He had failed to destroy the priestesses, failed to end Merlin, failed to punish Arthur for his crimes, but one of the unholy trinity was gone, at least.
The Red Knight, the guardian of Avalon since his father’s day, lay dead beneath him.
And then, as he felt his soul begin to seep from his ruined, shuddering body, the Red Knight whispered from the depths of his smashed and bloody helm.
“Balin?”
CHAPTER SIX
Balin wanted only to succumb at last to the death he had earned.
It took him a great deal of time to pry the broken helm from the Red Knight, and when he had pulled it aside and revealed the mangled, bloody face beneath, swollen and slashed, harsh, coppery breath hissing out through a crooked jaw and broken teeth, more than ever he wanted death to come swift and immediate, to spare him from what he saw.
But death didn’t come.
And Brulen said his name again.
Balin had poured out the last of his strength on this bloody field, but somehow his body found the wherewithal to shake and tremble as sorrow burst within him like a poison and flooded his fevered brain.
“I didn’t know!” was all he could force up from his raw throat through the contracting muscles of his grimace.
“Nor did I,” Brulen whispered, and he at least was more peaceful, though tears cut tracks through the blood on his slack face. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Balin sobbed.
“I came looking for him, for Merlin,” Brulen said.
Balin clenched what remained of his teeth. “As did I.”
“Defeated the last Red Knight,” Brulen said with difficulty, “but won only his curse, to defend the Isle until I was killed by the next. Compelled. No choice.”
Balin flung off his gauntlet and felt for his brother’s fingers, worked his steel from them. They were cold and did not return his grip.
This cursed, cursed Isle. Even victory was defeat.
“Wanted to see him,” Brulen said. “That’s all. Just…see him.”
Brulen’s face wrinkled and he closed his eyes.
“Don’t talk,” Balin said, for he knew it pained him, though truthfully, he did not want him to stop. He wanted Brulen to say everything, anything he could, before Balin would hear his voice no more.
“Wanted to know, why, why he chose his own son,” Brulen murmured.
Balin knitted his brow. Was he delirious now? He didn’t know what Brulen was talking about. Unless, at the end, faced at last with eternity, he had seen the light of the Lord.
Balin struggled to find the right words. Brother Gallet had once told him that a man of God could open his mouth and the Lord would speak through him, say whatever another man’s heart needed to hear, but nothing was coming to him. He was too drained. A few moments ago, he had focused all his hate on the Red Knight, but the Red Knight was his brother, for whom he bore all the love that was left in him.
“Because… He loves us, Brulen,” Balin said, repeating something he’d heard Gallet say in a sermon once. “He loves all of us. And He gave His son that we all might live. Who else could He choose, Brulen? Who else was equal to the task?”
Brulen opened his eyes. They were far away now. The sun was setting over the rim of the castle, and a harsh orange light was in his face. Balin raised his trembling hand to shade his brother.
“I didn’t do it, Balin,” Brulen said rapidly. “In the end. I couldn’t. I swore I would, but I just couldn’t. We drew straws. Dagonet, Kay, Brastias and I. I was supposed to drown them all in the sea, in a sack, those boys. I found a boat, and I cast them adrift. Maybe they did die. It was stormy that day. One of them looked over the prow at me, and I watched him till he was over the breakers. Such dark eyes. I swear I saw him again later. In Lot’s court in Orkney, holding onto his Morgause’s finger. It was him. I know it was him. He lived. I don’t know if the others survived, but he lived.”
He smiled broadly, as though that thought gave him great comfort.
Balin stared. He was speaking of the May Day children now. He hadn’t carried out Arthur’s order after all. He hadn’t had the heart. Balin’s heart swelled with pride.
“I just wanted to tell him, Balin. I wanted to tell Merlin that I couldn’t do it.”
Balin put his forehead to his brother’s.
“I love you, Brulen.”
Brulen made no answer.
***
Nimue approached the dark circle of grass in the gathering twilight. None of the other women dared to come near. Seraide, Rossignol, none had the heart to approach the two brothers who had fought each other to the death.
