Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II

by Richard Monaco

  Howtlande made a squeaking: my blade had pressed against his neck, and blood creased his jowls. “Please,” he begged. “Please, sir. I —”

  “Is there more?”

  “The … the rite was not finished, but I swear I don’t know how the rest goes … Spare me, Parsival, we’ll work hand in hand. I’m a loyal man, sir. A loyal man …” Everyone’s so loyal when you’re armed.

  “I can’t tell you how much that means to me, Howtlande.” I saw flowers move against the wind.

  “If she has not found what she seeks —” The eyes went sly briefly; blood beaded from the slight slash I’d made. “— as I think now, she hasn’t … then she’ll try more ritual. I overheard her telling him the Grail is wedded to your soul, Parsival … and will reveal itself to her witch vision when …” I could see he wanted to husband and trickle information now that the tension had lifted a little. It was too late for that.

  “When?”

  “When you die.”

  He stopped here, or perhaps I wasn’t listening. Gobble, in his tattered gown, and several armored beetles seemed to float towards me.

  And … “Well, well,” I said. “A happy meeting.” My blood-red ruby armor had just arrived, stalking me, blank helmet shut tight. The sword looked keen. When I was seventeen I’d punched a spearpoint through the previous owner’s neck and was baptized into knighthood by the drizzling blood. My first work for King Arthur.

  “I don’t suppose,” I said, “you’ll just take it off?”

  My steel didn’t reply.

  Gobble grinned, rolled his bug-eyes up into his forehead, and began to spin in a circle and mumble a chant while the jolly killer insects spread out, bobbing through the garden like the iron offspring of some strange machine. The mad cripple went faster and faster, a child’s spinning toy. I assumed he was having a fit. Howtlande was crossing himself rapidly in what seemed spiritual excess.

  “He’s doing magic,” he informed me breathlessly.

  My armor charged, sword cocked, just as a pair of dwarves ducked out long enough to loop ax cuts at my bare legs. That set me hopping. Nasty little nits. I hadn’t noticed Howtlande leaping loyally in yet, on any side.

  My armor aimed one for my face. I blocked, then spun aside as a fang-faced midget scuttled by, hacking, petals flying like sweet summer snow. I tried a stab but the shield was up fast and two little killers surfaced at my back. They were all silent; perhaps they were mutes. One nicked my side, but I got off a good backhand and the little arm flickered off and vanished into the shimmering, sun-laced colors with a scream of steel but no other: just a muffled sputter and puff in the little helmet … almost caught a strong downchop from my armor …

  The shield folded and the armor sagged backwards as I got in a good two-handed bang. My specialty. I tried to follow through but the rest of the tiny knights sprang and I batted one in mid-air; four others clutched my legs and nearly chopped me down before I could toss them away. The red armor went to its knees. Gobble danced on sliced flowers until the air stormed with petals. What was supposed to happen?

  Would I drop dead from a curse? Since I really didn’t want to damage the armor overmuch, I carefully bashed the red helmet with my hilt. Whoever was inside said, “Ohhhh …” Howtlande was gone; the remaining dwarves were fleeing or hiding or creeping under the foliage.

  Gobble veered at me like a demented top, screaming in circles, “Smite him, O Powers!”

  The powers were late. I smacked his whizzing sword away and hobbled aside and he fell and went on spinning, rolling through the blossoms. He seemed unable to stop. Plants crackled and whipped and shattered in his path. I watched, fascinated, as he kept rolling away, yelling for Morgana, the Devil, and his master to help him. He spasmed along. Flowers shook further on … then he broke into sight, slamming down the grass … then was gone again, fifty yards off … still yelling … I was amazed. Amazed. Rolled on …

  I stood too long in sword-reach of the red knight and I yelped in shock as I took one in the rear ribs. It felt like a burning torch. I went to my knees, gasping. And there was something else: I felt it, the rest of the magic spell, as if all the rich, bright world was instantly flat and thin as a parchment painting; the dream was pushing through, trying to gather me into it, holding me, soft and strange, tugging me into its dark tide, down into subaqueous landscapes where she waited, phosphorescent, gigantic, commanding, her weird substance dominating in dark currents … When I blinked the two worlds flashed together, overlapped.

