The Knight With Two Swords

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Balin burst into the room. The chamber was bathed in a red glow from the huge stained-glass window on the opposite end of the small chamber.

  He had only seconds to take everything in. He was aware of the image of Christ rising into the heavens as his adoring disciples looked on below. It was a thing of beauty, the same window he had seen during his entrance, and he struggled to remember if there was a negotiable drop to the roof beyond or a sheer plummet to the courtyard. Could he grab hold of one of the stone angels and so climb down? He rushed toward it.

  There was a stone table before the window. No, not a table, a great marble sarcophagus, the tomb of some august personage. He would have to clamber over it to get at the window.

  Pellam came in directly behind him, but instead of swinging his axe, he reached out and grabbed Balin’s ankle, pulling him down as he tried to lift himself onto the tomb.

  Something clattered and crashed beneath him. He saw a hint of gold, felt liquid splash on his hands. He had overturned a golden cup he hadn’t noticed sitting on the tomb.

  The knights in the doorway beyond gasped collectively.

  Pellam pulled him off the tomb and raised his axe to cleave him.

  Balin scrambled to find purchase on the smooth marble. His fingers closed around the haft of an iron-tipped cruciform spear.

  He hastily reoriented the crossed lance and drew it back, the butt end smashing the glass window into musical scarlet and white shards behind him, revealing a back and turgid sky beyond, fraught with strange, surreal colors.

  As he was pulled toward Pellam, he lunged with the spear. The golden cup went rolling off the sarcophagus and tumbled out the open window.

  The lance point pricked Pellam’s right thigh and drove easily through, then continued on through his left in a burst of blood, pinning them together. With an anguished cry the old king fell forward, hobbled, taking the lance from Balin’s grip.

  Balin stumbled.

  He was aware of a great impact when the Fisher King fell. He felt it beneath his feet.

  Then the floor crumbled away like broken sandstone and he fell into a cacophonous abyss.

  Everything was falling.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Merlin felt the tower sway beneath his feet, and he leapt into the air, becoming once more the pied raven. He pulled himself ever higher and then wheeled.

  Nimue had failed. His sharp eyes espied the cup, the Holy Grail, just a golden glint twinkling as it plummeted down from the heights of the Palace Adventurous. Too far, too fast for even Merlin to catch, had he been able to lay hands on it at all.

  It struck the courtyard flags, with a mighty ring that resounded like a booming church bell. Merlin saw a golden halo emit from the point of impact and grow swiftly outward like a ripple in a stone-pierced pond.

  Wherever that golden emanation touched, ruin followed.

  At its epicenter, The Palace Adventurous and the walls of the surrounding castle of Carbonek crumbled as if a mighty scythe had swept through the foundation of that tremendous structure.

  Like the fabled statue of Nebuchadnezzar struck by the boulder, the entire glorious structure collapsed in on itself with a tremendous rumble and crash. The three towers retracted into the earth as though drawn down and disappeared in a cloud of gray debris which rolled in a thick, choking plume all around. The mighty walls dropped.

  The golden ring passed on, expanding to encompass the village, the bountiful fields, the forest of Carteloise, and beyond. It stretched in every direction to the furthest horizons, until Merlin lost sight of its progress, but he saw its aftermath.

  The fields of Lystenoyse shriveled. The grass browned as if burned away. The leaves blew crackling from the trees, and in the murdered pastures, the cattle and the sheep dropped in their places. The waters shrank, and it was there that he saw Nimue lying crumpled in the mud and made for her.

  She was not dead.

  “Merlin,” she muttered weakly, when he knelt and cradled her in his arms as he had not done in an age. “What has happened?”

  Merlin looked all about at the gray land. The strange storms his battle with Viviane had caused were receding, but a gray fog hung low over everything and ash drifted through the air.

  “We failed. The Sangreal has been desecrated. Carbonek is fallen. Lystenoyse is no more.”

  He watched this revelation settle behind her eyes. He saw the burden, that she was partially an instrument of all that had happened settle upon her. She turned her face into his arm in shame and sobbed.

