Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II
Read Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II Online
Authors: Richard Monaco
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mythology & Folk Tales, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Historical, #Sword & Sorcery, #Fairy Tales
© Richard Monaco 1985
Richard Monaco has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as author of this work.
First Published in 1985 by Berkley Publishing Corporation
This edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.
The rain had stopped and the summer air was steamy. I was trying not to think, just riding home again. The sun on my bare head and armor was getting worse. No one ever got used to sitting in a steel suit. Especially in August.
When I was seventeen I killed a man and took his gear. I learned chivalry. A blond boy full of dreams. Everyone agreed that I was like a giant nine-year-old. My mother had hated the world and kept me locked away from it as long as she could. Now, almost twenty years later, I wished she’d done an even better job. And I’m still sorry I killed that first knight.
Always sorry for something; sorry to be going home, because my family was there, wife, son and daughter. It’s hard, when you don’t like one another. I’ve always let them down, going when I shouldn’t and coming when I wouldn’t, a poor husband and father and sorry for that, too.
Going home again after another bloody bit of work for Arthur. I was sick of it. The older the king got the worse it was.
He was afraid of everybody now. Trusted no one. He’d taught me ambition. My God.
When I was seventeen it had all been a dream. With bright, shifting scenes where everything made sense because I wasn’t trying too hard and wasn’t looking too closely at details. My youth always haunted me with promises unkept … yes … and simple peace and glory … lost.
I stopped to water my charger and myself. We’d been going since dawn and now the sun was slanting down the west. I glanced over my shoulder but really didn’t expect anyone to be following.
“
No
one
leaves
my
service
against
my
will
!” Arthur had shouted across the dim and drafty hall. I’d paused in the doorway. Most of the knights had been uneasy. Worried he’d sic them on me.
“That’s a silly attitude, my lord,” I’d answered. The morning sun had been splashing all around the door. “I’m weary. I want no more.”
“You’ll get more than you bargained for!” he’d promised as I’d gone out into the dazzle of morning.
I stooped to cup a palmful from the pool; ripple reflections flashed like scattered coins. Noticed myself in the water: hair still mainly gold; face long; and still not fat. Then I saw a woman’s face: pale; smoothly shaped; flamehaired.
I stood up, I licked the water from my lips, I bowed slightly. She was small-boned, softly melted together with dull blue, secret eyes. I always react the wrong way to women. I should just run away at once.
“You have a soft step, my lady,” I told her.
Watching me, she did subtle things with her mouth.
“Am I?” she asked.
“Pardon?”
“Your lady.”
I smiled — my second mistake. The first was not running away. I was tired. Nine hours riding; a saddle isn’t a silk bed.
“I’m too far from fortune’s graces,” I replied, falling into courtly manner and hating myself for it, “to hope so high.” I looked around but there was no horse or entourage visible. The damp, hot summer woods were lush and silent. The light was fire in her hair. I managed not to say so. She was watchful: was that fear, or calculation?
“You don’t look to be,” she told me, lightly brushing my cheek with her fingertips. “Are you in disfavor with your lord?”
“I don’t know which is worse,” I said. “Favor or disfavor.” I liked looking at her milky, delicate face.
“Well said. I see you have served the great.”
“The great are the lesser standing on others’ backs.”
“Better and better. Providence led you to me.”
I thought I knew what was coming. When I was seventeen, at least I had an excuse for stupidity. I was sophisticated twenty years later, not wise.
“I war not with providence,” I said, stroking the flank of my slaked mount. She climbed slightly up and sat sideways, relaxed, behind the high-backed saddle. Smiled with her vaguely troubled eyes. She kept looking about, then back to me.
“I lost what I rode,” she told me. “I need you to bear me home.” That was close to what I expected. She was watching me. “I think … I hope … I may trust you.”
“To steer my horse?” I climbed up in front and her hands reached around my iron lap — pity it wasn’t solid iron. She was silent. We rode away. She pointed out a trail and I followed it. Why not?
