“Oh … But …”
“Peace, woman. What may we hope to go back to?”
I’ll take a good start … with armor and a woman … Christ lend me succor …
“My God,” she said. Repeated.
He heard the relentless feet splashing behind. He didn’t dare face them, not if the other world flipped back and blinded him again.
“I won’t have all my roads end here,” he told her. “Not in this sewer.”
She gripped him then, looking into his face, desperate, intense, eyes showing the guttering flame in a face of shadows and black filth, a last, lost tremble of brightness squeezed by the absolute dark.
“Hold around my shoulders,” he commanded.
Persistent, disgusting maniac children! he thought.
She kissed him first and took it in to herself with closed eyes as if for eternity.
And then he drew back with her and charged for the rim, trying to gain traction, pointed footgear slipping, and he knew halfway it was no good and dug in his heels, hoping to stop without going over, and at the last moment, shrugging, flinging her off, gasping:
“Let go! Let go!”
Even as his legs went in he tried to twist around and push her to safety except she clung with such fierce strength (that would have amazed her had there been time), and so he hung half in, half out as the mad children, in a flashing and flutter of torches, arrived screaming and howling as if they’d just won some game …
He clung to the slippery lip, Unlea holding one arm, his tense, weary, furious face contorted, glaring at them with terrible bitterness. There were no fiendish shapes this time, just naked boys and girls, dancing and cheering with glee, flashing daggers.
“Why?” he cried at them and the walls and the dark too. “Why do this?!”
She didn’t look, kept her eyes on his face.
He saw the leader, the stoneblank expression, the bunched beard. He was panting. The rest watched him for a sign.
“Death in life,” he pronounced. The group sighed. “Life in death.”
The sighs suggested ecstasy.
“What mindless wretched nonsense!” he snarled. He struggled to claw himself up and draw his blade, his legs swaying over emptiness, fingers scrabbling, slipping.
The naked mud-and-soot-stained crew capered closer, smoky light leaping around them, at least a dozen blades snick-snicking, and then Parsival saw the dark shapes around them, growing out of the smoke and fitful fire, hovering, possessing …
“Bathe,” the leader cried, kicking his heels together in the air, “in the blood of love!” Sighs and gasps. Lustful, thought Unlea with shock, not looking, not taking her eyes from her lover.
The fish, the monkeylike thing, others, others, bodies of greenish smoke, clawfaces, clawing-eyed … the world dimmed again and with a kind of sobbing he let go and gripped her, pulled her over, clutched her to him, as the blades that were teeth too arced and ripped in vain, and they fell in silence, locked together, plunging down … down …
“I was here once,” Howtlande was telling Tungrim. They shared a torch tugged from the tunnel wall. They’d met on one of the bowel-like turns of the inner warren.
Now they were working (to the best of Howtlande’s recollection) their way around the main subchambers, although what lay farther and deeper than these was a complete mystery to him. “I spent the best part of a week in this miserable hole two years ago. This place was bustling then, let me tell you, fighters everywhere … part of my command, the best lads ever to march … that bentbrain led us all to hell … bad strategy, you see, Lord Tungrim, threw away the —”
“If he’s such a fool,” the other demanded, “why do you drag us behind him like this?” He was thinking about Layla. She was down here somewhere. That was the point. Go on with this fat flapmouth who knew something of the territory, until he found her.
“Here,” Flapmouth said, stooping by the wall, holding the torch high. There was a steady rill of water tracing down the mossy stones. He leaned in and pressed his surprisingly thin lips there as if sucking at a shadowcrease.
Tungrim’s body pressed close almost without his will, about to yank the bulky man away before he caught himself into his prince’s dignity. Waited, feeling his tongue fat in his ash-dry mouth as the other man sucked and coughed and lapped at the stones. Finally he pulled back and the Viking drank deep, the icy trickle splashing over his face and neck.
