by Vox Day
They both fell silent as the two angels alighted in front of them. “Behold, Nimue’s Mirror,” said the lord archangel. He seemed to be in a particularly good mood, probably, Holli thought, since he was getting out of the embattled monastery for once. It suddenly occurred to her that they must be his first visitors in a long, long time. His first visitors who weren’t trying to stick a flaming sword through him, anyhow.
“It’s lovely,” she said, hoping she sounded suitably impressed.
“It’s also much deeper than it looks. Are you going to leave your mortal here to enjoy the view, or is his presence vital to your purpose? He certainly doesn’t look like the one destined to take up and wield Caliburn again. But then, I suppose appearances can be deceiving. And he is young. Still, what a privilege to witness this moment!”
Oh dear. Holli realized that the poor archangel was under the impression that Derek was, like, Arthur’s long-lost heir or something, destined to take up the sword and free England again. “Are there any prophecies, or whatever, about Excalibur? I mean, Caliburn?”
“Well, not as such, no, although there are certainly many about Arthur himself. The once and future king, that sort of thing, don’t you know? They primarily suggest that he shall rise again and free Britain from the pagans, and there can be no doubt that Britain is much in need of saving.” He peered uncertainly at Derek. “I must confess, I would not have expected its rightful bearer to come from the Colonies, though.”
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Holli looked at Khasar, who shrugged helplessly. Well, the poor dear would find out soon enough. And they were trying to save Britain, kind of, even if it wasn’t in exactly the manner that the archangel was probably thinking.
It did not take them long to make their way down the hillside. There was no path, but the knee-high grass offered little resistance to their progress. Once Holli slipped, and only averted a clumsy fall by using her wings. She was really getting rather good with them, she thought proudly. After a five-minute’s walk across the valley floor, they reached the sandy shores of the peaceful lake. Nimue’s Mirror was, as its name suggested, as still as glass; not even a hint of a breeze disturbed the calm blue waters.
“So, the sword is underwater?” Holli asked. “And will this keeper just let us have it? And what do you mean by keeper, anyway?”
“I don’t know if he will or not. As for the keeper, he is a child of God, like the rest of us.”
Holli would have liked to get a more informative answer out of the archangel, but Khasar seemed unconcerned and was already wading into the water. “Wait, what about Derek? He can’t breathe underwater!” Actually, Holli wasn’t entirely sure that she could—no, that was stupid. Just walk shadow, doorknob, the water isn’t really there.
“He only has to hold his breath and swim to the bottom. You’ll see. It’s perfectly safe.”
All right then. “You have to hold your breath and swim down as deep as you can go. According to what the archangel is telling us, there’s some kind of air pocket or something so you’ll be able to breathe okay.”
“Swim down to what?”
“I have no idea. Something that looks like it’s big enough to hold a sword, I guess.”
“Actually, there can’t be too much on the bottom of the lake anyhow,” Derek said. He stripped down to his underwear unselfconsciously, and she looked away. “If it was hard to find, they would have said something, I suppose. Hey, I can swim all right, but if I get stuck, pull me up fast, will you?”
“Yeah, sure,” Holli said quickly. He didn’t seriously think she’d leave him to drown, did he? Then, after a moment’s thought, she realized that a few weeks ago, she just might have. Not intentionally, of course. “Don’t worry about it. Oh, and there’s, like, some kind of keeper for the sword or something, but the archangel says he knows it, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
Derek froze as he stepped into the lake and turned towards the sound of her voice. “Not exactly a jacuzzi here. Oh well. Keeper of the sword? What kind of keeper?”
“He didn’t say. A child of God.”
“Oh, well, it can’t be that bad then, I suppose. Let’s do it—holy mother church, it’s cold!” he shouted as the water reached past his waist. Bracing himself, he leaped into the air and plunged into the water with an audible splash. Holli, safely immaterial, dove in behind him and followed his long white figure as he quickly stroked his way down towards the lake bottom. Far ahead, down through the murk, she could see Khasar and the archangel standing in front of an arch of some kind.
