Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon (37 page)

MIMUJIN

They’d come to a cave or ancient tunnel and were now under the sea. The religious little killer relaxed, slightly. Blew his nose into his hand and the snot spurted from the split nostrils. He wiped his hand on his jerkin. The sea sounds faded behind. His people liked caves.

He now accepted she was bringing him to the satisfaction he desired. He would fulfill his pledge to his people. Drink in the Red Knight’s agony and eat his heart.

In the next world he would enjoy the slave-souls he’d slain in this life. Yes. And the sweet delights of whored women and boys. He would revel in his heaven.

“Ha,” he snarled, kicking his horse forward into the darkness, shadows from himself thrown by the torches the women now held, angling and bending around the damp walls that seemed partly natural, partly worked by who knew what giant race or evil dwarves.

As if he needed so much light; he could smell his way through any cave to serve his king who hated the bright of day. The feeble surface folk feared the dark while he loved it, a fanged shadow, a whisper of death. Imagined finding Parsival in the caves and burrows of his homeland; imagined how he would toy with the arrogant knight before eating him.

MORGANA

Morgana was close beside the shivering boy, one cool, iron-strong hand gripping his forearm. The torch shadows wavered and wobbled around them. “Hear me,” she said in the sudden quiet below, “I mean for you to rule this place we soon will come to.”

“But Aunt –”

“Peace. But not. At the end of this passage I will have little power and shall need all your strength.”

“But –”

“Peace. The little killer will do what he does and you will meet your father.”

I have released the demons in Britain, she was thinking. Plague, fog and fear will melt them into a clay I may work… with his sword my son can be crowned…

“How can –” Modred began, again. “Rule where? In a cave, Aunt? I want to –”

“You want silence, boy. You’ll do what you must, secure in my love for you.”

There where mortals can do magic and wizards lose their fire, she mused and then, for some reason asked herself: Would I do these things were I alone on the earth? What would one seek, then? Were heaven perfect what would make our dramas? If ecstasy were always at a peak would it be ecstasy or ordinary?

“The world runs on what we do and what results,” she murmured.

Remove pain and death and the world is but entertainment… why strive for gain where all are rich? On earth its contrast moves us…

That would be interesting.

PARSIVAL

A bend… another… then a sun-glazed field, rich with shadow-melted bushes where red berries glowed. A brownish form moved in the filtered light and, for a few moments, the sun slanted, blindingly bright, and then he knew it was a deer… four legs… heavy antlers of a buck, big body. He remembered and smiled. A vision of his childhood.

Am I still asleep in that monk’s chamber having but dreamt I ever left? At what sure point does any dream begin or end? That was his question.

Lego had armed himself with a short, stout bow he’d taken from one of their opponents. He nocked an arrow and drew on the creature in the dappled gleam and shadow of the brush.

“Fresh meat,” he murmured but Parsival stayed his hand.

“Nay,” he said. “This was my first guide and will not be slain again.” Because his idea was to reverse everything he could and so reverse his life. Because the old memory had blurred away what he was now looking at; a teenager again, still living with his long dead mother on the summer morning when he’d hurled that spear at the surprising, mysterious beast that seemed wrung from the netted light and shadow in the underbrush. He’d watched it shatter the glowing perfection of green and gold, suddenly belching blood in flailing death throes… and he’d run in fear and sick regret to his mother, shouting how he’d just killed something wonderful…

So he now took the bow from Lego and aimed, just as Gralgrim had come up to them, saying:

“Shoot for Freya’s sake!”

The knight did, aimed low and the arrow stuck in the pale mossy earth ten feet short of the animal who backed and withdrew with what humans might have termed dignity or disdain, into the dense, scrubby, wind-twisted ragged trees.

“I’d done better with a thrown ax,” muttered the Viking.

“We’re lucky to have something to follow,” Parsival told him.

“We follow the wild beast?”

“Come or not,” the knight said, shrugging, heading into the strange forest and thought he saw (where the mist blurred the undergrowth away) what might have been a gowned woman moving into the shadow as if the creature had transformed. He decided that fit and smiled. “See, Mother,” he murmured. “I killed nothing this day.”

SHINQUA

She turned the cart and simply headed back through the ghostly glowing mist, wheels bumping and creaking over the ruts and stones of the reverse slope.

