The Grail War

by Richard Monaco

  “Why are you going there?” he simply asked.

  Broaditch shook his head.

  “I do not entirely know,” he half-explained. “But I think I have been called.”

  “You think? But for what reason, Broaditch?” Valit was concerned. “How can you escape the fire? See how it advances …” He cocked his head, almost smiling. “You said there’d be more than riches! What?”

  “I like you, lad, after all’s said and done. I know not what courage is, but I must tell you, go on without fear if you can, because your fate will prove the same in any case … And now I can ill spare time for talk.”

  Perhaps, he thought, courage is more than riches.

  He hugged the strange boy to him and impulsively kissed his forehead. Then turned and went at a rapid trot until the clouds swallowed him up. Love well, he thought, the image of his family still before him. Because they’d all lived, life had met in himself and them and he knew he could bear that lightly into the smoldering eye of death (where a sack of gold would anchor him to doom) and beyond … only that beyond …

  Holding the smooth, time-worn spear, he went rapidly down into acrid clouds, the ground seeming to jump wildly as the lightning intensified. The winds sucked out his clothes and fluttered his beard. The echoing thunder rolled toward him. It would be night soon. A stray spatter of rain and light hail clattered around him …

  Lohengrin felt weak and faintly nauseous. He’d propped himself against the curving, padded wall, bare face turned in to the muffling hangings that reeked of perfumes. The blood had caked and dried along his neck. His legs were doubled up, knees touching his chestplate.

  The wheeled fortress was banging and pitching heavily now. Clinschor was gripping the silks, supporting himself by the open slit, rapping out orders to someone. It seemed as though he were speaking into a furnace. Incredible that people lived out there, Lohengrin dimly thought. He had difficulty paying attention to anything; he’d never felt so drained and hopeless and (though he would not have used the word) degraded. What had happened with the chanting left him feeling violated and apathetic, as though the other had somehow sucked energy from him in a ritual of tainted intimacy.

  He shut his eyes but didn’t like the darkness of himself. He hardly noticed the sweetish, heavy incenses overpowering the bitter, biting tone of the smoke.

  He was thinking, with a certain petulance, that he’d be damned if he’d live to please this man … He contemplated some obscure revenge … He was lord Lohengrin and not to be treated in such a fashion … Great Master Clinschor didn’t expect to be defied. They all feared him. Well, they’d see something, then … Why, if he hadn’t been hit on the skull by that mad boy … and if his eye were better, none of this Oriental mumbo-jumbo would have affected him … He nodded slightly as his aimless mind drifted from thought to thought … He was no longer impressed, he assured himself … all fine speeches, but what did they come to …? Not much … great armies … and the Grail … Grail … destroying everything, wasting everything … he could weep … waste … waste … and for the sparkling nonsense his father and the other village idiots dreamed up …! Oh, a fine thing … a fine thing … great Lord Master wizard ball-less … As soon as his strength came back, he’d see … he’d see a few things, the Lord Master would … This was Lohengrin here, not those other girlish fools he surrounded himself with …

  Suddenly the vehicle tilted wildly and his stomach spun and he spewed sickness without moving his head, staining the silks. He was coughing, choking, still without moving, shivering a little.

  I’ll show that bastard … I'll settle the great magnificence …

  His head lolled and he kept shivering. He wondered if he were falling sick with fever.

  They were stopped. Clinschor was shouting into the flames and smoke.

  “Drive on! Drive on! This is the right road!”

  Faintly from without came the words, “The wheel, Lord Master …”

  “Are you hopeless imbeciles? Must I do everything myself? Drive! Drive! Drive!”

  He reeled back a step and pounded his fists into the padded wall. The metal faintly rang.

  Fearful he’ll be burned like a capon, is he? The great fart-noise, Lohengrin thought, miserably.

  A moment later, to heaving and curses and shouts, the iron ball of coach humped forward and continued its laboring, twisting climb.

