Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (30 page)

LAYLA

She blinked and tried to resurface. Her head seemed to vibrate like a bell: light and dark flashed with each peal. There was a roaring sound all around, that seemed like sea or wind; wild wind and voices or the crashing of mad flame and voices… screams… shouts… curses… clashing like smashed trees or voices… voices…

What asked her mind. What?…

And then blackness tolled again and she was gone under and away…

JOHN

Racing along the firm, damp sand where the small waves were just curling into foam, charging back towards the waterfront, mind shouting:

We sail at once!… At once… once… sail…

He felt all might be lost. Memories kept flashing back from his life, scattered, irrelevant: refusing to study knighthood when he was nine or ten, standing on a trough in the castle yard to face his father eye-to-eye, steady, chill rain coming straight down from a low, tin-colored autumnal sky, drenching them, his bowl haircut plastered flat while he jerked his 14-year-old hands in the air and yelled:

“I hate your life! I will be a priest!”

His father, laughing. His sister, Layla, watching. Both from the shelter of the tunnel-like passage to the gate. She was big-eyed, dark-haired, slim, supple, a few years younger with a quality of petulance crossed with depression. People thought she always looked trapped.

“The priests don’t want you. Nobody wants you.”

“The Church is corrupt and full of evil! All men are brothers in God, yet men are enslaved and trodden down!”

The father looked around, waving his arms in the sheeting rain that blurred anything more than a few feet away as if a large audience were watching.

“See, see,” he cried. “I have whelped a mad boy!”

Now, running into the nearly solid fog, other memories kept flashing, unbidden: a few years later, after joining a band of wandering monks who drove him away with stones and kicks when they tired of his trying to convince them to preach rebellion to the serfs and then lead them in a war to overthrow the nobles… befriending a mad hermit he’d discovered in a cave who said He was John the Baptist come again, the pair of them, in filthy rags marching into London Town (still called Lundenwic by some) spewing speeches and diverse prophecies and ending up dumped in a latrine pit from which they were rescued by several obese whores from a nearby stew; after washing John off with a bucket or two (the prophet having fled, terrorized, as someone quipped: “Back to Jerusalem”) one dainty delight sat her two hundred plus pounds on him and ground away at his manhood in front of an approving crowd of local color until, red-faced, suffocating, begging, he finally managed to get, what another called, “a hanged man’s stiff’un,” and spent his seed to great public scorn and amusement… needless to say, this experience had left him more leery of sex than ever.

Suddenly he was splashing into the low tide, shallow water, absorbed in the vivid memories that kept opening before him, unaware that he’d slanted out into the bay and was aiming away from the dock area, seeing (as if reentering the past) the first time he strode into a village, bearded, digging a staff into the road, kicking up a reddish-yellow dust into the rich, summer-heavy air, already speaking to the peasants who were piling and binding early wheat in the square. He’d told them how they’d worked hard and their lord was going to take it for himself, as always, except, this time the people reacted, gathered around, stamped and shouted raw approval… Then they’d followed him, heading for the castle which (in what he took for a special providence) happened to have just been successfully assaulted and half-gutted by Clinschor’s warriors. The dazed and wounded survivors fell easy victim to the furious mob who’d been doubly fortunate in that they had crossed the open fields missing the enemy who’d hurried off to their next target. After this they believed in John’s special vision and power. The idea spread as they followed behind the raiding invaders like, some said, buzzards and wild dogs…

Now he went out with the ebbing tide, lost in memory-visions that he would only later suspect had been caused by the masked witch. He was following a long strand of damp sand, now, that humped out into the water like the back of a whale or some snake-like sea monster.

Because visibility was near nil, he believed he was following the shoreline near the ships when, in fact, he was running on an angle out to sea, still shouting commands to the followers he thought could actually hear him, voice croaking through his hurt windpipe:

“Cast off! Cast off! We sail at once!”

I’ll need no map, his mind said. God will guide me!

Except the yelled words were lost in the fog and splashing of his frantic feet and came out sounding more like:

“Broak oak! Broak oak! Wroak ogg! Wroak ogg ogrog!”

GAWAIN

He stood up looking straight at her, the still, hard eyes above the mask, not really amused anymore. The mist whipped around them. He wobbled a little. The tight warmth within had dissipated. Nothing was funny, now.

“You are a delight to know,” he remarked. “Most gentle.”

“You want to hump me?” she asked, voice neutral. “Is this your pleasure, damaged knight?”

The idea was suddenly sour, unamusing. He shook the jug. Nothing. Tossed it into the shifting, seamless gray that was air and water. Heard the splash.

That bottle, he thought, has a fairer chance than these mad dullards to reach the sacred goal…

“What do you really mean to do with these people?” he responded.

“Lead them,” she said, eyes showing nothing, “away from their troubles.”

“To others worse? Or are you a saint?”

“Far from it.”

“As far as reason from religion, I’ve no doubt. Aye, you act more like a pope. You’ll rip out a windpipe to stop an argument.”

She stepped closer to him and he waited for those deadly hands to move.

“Fear not,” she assured him.

“I don’t,” he said. “Do what you must.” He was wondering if he could rip the mask away before she could react. Doubted it.

“If I show you my face, Knight, you will never leave my service.”

“Another caveat.”

She began walking, slowly, parallel to the splashing surf. He kept pace with her. Thought he heard John’s voice somewhere out in the grayness. He understood she was seriously following some incomprehensible agenda.

“This world,” she explained, “has been poisoned and is dying.

We are going to a place that is safe.”

“Safe. At long last.”

