He mounted, helmet hung at the horse’s flanks; rubbed his head violently. As he’d expected Firetail had been waiting up there on the high ground.
Poor Hal, he thought, had he no better breakfast than this he’d count himself close to death…
He had a vague urge to go and look at the strange stronghold he’d escaped from. He remembered fragments of the past night: the dream-like girl, the pit of bones… He wanted to look for Hal but the visibility prevented even a poor guess as to direction.
The thing is to go downslope, he decided.
As he went he discovered the surface was grassless, covered with small smooth stones that gave the impression that this had once been a watercourse.
This mist should burn off soon, he thought.
He really wanted to find Hal again, wanted to tell him about the strange adventures that had been crashing over him like a wave of madness; but for the thought of trying to struggle up or around or whatever to find him.
So he went down and it was a dry riverbottom, twisting and gradually steepening. At first he thought it was a road except the horse was already leaning back to resist slipping on the seethe of pebbles that clicked, skidded, and scraped under the backpedaling hooves. It wasn’t long before it was just a long, twisting slide down a dry mountain riverbed, the horse slipping to its haunches.
“Piss and shit,” he said, leaning back, clenching the reins, trying to will traction for the skidding hooves as he hooked around a sudden, tight bend. On the left he heard a roar and then saw, between the thinning trees and lifting mist, churning rapids: grayish-white foam and dark rocks like fangs and broken teeth. The fog was unwinding up the slope like a heatless fire. Now he could see on the right an embankment too steep for either horse or man.
“All I’ve been doing is falling,” he gasped, again wishing he’d stayed home. He had a stray idea that it was no wonder his father was so odd, having been out wandering and questing into and out of madness for so long. He felt an abstract sense of sympathy for the man he so resented. Maybe there’s no bottom to anything, he finished as a thought.
The mist was bad because it kept billowing up into his face. A Latin phrase that his tutor liked to quote whenever he came into the study chamber for a lesson (which wasn’t often) kept repeating in his mind as the horse staggered and struggled and skidded down and down and he could only see in brief gray flashes: “Qui similis bestia” Over and over.
At any moment he might careen into a tree, a wall, over a cliff into God-knew-what abyss…
There was no stopping: faster and faster… he was tempted to just roll from the saddle but felt that would accomplish little more than leaving him rolling on with a shattered limb or two.
“Shit,” he said.
Their speed was amazing. In the blurring to his right, he thought he saw a fallen man with a woman standing over him gripping a sword that she’d either just plunged into his breast or was trying to remove. Her expression, glimpsed in a flicker, could have been fury or grief…
What was that? he asked himself, leaning back in the deep bowl of the saddle.
“Blood shit!” he cried, because suddenly they’d skidded to the brink of what had to be a waterfall (when there was water) and they went end over end. “Oh, fucked turds!” he yelled.
In strange slowed motion, he kicked himself free and away from the horse, dropping into clouds of mist and he had a sense that this might be a very high dried-up waterfall with the stony bottom a long, long way down…
LAYLA
She just sat there in the stuffy, hot tent, watching the flap, dreading a visit from any of the Gaf family or retainers; but mainly the dumpy wife. The woman was dreary, nasty, sullen, stupid, and cruel.
Those are her best points, Layla joked with herself, imagine her defects…
She sat on her litter-like camp bed in dim, orange, unsteady light from the single oil lamp set on a stool-like table. She decided to try and slip away just before daybreak. Even the dogs, she remembered, seemed to share the same general dullness as the rest of them. She doubted they’d even bark, much less pursue her.
Not that I’m so anxious to go home, she thought. If these dolts had anything at all to recommend them I might journey with them until someone actually missed me… Holy Mary, what a life I lead!…
She heard what sounded like singing chants outside. Some man seemed to be shouting in a resonant bass but if the words were English or Latin, she could not make them out. She hesitated, then went to the entrance and parted the flap just enough to fit her eye. She was shocked.
