The night slammed back and screams were still ringing, Unlea fleeing past and he followed, shouting:
“Unlea! What?! What?!”
And she spun into his arms, panting, shaking.
“They were in the tent! … the tent! …”
And he suddenly was seeing two worlds at once (or was mad), where dark, stunted creatures stalked among the blasted woods, things like fish with clawed, reptile feet dragged themselves through the ashes, pop eyes gleaming in the coal light; where birds with human heads hopped on long legs and grimaced … howled … where things like giant bees hovered beside winged lizards … where vast greenish fires raged in the distance in what seemed burning cities. He knew they could see him too. He blinked and shook his head as she trembled against his cold metal side. The visions remained. He was trapped again, the other world was leaking through everywhere. That deadly water, he believed, had washed away his defenses … his fortress walls were crumbling …
“The tent … Oh, Parsival … Parsival … save me, my dear one … Please save me …”
“You?” he wondered. “Save you?”
The screaming had stopped. The peasants were gone. In the other world, terrible distorted creatures were following them. A monkeylike thing with a sharkface seemed to caper around the glade, banked rows of terrible teeth bared.
“Stay here,” he commanded, plunging off to where he glimpsed a humanish form bending over what appeared to be a flopped sack. A girl spun to face him with drawn dagger, eyes wide, bright, and the monkeylike shape leaped between them and Parsival struck, missed or cut through a shadow, twisted back, and the girl was gone into the confusion of darkness and overlapping worlds. Now Unlea was backing away from another girl with the horrid fish behind her. A pushing stream of liquid fire flowed across the rocky ground. Parsival charged back and the girl ducked aside and then still another leaped in, cloak outstretched except they were batlike wings and he slashed and shouted, hit nothing, and then Unlea was clinging to his legs, howling sobs.
The poisoned earth let them in, his mind somehow knew. We all did it … we poisoned everything … He held her, shut his eyes. Bent and kissed her uncombed, slightly sourish hair. Held her with Gawain’s drawn sword as nervous as a youth, feeling awkward and slightly incapable. He kept his sight lowered, denying all terror and vision, gathered his will and waited for dawn to gradually fill the woods and wash all the blackness away. Watched the two new corpses gradually emerge from the background, sprawled in the ashy earth: a woman and man. He didn’t look closely. The effect of the water seemed to have faded. He sardonically wondered why Gawain seemed so pleased with it … well, he’d had more than a mouthful and no doubt was mad in proportion. He sighed … Unlea stirred and he soothed her with a touch.
All his life, it came to him, he’d lived as if his steps could always be retraced. He’d clung to that. Expected the second chance, a place to return to … except there wasn’t, time ran one way only …
Now it was hazy noon. He shielded his eyes and scanned the desolate hills for movement or a change somewhere to green … nothing. He worked his dry tongue and sucked it for moisture. It was sticky. He was glad he’d spilled the bad water because the temptation would have been immense.
He held her arm as they trudged on through the shadeless forest Followed a dry streambed leveled with the omnipresent soot. Hoped vaguely that the far end might still be wet. Glanced at her: the gown was rent and blackened, her hair in knots. Sweat had streaked the ashstains on her face. She was footsore, limping.
“Is there hope?” she asked.
He wondered how he looked himself. Each step jarred his head.
“Hope,” he repeated, looking ahead at where the banks wound on, sinking slightly, steadily. “For what? There’s ample room for hoping.”
“To live,” she said, licking her cracked lips.
“Unlea …” Squeezed her hand.
“I thirst so.”
“Yes.” Felt responsible and wondered if that was what love always became, because what had been love before was gone: he could look at her and see a fragile, often silly, fear-ridden person; see the sweet good and tart ill mixed all at once without the tender elation and melancholy of the past, without jealous need to possess all her moments … it wasn’t just the miseries of their situation either. He was used to loving, he thought, amused, under the worst possible conditions. His loves had survived everything but marriage.