“A woman will rule.”

“A queen? You?”

She actually chuckled, this time. Took his arm and stopped him.

He felt as if her very nearness was, somehow, tugging at him.

“You are better than a jester, Gawain,” she said. “Morgana will rule, of course.”

“Ah,” he murmured, looking almost on a level into the hot blue eyes above the mask. “Arthur approves this?”

“He has deserted his people. He went to seek his dear Merlin. He despaired of ruling, tired of his slut wife and the failure and betrayal of his knights.”

“I certainly failed,” said Gawain. “I deserted the court for love of darkness. I lost my face and my dark love.”

She was tugging at him, without touching. It might have been sexual but he wasn’t aroused. They stood there, sealed in the fog without reference of direction or mark of time as if their feet pressed the undefined soil early in creation’s first week.

“That is well-known,” she commented. “Arthur always forgave love, did he not?”

“It cost him. It cost me …” Grinned with what lips he had. “To lose yourself for love of squat Lancelot with his monkey-long arms. Women have a power to overlook faults past conceiving.”

“Else a bony, hairy, crude and awkward beast like thyself would have found few beds to revel in.” She brought her face closer, as if to kiss him.

He touched the mask’s cool chin. “These lively lips allure me,” he told her, trying to move the mood.

“Be content that I save living flesh for last.”

“You leave things out,” he said, as she started walking again. “There’s more here.” Something lost in fog; dark and unformed. He followed her, a step behind.

“Of course,” she agreed. “Much more.”

LAYLA

She opened one eye. Nothing. Dull bright, blankness. Her first idea was that she was dead and in the grayness between worlds. She’d heard about that. Her next idea, blinking both eyes now and realizing she was lying face down with her cheek flat in the dirt, was that she’d been blinded. After that the headache closed in with steel fingers and she moaned and shut her eyes again. Must have passed out because the pain went away to be replaced by a dream, an image, anyway, a pale woman beautiful in her agony, naked in a huge, satiny bed, straining to give birth, a dragon’s head emerging from her distended vagina, a clawed forelimb clutching at her thigh, blood spattered everywhere.

“Aiiii,” cried Layla, coming to again, taking the spiky pain in her head and struggling to sit up, this time. And still the brightish gray closed in tight around – except she saw her arms and legs this time and knew she was not blind, just lost in dullness.

Sitting up, she realized she hadn’t gone anywhere. Remembered the attack, the blows. Touched the swellings and dried blood.

“Holy Mary,” she said.

She saw nothing but the sealing fog – then a bare leg, flat on the ground, poking toward her. She strained her aching head and came up with fragments: small, brownish, oily-looking little men dancing, darting, slashing and stabbing, rolling over the believers and their fat leader who’d bolted. She had a flash of him barreling through followers and attackers alike, bouncing, leaping, rolling and shouting in his croak voice…

She had a sense everyone was dead or gone. Silence. She’d, obviously, been passed over because she was already down.

Which way? She asked herself, thinking getting to her feet. Or does it matter? Since she had no idea where she might be. At least no one’s going to see me coming or going… maybe I won’t be ambushed for a change…

She stood up. Reeled from the pain.

“Aii,” she sighed. “Sweet Mary, I pray my skull’s not cracked.” Touched her temples, felt lumps, caked blood. Sighed again. You don’t need a map when there’s nowhere to go…

Made herself move, stumble, walk. The circle of blankness kept pace with her. Then she tripped over a headless man’s out-flung arm and staggered, then stepped on a girl’s hand and stopped. The girl was on her back, too close for the mist to blur much. Her mouth was open and there was a hole where her heart should have been. It was obvious when Layla looked into the gaping cavity. A poet might have made something of it but it was too horrible for her.

She kept going and stopped looking down. The impenetrable darkness stayed closed around her. A poet might have liked that too.

MIMUJIN

Mimujin found the two he followed had ridden straight east along the main road. They’d come out of the low, green, forested hills by sunset onto the flatlands and marshes that stretched, unbroken to the coast.

The sunset was a violet grayness behind them when he stopped to camp. The mists had closed in. The little killer made no effort to light a fire. On the march his people washed down dried food with water, rolled up and slept (as was said) in their own stink; the young woman gathered some wood and leaves, took two flat stones from her kit, struck them gently and almost at once had flame.

He was impressed where he sat, ripping at a strip of dried meat and sucking at a leather of water.

“Witchery?” he asked, in English, assuming she didn’t speak his tongue.

“No. Good firestones.”

“Fire call bugs and enemies.”

She gestured around. “Fog,” she said, “hide us.” She took out her own food: traveler’s bread and hard cheese.

He pointed south. “My people that way,” he told her. He laughed inwardly because he had kept his agreement with Morgana and showed her the way. “How you find?”

She chuckled

“Oh, assure thyself, I find. I find.” He nodded.

“Witchery,” he grunted.

“If you like. What you understand not, you name ill.”

“Eh?”

He was now sure she was bait. Why? To distract him? How could she find his tribesmen? Absurd. A lone female in fog and trackless ways.

“You think I have powers as my mistress hath?” she asked him.

“Eh? Womens talk, water splash. Make sound, no sense.” She very clever, he thought. Can trick a man. When she sleeps, kill her. She not go to my people, she is dog set to follow me…

“As you say,” she responded, sipping scented, herbed liquor from a silver flask. It was a Druidic concoction: a burst of strength and soothing. “I’ll leave you on the morrow.”

“That good,” he said.

To follow from behind… you will leave, witch woman and go where no path leads back…