“Where are you going, my lord?” Gobble called ahead.
He was nervous about going too far into the unmarked and untraveled maze of carved passageways that no man knew the end of, or when they’d been constructed. Did Clinschor know, he wondered? He went on without hesitation. Anything was better than rotting back there with those filthy degenerates, he decided … he had wanted to die for months here, and now … it had to be a miracle.
Clinschor went straight down a long, straight slope ahead of the flickering light, the immense voice muttering on like wind in a drain.
All the old force is still in his eye, Gobble assured himself. He remembered the irresistible flow of their armies sweeping over the green earth, the wild excitement and sweetness of it; a new age about to be shaped from the sullen lead and dough of the old … and then the flaming accident that destroyed them, caught in their own fires. Crawling here to hide in the earth without hope … and then, thinned to bone, blackened, the master had reappeared from the cindered world, coming out of the darkness while Gobble was dragging himself on his hopeless, meaningless rounds in a parody of his old activity. And then, as if taking form in the reddish light, solidifying into tight, ironhard substance with all the force of an omen or a dream. I will follow and forget … Follow and forget …
“Parsival,” cried Unlea, bracing herself, yanking at him, dragging him out of the glowing Grail Hall — she didn’t see — towards the nearest archway. “For mercy, come! Come!” Because she heard the footsteps rushing faster …
Except he was in a dim, mistladen forest of towering, darkwet trees. Moved in a kind of twilight silence. He felt her hand and had a dim sense of the actual darkness they hurried into. He felt the deadly children following behind among the trees that were chilly corridors and empty stone … a mounted knight floated out of the mist, greenish armor wetly glinting … familiar … calling something … his name: Parsival Goddamnit! … cantering past … Parse! … Parse! … and as he vanished into the shifting fogs he recognized Gawain … features whole as they were twenty-odd years ago, and next there was himself (he half-expected it) helmetless in the red armor, riding the thickformed charger he’d won from Sir Roht the Red. So young, his mind noted, and so fair, by Christ, I seemed a woman. And he remembered what was coming next. From far, far away something (he didn’t realize was Unlea) was trying to pull him out of this scene. He remembered what was coming next as the young Parsival, golden locks flowing, rode through a wall of mist and reined up as the old man stepped into his path, dark, big, bald and heavy-bearded.
Merlinus, he thought, and, arm stretched out, pulled unseen Unlea along in the other world that was less than shadows to him. Merlinus …
Spoke over his young voice (saying something about graybeards interfering …) and saw the wizard’s deep-set eyes flash to him, looking past the youth.
“Merlinus,” he called through the fog, “I need your help again!”
From a ghost? the eyes somehow said.
“Yes. Am I not a ghost as well?”
Do you trust me at last?
“I need help. I’m lost.”
Then let yourself be led.
“Where? Where?”
He was still moving into the swelling grayish veils, drifting away from the scene, though he still struggled to get nearer against the invisible grip he couldn’t understand, because his own body seemed but a thickening of vapor …
The last door is at the bottom.
“Bottom? Bottom of what?”
And then he veered, tried to duck away from the fanged and taloned monkeyshape that suddenly sprang out of the dark trees, struck and bounced him reeling, and something screamed in a wailing voice: the dark world came solid again, flashed painfire, and he saw the stone pillar he’d crashed into and heard Unlea’s desperate cry clearly now:
“Parse! Great Jesus … are you struck blind? They’ll be upon us!”
She held the torch now as he groped for his bearings.
“All right,” he told her without conviction.
“Are you come mad to hold fierce converse with nothingness? My God, lost in this terrible place with —”
“All is well. It’s the poison water!”
He headed across the long hall, set with hundreds of pillars in echo of the dark forest from the past.
All is well except it will come back …
“You stumbled like a blinded man,” she was saying, “straight into that pole though I pulled at you.”
“Yes. All is well now. Come on … come …”
They entered another sinking, twisting corridor. He gripped her arm. Heard her laboring breath.
