Sleepless Knights (40 page)

With that thought, the light fractured into fragments, each the size of a small pane of glass. The pieces arranged themselves in a circle around me, then multiplied, spreading out into three dimensions like the seeds on a dandelion clock. Words appeared on each piece, written in my own hand. Lists and routines, items and itineraries; all the stuff of the first working day of a butler-magician.

I gathered all the gleaming fragments together, piling them up in a stack in my palm until they condensed into a whole. The light faded, and in its place was a small leather-bound notebook edged with gold, which flipped open to the first page. I read it and nodded, satisfied. It told me everything I needed to do next, and exactly how to do it, and that was more than enough to be going on with.

And so I set to work.

 

“Master?”

“Good morning, staff,” I said to the living dead of Lower Annwn. At the sudden manifestation of my Merlin-self, their jaws dropped. Which, seeing as most of them were barely attached to their faces anyway, was quite a sight. “Item one on the agenda. Cancelling curses and de-damning the damned.” The creatures moaned and groaned, but from habit rather than complaint. Indeed, I detected a certain lightness to their tone, my magical ear picking up a faint anticipation of job satisfaction. As they gathered together in a group, they seemed to stand a little taller, their flesh slightly less decomposed. Restoration had begun.

While they were assembling (for down here they shuffled somewhat slowly) I closed my eyes and sent my mind off deep into the Otherworld for a good rummage around. I was looking for the place where lost legends go, waiting to be claimed by their rightful owners. When I found what I was looking for, I gathered together all the broken pieces and pulled them up out of the depths. I opened my eyes. In the air before me were many shards of metal. “Owen,” I said to the creature who had once been the finest armourer in the land. At the sound of his old name, he cocked his head like a near-deaf dog. “Take these shards to your smithy. Re-forge me a sword fit for a King.

“As for the rest of you,” I continued, “item two.”

I drew an arc in the air and peeled back the earth above our heads like the skin of a satsuma. The gloom of Annwn seeped down from above. Tools and implements flew out from the store room in which I had first arrived, distributing themselves among the creatures so that no-one was without a mop, bucket, brush or broom. “Time to give Hell a thorough spring clean,” I said. They murmured in the affirmative, and off they all went, crawling up the rock face. The one who had been Beaumains I kept by my side. “For my next task, a mode of transportation is in order,” I said.

“Stables,” she said, a brightness returning to her eyes. It was joyous to see, but I restrained myself from celebrating prematurely. She pointed down the precipice, past the now-dry pool and the pit into which I had passed, over to where Sir Gareth's skeleton had marched. At her signal, a stone rolled away to reveal a hidden cave. With one step I passed over the edge and floated down to the lower level, taking her with me.

The stables were full of skeleton horses, stamping and whinnying as the once-Beaumains and I walked among them. I soon found the one I was looking for. To my eyes he stood out from all the others, for although most of his flesh had fallen away, he was not a knight's horse, and had not died at Camlann. Plum recognised me too, staring back at me from empty eye sockets, pushing at my arm with his long white skull.

I felt like I should give him something, and accordingly a lump of sugar appeared in my hand. Yellow teeth took it from my palm. As he crunched it in his jaws, the sinews quickly knitted back into place around his mouth. Flesh reformed on his flanks. Bright eyes and a glossy coat glowed with healthy radiance. The other horses stamped their skeletal feet in jealousy. “Hush. Your time will come. Take these
horses up for your fellow creatures,” I said to Beaumains. “When they have finished their work, have them ready to ride at my command.” I mounted Plum and looked up at the rocky ceiling. “Let's raise the roof, Plum old thing,” I said. “Full gallop.”

Up we flew, Plum's hooves pounding at the earth, out from the depths of Hell, smashing up through Morgan's castle, then higher still, into the dark skies of Annwn. Here one could see the full extent to which her realm had extended. But my staff were already hard at work, pushing the power of Annwn back to where it belonged, restoring the Otherworld that still lay beneath, like the dormant ground of winter awaiting the first touch of spring.

