The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3)

by Richard Monaco

  He spat into the fine dust that was rising and hanging behind them like yellowish smoke. A butterfly rose, erratic, sudden, falling, tipping, tilting through the air with exquisite awkwardness. He barely registered it stuttering across the road and vanishing as if blown dissolving into the glitter of underbrush and long grasses.

  “How far do we march?” Skalwere wanted to know.

  “Tired already?” Howtlande joked.

  “No, fat man,” was the unsmiling reply. “But it be well to know your destination.”

  “Not far. Half a day on foot. I know the place, Viking.”

  “Spare me,” Skalwere cut in, “more answer than question.” And moved toward the head of the scraggly column, past the roped women, the part-armored men in varying states of personal scarring: one-eyed, -eared, -armed, bloated, lean, short, long; bent and straight; speaking and silent, all hot …

  Vicious, runty bastard, Howtlande thought, and half-muttered. The knight was striding, silent, at the flanks of the mule.

  “How do you fare today, sir?” Howtlande asked. The man didn’t look at him. “There may be horseflesh in this village. There’s few enough steeds left in the country for our finding Else I’d not be mounted thus, eh?” Smiled. The man glanced at him and said nothing.

  A fit companion for Skalwere. The pair of them could match their wits and elegance together …

  He went on, still trying to stir a wriggle of conversation from the fellow:

  “Once we have good mounts beneath us and raise more men then things will be different.”

  “Once were dead, things will be different too,” the knight reflected, not-quite-smiling.

  “Don’t give in to the pessimism of these times,” Howtlande insisted. “That’s a great mistake. In my view, sir, there’s a whole new world of opportunities opening before us. Look you, men rise up in any condition of life. There’s a leader in prisons … among serfs … beasts … you take my meaning?”

  “I don’t take it very far,” the knight returned, composed and aloof.

  “Oh? Hear me, first we take this town, then the next, and so on. Then we keep heading north. I have a route in mind that will allow us to gather strength like … like a ball of snow rolled down a winter’s slope.”

  “And so,” the knight replied, “we only grow by speeding to the bottom.”

  “What? Hear me, sir, were both cut from the same sheet.” His voice was confidential. “Don’t yield to this pessimism. I say there’s no limit to what may be ours, in the end.”

  “The length of a grave may be ours, in the end.”

  “You’re worse than a monk.” Howtlande was exasperated. “You have to use your imagination.”

  The other smiled.

  “I do, baron,” he said. “I’ve had to or else I’d face the truth.”

  “You served great men, in your time, I think.”

  “None but. All dead. And the greatest of them once told me his whole life was hollow at heart. And I didn’t understand him then.” He scratched the back of his neck where it showed reddened and thick above the bright links of mail. “Later I came to understand him.”

  Howtlande opened his round mouth, then closed it again. Watched the man sink back into himself, into a granite silence …

  V

  Suddenly the sickening falling ended with a shock that was pressure before it became chill suffocation and he kicked and struggled up from the muddy bottom, sucking air and remembering everything instantly, bursting into a mounting wail that became (at the end) a howl as teeth flashed and chewed water and air in the bony edge of a face, the cry echoing from the riverbanks, a bitter eruption so violent it seemed the scarecrow frame would burst to pieces … and then he was swimming, lashing, pounding at the dark water, clawing, scrambling, kicking at the shore as if to wound the earth itself, spitting fury, racing over the land now without even taking the trouble to straighten up, hands still flicking at the ground, hissing, over and over:

  “So … so … so … they think me set aside, do they? … so … so … so …”

  Jerking along now, following the stream, too caught up in a frenzy of remembering to grasp or even care that he was plunging blindly into the silver-haunted shadows, bulging eyes fixed on bright, vivid shapes, the flowing past lost and then becoming (as he gradually slowed and stood upright) the future … pleasant images, so that he was down to a reflective walk a few yards later as he gradually gained control of himself. The shock of remembering was fading … that that he’d lost; the sickening frustration of seeing it all slip away … now he was watching each enemy, each betrayer dragged to justice, and the details absorbed him: he watched Lord General Howtlande being bound to the wheel, his fat, sweaty flesh quivering, mouth shrieking and pleading, rolling his eyes as the executioner stepped closer.