The sunbeams slanted through the full trees. The air smelled green and seemed to sparkle. The sketchy path cut and curved back on itself a dozen times in half a mile. We always appeared to be going a different way. When I was seventeen I’d hunted the Holy Grail — my father-in-law had convinced me not to sleep with his daughter until I found it. It took a long time for me to really get the hint. “Follow the sun,” dear Father had advised, and so I’d aimed myself east at morning, gradually south all day and finally west come evening. I’d looped across the country. Nothing had ever suited me better, I thought.
“You needn’t tell me anything,” I said. “I enjoy riding in circles. Makes me feel young again.” She seemed to come back from far thoughts.
“Are you so old, sir?”
“I don’t keep count,” I lied. Her flesh, where she held me, was soft as fluff. “I won’t deceive you,” she said. Her breath was a thrill along my neck. “I am Lady Morgana.”
That was a surprise, if true. The red hair was right. I’d never seen Arthur’s famous sister or half-sister or whatever part thing she was. Incest in great families was like fleas on a dog. The witch, she was called. So young, too. Well, that might be witchcraft.
“Glad to hear it,” I said. We took a violent twist through the trees and the setting sun was suddenly in my face, shattering through the dense leaves. “I haven’t been deceived in days. I want to keep my record unblemished.”
“My God,” she murmured, “are you truly so bitter?” Her voice melted with soft, young hopefulness.
“You haven’t tasted me yet,” I said, then relented. “I’ve been too long at court.”
“Ah, I see,” she murmured with sweet compassion, “you’re a great lord yourself.”
“Great? Maybe across the shoulders.”
“Will you name yourself?”
“My mother did that once,” I said, and shrugged. We came out of the forest. Across a blue-green rush of field an immense castle towered. The sun was going down behind it, and the crenelated shadow reached towards us like an immense road of darkness.
“I need help,” she said. “Desperately.”
“Naturally. Chivalry binds me to your service. Without chivalry,” I said, “the world would no longer be perfect.”
“You may even be too cynical for court life.”
“I’ve retired.”
“Halt the steed here.” We reined up. The charger began to browse the dimming ground. I twisted around in the saddle. The twilight had deepened; her substance was just hinted.
“Yes?” I waited.
“My life is in danger. I was fleeing when you found me. And yet my welfare is of less importance than the mission I have undertaken.”
I was interested. The famous witch, Morgana. Amusing.
“You didn’t seem out of breath,” I said, “from fleeing.”
“Notwithstanding, I fled. Death was close.”
“When isn’t it?” The twilight gradually melted us together.
Her face came nearer. I could feel her scented breath.
“You’ve heard of the Holy Grail, I trust?” she asked. I snorted. Didn’t quite chuckle. “As what knight has not.”
“A child’s tale,” I suggested, waiting.
“Things hidden are not things false. Since the Grail was brought to this land, a chosen few have guarded it through generations. The Grail is power. Many seek it. Always.”
There was a time when people believed I’d found the damned thing. And followed me, tortured me, ruined whatever of my life I’d left unspoiled, hounding me out of the country …
Farewell
,
lady
, I almost said. I wish I had.
“What kind of power? A strong smell?”
“Jest not,” she said, with an edge now. She was used to commanding and I was getting used to not obeying. “These are deep matters.”
“I once worried about deep matters. And magic and mystery.” I shrugged. “What happened to your vassals?” I peered around into the glimmering that was dying into night. The castle was a depthless shape against the sky.
“We were ambushed. My loyal servants died for the Holy mission.” She found my bare hands and firmly held them. Her voice was vibrant and I heard the tears I couldn’t see. She seemed so young, determined and strong, yet softly vulnerable. I was touched. Her hands felt good. I felt myself starting to drift. “So now I cast myself upon your honor. You have a cynic’s voice, but I read grace in your heart.”
“All right,” I said. Her touch was a promise in the dreaming dusk. “I’ve taken the bait. Draw me in at your pleasure, Lady Morgana.”