  Merlin heard the desolate, lone wail of an infant from the direction of the silent village and then, as if responding to that pitiful cry, the drone of many horse flies buzzing, emerging newborn from their muddy nests, rising blood mad into the air to claim dominion over the wasted land.

  Third Part:

  The WASTE LAND

  CHAPTER ONE

  Merlin leaned on his new staff, looking from the beauteous face of Nimue to the Holy Grail, lying on its side in a niche of broken masonry.

  It was untouched, undiminished, shining from the gold plating.

  Once it had been a simple wooden cup. Some well-meaning adorant of Joseph of Arimathea’s coterie had hammered burnished gold to it, to better display its worth. Every chalice on every Christian altar since had followed the model.

  Men and their gold. It amused Merlin that some artisan believer had decided he could take a priceless object and improve it. He imagined the man had done so without even a hint of ironic thought to his own hubris.

  There was nothing amusing about the devastation the profaning of the Grail had wrought though. The Grail’s own light, emanating from the recess in the rubble, was now the brightest thing in sight. All else was gray and dead.

  Nimue stooped to retrieve it, but Merlin gripped her by the shoulder.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  She looked at him querulously.

  “It is touched by the divine, and our own exposure to magic could cause an unwanted reaction,” Merlin explained. “Maybe even a second backlash. Go and find the lance, but do not touch it.”

  Nimue rose.

  “And how are we to retrieve these things if we cannot touch them?”

  Merlin straightened and pointed with his staff, to a procession of monks coming from the east.

  “They will do it,” he said.

  “Who are they?” Nimue asked, shrinking behind him unconsciously at the appearance of the strange, robed men.

  In spite of all that had happened, Merlin could not help but smile thinly at the wizened, craggy countenance of the bent old monk who led the procession, bearing a rude cross on the head of his staff.

  It was Brother Blaise, the man who had been his father, and the human personification of the Christian God to him as a boy. His hair was white and undulant and swept about his head like a bright torch fire. His prophet’s beard hung to the rosary around the thin waist of his coarse white mantle. Though his face was aged and half crippled, the bird-bright eyes that looked out were as vital and focused as ever.

  Even though he had been a silent newborn nestled in the crook of his mother’s arm, Merlin could still clearly remember the younger Blaise standing like the monument of a saint between Vortigern’s dour judges and poor Adhan, blinded by the hellish visitation of his incubus father which had deposited him in her womb alongside his sister, Gwendydd. Blaise eloquently denounced their order of execution as his twin sister howled and shook in his mother’s other arm. Blaise had sworn before his God that he would raise the Cambion to serve the cause of the Lord, or destroy Merlin himself and then submit to the judgment of the Most High: all to spare the life of a blameless blind woman and her daughter. Blaise was the first Christian Merlin had ever known. The fiery priest had made quite a strong impression on him. He was the only father Merlin had ever known on earth.

  Merlin had begged with Blaise numerous times to retire to the life-prolonging air of Avalon, but the old priest had been content to remain at his h
ermitage in the wilds of Northumberland, silently contemplating, writing, and praying.

  “Father Blaise!” Merlin called and raised his hand in greeting when the monks were near.

  “Bless you, my son,” said Blaise, in word and action, making the sign of the cross at him as he approached.

  “You came quickly.”

  “The Lord made it known to me that this would happen.”

  Merlin was surprised to see old Sir Brastias, a knight of Uther’s Table who had fought at Bedegraine for Arthur, among Blaise’s monks, tonsured and robed. He was one of the knights Merlin had summoned that one shameful May Day long ago.

  “Hello, Brastias,” Merlin said awkwardly. “How are you?”

  Brastias stared impassively at the Grail, as though Merlin had not spoken.

  “Brother Brastias took a vow of silence when he joined our order,” Blaise explained.

  Well, that was likely for the best. No doubt Merlin had earned the old knight’s enmity.

