They reared to a sudden stop as a wedge of mounted “infidels” rose up to block them. Parsival’s head felt like a broken bell.
“Well, lord,” Lego said. “Gone but a day and I find you with a woman.”
Parsival went on his hands and knees to her and carefully ripped the fabric away from the arrow wound. A strand of blondish-brown hair unwound down his forehead and he shook his head to keep it out of his eye.
He saw the arrowhead had penetrated her ribcage and the pain and shock had knocked her out. He realized it wasn’t deep enough to cut her lungs, but there would be no way to push it through: he’d have to pull it straight back the way it had come.
Lego was watching the three knights circling their horses, looking for a weak point; there were too many warriors now. He was waiting a chance to strike down the one who’d hit his lord.
Parsival took a careful grip on the shaft, deciding to take advantage of her unconsciousness. He braced his left hand on her breastbone, held his breath and pulled with a steady wrench.
Praise our lady, he thought, because the head was small, narrow and oval with no reverse edges to stick between the bones. So it popped free, followed by a gout of blood. She groaned and thrashed for a moment.
“Get the medicine bag from your horse,” he told Lego. He’d pack the wound with a field poultice before binding it. He knew that more wounded survived who were treated by fellow soldiers than those who fell into the care of professional surgeons.
At the rim of his attention, he saw the foreign warriors had shut them in; but if they’d meant to kill they’d have already done it.
Lego came back with the bag. He was looking at the newcomers his lord hadn’t seen yet. Parsival found what he wanted and started dressing the wound, aware of the clash and jangle of horses and metal looming over them. He assumed it was Arthur’s men. The sun was low and right in his eyes where he faced southwest on the road so it was all shadow and dazzle and he didn’t understand what Lego was talking about when he said:
“These are strange knights.”
“Aye… and days, my friend.” Parsival squinted and shielded his eyes, looking up not at Lego, but into the silvery facemask that was now close to him. The rider leaned down.
What? he thought. What?
Because it was a skull face with blood-red fangs; the distorted, furious grimace of a demon in deep black armor, darker than the shadows themselves. And he was shocked because he knew them, twenty years ago, while escaping from the madness, plague, fire and famine of those days, returning home he’d been tracked by twelve of these black armored killers, the last (he’d believed) of the dark army whose lord and leader Clinschor, the eunuch, devil, wizard and fiend, had unleashed on Britain in an effort to conquer the land and possess the Holy Grail.
Parsival, weak and weary, far north and near his home, had been caught up with on a white pebbled dry-wash that served as road in the Welsh highlands. His memory was true: the steep banks, violet highland flowers on the rocky, scrubby hills; the black knights: with their carnival facemasks charging him again and again and again. Him: striking, blocking, twisting, ducking, blacking out, the world spinning gray, bright and dark… finally the earth slapping him flat on his back and it was over, and when he returned to consciousness he found he was the only one left alive or unbroken…
He’d been a boy then. The boy who’d found the unfindable Grail Castle, by seeming chance, and then left, and lost the way back forever… a fierce, hopeful, dreaming boy with a fighting talent that seemed to possess rather than obey him. A skill that was poetry and pain. A violence cursed with elegance.
He remembered in a bright link how he’d lain there in the white pebbly wash among the dead and dying Black Knights – sleeping, half-waking, shivering with fever from his wounds, the mist-paled Northern sun seeming to appear then flick away into moonless night. Eventually, he’d wakened and healed.
Those killers had followed him for literally hundreds of miles. They’d been sent by the tyrant Clinschor to take the Grail from him. This mistaken belief had become his life’s chief curse. The Grail, he’d said, was like a tin can tied to a cat’s tail that drew all the dogs to him.
