Knight Life (10 page)

    
“Am I succeeding?”

    
Merlin was clearly not amused. “I want honesty from you, Arthur. Without it we've no chance. None.”

    
“Honesty.” He leaned forward, interlacing his fingers between his knees. “All right. When I was first clanking about in the streets of the city ... I saw her. I was staggering around, endeavoring to get my bearings, and suddenly I saw her. When I looked upon her, it was as if I ‘recognized' her somehow. I saw her sitting there, and she looked up at me, and suddenly ...” He shivered slightly at the recollection. “I saw
her
. My Gwynyfar, Guinevere, Jenny ... so many names, all of them barely able to encompass the one woman. She was smiling at me from ten centuries ago, dressed in ermine, long candles flickering in our bedchamber. And Camelot was so damned cold, Merlin, you remember. On chill nights the wind would
cut like the sharpest of blades, but when she was with me, there was warmth in the room, and a peace and happiness such as I never knew ...”

    
“Until she betrayed you for Lancelot.”

    
“You're so quick to remind me of that.”

    
“Possibly because you're so quick to forget.”

    
“But it could be fate, Merlin!” Arthur said with growing urgency. “Don't you see that? For me to stumble across her, so soon after you magically freed me from the cave, and now she shows up here again. Does that not sound like the hand of fate to you?”

    
“Possibly. But need I remind you, Arthur, that the Lady Fate has never exactly been an ally of Camelot? You have been well and truly buggered on a number of occasions by fate, and if you think that returning you to your lady love is some sort of positive inducement, then you, highness, are being even more self-delusional than usual. Except it's not her. It's not Gwynyfar.”

    
“But how can you be so certain?”

    
Merlin sighed and shook his head. “Arthur … mariners of old would report that they had seen mermaids capering about in the waters they sailed. Now I have seen many wondrous things, Arthur, and know even more than I have seen, and in all of that I have never come across a genuine child of the sea. Do you know what those old sailors actually saw in their travels? Manatees.”

    
“What?” Arthur's brows knit in puzzlement. “What are—?”

    
“Great, lumpy cows of the ocean, with as much resemblance to a woman as any other cow might have. But because these men had been at sea for so long, just about anything looked good to them and reminded them of women. Do you see what I'm saying here, Arthur?”

    
“You're saying,” Arthur sighed, “that when I saw Gwen she reminded me of Gwynyfar because I had been away from her for so long, so anything would remind me of her.”

    
“That's exactly right, Arthur. You were a stranger in a strange land. It is natural that you would have sought out something that reminded you of days of yore.”

    
Arthur was silent for a time, and then he rose and walked to the window. He looked out at the glittering skyline before him. “Perhaps you are right,” he said finally. “Perhaps it is madness to think that she could be Jenny, somehow miraculously returned to me. Still ... it was nice to hope for a time. That is what Camelot was built on, Merlin, was it not? Hope?”

    
“No,” Merlin said flatly. “It was built on belief. A belief that it, and you, could make a difference. And that is the same foundation upon which you will build your political career. But if you do not believe, then you're going to have nothing.”

    
“Political career,” snorted Arthur. “Merlin … if there is one thing that has been driven home to me in all of this, it's the vast scope of the world nowadays. I never realized what a small pond was dwelt in by me, the large fish. Who am I now? I am nothing to them. Nothing.”

    
“You've forgotten, haven't you,” said Merlin sadly.

    
“Forgotten?”

    
“What it was like for the young King Arthur. To all of those knights, you were nothing as well. A snot-nosed boy awarded the throne of Britain through a sorcerer's parlor trick. Have you forgotten the looks upon the faces of the warlords and warrior kings when they were asked to swear allegiance to you? Half of them revolted at the outset. You had to put down the rebellion. You, barely into your teens. And look what happened!”

    
“I know what happened, since you are so quick to remind me. My wife and best friend betrayed me ...”

    
“Yes, yes, yes,” came the impatient response. “But until that happened, you had built something truly great. Yes, your destiny was unfortunate. However, you can make up for it now. And with the world such a vast and yet easily accessible place, you can do even more good now than you
did back then. My magiks have given you a second chance, Arthur. All you need to do is be careful not to fritter it away obsessing over ‘lookalikes' of Gwynyfar ...”

    
“It's not that she's a lookalike. It's that she evokes the spirit of…” But then he shook his head quickly. “No. No, you're right, Merlin. I shall simply concentrate on what needs to be done.”

    
“Excellent. And my first piece of advice to that end is call the Queen woman, tell her there's been a mistake, offer her a nice severance package and be done with it.”

    
He shook his head. “I cannot. I gave my word.”

    
“And you gave your word to me, as I recall,” said Merlin. “Your dying words, whispered on your funeral bier. You said, ‘If I only had one more chance ... I know I could do it right.' Well, you've got your chance, Arthur. You're lucky. Beyond lucky. Most men in this world don't have the opportunity to do even once what you're going to be doing twice. May I strongly suggest, Wart, that you do everything you can not to screw it up this time?”

    
“I shall take your kind advice to heart, mage,” said Arthur, and he bowed once and deeply.

    
But even as he did so, the lovely young woman from centuries agone moved through his mind's eye, smiling at him, beckoning to him.