Where did all this come from?
Because about fifty yards away at the far end of the encampment, there was a big bonfire, maybe ten feet or more of flame. There was a cross set up with a naked man hanging from it. For a moment she believed she was having a vision. There were at least a dozen more naked and half-naked men and women clustered at the foot of the crucifixion, kneeling, rolling in the dirt, crying out while a cowled monk scourged them with a flail. Her captors were all an audience, on their knees, fully clothed and (she observed with disappointment) not being beaten. The other disappointment was the fact that the guard was still on duty in front of her tent, leaning on his halberd and watching the religious show.
Now the Monk paused in his flagellations, panting a little, and addressed them. From where Layla looked the fire at his back turned him into a two-dimensional outline without feature or solidity. The voice was hoarse but strong. She could only make out some of what he was saying; based on that sampling, she didn’t much regret what she might have missed.
“… end of days… only through pain… God will choose… follow… only a few will be …”
She went back inside. She’d seen and heard enough.
I forgot, she thought, next year the world ends… I should recite this every day at Matins…
She sat back upon the bed. Thought about Sir Gaf, her ex-lover and present captor.
That stupid, scratchy beard, she thought. He hath on his face the same fur as his asshole… Ugh, I refuse to be pregnant…
“I’ll sit on a sharp stick,” she said aloud. “I’ll go back to the witch.” The tent flap fabric rustled and she assumed it was Gaf coming to claim her favors or whatever.
“Get out of here,” she said, “you Greek cowflop.”
She folded her arms and sneered at the opening except it wasn’t he, it was half-a-dozen of the naked and bleeding pilgrims preceded by a stink that hit like a solid wall. She wondered if they’d been bathing in a pit of shit.
She leaped up when they immediately tried to drop a sack over her head. She ripped her nails at them, tearing flesh and fabric.
“You must be saved,” one shouted.
Her head was in the stale bag. She struggled, choked, tore at it, freeing her arms for moments while they reeled around the interior: banging off the tentpole, toppling over the cot.
They’re killing me, she thought.
In total, suffocating blackness, the world spun and tilted around her. Sick lights flashed in her head.
Far away, muffled, she heard a woman’s scream that was not her own, and what sounded like a hammer driving nails. Before she could have an idea about it, she went over the edge and dropped into a bottomless dark like a stone into a well…
MIMUJIN
Mimujin, the chief of the wandering fighters who were a shattered remnant of what had once been a great horde was entertaining a guest. A single oil lamp hung in the center of the rank-smelling, round hide tent.
An even smaller, quite round priest of their god sat crosslegged under the lamp facing Mimujin, who stood with folded arms, wearing only a loincloth and chief’s body tattoos.
“Battle leader,” the priest said, “the people are troubled.”
“Because we do the work of the enemy witch,” he anticipated.
The priest lifted a just smoldering straight wooden pipe to his lips and sucked in cloying, sweetish narcotic smoke. Exhaled, and said:
; “Because we have only your word, Mimujin, that she will show us the way to Him.”
“You have only my hope, Tarkas. And we have little else.” He began to pace around the tent.
Priest Tarkas knew he was dangerous when he moved restlessly. He’d been known to suddenly strike and slay. “You want proof? There is no proof.” He shrugged. “When there is no water in the desert, a man looks for the signs. When there are no signs, a man can only look.”
The priest puffed smoke. The dome-like space was filling with the sweetish, stinging vapor.
“You say, this witch has a map that shows the way?” he asked, not looking up as Mimujin paced and brooded.
“Bah! I have not seen it priest.” He was angry; but not to kill. “Yet another thing I must believe.” The fumes were affecting him slightly. The drug was a relaxant. Tarkas liked to use it during tense meetings. “And what would prove, to see it?”
“My chief, the people say we are warriors. They ask, do warriors collect the dead and poison the land?”
