The Knight With Two Swords

by Edward M. Erdelac

  He moved to pursue her, but the old king burst through the ranks and swung the mighty axe. Balin brought up his sword to stop it and came away with only the broken hilt in his hands.

  He dropped it with a clatter as Pellam swept the axe back at him. He caught the haft in his hands and grappled with it, but the strength of the Fisher King was astounding. It took all his effort to keep Pellam from breaking free and splitting his head.

  “Slay him!” Pellam yelled through his teeth, and the Templeise moved in with their swords.

  Balin released Pellam and jumped back, narrowly avoiding the jabs of a half dozen swords. A pike still managed to cut his cheek as he ducked under a spear and dove underneath one of the tables.

  He did not stop to recover, but rolled out on the far end and ran for the only unguarded exit in the chamber, colliding with such momentum that he took the left-hand door off the hinges with a great crack.

  Beyond was a bare and empty corridor. As the clash of arms and shouts increased behind him and King Pellam rode forth on a tide of knights, he ran pell-mell down the passage, praying it did not come to a dead end.

  ***

  The black sky was lit up with lightning as Merlin and the Queen of Norgales traversed mysterious drafts of frigid air up the tall towers of the Palace Adventurous. The faces of the graven angels took on malevolent airs as they were illuminated by sorcerous flashes, while the two archmages unleashed every hellborn arcane assault and divine counterspell either knew.

  They were figures out of nightmare, man and woman, each bearing the burns and scars of their terrible combat, each one’s costume reduced to streaming rags as they wheeled and turned, dove, fell, and regained.

  And through it all, orbiting the outer edge of the colossal battle, was a madly flapping starling, a tiny and furtive witness to this titanic contest.

  This was Nimue.

  She was astounded by the ferocity of the battle, more so because for all that Merlin had taught her, for all she had learned in the tutelage of Avalon, of Viviane herself, she could not begin to understand the magic the two combatants employed against each other. They drew on resources totally unknown to her, plunging their arms to the elbows in untold mystic reserves and coming up with fistfuls of crackling power she could scarcely comprehend.

  Viviane drew the surrounding air into a white, frigid cloud and flung it at Merlin, and his staff froze solid and fell, shattering into pieces on the ground below. The enchanter countered with a complex gesture that produced a thick swarm of black hornets from the sleeves of his garment, to coat every inch of Viviane. With a shrug of her shoulders, they fell dead from her body and plummeted down, rattling like some accursed hail out of the Bible.

  They spoke no words but their unrepeatable incantations, the forgotten spells gleaned from thousands of rare and long lost grimoires, the sum total of both their considerable occult libraries. The power on display shook the windowpanes of the Palace Adventurous and sent the villagers down in Lystenoyse scrambling for cover, terrified by the thunderous storm of colors that played out across the mad sky.

  Nimue sensed that, despite the violence of the struggle, it was doomed to a stalemate, as unwinnable as it had been inevitable. The crash of the waves on the stones.

  So she did not seek to intervene, not there.

  No, she was needed elsewhere. Inside the Palace. To that end, she hurtled herself down at a great glass window depicting the giving to Moses of the Ten Commandments and became an immense white-tailed erne. She hated to destroy the ancient masterwork, but her need was great, and so she tucked in and smashed through, tumbling to the floor of the chamber beyond as a spry little calico cat.

  She was in the dining hall, and it was deserted to the tune of spilled goblets still dribbling purple wine, broken carafes, and tipped chairs. She leapt lightly up onto the table and hurriedly padded along its length, stopping and laying her ears back when she saw a single figure still seated in the room.

  It was Sir Garlon, and he was very dead.

  She sat down and licked her paw in relief. Balin must have killed him at dinner. It was something of a habit for him, apparently. Yet another rash act in a long line of impulsive violence. No doubt he had been apprehended on the spot and taken to the dungeon or dragged before Pellam for justice. Then they were safe, and she and Merlin could concentrate on defeating Viviane, or rather, the Queen of Norgales, if such a thing were even possible.