Plum galloped on through the sky. Down below us I saw Perceval, stumbling through a forest that was blooming into life all around him. Yet wherever he stepped, the wasteland still held sway, as if he were enclosed in his own black bubble of desolation. I set Plum down on the path amid a blossoming patch of bluebells. Ahead of Perceval, there moved an object not unlike the Grail. But from this angle I could see it was just a model, a wooden replica carried by two living dead creatures, gleefully leading Sir Perceval on a wild goose chase. I stood in their path and they stopped in their tracks, caught in the act.

“Well?” I said. “What have you got to say for yourselves?”

“Master,” said one, looking at his feet.

“Master,” said the other, shrugging rotting shoulders. Aspects of their appearance were familiar, and I knew that these culprits had once been Geraint the Gatekeeper, and you, Gwion, although you will thankfully have no memory of it.

“Get yourselves to Lower Annwn, and we'll say no more about it,” I said.

The two of them sank apologetically down through the forest floor, just as Perceval, worn and weary, fell upon the false Grail like a pauper on a crust. At his embrace the dead wood broke apart, and the look in his eyes spoke of a heart about to do likewise.

“Please, Merlin,” he said. “If you have the real Grail, take me to it.”

“Why?”

“It's my quest. It always has been, yet I'm cursed to be its keeper, or its seeker, never its achiever.”

“The Grail is not the quest of a knight, Perceval. The Grail serves a servant.”

Perceval squinted at me. “Lucas? Is that you?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. And in that moment my true self was revealed to him, and the black bubble surrounding him burst, flowers flourishing at his feet.

“Come along,” I said. “There is work to be done.”

“The Eternal Quest?” he said.

“The end of it,” I said. “You might call it the Quest to end all Quests.”

“Count me in,” said Perceval, and he got up onto Plum behind me. “Where are the others?”

“One thing at a time, Perceval,” I said.

†

Spring had not yet reached the desert where the Questing Beast chivvied Sir Pellinore up and down the endless sands. I set Plum down at the foot of a dune and alighted. Pellinore skidded down from the top and came to a stop. Behind him, the Beast and its rider did likewise. “Herne the Hunter,” said Pellinore, his voice parched and panting. “You summoned this Questing Beast of burden. End it now. Destroy it, before it destroys me.”

“The man is master of the quest; the quest is not master of the man,” I said.

“Sounds very quotable. Who said that?”

“You did.”

“All the same, a vow is a vow. And I swore to master this Beast.”

“Then master it. Look behind you.” Pellinore turned. “The Beast stopped running when you did.”

Pellinore walked towards the Questing Beast. It squared up to him, hissing through its snake jaws, poised pounce-ready on lion haunches. But Pellinore hissed right back at it, holding its serpentine stare. The Beast retreated, cowed and submissive. The creature riding it dismounted and scurried to my side. In one bound Pellinore was up on the Beast's back.

“Ha! You're right, Herne!” he said. “You haven't seen a butler round about these parts, have you? Goes by the name of Lucas. Seem to remember seeing him just before I came to this place. What
is
this place, by the way?”

“Hell. Though not for much longer, I am pleased to say. But as for Sir Lucas the butler, I regret to inform you that he is no longer with us.”

“Pity,” said Pellinore. “Splendid fellow. You two would've got on.”

“I'm sure we would, Pellinore.”

“So what now?” said Perceval. “Plum here is champing at the bit.”

“We're almost ready,” I said.

Spreading over the horizon, shimmering like an oasis, the regeneration of the Otherworld swept across the desert, returning it to the fertile land of legend. Almost. But not quite. The restoration would not be complete until everything that had passed through the portal between worlds had
been returned, and the door sealed up once more. Or, as I preferred to call it, item three on the agenda.