“If there’s water,” he told her, “we’ll come upon it.”
“If there’s none?”
“Need I answer?”
He noticed something moving, squinted: it seemed a brightness, a shimmer like sun on ripples. Blinked … it was gone. Decided it had to have been a heat mirage. As he looked away it came back and he studied it indirectly, still walking, and then realized what he’d drunk last night was still active. He watched it take form and something like music sounded from within a space resembling an open door where a womanshape floated as if glowing colors had taken flesh, cool greens, rare blues, flowing golds spilling and sparkling …
No, he thought. Sorry … but I say you nay. Haunt me as you please I care not.
“Who slew those poor folk then.” Unlea was asking.
“I know not,” he replied, slowing, spotting what he hoped were the banks of the main river crossing into them a few dozen steps ahead.
“There was a young girl in the tent,” she said, “with a knife … She was so young.” She shuddered, slightly. “There was blood on her face. The candlelight showed it plain. Oh dear God, what days are these? What days?” Shook her head. “Children do murder … the earth is seared to dust. Will we find any towns or castles left?”
He shrugged.
“I know not.” Stopped now at the edge, looking down into a deep ravine. He heard no water sounds in the bottom shadows.
“Sweet lady Mary,” she murmured, “now what do we do?”
He was irritated, hot, headachey, thirsty.
“I recommend we leap,” he snapped.
“Parse,” she said, hurt.
“Oh, Christ, don’t weep, I beg you.”
She looked at him. Opened her mouth but held her words. The tears gleamed, unfallen.
“So this is it then,” she said. “Your heart is plainly read.”
“What?” He took her hand to lead her on so they could walk on the rocky rim of the cut except she jerked away and stood with fingers pressed to her mouth. He knew she was chewing the knuckle. She always did when upset.
“Very well, then,” she announced, voice unsteady, nodding. “Very well.”
“Very well what?”
“Go on,” she said. Nodded. “Go.”
“Unlea,” he pleaded, “seems this a fit time for —”
“You never cared, that’s plain to see. I’m ashamed … ashamed … You’re helping me from pity only … pity!”
“What dung and nonsense, Unlea.”
“Ahaha,” she cried, “yet I see it plain enough!”
He saw her teeth nervously working on the finger. She wasn’t looking at him.
“This is absurdity!” he suddenly yelled, hoping for effect and frustrated too. “I love you!”
“Ahaha.”
“Oh, God in heaven!” He grabbed her wrist and she was struggling, wild, awkward, frantic out of all proportion, yelling:
“Free me! Free me, you bastard knight! Free me! You smug bastard! You faker! You sod of shit! Used me like a whore and murdered my husband …”
“No! Be still!”
“Used me used me used me! Faker! Smug bastard … Oh, God I’m alone with him … with him … I have nothing … nothing. Oh, God!”
He shook her violently, screaming now into her contorted, weeping, wild face:
“Be still! Damn you, be still! Unlea! I love you! I love you! I love you!”
And then they were both on their knees, her wrist in his hand, both sobbing, her greasy hair flopped across her face, reddened eyes running tears
. He was gasping hoarsely for breath and remembering his life with Layla. He felt stupid, guilty, helpless …
“There’s nothing,” she kept saying, “nothing … nothing … nothing … I want to die please let me die … please …”
Though he believed he loved her he’d felt no truth in saying it. Looking at her he felt a sad, deep shock, thinking:
Oh, all the pain … the pain … so needless all this pain … here we are at the end of the world and there’s still this pain …
He knelt and gathered her into his arms, pressed her hot face close, the wetness and unhappiness and pungent breath … holding her in the dried-up stream under the unrelenting sun, sobbing and kissing one another … then pulled and twisted and tore their garments free, stretching themselves out, gasping on hot, baked, sooty mud, ears roaring, blood beating, feeling himself arced hard, spearlike.
