Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II

by Richard Monaco

  She was in no temper for philosophy.

  “Those lice,” she hissed. Made another set of expressive and (I assumed) ill-intentioned magical gestures at the blank wall with the same general effect as before.

  “Maybe you’re out of practice,” I suggested.

  That was as successful as my first remark.

  “Close your dull mouth,” she recommended. Her eyes were pure fury. “Treachery and betrayal.”

  “I think we’d do well to move along. Even they are bound to find a door soon, much as they’d prefer, no doubt, to tunnel after us like moles.”

  “Those are the minions of the black empire, and I must destroy them.”

  “You’ve made a good start. “

  I headed across the sunny, dusty road for the cover of the brush and jagged rocks. My ingrate son was probably all right. He seemed gifted enough to preserve himself in all weather. I figured to circle around and find another way in. Over the wall, if need be. I was good at over the wall.

  She followed me. That showed sense. Gave her magic a rest. Suddenly she wasn’t giving orders. Amazing. Like a dance: now dip, now bend, now lift, now down …

  “I need your help,” she told me.

  “I agree,” I responded as we worked our way through the prickly bushes. They were dense and yellowish green in the sun. “You’ve stopped selling my family members back to me?”

  “What I said stands.”

  I let it go. “Let’s get back into the castle,” I said. “I want to find my son. Don’t ask me why.”

  “Don’t you love him?” She seemed vaguely taken aback.

  “You met him,” I evaded.

  “He’s your flesh and blood.”

  “He doesn’t look much like me.”

  She snorted as we picked our way through a grove of stunted pines. The soil was black, ashy.

  “He seems as big a fool,” she said, and I grinned. “We can escape them underground. There are secret ways off this island.”

  “That’s how they got at you?” I lifted myself on a tree limb until I could see the road and castle. Sure enough, they were coming. Too many. Spreading out, obviously on the hunt. We’d never get past the damned runts. “Your problem, Morgan, is that you’re short of army.”

  “Not once I reach the mainland.”

  I lowered myself, studying her. She turned a lingering and sultry look on me. I understood that signal well enough. I was supposed to roll over, loll my tongue, and beg for a tummy rub. “I need your help,” she went on, quite frankly. There’s nothing more effective than a deceiver being honest. Steals air from the lungs. “Get me to my son.”

  Ah, I thought, Modred comes into the picture … Arthur’s bane …

  “And? … “

  “And then the castle of the Grail.”

  “And then all things will be mine, eh?”

  “Yes.” Her look toyed with my needs like a silken touch.

  She wasn’t the type of woman I instantly went weak over, but her eyes did things. “More than you can envision.”

  She was boyish, wiry, with a haunting wickedness. I tried to blink it away. She knew what I was trying. “We’re cut off from the castle,” I said. “We’d better see if Lohengrin’s boat survived.” There was no arguing with that. I planned to sneak back after dark. I didn’t need anyone along for that job.

  The last leg of reaching the coast was a problem: working down a sandy slope hand-in-hand, in sight of the sea, at dusk, the famous fog beginning to creep in, small, sudden shadows all around, dark glitter; we practically tripped over one sneaky scum. His axchop grazed my hip. My reply was hurried and off-balance but good enough for sparks and a gust of painbreath.

  “By Christ’s crown!” I snarled, jerking her out of the way of two of them as they dived for her legs. She didn’t thank me. She stabbed one through the eyeslit on the run. My brows went up. Deadly lady.

  We fled over a sharp-edged wall of rock and leapt into gathering fog. Went to our knees in gritty sand. Heard voices barking that senseless language.

  “Lice,” she muttered.

  “They’ll take some scratching.”

  We moved along the water’s edge. The mist seemed to draw the night in around us. I’d already realized they weren’t trying to kill us. The first had been trying to clip my leg and bring me down. He could as well have sliced at my gut.

  A pair of full-sized shapes loomed in front of us.

  “Hold your stroke,” she commanded me. Another point in her favor. She was right. But I had to parry a spear thrust at my belly before another prodigal meeting could happen.