  His smiling mouth murmured into the peaceful, silvery glowing night, just louder than the throbbing of frogs and general screech of nightbugs.

  “No mercy, general,” he said.

  Then he mouthed the other’s desperate reply:

  “Please, my lord, I beg you, please! Pity me! I’m sorry I failed you … I’m sorry …”

  “Too late, general,” he told the image in the darkness, “far, far too late.”

  “Please … please …” Sobbing, bubbling, chewing his foamy lips, then screaming as the burning red steel drew a ring under one eye and the socket suddenly filled with bubbling, charring jelly.

  “Far, far too late, traitor.” His voice was smoothly, contemplatively calm. “Now the other eye.”

  “Please … O mother of God … please … no more … I beg you, lord … I’m sorry … I’m sorry …” Only one eye still could weep. “Don’t hurt me more … this is enough … I’ve learned my lesson … I’m sorry … I’ll do anything … please …”

  “Bum it out!” he hissed, clenching both fists. “Burn it out! Out!”

  And then he tripped and went to his knees. Groaned, rubbing his foot. One toe throbbed terribly under the splintered nail. A log lay across the path in the faint gleaming. He stood up and limped on a few more steps, then nearly walked into a wall. Wooden. He pressed his palm to the timber, groped along it thinking this was a great defense built by his enemies to keep him outside, blocked off from the source of his power. He smiled with grim determination. Could feel the power pulsing deep in the dark country ahead like a sunken sun within the depths of the earth fitfully guiding him. He clenched his teeth, drawing himself back a little. He would smite this wall with his concentrated will. Did they think his force waned so far that this pitiful barrier would check him? He paced a few steps and began muttering a spell, chanting, singsong, reaching one big soft hand out, pouring the energy into his fingers, visualizing the wood bending, splitting under the psychic impact, his body and then the earth beginning to vibrate as his immensely bass and resonant voice filled the night and hushed the droning sounds … then, suddenly, violently, thrust himself forward and sagged, surprised, into unresisting darkness, toppling over what he didn’t know was a window ledge (the invisible sill hitting him just above the knees), getting up inside and straining his sight into the corners, chuckling under his breath.

  “A new enchantment,” he muttered.

  He was quite satisfied. The merest touch of his strength had been enough.

  He crouched and groped around the thick-smelling interior: earth, smoked wood, old sweat … heard a fly buzz somewhere, invisible … touched something soft, crumbly; smelled it on his hand: cheese. Very good … He murmured a spell to take off any poison or curse and ate some, feeling a little gloat of smugness. Crammed it in, swallowing and spilling moist crumbs.

  “Rest now,” he half-said.

  Began creeping around the floor looking for something to wash it down. His wet clothes sloshed. Found nothing. There was no telling how vast the place might be. He saw it running off into an endless, treacherous labyrinth … He had to sit and rest his eyes a moment. Leaned against the cool, mudchinked wall; started to repi
cture Howtlande on the wheel, one eye seared out … lost it … saw armies under a blazing greenish sky hurling themselves against a vast, black stone fortress … slid down the wall onto something soft; dimly felt cloth on his cheek … the massed troops glittered like black ants; then darkness lapped over him totally in a massive, soft surf …

  Then brightness, harsh, digging into his eyes and head. For an instant he felt the attack of magical forces and struggled to collect his power, then blinked and shook fully awake. Stared around the hut, which was a small shock to him: a sagging little kennel with the sun coming straight in the window and cutting through slight spaces in the wall and roof.

