know about him?"

"Anything you remember."

Clairmont's eyebrows rose. "May I inquire as to your purposes? Being as I don't see
the connection between Merry and your own work."

There was a pause, in which Will worked out something he could say. Finally, he
said quietly, "It's a personal thing."

"Meaning you would rather I didn't pry." Clairmont rocked a little in his chair. "I don't
think there would be harm in telling, as he's been gone for so long. Where do you want
me to begin?"

"Anywhere you feel comfortable." Will looked at the small, wrinkly face; something
in him relaxed. "I appreciate this, Jack."

Clairmont waved a hand before replacing it behind his head. "Not at all. Good
lord...where to start? I was an undergraduate here when I saw a notice that Merry
was looking for a research assistant, and this was Professor Merriman Lyon -- a
very big deal. He was one of the names I kept seeing when I was doing a bit of
reading in archaeology on my own before I came up, and I begged him for the
chance to work with him. I still remember what he said when I went to speak
with him for the first time -- he looked down at me over that nose of his, gave
me something between a smile and a smirk, and said, 'I think you'll do admirably,
Mr Clairmont. Good day.' And with that, I was dismissed. That was what I got
after I'd spent ten minutes expounding on why I absolutely had to work for the
Merriman Lyon. That was the sort of man Merry was -- didn't put up with much
fuss, no matter how hard you tried to fuss. He wouldn't say anything much...just
sort of let you rant and rave and then very calmly take the piss out of you with a
few well-placed words. And then, while your head was still spinning from what
he'd said to you before, he'd somehow make you agree to do whatever he wanted
you to do. A master of human behaviour, that man."

Will's knuckles were white; he was clenching the armrests of his chair.

Clairmont paused, thinking. 'Talking about human behaviour...one of the things
that always astounded me was his ability to deal with the rest of the Department,
and the College -- hell, even the University, and you know what that's like. He
somehow dealt with it by not dealing with it. He must've had to sit through the
same endless sordid squabbles over grants and funding and changes to the degree
requirements, but I don't remember him ever remarking on it or even being troubled
by it.' He chuckled quietly. 'Of course, when you're the great Professor Lyon, with
the positively uncanny knack for finding sites of fantastic historical significance,
you could easily tell the paper-pushers at the University Council to shove off.'

Will laughed at that, hoping the laugh didn't sound as hollow to Clairmont as it
did to him. He let go of the chair before he could do actual damage to the wood,
and clasped his hands in his lap instead. 'I can imagine. With a reputation like
that...speaking of which, what was he like to work under?'

'Hellish.' The older man held up a hand at Will's startled expression. 'But I knew
that when I went to him in the first place. Oh, I'll admit that the first time he told
me to re-do the chapter I'd spent two solid weeks working on, I was a wreck.
But he'd tell you what was rubbish about your work in such a way that you'd be
kicking yourself by the end of the tutorial, wondering how you'd overlooked
something that obvious. And on digs, you did what you were told, by god -- but
when they were over you could talk the ear off anyone who asked you what you'd
found. You learned things without knowing you'd learned them. That was the kind
of supervisor he was.' A wistful look crossed his face. 'I've tried to be like him in
some small way, but I know I've never even come close. And now it's a little late
in the day for that.'

Will nodded, silently. 'I can understand that,' he said at last. 'I know the feeling.
He was a great loss to the University.'

Clairmont's eyes clouded over. 'I was incredibly lucky to have worked with him,
even for that short time. I probably owe my place here to him, come to think of it.
I applied for my post almost as soon as I had my doctorate, since there'd been a lot
of reorganising of the Department when old Avery was promoted to take Merry's
place shortly after....' His voice trailed off as memory caught up with him, but after
a moment he blinked quickly, and his gaze settled on Will again. 'You've been here
awhile, too, haven't you? How long has it been?'

'Oh, thirty-odd years,' Will said, quite calmly. 'I try not to think about it too much.'

'Good,' the older man said firmly. 'Don't think about it.' His kindly smile had a
conspiratorial leer to it that was faintly unnerving. 'Anything else you wanted me
to dig up about Merry, then? Seeing as how I was only a lowly student drudge at
the time, I don't know that I'll be able to provide you with the sort of answers I
imagine you're looking for.'

