Spellbinders Collection

by Molly Cochran

  "It's not a joke."

  "Half the guys you see look like Taliesin, and the other half look like the guy on the bus. Do you expect me to believe that?"

  Arthur didn't answer.

  Hal exhaled noisily. "I think you've been taking too much Seconal."

  The boy looked out the window. "I said I'd tell you the truth, and I have." He blinked rapidly. "But I guess I can't force you to believe me."

  Hal put his hands on his hips. "You're a hell of a strange kid."

  Arthur shrugged. "I'm not strange. I've just been put into circumstances nobody my age should be in."

  Hal smiled despite himself. "What's your aunt say?"

  "She's losing it," the boy said simply. "This is hard for her. Really hard."

  Hal thought for a moment. There was no way this kid could be telling the truth. And yet there was something compelling about the cool, intelligent eyes and the mind behind them.

  "Got any idea why all these guys who look alike would want to kill you?" he asked.

  "Yup." He took out the dull metal cup and tossed it to Hal. "That's why."

  Hal looked at it. It wasn't much, a baseball-sized sphere with the top sliced off and the inside hollowed out. Even if it were solid gold, it wasn't big enough to warrant the kind of action the boy was describing. And any fool could see it wasn't gold.

  And yet there was something extraordinary about it. Hal felt that as soon as he touched it. It was warm, for one thing. Its warmth spread in fat, pleasurable waves through his body. And it was . . .

  floating . . .

  It was a strange color. Bronze, but greener.

  And it passed by, floating, draped in white Samite. I did not see it again until the day of my death.

  Hal squeezed his eyes shut.

  "You okay?" the boy asked.

  "Yeah. Fine. I could use a sandwich," Hal said.

  "My aunt says your name is Hal. I don't remember your last name."

  "Hal's okay." He held the cup out to Arthur.

  For you, my king, I thought. They were the last words in my mind before the darkness. Covered with silver and precious stones, it stood in the abbey, the chalice of the King of Kings. I reached out for it, to be certain that my longing had not created another vision, like the magician's trick at Camelot.

  The cup floating above the table had been an illusion, the sorcerer's enticement to the Quest. But here it was, true and splendid, and I touched the cup of Christ with my own hands.

  "Thank you," said a man's voice behind me. It was rich and liquid, the voice, and on the verge of laughter. There was no reverence in it. "I knew that you, of all the High King's lackeys, would find it."

  The man was as tall as a tree. I had heard of him, the Saracen knight who had come to Camelot to claim a seat at the Round Table. His arrogance had sent him straight to Hell.

  But he had somehow returned. I do not claim to understand the ways of God or the Devil. I knew only that without the Grail, the Great King would die before his mission was complete. And so I moved to fight the black knight for the cup, but I was weary and sore, wounded from my long journey, and he was upon me before I could draw my blade.

  I failed. The fate of the world had hung on my skill, and I could not summon it in time. The knight's blade flashed silver in the sun for a moment, then pierced through my neck.

  It was finished: The King, the land, the dream, all gone, spilling away with my blood. Perhaps, I remember thinking, I was struck down for daring to touch the holy relic with my unworthy flesh.

  For you, my king.

  The boy took the sphere, "You look like you're having a problem, Hal," he said somberly.

  Hal stared at him for a long moment, weak and drained, sweat coursing down his face.

  "Can I do anything for you?"

  "No." He stood to go.

  "Please," the boy said. "I need your help."

  "You need the cops. Get your aunt to tell them the truth."

  "It isn't that easy." He looked down at the sphere in his lap. "Those men are going to kill us whether or not we have the cup."

  "Why?"

  "Look at your hand."

  Hal held both hands out. The bruises on his knuckles were gone. "Jesus," he whispered. "Are you telling me—"

  "I'm not telling you anything. You're seeing it for yourself."

  "How do you do that?"

  "I'm not doing it. It's the cup."

  The Chalice.

  Hal let out an involuntary cry.

  "Hal?"

  With an effort, he pulled himself together. "How did you find it?"