  How could he ever have explained to Blaise the far-reaching plan he had enacted through their vile deed that day? How could he explain the great service Brastias and the rest had done to Arthur and all Albion? The greater evils they had averted through the one?

  Here in this blighted place, it must have seemed to Brastias that nothing he had done had amounted to anything.

  Nimue came stumbling over the shifting stone. He had not realized she had left his side.

  “I have found the lance. And King Pellam. He is alive.”

  Blaise waved for Brastias and three other monks to accompany Nimue, while he stooped and retrieved the Grail from the ground.

  The old monk’s eyes widened at the touch of the holy object but his expression was sad.

  Blaise turned to the two remaining monks. From their baggage, they uncovered a simple wooden tabernacle with a pair of carrying straps, and Blaise set the Grail in it, shutting its light from the world.

  The old man turned then, and the younger monk strapped the tabernacle to Blaise’s hunched back.

  “Father, might one of the younger brothers carry that for you?” Merlin asked.

  Blaise stared at Merlin and shook his head.

  “It is my penance.”

  Merlin nodded. It was plain that the old man blamed Merlin for what had happened and thus, himself. Had Brastias confessed to him?

  Nimue returned, with Brastias and the other monks bearing the pale King Pellam on a bier between them. They chanted lowly, mournfully. The old king’s legs were pierced through the thighs, bleeding through linen wrappings. He stared with wide, frightful, faraway eyes at the gray sky and clutched the bloodied Holy Lance of Longinus to his chest. Perhaps it was what had saved him in the end.

  Beside the grim procession walked a boy, Pellam’s son, Eliazar, with his wailing baby sister in his arms.

  “The Queen?” Merlin asked.

  Nimue shook her head.

  “They are all dead,” said Eliazar quietly, between the rattling cries of his sister.

  All but one other, thought Merlin.

  ***

  Brastias and the procession of chanting monks departed in the opposite direction from Carbonek, bearing King Pellam and the desecrated Lance.

  “Where will they take them?” Nimue asked. “The king and the treasures?”

  Merlin started to answer, but Blaise spoke.

  “Joseph wrote here on the tomb of the traitor, Simeon,” the old monk intoned impressively, pointing to the walled cemetery outside the ruins. “‘Here shall come a leopard of king’s blood, and he shall slay this serpent, and this leopard shall engender a lion, and this lion shall pass all other knights.’” Despite his weak and aged appearance, he still had that way of speaking which made every word a booming proclamation, a divine declarative. “My lady,” he said to Nimue, “it is for only the leopard’s son to know. Only the lion can heal the king and the land.”

  “And where will you go, father?” Merlin asked.

  “I will see the Sangreal secured and return to my abbey to await the coming of the lion,” Blaise said, shrugging.

  Merlin eyed the sanctuary on his back. It was a heavy thing for an old man to bear.

  Merlin could not hide his anxiety apparently, for Blaise then smiled and said, “Do not worry, Merlin. The journey will be long, and the holy quest even longer in fulfilling, but I will see him.”

  Then he leaned forward, embracing the enchanter. It was like hugging a skeleton, and Merlin wondered if his old foster father had gone senile. Blaise kissed him, whispering, “You will not, my son.”

  Then he turned, and to Merlin’s surprise, embraced Nimue and held her for a moment, whispering. She nodded, as surprised as he. Then without another word, Blaise broke the embrace and went to catch up with the other monks, going as lightly as if he were a hungry man on the way to a dinner party.

  “What did he say to you?” Merlin asked.

  “He made me swear not to tell you. Yet,” she murmured, watching him go.

  Merlin frowned at her. “You do well to abide. He’s no magician, and he has no demon’s blood, or angel’s, so far as I know, but I have never known him to be wrong.”

  “What happens now?”

  Merlin sat upon one of the broken blocks strewn about the ground and turned his palms to the gray sky. “Now, Viviane must die in the eyes of the Avalon priestesses. Merlin must not be seen to kill her, or he will be branded a usurper. You will become Viviane and take her place in Avalon. I will come to you as Nimue, with the remains of the Gwenn Mantle, begging forgiveness. There will be a public reconciliation. Then, slowly, perhaps in a year’s time, Viviane will step down, and Nimue will be Lady of The Lake.”