“So,” Howtlande went on, “mad as he be yet he’s cunning. When you think of the loot he took!” Nodded. “And it’s down here, by Freya. We all knew that. Why has he come here save to gather his wealth to raise a new army? Eh?”
Tungrim straightened up, panting a little, leather and steel tunic now soaked and chill. The fat ex-baron was vaguely less respectful, he noted. He watched the flabby, beak-nosed, desperately earnest face. He was still talking, he suddenly realized, amazed …
“… and make ourselves masters of —”
“Masters?”
“Yes! What can stop us? We take the booty. This island is a field left fallow, you see? All we need do is march —”
“This island is a clot of shit, mad talker.”
“But —”
“Be still, walrus. Keep the door shut and your fancies within.” “But —”
“Peace, I say!” Tungrim laid a hand on his sword hilt and they went on in the shifting, dulled torch aura. “Masters,” he muttered. “By Odin’s bleak stars … masters …”
Gobble was panting hard, struggling to keep pace as Clinschor bounced along the brickless tunnel. His deformed leg hurt with each splayed impact on the ringing, hard floor.
“I want the army shining with readiness,” lord master was rumbling cheerfully. His recent triumphs left him expansive and warmly serene. “You will bear witness to great acts, Gobbo.” His big, soft palm stayed closed over the sharp, bloodstained fragment. “Great acts …”
And then the passage ended under stalactites at a blank wall. They stood together, the flame shifting their shadows back and forth as if they rocked in bizarre unison: a skeleton beside a bent toad.
“So still you would thwart me!” Clinschor suddenly screamed, so wildly Gobble nearly dropped the torch.
“Know you not where we are, master?” he wondered, uneasy.
“The wizards, who soon will suffer greatly, have shifted the turning to confuse me.” He laughed. “No matter. I cannot lose my way, for all ways are mine, Golba …” Smiled and raised the Grail hand again. “I might open this wall with a single stroke, if need be …”
“Need it be?” Gobble was wary. Mad or not, this was Clinschor the Great. Who knew what he might do?
Howtlande saw the light whisk past down the cross-corridor and heard the unmistakable voice, thundering.
“… you see, I’ve found a new way to the lowest level and foiled my enemies once more …”
And the rest muffled away as Howtlande said:
“That’s him! We’ve stumbled onto him. What a fair fate I now follow!”
Tungrim raised both eyebrows and deemed this as good a direction as any in these ropy coils of confusion.
“Why,” he sullenly mocked, “we’ll be masters in the space of a seagull’s fart.”
Get the woman, he thought. Go home. Find the rest of Skalwere’s kin before we find the longhouses burned …
Broaditch had found Layla’s robes and helped her into them. The three of them stood there, Lohengrin, as the shock wore away, smiling and shaking his head. The swarming dwarves rolled and spread and regathered in their heap like a single creature many limbed and headed, struggling in the quavering light …
“Well,” said Layla, shaking out her matted hair, “there’s so much to say I’ll close my mouth over it.”
“What a delightful place to find you, mother,” her son commented. “I’m pleased you’ve kept from idleness.”
“Tm glad you kept from death, my boy. I’ve heard much of you.”
“Not much, I think,
as was pleasant, mother.”
She shrugged.
“Either of you have a good direction in mind?” she wanted to know.
“No, mother,” he said, “we thought it best to stay here with your rutsy friends.”
“How like yourself you always are.”
Broaditch tapped his foot and cleared his throat and wobbled the mace, trying not to look at the constantly shifting, reforming mound of sex.
“I like a family reunion as much as any,” he put in. “But I think, lord and lady, there be other holes down here just as foul as this and not so filled up, so please you.”
Layla approved his irony and pondered him.
“Like your father too,” she said to Lohengrin, “you’re thick with the clods.” To Broaditch. “But you’re a rough old rogue, uncle, to have witnessed my shame.”
“Say, rather,” he suggested, “inconvenience, my lady.”
Holy mother, he thought, with a sigh, I tracked through all the earth to find trace of any of these and here at last in this snake’s palace and mole’s delight …
“How well he speaks,” she said, with surprised condescension.