“Warriors do what they must,” he said. “We are broken and despised in this miserable place.” His deep, jet-black eyes were cold, furious. “We have no home whence to return.” His split nose gave him a demonic cast in the wavering, dull reddish glow. “We need an ally.”
Tarkas nodded, puffing. The smoke seemed to be subtly soothing the chief.
“So the woman is our ally?”
Mimujin shrugged. His eyes were now more thoughtful than angry. “She is what she is,” he said. “We will find the Great King or perish. Then we will see what befalls our friends and enemies alike.”
The priest offered the pipe to Mimujin, who took it and sucked smoke gently.
“It shall be seen,” Tarkas said. “Or not seen.”
“The witch is wise.” His eyes were just cold now. “I trust her as the snake trusts the scorpion. She plans cleverly.”
Tarkas nodded.
“A new plan?” he asked. “Do we now eat our own young to please her? What new enormity, O chief?”
The fury smoldered in the coal eyes again.
“What young, O priest? Where are our women? Taken as slaves. Dead. The youngest child still living among us has seven years. Hear me, we will perish and be no more, save we gain strength enough to do better than strike from the shadows and shit in wells!”
Tarkas nodded, this time. Sighed. Thoughtful. They sat in silence for a time.
Allow the great knight to escape, he thought, remembered. She’d wakened him at dawn sleeping in the midst of his men and none had stirred. Oh, she was a witch for certain. Again, he struck at her, thinking she meant to kill him. He was fastest of his tribe. His curved dagger split the air in a flicker and, somehow, missed her throat though she seemed not to have moved. She’d held his knife hand with a soft strength beyond his understanding. She’d told him freeing the knight was essential to their purpose. What could he say but yes?
“I will tell them,” the priest said, at length, “Mimujin is a wise chief and a father to his people.”
PARSIVAL
The cart bumped along under a lightless, overcast sky. A fine, misty drizzle gradually soaked them. Humid, thick air. The road was ruts and rocks. The bumps hurt the knight’s sore head.
“They want us for something besides a snack,” Parsival said.
“Mayhap they aren’t hungry yet. As the farmer lets the pigs live on in false hope,” Lego offered. “I’ll make chewy bacon.”
The loud straining of the cart was a background sound almost drowning out the steady scree of insects. “Somebody warned me not to wander with you save I craved adventure,” Lego said.
“No doubt it was I warned you. Or Layla.”
“No. Some man.” Shrugged.
“Well, most men crave adventure. Few crave its miseries.” He grunted and braced as they whacked over what must have been a log in the road.
“Christ’s hairy wens!” cursed Lego. “Aii! I hit me fucked head!”
“In a word,” Parsival said.
By the tilt you could tell the way was steepening down; though they were pretty much in the lowlands already. The dark was solid.
“Are they bats,” wondered Lego, “to find their way in this blackness?”
Parsival smiled.
“Maybe moles,” was his view.
We’re probably about to enter some bottomless hole, he thought.
They went on. Somehow, despite the bumps, tilts and twists, and general discomfort, Parsival dropped into and out of sleep; tortured twisted sleep. The rain picked up to a steady, muted whooshing and tepid drops began pittering steadily over the cart whenever the trees opened out at all.
The air seemed to thicken and make the wet heat worse. “Aaah,” grumbled Lego. “How pleasant. Still, better be rained on than pissed on.”
“Better to be dry,” said the bound knight.
They jounced steadily down… and down, the lukewarm water gradually saturating their garments. Parsival kept his shoulders braced to keep his head from banging and tried, grimly, to doze off… Now and then the rain would instantly stop and he’d be out for a moment or two. Sometimes it was mere blankness; now and then a vivid dreamflash so he knew it wasn’t real when he saw a roofless, vast, shadowy hall where a palely phosphorescent knight whose body looked half-consumed by the palpable darkness, spectrally gleaming spiked crown on his skull, leaning back on what seemed a sharp-edged iron throne, a young man (who reminded him of his son) kneeling as the king held out a cup of blackness as if inviting him to drink or maybe fill it with something… then Parsival shot straight up into the dark shaft at impossible velocity for what had to be miles, rising, finally, out and up and the strange island was under him again, surrounded by icy seas and freezing fogs and the blurred center that defied focus through which, it seemed, he had just shot too fast to note anything.