  I got my feet under me. Felt the bleeding pulsate. Reversed my sword like a dagger, with both hands. I struggled in the amber of the dream and the towering, naked goddess moved her ineffable and awesome limbs, her hypnotic eyes radiating compassionless love, her voice a soft roar like vertigo: “For love of thee, mortal, I slay thee but I will keep thee forever in my sleep, thy soul shalt not pass from me and we will walk in glowing fields of eternal splendor in the tender twilight that swells, like the unending sea, in forever’s grandeur.”

  Very pretty. Nicely put, and so was the blade that dipped for my heart. I threw myself backwards so violently I sailed into a crest of yellow roses. My pathetic, bloodsoaked loincloth was ripped away. The dream goddess ripped at me too. From my knees, weeping with pain, I slashed free in time to meet my armor face to face but dreamless now. I must have looked like that saint full of arrows you see in every church. I surely felt like him.

  “You son of a bitch,” I managed to snarl.

  The incongruous, impossible voice, tinny, muffled, pitched too high — wrong as the twisted runt in the woman’s gown, wrong as the brass dragon — cried out, “Wait, Parsival, wait! —”

  My full stroke smashed solid on the red steel chest. As hard as I could hit, and no one hits harder. A hot mist of blood puffed out from the rent, like scarlet steam. And I understood and wasn’t sorry until after she’d crashed to earth and the thin wail echoed inside the faceless metal head.

  Blood was like dew here on the white and golden flowers. I knelt, and carefully twisted the helmet off.

  Whatever the plot, whatever the lies, tricks, false traps and real pain, whatever anything . . . magic and dream had stunned and drowned me already and I had to accept it, watching pink froth bubble from the corners of her lips to stain the soft, secret-eyed face, the coppery hair that caught the sun like slow coals in an old fire … Morgana.

  “My God,” I think I said. “My God.”

  It was suddenly so still. I crouched, dressed only in blood, on my knees in the broken garden. Her mouth struggled with words.

  “No,” came from my own mouth, “don’t tell me anything, Morgana.”

  “I … I’m … not …”

  “Oh Lord Jesus,” I said into the darkness of my burning eyes.

  “Not her … not Morgana … sister … sister …”

  “She’s your sister. I see. All right.”

  “Magic … failed … love you …”

  “Please …” I looked at the eyes like secret blue coves where the sun was dying. It was a little late for lies.

  “Failed … love you … Parsival … I like to say it … even now…”

  Nothing mattered, not absurdity, madness, stabbing, paths to blank walls or murky pits or the dark gates of hell … none of it mattered … “Love,” I whispered. “Love.”

  “Sister sent me … to find you … said you … wouldn’t die … not … not die … magic … when I struck you … protect … magic failed … magic …” Then all the words were blood. Time passed. I didn’t look up. She didn’t think I’d die.

  “We should have met another way,” I told the eyes that saw no more. Mine burned with weeping as I stood up. “At a better time.”

  The sun dropped behind the blossom-covered wall like a stone in a pond. Two silly, hopeless, armored shadows stood behind me and I ignored them. She’d tried to warn me, once or twice; and tried to kill me, too, but all in the dream, that is, the dream where no one really lived or died.

&nbs
p; Galahad and Bors; one cleared his throat. Survivors blending together in twilight’s first flowing, noiseless grays.

  “Ran out of dwarves?” I asked, not looking at anybody.

  “They drew back,” Galahad said with a shrug in his voice. “Maybe they lost interest.” Sucked his lips. “Who is she?”

  “A dead lady.”

  “In your armor,” said Bors. “Unheard of. Did she wrest it from you, Parsival?” I’m sure he was grinning malice. I undressed her, as gently as I could. Twice now for the same steel. Twenty years later and a woman this time. “By the time I have this gear on,” I said quietly, “you’d do well to be gone.”

  “What of our bargain?” Galahad fretted.

  “We came to kill this arrogant bastard!” Bors yelled. He had a big forehead and scant locks; I wondered what swelled his skull — not brains. “Not to strike bargains with him!” He was excitable.

