Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (15 page)

PARSIVAL

I had no reason to believe what she told me. Maybe my wife was in trouble, maybe not. My son surely was. And I had a few problems of my own.

I followed her without underrating her powers, though if her magic was so powerful, what did she need with me? Perhaps it wasn’t that good. In any event, she knew the way home and had the means to get us there. We stopped in her main hall. She was giving orders to the troops. There weren’t many of them, but they looked loyal, determined, and wary of her. I was never sensibly afraid. The wrong things always made me nervous. Trying to chop my head off didn’t do it, but dealing with my family did, and the idea (for instance) that God might somehow hit me with a bolt of transforming revelation gave me goose prickles. In other words, I was afraid to be simple, alone, and open. Yes, and that’s what I inwardly most longed for. I’d come full circle since being seventeen. The Grail they always wanted may or may not have been nonsense, but I really didn’t care to have to find out …

“What do you really want?” I asked. I knew it was the Grail, of course, but I wanted her to say so. She turned her sharp face and floated her dreamy stare at me.

“I told you all I’ll tell you for now, Parsival.” She didn’t smile even with her lips now. “I’ll keep my bargain after you’ve served me. It boots nothing whether you believe me or not. “

“That’s frank enough.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It is.”

“Fine,” said I. “We’re off to follow the magic Dowhat and restore the Kingdom of Butterflies.” I suppose I was poking to see what stirred in the meat. But she’d lost all interest in me. I twisted around to track her stare. Winced. “Pinch me, I’m asleep,” I muttered.

The last creatures on earth I wanted to see had just appeared in the main archway. Lots of them. To judge fairly, Morgana herself was a trifle set back.

That canted, wobbling little cripple I thought I’d buried beyond recall and the jolly, chatty fool I’d hoped had capped the damned well, and sundry hairy men, and a swarm of those deadly, black-armored beetles, like putrid fish returning on the tide.

“My God,” I said.

Gobble did a unique shuffle and spin. He was happy as a priest in a wine butt. I heard his shrill screech of triumph and satisfaction.

“Aha,” he cried, “the power of destiny rides with us! We have them both! Two hares in a single sack!” I looked up to see if we were wrapped in a cloth-of-gold. He clearly mistook us for gifts at Christmastide.

She was furious. Who could blame her?

“They came through the tunnels,” she murmured in obvious disbelief.

What uninvited guests! Weapons flashed and everybody laid on with a will. I stood with my back to the dais, getting a good view of the usual madness. The deadly mites scuttled and scurried through the ranks that had closed around Morgana and myself, chopping the normals down like termites eating a rotten log.

“Somebody knows your secrets,” I suggested to her. She didn’t react. I’d about decided to sprint to the nearest window. I could just have reached the sill with a good leap.

Morgana was pointing both hands, fingers outspread and trembling, hurling some curse or spell. I witnessed no green lightning, however. Gobble was already through the last line of doomed defenders, waving a metal rod in circles at her face, as if it meant something. Perhaps it did. She looked forward and fell back up the low steps to throne level, frustrated. He advanced, pop eyes popping and rolling crazily. The fat one was restraining himself in the background.

I shifted quietly behind her. I could have spent happy hours losing my foot in Gobble’s asymmetrical backside. I let go a solid kick. He banged flat on his face.

Then I was pressed close by the little killers with the toothy silver masks — echoes of my lost youth. I hopped and slashed and next (I’m not sure why) I picked Morgana up like a grainsack and fled for the daylight. I tossed her to the window ledge. She was lithe and nimble. She knelt and extended a hand to me. I took it as spears clattered behind me. Gobble shouted some malediction, or orders maybe, in some biting, barking tongue as we jumped onto the grassless grit piled up along the fortress wall.

We rolled, raised a dust, and got up intact.

“The flip-flops of fortune,” I told her, while she beat the dust from her clothes, “ought to be a lesson to us both.”