“O God … Parse … Parse …”
“If the poison grips my brain again just guide me as best you can. Do you hear, Unlea?”
“O God …”
“Do you!?”
“Yes … O God …”
“I love you. I love you, Unlea,” he said. “I’ll do what I may …”
“O God …”
He could hear the slapslapping of the following feet, and voices too now.
Why must they follow? Let them but come close when my brain is all mine and I’ll instruct them in regret …
“Fear not,” he said, but perhaps to himself mainly, because he felt the other world coming the way a dreaming is already on you by the time consciousness grasps the change. Heard the voices and the padding bare feet …
Layla felt it was a comedy. She only wished she were drunk enough to laugh. She realized she needed water but her mind was on wine, even here in this black cavern under the mountain.
She kept recalling the last few swallows she’d managed after discovering the gourd in a discarded pack as the ash storm broke over them in black whirlwinds. There’d been just enough to flush her with delicious numbness and she knew she could deal with all other problems, even here buried alive. It was a comedy running and hiding and chasing through the desolate, pitiful world …
Tungrim … had he survived? She decided he wouldn’t be easy to kill. He was a man, that one, no mistake … pity he was so crude and that they’d not met in early years.
Except all years have been dismal in their fashion, she reminded herself. The winesoft blurring lay around her like a soothing touch. She wobbled slightly and wasn’t particularly concerned at seeing nothing in all directions and having no formed notions of what was to come … A man as others weren’t if it comes to that. But do I go to his frozen lands with him and become the lady of his longhouse? Imagine what his mother must he like … At least Parsival’s was dead … She frowned now that she was thinking about him. The bastard … did he ever trouble to stir to my side of the bed?
“No more,” she muttered, “no more …”
Hugged herself suddenly, feeling the dank draughts that sucked foul stinks along with them. She believed, without having to phrase it internally, Tungrim would find her one way or another, simply because that was another unsatisfying alternative to nothing better. She believed the calamities would somehow run their course (they always had) and strand her again in the wrong place in the wrong life with the man who wasn’t quite right enough … not quite, though good …
She wasn’t really aware of the sickly torchlight until she was already sloshing and stumbling over the half-submerged planks that served for flooring in the inhabited sections of the tunnel system. Blinked at the flames … went on … blinked at the runty folk who suddenly emerged from a cross-corridor. The shortest and widest of the crew had a beard that coiled in patches along his jawline like coppery wires, face fishbelly pale. He gawked at her with washed-out eyes widened in something between awe and outrage.
What repellent little things, she thought. Do they grow them in the slime here? She giggled. There were even females, she noted. No shorter, the near one was, but laced with fat and sags like, she quipped inwardly, a bound roasting beef, half-naked as the rest.
What charms …
“Have you tongues?” she asked. It turned ou
t not all did because the wide one yawned his mouth and pointed at the stump.
“Blaaaaerr,” he said. Then smiled. Gawked. Moved closer, still smiling. Touched her stained leathers with stubby fingers as if wonderingly.
How well spoken, she thought, and what fine teeth …
“You live here?” she asked, raising her voice pointlessly.
Scatterbeard nodded with vigor and tugged at the fabric.
“Blaaahhher,” he explained, gesturing, smiling.
“This is no doubt your court,” she said. “Is there feasting and dancing this morrow?”
She walked past the group and wasn’t really aware that they were all closing in around her until she caught her foot between two boards and reeled forward, half-running, and several sets of hands clutched her and she was down, kneeling, staring into the flabby woman’s faces, shadows setting off the bulges and sinking the tiny eyes out of sight.
Layla didn’t struggle. Wondered why they didn’t help her up or release her.
“I have a thirst,” she told them. “Have you any wine?” She shrugged in the softly firm gripping hands. “Or ale, for all of that? But wine’s a noble’s drink … still …”
The woman, almost face to face with Layla on her knees, stood there, expressionless, nothing moving but the flame-wavers. The hands kept firm. She was only just beginning to be afraid.
