The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3)

by Richard Monaco

  Lohengrin saw him now, a vague metal gleaming. Heard the muffled hooves.

  They must have bagged the feet, he thought, to dull the sound …

  “Do we go straight on?” a coarser voice asked.

  “Till we pass what used to be the river,” the knight Lohengrin didn’t know was Gawain said. “Are you not pleased he’s come back?”

  “Am I not?” she ambiguously returned.

  Lohengrin only partly listened. He stood, indecisive, sword unmoving. Should he speak up? Perhaps this knight knew something about Lohengrin … the sounds, movement faded quickly into the muffling night … the breezes shook the trees into an invisible hissing high up, out in the fields …

  As he started to follow someone spoke close behind him and he turned, nearly in panic, scanning to pull a sure shape out of the hollow blottings of the night.

  “Will you spare me slaying you?” the man asked.

  “What?”

  “Walk back the way you came. Follow not this path.”

  There were still shouts, ringings, shifted and swallowed by the wind.

  “Are you certain to best me?” Lohengrin asked.

  “Save my breath and yours,” was the answer.

  The young knight felt his scalp prickle and he inched back a few paces, testing the vacant air with the tip of his blade. He recognized death in the voice that touched a memory somewhere in the lost, empty recesses of himself.

  “I mean no harm,” he told the darkness that he felt completely exposed in. His running sweat was chilled. Who was this terrible man who’d stood against a hundred?

  “Leave then.” the voice was behind him again. Lohengrin twisted around, backed and circled. He felt his cold rage flowing into him. Fear made him furious.

  “Very well,” he said. “Are you a wizard, sir?”

  “In the dark,” came the amused answer, “there’s magic everywhere.”

  Lohengrin barely listened. He was inching up to where he thought the fellow was. He was sure he’d caught a dim steel gleaming a bare sword length to his right. The rage poured into him like iced blood. He told himself it was time to act, to conquer, lead. That was all that appeared to bear reason in this absurd world he found himself wandering through, with rent past and no purpose … Unfair! … Stupid … He’d give them back the only coin anybody seemed to count, he’d have this much purpose: slay whomever dared stand before him! Command the rest. Ring himself with power … other things stirred now and he remembered, peripherally but intensely, one of the captured village girls, long graceful hands, long back … He was awakening, so there was going to be that too, pictured her sweet mouth with his angled hardness thrust into it … he was awakening, at last! Gritted his teeth.

  “Sir,” he said, “I am not one of those men back there. I am a lost knight whose memory has been stricken from him like pages torn from a book. I need good counsel above all else. Why I know not even my name, for certain.”

  “Is this truly spoken?” the unseen warrior wondered: Except he just could make him out now: a tall shape, the vaguest glimmer of chain mail and light hair.

  You son-of-a-bitch! Lohengrin thought. I have you now.

  “I swear it, sir,” he said.

  “What name have you?”

  “Someone said Lohengrin …”

  And then, body whipping like a steel spring, he uncoiled a terrific stroke, sidewise and level, that stunned even himself with its frenzied malice and power, anticipating the impact, crunch, split and shatter, his own voice beating in his ears and head, exploding a warcry!

  Howtlande felt the mule shudder just before it spilled him, going down spraddle-legged, the shadowy attacker still hacking the long, flopeared creature with relentless and senseless savagery that terrified the pop-eyed leader because the killer was so totally unconcerned with him and the sword he snicked the air with, reaching for the small, rapid shape plying its longhandled ax; chopping the beast’s skull to unnecessary splinters. Howtlande rolled backwards with surprising agility. He somehow was convinced his enemy could see in the dark, imagined reddish feral eyes … He scrambled away still hearing the frenzied ax, splat, splat, hack, crunch, thinking: I always live I always live! puffing, fleeing for the gate, the wild battle all around, men colliding, rebounding in the night, the nimble, deadly attackers cutting through and around like a diabolic wolf pack, striking, yelping incomprehensibly, someone tittering, penetratingly …