She was in no temper for philosophy.

“Those lice,” she hissed. Made another set of expressive and (I assumed) ill-intentioned magical gestures at the blank wall with the same general effect as before.

“Maybe you’re out of practice,” I suggested.

That was as successful as my first remark.

“Close your dull mouth,” she recommended. Her eyes were pure fury. “Treachery and betrayal.”

“I think we’d do well to move along. Even they are bound to find a door soon, much as they’d prefer, no doubt, to tunnel after us like moles.”

“Those are the minions of the black empire, and I must destroy them.”

“You’ve made a good start. “

I headed across the sunny, dusty road for the cover of the brush and jagged rocks. My ingrate son was probably all right. He seemed gifted enough to preserve himself in all weather. I figured to circle around and find another way in. Over the wall, if need be. I was good at over the wall.

She followed me. That showed sense. Gave her magic a rest. Suddenly she wasn’t giving orders. Amazing. Like a dance: now dip, now bend, now lift, now down …

“I need your help,” she told me.

“I agree,” I responded as we worked our way through the prickly bushes. They were dense and yellowish green in the sun. “You’ve stopped selling my family members back to me?”

“What I said stands.”

I let it go. “Let’s get back into the castle,” I said. “I want to find my son. Don’t ask me why.”

“Don’t you love him?” She seemed vaguely taken aback.

“You met him,” I evaded.

“He’s your flesh and blood.”

“He doesn’t look much like me.”

She snorted as we picked our way through a grove of stunted pines. The soil was black, ashy.

“He seems as big a fool,” she said, and I grinned. “We can escape them underground. There are secret ways off this island.”

“That’s how they got at you?” I lifted myself on a tree limb until I could see the road and castle. Sure enough, they were coming. Too many. Spreading out, obviously on the hunt. We’d never get past the damned runts. “Your problem, Morgan, is that you’re short of army.”

“Not once I reach the mainland.”

I lowered myself, studying her. She turned a lingering and sultry look on me. I understood that signal well enough. I was supposed to roll over, loll my tongue, and beg for a tummy rub. “I need your help,” she went on, quite frankly. There’s nothing more effective than a deceiver being honest. Steals air from the lungs. “Get me to
my
son.”

Ah
, I thought, Modred comes into the picture … Arthur’s bane …

“And? … “

“And then the castle of the Grail.”

“And then all things will be mine, eh?”

“Yes.” Her look toyed with my needs like a silken touch.

She wasn’t the type of woman I instantly went weak over, but her eyes did things. “More than you can envision.”

She was boyish, wiry, with a haunting wickedness. I tried to blink it away. She knew what I was trying. “We’re cut off from the castle,” I said. “We’d better see if Lohengrin’s boat survived.” There was no arguing with that. I planned to sneak back after dark. I didn’t need anyone along for that job.

The last leg of reaching the coast was a problem: working down a sandy slope hand-in-hand, in sight of the sea, at dusk, the famous fog beginning to creep in, small, sudden shadows all around, dark glitter; we practically tripped over one sneaky scum. His axchop grazed my hip. My reply was hurried and off-balance but good enough for sparks and a gust of painbreath.

“By Christ’s crown!” I snarled, jerking her out of the way of two of them as they dived for her legs. She didn’t thank me. She stabbed one through the eyeslit on the run. My brows went up. Deadly lady.

We fled over a sharp-edged wall of rock and leapt into gathering fog. Went to our knees in gritty sand. Heard voices barking that senseless language.

“Lice,” she muttered.

“They’ll take some scratching.”

We moved along the water’s edge. The mist seemed to draw the night in around us. I’d already realized they weren’t trying to kill us. The first had been trying to clip my leg and bring me down. He could as well have sliced at my gut.

A pair of full-sized shapes loomed in front of us.

“Hold your stroke,” she commanded me. Another point in her favor. She was right. But I had to parry a spear thrust at my belly before another prodigal meeting could happen.