  But then she started, nearly leaping from her whiskers, as a group of six armed knights ran in from an ulterior corridor and raced purposefully out another door.

  She heard them as they departed:

  “He’s on the second floor, the villain!”

  “The King pursues!”

  Balin had not been taken prisoner. He was being chased through the Palace Adventurous like a wild boar. The danger had not passed at all. She turned and leapt back out the window, regaining an eagle’s wings, beating the air to gain the turgid, sorcery-lit sky.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Merlin lit upon the roof of the Palace to catch his breath, as Viviane streaked earthward, encased in a whirling globe of pecking ethereal ravens formed out of the very shadow of night.

  How had she escaped his detection all these long years? How had he not known her nature? Avalon, was of course the answer. The nature of that Fey place wreaked havoc on his vision and senses. All this time he had thought his nemesis had erected some occult citadel with magic enough to hide her from his sight, when in fact they had shared the very same bed in Avalon on occasion. He cursed himself to think that some of the magic she now used against him he had personally taught her.

  She had manipulated Nimue from the start. She had already admitted to feeding her Arthur’s name to give Nimue a focal point for her rage and grief. No doubt as Viviane she had facilitated her theft of the Gwenn Mantle and the Adventurous Sword. Perhaps she had left a chamber door ajar or slyly told Nimue the story of the sword and dropped its location during some innocuous visit, or in Avalon, happenstance over their herb-tending. What other plots had she cultivated to fruition right under his very nose? Maybe she had urged Lady Lile forth from Avalon on the fateful day of her death by telling her the location of Nimue and the sword, securing her own ascension. Viviane had been one of Lile’s most trusted advisors. How many times had she surreptitiously led her astray?

  For that matter, how many times had he been manipulated?

  She had created for him the mysterious guise of the Queen to hunt and obsess over, distracting him from Viviane. But was the Queen Viviane, or was Viviane the Queen?

  He could not help but admire her work. It was masterful in its longevity and execution.

  He looked about for Nimue. Had she penetrated the Palace yet? Had she stopped Balin and Garlon?

  That was when the first of the stone angels broke away from its housing on the side of the tower like some hatchling emerging from its egg and landed heavily beside him. It struck him with a stone fist that broke one of his ribs and sent him crumpling.

  As it bore down on him, its carved, dead-eyed expression placid and thus all the more fearful, he raised a hand and scattered it into gravel.

  But a third and fourth hit the roof solidly, then a fifth, and he was forced to roll aside as powerful granite feet stomped down, seeking to pulverize him. He saw others from below rising into the air, spreading their gray stone wings mockingly.

  He got up and staggered back, raising both hands to blast them apart, but more and more came.

  Viviane ascended over the lip of the roof and touched down lightly behind her stone army, directing them, urging them on the attack. The remains of her samite gown hung in blackened scraps about her, and her flesh was a myriad of crisscrossed cuts, coursing blood. He knew he must not look much better.

  The stone angels rose and plummeted, and though he shattered them left and right, the jagged fragments that tumbled down still struck and bloodied him. There were too many for him to concentrate on. There had been th
irty-six arranged in all about the towers, and he had barely accounted for nine. Then he saw phalanxes of the little smiling stone cherubs that surrounded the Palace whirling and dipping like flocks of sparrows. He had no idea how many of them there were, but they bolstered the army of granite angels and shot quickly through the ranks to batter him. They were too small, too quick to mark. He was struck hard four times almost before he’d seen them.

  He retreated, leaping far free of the grasping stone fingers that tore his robes, and landed atop the central tower, grasping the arm of the golden cross in exhaustion. He barely had time to catch his breath before the stone host leapt as one gray flock into the sky to assail him.

  As they reached the top, the four golden seraphim statues encircling the cross turned from their perennial adoration of the cross to repel their besieging comrades. Golden fists struck the heads off granite angels or caught the spiraling cherubim and pitched them down like boulders, smashing into the attackers, breaking them to pieces.