  “Sir Ubiquitous,” my son was saying, drawing back the point. The pretty lady was with him. She wasn’t happy to see her mistress. We were all vaguely formed by clammy fog and dying light.

  “We’re all going the same way?” I asked.

  You could hear the schluff and scuttle of the armored dwarves working along the beach and over the natural wall. “My curse, dear father,” said my son. “We’re beset,” I said, gesturing around. He was quick to grasp such things. His Latin tutor once asked permission to drive a spike into his bushy skull to let in the light of learning. “So,” said Morgana, amused, I think, “I’ve been betrayed here as well.” She was talking to Chael, who quailed slightly.

  “I think we’re surrounded,” I added.

  Lohengrin led us a few steps along the water’s edge. New shapes: something low and long; a tall man; a short man. “Veers,” I said, “and Beef … and a raft.”

  “Move along there,” said Veers.

  The little ones came clittering out of the mists, armor stuffed full of harm. I knew the crippled king of malice had to beat hand.

  Chael stepped on the raft that had obviously been pieced together from wreckage. It even had a short, thick mast. As Lohengrin followed, Morgana snatched at the spear. He lifted it away from her grasp.

  “Give it to me,” she said, ignoring the enemy. More than I could manage just then. I dropped to one knee and kept my blade humming.

  My son kept his spear as we were all driven onto the raft. Veers and I moved it off into the now moderate surf. What a crew for an afternoon on a lake that would have been! All we needed was Gobble and the fat one for ballast. The little ones stopped at the water’s edge. Lots of them. Then the mist and night ate them.

  Morgana sat there, brooding on the wet planks. The water spumed up through the cracks everywhere. We paddled with curved boards while Veers spread out the shapeless rag meant for a sail. He was skilled at his craft and soon had us bouncing awkwardly alongside the wind.

  Morgana was disgusted. She eyed my son with cool fury which he didn’t mind. Chael stayed huddled under his arm. Beef and I kept our paddles working to head the craft at Veer’s commands.

  “I think,” my son said over the wind and water sounds, “I should have taken my chances back there rather than ride to doom on this bundle of twigs.”

  “You’re welcome to leave,” offered Veers. To me he said: “Is that your lad?” I nodded. “Strikes me as he’d make a fair anchor.”

  Lohengrin spat into the foggy darkness beyond the wildly stuttering light from the fat torch Veers had jammed beside the mast.

  “Strikes you, does it?” Lohengrin responded. “More than that may strike you in a minute.”

  “Set quiet,” I told him, “while your life is being saved.”

  The dull torchlight showed Morgana’s baleful stare still fixed on him. “Saved?” he wondered. “I like to pay the debt after the goods are delivered.

  “When did you ever pay for anything?” I wished to know.

  I was thinking about taking the spear now. Decided to wait until we were alone and spare his feelings. I assumed I’d survive again. I had a mission, I believed (though it never made sense to me) and fate or God wouldn’t let me off easily.

  “I have you for my father,” he said. “That may be payment against purgatory.”

  Veers liked that remark.

  “I’
ve purchased hell then,” he declared, “with my Beef here.” Laughed and strained to aim the doubtful craft.

  Lohengrin had his mother’s humor.

  Morgana moved closer to me where I knelt with the board in the dark water. “I need that spear,” she said.

  “So I gathered.”

  “I don’t want to hurt him.” She seemed in earnest. “I haven’t shown all my teeth.”

  I didn’t doubt that.

  “Why don’t I just take it,” I suggested, “and return it to the owners?”

  “Owners?” she scoffed. “The only one with clear title would be the Roman that poked Christ on the cross.”

  The waves foamed over the front and sides as we beat and wallowed along. The fog had thinned, but there were no stars. I hoped Veers had a lodestone in his brain.

  “Then you have no better claim than another,” said I.

  “I told you, Parsival, my purpose is great. It will open certain secrets to me. Then we can free your wife and daughters and take the hidden power from the hidden place. “

  I didn’t laugh. Morgana wasn’t one you laughed at. Not to her pretty face. Well, not exactly pretty. I never could decide how she really affected me.