Will pressed on before Clairmont's smile could unnerve him completely. 'Did he
ever talk about...about what he'd done before Oxford?'

'Oh, no,' Clairmont said immediately. 'Not so much as a flicker of a hint about that.
Then again, as far as any of us who worked with him were concerned, he might as
well have sprung out of the Department like Athena from Zeus's forehead -- fully
clothed and ready for battle.'

Will had to laugh out loud at that mental image, which in his opinion was almost
as good as the one involving the yeti. Clairmont laughed with him.

He allowed them a few moments to settle, and then he asked, "What was his office
like?"

"An absolute wreck. I walked in on him once while he was trying to put it to rights,
and he was just standing there helplessly in his shirtsleeves, not knowing where to
begin. Fortunately -- or unfortunately for me -- my mother was a stickler about
keeping things organized and in their proper places, and seeing him like that...I
couldn't help but step in and help him out. That was one of the very few times I ever
saw him at a loss for words or movement." Clairmont sighed. "It took us the better
part of the evening -- I don't think I got back to my own quarters until two that
morning -- but we finally got it straightened out. And it actually stayed that way
for a few weeks, too." He grinned. "It got to where I'd slip in once a month or so
while he was out and try to put a dent in the wreckage. Didn't do much, though."

"Did he keep anything with personal significance in there?"

Clairmont regarded him evenly, then said, "That's a very strange question, Will
Stanton."

Will shrugged. "You keep that hat in here, and that's fairly mystifying."

"I surely hope," said Clairmont mockingly, "that you're not blaspheming against
Saint Buffett."

"Not at all," Will said. He grinned. "Just trying to make a point."

"Point taken. Give me a moment." Clairmont rose and went to the window,
stretching. The day had darkened, and the rain was falling hard against the glass.
Finally, Clairmont clasped his hands behind his back and said, "He kept a glass
paperweight on a shelf by itself. It wasn't holding down any papers -- that was a
very Merry thing to do, so I didn't take much notice of it when I was in there most
of the time. I saw him pick it up every now and again, though -- he held it like a
Buddhist holding prayer beads. That made me curious enough to have a look at it
once. There was an inscription engraved on it -- I don't remember exactly what it
said, but the date on it was 1911. Oh, and it had a seal from one of those Ivy
League universities. I forget which one" He turned around to face Will again.
"That's the only thing I can think of."

There was something in Clairmont's face that made Will wait before commencing
with the usual end-of-visit formalities.

The old man said quietly, "I'm not going to ask you how you knew him, Will. That's
not important. What is important is that you know that he was the most remarkable
man I've ever known, and one of the kindest. There were a few instances when one
or the other of his undergraduates had bad things happen -- deaths in the family and
whatnot -- and for such a stern man, he had an extraordinary talent for knowing what
to say or not to say, or what to do or not to do. He couldn't make it better, but he could
alleviate some of the hurt, and he did that whenever he could. It wasn't a love-fest or
anything like that -- Merry was most certainly not the type to offer a shoulder to cry
on -- but it helped. All of us who worked under him...we were a family, and we knew
it -- and we had him to thank. It was a horrible blow when he disappeared in Nepal
that summer." Clairmont turned back to the window. "Part of me still wants to believe
that he's out there somewhere, biding his time in a monastery -- that he found Shangri-La
or something like that." He laughed softly. "What a thing for an academic man to say,
eh, Will? But somehow -- it would fit Merry." Clairmont paused. "That's the worst thing
about getting old. Everything you knew fades, and eventually, you're the last one left.
Things fade when no one remembers them. And then" Clairmont's voice became
brisk again. "And then you make poor, defenceless young people sit and listen to your
tales." Looking over his shoulder, he smiled at Will. "I'll send you my address once
I'm in Key Largo. You're required to come for a visit, you know."

Will swallowed heavily. It would not do to let Clairmont see how much he'd been
affected by the man's words. "I'd like that."

"I'm about to turn the Buffett back on, so you'd best leave while you can." Clairmont
reclaimed his chair and reached for the CD player, one eyebrow arched.

That elicited a laugh. "I'll take the hint. Thanks, Jack. You've -- you've helped me
out a lot. I appreciate it."