The grass was boggy, marsh-like with blood, and her feet sank past the rim of her shoes and stained the hem of her samite gown red.
They lay beside one another on their backs, embracing, Brulen’s head inclined against Balin’s shoulder.
She stood over them, weeping softly. She had been the cause of their misery. She had driven them to this.
Balin’s one eye opened, glassy and unfocused in the growing dark.
“Lady?”
There was no one to see, so she let slip the guise of white-haired Viviane and knelt beside him.
“I am here,” she whispered gently, dripping tears on his ruined breast.
“Why do you linger?” Balin asked weakly. “Fly, before the lady of the castle discovers you. I have slain the Red Knight, don’t you see? When I die, there can be no other. I have broken the spell. You are free.”
“Thank you,” she sobbed, taking his bloody hand and pressing it to her cheek.
“Please tell of my brother and me in Camelot,” he whispered.
“I shall tell them all of your deeds,” she promised.
“And lay us in a single grave. From one womb we came and to one we return.”
She nodded, unable to respond.
He smiled slightly. “You are lovely,” he said.
His hand hung limp in her own, and she laid it back on the breast of his brother’s, from where she had picked it.
His shining eye reflected the wheel of stars.
The ESPLUMOIR
Merlin stood back and admired the block of red marble with the Adventurous Sword protruding from the top. He had fitted it with a new pommel, one entirely of solid emerald, in which gold script had been inlaid, reading:
NONE SHALL TAKE ME HENCE BUT HE AT WHOSE SIDE I AM TO HANG AND HE SHALL BE THE BEST KNIGHT IN THE WORLD.
It was exactly as he had foreseen it.
He put his foot to the marble and pushed it from the bank, and it floated like a hunk of cork off into the mists. He watched it disappear.
When he turned to go, Nimue was standing there in her samite gown, no longer the tearful, love-struck girl who had played with vengeance and magic, but the Lady of The Lake.
“No more Viviane, eh?” Merlin said.
“She is dead at last,” Nimue said. She looked over his shoulder in the direction of the sword in the stone.
“You cannot stop, can you?”
“Stop what?”
“Interfering.”
“It’s not interference when it’s been divined,” Merlin said. “I like to think of it as a ratification of Providence.”
“More swords in stones? When will you think of something new?”
Merlin shrugged. “Coming into the Garden?” he asked with a hint of playfulness. He had granted her her own means of entry. It was becoming quite serious between them again.
She said nothing but walked along beside him. “You’ve not been to Avalon since their funeral,” she said. “You’ve not been in the Garden of Joy, lately. Where have you been spending your days?”
In truth, Avalon held no amusement for him. The memory of Balin and Brulen pained him, as he had not ever thought it would. He had thought himself above such things. Nimue had told him all of their final hours. She had not spared him a single gory detail, as though punishing him with the excruciating minutiae of their fate somehow alleviated her own guilt
and heaped it upon him. He already ached for them, in ways she could not guess.
He had built their tomb, laid them together, as Balin had requested. He could do no more.
“I wanted to stay out of your way, Lady. I went traveling. After Sir Lancelot set foot in Albion, I had to be about undoing much of what Viviane had done and what Lancelot will do, unwittingly. I’ve scarcely had a moment’s rest.”
Lancelot. He would bring more doom to Arthur than ever Balin could have, if he was not stopped. Much of Camelot loved the young knight. Too much, really.
Then, of course, there was young Mordred, the son of Arthur and his aunt Morgause, safely under the protection of Morgan Le Fay. Somehow, he alone had escaped the May Day slaughter.
They passed from the shore into the forest, and soon they were at the spring, and they walked in silence through the sunbeams that pierced the jade roof of his sanctuary. They went ever deeper, until they came to his crystal cave, wherein he had wiled many hours peering into the future, picking through the complex threads of destiny, scowling over inevitabilities, and tweaking potentialities, trying to steer Arthur and the world toward that golden day far along, that day which even the purest heart in the world would mock with a cynic’s scoff if Merlin were to tell them of it.