“Alllbhhhhooo,” the voice said in her ear now and some one of them laughed. The breath in her face was like soured flesh. “Blaaatoooo!” Violent, spittle spraying.
She somehow knew he’d still be smiling. Reality was penetrating as no one moved.
Oh, she thought. Oh … oh …
The pig stood there, upright, scarlet gaze glaring, spacious head near the roof of the passageway, great body gleaming, a pale reflection of the baleful eyes, and John trembled with awe and fell to his knees, hands gripped, interlocked against his lean chest.
“Thou hast preserved me in the midst of Thy wrath, Lord!” He felt the terrible look penetrating him, burning his soul naked. He felt exalted. Felt an inner trembling surrender. Thou hast brought me whole through the storm of Thy darkness. I serve Thee only, Lord!”
The vast shape remained fixed. Eyes glared, blank fire. John waited for its voice to sound … waited for a sign … Felt no hunger or thirst. Watched the sleek, luminous, towering porcine form as if all nourishment flowed from the raised front trotters, the thick snout itself: the mystery of its substance …
Clinschor and Gobble and several ragtag dwarves came out of a cross-corridor. The pig whispered and John called out:
“Wait!”
And Clinschor turned, eyes tracking, vaguely.
“Who’s this?” Gobble asked.
“We must bring the Holy Grail —”
“What?” Clinschor focused, frowned. “What?”
“I have been told. By our Beloved.”
“What?”
“Where did you come from?” Gobble wanted to know. He was wondering whether these two might not be brothers, both emaciated, filthy and wild-eyed. While he believed in lord masters greatness, he remained concerned by his condition.
“We must take the Grail with us and raise statues of the Mighty Beloved in every church in every land.”
Gobble watched Clinschor ponder this idea with deepening frowns.
“Who’s this mad creature?” Gobble wondered.
Clinschor was now making intricate passes with his free hand.
“Back, devil!” he commanded. “Grababebble Grabab Grabab!” He incanted. “You cannot steal my power. Begone, devil, begone! I adjure thee!” Leaped up and down and flailed his bony arm in the other’s face. John stood, swaying. Clinschor spat next, frothing with fury. “I’ve been too soft and tender,” he said, nodding. “No more of that … no more …” Whirled and walked away. Gobble followed and then John staggered after, skinny fists clenched.
“Betrayer!” John cried, frantic. “We must save the churches! It’s His command! Men’s souls must be cleansed! This is our work!” He clutched at Clinschor, who swung the Grail hand just as Gobble whacked the fanatical priest with the flat of his blade. John fell flat, raging, agonized, clawing at the mud, blood in his eyes, cried after them:
“Betrayer! … Betrayer! …” The pig voice whispering instructions.
Clinschor was smiling, holding up the fist that prisoned the sacred splinter.
“No magic can stand against me,” he explained. “You saw with your own eyes.”
Gobble’s own eyes were watching his master sidelong as he sheathed his sword. Blinked. Frowned faintly …
“I think we should rest and eat something, lord master,” he suggested.
“Nonsense. I need no mortal sustenance anymore.” Smiled. “I have returned from the land of the dead. I cannot die again.”
“Ah,” breathed Gobble. Frowned and watched as they labored deeper into the tunnel. Then his eyes went back to their customary restless rolling, as if ever searching for an exit or watching for a foe.
“I belong, as soon as you will, Gobba, to the powers.” Smiled and stuck out his chest with simple pleasure. “Soon all will belong to them,” he added, chipper, refreshed …
Broaditch actually heard the scream. He was holding a long, thin-stemmed mace. He’d just found it leaning against a damp wall as they carefully moved from torch to spread-out torch.
“A woman,” he told his companion.
“What?” Lohengrin, who was nearly past the entrance, wondered. He peered ahead hoping to sight Clinschor. He assumed he’d find the nearest way out.