And finally the rain was just gone and the wheels no longer bumped, just rumbled smoothly, still downslanting.
Parsival was awake for a few seconds before he realized that they were rattling along inside someplace that echoed. He was fuzzy, sore, sick to his stomach, and miserable. He almost didn’t care that they were inside some sort of paved cave – but why pave a cave?
“They must be bats, these miserable cannibals,” Lego decided. “That in this hole they use no torch.”
Parsival backed himself higher on his raw elbows. From there he twisted himself up to sit crosslegged.
“Mayhap,” he said, “to them dark is indeed light.” He kept remembering the woman he’d meant to help: the obscene mutilation… but it wasn’t just that, because he’d seen worse horrors. The terrible part was that it was a form of worship, that there was prayer in it. Murder and madness was one thing; holy worship, however narrow and misguided, was always lit by compassion.
The infidels, whom these resemble outwardly, he said to himself, pray for Allah’s compassion above all else… the Hebrews, the Greek, even the Roman killers all asked mercy and prayed for the love in Heaven they could not express on earth…
“Only in blackness,” he said, “can they find their way to what they adore.”
“I fear,” said Lego, “that we’ll soon come to the place where they roast our gizzards to make the Devil smile.”
LOHENGRIN
The drop was about fifteen feet in fact. He hit (what he didn’t realize was water yet) with a splash and hung suspended in a sudden, soundless shock.
Where’s my horse? His mind asked. He was upside down, spinning, sucked away, surfacing (despite his gear) catching a breath, hearing the instant, terrific smash and hiss of the rapids. I’d rather be home…
He went under and up, whirling, losing breath and orientation… time came and went with his rare gulps of breath… time was how long it took his lungs to starve. He’d hang in a motionless universe then rise and roll past edged rocks and just under the surface he’d stare up into the glare of day like a fish…
Then he was sucked deep into dark currents whe
re he was bumped and dragged through webs of weed.
I die, said his mind.
Body spasmed, struggling to claw out of the iron shell (he wasn’t conscious was his armor) that was trapping him. He clawed, twisted, tore, bent and felt himself kicking free while his lungs seized up with agony and he desperately thrashed up and finally broke the bright surface and found himself treading water still as a pond; the downcrashing torrent back behind him, muted, steady, distant and blurred… the water was bright blue under a seamless sky.
No more fog. The air was lucent, breezeless, warm. There was only a slight current as the river debouched into a long, wide lake surrounded by low, bluegreen, round-topped hills.
He felt he walked to land though he knew he was floating. The forest grew close to the shore and even unpoetic Lohengrin was moved and stunned by the rich, sweet masses of flowers that choked the tree trunks in redgold clouds.
As if the sun had bled onto the earth, he thought, reaching the shallows near the shore and really walking now. He’d just realized, though the sky was blue and bright, there was no sun visible! It seemed just fine. Is this fairyland? he wondered. He may have been walking but he felt he drifted into that sweet shining hush. Still the work of that witch, whatever-geas she may have laid on me… At least it was pleasant.
And then, as if the flowers had exhaled their scent and that sweetness had coalesced into human shapes, there was a misty ripple and suddenly, seven nude women, perfect and graceful beyond imagination, seemed to take form. He felt pierced and shocked by what wasn’t even desire yet.
Their eyes spoke somehow clearer than words, promising sweetness without end and he perceived himself like a bee swimming in a sea of flowerscent, sucking his way from bloom to pollen-gorged bloom, sucking infinitely from infinite flowers…
Their message was he could stay and lose himself forever in arms that were exhalations of perfume and bodies that were dream breezes…
Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon Page 16