  Clinschor went back to poring over the map; then he rushed to peer at the mounting inferno. He muttered something as Lohengrin came suddenly alert, nerves wincing in fear, afraid he’d begin the terrible chanting again. He whimpered faintly, unconsciously.

  “You’ll feel better after a time,” the master told him. “You adjust.” His magnetic, hollow, flashing eyes held him, and for the moment Lohengrin was calm. “In any event, you have little choice. You have been started on the process — no turning back.” He shook his head almost primly. “You will be changed.” The stooping, pale man in the dull-gray tunic smiled with what seemed a tic, but the immense voice rumbled on, masterful, profound, ultimately certain, and the eyes were now unwavering penetration above the absurd, upcurled moustaches.

  Lohengrin was sorry and a little shaky again once the voice stopped talking to him, filling him with its own somber, resonant strength. The timbre and phrasing, the flow from murmuring thunder to mounting sweep, to flashing bolts, stilled his own thoughts and left him vaguely, childishly ashamed of his carping, petty little notions … It was more than just trust … much more than sincere faith, it was here and present, it was happening while the voice spoke and you moved in the actual flow …

  He shifted his body experimentally and found he was slightly better. He was sure he had no fever now.

  “My personal guard has been committed to battle,” Clinschor said, perhaps to himself only. He’d shut one eye in contemplation of his tented fingers. “The way to the stronghold is open. This is the hour!”

  Clinschor leaned back in his seat looking meditatively at Lohengrin. He munched a piece of dried fruit. Smiled distantly, eyes suddenly remote and peaceful …

  “I never married, you know,” he rumbled, quietly. “A man like myself is denied ordinary life. But I took it as consecration. I am like a priest, in many respects …

  He opened one hand in a rueful, self-conscious gesture. “I often dream of a peaceful old age. Once the realm is firmly established I’ll give place to younger men. That is how things should be: the young follow the old, spring follows winter. The strong supplant the weak …” He gave a meager sort of smile to Lohengrin who was trying to move into this mood with the Lord Master. “I’ll live in quiet and meditation … yes … I only took on these powers because no other could do it. I don’t love this work, young man.” Shook his head. “Not in the least. But it must be done. I was chosen, you see, as I’ve chosen you.”

  “By what or whom?” Lohengrin asked.

  “By power itself. By the need … My sweetest recollections are of my youth … My father never understood my ideas. He had a narrow view … But my mother was very intelligent. We would talk for hours …” He smiled with fond indulgence. “I recall once reciting a poem I’d devised …” Shook his head. “Oh, I was filled with great feelings. I told of the holy wars … in very good style for a youth … yes …” He shut his eyes, the smile flickering still. “I had ever a gift for expressing myself … yes … I want to create gardens filled with herbs and great orchards. Once we’ve fixed up the world I intend to set thousands upon thousands of men at work upon that task … yes …” He rested his arms peacefully across his chest. “Men will live in these gardens. All need for grim and dark castles will be past. Such places are not healthy. I’ve looked into these matters. Foul humors gather indoors … and men should eat only fruits and uncooked vegetables. This helps develop the spirit … It will be paradise regained for those strong and vital enough to merit it …” Shut his eyes. “Yes … men and women will live in nakedness again eating only the pure fruits of the earth.”


  Lohengrin frowned.

  “Naked?” he wondered. “Like a whore-stew?”

  Clinschor’s dreamy eyes flickered with momentary impatience.

  “This will be a pure race,” he replied. “All the scum will be purged from it.” His eyes now stared, lidded and complacent, across the swaying interior. “Sex as we know it will have little place there. But the serf will breed and be kept alive to tend the gardens, of course …”

  “But won’t everyone die out in time if there’s no sex?” Lohengrin didn’t quite know whether his master was mad or subtle, at this point. Clinschor brushed him aside.

  “When I was a boy,” he said, tilting his head until it rested on the back of his chair, “my happiest hours were spent in the garden. Time seemed to pass so sweet and slow there.” He sighed. Murmured, “This whole land will eventually become a single, sunny garden with magnificent, beautiful people walking along the fragrant, cunning paths … singing and rejoicing together at the mystical wonder of life …” Sighed.