    
He spent the rest of the evening trying to convince himself that he had made a mistake and that he should contact Gwen immediately and inform her that the position was not available. He was not, however, able to do so, and couldn't decide—for the life of him—if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

C
HAPTRE

THE
S
IXTH

T
WO WOMEN IN
Arthur's life were involved in very different pursuits one evening …

T
HE
V
HAD
burnt out in the “Vacancy” sign that hung outside the beat-up roadside motel situated just off of the interstate. The signs posted nearby had promised waterbeds and triple-X-rated films in the room. Just the sort of thing the average passing traveler would be looking for. As it so happened, Morgan was passing, and a traveler, but she was certainly far from average.

    
When she'd checked in, the desk clerk had gaped at her openly. Part of her was tempted to put him in her place, but another part was flattered by the attention, and it was this aspect of her that saved the clerk's life. It had, after all, been a very long time since any man—even a bald, potbellied specimen such as the desk clerk—had looked at her appreciatively, or even at all. Being subjected to scrutiny by even as pathetic a specimen as this was still appreciated. As for the desk clerk, he was able to
go home that evening, unaware of the fact that he should be relieved that he was alive or that his brain hadn't been melted under a sorcerous curse. Instead he had a normal-functioning brain, which was carrying secret fantasies acted out with the stunning woman who had checked in at the scummy little motel he managed.

    
The clerk had no idea that, weeks earlier, Morgan Le Fey would hardly have turned any heads. Indeed, she might have turned a few stomachs. But the excess weight she'd been carting with her all this time had slid away like melting butter. All the extra chins had vanished into memory, leaving her with the one jutting chin that stuck out so proudly. The raven hair was black through and through—no gray at the roots—and her feet, once swollen and cracked, were now slim and strong.

    
In the dingy hotel room, she stripped to the buff and examined herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the inside of the bathroom door (unaware that a young blonde woman, with whom her path would eventually cross, had subjected herself to similar scrutiny not too long ago.) She couldn't help but wonder who the genius was who thought that mounting a mirror inside the bathroom—and, as a consequence, directly opposite the toilet—could remotely be considered a good or flattering idea. It meant that when she was relieving herself, the only view she was afforded was herself, sitting on the toilet, leaving her to grumble to herself, “Well,
that
looks about as dignified as I always thought it did.” But at that particular moment, she wasn't dwelling on it. Instead she was busy admiring the contours of her muscular body. She thought of the lethargic lump she had let herself become and was filled with silent rage.

    
But that loathsome creature was long gone. And Morgan Le Fey was back in business.

    
The naked sorceress rolled back the threadbare rug, bracing it with her foot against the wall. Then she padded back to the bare area and removed a piece of chalk from
the pocket of her long black coat. She knelt down, then, and, brushing strands of hair from her face, carefully traced a circle, with a five-point star enclosed within. She then reached into her beat up duffel bag and extracted five black candles, fondling the length of them almost sexually. She placed one at each point where the star touched the circle. She stepped back, admired her handiwork, and smiled.

    
Then she rolled the television set near to the circle and sat down facing it. The floor chilled her bare rump but she ignored it, as she composed herself and then snapped her fingers. The five candles around her promptly lit. It was a minor exhibition of her power, but it pleased her nonetheless. Again she snapped her fingers, and the television flared to life.

    
The sight on the screen afforded her momentary amusement. It was a couple madly rutting, panting like twin locomotives. But then it reminded her of just how long it had been since she herself had indulged in such carnal pleasures, and it caused her to frown in irritation and wave a hand as if brushing a flea away. The picture vanished from the screen, replaced by blankness.

    
Morgan concentrated, reaching out with her mind and tracing the waves of magic, charting the ley lines that filled the air around her. She'd been doing this regularly, going from town to town, city to city, setting herself up at different intersection points of the earth's ley lines, trying to discover a mystical trace of Merlin. It had proven to be frustrating. Merlin had covered his tracks too well. If she'd begun the trace from the moment when he'd escaped from his centuries-long confinement, she could have picked up on it in no time. But this was no longer possible. Just as a fox can cover his trail and scent given time, so had Merlin been able to erase any sign of his person.

    
However, if Merlin had been practicing magic lately, he would most certainly have been tapping into the ley lines that encompassed the earth. Any adept was able to
detect the pale ribbonlike trails that filled the air. But not any adept would have been able to do what Morgan was attempting: To track back along ley lines as if they were mystic telephone wires, tracing along and discovering where a particular caller—Merlin, in this instance—had most recently made use of them. Had Merlin been using his sorcerous powers, Morgan should have been able to retrace him down those mystical bands as if she were tracing a telephone call. But she had found nothing, which meant either that he had been using no magic lately, or— more disturbing—that he'd discovered a means by which to cover any track of magic use. If it were the latter, Morgan would certainly have her work cut out for her. She should have felt some degree of frustration over that possibility, but instead she merely warmed to the task. The more difficult Merlin made it for her going in, the sweeter her triumph coming out.

    
She found a faint whiff of magic along one stream and immediately ran it back to its source. The TV screen flickered and then the image of a young girl appeared. She was a teenager, naked as was Morgan, seated in what appeared to be the middle of her high school's athletic field. She was chanting quietly to herself and burning a photograph of a handsome young man. The candle was white.