So he accepted he wouldn’t find his family again (they — or it, or he — always withheld them like stakes in a gamble) until he’d done whatever it was the invisible demanded …
“Mother,” the knight was saying, “I, for myself, am eager for any help I can get.” He glanced back, hearing a shuffling scrape. “Keep from my reach, you shrunken sodomites,” he called into the ambiguous blackness. “I’ve been changed, mother. I had no choice in the matter.”
“Have you, Lohen?” she said, not untenderly.
“Something caught in my brain,” he ironically explained, “and let the old things run out and much new come in. Him, that burly, aging rogue who pants before us, he’ll testify a piece of something holy laid me low.”
“With what holy, pray?” she asked.
She was vaguely worried, reminded of his father. Was he going to flip full over and cross-kiss like the rest of that uneasy line? Better if one of them could find some solid footing in the middle …
“A piece of the Grail, mayhap,” Broaditch said, and she couldn’t tell how seriously.
“O great God of spiders and windmills,” she cried, one hand reaching inside her soiled robes and touching the flask that jogged and sloshed there. Because even as Broaditch was jerking her free from the pale, stunted seducers, she’d been able to snatch it from a heap of their things. Touching it took the tremble out of her sudden fears. “Not that,” she said.
“We know not what for certain,” Lohengrin said.
“Just like your father and mad grandam,” she said.
“Mother, please. Spare —”
“What advice?” Broaditch put in as they moved across a deserted chamber, unlit, where the torchflickers showed a giant erection scratched into the wall and decorated with smokestains.
“A question,” she said, “merely: what gain is there in going ever deeper into this maze?”
“Or,” put in Lohengrin, “what happens when these sketchy flames go out?”
“We walk in the dark,” said Broaditch, “noble folk.” Smiled. “Or light these others I’ve thrust under my beltcord.”
We all saved something, she thought.
Lohengrin made a slight, sudden rush backwards and was rewarded by seeing a few of the leaders scurrying away.
“Still hopeful, eh, rats?” Laughed. “If we die of weariness at least they won’t devour us. Guard your nether eye, big ruffian, if you fall.”
“Wherein have you changed?” his mother wanted to know. “You still laugh at things unfunny.”
Her hand closed around the firm neck of the leathern flask that rocked against her thighs.
“That’s a private matter, my lady,” said Broaditch, “as to what’s funny.”
“Never say ‘Grail’ to me, by Christ. The Grail swallowed my marriage without chewing! Gulped your mad father down.”
They were following down a tight spiral now, unmarked, monotonous walls passing, a dank smell rising.
“Hm,” grunted her son.
“He, whose mother was daft, and Christ knows how far back ran the taint.”
How like my Alienor, Broaditch thought. Noble or plain, a wife is the same …
“Everything has a bottom, my lady,” he called back up half a turn. “Babies, holes, even griefs …”
“Did God swear it was so?” Lohengrin added, a full twist above. None of them was in sight of the other as they descended.
“If not we’ll soon prove it,” Broaditch answered.
He couldn’t stop in time, because the turning was too steep and tight, so he flung wide both arms, dimming the torch, just as his legs and belly hit the stooped, strangely bent, hollow-faced creature (so it seemed in a winkflash) and he knew he was going over and down, crying out in shock, anticipating claws at the very least, the flame going out entirely as he sailed into the blackness and tumbled around the following bend, trying to kick himself clear of the thing behind him (seeing burning light as his skull cracked into rock), hearing, as from far off, a screeching that at first he took for the woman, then the creature except it was saying (Lohengrin coming, metal jingling, passing his mother), raving:
“Aiii! Aiii! Slay me not! Pity! Pity!”