Absorbed in the memories, he touched his head where the flat of the sword had just hit. Winced. There was blood and a bump. When he stood up to face the Black Knight who was regarding him from horseback, reeled and staggered forward, groping to hold himself up on his horse that suddenly wasn’t there… falling… bracing himself to hit the ground that wasn’t there either… nothing under him but nothing… darkness…
LOHENGRIN
The wide road tilted steeply down and ran straight into the valley where the shadows were gathering, filling the rills and clefts with an almost tidal rush as the sunset died into livid purple and deepening red.
Young Hal looked up, frowning, watching the crescent moon blotted out as a vast hand of cloud clenched it. The horses were uneasy, feeling the tension of the coming storm. Lightning flashes jumped, shifted and wildly shadowed the underbellies of the thunderheads.
“Now we’ll be soaked,” he complained.
Lohengrin cocked his head, concerned with the sudden straying of the road. The horses were bracing back to keep from skidding on the pebbly surface.
“There’s bound to be a village along such a broad way,” he assured Hal.
“Yet do I doubt you,” Hal responded. “Peradventure we should camp and take shelter.”
“Where? Here? This is like a child’s slide.” Indeed, the horses couldn't help accelerating. The hooves clacked and scraped as the slope dropped away. “Who could come up this stupid road?” The two of them were tilted hard back in their oversized war saddles. “Goats?” Faster and faster down now, approaching a gallop. “Christ!” he cried as they plunged into a sudden mass of trees, the road purely theoretical now. The night had closed in and under the clouds it was as dark as a closed room except for the shudders of oncoming lightning.
The first winds ripped around in the upper branches, swirling leaves loose.
“What a place,” Hal complained, in a gasp, clutching reins and saddlehorn as they crashed down far too fast.
Under the massed, creaking branches the darkness was now total. The wind puffed and strained, violently. Even huge trees groaned and crackled. Unseen dust and dirt whipped into their eyes. Lohengrin cursed in short, furious barks. The horses were terrified.
Then lightning hit a tree nearby, so close the sound was more pressure than noise and the flash shocked their eyes, the afterglow a blinding greenish-red… and the bolts in the air everywhere so that the forest flung wildly in staccato convolutions.
And then suddenly they were at the bottom trying to slow the totally spooked mounts. The flashes showed they were still on the wide, straight road. When another big bolt blasted a nearby tree to flaming splinters, both horses reared in panic. The young men barely kept their seats.
“You shithead,” Lohengrin snarled, kicking the beast forward savagely.
And then the rain finally came scything down like knuckles on a fist of wind. At least it was warm. They struggled into the stinging gusts that clittered and drummed on the shields and armor strapped to the horses as the light and shadow twisted around them.
At some point the road must have turned and they didn’t because they were suddenly out in the open again. The wild light showed twisting downpour empty fields around them and mist that boiled across the fields as if the clouds had been driven into the earth. Hal was shouting something off to Lohengrin’s left. He wasn’t far but his voice was sucked away by the storm. The wind shook them in their saddles.
“Christ,” Lohengrin said. “Christ.”
In the leaping stormlight he glimpsed a metal gate in a wall of shadows. He took it for a trick of the eyes. Squinting and shielding his face with one hand he forced his mount for it, flanked by Hal, who’d fallen back somewhat. He had an impression of a long, low castle wall, strangely folding back into itself as if the wildly sh
ifting shadows were part of the structure.
He was thinking they could shelter from the wind a little there. In the flashes it really seemed to be physically moving, the gate jumping forward, back… to the side. Suddenly it was right in front of him, glinting. He had an impression it was set in the inner crease of a V formation of dark stones that had once been part of a great, structure, now shattered and jumbled.
Leaning back and forth in the saddle against the blasts of mists and wind that let up slightly as he entered the open end of the V. He saw the gate was perfectly intact: a doorway, he thought, into rubble.
The broken stones on each side of him were ten or fifteen feet high. As he went deeper into the narrowing area (that must have been a courtyard), the gale puffed overhead, roared and whispered; but he could sit straight now and the horse settled down a little.