Scented breath, and then a kiss so light and soft I thought of a butterfly flicker. “Thank you, sir,” she said. “Sir whom? Is your name covered over by a vow?”
“A vow of good sense, which I’ve just broken, my lady.” I hoped she’d try for another kiss. She didn’t. “My name is Parsival.”
Most would have known me by the ruby-red armor.
“Ah, and you pretend to know nothing of the Grail? You, of all knights?” Her voice seemed older, now.
“That was all moonspinning. I was a boy then.”
Suddenly shadows leaped and jingled, already far too close: the kiss had distracted me. I drew and slashed too late, aware I’d already let her down, wondering how many had been hiding in the brush here. Had they expected her or me? My head burst in white fire and I was gone.
Then images spilled over me like surf: I floated in deep darkness, greenish dimness, the blinding surface far, far above … drifted and was held, tangled somehow … gleaming eyes watched … and then a pale fire swam over me, graceful, and long hands felt me … sharp teeth nibbled softly as underwater wind, hurting and soothing in luminescent dreaming … tender sharpness stirred deep into my body, and I couldn’t tell myself from the wash of hungry need that pulsed and probed into me, mercilessly sweet. …
When I woke up, I assumed, obscurely, that I was dead. I was naked; the world was colorless and muffled in the gray light of limbo. Everything was too soft and cloying.
I kept blinking and when I shifted my head (surprised to find it on my shoulders) the pain told me I was still in the thick of things. Daylight filtered down from slit apertures high in the buttressed ceiling. The floors were deeply cushioned by rugs and I seemed to be laid out on silk cushions. Very comfortable — except for my skull.
When I tried to touch the wound I discovered the next hair in the egg: my wrists were chained above my head. I sighed and groaned faintly. Nothing was ever easy. Every time I kissed somebody, trouble followed a breath later. When I was seventeen the first woman had a husband who tracked me for years; the second one I had to marry; the third hurt my feelings and the fourth wept … and somebody always wanted to kill me …
The underwater dream came back to me. Was it all dream?
How long had I been lying here and what had gone on? Maybe I’d missed something good, at that. “Now what?” I wondered aloud.
“What, indeed,” a foreign accent sounded behind me. I peered back and saw an upside-down, massive man in mail armor.
“Where’s the lady?”
“Where, indeed.”
“Don’t strain yourself trying to answer.” I was irate. Pain kept flashing across my forehead.
“I like your spirit,” the massive man returned, obliquely. “Yes indeed. Men with spirit and imagination are needed. That’s the trouble in your country, sir. Lack of real imagination. Imagination, plus the will to rise high and achieve much, there’s completeness. A man like yourself, I think, might —”
“What do you know about me?” I cut him off. Everyone cut him off, it turned out. He never seemed to mind. “Besides the fact that I’m easy to hit on the head.”
“Yes, yes, you should have been more circumspect.”
The place was so muffled, so soft, I had to resist sleep. The air was comfortable. There wasn’t too much pain unless I moved.
“Did the king send you after me?”
“What? Nonsense, nonsense. Set your mind at rest on that point, Sir Parsival. A chance meeting. A happenstance crossing of paths, sir. Yes, shall we say?”
“Shall we?”
“By all means.”
“Get me out of this ridiculous position. I’m a knight and we’re all full of pride and so forth.”
“Young men are so, so hasty.” He seemed deeply grieved and pained by my impatience. “Let’s talk awhile. Let’s see what sort of men we both are, eh? Surely you’re not uncomfortable?”
“Neither am I young, you fat slob.” My head hurt.
“Now, now, civility, sir, civility sweetens the intercourse of noble men.”
Intercourse? Well, I was undressed and bound to a bed; and that dream, there was no telling what had gone on. A new voice joined us, from deeper back in the dim grayness. A reedy, nervous voice. I didn’t like it.
“So,” it piped. “So. What’s this?” A little runt in runt armor sort of staggered closer. I thought he was drunk, but it was a severe limp. “Why don’t we teach him gentility, Howtlande?” he wondered.