  “Maybe the dwarves already have what they came here for,” I suggested. Galahad didn’t like that.

  “Then we’ll take it back from them.”

  I’d heard that one enough. I had the leg pieces on and was struggling with the mail coat. I kept the sword stuck in the earth, half a reach away. Fumbled with the buckles, straps, plates. No one was going to bother me now. The blood was drying, wounds starting to stiffen. Nothing major. I wrapped the most recent in a shred of something. Decided to wait and bury her. And go home … Then I realized I didn’t know her name. I wondered if Howtlande knew, or Gobble? It didn’t matter. She’d followed me, they’d followed her, then others, dwarves, knights, priests, everybody following everybody in a bloody vicious circle, then everybody met and she was dead and nameless to me.

  “Why don’t you go fight some more? It’s nice and stupid.” I was dressed. “All right, I know where the Grail is. And no one can tell you how to find it but me.” The flowers were all one color now.

  It got to Galahad.

  “Do I hear right?” he asked.

  “You do.” I pointed to the bloodstained sunset. “Follow the sun. Wherever it goes. Start at once.” He must have been frowning. Bors was still trying to work it out.

  “But the sun is set, Parsival,” Bors said.

  “All the better,” I told him, sheathing my sword.

  “Parsival —” Galahad began.

  “No. Don’t ask me anything.” I slammed the helmet on my head, kept the face plate open. The bang rang through my poor skull. “Kiss Arthur for me.”

  I started walking. The next thing was to find a horse. I passed the fallen dragon, a ripped, empty shape full of shadows. Saw the glint of fallen knights and armored dwarves on the field. Nearly stepped on a druid, the just-rising moon filling his void stare. I heard a sound that might have been a horse. An archway opened into a courtyard. A likely place. I entered quietly. There were three shapes near what had to be a well. The rest of the yard was empty.

  “Is this the spot, priest?” Gobble’s unmistakable mistake of a voice demanded. Now I knew the source of the sound. The druid could barely speak. He was kneeling, propped against the well, but not to pray. The final outline was immense, and I didn’t have to hear the rambling monologue to know what a sweet reunion this would be.

  The priest groaned. That didn’t satisfy the Grail hunters. “Plain speech, plain speech,” my loyal comrade advised.

  “It’s true wisdom to ease your sufferings, sir. A few words are a slight price to pay for an end to pain. How few men realize, during their brief turbulent span on earth, the value of —”

  “You dog!” Gobble raged, lashing out at his victim. The young man screamed wetly, and Gobble tossed something aside. Probably a piece of druid. I felt my teeth grate. But I’d not managed to do much to Gobble yet, so I’d have to bide my time. In the dark he’d elude me again, writhe off. He kicked the helpless man; thud, gasp, groan. He wasn’t wearing his dress anymore. “Is this the place?” he hissed. “You brought us here. Is this the place?”

  “Where? Where?” Howtlande was almost hysterical with greed. “Point! Point! Point to the place!”

  “Bah, he’s dying, the pig.”

  “No, no, he’ll be fine and right as rain. Just show us the exact spot, and we’ll tend your wounds, and —”

  “Stick his ear back on and his eye back in? I’ll chew the other loose, I swear, if you keep silent.” Gobble wanted results, but he was bargaining himself out of goods. I stared at the well a long moment, and had an idea as the mutilated priest gargled his own blood. A deep and satisfying idea.

  Howtlande saw me. The priest mouthed last words, “… never … never … never …”

  Tortured, dying, saying never. So much suffering for a puff of dreams. Gobble ripped the hooked dagger across the druid’s neck, whinnying with insane hate. “Never, then!”

  “Lady?” Howtlande asked, cautiously watching me, straining to see details. My back was to the moon so the open helm would have been a blot of darkness.

  “So you finally stopped rolling,” I said, without anything in my voice. “Sir Parsival,” gasped Howtlande. “Thank God you prevailed against that cursed witch! I feared —”

  “With reason,” I said.

  “Hah,” Gobble snorted, “it was all for nothing.” He spat on the dying man at his warped feet. “Well, there’s no quarrel among us now. “

  “When will you roll again? I liked that.”

  He sort of shrugged. “Her magic failed.”