  I thought I might as well keep everyone involved in this insane business where I could watch them. I’d get to the bottom of it. My last service before retirement — and not to the king. I’d not forgotten him, because I had to be in his troubled thoughts. I’d run away. His bully boys had failed to take me back, or even a piece of me. The threat would always be there.

  We bounced and staggered on into the chill and pit-dark night.

  *

  Dawn’s gray. Wet and miserable. It was raining again. Brief, rattling bursts that clattered over the soaked timbers and beat the sickening sea to foam.

  “I smell land,” Veers announced.

  Sure enough, a minute or two later a dark line with softened edges lay before us. I had an impression that a misty swirl of cloud funneled down to touch the surface.

  We came closer, faster than expected. The wind was still beating from starboard. It felt as if a tidal current were sucking us in. Chael looked up, pale and desperate. Wave-sickness.

  “That ain’t the coast,” Beef cried to his father.

  “That’s looking out shrewd,” Veers reacted. “He mighta missed that,” he explained to me, “and took it for a point.” He was pleased with his boy.

  “It’s another island?” I asked.

  “There’s more coming than that,” Veers assured me, grim. “It shouldn’t be there. Not in these waters. We should have made landfall hours ago.”

  “Well,” I said, helpfully.

  Lohengrin was alert now, rubbing his eyes. Morgana didn’t seem to have moved or slept. I was surprised she hadn’t tried for the precious spear during the night.

  Veers shrugged and stood up, trying to re-angle the ragged sail.

  “I don’t like this current,” he told us. The island grew too rapidly. We all felt the acceleration. And now we were against the wind. The sail billowed back the wrong way. It was as if we were being towed. Faster and faster. We tried backing off. My paddle snapped. I noticed we were running on an angle to the shore as if the land were the vortex of a whirlpool. Impossible of course. Veers was incredulous; Beef ashen. My son, bless him, was too busy cramming half a dried loaf into his maw, looking with contempt at Morgana, to notice much.

  I think we circled the island once before spinning like a chip in the crisscross pounding near the shore. By then everyone was clinging for life to the slippery timbers. I noticed Lohengrin ultimately losing all he’d gained in the way of food and drink as we madly bounced and twisted. Most of his spew missed me. I think Beef absorbed a spare pint, however.

  We dug into the shore and stuck fast. Most of us lost hold on impact and rolled onto the black, gritty sand. Jet black sand. Strange.

  We all stood there taking amazed stock. Things kept repeating as if my life were being forced, shaken through a sieve of events to get at something separate, something … Maybe it all made sense to God, but he hadn’t shared the secret with me yet …

  As far as I could see, this bleak place was all black sand. Almost level. A hand print of bitter desert in the coastal sea: no trees, bushes, nothing.

  “If that current doesn’t ebb sometime,” I observed over the chewing breaker sound, “we’re in mud with iron boots.”

  “What rises, falls,” philosophized my son.

  Beef looked down at him, reddened, doughy face tense, eyes small with fear and outrage.

  “Arr,” he snarled, “what goes down, comes up, you mean.” He kept wiping his wet sleeve across his lips with disgust.

  “This is all witchcraft and curses,” Veers said, moving a few steps inland, favoring one foot. “I rue the day, though it were night, and the bad stars that brought you to me. All of you.” He peered at me. “Next time, let your damned son go where he pleases, that’s the advice I have for you, great knight. That’s all the advice I have left in me.”

  “Next time I’ll heed it,” said I.

  Morgana had her head cocked. Seemed to be listening to the sea or air or the cindered-looking earth. She wasn’t lusting for the spear for a moment at least.

  “I believe I know this place,” she said.

  Interesting. I said so.

  Chael held Lohengrin’s arm, looking miserable and angry. She pointed at her mistress. “She’s evil,” she said. “Trust no word of hers!” Morgana just looked at her. Almost funny. Chael half hid herself behind my boy, who was amused. “A fit friend for Parsival,” he said. He leaned on the disputed spear. It looked even less remarkable in daylight. No rain now, finally. The normal gray had brightened to a whitish haze.