The sense of going on, she thought, is no sense…

Down and across the short bridge again and it really wasn’t far now. There was the broken windmill, the single blade that, for a moment, startled her, looking like a giant with a wide sword, poised to strike.

Not so far, now, she thought, as the wooden wheels clattered dully across the slatted bridge. You are still the dreamer, woman… see what the dream is…

The new waxing moon floated on top of the mist, a bow bent at the east, the sun not far behind. She was near the river that fed the moat and knew there were huts maybe 100 yards ahead. She didn’t want to see them and just be back. Now she wished she’d gone the other way.

Reined up, got down and found a dry hummock of mossy grass and sat watching the soft, round reflection on the dark surface… after awhile she stretched out and might have dozed off in the slight murmuring of water and night-bugs and the muffled, soft chanting of frogs…

GAWAIN

So the next day when he came to the same wooden bridge he remembered where he was, as the heavy-shod hooves clunked on the damp boards and he took in the rich smell of wet woods and muddy banks. The sun melted the mist down to the bushes so the trees seemed to poke from a cloudy flood. The bright warmth was good and he lay back on soft grasses among summer violets, stripped to the waist; slept away the afternoon.

Like any ghost, he thought, I need the night…

The sun was still high when he woke up went to the stream. Stood looking down at the bright rippling. Knelt to top off his near empty water skin. Saw his coweled reflection among the undulant weeds and smooth stones. Threw back the hood and looked on the open ruin, softened by sun and shadow.

What’s the point? He asked himself. Why not stick my head under and draw breath?

“No point,” he murmured. “Not deep enough.”

Broke the reflections as he cupped a palm full to drink, then tilted and held the waterbag under. Watched the bubbles rise and pop.

In a little while he went on. After sunset he watched the slim, crescent moon follow the sun down behind the fog. He was getting close to judge by the low forested hills the road had been winding around and over. He knew the country.

Decided to keep on a little longer before eating and soon passed a set of half-fallen-in huts. He halted at one and sat just inside the doorway; smelled damp and sour but almost pleasant. Sucked at strips of salt, dried and barely chewable beef.

Sat among the faintly starlit, shadowy forms and wondered if plague or the roving killers had emptied this place. He thought about Lohengrin and the girl Jane, which turned his mind to Parsival.

He liked to talk about being a boy, the knight thought. I hated being a boy, ruled by others. In that, I am like his son…

Continued on the road he knew was the right one. His mount was skittish; kept snorting to clear his nostrils. Gawain had taken to calling him Horse. The knight appreciated how footsore the beast must be. He dozed and jerked awake in the saddle a few times in the thick, earth-scented early morning air…

Nothing drags its feet like a dawn you wait for, he thought. Or comes so swift when the headsman waits…

The sun was still an hour or two under the earth, he calculated. “Not far to go, Horse,” he said, stroking the smooth neck. “Then what?” Then an empty cart took form in the luminous mist and he halted and waited, listened, hand on sword hilt. Who would leave an animal in traces out here, unattended? Who might be out here, attending? He dismounted and hitched the horse loosely to the back of the cart.

LOHENGRIN

In that limited area, even soaked in palpable wet air, it was likely that they’d all come to the same stream as they worked their way roughly inland. So (though Lohengrin didn’t know it) his mother and Hal were less than half a mile ahead and had already reached the nearest village where they meant to rest and stay out of the fresh light rain.

Jane huddled in her cowl while he removed his helmet because he hated the pitter-pung of raindrops on the metal. His tight curly “Moor’s” hair was water-beaded, almost as good as a cap.

Now it was close to evening; their conversation had dribbled away hours ago. She was tired and cranky and felt what she knew were incipient cramps that came with the dark moon. By tomorrow she expected to be miserable and was about to insist they stop when they heard and a creaking thunk and startling splash.

“What noise?” she shout-whispered.

“Sounds like a mill to me,” he grunted, saddle-sore and grouchy.

A little further and he heard Hal before he saw him. Shook his head. Dull, wavering flames showed through a doorway in the humped shadow of a hut. The rain was spattering down harder from a thicker sky so the fire was the only light.

As they dismounted she reeled, slightly, and held the saddle. She felt hot and cold and cramped-up. This was something new, she realized, at once. Before he knew he’d moved he was already supporting her.

“What, my lady Jane?” he asked. “A dizziness… I …”

Her cowl was back. The hair under his face. She was a damp, sweet-sour scent that gave him pleasure. He kissed her forehead. It was too warm.