It was his secret joy to tend it. He was like a parent before Christmas, hiding gifts for his loved ones and imagining their delight to come. No, perhaps not like a parent.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, seeing his face darken.
“Nothing, my dear,” Merlin said.
They came to the edge of the cave, and he smiled at the curtain of ivy hanging down over the entrance.
“I have been away awhile,” he said, rubbing a green leaf between his two fingers. “Or you’ve been redecorating.”
She smiled sweetly.
“I hope you haven’t been reordering my reagents. I have a system.” He went inside.
The scintillating hues of the many crystals in which he had gazed for hours beyond the frontiers of many universes, the shelves and stacks of books, the old workbench, all were gone, replaced by blank walls of ugly black iron.
A cold iron box.
Behind him, Nimue had deftly turned the soft earth of the threshold with the toe of her shoe and dropped an iron dagger into the prepared hole beneath.
When he turned, she was kicking dirt over it.
“I’m sorry, Aurelius Ambrosius.”
He smiled thinly and stretched his staff across the threshold. When his hand moved over the knife, it was as though he had met solid stone. The staff could leave. He could not.
“So that’s my true name,” Merlin said. “Bit of a mouthful.”
“Blaise named you for the High King he once served,” Nimue said. “I’m sorry. You can’t be permitted to meddle anymore.”
Merlin nodded in agreement and set his staff against the wall. He put his hands in the pockets of his robes. “What will Avalon do?”
“Avalon and the Lady of The Lake will retreat into the mists,” said Nimue. “The crucified god has won Albion.”
Merlin could only frown. There was no point in voicing disagreement. This was not Lile. Nimue would not be swayed. She had found resolve to match her power.
“You told me that Blaise was always right,” Nimue said.
“I know,” said Merlin. He looked about the bare chamber. There was a simple bed, nothing more. “Not even my books, eh? How will I pass the time?”
Nimue did not smile.
He touched the iron wall. He could not feel the crystals beyond, and the door with no key which led to Camelot was gone. They must have walled it up during his sojourn to the east. He went to the cot and sat down.
She still stood in the cave mouth. “Farewell, Merlin.” Then she raised her hands.
He took it as a parting gesture and lifted his own, but then he saw the great iron shutter slide down slowly, grinding, groaning against its housing.
Then the light was shut out and he was in darkness.
As he had foreseen. He lay on the cot and sighed.
He had told Arthur of course, all about Lancelot and Guinevere, and the great rift it would bring. Once free of Avalon’s mists, he had seen all that would come, all that would be undone by the young knight. Viviane had struck even from beyond death with that one, sly vixen, but he had also seen what would spring from Lancelot, and how the Sangreal could redeem them all.
So he had warned them all, uselessly, but only so they could not later wonder why he had not.
He had warned Balin, too, and his brother, but they were not entirely to blame for their own fates. He had piloted them as sure as he had put them to sea, hadn’t he?
They alone were the whole of his regret.
“I’m sorry,” he said aloud, and his voice boomed in the iron walled chamber.
It was foolishness. He had done all he could. Arthur’s life was his own again.
And he, he would sleep until they needed him again.
He closed his eyes and thought of the summer he had spent as other men, sitting on the rude bench outside the stone cottage at the edge of the forest, bouncing his sons upon his knees as their mother picked wild chives and spignel from the base of the old Roman wall, and dandelion fluff from her red hair.
“And I pray all you that redyth this tale to pray for him that this wrote that God sende hym good deliverance and sone and hastely – Amen.”
Edward M. Erdelac is the author of twelve novels including Andersonville, Monstrumfuhrer, and The Merkabah Rider series. His fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals ranging from Occult Detective Quarterly to Star Wars Insider Magazine. Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he resides in the Los Angeles area with his family. News and excerpts from his work can be found at http://www.emerdelac.wordpress.com
ANDERSONVILLE (Del Rey-Hydra)
In 1864 thirty thousand ragged Union soldiers pray for a way out of the disease ridden confines of the South’s most notorious prison camp, unaware they are about to become unwitting accomplices in a dark ritual enacted by a madman to turn the tide of the Civil War.