  He was going full tilt by the time he reached the torchlit gateway and burst into the jammed men there like (Skalwere thought, watching from the wall, perched with a fistful of spears) a stone through a straw roof, and rolled into the yard, shrieking:

  “Shut the gate! Shut! Shut! … Demons from hell! … Gate! Gate! You pissbuckets! … Shut! Shut! …”

  Skalwere searched for a target (not forgetting to consider Howtlande himself for a moment), then fired a spear and thought he scored … saw another climbing the wall like, he thought, a spider, shockingly long, swamp-pale limbs creeping rapidly up: threw and watched the climber writhe and twist down into the earth’s darkness …

  I have to live, Howtlande told himself, racing for the castle, massive belly heaving, I have to live …

  As he reached the steps a spear spat sparks and clattered loosely beside him.

  No, his mind said, Not yet … not yet, you filth!

  Plunged against the massive portal, yanked and strained at the handle expecting the bite and shock in his back every sweating instant …

  And Skalwere, wild with outrage, fired another in a high arc, hissing:

  “Coward! Fat coward!”

  Knew he’d missed again and raced along the wall and down the stairs as the fighting spilled into the yard. He was holding two spears now. Nothing would stop him. He’d slay the fat sack. He’d slain far better among the Vikings and nearly got to Prince Tungrim himself … bad luck had ended that and he’d fled … a swordstroke away from being a great lord himself … that was fate … But this fat coward would not escape …

  Parsival hesitated. Didn’t know and never knew why. He held the long mace part lifted. Saw the faintly glowing armor three feet before him. Didn’t strike. Shrugged. He’d let him go past, followed and then hesitated … then they had their strange conversation.

  All throughout he thought about Unlea. Kept watching an image of her that hung in his inner sight, a shape that delicately hinted at subtle things, hopes, touches, washes of sweet light opening into soft landscapes that took his longings deeper, deeper into partial forms and exquisite colors, and he wanted to talk or sing or do something about it, some gesture or shape to hold the ecstatic delicacy … felt the blow coming and instantly realized this knight had succeeded where unnumbered others had failed and he was actually going to die here and now with that flowing magical vision drawing his attention …

  Lohengrin, his son, saw brilliance that was blinding white pain as though his skull had burst and the light streamed not in but out through the fragments and he felt the something, the burning cold and bright and agonizing something there, feeling even the shape of it like a steel splinter under the skin or a sliver in the eye, and he knew something was in there, in the wound, all this virtually timeless in perception as arms and back cracked with the supple strain, slamming the cut home as everything went fluid and slow and flimsy in the terrific bursting light and himself and the other seemed shadows, part of the dark that was part of them both, his own movement mechanical, meaningless (he somehow saw) momentum … pointless … pointless … disconnected from life … who was this fellow shadow? … What was himself? … Too late to check the absurd blow, except he didn’t realize until a shock of time later that his hands had already (as if briefly separate from his will) released the hilt …

  He’d partly doubled up before he felt the narrow shock of pressure along his side, felt the steel links shear, and the pain, and was still trying hopelessly to wrench away as the ground slammed into his face and knees. Felt the slosh of blood as the blade (he
didn’t know) spun, bounced and skidded away in rebound and the man (he’d just realized was impossibly, insanely, but probably his son!) was already fleeing as if in horror and ultimate repudiation of what he couldn’t have known was attempted parricide, fleeing blindly (he heard him past the pain and desperate breathless sucking of his lungs), crashing and clinking across the field through brush and saplings and moonless obscurity, and he tried to call after him but his lungs felt flattened and his mouth gaped like a beached fish’s, only his thoughts racing on:

  My son … Was that my Son? … Sweet Mary, was that my son? …

  Parsival sat on the hard ground for a while, listening to the night. The distant sounds of fighting had faded. His son, he thought, if it really had been he, lost himself in the dark woods.

  His fingers discovered the wound in his side was superficial. That surprised him. He’d been winded by the blow but there wasn’t much blood. The fellow must have misjudged, he decided …

  He stood up after a time and went on in the general direction taken by Gawain and the others. After dawnlight he’d be able to pick up their trail.