  “How will you engineer that?” Nimue asked.

  “We shall think of something,” Merlin said. He had not entirely prognosticated the details, but he had already foreseen the end result. Nimue would be the Lady. The how would fill itself in.

  “And I am to agree to this arrangement without any protest?”

  “Of course,” Merlin smiled. “Isn’t it what you always wanted, deep down? Before you met your prince, you used to beg me to teach you the secrets of the universe. Won’t the duty and the power fill the hole left by the love you lost?”

  “What about Balin and the Adventurous Sword?”

  Merlin’s smile fell. “Yes. You know he lives. Whether it was the destiny of the sword or his contact with the Grail, I do not know. But he lies there, waiting, beneath those stones,” Merlin said, looking out over the silent, broken masonry. “Blaise would call it your penance, Nimue. I would call it balance. You gave him the sword, and it cannot be relinquished. Not now. Not except by the way it was foretold. Balin is like a driven animal, and you must be the hunter. I will be the hound that drives him to you. Let it be quick, if you can. You owe him that, at least.”

  He stood. It was a hard thing, to send a good man to his death, but Merlin had known from the beginning what must be done. Arthur’s life was still at stake.

  “What will you do, Merlin?” Nimue asked in a low tone.

  “I must strangle the love he holds in his heart,” Merlin said. “He will follow his hatred to a better, stronger love. Then he will die killing it.”

  He put his hand to Nimue’s soft cheek. She was lovely. “I will see you again in Avalon,” he said.

  Then her features undulated like the surface of a pond and she was Viviane. For a dreadful moment, Merlin worried that she had been Viviane all along. That Nimue, and Viviane, and the Queen of Norgales, and Morgan, and Morgause, and even his mother Adhan were all faces of one Goddess, a Goddess he had angered through his diplomacy with the crucified god.

  Then she was a sparrow, and then she was gone. Merlin picked his way among the broken blocks.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Balin did not know if he was in hell or Purgatory, only that he was not in heaven. Heaven would not be this dark closeness, this heavy burden all about, this tantalizing view of freedom.

 
; The first day, as best as he could reckon time, he thought perhaps he had survived the evident collapse of the Palace, been uncovered by some unguessed party, deemed dead, and laid prematurely in some tomb. All was black and cold.

  That thought panicked him. He fought against the stone enclosing him, skinning his fists bloody, and soon succumbed to unreasoning screams.

  Then, after who knew how many hours, but at what he guessed was the morning, such as it was, of a second day, a sliver of light appeared to his right, and straining his eyes to see, he perceived only a dull, gray formlessness.

  He supposed then that since he had made no final confession and died fighting against Pellam, God’s anointed, he had not been granted access to Paradise.

  Yet he had not been damned either.

  Unless Brother Gallet had been wrong, and hell was not a torture of fire but of cold confinement.

  He had never feared fire, but closeness. Once, as a boy, playing at some hiding game with Brulen, he had crawled into their father’s old chest and their unwitting mother had set firewood on top of it. She’d been distracted by some visitor, leaving him trapped, too weak to lift the lid. He had remembered the cold sweat of terror, the unreasoning fear that had settled on him like a feasting presence, whispering to him that no one would find him for hours as the air grew hot and his breath short.

  His mother and Brulen had heard him scream of course, and released him, but the dread of close confinement had remained all his years.

  Maybe every man had his own hell. Maybe Brother Gallet’s hell was fire, and Balin’s was this internment in stone. To be gripped in a grave for all eternity.

  When he heard the grinding of the heavy blocks moving, saw the slim fissure of light widen like a birthing canal, his heart sang and he expected to see Christ or one of his ministering angels beckon him to glory. Instead, it was with a groan that his watery eyes picked out the dark form of Merlin standing over him.