  From the two flanking towers, the golden archangels left their pedestals and soared over to Merlin’s tower, circling and striking with their lances like glorious wind born cavaliers, turning the rising force of animate stone into a crumbling avalanche of broken rock.

  Merlin wiped the blood from his eyes and looked down to see Viviane glaring, eyes full of hate.

  ***

  Balin was driven throughout the Palace like a fox. The entire force of the castle had been mobilized against him. Every time he thought he’d chanced upon a free egress, he’d found the passage quickly filled with knights. They came relentless, like a flood of steel, pouring out of every chamber and corridor.

  And always there was Pellam, waving his wicked axe and calling for blood.

  He fought where he had to. There were weapons aplenty displayed on the walls. He tore mace and morning star, axe and flail, from the walls, and fought madly through tides of men until the weapons broke or they did. Sometimes he met Pellam, and always he came away bleeding. The old king was tireless and immensely strong.

  Now he had only a shield he had torn from the grip of one of his pursuers. He set it before him and, ducking low, charged through a wall of knights only to find a single door on the other side, and a long winding staircase leading up behind.

  He thought to ascend to some landing and find a window to escape through. He was confident from his previous study of the architecture that he could climb down to a survivable fall onto the stable roof, and there, if God was with him, ride Ironprow or some other horse out into the countryside. If he could but gain the woods beyond, and night fell, he would be free.

  The narrow stairwell gave him a slight advantage over his pursuers, rendering their greater number meaningless. He was able to upset their chase and gain ground by catching up a knight and hurling him down the stairs into Pellam and the rest. There was no respite along this course. No landings. The stone stairs wound ever upward, and he knew he must be in that central tower.

  His heart hammered in his chest, breath ragged in his lungs. How many times had he wished for his armor during this fight, and yet now he thanked God he had left it packed on the horses, for if he’d been wearing it now, the weight would surely have been the death of him.

  Yet he was bleeding badly from a dozen cuts, the majority of them landed by Pellam.

  He had also become aware of a mighty storm raging outside the keep. If he could but gain the outside, he felt sure the tempest would aid his escape.

  When at last he felt sure he was at his end and prepared to turn and meet Pellam with his bent and battered shield, he rounded the hub and came at last to a short upper landing with a single heavy door.

  The door bore markings and emblems, but through the sweat burning his eyes, he paid no attention. If he could get beyond the door, maybe there was something with which to bar it or maybe a much-coveted window lay beyond.

  He tried the door, found it locked. He took a few steps back and hurled himself at it. It didn’t budge. The clanging and shouting of his hunters grew closer.

  ***

  Nimue fluttered about the central tower, dodging stony debris and deadly little cherubs, their stubby wings buzzing like granite bumblebees. She had chosen the tall stained-glass portrait of the ascending Christ as the most likely place to enter the Palace and head off Balin, but she could not find a way through the dense host of stone angels.

  Atop the tower, Merlin leaned against the golden cross as the gleaming six-winged angels defended him. He was covered in his own blood, his tatterdemalion robes hanging from him. He looked even wilder than that first night she had seen him, coming in naked from a storm.

  The dark sky still crackled and flashed with intermittent bursts of irrational color, nature fighting to reassert herself over the obscene chaos Merlin and Viviane had unleashed. Purple and emerald thunderheads boiled and collided in the black sky as though solid entities, and where they met red ball lightning flared and dropped to earth. An inky rain like dark blood had begun slashing down, staining the ground.

  Below, the attendant buildings of the Palace were aflame, and she saw the horses screaming as they fled in a multicolored line through the outer gate of Carbonek, herded by the brave stable boys, the only servants who had not fled the castle like sea rats. In the village of Lystenoyse, the wailing of the terrified populace could be heard between terrible growls of thunder. A heavy, sulfurous odor permeated everything.

  The bells of Carbonek tolled. It was like the very end of the world.

  Viviane rose into the air behind her failing army, eyes fixed on Merlin, muttering some new terrible spell.