  Those ribs will be sore as the devil’s whang tomorrow, he realized. That bastard was sly enough to be Lohengrin … Taking me like that … I’m getting to be quite the ordinary great man, he thought, sarcastically. If this keeps on I’ll begin to believe I’m mortal after all … whoever he was if fate keeps up this game we’ll meet again …

  He moved carefully through the trees, somehow (he never questioned it anymore) feeling where they stood and avoiding collision.

  The next problem would be Unlea. What to do about that? Well, another bridge to wait to cross …

  “Anyway,” he muttered, “if that was my boy I hope he gives me time, when next we meet, to say I’m sorry.” Smiled, wry.

  Parsival, he told himself, you collect problems like dogdung breeds flies. And even if you don’t think them up they leap out of the dark at you …

  XXV

  At a certain point Broaditch realized they were trapped. He let himself and the others be led without resistance towards the great fire. The madman they now knew was Clinschor had stopped speaking and the other man (John, the leader) came forward again on the ledge. Pleeka was just ahead of Broaditch.

  Close to the fire the blank rockface was impressive, the two figures on top commanding. At first Broaditch didn’t realize they were being discussed.

  “Brother Pleeka brought these creatures here,” John declared, reedy, annoyingly insistent.

  Broaditch was sure who he was now and yelled up at him:

  “Are you not John of Bligh?”

  “By Christ, you’re right, I think,” murmured Alienor. She held both her children before her, surrounded by the dark masses.

  “I brought them as converts,” Pleeka was answering. No one paid attention to the interruption. Pleeka’s remarks seemed to amuse some of the crowd whose breath and stink swelled around them. The flames popped and hissed. The smoke seemed to hint at strange shapes as it sluggishly rolled overhead, great creeping things with many heads and twisted limbs …

  “Ha!” somebody called.

  “Hoo!” another.

  “The brother has been away,” John said, with easy humor. “He knows not the new ways of the holy people.”

  “What new ways?” Pleeka demanded. “Our ways were founded in truth and God’s light! What new ways need we? And who is this —”

  John cut him off.

  “God’s will changes at His pleasure,” he announced. “There can be no converts because the brothers and sisters are a whole folk. The lost race of Trueman from the days of the prophets!” A sighing; a breathstink went up from the massed holy ones, still a little numbed from Clinschor’s insane but matchless rhetoric. “We are the inheritors of the earth in these final days! The final days of the old world!” Sighing. “This is the day of Armageddon! The twilight of time …” The crowd was swaying and humming a strange dirge or universal keening of infinite and primal pain. “This is a time and a half time!” John suddenly screamed and Broaditch squinted hard past the flames at the shaggy-looking, dark-eaten figure. “A time, time and a halt time!” Sighing, sighing … “We are the people of the judgment! We are the mouth with teeth to chew the sinners!!” Sighs and outcries and moaning and the dirge … “To chew and swallow the sinners and the accursed of God!”

  The mass went into a frenzy, blotting away Pleeka’s shouts, his sweaty, fire-shaken face tilted up, mouth struggling soundlessly.

  Things rarely flow easy and smooth, Broaditch thought, but here’s all rapids and falls … Leena stood, eyes shut, holding the boy.

  Finally Pleeka’s hysterical voice broke through and Broaditch heard:

  “You’ve profaned everything!” he was yelling. “Everything!”

  “Seize them all!” John ordered. “For their tongues are as the tongues of serpents!”

  Broaditch dimly saw Clinschor’s long head bobbing, nodding madly as if in agreement as the other spread out his hands in nervous benediction, pacing slightly, erratically from side to side through the entangled shadows and flameflashes.