When Mary Todd Lincoln’s spiritual advisor has a vision of the nation awash in blood, Union Black Dispatch agent Barclay Lourdes is dispatched to infiltrate Andersonville prison and put a stop to the terrible events about to enfold….
PRAISE FOR ANDERSONVILLE
“[Edward M.] Erdelac makes a heady brew out of dreadful true events, angel and demon lore, secret societies, and the trappings of Southern gothic novels. This is thoughtful horror at its best, and not at all for the faint of heart.”—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“Andersonville is a raw, groundbreaking supernatural knuckle-punch. Erdelac absolutely owns Civil War and Wild West horror fiction.”—Weston Ochse, bestselling author of SEAL Team 666
“If you took a tale of atmospheric horror by Ambrose Bierce and infused it with the energy of Elmore Leonard, you would come close to what Edward Erdelac has accomplished with Andersonville. But even that combination would sell the novel short. What Erdelac has done is not just splice genres together but create his own voice in telling of the horrors, real and supernatural, inhabiting the most infamous prison camp of the Civil War. This is U.S. history seen through the eyes of the tortured dead, told with amazing skill by an author who knows how to create genre literature with a purpose.”—C. Courtney Joyner, author of Shotgun and Nemo Rising
“Andersonville definitely stands out . . . with its nuanced language, complicated characters, engrossing narrative, and subtle commentary on the past and the present.”—LitReactor
MONSTRUMFUHRER (Comet Press)
In 1936 Dr. Josef Mengele discovers the lab journals of Victor Frankenstein and is tasked with replicating his reanimation procedure by the Reich Institute.
In 1945, a Jewish boy uncovers the secrets of Mengele’s horrific experiments behind the barbed wire of Auschwitz KZ. He escapes and heads north in search of the only being on earth who can
stop the Reich’s insidious project – Frankenstein’s original creature.
But the Creature has its price….
PRAISE FOR MONSTRUMFUHRER
“….profound; a wrenching and tragic look at the horrors of war, tortured dynamics of father-and-son relationships, race and ideology, pride, belief, ambition, survival, philosophy, brotherhood, the very nature of humanity and life, and the darkest insights into our collective psyches.” – The Horror Fiction Review’
“….absolutely devastating.” – Cemetery Dance
“Highest possible recommendation.” – Confessions of a Reviewer.
TEROVOLAS (Journalstone)
The recovered personal papers of Professor Abraham Van Helsing recount the events which took place immediately following the account of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA.
Following the killing of the nefarious count and his vampiric wives, Van Helsing suffers from violent, recurring fantasies and commits himself to Jack Seward’s Purfleet Asylum for treatment. Upon his release and seeking a relaxing holiday, Van Helsing volunteers to transport the remains and earthly effects of Quincey P. Morris back to the Morris family ranch in Sorefoot, Texas.
He finds Quincey’s brother Cole embroiled in escalating tensions with a neighboring outfit of Norwegian cattle ranchers led by the enigmatic Sig Skoll. When men and animals start turning horrible mutilated, Van Helsing suspects a preternatural culprit, but is a shapechanger really loose on the Texas plains, or are the delusions of his previously disordered mind returning?
PRAISE FOR TEROVOLAS
“Professor Abraham Van Helsing in the Wild West! What more could one ask for? [Erdelac] melds the stylistic concepts [of Dracula] perfectly with those of the classic western tales.” - The British Fantasy Society
“Erdelac manages to recreate the style of Stoker without lacking originality as one might expect. By staying true to the tradition laid down by Dracula while simultaneously putting his own spin on the story, Erdelac breathes new life into an old tale. The action scenes are crisp, the characters well developed, the plot filled with surprises.” – Brett J. Talley, Stoker award winning author of That Which Should Not Be.
The Knight With Two Swords Page 39