“Is your husband here?” he asked.
“What?” put in Lohengrin. “Him too? Is all Britain in this sewer drain?”
“Your father?” she was humorous and scornful.
“I know not. I asked you, mother.”
“So did this great chunk of peasant.” Leaned close to Broaditch. “But say, fellow, have you such a thing as wine or ale about you?”
“Ha,” added Lohengrin, “father’s spirit is certainly present.”
He lit a torch at the big fire and then pulled several burning sticks from the coals and straightened up.
“Have you?” she persisted.
“Eh?” Broaditch was watching her son.
“A drink, clod Jack?”
He gestured at the orgy lump.
“Try them,” he suggested, “my lady.”
She took his advice so far as to stoop and peer around their garments, as suddenly dozens more of the pallid, voiceless folk emerged from the shadows (one must have gone for others, Broaditch reasoned) and advanced, surrounding them, gesturing towards the unceasing action. Several males and females exposed their genitals, fingering themselves and dancing, swinging their hips to unheard music.
“Right enough,” said Broaditch, pulling Layla towards the fire where her son had started hurling burning sticks into the obscene mob. “Christ on high!” he cried.
“Mother,” Lohengrin yelled, laughing, “they mean to have the lot of us!”
They were burbling wordlessly, ducking the missiles that fell in fluttering, rushing arcs around the chamber.
“Christ,” was all Broaditch could say, lifting his mace and leading them towards the archway.
“Had they fairer forms,” Lohengrin declared, “I might be tempted.”
Suddenly falling was suspended, the darkness gone, and Parsival was sure he floated on a soft cushion or was supported by gentle, unseen hands. Unlea was gone again … he felt himself rising as a feather on a draught … and then he was in a place he knew, a hall with thin, slanted lines of light fanning in from high up, past dim pennants unstirring in the still, cool air. He moved up the hall and saw, with a tremor, the woman on the highbacked wooden throne, pale light washing her form into the stone dimness. Her head suddenly tilted back and he heard her say something he thought had his name in it, but he couldn’t quite make it out and heard his own voice:
“Mother … Mother … What did you say, mother? … Can you see me?”
Her extended hand went stiff into a violent clench and he knew she’d just died.
“Help me, mother … tell me … tell me …”
And then mud and water rained down as his lungs sucked for air, and he heard Unlea’s outcries in the total blackness clamping in around them as they clutched and scrambled into the muddy edge of an invisible pond or sluggish stream …
“Stop!” Clinschor shouted, holding up his arm. They’d just entered a chamber where shriveled carcasses of what might have been goats or sheep hung swaying in chains over low fires. They were obviously being smoked. At the far end of the room was a low wooden door. “What wizard’s work be this?”
Gobble shrugged and took a deep breath, grateful for the rest. His leg was almost numbed.
“We must have circled back,” he offered. “I know this place.”
“Thus you’ve been the more deceived!” his leader thundered. “This chamber is enchanted. These are the bodies of the heroes before me who tried to do away with the lies and stupidities and corruptions of men! This was their fate. Endless torment!”
Gobble rolled his restless gaze around, unsatisfied.
“But —”
“Silence, Goppa,” insisted Clinschor, watching the colorforms that menaced him, wizard things to seize his soul; forms of soft butterfly confusion, cloudy purpose … shifting shapes hinted wonders of light and peace … He forced his eyes to the pure dark shadows. “They tempt me still,” he muttered to Gobble, who was just watching now and massaging his cramped, crippled leg. Clinschor stared at the swaying meat and began a muttering drumroll of incantation.
“I will burst the spell that seals the door,” he said.
“Master,” Gobble put in, “I can open it, I …”
“Make ready, men,” Clinschor said. Gobble wondered which men he meant. Looked around at the smoky, dim chamber and saw none.
“But …” Gobble began and then was checked by the smouldering, pale, hypnotic eyes.