  "By accident." He touched the sphere. "At least I think it was by accident. I'm not sure about anything anymore."

  "You . . . you could give it to the police," Hal offered.

  "Do you think that would stop whoever's trying to kill Emily and me? Considering what we already know?"

  Hal looked into the wide blue eyes. "No," he said truthfully.

  "Then will you help me?"

  "Kid, I can't—"

  "I need to get to the castle."

  Hal wiped his hand slowly across his face. "What?"

  "My castle. The one I inherited. I know it's probably just a pile of rocks, but I have to get there. I don't know why, exactly, but I have to see it. At least once."

  Hal sniffed. He wanted to be out of the room, out of the country, away. "What's that going to accomplish?"

  "Nothing, I guess. But I won't mind dying so much."

  A jolt ran through Hal. "Don't talk like that," he said.

  But the boy's eyes remained level. "I've thought it through pretty well," he said. "I'm going to leave the cup at the castle. I don't want Emily to go along. If I make it back, we'll both try to get lost in London."

  "And if you don't?"

  The boy took a deep breath. "If I don't, I want you to get her home safely. She's very smart, but she's naive. Do you know what I mean?"

  Hal nodded.

  "There are ways to get a new identity. I've written everything down." He rummaged through his box of treasures and came up with a small spiral notepad. "It's all in here." He gave it to Hal. "Will you see that she's all right?"

  Hal blinked.

  "I'm running out of time," the boy said quietly.

  "How do you plan to get to the castle?"

  "I'll walk. It's only a few miles from here. If I leave at four in the morning, I can get there by dawn."

  "What if you're followed?"

  "That's a chance I'm willing to take."

  Hal looked out the window at the stars in the clear sky. "You're crazy," he said.

  "Okay. Whatever you say. Will you do it?"

  He sighed. "I'll go with you to the castle."

  "You may be in danger."

  "I said I'll go. And we're telling your aunt."

  "She'll want to go along."

  "Nothing's going to happen."

  "Something might." The boy paused. "Hal, this quest is just for us two."

  There was an earnest sound in his voice that made Hal reconsider. Finally, he nodded.

  "All right. We'll go alone."

  The boy smiled. "Good." He leaned back on his pillow. "Thanks."

  Hal walked toward the door, then stopped.

  "Arthur?"

  "Huh?"

  "Does anything happen to you when you touch that . . . cup?"

  "It feels good."

  "Yeah. But do you think things? Imagine things?"

  "No. I just get a good feeling. Like it belongs to me. Did you feel it, too?"

  I have touched it with my unworthy flesh . . .

  "No," Hal said. "It doesn't belong to me. Get some sleep." He opened the door. "I'll be around."

  "Be valiant, knight, and true," Arthur whispered.

  Hal whirled around. But the boy was lying peacefully, his eyes already closed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It was still dark when Arthur knocked on Hal's door.

  "It's time to go," he said. A small d
rawstring pouch containing the cup dangled from his belt.

  Hal stumbled back to bed. "You've got to be kidding."

  "You said you wanted to go with me." The boy waited, somber-faced, for a moment. When Hal didn't show any inclination to rise, he turned away. "See you," he said softly.

  "Oh, for crying out loud." Hal lumbered out of bed. "What time is it, anyway?"

  Arthur looked at his watch. "It's four-oh-four," he said. "We'll have to hurry."

  "For what?"

  "I need to leave before dawn."

  "Art, nobody's chasing you. Not here, anyway. If they were, they'd have come during the night."

  "Are you coming?" the boy asked stolidly.

  Hal sighed and pulled on a pair of trousers over his boxer shorts. "Yeah, I'm coming."

  It was nearly pitch-dark outside, with only the sliver of a new moon and a scattering of stars. "How far is it?" Hal asked.

  "About ten miles."

  "Great. That's just great, Arthur." He eyed the shiny chrome of a Volvo in the inn's parking lot. The driver's-side window was open a crack against the heat of the day. He could get inside with a coat hanger in less than a minute, then hotwire the engine . . .

  "Hal, would it be stealing if you took something that you needed and brought it right back before the owner ever missed it?"