  “But, master,” Lohengrin put in, frowning, “You swore to sacrifice this country as an example and — ”

  “This will all come later. The two things are the same.”

  Lohengrin was bemused.

  “But what about nothingness?” he demanded. “Hmm?”

  “Nothingness. You showed me that we’re all nothingness. Why do you talk about gardens and … you know religion is superstition yet you sound like a priest, I — ”

  Clinschor was frowning, serious.

  “Christianity will be stamped out!” he declared. “It’s political and senseless. But never imagine that I deny God! God is the power of life, young man. The law of God is to destroy all weakness, burn away weeds and filth and grow a divine man! Yes … this power is beyond your personal nothingness, Duke Lohengrin. To grow my garden I needs must turn it under with a ruthless plow!” He smiled. “Don’t think I am destroying. I am preparing the soil.” He coughed as a stinging draft of smoky air sucked in through the loosely shut window slit where the darkness and fire raged. Lohengrin just stared, uncertain and feeling ill again.

  “But,” he muttered, “there is only nothingness. I have seen — ”

  Clinschor cut in, fixing him with his somber eyes.

  “You,” he told him, “are a cloud of nothing. Like your title, Duke. You are all words, fancies, fears … You see …? But I'll destroy everything else and let the power fill you and possess you!” He smiled and nodded, rhythmically, hypnotically. “Yes … yes … yes … out of nothing all is born, my little Dukeling … yes … yes … yes …

  And then the first blast of sheeting rain slammed and tilted that iron mass, tearing, popping the slit open, pressure and drafts rippled and tugged at the hangings around the interior. The dinning on the metal shell was shockingly loud. Lohengrin went to his hands and knees as the floor swayed and bucked …

  Foaming torrents spilled over the rocky ledges and poured in muddy floods down the slopes. Parsival saw the castle lit by lightning as he came out from under the muffling forest. The winds were still gusting and he cut into them at a half-run. His body shivered. The air was just the wet side of the freezing point. The sky ripped, cracked, hissed, seemed to bend low to pound at him as the earth seemed to dance and stagger. In all his life he’d never known such fury: the rain would veer, spin, and needle straight into him, billow away, feint … pause … cascade …

  Parsival was wading through the great moat’s seething overflow when he spotted the gate. The drawbridge looked to be half-lowered. He put his head down and shouldered into the sucking, twisting, pushing wind that howled and keened through every fractional lull in the thunder. He heard the hollow rattle of his teeth in his head … As the flashes flung shadows around the towers and walls, he was astonished by the size of the place. It was not so big in his memory, though all else was the same.

  He breathed violently and flapped his arms to warm them. Was he going to have to swim in? He was up to his shins in muddy water now. Great streams crashed down from the walls and battlements and slapped into the moat.

  He thought there was just a chance he might reach the end of the bridge with a good jump. He was almost close enough to try when he felt it: the “claws” that had ripped at his heart. They were just touching the outer aura of his power, just maintaining contact, poised, waiting … He felt his pulse quicken and his shivering stopped for the moment.

  He was craning around, but all he could see were bounding and rebounding fragments of torn sky, quaking woods, masses of piled stone, sheets of violent water …

  “Very well, then!” he shouted into the over-roar that blew his muffled words to whispers at his mouth. “I’m here! I’ve returned! Parsival!” Boom! Roar! Hiss! Crash! Howl! “I’m waiting!!”

  Broaditch reached the back of the castle just as the worst of the mad storm hit: clouds mixing with smoke and steam, driving overhead, streaming through the towers.