  “Let bygones be?” I suggested.

  “Exactly. I always cut my losses.”

  “So I saw.” Irony missed him.

  “Exactly. I serve my master, but this game’s ended. We all failed. You too.”

  “How true,” sighed the disappointed fat man. Well, I’d raise his spirits. “You’re both wrong,” I told them. “What’s this?” Howtlande was alert. “I didn’t fail”

  “Eh?” Gobble came in, slowly.

  “The priest didn’t lie,” I said. “He just repented at the last.” I went and peered down the well. It smelled musty and damp. I loosened a pebble from the edge and let it drop. I waited a satisfying time before the distant splish of impact.

  “Oh?” Gobble jerked himself alongside of me. “Meaning what, Parsival?” He wasn’t the least bit afraid of me.

  “It will take two for the job,” I said thoughtfully, still peering down into the utter black beyond the edge of the moon gleam. Howtlande was close on my other side. “I’ll need at least one of you.”

  “Two?” Howtlande murmured, not saying too much for once.

  “You both could fight to the death,” I suggested, “or we can share the prize three ways.” My voice sharpened. “There’s more than sufficient.”

  “Ah,” breathed Gobble, and his breath was no delight. “Is this a change of heart, Parsival?”

  “I remembered. And I came here, but found you’d come first.” Gestured with my head. “It’s down there. I remembered. Whoever goes down the rope will need to be hauled up once he has the Grail.”

  “Ahha,” said Howtlande, excited, “Of course, of course! How obvious, once you see a thing. We do the work, good comrades, and fast, before Morgana —”

  “Morgana, indeed?” I said.

  “Or whatever and who. What matters a stray name, eh? When the witch —”

  “She’s dead, in any case.” I stared down the lightless hole into nothing. “Ah. Pity … but, then, sirs, it’s ours altogether and without tedious dispute of right?”

  “What about his nasty little men?” I left Gobble weighing and watching. Of all of them, he was the one worth fearing.

  “Most fled,” he snarled. “Those cowards will regret much once I come before the master again. We used to get fighters who could fight. Now …” He was disgusted. He sniffed.

  “What of your friends?”

  “Friends?”

  “The great knights from Camelot.” He was amused.

  “Most of them died,” Howtlande mentioned.

  “And they came here to kill me
,” I pointed out.

  “That’s true,” Howtlande confirmed. “The lady knew that. We’re all comrades at the last, then.” Insects hummed and skreaked outside the walls. “So let’s to business, eh? Down the well here, you say?” He peered dubiously. It was a fairly wide opening.

  “There’s a ledge not far below,” I explained.

  “Go on, then,” Gobble urged. “I trust you to go down alone.”

  “It has to be somebody small,” I said. Silence. “I’m not getting out of this armor again.” I waited.

  “Ah, yes,” said Howtlande. Suited him. There was more silence, maybe a little sweating. But everybody was hooked. What would master say if his pet cripple passed up the chance?

  “After you succeed,” I said, “you can afford a thousand ladies’ gowns.” I could feel him stare, feel him thinking, round and round, but there was no way for him to leave and come back. He couldn’t possibly risk it.

  “Why should I —” he began.

  “I’d go,” the massive knight declared in his ambiguous over-the-water accent, “but I’m not so nimble as another.”

  “Even,” stated Gobble, “if that other be an elephant.”

  I didn’t have to say anything. Just wait. He leapt up on the well, still trying to read my face, probing the way a man who’s already bought a horse still tries to reassure his judgment.

  “Why did you suddenly remember?” he asked.

  I smiled.

  “Strange thing. When the lady in my armor stabbed me in the side, I fell, and it all came back in a flash. Like magic.” He was sweating, but what could he do? It was his own story. “A strange marvel, don’t you think?”

  He snarled in parting, and gripped the rope like a spider.

  “At last, at last,” breathed Howtlande. The rope held, swayed, marked his descent. We watched him drop, a worm on a line, past the level of indirect moonlight. As if he climbed into the nothing before creation. Howtlande, at my elbow, kept murmuring to himself. After many minutes the rope jerked and we heard a muffled, hollow shouting, too far for the words to separate into sense — if there was any.