“Oh, darling Unlea,” he moaned, “Oh … Unlea … Unlea …”
Help us … we take what we can … help us … help …
XXXVIII
“See here, see … see for yourself!” Clinschor was exulting, squatting at the fallen knight’s head. The brief flash of day was over, though it was barely past noon, because the canyon here was so high and narrow and twisted that the sun only showed when pouring straight down for a piece of an hour and then dusk rushed into dark down at the barren bottom. So he held the sputtering torch over Lohengrin’s gashed head, one long, thick finger aimed down, washed-out eyes reflecting the shaky light, hollowly, catlike, while his flesh seemed eaten to bone by the rocking shadows. John leaned in the wagon door to look on. Outside the remnants were squatting and sitting, chewing food and sipping from flasks. Broaditch and the other prisoners were close under the rock wall. One of the Truemen was handing out strips of dried meat. Broaditch dropped his piece without comment, staring with steady fury at the bent, bearded man who was grinning, mouth-breaking. His nose seems so lost in hair no air can reach it, Broaditch commented to himself. My own beard at least grows in a general direction and not looking like it be attacking my face … and then the man handed him a drink and this time, gripping it between his bound hands, he grunted thanks.
Took a slug and it wasn’t just warm and clotted but metallic too (As though I cut my gums!) and he was spitting and gagging and snarling a curse. There was enough light left floating in the dusk to show the thick black-red on the pale pebbles and spattered over his hands and lips.
Just as, within, Clinschor turned Lohengrin’s head on the dim planks and placed his pale finger in the glancing slice of a wound. His pale eyes rolled up and he shuddered and for a moment there was an image, a feeling, his mother’s round face across the table, his burly father working a beef bone into his beard and mouth, small very white teeth grinding and ripping into the flesh, and her voice too:
“Nay, my lord, that’s too hard a thing.”
“Be it?” the dark man replied. “What say you, boy?” Speaking now to Clinschor who was looking up at the big face and small, hard eyes. “He’s free with brag and boast most days.”
“Let him remain at home,” she insisted.
“But he claims to be a man already. And quite a one, eh, boy? Are you a great one, boy?”
He thought: even then the dark magicians worked their spells against me …
“But no more,” he muttered … the feeling, the feeling standing there at the massive table, arms folded across his thin chest, nervous hands drumming and twisting, candlelight touching their faces with quivering fingers as if the flesh itself were loose, uncertain …
“What’s wrong with him, eh? He spoke large enough ere this!”
“Let him be, why can’t you?” she said.
But he refused to answer and felt his power gathering within, knew he was growing taller now and more massive moment by moment, concentrating on it, and knew his father would soon see his error and would feel the terrible strength of his son … felt himself towering, filling the hall with the massive force of himself.
“Clinschor,” she was saying, “are you ill, son? Son? …”
“I said no word,” he informed John, “and soon I smote the Devil with my magic!” the torchfire hollowed his sockets. “First there was only myself and then a time came of hundreds of thousands, yea, and more! A time came!” One large, pale hand flicked through a complex gesture expressing all these things. “And then, again, I was alone and betrayed by weakness, cowardice, stupidity!” Took breath.
John smiled a secret smile because he suddenly saw this being’s true form and this amused him and touched him with awe as well. It had instantly come clear to him. All the blood and pressure of the night had led him to this: here was no wandering madman, this was God’s own instrument. He saw splendid limbs and flaming eyes under the twisted, skinny, filthy, blasted guise and knew the pig face that spoke to him in secret, the pig that stood upright as a man in the shadows of his tent or on the lonely mountain trails, the red eyes fierce, commanding, the divine pig who’d found him in his wandering misery long ago and with stern compassion taught him God’s true and deepest will had now possessed this broken creature with his infinite spirit, force and wisdom.
“I lived in darkness,” he confided in Clinschor, who cocked his head to the side to listen, long finger still poked into the knight’s wound. “Aye, master.” Gazed with deep pleasure into the red pig eyes behind Clinschor’s sockets. “I was a priest, praying and blessing, hoping to heal the world’s pain … but I was young, master, and saw well the folly and wickedness of things, so I gathered the serfs and smashed at the foulness …”
The other blinked rapidly. This was a good servant, whatever he was saying he said “master.”