I stretched out with my mind for the breach between the Otherworld and the real world beyond, pulling it towards me until the vortex spun before us like a horizontal funnel. “Staff!” I said. The creatures rose up out of the earth at my command, mounted on the skeleton horses of the army of the dead. Since I had left them, my staff's appearance had improved even more, the balance of their condition tipping away from the dead and towards the living. Someone who now looked a lot more like Owen rode up to my side and presented me with a sword, shining and new, sheathed in a temporary scabbard. I hid it inside my cloak, and inspected my strange companions. What a sight we made. A newly minted magician and a knight sharing a steed, leading an army of fifty of the living-dead on skeleton horses, accompanied by a knight riding a Beast that could not decide if it were snake, leopard, lion or stag. Such a rag-tag band of the broken and the mended were entirely appropriate for the work ahead.

“Follow me,” I said, and led them out of the Otherworld.

 

We emerged from the breach between worlds on the West Wales coast, precisely one second after I had stepped into it with the body of Sir Pellinore. I consulted my notebook. The next page informed me that Morgan was still savouring her triumph over King Arthur back at the stadium. Well, let her enjoy it while she may. It would give me just enough time to make my preparations.

I divided my domestic army into two equal units. The first, under the leadership of Pellinore, were tasked with rounding up all the dragons, demons, and chaotic creatures of the Otherworld and herding them back into the portal. “Consider it done, Herne,” said Pellinore, sending the Questing Beast springing up over the headland. “Now, the first rule of beast herding is, always work as a team. Remember, there's no ‘I' in dragon.” The rest of his words were lost in the yelping and baying coming from the belly of his steed as Pellinore led his crew of skeletal horses and living-dead horsemen in a wild hunt across the sky.

The second unit would follow Perceval and myself. The magical energy that streamed up out of the portal had changed in colour with our return. It now possessed a light freshness that took the edge of apocalypse out of the air, the effects of my staff's spring clean of Hell following in our wake. As we flew, I could see the difference it made to the ground
below. The recreated Camelot was rubbling gently back into the earth. The town of Cardigan reassembled in the right place, the enchanted, sleeping people sitting up and rubbing their eyes. Everywhere the devastation wrought by the outpourings of the Otherworld was being undone, reversing the end of the world. Ahead of us, to the east, the darkness still held sway over Cardiff. I spurred Plum onwards.

I have no idea what history Cardiff prison has known in the subject of escaped convicts. But I think it is safe to assume it has never held any fugitive quite like the one known only as Sir Kay. I instructed Perceval and the others to wait for me while I teleported directly into his cell, along with Plum and a spare skeletal steed.

Kay was sitting at a small desk, working in longhand on a great sheaf, the floor covered with balls of scrunched-up paper. Piles of prison library books covered both the upper and lower bunks of his bed, and possibly his cellmate. He was so engrossed in his work that he did not notice my sudden visitation.

“Kay,” I said. “I am here to end your incarceration.”

“You've completely interrupted my stream of thought,” he said, pausing his pen. “My prison diary,
Sentence by Sentence
. Only a working title.”

“Very droll.”

Kay turned to face me and his mouth opened in amazement. “Lucas?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I've been promoted. It's time to go.”

Kay looked around, taking in myself, Plum, and the skeleton horse in his cell.

“I can't,” he said. “I'm better off here. They found that dead body, Lucas, as well as my
Chronicles
. They know what really happened.”

“Yes, they do.”

“I never meant to disobey Arthur's orders. But after I'd finished the
History
cover-story, I had nothing left to write. So I went back to the
Chronicles
and started again.” He smiled, weakly. “Yet another draft. Arthur's going to kill me.”

“King Arthur has other things on his mind,” I said. “Besides, I have an idea for a new story. One with a better ending to any we have known.”

“Why don't you write it?” said Kay, but without malice.

“It requires an expert hand.”

Kay picked up his pen and tucked it behind his ear. He pushed back the chair and stood up. “Better stop distracting me so I can make a start then, eh?”

“Your steed awaits,” I said.

“What,
that
steed?”

“Yes, Kay.”

Using the bed as a mounting block, Kay got on the horse, wincing a little. “Bit bony.”

“Its gaunt aspect is compensated for by other qualities,” I said.

“Such as?”