Knight Life (2 page)

    
As she sank back into the easy chair, resting her hands in the customary places on the arms, she watched the final credits run on this latest rerun of the adventures of the castaways. Even more than Gilligan, she empathized with the concept of castaways as a whole. She was a castaway too. Drifting, floating, on an island of isolation. Abandoned by happenstance, cast off by fate. Alone, forgotten …

    
And prone to indulging in lengthy exhibitions of self-pity. Don't forget that
, she added mentally.

    
She popped the top on her can and started to guzzle beer. The cold beverage slid down her throat, bathing her in a familiar warmth and haze. She patted the can lovingly. Her one friend. Her familiar.

    
She held up the can in a salute. “To mighty Morgan,” she croaked, her voice cracking from disuse. “Here's to eternal life, and to the thrice-damned gods who showed me how to have it.” Morgan choked then, and for the first time in a long time she really thought about what she had become. With a heartrending sob she drew back her arm and hurled the half-empty can square into the TV, which sat two yards away. Except the can was not propelled by a normal arm making a normal throw. Instead, in that throw, was centuries of ennui, of frustration and anger, heaving it in an eldritch fit of pique. Against such a display, the ancient television had no chance. The screen exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, flying out like a swarm of liberated sprites. There was a sizzling sound, and acrid smoke rose from the back of the set.

    
Her face sank into her hands, and Morgan Le Fey wept loudly. Her sides heaved in and out, her breath rasped in her chest. The rolls of fat that made up her body shook with the rage and frustration she released. She cried and cursed all the fates that had brought her to this point in
her life, and it was then that she resolved to put a stop to it. It was not the first occasion she had done so, but every time she had decided to terminate her wretched life, she had always thought better of it. Her loathing had always turned outward. “I still hate,” she had always managed to say, and make it sound as if she meant it. But this time, though—this time, something had broken within her. She had no idea what had done it, what single thing had set it off. It probably wasn't any one thing, she realized. It was probably the collective weight of it all, crunching down upon her until—all at once—it had proven unendurable.

    
“Existence for the sake of existence alone is no existence at all,” she declared out loud. “I am a mushroom. A fungus. I have lived for far too long, and it's time I rested.”

    
She waited a moment to see if some other aspect of her mind would tell her that she was wrong, but none did. Knowing beyond question that she was doing the right thing, she stood again, but this time with far greater assurance, for her movements now had a purpose to them other than simple self-perpetuation. She lumbered into the kitchen, fumbled through a drawer crammed with plastic spoons from Carvel's ice cream stores and equally harmless knives from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Finally she extracted a steak knife. She blanched at the rust, then realized that rust was hardly a concern.

    
She sat back down in front of the TV, the knife now cradled serenely in the crook of her arm. The TV screen had miraculously mended itself. There was a crisscross of hairline fractures across it, but these too would fade in time. Not that this was any concern to Morgan either.

    
“One last time, old enemy,” she said. Her thin, arched eyebrows reached just to the top of her forehead, even though her eyes were little-more than slits beneath painted green lids. She fumbled in the drawer next to her for the remote control, and she started to flick the switch. Time had lost all meaning to her, and she could not recall
how long it had been since she had looked in on Him. Five days? Five months? Years? She was not certain.

    
Once these long-distance viewings had exacted a great toll from her, physically and spiritually. She had had to use specially prepared mirrors, or magic crystals. With the advent of the diodes and catheters, however, had come a revolution in the art of magic. A one-time ensorcellment of the wires and tubes, and she could look in on Him whenever she wished. That was why she had never opted for solid-state components—she didn't trust her ability to control something as arcane as microcircuitry.

    
She clicked her remote to Channel 1, and the smiling face of the news anchor disappeared. In its place was the exterior of a cave. Erosion and overgrowth had altered the exterior somewhat over time, but not enough to throw her. She knew the cave on sight. And she would take the knowledge to her grave, providing that someone ever found her bloated body and tossed it into the ground for her. Yes … yes, they probably would, once her decaying corpse smelled so bad that no one in the neighborhood could take it anymore. She took some tiny measure of comfort in that, that in her death she would at least be able to provide inconvenience for somebody.

    
She held the knife to her wrist. She should really do this in a bathtub, she remembered reading now. But she hated the water. Besides, she wanted to be here, in front of the entombed resting-place of her greatest magical opponent.

    
She stared at the cave entrance on her TV screen. “You'd really enjoy this moment, wouldn't you, you cursed old coot? Morgan Le Fey, driven to this, by you. You knew this would happen someday. This is your doing, you reaching out from beyond the grave.” She pressed the blade against the skin of her right wrist. “Damn you, Merlin,” she said softly. “You've finally won.”

    
She set her teeth against the anticipated pain of the knife digging into her flesh … and then she stopped.

    
She leaned forward, the knife, still against the inside of her wrist, forgotten now. She squinted, rubbed her eyes, and focused again.

    
Against the mouth of the cave rested a huge stone, covered with moss and vegetation. This stone was far more than just a dead weight. It was held in place through the magic of a woman's wiles, and there is no stronger bond than that. And though the woman, Nineve, was long gone, the magic should have held for all eternity.

    
The operative word here being “should.”