  He saw the hunk of cheese on the low table, gourds hanging above a hearth overflowing with ashes and then the peasant man, face blackened and bloated, lying on his back, tongue thrust out as if in violent mockery and defiance of the flies that spiraled and hummed around him, arms starfished out, great, lumpy swellings under the armpits, belly bulged up; then the woman on the low pallet in her shapeless garments. He turned his head on the softness and saw the third face, much too close, just as the woman exhaled a terrible rasping that he didn’t know were words. The young girl’s face was inches from his own, blue, empty, frozen eyes staring out from purple-black flesh; soft, golden glints of hair caught in a stir of air and the edge of a stray sunbeam; inches away; the tongue that at first he took for a chunk of dark sausage, and he knew they’d won, his enemies had tricked him here, to certain, horrid death. Heard the woman’s words now, a gurgle and hiss across the room:

  “… waaaar … teeerrr … waar … terrr. Wa … rter …”

  And he jerked his head from the soft, cold breast he’d Iain on all night, staring, hearing too (as if amplified) the burring buzzing of the gathering flies, their bright flash and greenish flicker at the window where the sun spilled in.

  He scrambled to his feet and saw the open door and was already stumbling, fleeing into the gold-lanced green outside, moaning under his breath, straining, angular, jerky, over the crest of hill; across the road in a spume of dust; along the clean, smooth hillside through the scraggly wheat … across the village proper, the huts moving past; a blur of faces he didn’t even glance at, fleeing by an old woman working the well-rope; a group of playing children rushing past, shouting at him; one running along for a few of his panting yards as he went up the reverse slope shouting, dry, vacant, violent:

  “Death is come! Death is come!”

  He did not see the knight in black and red robes just coming out of the bam, yawning and stretching in a flood of clean, hot sunlight, then staring curiously after the gangly figure in the rent rags who struggled up the hill as if pushing his outsized, twisted shadow ahead of him and, still running, jerking up and down, disappeared over the far crest.

  The knight turned quizzically to the matronly woman beside him.

  “I wit,” he said, “that fellow grew tired of this village.”

  “Nay, lord knight without-a-name, I know him not. He had the look of a holy man.”

  “Mayhap he flees the Devil,” the knight returned.

  “Or his fasting cracked his brains,” she offered.

  I know about the Devil, he thought, that’s curious. But what do I know about the Devil? Curious … He frowned, puzzled.

  Her face wasn’t quite fierce but set against all times and weathers. There was iron in her, he thought. He was amazed again at all he knew, the words and images at his command. Except so much was missing … his name … when he tried to remember too much he saw brief, vivid, inexplicable flashes of what he assumed was the past; flashes out of a general dimness. He frowned, trying again:

  What’s my name? … Nothing. A name is the sound or a mark they make to … to separate a thing from other things … Frowned. Why do that? … the things are the same anyway … Where did I come from? … Shook his head slightly. Why does it matter? …

  He saw the same scene: an unbelievable storm, wind and rain sheeting almost horizontally into a hillside that leaped and shook in the incredible continuous lightning … flashes of sword and armor in chaotic fragments … slashed bodies … a robed man, mouth yawning, screaming into the thunder and rage, long moustaches fluttering, pale eyes burning as if invoking the fury through himself … he felt sick and nervous, remembering this, and then shook himself out of it. Blinked at the sunny brightness, the brilliant points of dew, scattered bright flowers.

  They don’t name each one of those, do they?”

  “Well,” he said, “where are those wicked men you fear, woman?” He felt warm and strong. He realized he had little fear in him. Whatever he had been, he decided, he must have been fairly successful at it. Smiled, faintly. Or comfortable with it …

  “Never mind, good sir,” the woman said, holding out an onion and piece of cheese to him, her eyes seeking and finding a boy and girl playing together at the edge of the cultivated fields, a mothers automatic checking. “Troubles always find their way home. This is a thing I’ve come to trust for truth.”

  VI

  The air was sparkling and fragrant. Parsival stood in the walled garden inhaling the day, the flowers and spice, the cool gray stones rich with sweeps of ivy, the heavy hanging trees creased and nicked with yellow light and blue shimmer. The moment seemed charged with something from long ago and he felt a strange, sweet sense of time last and of no time passing at all …

  smiled and stretched his limbs till they shuddered a little. Sat down on the grass with the sunlight pushing against his bare face and arms.