  Hal's eyebrows raised. "Well . . . no, not really. I mean, not if it's for a good cause."

  "That's what I think, too."

  "Good. I'll get a coat hanger."

  "What for?"

  "For the . . ." Arthur patted the handlebars of two bicycles leaning against the porch. "Bicycles?"

  "We'd make good time. We'd be back before daylight," Arthur said.

  "I guess the rap isn't as bad as it is for car theft."

  "Did you say something, Hal?"

  "No. Nothing." He climbed on one. "It's been a long time since I rode one of these," Hal said as he steered in a wobbly line.

  "Hey! Mine's got a light!" A pale circle shone down on the roadway ahead of Arthur as he zoomed onto the blacktop road, his wheels humming.

  "How do you know where the place is?" Hal called, struggling to catch up.

  "The lawyers sent me a map. We turn left at a crossroads near here, then it's straight ahead."

  Hal pedaled furiously for more than an hour, keeping his eyes focused on the circles of light on the otherwise empty road.

  Sweat poured off him. It stank of ale from the night before last, transformed through time and the mysteries of the human body into effluvium. He had not had a drink since then, or anything to eat. The night before, after his strange meeting with Arthur, he had gone back down to the lobby in hopes of raiding the inn's kitchen and possibly liberating a drink or two from the bar's locked cabinets. But Emily had been waiting for him.

  "Look, I've been through a lot," he’d begun crankily.

  "I understand, Mr. Woczniak," she had said. "Can you help us?"

  "I don't think so."

  "I see."

  “I’m sorry.”

  Emily nodded.

  "For what it's worth, I told the kid I'd go to the castle with him tomorrow. Afterward, I'll take you both back to London. We'll talk to the cops there."

  "That won't do any good," she’d mumbled.

  "Is that why you lied to the police?"

  She looked away.

  "I saw you offer the thing . . . whatever it is . . . to the guy who tried to attack you."

  "Then you saw him try to kill me anyway," she said. "And they're going to keep trying. If we tell the police, we'll be asked to stay in one place, and those men will find out about it and they'll kill us for sure."

  "You can't keep running forever."

  "I've thought about that. When we get back to London, I'm going to mail the cup to the Katzenbaum Institute. That's where I work. The scientists there will know what to do with it. And Arthur and I will get lost until the killers lose track of us. In time, there'll be too much publicity about the cup for them to bother with us for what we know."

  Hal nodded. "Sounds good." He decided not to mention the young boy's plan to leave the cup at the old castle ruins.

  "I should have thought of it before we left, but everything got out of hand so fast." She shrugged. "I'll try to rent a car tomorrow to return to London. Will you come along?"

  "Sure. What about the castle?"

  "Arthur can go. The castle's taken on great importance for him. I think he should see it. I'll feel safe if you go with him."

  "He'll be all right. And by the way, I think I've been misjudging you."

  Emily shrugged. "I'm used to it."

  He hadn't eaten after that. And he hadn't even tried to steal a drink, though the small lock on the bar would have been easy enough to pick.

  Instead, he'd gone to bed, hungry and sober, like an athlete fasting before his trial. And for the first time in a year, he had not dreamed.

  Now, gasping for breath on the bicycle, he no longer felt like an athlete. He felt like a grunting, suffering, aching imbecile. "How much farther?" he panted.

  "I think I see it." Arthur switched off his light and swung his leg over his bicycle. "Over there." He pointed to an outcropping of rock in a field nearly a half-mile from the road.

  "You sure? It doesn't look much like a castle to me."

  Arthur ignored him, wheeling the bike onto the rocky ground. With a sigh, Hal followed him.

  The sky was just beginning to lighten. As Arthur approached a long broken line of rocks, he set down his bicycle and stared off toward the scattered boulders beyond.

  "We're here," he whispered.

  For a long moment he said nothing more, his small face silhouetted against the cobalt sky.

  "This looks like it used to be a wall," Hal said finally.

  Arthur nodded.

  "Do you suppose there could be a moat?"