  Still Nimue hung back, waiting for an opening through the thick sky.

  As the last of the stone angels crumbled beneath the counter attack of the golden seraphim, she spied her chance, folded her wings, and dove at the glass.

  She grew into a fish hawk when one of the treacherous granite cherubim shot up unexpectedly before her. It had been dodging the falling debris of its cohorts and launching one last desperate attack against Merlin. It might have succeeded had it not struck Nimue’s beak instead. The resultant collision altered its course so that instead of the back of Merlin’s skull, it struck the lance of one of the gold archangels and shattered.

  Nimue fell end over end, dazed. She hurtled over the wall of Carbonek, the ground beyond rushing up at her. She did not know if she was yet a bird or had become a woman again.

  Then she struck something quite hard, but it broke around her, and she sank into chilly, bubbling waters and knew no more.

  ***

  Merlin let go of the cross as the last of the stone angels fell away and Viviane rose into his eye line. Once the golden angels lunged at her, and with a dismissive wave of her hand, she melted them all into puddles of gold that ran like candlewax down the tower.

  She stepped onto the tower roof and flung herself at him bodily, her hands pulsing with a blue white glow as though she gripped a will-o’-the-wisp in each fist.

  He caught her wrists and groaned. They were like ice to touch, and his fingers blistered and burned.

  As they struggled back and forth beneath the cross, she hissed at him through split and burned lips. “You’re too late…Melior!”

  One last attempt at mastering him. He grinned in response.

  Because she was Viviane, the daughter of Baron Dyonas of Briosque, and while he had known nothing of the Queen of Norgales, he knew something of Viviane. He had visited her home country years ago with his mentor, Blaise. There was a forest lake between two castles there, and the castles, Brion and Charosque, had given the lake its amalgamated name.

  There they had met Viviane’s old father, so that Blaise could perform the Anointing of the Sick. Baron Dyonas had converted to Christianity for the love of his late wife, and had requested the renowned Blaise to hear his last confession. As part of his reconciliation, he had told them how he had once spared a wounded white hart in the forest, and that it had spoken to him, saying it was
the goddess Diane, and would bless his first daughter with unfailing beauty, and that she would bear the name of her divine patroness.

  Yet the birth of his daughter had been the death of Baron Dyonas’ beloved wife, Vivienne, and so he had felt compelled to honor her memory by, like the two castles of his land, combining the name of her mother and the goddess.

  Vivienne and Diane.

  Viviane.

  But Merlin knew the decree of a goddess was unalterable by man. The Goddess had named Viviane long before she was born, and so touched her with her immortal influence.

  In revealing herself to him, there was a possibility she had made a grave mistake. For even if she had been christened Viviane, that was not her true name.

  “You’re fishing again,” Merlin said, still smiling, as with indescribable relish he uttered, “Diane.”

  The icy glow of Viviane’s hands ceased instantly, and she fell to her knees with a shriek of despair and surprise.

  “How?” she managed.

  “All these years,” Merlin snickered, letting the fire that burned in his heart well within him, “trying to find each other’s true names…and it was so hard because neither of us even knew them ourselves!”

  Viviane screamed as Merlin’s hands emitted a soft golden glow, which then turned blue, and then white. She burned in his clutch, the horrible blackness spreading quickly down her upheld harms, down her body, and over her head until she was a gray statue of ash, captured in the midst of a now silent wail, as dead as the angels she had commanded against him.

  He released her and admired his work, as though he had sculpted it over a lifetime, which, in a manner of thinking, he had. With great satisfaction, he blew her apart with a puff of his breath.

  All she had been scattered on the wind that blew over Lystenoyse.

  “Farewell, my dear,” he whispered and leaned against the cross once more.

  ***

  The lock broke at Balin’s third try and the door sprang open.

  Pellam was on his heels, coming around the bend and up the stairs, unstoppable, terrible. Even ahead of his winded Templeise. There was no reasoning with the man. If he begged mercy, he would be slain as soon as his guard was down.