And then he righted himself as Lohengrin’s torchlight flashed on his drawn sword and outlined the grotesquely twisted figure Broaditch had fallen over …
John’s head still hurt from Gobble’s blow. He followed the glow of the pig through a dim and dark complex of chambers and ways. The giant form moved before him smooth as floating. The reddish eye-glare was like a torch to John, who was filled with calm. His soul was washed clean and polished smooth and there was no need to think, fret, plan, hope or fear: the Master would make it plain … the other one was false, and had sinned in the sight of the pig and sought even now to take the pig’s holy power for himself in his foul blasphemy. The voiceless voice explained it in deep, rushing clarities within his brain. He laughed out loud, though by the end it had become a kind of moaning, and then he spoke, shrill, harsh:
“O blasphemer, thou shalt be set at naught!”
He barely noticed he was crossing a firelit hall where numbers of the runtish folk and a few normal-sized (though no less filthy, pallid and torpid) men and women gathered around steaming kettles, plucking out boiling things, scalding and sucking their hands, hardly looking up as the gesticulating, mumbling man, sootblack, jerky, went out the opposite archway.
“All thy work,” he was saying, relishing, “shall lie dust and thy get and generation shall be as ashes and naught shall remain standing one stone upon the other in the sight of the Master!”
Went on, as if booted forward, head and neck wobbling, following the reddish phosphorescence of the tall, bulging shape ahead, not really feeling or noticing each time he blundered into a pillar or wall, smiling, confident, intent on the voiceless voice …
Parsival heard the sloshing roar ahead and felt the quickening flow of the thick, stinking water around their legs. Unlea simply clung to him. She’d vomited several times and now her legs just hung unflexing as he dragged her through the thick blackness.
And then he knew it was coming again, felt the first strangeness, faint flickers of light that brightened nothing.
Oh, God, he thought, what do you want of me?
Then he could see the walls of this foul tunnel, solid and dripping, dark water gurgling past, oily-looking, streaked as with dribbling spittle … then the rock faded …
There was a speck of brightness ahead like a droplet of sun burning deep in the heart of the world. It dimly echoed the fire within himself and he found he could look at nothing else now. It was like the door of a dungeon open a crack … He felt himself moving loosely, floaty as a butterfly, a blueness of sky exploding above vast, swaying golden-white flowers that condensed and shimmered the air that was thick and soft as honeyed water, curling, caressing under his wide, bright, sail-like wings. His eyes saw everything at once in crystalsharp shimmers … he was floating, swept into the melting golden softnesses and whispering flower touches, the tender shock of tasting the taste of himself too as he buried his face in the blossom, drinking deep, wings shuddering in ecstasy …
He turned, forced his perception away; strained, and the dark rushed back and slammed into him as though the walls had crashed closed; then, in fear, he begged the vision back, gave himself to the everchanging, speaking, touching brightness, the only opening in the unending mass of night’s crushing stone …
It was so sweet, he half-saw a great winglike flash around himself, catching the streaming rays, and he was almost weightless, barely conscious of carrying her, almost sprinting through the stinking spill that here and there woke golden facets where a stray beam caught it … he fled … fled … locked to the distant shining. He rushed as the stream gathered speed and saw the waterfall he’d expected, glimpsed the sheer, terrific plunge of it, felt Unlea (all sound lost in the roaring) struggle in his arms, knew with tenderness that the foolish child was screaming as, without hesita
tion, he opened his silksmooth arch of wings and leaped out into the crashing abyss, feeling everything, world and water, stop so that while he saw it moving it hung within a stillness that suspended everything beyond comprehension … movement and time went on but went nowhere, progressed nowhere … meant nothing, touched nothing essential beyond the flimsy shadowflicker of the world as those delicate wings filled with prismatic flame, color and beat firm, lifted.
“Hark!” Tungrim said, gripping Howtlande’s thick, softish arm where the short mail shirt ended, stopping a lengthy talk on the value of building from small beginning to enormous enterprises.
“Eh?” the ex-baron general grunted.
Tungrim had cocked his head to listen down the passageway ahead.
“A cry,” he murmured.
“Ah,” breathed the other as they moved cautiously on. He drew his broadbladed sword.
The darkness opened to the left: a crossway, flare of firelight, shadows and struggling forms … shrieks of pain, one light gone and then the other bobbed away as some fled and some followed … darkness … a diminishing rattle and chinking of steel …
“Things are stirring in here,” Howtlande decided.