“There are powers here, Globa, you cannot imagine, whose lightest touch would shrivel your bones to dust.” Gobble nodded, locked to the strangely vacant stare. Felt the threats around them now, the nameless shapelessness of unfocused terror. Clinschor could see them pressing against the door, fluttering, soft, stupid touchings, like women’s hands ready to stroke, sap, lull him to weakness … “Once we pass this barrier nothing will stop me!” He flung this challenge at all of them and advanced on the exit, incanting under his breath, his vassal tilting along uncertainly in his wake. “The corruptions gather against me. The cowards who fear the prisoned king chained below. I’ll free him and woe to you all! You weaklings who cannot bear greatness will pass away forever!” the soft, tender cloudiness rose up before him like a cloying perfume … he thought of his mother for some reason … “Behold, I smite!” He roared and lunged at the door, struck it with the Grail fist and it sagged and wobbled open effortlessly outward and he stood facing the terrific, chaotic frenzy. “Behold them put to rout!” Where his dark lightnings flayed the rose-soft, cloying sweetnesses and amorous, dying tones to whimpering shreds …
Gobble stared, tried to see something in the musty dimness beyond the doorframe. Saw musty dimness.
“Follow me, men!” his leader cried. “To final victory!”
What men? he still wondered, following …
Now they were sloshing on, clinging together, groping calf deep in the slimy spill that Parsival realized must be draining somewhere ahead as it flowed steadily over their feet.
She seemed strangely calm now, he noticed. She’d passed hysteria. Realized she’d given up and so would be all right for a time … until her hopes returned …
The visions seemed to have ended again. His eyes beat hopelessly into the blank wall of absolute lightlessness and wondered where this would ultimately empty … in any case, as ever, there wasn’t any choice.
* * *
Tungrim batted his eyes.
“What’s this?” he muttered.
They’d come out in a high-roofed, cathedral-like hall lit by hundreds of candles.
“I know not,” Howtlande said. He was depressed. They’d lost Clinschor’s trail a few corridors back and had circled uselessly since.
There was something like an altar in the center of the floor, where more of the stunted people were gathered in seeming worship. A massive, unshaped chunk of rock lay tilted on t
he pedestal. Several of what looked like priests (in robes that dragged behind the diminutive forms) stooped, knelt and appeared to place small objects around the stone. He squinted as they went past. Some of the congregation wore fragments of black armor with tarnished silver trim; some wore what he took for masks until he realized he was looking at helmets with hideous silver faces. The little priests (if that was what they were) chanted out of phase.
Howtlande was tugging at him.
“Here’s a way,” he said.
And they hurried away into this new descent.
“What a place,” Tungrim muttered.
“Determination is everything,” the huge man meditated aloud. “All things fall to the determined man. He never surrenders to adversity. That’s the key to greatness. Not being so smart and great of wit, who cares? Eh? Who cares for genius? Eh? Better to sink in your teeth and hold on to the end … determination …”
Determination, the Viking thought, yes, by Thor’s eyes. I’ll crawl through all this stinking pit until I find her …
The sex-maddened little people were following at a distance as Broaditch, Lohengrin and Layla went on quickly through the fetid passages, each with a weak torch. The knight would suddenly turn and catch flashes of their eyes as they fell back and waited for him to go on.
“They just creep and crawl and cling at you,” he muttered at his mother’s slender back. “How can you even kill them? They don’t really fight.”
“Being both men,” she suddenly said, “you no doubt need no counsel from a woman.”
“Much less a lady and mother,” said Broaditch from the lead, thinking:
I began in this family s service and mayhap I’ll end at the start … I feel it … I’m not free yet … I’m being forced into something again … the tide and waves still bear me on … (remembering how the sea had once gently borne him through a tremendous storm, past fanged, dripping reef-rocks, restored his life as a gift and a debt to the invisible, less than a year ago … and from that moment he’d known no one is ever free) but on to what? I would ask were I still babe enough for asking …
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 28