Another wave of the hand as keyboard, guitar, and drums filled the room. "Not at all.
Not at all. Goodbye, Will -- and good luck with whatever it is you're doing."

Will lingered a moment at the door, looking at the last man other than himself to have
known Merriman with any degree of closeness, and then left. He knew it would be the
last time he saw Jack Clairmont. It was too dangerous to have it any other way.

* * *

The music followed him out of the building, and he paused outside the front door,
holding it half-open with one hand. He had seen pictures of Clairmont as a young man,
and it wasn't much of a stretch of the imagination to think of him as a research student,
energetic and eager and very much in awe of his distinguished professor.

He was a little jealous of Clairmont, truthfully. He had only seen glimpses of Merriman's
academic life: the Ford Foundation dig at Caerleon that had unearthed the Signs was his
most vivid memory. It had been a part of Merriman that Will, the youngest of the Old
Ones, had never really known. He envied Clairmont the time he had had to work with
Merriman, envied that time of close connection and understanding that can arise between
a student and supervisor...between boy and master, so to speak. Will had had it, and there
had not been nearly enough time to appreciate it then. Reliving it second-hand, through
another's memories....

No matter. It was nearly time for dinner.

Normally, he would have taken it in College on Saturday evenings, but that would
require dressing for Formal Hall and tonight he couldn't be bothered. There was
enough food in his rooms to tide him over until the morning, and at the moment the
only thing he wanted was the chair before the fire.

He pondered the information he'd received as he brewed a pot of strong, oily-looking
coffee and took it into his study. Now he had something to go on. 1911 and the memory
of the sigil of an Ivy League university -- that gave him a date and a possible location.
From Clairmont's description, the little glass paperweight sounded like some sort of
commemoration piece. He had one or two of them himself, coffee mugs from academic
conferences and the like. Tacky things, but practical enough.

He settled into the chair and closed his eyes. It was perfectly plausible that Merriman
could have spent time overseas, outside of Britain. The only time he would have needed
to be present in the British Isles was during the dangerous times, the years when unrest
and the threat of invasion made men most susceptible to the Dark. And at the end, of
course...but Will wasn't interested in that time.

Merriman's time at Oxford went back to before the Second World War, and he would
have had to reside in Britain for the Great War as well. From 1914 on, then, he would
have been Merriman Lyon, archaeological scholar, the well-known Oxford University
don. But what of before?

Will opened his eyes, and picked up the pad of paper that he had left on the table the
night before. Before the modern era, it was difficult to say. Documentation in those days
was often a hit-or-miss affair -- or so his Mediaeval History undergraduates never failed
to inform him -- and Merriman would not have had to worry so much about keeping hidden
from the records of men. After 1600, then, was where Will had to start investigating.

An Old One's duty was to guard against the Rising of the Dark. Risings were nearly
always connected to periods of unrest and threats of invasion. The great invasions of
Saxon, Norman, and Dane were obvious instances, but there had been many times in the
modern era when Britain was in danger of tearing itself apart. What with the Gunpowder
Plot, Charles the First, Oliver Cromwell, the Civil War -- in essence, everything that had
happened between the death of Elizabeth I and the Glorious Revolution that put William
of Orange on the throne -- Merriman must have spent the entire span of the 1600s in
Britain.

Will tapped the pen on the paper, racking his mind to double-check dates and make rough
estimates accordingly. Finally, he flipped to a clean sheet and began to write. When he
set the pen down again, he had a new list.

1600-ca.1700 -- Britain (Civil War, Cromwell, etc.)
1700-1792 -- unknown
1792-1815 -- Britain (French Revolution, etc.)
1815-1874 -- unknown
1875 -- Britain (Christmas Eve -- Greythorne Manor)
1875-1910 -- unknown
1911 -- America (Ivy League university)?
1912-1973 -- Britain

He had taken into account the years of Civil War, the rise of Napoleon, the Christmas Eve
party, Clairmont's memory of the date on the glass paperweight, and the great wars of the
twentieth century. Surely that was enough to be getting on with, for the moment.

He picked up his mug of coffee, only to discover that the liquid within was stone cold.
The oily film on top had made rainbow patterns across the surface of the coffee, and the
patterns shifted and changed colours as they caught the firelight.

He had the when. Now, he needed to find the where and the how.

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Forward to Part II