    
For Morgan now saw that the rock had moved. It had rolled ever so slightly to one side, creating an opening. An opening far too small for a man to squeeze through. But still ... it hadn't been there before.

    
Quickly and deftly she manipulated the remote control. Responding to it, the TV screen zoomed in tight on the hole. Yes, definitely new. She had never seen it before, and she could see where the overgrown leaves had been ripped away when the stone was moved… .

    
“Moved!” she whispered. “But who moved it?”

    
It was more than she dared hope. The camera panned down away from the hole, which was several feet above the ground. There were footprints. She had no clue when they'd been left there. Once she would have known immediately, for in olden times she had looked in on this spot every day. She would have spotted any change, no matter how minor, within twenty-four hours … less, considering she used to check two, even three times a day if she was bored. But with passing years had come passing interest, and the occasional look-see had seemed to suffice. Seemed to, but clearly did not.

    
“Yessss,” she hissed, “footprints.” But more than that, she realized, barefoot. And something else: They were small. A child's. Heading one way, away from the cave. “A child,” she breathed. “Of course. Of course!”

    
The knife clattered to the floor as Morgan Le Fey, half sister of King Arthur Pendragon, incestuous lover of her
brother, mother of the bastard Modred, tilted her head back and laughed. At first it was hardly a laugh, but more like a high-pitched cackling imitation, similar to the sound a parrot would make. With each passing moment, however, it grew. Fuller. Richer. Although the abused body of Morgan still showed its deficiencies, years were already dropping from the voice.

    
If anyone had once dared tell her that she would be happy over the escape of her deadliest enemy, she would have erased that unfortunate person from the face of the earth. The suggestion was positively ludicrous. But her life had become no less ludicrous, and knowledge of the departure of the cave's occupant from his place of imprisonment had fallen into her lap like a gift from a benevolent—if somewhat twisted—god.

    
For Morgan Le Fey had come to realize that she thrived on conflict and hatred. It was as mother's milk to her. And without that, her spirit had shriveled away to a small, ugly thing lost somewhere in an unkempt form. Now, though, her spirit soared. She spread her arms and a wind arose around her, blowing wide the swinging windows of her apartment. It was the first time in several years that clean air—or at least what passed for clean air in her neck of the woods—had been allowed in, and it swept through as if entering a vacuum. Fresh air filling her nostrils, Morgan became aware of the filth in which she had resided for some time. Her nose wrinkled, and she shook her head.

    
She went to the window and stepped up onto the sill, reveling in the force of the wind she had summoned. Above her, clouds congealed, tore apart, and reknit, blackness swarming over them. Far below, pedestrians ran about, pulling their coats tight around them against the unexpected turn of bad weather. A few glanced up at Morgan in the window but went on about their business, jamming their hands down atop their heads to prevent their hats or wigs from blowing away.

    
Morgan drank it in, thriving on the chaos of the storm.
She screamed over the thunder, “Merlin! Merlin, demon's son! The mighty had fallen, mage! You had fallen. I had fallen. All was gone, and you were in your hell and I was in mine.” She inhaled deeply, feeling the refreshing, chilled sting of cold air in her lungs. She reveled in the tactile sensation of her housecoat blowing all around her, the wind enveloping her flimsy garment.

    
“You're back now!” she crowed. “But so am I! I have waited these long centuries for you, Merlin. Guarding against the day that you might return, and yet now I glory in it. For I am alive today, Merlin! Do you hear me, old man? Morgan Le Fey lives! And while I live, I hate! Sweet hate I have nurtured all these long decades and centuries. And it's all for you, Merlin! All for you and your damned Arthur!

    
“Wherever you are, Merlin, quake in fear. I am coming for you. Thank you for saving my life, Merlin!
And I shall return the favor a thousandfold. I, Morgan Le Fey! I can live again! I can breathe again! I can have my hatred! I can have my revenge! And I can get the hell out of New Jersey!”

H
ARRY, WHAT'S GOING
on?”

    
Harry peered through the curtains at the window of the apartment across the way. “It's that fat nut again. God, what a slob. I don't know how people let themselves go like that.”

    
His wife, Beverly, eyed his beer belly but wisely refrained from comment.

    
“She's shouting about some damned thing or other,” he muttered as he came to sit next to her on the couch. “Usually she's just regular drunk. I don't know what she's on tonight, but it must be a beaut.”

    
“Bet she's from New York,” mumbled his wife.

    
“What?” he asked.

    
She repeated it, adding, “It wouldn't surprise me in the least.”

    
“No?” His eyebrows puckered across his open and unimpressive face, thick with lines that had come from worrying that Beverly would learn he was having it off with Mrs. Findelman down the street.

    
“No,” affirmed Beverly. “Because New Yorkers are all crazy. They know it. The government knows it. The whole country knows it. In New York everyone acts like that,” and she chucked a thumb across the street in Morgan's direction. “You never know what's going to happen.”

    
“Yeah,” said Harry, who didn't mind an element of danger in his life (hence Mrs. Findelman.) “That's why I like it.”

    
“Well, I hate it,” Beverly said firmly, as if she'd just turned down the option to buy Manhattan. “All the crazy people there—they all deserve each other. Why, I hear tell it's not safe to walk the streets at night there. You never know what weird thing you'll run into next.”

C
HAPTRE

THE
S
ECOND