But then Derek turned around and started swimming back up to the surface. She quickly joined him there as he tread water. “Did you see it?”
“See what? I didn’t see anything, except a couple of fish. Man, the cold kind of took my breath away. It’s not so bad now, though.”
“You didn’t see kind of an arch thing?”
“An arch?”
“Yeah, it was a grey stone thing.”
Holli was puzzled by the blank look on his face. Then a thought struck her. “Hang on a second, stay there.” She slipped into septus, forgetting that she hadn’t bothered to strip down. She panicked for a second at the weight of her saturated robes dragging her down below the surface, then laughed at herself and relaxed as she quickly returned to quintus and the drowning weight disappeared.
Then she blinked at the sight of the reappeared arch. Hmm, well, that would be the problem, wouldn’t it. No wonder Derek hadn’t seen it; it wasn’t meant to be seen by mortal eyes. Or material eyes, anyhow. She switched back to septus to be sure, and the arch disappeared. Kicking hard against the weight of her sodden robes, she surfaced and blew the water out her nose.
“What happened to you?”
“You can’t see it when you’re human. I mean, you won’t be able to see it. I’ll stay visible and lead you to it, all right?” She frowned. He was looking away from her. “What’s the matter.”
“Um, the white… it’s kind of see-through when it’s wet.”
Oh! She covered herself reflexively, then laughed with embarrassment as she went into tertius. Miraculously dry and weightless again, but visible to mortals this time, she beckoned at Derek to follow her, then flew down through the water as if it was not there, which, for her, it wasn’t.
The bottom was about fifty feet down and Holli wondered if perhaps she should just grab him and drag him down. But he flipped over and smoothly kicked his way down towards the stone arch that stood at the front of the large underwater edifice. It reminded her a little of the castles you see in aquariums, although she hoped to never see a crab big enough to make its home in a structure this size. She stopped when she reached Khasar and the archangel, who were standing on either side of the arch, but Derek, with a good head of steam going, swam right past them all and into the very center of the arch.
Holli blinked. One moment, Derek was there, a long white blur. The next, he was gone! Vanished! She glanced worriedly at the archangel.
“Where’d he go?”
“He’s perfectly safe, I’m sure.” The archangel was unconcerned. “What were you expecting, an underground city? Go on, go on.”
Khasar was the first to step through the arch, followed a moment later by Holli and the archangel of the abbey. Holli clapped her hands with delight. Why, they weren’t on the bottom of a lake at all! They were standing in a narrow chamber with a high, domed ceiling and walls of dark green marble. Rich, brightly colored tapestries decorated the walls, woven with dashing scenes of lords and ladies dancing, feasting, hunting and generally looking like they were having a grand old time. She was so distracted by the unexpectedly lovely room that she barely noticed the regal woman before whom Derek was standing in nothing more than a pair of navy blue boxers.
She was strikingly beautiful, even seated as she was at a loom, from which descended a gorgeous purple cloth. Her skin was white as the chalky cliffs that they’d driven past only ten days ago, and Holli envied the artful way two strands of raven b
lack hair framed either side of her porcelain-perfect face. But her eyes widened with amazement as she looked past Holli, even as she finished saying something to Derek.
“…of course you may not have the sword. Lionel? By all the bones of all the saints, Lionel, that can’t possibly be you! My dear, what have they done to you!”
Holli and Derek both turned around and were surprised to see their guide, the lord archangel, blush a little before hiding behind a courtly, one-legged bow.
“My Lady Nimue, yours is a beauty for the ages. Would that the cruel ravages of Time had treated us all so kindly.” A little more composed, the archangel—Lionel, apparently—drew himself to his full height and cleared his throat. “But what, my dear Lady, are you doing at the bottom of this Lake? Surely you are not the Keeper of Excalibur!”
“No, to be sure, that I am not,” answered the beautiful woman, or angel, as Holli assumed was more likely the case. Clearly she wasn’t anything natural to this world. The Lady’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but she did not press Lionel further on his decrepit appearance. “Perhaps you have not heard, but Gloriana is no more. When I heard Maomoondagh took her, I thought it best to take flight myself before he decided to add another queen to his collection. I had thought that this place would provide safe refuge, being known to few and forgotten by all, although it appears that I was wrong. The Keeper is no more; I banished him.”