  Arthur shook his head. He walked over the ankle-deep "wall" toward a large flat area dotted with stones and red clover. He picked up a pebble. "It's all gone," he said.

  Hal's heart sank for the boy. "Your aunt tried to tell you it wasn't a real castle."

  "But I thought something would be left. Some trace . . ."

  With a single motion, Hal swept the boy to the ground and rolled with him back toward the wall. "Someone's here," he whispered.

  A figure stepped out from behind a high mound of earth and waved cheerily. "I say, what's brought you here?" he called.

  "It's Mr. Taliesin," Arthur said.

  "I noticed." Hal stood up irritably and walked toward the old man. Arthur trotted behind. "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

  Taliesin smiled. "I've come to see the dawn break," he said. "It's June the twenty-second. The summer solstice. The druids placed great stock in this day. They viewed it as the beginning of the good times, so to speak. And it's the date the locals say that children can see the castle." He chuckled. "Beautiful morning. Marvelous."

  "How'd you get here?"

  "I walked."

  "Ten miles—to see the sunrise?"

  "It keeps me young. Actually, I was anxious to see the stone."

  "I thought you said it was worthless."

  The old man shrugged. "Even the most jaded archaeologist can't help being excited at such a lovely fantasy."

  "Well?" Hal asked. "Did you find it?"

  "Not yet."

  While they spoke, Arthur wandered around the field, picking up rocks and casting them away.

  "I don't think this place is what the kid thought it would be," Hal said quietly.

  "He was no doubt expecting a castle with banners flying and knights clanking around in armor."

  "Who could blame him? He's ten years old, and he's traveled a long way." Hal walked over to Arthur.

  "There's nothing left," the boy said. "Not even the tower."

  "Nothing lasts forever," Hal mumbled lamely. "Come on. Do what you've got to do, and we'll go."

  "Hal! Arthur!" Taliesin called, motioning the
m toward him. "Over here!"

  Arthur took off at a trot.

  By the time Hal arrived at the bramble-covered spot on the edge of the woods, Arthur was already exclaiming excitedly. "Look at it, Hal!"

  It was an enormous boulder which was painstakingly set upon another, even larger boulder. The earth had been dug up around them and now the snowman-like structure was balanced precariously on a mound of dirt that rose some four feet off the ground.

  Taliesin shone the beam of a flashlight on it. "This must be where the student was digging. There's an inscription, certainly," he said, "but it's far too faint to read."

  "Maybe we could make a rubbing," Arthur offered. "Like people do with the tombstones of kings."

  "Intelligent boy," Taliesin said. "I plan to do just that."

  He took a thin sheet of paper from inside his tweed jacket and unfolded it. "Hal, would you mind? My old bones are a little brittle for this work."

  Hal climbed on top of the boulder, balancing carefully as Taliesin handed him a long, thick piece of charcoal.

  "Okay, what now?" Hal asked.

  "Just rub it back and forth, the way detectives in films do when they're discovering a telephone number on a used notepad. Keep the paper steady, boy."

  Arthur held the two lower edges of the paper while Hal bent over the rock, tracing the outline of the ancient inscription. Slowly, as the words were uncovered, Taliesin read them by the light of the flashlight:

  "Rex . . . Well, it's something about a king, anyway. And that looks like a Q. Q, U . . . Rex Quondam . . . Oh, no."

  "Oh no what?" Hal asked. "What is it? My arm's breaking in this position."

  "You can stop," the old man said flatly.

  Hal straightened up. "What's it say?"

  "Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus. King once and king to be."

  "The once and future king! Holy . . ." Hal turned, wild-eyed, to the old man. "That's right out of the legend."

  "Unfortunately, it's right out of La Morte d'Arthur, published by Caxton in 1485," Taliesin said dryly. "A thousand years after Arthur's death."

  "Oh." Hal felt ridiculous at his own disappointment.

  The old man walked close to the rock and peered at it. "It doesn't even look very much like a rock, actually," he muttered. "More like mortar of some kind."

  "Why would anyone inscribe mortar?" Hal asked.