  “I want to get to shore and to my old woman,” said Veers. Beef squatted on the black grit and stared despondently at the madly tipping and intersecting waves.

  The day was getting muggy and uncomfortable. At every step the powdery stuff misted up in choking puffs. A great place to die of thirst.

  “You’ve been here,” I asked, “for picnics?”

  She was still listening to something or other.

  “A hermit keeps a hut here,” she said.

  “A hermit? Indeed, if hermit he must be, this is the very spot for it.”

  “Dangerous fellow. A magician.” Veers looked concerned. But he hadn’t witnessed her spells in action. I suppose my son had, because he sneered a soft guffaw.

  “I don’t have to worry,” he said, “I’ve got the great spear.” He seemed to like that idea.

  Morgan smiled.

  “Better keep a tight grip little boy,” she advised, “on your pole.”

  “Can we cast off here?” Beef asked his father, who shrugged. “Will not the damned seas relent, father?”

  “My eminent sire,” said Lohengrin, “will build a bridge. And the great mistress of magic will fly back.” He grinned. “Myself, I think I’ll carve out a kingdom here.” Squeezed Chael. “You can be my queen.” I had to admit he had a sharp side I liked.

  I was squinting at the smoky pillar I’d noticed as we came up on this dreary place. It rose in gritty looking clouds from the center of the island. Maybe that had something to do with how the water had behaved. Or the hermit. Yes, the hermit.

  “The hermit,” I said to her. “Let’s look him up. I feel sociable.”

  LAYLA

  Life wasn’t much different, once I got used to it. Now I was literally a prisoner; in the past I’d just felt like one.

  Mad Orlius had locked me and my two daughters in the tower where we had a good view of the dull countryside. I suppose he expected my husband to turn up sooner or later. I don’t think he’d studied him too expertly. Years could pass before that happy event might take place.

  My ex-lover, the bastard piece of dung, stuck his head in the chamber one evening. The dusk was gathering in the corners. My children were at the barred window looking at a picturebook of the saints.

&n
bsp; He hoped to make amends, I imagine. I nearly crowned him with a stoneware cup. It shattered satisfyingly near his skinny skull, which I had once thought fair and refined. He hadn’t been back since.

  I had too much time to think, and the girls were restless. But at least I had wine to drink. That almost made up for the rest of it.

  I wanted something … I knew it … could feel it in the warm and dreaming dusk … sometimes … the scent of what I wanted, the longing under longing that could never be drowned even under a sea of wine …

  HOWTLANDE

  They escaped us. I wasn’t clear why we wanted them. I’d had enough of that Parsival the first time around. There had to be better ways to gain our ends.

  I thought about that, watching (with the others) as their bundle of sticks slipped out into curtaining mists.

  The little killers made a noise like locusts, bouncing in frustration along the water’s edge. Gobble weaved with a scowl. He looked thoughtfully at where they’d melted into the mist.

  “I think,” I said, “we might have done better to sail here after all.” Not that I relished the idea. I was developing a fine sense of futility. Perhaps I needed new associates, new concepts …

  Gobble whirled around.

  “We’ll meet them anon,” he said.

  “Ah,” I said, “that’s an optimistic attitude. Optimism is a needed quality on great enterprises. I think —” He cut me off. Listening and delectation are lost arts. “Follow along,” he said, limping back the way we’d come.

  There had been plenty of pleasant slaughter back at the castle, so the little ones should have been content. I suspected their meat. Cannibals, I had a notion. “When,” he went on, “you cannot catch a flying bird,” he went on, “you wait by the nest or where it feeds.”

  “Ah, yes,” I agreed, “well put.” We clambered over the rocks. “Well put. I—”

  “She has the spear,” he went on, as we cut across the open fields. “She’ll go back to the Grail castle. We’ll have the lot of them there.”

  LOHENGRIN

  Was I getting nowhere? Perfectly possible. But anything was better than sitting at home. I’d wanted the gold for the spear so that I could live by myself, buy a better horse, get out of the country if I had a mind … make a real fortune … capture a kingdom …