“Sir Ubiquitous,” my son was saying, drawing back the point. The pretty lady was with him. She wasn’t happy to see her mistress. We were all vaguely formed by clammy fog and dying light.

“We’re all going the same way?” I asked.

You could hear the schluff and scuttle of the armored dwarves working along the beach and over the natural wall. “My curse, dear father,” said my son. “We’re beset,” I said, gesturing around. He was quick to grasp such things. His Latin tutor once asked permission to drive a spike into his bushy skull to let in the light of learning. “So,” said Morgana, amused, I think, “I’ve been betrayed here as well.” She was talking to Chael, who quailed slightly.

“I think we’re surrounded,” I added.

Lohengrin led us a few steps along the water’s edge. New shapes: something low and long; a tall man; a short man. “Veers,” I said, “and Beef … and a raft.”

“Move along there,” said Veers.

The little ones came clittering out of the mists, armor stuffed full of harm. I knew the crippled king of malice had to beat hand.

Chael stepped on the raft that had obviously been pieced together from wreckage. It even had a short, thick mast. As Lohengrin followed, Morgana snatched at the spear. He lifted it away from her grasp.

“Give it to me,” she said, ignoring the enemy. More than I could manage just then. I dropped to one knee and kept my blade humming.

My son kept his spear as we were all driven onto the raft. Veers and I moved it off into the now moderate surf. What a crew for an afternoon on a lake that would have been! All we needed was Gobble and the fat one for ballast. The little ones stopped at the water’s edge. Lots of them. Then the mist and night ate them.

Morgana sat there, brooding on the wet planks. The water spumed up through the cracks everywhere. We paddled with curved boards while Veers spread out the shapeless rag meant for a sail. He was skilled at his craft and soon had us bouncing awkwardly alongside the wind.

Morgana was disgusted. She eyed my son with cool fury which he didn’t mind. Chael stayed huddled under his arm. Beef and I kept our paddles working to head the craft at Veer’s commands.

“I think,” my son said over the wind and water sounds, “I should have taken my chances back there rather than ride to doom on this bundle of twigs.”

“You’re welcome to leave,” offered Veers. To me he said: “Is that your lad?” I nodded. “Strikes me as he’d make a fair anchor.”

Lohengrin spat into the foggy darkness beyond the wildly stuttering light from the fat torch Veers had jammed beside the mast.

“Strikes you, does it?” Lohengrin responded. “More than that may strike you in a minute.”

“Set quiet,” I told him, “while your life is being saved.”

The dull torchlight showed Morgana’s baleful stare still fixed on him. “Saved?” he wondered. “I like to pay the debt after the goods are delivered.

“When did you ever pay for anything?” I wished to know.

I was thinking about taking the spear now. Decided to wait until we were alone and spare his feelings. I assumed I’d survive again. I had a mission, I believed (though it never made sense to me) and fate or God wouldn’t let me off easily.

“I have you for my father,” he said. “That may be payment against purgatory.”

Veers liked that remark.

“I’ve purchased hell then,” he declared, “with my Beef here.” Laughed and strained to aim the doubtful craft.

Lohengrin had his mother’s humor.

Morgana moved closer to me where I knelt with the board in the dark water. “I need that spear,” she said.

“So I gathered.”

“I don’t want to hurt him.” She seemed in earnest. “I haven’t shown all my teeth.”

I didn’t doubt that.

“Why don’t I just take it,” I suggested, “and return it to the owners?”

“Owners?” she scoffed. “The only one with clear title would be the Roman that poked Christ on the cross.”

The waves foamed over the front and sides as we beat and wallowed along. The fog had thinned, but there were no stars. I hoped Veers had a lodestone in his brain.

“Then you have no better claim than another,” said I.

“I told you, Parsival, my purpose is great. It will open certain secrets to me. Then we can free your wife and daughters and take the hidden power from the hidden place. “