He stopped in front of the perfect arch and massive portal. Dismounted and secured the bridle to one of the arm-thick bronze bars close to the hinge. Then he gripped the double handle and braced to pull. He was surprised, staggering back, because there was no resistance: it swung open as if the pins had been oiled that day.
Hesitating, he looked back for Hal. The open triangle forming the entrance was maybe thirty feet deep. He could see no more than forty, when lightning permitted and then just billows of dense mist and downpour. Shouting would have been futile so he shrugged, gave the horse a pat and a word in its ear, and went inside, leaving the gate open behind him.
He hoped to find enough roof intact for a night’s shelter. He was surprised to discover a sudden, steep tunnel cut through the stone and then dipping the way, after the arch of the mouth, the throat suddenly drops down – except, balancing himself at the brink, he discovered neat stairs cut wide enough to make descent acceptable if nerve-wracking.
Adjusting to the flickering flashes from the doorway he went down a few steps: too fast. It was hard to stop. He leaned backwards and just caught the sides of the shaft with his outstretched hands. About five feet across. He paused. The wind and thunder was a distant hollow pulsing here; and the flickers from above barely broke the darkness.
How deep is this? he wondered. Twisted his head around to look up where he’d come. About twenty feet. How did I get down this far already?
He didn’t want to go back yet. There was nothing behind but the storm, finding Hal and hearing him complain. He had a vague idea there might be something valuable below – a treasure or old weapons… He didn’t really believe it, but his recent experiences reminded him of minstrel tales where anything was possible.
In any case, he carefully descended, keeping both hands stretched out to the walls, into darkness that had become thick enough to sit on.
This is stupid. There’s probably no bottom and what's down there? He had no means of making a light. This is a fool’s enterprise fit for my father… I’ll wait at the top…
Even as he twisted around to climb he realized he should have just backed up because his foot slipped immediately and skidded. Even as he cursed he was sliding down on his belly feet first, chainmail surcoat streaking sparks as he gathered speed over the stone steps.
“Holy Virgin!” he exclaimed.
He gave himself up for dead as he protected his face with his forearms and sickeningly accelerated. The steel was already burning hot from the friction.
What a stupid death! he thought.
And then there were no steps; nothing under him and he dropped, spinning slowly end over end into total blackness. Then, inexplicably, he felt as if his body had dissolved and there was only a tiny point of himself left in a vast, lightless silence. He relaxed, strangely.
His mind automatically insisted it had to be a terrific uprush of air cushioning him. He couldn’t tell if he was still actually falling.
And then an instant impact: crunching, grinding, powdery crumbling through what seemed unseen brittle layers of lumps and sticks or loose straw which gradually slowed him until he finally stopped, buried in a heap of scratchy fragments of what he decided, deep breathing himself back from shock, might be kindling wood.
I could have broken my neck, he pointed out to himself.
He sprawled there, several body-lengths deep. He had a sense of being at the bottom of a well. Wondered if the stairs came all the way down.
He half-climbed, half swam to the crumbly surface. Struggled, kicked his way to the back wall and groped around it. It was square and wider than above. There were no stairs. He couldn’t stand upright because of the brittle stuff he rested on so it was a little time before, groping higher, he found space behind what he’d assumed was the wall of the well. Apparently he’d dropped into a bigger chamber from a hole above.
This could be good or bad, he thought.
He clambered up and over and was now outside the square full of whatever had cushioned his otherwise fatal plunge, standing on solid stone flooring. He stood a moment, brushing chips and splinters from his hair and mail surcoat.
He stared up the shaft and imagined he saw faint winks of the lightning outside. Maybe just his eyes reacting to total darkness. He shrugged. Now what?
This is my father’s type of nonsense, he said to himself. I can’t believe this… Still, if there’s a way in there usually a way out…
Lohengrin wasn’t given to panic; but this was pretty much whistling in the dark. Then he realized something. He leaned over the lip of the square enclosure and picked up a long stick from the heap. As he felt it carefully and knew he was right: a human bone. An arm or a child’s leg. A pit of bones.