“Who are …” Lohengrin began and then, peering closer, recognized the twisted man on his knees. Pushed the flame closer to the wolfish face with the ever-shifting gaze.
“Lord Lohengrin,” said the almost lipless mouth. “Hear my words.”
“I’d sooner hear your screams,” was the retort. But the young knight waited as Broaditch righted himself in the narrow turning.
“The master’s mad,” Gobble insisted, rising partway.
“Christ,” mocked the young man, “here’s news indeed.”
“Who is this creature?” his mother wanted to know. In his shadow she had just taken a pull on the wineflask, felt the hot, sourish trickle and soft impact within her, as if it instantly reached a soothing touch to each part of her body.
“Hear me, he’s mad, I tell you!” His eyes bugged and wandered. “He will destroy everything.”
“Is there aught left?” Broaditch considered, looking with faint disgust at the furtive little man, “he overlooked, perchance?” Because they all knew who the Master was.
Gobble’s eyes flipped back and forth in the smoky, shifting flames. The slashmouth never entirely closed.
“There are terrors below,” he said, his hysteria evident. “Terrors beyond terror.”
“Below,” commented Broaditch, setting his teeth. “You think what’s above us here’s a Sunday feast? Choose your own doom, fellow, I cannot decide. The menu’s too rich for me.”
But most of what he said was covered by Gobble screeching:
“He means to release the terrors, I tell you! He makes for the hole that reaches down to the demons in the earth! The well!”
“He goes to dip out friends,” Broaditch said, “instead of water?”
“Well or ill,” Lohengrin sneered, “I never cared for you, and I weary of your cracked master. Clearly your own brain’s been bounced sidewise.” Except he remembered first meeting Clinschor in the pits beneath the castle he’d won for himself by slaying the duke; remembered strange and fearsome visions … but nothing, he assured himself, substantial …
Gobble fastened on him, tugging, spittle flying, desperate, Broaditch trying to pry him loose, the crippled little man raging, pleading:
“Listen! Listen! Heed me! He has a charm to free them …” They had him all but loose, one bony hand still clinging as Broaditch shook him free. “A … charm … in his fist … fools!”
Behind them Layla took another long, slow pull on the wine. Blinked down at the absurd tableau.
“He must be stopped,” Gobble screeched, “or they’ll come. Cannot you grasp this? They’ll come up the well! Up the well!”
The unerring pig shape in its smoky glow led John into a section where the way tangled and twisted into a hundred corridors like a knot of intestines.
The screams and outcries echoing around bends meant no more to him than water dripping or the flashes of torchlight as he crossed passages, sight fixed on the floating, massive oracular form that moved its slow limbs, wading through dim air.
He didn’t take note as he stepped over and around a sprawl of bodies, the blood splashing his filthy bare feet. A black-robed man, dagger in one hand, torch in the other, stood widelegged, little stonedark eyes squinting through his madly flared beard. Stared as John went past without a pause.
“Father,” he said. There were others behind him among the little dead people. His scattered teeth winked in the dimness. “Father, we are here.” Stared as he passed, hands clasped across his body like a meditating monk. “We devour the ungodly,” he called after John, hopefully, as if to draw him back as that lank, erratic prophet veered off into a side passage. One of the others was bent over a woman, sawing and hacking chunks of meat from her runtish limbs.
“This looks a tender bit,” he remarked, brightly.
He was kicked for his pains by the small, rockhard, gap-toed foot of the leader (the man who’d first chased Parsival), who then pointed his bloody knife into the shifting shadows.
“We follow the father!” he told the dozen or so of them. “We’re serving him and not ourselves!” And went, loping on legs like springy steel, and the rest, not quite howling, followed …
Lohengrin went up a few turns of the spiral, listening, intent. They were gone. Down below, Gobble raved on as Broaditch and Layla (whom he noticed seemed strangely content to lean on the wall and watch proceedings with a faint smile) waited developments.