  God, Broaditch thought, what a crew! Every madman’s found a home at last … even the plague seems to shun these creatures …

  His spear had already been snatched away and he decided not to struggle hopelessly to save it. Watched flailing, vociferous Pleeka overcome by a swirl of them, broken pieces of his shouts audible:

  “… betrayed … promise … promise …”

  As Broaditch and the others were lifted, yanked and bound with wirelike cords, carried into the darkness, the organlike tones of Clinschor swelled over all in immense disproportion to the stick figure form:

  “I will create the new kingdom and overcome the evil forces of weakness and sickness and confusion! This triumph shall outlive the ages! We shall raise in stone the final monuments of blood and time!!”

  And the rest was lost in cheering howls, clashing of metal and the curses and gratuitous buffeting as several blows rocked his solid head and the sounds became the music of some lost and maddened world of plague, seas of blood, drying, dying earth … how could any bear it, he wondered abstractly, how could hopeless and fragile flesh bear this crucifixion of all nature? …

  Then a dark, closed wagon, the door slammed shut behind them.

  “Are you intact, Alienor?” he asked.

  “Torky,” she was saying, soothing. “Torky.” As he wept.

  “Mama … mama,” Tikla clung close in the black, musty place.

  They must keep pigs in here, Broaditch thought.

  “Where are you, papa?” Torky scrambled around, tensed. “Papa …”

  Pleeka was still raging:

  “Betrayers of God! … Betrayers of God! … Children of Gog and Magog!”

  “Torky,” Broaditch said, “we are all here and still live. Come to my voice.” Heard the boy moving then felt his hot, surprisingly hard touch. Thought how he was changing with the days and hoped these times would not wound his heart forever … He held him silently now …

  “God will be revenged,” said Pleeka to no one present. “The beast will be cast down and broken! …”

  Leena was embracing the young boy. Only the full adults had been bound. She crooned to him, not thinking about the blood. The fire had showed it everywhere, splashed on all of them in running rose stains. The fire was bleeding … She calmly didn’t think about it.

  All Broaditch believed he wanted, as he strained carefully against his bonds, was not to surrender to this. There had to be a sane moment in every madman, a clean spot in every leper. So, he concluded, somewhere in this wasteland, there had to be a garden, in all this broken, bleeding, burning life …

  He sighed and sank back on the foul-smelling boards. Pleeka muttered inaudibly now. His head stung and was starting to ache …

  “Never mind,” his wife was saying, “You tried. You have always tried, Broaditch.”

  “Woman, I …”

&nbs
p; “Never mind!” She was fierce, almost harsh in her tenderness. Her head touched his solid shoulder. “Say no word, husband. Say no word to me.”

  He nodded. Rested. Let his eyes gradually tune into the faint strands and blots of light that showed at cracks and around the door. Sighed and sat, not even thinking anymore. Just waiting, patient and still, terrifically intent, nothing in him even asking for sleep yet. Sitting solid as carven, indestructible granite. Felt his son’s hand on his arm gradually soften as his tense breathing steadied … waiting … not thinking …

  Leena was praying, fingers twisting the rope belt of her garment as if it were beads. The dark made it hard to keep the shapes away, the faces in the gusting torchlight, harsh beards, unlooking eyes, the metal smell of the blood sticky on their clothes and faces as she pushed at the closing shadows, flopping, arching, kicking, raw sound bursting from her without words, begging her father and mother for relief from the hands that kept coming back, from stonehard bones, the sheer heaviness of men, pulling, pushing, grunting, blood and suffering, her own blood draining down there darkly beyond help or reach (masses of stony shadow crushing her flat as though not just the raping men but the whole world lay on her, the horse snuffs and smells nearby, laughter … a barking dog … ), her painful blood draining down her wrenched thighs … draining into a void that sucked her down too past all struggle and outcry … the savage, rhythmic pain prying her from her body … And now she pushed the images away, forehead resting on the planks, eyes pressed to the thinnest crevice where almost light showed edgeless as water, praying, the boy across her lap, hands twisting the knotted rope as if to tell or untie it, soundless lips steady, praying the way another might strike blows …

  XXVI

  The sun was setting behind a wall of violet-dark clouds. The fields opened before them, silvery, water-vague. The mules, horses and marching men seemed to float along.