“From this place?” asked Lionel.
“From this world.” Clearly, the Lady was not one with whom to trifle. Appearances, Holli thought, could be misleading.
“And the sword?” Khasar asked quickly.
“Still here, in the chamber beyond. I have not touched it. “
“You need not fear our coming, Lady,” Lionel was quick to assure her. “Maomoondagh will receive no word from anyone here, except the end he so richly deserves. Have you heard aught of Morganna?”
“I neither know nor care.” She glanced at Derek, sniffed, and returned her attention to Lionel. “Surely this cannot be Arthur’s heir! Those tales were naught but fiction, human legend. Hopes and dreams in a dark night. There was never a child. There is no truth to the legends.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about any heir, all right, but we kind of need Excalibur,” Derek broke in, and for the first time, Holli realized that he could see and hear everything that was going on in this unusual place. “We’re going to take out this Maomoondagh dude, and I’m told we need this special sword to do it. From what we figured, there’s no sword more special than Excalibur.”
Nimue’s thin, perfectly arched eyebrows rose visibly, and for the first time, she looked at Derek as if he was an individual and not a strange, intrusive water bug. “I do not think Excalibur is that sword for which you quest, young mortal.”
“Actually, we have good reason to suspect it may, in fact, be exactly what the purposes require,” said Khasar, stepping forward. “Maomoondagh is no angel. The blade which defended the Isles against the sea wolves would surely suffice to strike him down as well.”
“That’s preposterous! No angel?” The Lady scoffed. “Do you suggest that he is a mere mortal? I can assure you otherwise. And not even a Child of the Twice-Fallen could dream of wielding such might as him, not for so long! Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of spirits?”
“The archon Khasarotjofee, at your service. Or Khasar, if you please. And Lady, while I cannot tell you exactly what Maomoondagh is, I can tell you with certainty that he is no angel, Divine or Fallen. My word may not convince you, but know that I am of the order of Prince Uriel and I am here at his command.”
“I see. A shadowstalker.” The beautiful queen, who, Holli realized, had to be the legendary Lady of the Lake, did not seem pleased, but she sat back at her loom nevertheless. “I see, but I do not understand. I can’t see how this is possible.”
“There is reason to suspect Titania is behind recent events,” said Khasar. “It has long been rumored that it was she who engineered Oberon’s fall. It is possible that Oberon’s escape may have caused her to induce Maomoondagh to eliminate Gloriana.”
Nimue’s nostrils flared with anger and her alabaster cheeks colored, just a little. “Oberon is free? Your words have a ring of truth to them, archon, for I would put very little past my thrice-cursed sister. Next to Morgana, she is the most given to intrigue. But what interest could these Isles hold for Heaven and her King today? Why should Prince Uriel concern himself over this poor fallen land?”
“Because seeing it fall to Moloch’s daughter is in no one’s interest, Lady Nimue, least of all Heaven’s.”
The Lady tapped her fingers on her loom. It was an exquisite piece of machinery; no doubt it had produced the wonderful tapestries which adorned the chamber. She sucked in her cheeks as she contemplated Derek, which made her finely sculpted cheekbones even more striking. He was, thought Holli, admittedly less than heroic in appearance, with his tall scrawny frame exposing entirely too much skin of an unhealthy pallid color that managed to simultaneously be like and almost entirely unlike the snowy purity of the Lady herself.
The Lady frowned, pursed her lovely red mouth, then bowed her head and acceded to their request. “Very well, then you shall have the sword, young man. My time is past, this matter is not one for me to judge. Go, into the next room, there is no one there to stop you. Lionel, you will stay with me, I pray. I have no interest in these darkling times, let us speak of nobler days, when all was not darkness and shadow on deeper shadow.”
Chapter 29
Shattered Dreams
Therefore, from a primary iconism and through a perceptual process already imbued with inferences, we come to an identity (if not final, at least temporarily established) between perceptual judgement and immediate object, and between immediate object and the first nucleus of meaning associated with a representamen.
—Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus
“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Derek told Holli as he opened the door that Lady Nimue told them led to the chamber in which Excalibur was kept. “I mean, I don’t see how this place fits beneath the lake—the ceiling is almost as high as the lake is deep—but at least we don’t have to mess with the keeper. After you.”
“Thanks!” Holli was surprised, until it occurred to her that perhaps Derek hadn’t suddenly learned his manners. “Hey, you go first!”
“Forget it, I’m not the one who can go hyperspace whenever I want. You go first!”
It wasn’t very gentlemanly, but she couldn’t deny that his argument was persuasive. “Fine,” she snapped. She stepped carefully into the room, and was quickly lost in the darkness. “I can’t see anything!”
“You’re in septus,” Khasar called out from behind her.
She shook her head. Stupid. How did angels ever keep straight where they were? This shadow-walking wasn’t hard to do, but it was hard to master. She went to quintus and gasped. Not twenty feet in front of her was a tall and terrible being, all covered in armor and standing with his hands folded on the hilt of his drawn sword.
“I thought the Lady said there wasn’t a Keeper in here,” she hissed over her shoulder.
“She did!”
“Then what’s that?”
“What’s what?”
But even as Derek spoke, a golden light began to flicker all around the floor of the chamber. It grew in intensity, rising up the walls, which proved to be decorated with intricate carvings of flowers. There were roses, daisies, bluebells and a hundred other flowers that Holli couldn’t identify. They practically leaped out at you in the shadows cast by the golden light, the overall effect was much starker than the Lady’s brilliant tapestries, but it was beautiful in its own way. Glancing back at the great knight, who still had not moved, Holli noticed that similar roses were embossed on the breastplate of his white armor.
“Hey, there’s the sword, behind him!” Derek was right. Excalibur hung, unsupported, in the air, surrounded by a silver glow. He began to walk gingerly around the motionless
Keeper. Holli wasn’t sure who screamed louder, her or Derek, when a massive white-armored hand suddenly came down and blocked his path.
“You may not pass,” said a deep voice that rumbled up from one of the less accessible parts of the Abyss.
“Um, the Lady said you, ah, wouldn’t mind.”
“The Lady is nothing to me. You shall not pass.”
“So, what now?” Derek called out, his eyes never leaving the Keeper. “Khasar, can you take this guy down, or distract him or something?”
“I don’t think I’m supposed to,” Khasar answered. “That’s supposed to be the hero’s role, as I understand these things.”
“Do I look like a freaking hero to you? I’m buck naked except for my boxers, and I’m not about to fight a ten foot-tall armored giant whose sword is bigger than me, all right? It’s your show, homes, you figure it out.”
Holli had an inspiration. “Keep him busy, Khasar. We’ll take care of the sword.” She whispered into Derek’s ear. “I’ll help Khasar distract him, then you slip around behind and grab it.”
He looked uncertainly around the chamber. It was just wide enough for him to slide past, as long as the huge Keeper was pushed completely off to one side. “Why don’t you just go through him and grab it yourself?”
“Because I don’t think he’s mortal, so he might not be limited to this shadow. He can probably see me.”
“That makes a weird kind of sense. Okay, just don’t let him cut me in half with that thing. Or step on me, for that matter.”
“I’ll do my best.” She nodded to Khasar, who without warning, took on an Aspect of a gilded knight, identical to the white-armored Keeper except there were lions on his shining breastplate instead of roses. The big archon stepped forward in challenge.
“You may not pass.”
“We’ll see about that.” Khasar replied as he drew his own sword, a gleaming silver blade, and without warning swung it at the Keeper’s neck. Faster than Holli would have thought possible, the Keeper reversed his grip and brought his sword up to block it. The clang echoed through the chamber and then the battle was on. The din was tremendous as the two mighty knights battled away, hammers and tongs, neither one moving nor giving an inch. Then Khasar seemed to slip, and the Keeper began to press his attack, forcing the archon to retreat towards the right wall.