  “What delight,” he whispered. This was a day from the purest depth of childhood and if he forgot to tell himself how many years had come between, there suddenly were no years at all, just this moment …

  He smiled and shut his eyes and the brightness still glowed into them.

  He shook his head. Was startled because the shadow of the wall had shifted noticeably though he was certain his eyes had been closed but a moment. And now one of the monks was standing there, young, round-faced, nervous-looking, partly smiling.

  “I feared to disturb you, sir,” he said.

  “I must have dozed.”

  “Do you really think so, sir?”

  Parsival concentrated on the man.

  “I ought to know,” he declared, at length.

  The monk nodded nervously and brushed a hand through his unevenly tonsured hair. Parsival noted that for all his uncertain looks his voice seemed quite assured.

  “So you ought,” the holy man said, ambiguously. “There’s food and drink waiting, if you are ready.”

  He’d been there perhaps two hours. Since mid-morning. He was hungry. He’d passed an empty, crumbling, white stone church and followed a cart trail across a dense, flowery glade under full trees (that rushed and creaked) to where the thin double ruts ended at a white, overgrown wall whose stones were spilled among the high grasses. He’d thought it odd for tracks to end where there was no gate. Noticed the rusted fragments of an ancient suit of armor and a broken sword lying as if the rocks had been dropped to shatter them there. Clambered over the wall and saw the monastery with the brothers working in the fields around the large, low, rambling structure, the same bright white building rock. No one had spoken or seemed to notice him until this one monk led him through cloistered passages that wound within and without the inner buildings past vistas of sudden bright green richness at the end of long, dim halls. Strips of crystal sky vibrated through slitted windows. Finally the fellow had left him in this silent interior garden.

  “Yes,” he murmured softly, thoughtfully, “I’m hungry enough.”

  “Are you awake now, sir?” the monk asked with the same ambiguous overtones, still partly smiling.

  “If you mean to say something, brother, why don’t you say it straight out?”

  The monk brushed irrelevantly at his hair again.

  “Some things,” he replied, “can’t be said plainly or they vanish like a moonbeam in a candle flame.”

  Parsival nodd
ed.

  “Very well,” he said.

  “Were still waiting for you to wake up and come and eat and drink.” Rubbed his head vigorously. “The table is laid, the wine poured.”

  Parsival stood up. For an instant afraid he lacked the strength to do it all in one motion, as if he’d been stuck to that lawn under him.

  “I want nothing to do with that anymore,” he said.

  “With nourishment?”

  “You know what I mean. It’s all trick roads that lead in circles. Sweets that turn bitter, drink that sours.” He shook his head and stubbornly set his lips. “If you tell me the Grail is here I’ll run away.” He paced back and forth under the trees, body breaking thin threaded sunbeams that spattered the grass like golden coins. “I want none of it and no powers either. Look, fellow, I’m an ordinary man. That’s the remarkable thing about me.”

  He stopped and planted his hands on his hips. A fragile trickle of light creased his face almost in half. “Was I led here? Is that it?”

  “You’re led everywhere,” the monk said, “whether you know it or not.” Played with a smile.

  “I know all this talk,” he said. “I’ve heard it for years.” He moved and the thread snapped. “Talk to me after the grave. I’ll listen then.”

  “Too many ‘nays,’ sir, if you ask me. You’re free to do all you choose. God has granted us that much.”

  “I want none of it,” Parsival said, remote, shaking his head. “I paid my debts on that mountaintop. I did all I needed to. I was once a fool and famous for it. I lost my family and my peace of mind.” He was heading past the monk now, aiming for the arched passageway. “I’ve been your damned hero and damned magician too and that’s all done with.” He stepped out of the sunlight and seemed to vanish into the hall, still talking, voice echoing back directionless, suddenly distant and hollowed. “So lead me to your food, and I’ll starve at your table or chew my own flesh before I’ll touch your meat!”