  He smiled wryly and accepted the fact that a long, massive tree had uprooted and fallen to bridge the rising moat. He raced across the open heath and climbed onto the trunk and (as the wind and sleet mounted to a solid blow) quickstepped across, skidding and slipping and finally diving the last few feet to keep from toppling in …

  Coming back, he realized, watching everything churning to froth, was going to be another tale to tell …

  Huddling close to the fortress wall, stumbling blindly around the periphery, Broaditch began to feel ridiculous again. There was really no proof of anything, and his mind kept wanting to smooth over the past and convert it to coincidence, confusion, dreams … He found his mind preferred even the most terrifying and meaningless horrors of sword, fire, storm, and flood to the inexplicable other worlds … It kept telling him to turn, crawl across that fallen tree and run, hide, survive … find his way home …

  “Home,” a voice said, and he jerked his head around, holding up the spear, looking, thinking, no doubt I spoke aloud just now and knew it not, seeing no one in the multiple crackling blazings.

  His body involuntarily leaped as a bolt shattered a tree near the moat, igniting it into a briefly steaming blaze and showing a shadow in the wall that turned out to be a fracture. He scrambled into it, clambering over wet, fallen blocks and soon found himself out of the rain in a vaulted passageway dimly, fleetingly lit by the unceasing flashes filtering in from high window slashes.

  Being inside, he thought, he might as well go on as not, after coming so far, senseless as it no doubt would prove … The thunder was steady, hollow, muted … Even if he beheld a miracle a minute, he mused, he would still find space to doubt between them … The fact was, to his mind and feelings, the only real things were these cold stones, his soaked, chilled body, the howling night … almost, because he sensed something that he kept saying no to … something … formless … tidal, that worked through all the chinks in all the solid blocks …

  He accepted being afraid and in doubt since there wasn’t any choice except to curl up helpless and cower in emptiness. He gasped in a deep, deep breath.

  There are no half-measures in life, he explained to himself, no practice. It's all to a finish every time …

  He went on, steadily, taking a turn … another … The bluish flickers faded now as he arrived at a branching: one passage slanted down; the other rose and curved inward. He had no basis for choice. So he grinned. No more basis than for being here at all. And he'd never seen this forking in any visions. But he wasn't about to hesitate. That would finish it right here. He flourished the spear (for no particular reason) and plunged into the rising right-hand passage, into pitch blackness, holding the weapon out before him, tapping floor and walls as he went up and around and on past side tunnels and cross branches, grimly pursuing the irrevocability of it …

  How long have I been in here? Broaditch asked himself. Time was a blankness. And when he saw the warm glow of light up ahead, he was positive (in a mix of anxiety and relief) that there were others in this deserted place — eve
n if it had to be the bearded mage, after all … or worse … At least there would be guidance, however ambiguously expressed in mystical hintings. He allowed himself a mild smile.

  However, it was an empty chamber shaped like a barrel, and he stooped, checking the ceiling height with his hand. There were three diverging doorways yawning black and vacant in the unwavering light from an immense oil lamp, whose light might burn, he could see, for years unattended.

  So it was all up to nothing again. He squatted, then knelt to rest. His garments were drier. He cocked his head, thinking he heard a voice coming from one of the arches.

  He listened … nothing …

  He sighed. No easy way. He forced himself to get up and march without hesitation for the central passage. Since he considered there was no chance, his only hopeless hope lay in senseless — no, reasonless — decisiveness. His mind, at this point, was slyly entertained. He now assumed he was being watched and was playing to the unseen watchers. At some point they’d appear to help him. Gradually this idea moved toward conviction, except (though underlying everything he did) this belief was unstated and his surface thoughts kept denying it.

  The way was narrowing steadily until he had to twist his heavy shoulders sideways and was trying to convince himself to turn back from moment to moment … but the idea was too disturbing: it snapped the thread he was subliminally following, clutching at … so he pressed on into the gradually funneling tunnel … felt alternately hot and cold, felt both kinds of sweat soaking him, and for the first time he noticed how neutral and pleasant the temperature was in here, not damp or chill, as might be expected … He tapped on with the spear haft …

  He was almost dry, so how long had he been wandering?

  The passageway seemed to curve constantly left, and he was going faster now, on the edge of being frantic, groping ahead with the spear, scraping himself along the rough-cut wall …