The King's Gold (45 page)

Perhaps this is as it should be. I have not decided yet, if we should scorn the false and absurd stories of knight-errantry, Vulcans,
nosferatu,
Italian witches, poltergeists, dragons, gods, melancholic werewolves.

But I know that I will need these tales to help me through one last adventure, at least.

There has been a rumor that has lately reached me, of a Guatemalan man who was seen on the moors of the Scottish Highlands one week ago. It is said he is bearded, and of few words. He uses a walking stick, and his face is gaunt and pale; he carries a large, roving library in a rucksack, composed, in part, of the biographies of the South American radical Che Guevara. Other parts of his collection consist of valuable medieval texts, some of which tell of a Druid named Merlin who went insane in the forest, as well as of a sword that sang like a nightingale when it swung mightily through the heathens’ battlefield.

“I’ve got spies north of Edinburgh,” Tomas de la Rosa told me last night. “Seems your boyfriend there’s gone whacked, cleared out Sotheby’s book collection, then raced around the British and Trinity College Libraries. He’s on the trail for Arthur’s sword—the one Che Guevara’s said to have gotten his hands on in the fifties. But I think Marco and his sister—a low-living, hell-catting,
diabolical
shaman-witch who would’ve gotten burned in any other right-thinking century—might be following him. I’ll tag along to make sure you don’t wind up mugged in a pub and wake up with a Union Jack tattooed on your behind.”

“
I
should probably go with you, dearest,” Manuel interrupted, his ears turning a vibrant shade of pink.

“Well,
I’m
going with her,” Yolanda and my mother said, simultaneously, while standing as far away from de la Rosa as I was close. “She’ll die in the gutter without me. Creature, sweetheart, you can’t even
think
of leaving without my help...Lola, remember what happened in the jungle, the crypt, underneath Siena,
Rome
—you can barely even tie your own shoes for God’s sake, let alone navigate the isles without a proper guide—”

“I’m going by myself,” I said.

Here in the shadowed corner of my defunct Lion, I put down
Dracula
and stand up. I must escape Long Beach, and quickly, before my entire clan tracks me down to London like an affectionate if more voluble version of the Furies, and makes a disaster of my mission. I walk out of the bookstore, lock the door, and do not look back. As I move down the soot-black street, I am wearing canvas pants and a leather jacket, and my rucksack is filled with necessities: a rare 1712 edition of
Lancelot du Lac,
a sixteenth-century hand-lettered copy of the
Mabinogion,
the apocryphal and very good with dust jacket
Diaries of Vivien,
and a fudgy Xerox of the letters of an unrequited sweetheart of Che Guevara. I believe Erik would have chosen these same works; being so much in love, I have learned his readerly inclinations.

There is still in me a shaken faith in these precious aids, despite their terrific failings: fantasy, adventure, the word. The word! My whole life! But even if these book gifts go wrong, even if I am left alone with no language and no other tools than my love and my many moral flaws, I can still make this incomprehensible world tell me where he is. With my quick, quick eye, I will scan its traveling borders, the fading footprints in its mud.

With my keen ear I will decipher the plastic patois of its grieving denizens and detect the murderous histories that alter with each teller. This rough, whirling planet will divulge its moving meanings if I press my fingers to its hidden braille. Some text or erasure will show me the way. I will find Erik Gomara and bring him back home.

Copyright © 2008 by Yxta Maya Murray.
All rights reserved.

First Edition

HarperCollins Publishers
10 East 53
^rd
Street, New York, NY 10022

Rebus by Yxta Maya Murray

Map of Italy and calligraphy hand-lettered by John Del Gaizo

Book designed by Joy O’Meara

Cover design by Mary Schuck

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN-11: 0060891084
ISBN-13: 978-0060891084
Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader April 2008 ISBN: 978-0061644467

Great thanks to my husband, Andrew Brown, and also Rene Alegria, Melinda Moore, Fred MacMurray, Maggie MacMurray, Marta Van Landingham, Edward St. John, Shana Kelly, Virginia Barber, and Kirsten Dhillon.

YXTA MAYA MURRAY is a winner of the Whiting Award, and the author of
The Conquest
. The King’s Gold is the second novel in her acclaimed Red Lion Series, after The Queen Jade. She is a professor at Loyola Law School and lives in Los Angeles.

The Queen Jade (Red Lion Series Book 1)

The Conquest

What It Takes to Get to Vegas

Locas