Mary’s sweet milk, he thought.
He tossed the bone aside and drew his sword. He felt better holding it. He groped forward, using the blade like a blind man’s stick. The metal clinked on the stone flooring. The air was damp but not unpleasant.
It turned out the square charnel pit was set in the center of a square room.
Who was collecting bones he wondered? A troll? They’d obviously been dumped from above. But they were old, desiccated…
“Alright,” he murmured, after going around the chamber twice, touching the walls, “there’s no door. Or it’s hidden or subtly set and I missed the latch.” He sheathed the sword.
He made another circuit, reaching as high as he could, running his hands over the smooth, ancient stonework. By the third futile pass he was nervous and tired enough to sit with his back on the wall, facing the bone pit.
He breathed steadily to calm himself. Told himself he'd try again. Shut his eyes. He had no idea what time it was. Tiredness softly pulled at him. He felt leaden.
He went out as if he’d dropped into another well except this one had no bottom. No shattered bones — nothingness…
And the women were all beautiful. He counted eight of them. Their bodies were full and golden, trimmed with rings and thin gold chains that covered nothing. Their naked bodies were sleek, stunning lines and rills, shadows and archings; the bare feet had bright rings on each toe.
There was music and they danced. Reedy music with bright cymbal clashes. He watched as if nothing else had ever been.
As they swayed and spun closer to him he noticed each girl had at least one blemish on her body: reddish black blotches that suggested swollen birthmarks. He was attracted and nauseated at the same time.
“Who are you?” he heard himself saying. “What is this? What is happening here?”
A perfectly formed, nude girl with exquisite features, long hair the color of hot embers, came and knelt at his feet. Her eyes were amber, haunting. She put a finger to her lips.
“Shhh,” she murmured. “You ask too many things. Ask nothing and you will get everything.”
“No questions,” he snorted, “even in my own dream.”
“You have been chosen for the gift of power.”
That was nice. He accepted that he was asleep or had a fever, but was enjoying himself. He became aware of the chamber suddenly: garish gold and red. If he tried to focus too long on any area, it blurred into a dar
k hole.
Now a stooped, hooded man in red and gold robes came toward him. He hadn’t noticed him before. The robes wavered like a shadow. He was holding something out in front of himself with both hands.
Lohengrin tried to see what it was but when he looked directly it dissolved into a head-sized blot that seemed a hole in the dream he assumed he was in. For an instant, through the hole, he thought he glimpsed a landscape: a vast view of ragged stones and distant, sharp-edged mountains under a sky of wild, black clouds and deep red as if the atmosphere itself were dully burning.
The scene was compelling and seemed to draw at him. He had an impression that if he somehow let go he'd be sucked through the hole into that forbidding yet fascinating world. He sensed (but didn’t see) life there: strange, dark and powerful.
Then the hole became a blot again and then a face because the bent little figure in the redgold monk-like hood was suddenly standing over him. The face swam in shadows. He kept trying to focus on it — except it wasn’t a face, it was a skull-shaped goblet. Looked like reddish black metal.
Silly nonsense, he thought.
He was supposed to drink. He felt that. The girl’s muddy gold-colored body was close to him. Her too short fingers were intimately soothing and stroking him as the hollow-topped skull bumped under his chin.
Drink, she soothed, somehow in his mind. Drink and become the great lord.
He liked that. The great lord sounded good.
He reached for the cup. Why not – it was only fever-dreaming. Looked into the hollow. The same hole again: window into a barren, dark landscape under the bloodred smolder of sky that seemed depthless.
It was like a well. He didn’t want to fall. He could see and sense things out there where far and near seemed strange. There were human-like beings standing or floating (he couldn’t be sure) on some flat, jet black clifftop and the one in the center echoed the gesture of the cowled cripple except his head wasn’t a skullcup, it was swollen, all huge mouth gnashing long teeth opening wider and wider – Lohengrin felt it pulling at him.
Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon Page 13