Broaditch, thinking of Alienor, was instantly heading down the darker passage even as the knight hesitated a step.
“It makes little sense to go this way,” he called after him.
“At this point,” the other responded over his bulky shoulder, “it makes little sense to put one foot before the other.”
Around a bend … another, no torchlight here. Broaditch banged and scraped along, ripping his hands on the gritty stones … heard another female cry, much closer. Lohengrin, losing ground, cursed and rasped his chain mail until sparks flew …
Broaditch was suddenly standing, panting, in a low, squarish chamber lit by a central fire that smoked back into the place as the flue sucked the flames into the rockroof. He thought:
The picture’s come to life!
Remembering instantly (what he hadn’t been likely to forget anyway) the bizarre paintings on the walls and ceiling of the wagon full of whores he’d traveled in before reaching the country where he’d found the famous Grail castle. The paintings had amazed him and now he froze, seeing the slender, long-haired nude woman shockingly outspread in the smoky light, limbs stretched in four directions (he couldn’t see the ropes on wrists and ankles yet), a small, flaccid-bodied female bent forward between her legs as if drinking from her groin while several (children, he first thought) pale little naked males writhed around and over her, small hands plucking at her flesh and one another’s, joining together like acrobats, grunting and gurgling, the bound woman yelling as Broaditch broke his brief trance and moved forward as Lohengrin crashed through the last twists of the passage.
“… you fucked, foul, diseased mute filth!” she was yelling. “Oh, Christ!! Remove that fat asshole of a face from my private garden else I’ll piss in your scummy mouth! You pig bitch! Fat, fat dwarf filth! Untie me, I say … you pack of dwarfed degenerates! Free me, I say!”
And Broaditch was even laughing a little as he raced past the flames and heard Lohengrin’s stunned expletive behind him as he stopped and uncertainly shifted his mace in his grip. He felt vaguely like a parent finding children in the hayloft while he resembled, in the flameflaring, a demonic judge of hell’s remoter pits.
Some of them looked up, pale, interlocked with organs of action that large men might have envied, and beckoned him into the heap with grunts and choice, proffered flashes of anatomy; while the fat little female licked and slobbered in the bottom of the lady
’s belly … they tugged and sucked at her, reminding him of kittens round a dam.
“Great God,” Broaditch said.
“… disgusting, loathsome,” Layla was going on, then, seeing him: “Are you another of these things?”
“Free her,” he told them. It had little impact.
Lohengrin had arrived. Broaditch heard his breathing.
“Well,” he said, “this once would have been to my taste, before I was hit by the Grail or whatever … but I like not all the fellows to the feast here so well —” and broke off as he and Layla stared at one another. Broaditch was now scraping and kicking the others away, though they simply continued their sport wherever they fell in the heaps of hay and sacking spread everywhere.
“Lohengrin!” she cried. “Lohengrin!”
Broaditch paused, dagger poised to cut her cords, and stared at both.
“I …” The beak-faced knight began.
“Great God,” she said.
“Mother,” he said, “I …”
Broaditch just stared in the jerky reddish-dark waverings, the pale heap of entangled dwarves on one side (he’d tossed the fat shimmer of pendulosity into the center of it all), mother and son, incredibly reunited, on the other …
He found nothing (as he later put it) in his mouth but a stunned tongue and so, wisely, kept it shut …
The torch was sputtering to death. Parsival hadn’t actually registered anything as he skidded to a halt on the clay semi-mud, locking her close to his side with his free arm. The pit at their feet filled the tunnel from wall to wall. Here the bricks were loose and slimy muck pushed out between them under the sagging roof.
He held the flame down and stared into the soundless gape of darkness.
“Mayhap,” he murmured, “the bottom is in Satan’s bedchamber.”
“What can we do? What —”
“It’s not too far to overleap.” About seven feet, he guessed.
What had that vision of Merlin told him? … The bottom door … or something …
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 27