Where did our perverse little friends get to? Lohengrin wondered. Shrugged, ready to start back. Heard muffled shrieks and clashing higher up … went a few turns more … yes … no question … and something that sounded like barking … he crouched as a little naked man came spinning around out of the blackness, then stood, leaned a moment, seeming to speak in gouts of blood that spilled over him as his mouth formed shapes, and then he dropped flat and dead on his face.
The sounds were coming: yapping, raging, howling, rattling, banging …
He went down, catching his mother by the elbow (she nearly fell) saying:
“Let Lord Stagger lead us,” he ordered. “Death comes behind. He kicked at Gobble, who huddled back along the curve of wall. “Take us to Clinschor,” he snarled, “where he goes there’s always a way out. Thus have I seen.” Gobble was still stark pale and trembling.
“I tell you again,” he said, more calmly, “what he’ll unplug down there will eat the world.”
“And this troubles you, Gobble?”
If I’m led by heaven and truth, Broaditch was thinking, why then I’ll have a miracle in time … if not … His mind shrugged as he followed the others, last in line now.
“You don’t understand me,” Gobble was protesting around the bend, “I believed in a great dream, never in this … never this …”
Howtlande and Tungrim, swords in their fists, backed through an open chamber, stinking greasy smoke eddying from somewhere. All around echoes and outcries, blows, racing feet: dozens of tunnels fed into this space and the sound shifted, leaped … it seemed they were surrounded, about to be attacked … a swarm of semi-armored men of mixed sizes flooded into the chamber.
Too many, Tungrim thought.
“Fly,” he said unnecessarily to his companion, who was already well under way and surprisingly fast, sparks trailing from his thin torch. Tungrim had hesitated because fighting would be a relief.
As he followed the fat man he glanced into the echoing openings that flashed by, fragments visible: little people in fire, smoke and shadow, glints of whirring steel, screaming … fragment: indistinguishable mix of tall, short, naked, armored, fleeing from one passageway to another, back and forth … suddenly half-a-dozen of what he took for adolescent girls and boys charged from somewhere holding daggers and short swords, laughing and whirling in dancing glee, holding (the last thing he registered as he duck
ed into a tunnel mouth and realized without concern that he’d lost his companion) what seemed human heads in their upraised hands … each way crossed a dozen others in an insane maze … smoke and terrific heat blasted into him … Not that way … tried another full of screams … No … pulled back … another … ducking through the mounting, incredible chaos … another: saw what he took for the black hounds of hell slashing and barking, fangs bright … leaped over charred and bloody tangles; raced through a long room of dead women and children sprawled over a pit of hot coals, the blood still hissing and bubbling … another opening, a blade zipped at his face as he spun back and a blur followed, panting, screaming. He cut and ducked into a shoulderwide creviceway, in the flame shudders glimpsing robes, wild beards, metal flash, blood spray … ran … ran … and then the teenagers, hair flying, yelling, waving weapons, chasing down the squealing, terrified, slashed runts just as a tall, jerkystepping man lurched (Tungrim had an impression he was blind) right across the thick of it, oblivious, seeming pushed forward into a cross-corridor by an invisible hand as Tungrim charged into another lightless opening, ran sweating, panting, groping, away.
“Layla,” he called because that was at least something to grip at in this whirling, stinking, bottomless nightmare. “Layla!”
Past an opening: flame, shadowy struggles … fleeing … boiling, biting smoke … another opening: blank … he plunged in …
“Are you there, Layla?” He faintly knew that if he saw daylight he would run out and probably not stop until he reached the ocean.
Another opening: the teenagers squatting, kneeling, dancing and clapping their hands around a heap of fallen, flinging blood and chunks of flesh overhead, spattering the dark walls. Some were rolling over their victims, bathing in the hot blood. He knew now he was circling, caught in this knotted labyrinth … raced up a short flight of steps, heard shouts to his left down a short, straight stretch as shadows flew towards him out of reeling torchflame, shouting:
“Father! Father! Wait! Wait for thy children!”
The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Page 29
