Chapter Fourteen

Avalon

Daniel loosens his arms around Agnes as the vortex drops and they stare uncertainly out from the centre of a mirror flat pool. A cold mist sits in the air and Agnes shivers after his warm embrace. 'When you said things were about to get weird, you weren't kidding.' Agnes stares out into the swirling veil of shifting greys, unable to discern anything about their location. 'Where are we? Is this still Earth?'

'Probably not.' Daniel notices the smooth stone sill of the pool and he helps Agnes step out and down onto a small flight of stone steps. Momentarily the mist clears and both Agnes and Daniel gasp in surprise at the view unfolding in the brief window of time.

Beyond the dais the pool is built on, spreads a seemingly endless silver ocean, waves lapping in all directions towards the horizon where a night sky meets the sea. High above them where the sky deepens to a midnight blue, a roiling ribbon of green, amber and gold ripples across the sky. Then the mist returns, thicker than before and they see nothing more.

'Wow,! What an aurora!' Agnes sighs as the mist deepens around them.

Daniel crouches at the edge of the dais and drops a hand into the silver water and then laughs, relieved. 'It's not water, it's a sand of some sort.' He is about to lower himself into it when Agnes shouts, 'Wait! You don't know how deep it is, it could be sinking sand!'

'Sinking sand?' Daniel can feel a current pulling at his fingers as the silvery grains slip through his fingers. He leans over further and delves deeper but all he can feel is the sand running past his skin, cold and clean like a fast running river. 'I don't think I'd sink, I think I could swim in it.'

'To where though? We should wait, someone will work out eventually where we have gone and come and rescue us.' Agnes thinks of her handbag of coins and the jeep at the pool on Earth. 'I think we should just wait here, perhaps the mist will clear.'

In the Tower of the Magus

Aelixor leans on his elbows and watches as the night flies swarm on the crumbs of honey cake scattered on the windowsill. The sky beyond is filled with stars and firestorms... what did the Magus call it, Astraeus Anemoi Aurora, the star wind of dawn.

The night flies are filled with star wind too, or glow with similar colours, the Magus probably had a long name for that too but Aelixor struggled to grasp the ancient Magik words. He sighs and, bored of the flies, sweeps the crumbs off into the night where they spiral out from the tower wall, scattering the flies like sparks from a burning log. Tomorrow is Aelixor's twenty-first birthday, his ninth in the apprenticeship of Ninian the Magus and his ninth since he has seen his family. It will be his choice day. Whether to continue for another nine years of apprenticeship or return to his home, to the Isles of Avalon, far from the tower.

'Aelixor? Aelix? Where are you?' The querulous tones of Ninian's voice float up through the rafter floor and Aelix closes the wooden window shutters and shouts down the stone stairwell. 'I'm up here! In the roof.'

'Well what are you doing up there? Nothing but flies and stars in that head of yours! I need you here, at my side. It's the sands of time, someone has delved into the sands of time! Hurry!'

Aelix takes the stone steps two at a time, jumping the last four to land nimbly at the feet of Ninian in the tower's main salon, the library. Ninian tuts at him, annoyed by his athleticism. Would the lad never learn to control his impulsiveness? 'The Magi do not waste energy on running.'

'I'm not a member of the Magi yet.'

'That is very true.' Ninian sighs and struggles to pull the hood of his blue cloak up over his head while holding onto his walking stick.

'Here, let me help you.' Aelix adjusts the old man's cloak for him, asking, 'So what's this about the sands of time?'

'They have been disturbed, did you not feel it?'

Aelix shrugs and shakes his head and Ninian sighs, if the lad cannot even tune his mind to the frequency of the sands surrounding the tower after nine years... 'Never mind, someone is at the gate. We must see who it is, immediately!'

Aelix shrugs on his own novice's cloak of grey wool and pulls the hood up over his head and tucks a small silver sickle into the belt. Then he helps Ninian to the landing stage jutting out from the library's portico where the coracle is moored. Once Ninian is seated inside, Aelix casts off from the landing stage and, dipping the rudder into the fast flowing sands of time, steers a course for the gate dais, hidden in the mists of Avalon, a league across the silver ocean.

On Earth

Nixor is dreaming as he sleeps, with Gryst keeping guard at his side, deep in the reed beds of the fast flowing river. His soul is slowly devouring Robert Bowden, mind and body, eating out everything that one was human and moulding it to his own design. As this metamorphosis takes place, Nixor reaches out in his dreams to the far corners of the islands, calling up the forgotten hordes long relegated to a half world of myth and fantasy, buried in the landscape but not forgotten. Tor trolls and bog hobgoblins, hill giants, moor beast and wood werwulf, calling them all to arms.

Under armed guard, Kyna stares in amazement at the interior atrium of SGC as Tara paces impatiently up and down, waiting for these modern Celestians to get ready. What could possibly take so long? Every minute wasted is a minute Nixor grew stronger. Defeating him the first time round was hard enough.

Jack and Teal'c brief Professor Peter Cromwell on the afternoon's events knowing if it wasn't for the two Eponians standing under guard in the atrium outside the professor's glass-fronted office, their story would be unbelievable. The professor shakes his head and tuts at each new twist.

'So you are telling me that in my absence of.. not more than four hours, Rob Bowden turns out not be dead and escapes what is meant to be a high security facility, with an artefact. That you manage to lose two team members through an unauthorised gate event and be taken prisoner by two and I have counted them, there are only two women, armed with swords, claimingthe world is about to end at the hands of a dragon king?'

'Um... yes.' Jack winces at the way the professor has catalogued the afternoon as a disaster. 'And they seem to be quite insistent about it... so we need to prep asap to go offworld to retrieve Daniel and Agnes from Avalon.'

'Avalon?'

'Avalon. One of the four planets, well, that's what they call it anyway. They want to go there too.'

The professor sucks air in through gritted teeth, trying to work out if it is all some elaborate hoax concocted to give him indigestion after a particularly nice luncheon with the Minister or if, in fact, a massive, intergalactic nightmare is about to unfold across the Wiltshire countryside. He gets up from his desk and wanders to the window, staring intently at the two women outside. The younger of the two is looking as though she has just dropped down a rabbit hole into wonderland. The older one... he stops staring as she instinctively swivels on her heels and stares at him, her eyes full of anger at his impertinent gaze. 'A Queen you say... from a planet called Epona?' Peter Cromwell doesn't wait for an answer, 'Go, take an away team, retrieve Daniel and Agnes, I presume the mile perimeter is still in force? Take these two women with you as well and bring them all back, the sooner we get this under control the better. Do you understand?'

An hour later the away team stands at the edge of the pool near Blick Mead. The woodland glade is quiet and the dappled evening light casts long shadows across the still surface of the water. Commander Jack O'Neill takes the coin for Avalon from his pocket and holds it up as one by one the team, interspersed with Tara, Kyna and Teal'c step into the pool, forming a circle by interlinking arms.

'And this will work?' Jack asks Tara who stands at his shoulder.

'As long as no one lets go. Yes, Jack, we will travel to Avalon!' she shouts in reply but her words are lost as the water vortex starts to form around them and they are transported to another world.