“We should have stopped before,” she said, resting her cheek on his shoulder, “and crushed the grass again.”

“Come,” he said, “we’ve found Hal, I think. There’s bound to be food and drink.”

“I am very dry,” she said. Past the horse she saw a well in the ghostly mist, just touched by the reddish light in the doorway.

He started to help her but she freed herself. “I am better now,” she told him. “You go in. I’ll be there.”

She felt she was going to vomit. All at once everything was churning and nasty.

For some reason he didn’t understand, he kissed her forehead again and felt a sick, dim fear and tenderness.

“Are you certain, Jane?”

“Ah… yes, I need to go to the bushes, my love.”

“I’ll see to Hal.”

Heard a female voice as he headed in. Hal and a woman?

Inside was warm and bright by contrast. He leaned in the doorway, enjoying the feel and worrying about Jane.

Hal saw him and reacted, scrambling for his sword which leaned against the wall by the rough fireplace.

“Your doom is upon you, Henry Loutling,” he pronounced, amused, going in, then seeing his mother sitting, doubled-up on the rude bed of logs and sacking, clearly in pain. “Mother!”

“Lohengrin,” cried startled Hal.

“My son,” she said.

“Are you hurt, Mother?”

“Bad food, I think,” Hal offered, coming closer. “We found some dry victuals here that –”

“Not food. How have you come here, son?”

“After many turnings, mother,” he said, kneeling beside her. “I think we were all closer than we knew. I –” She winced and clutched herself convulsively. Sighed a groan. “Mother, what?”

Then got up, still doubled-over, and half hunkered outside into the dark damp.

“Follow me not,” she insisted.

He was torn. Hal was looking at him.

“Bad meat, I’m sure,” he explained. “Let her but void it and all will be well.”

PARSIVAL

The wet air kept thinning as they went so now they could see as they came around the next bend. He knew he should have been surprised to see a castle set into a hillside that he instantly recognized.

“When in a dream,” he told Lego, “make no resistance.”

“What place is this?”

“Camelot.”

“My Lord, I –”

“In a dream, captain.”

Gralgrim came close. “Eh,” he sounded.

“Shh. Don’t wake me. You must serve a deep purpose else you would not be here.”

As they reached the gate he wasn’t surprised to see two armored knights in black and silver with fang faces.

“Come ahead,” he challenged the pair, loosing his blade in its scabbard.

“We’re right here, my Lord,” said Lego.

“I mean these two devils. Here begins the nightmare.”

“My Lord,” said the captain, “doubt these will hold us back for long.”

“They are fearful fighters.”

Gralgrim snorted and gripped the devils in his massive fists.

Parsival saw the deadly mutes draw and he leaped to assist the rash Viking except the voiceless knights were shaken and snapped apart in wordless gusts of agony.

“What power you have,” Parse said, approving.

His companions looked at one another. Gralgrim held a broken, brown-leaved, stunted and rotten pine sapling in each hand. They’d been growing before the broken columns where Parsival saw a castle gate.

“Keep watch out here,” he commanded, “whilst I enter. I fear we are tracked by the little men.”

“Enter?” wondered Lego.

His master had already stepped between the broken stones and seemed to wander among scrubby trees and wiry brush into a kind of rough glade where scattered clumps of reddish, spiky little flowers gathered around small, dark, narrow rocks that appeared to be set in a rough circle like worn-away standing stones.

“Maybe when your great knight is done talking to trees and bushes maybe we’ll find a town or something of use.”

“The old priests did talk to earth and tree. The ones of Merlin’s ilk still do.”

“It’s good to converse without fear of argument.”

Indeed, Parsival seemed to be deep in discourse with a mossy, thick, short, knotted, leafless tree bearing dark, stone-like berries on the twisted limbs.

He’d entered the lofty, dim throne room as if the mist that domed around him had condensed into the vaulted chambers of Camelot.

The Round Table was empty. A massive hooded figure slumped on the high seat. The knight went up to him, imagining it was Arthur. He saw the beard and nose recognizing Merlinus.

If all things were the same, he thought, how do you tell a vision from the rest?

Glanced back to see that Lego had come in the high door.

“Wait there,” he commanded, “whilst I speak with this wizard.”

Lego winced. Gralgrim grinned, showing various teeth. The blood crease that divided his face wrinkled.