“Now it’s in my hands at last,” he said, “this scrap here —” Wiggled his fingertip in the shallow slash in the knight’s head that exposed a bright strip of metal, wedged into the temple bone, neither quite cool silver nor warm gold, in the changing light. “I bent close and lo! I read the writing in this hurt … Lo!” Moved his face near and peered into the split flesh edged with bared skull as if gazing into the head itself, it seemed to those men behind John who perched birdlike in the doorway.
John frowned, hearing these holy words from He whose name was known to him. He knew these were parables.
“Lord Sixsixis,” he said, leaning close to the upturned snout, that poked from behind the human bone, “divine one, I know it is written in the blood and flesh that we are to feed and drink from the substance of the unworthy. I have led my people to this. When all failed, when I were left helpless, searching in vain … in vain …” He was weeping. “… for truth and power … even then, lord, you showed me and lit my path … even before I knew Thee in Thy form, dread lord, Thou came when all my reasonings had failed, my plans confounded, and with a blade put to my throat by my selfsame hand to end this sorry life, Thy voice spoke unto me and shattered the false world and all appearances into shivers!” No numbers added, nothing grew straight, stars wheeled planless, men whirled among themselves like dustmotes in a turn of wind, babbling nonsense, dying for insubstantial dream after dream and he knew the madness was health because there was no sense save in nonsense. He found the end of all science and philosophy. And only nonsense freed him a last because there was no pity in anything but only the great grindstone of death smashing all things to meaningless dust and this pitilessness freed him from all inner conflicts. He saw the truth was pitiless and so became the truth and the pig whispered to him: Feed and live! Feed and die! Feed and live! Feed and die!
Clinschor squinted one reddened eye at him, face still close to the wound as if listening to it now. He clearly was listening to nothing else.
“I read the words and lo my strength multiplied,” he said.
Reached his arms wide as if everything could be embraced. The thundering voice suddenly rose to full force and shook and snapped in the confined space.
Broaditch, at the end of the rope, had moved close enough to the wagon to hear and see and
then smell: a reeking of excrement poured from the doorway and he realized Clinschor must have been relieving himself without ever stepping outside.
“All things are my things!” the voice exploded.
As Broaditch edged closer one of the black-robes gripped him by the hair, yanked at his head until tears welled up.
“Back, sinner,” he snarled.
But the sinner stepped into the terrific pain so he could watch and saw Clinschor hook his fingers and rip the bright metallic shimmer out of the skull as the knight screamed and flopped wildly, horribly (Broaditch felt a shiver through his own blinding pain, hardly noticing the kicks raining on his dense body), thrashing in the torchlight like a man with falling sickness as Clinschor held high the sliver, yelling:
“The Grail! I have the Grail!” Seeing the host surrounding him, the calm, bearded giants and pale magicians weeping despair; female fiends with terrible, tender faces stretching out soft hands (he knew) to weaken him, tempting him to softness … he felt coming history shift toward strength and away from pale quoters of poems, singers of sweetness … prayers … held history in his clenched hand … away from soft arms and lying peace and empty embraces … away … Clutching the bloodwet fragment, he danced.
Lohengrin still howled and flopped around his feet. John crouched, transfixed, beholding the pig rise, expand trunk and trotters until it stooped, immensely filling the wagon, red eyes fist-sized, dimming the torches with their glare as the voice, beyond, he believed, anything human, cried:
“Hail victory! Hail victory!”
And Broaditch, stubborn and amazed, watched (head still sawed back and forth by the hair as the blows hit) John caper on the steps and gleefully raise his fist in wild salute, crying out between Clinschor’s boomings:
“Praise … all … the glory … all praise … highest pig … the pig! … Thine eyes surpassing … bless … bless … wonder … Thy form …”
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 23
