Lost Years: The Quest for Avalon

by Richard Monaco

  “There before us!” cried Gralgrim. “The lost treasure of Odin!”

  LOHENGRIN

  His mother came back into the hut, limping, pale, but not entirely miserable.

  It’s over, she was thinking, God’s will. “How fares the maid?” she asked. Coming closer she saw and knew and winced.

  “I know not, my lady,” said Hal.

  It’s always the worst, she thought. Her son looked dismayed; she hadn’t noted that since he was three. Ah… my son… my son…

  GAWAIN

  He kicked the horse ahead, then reined it to a stiff legged, snorting halt because she held on and now was being dragged. “Damn you,” he cried.

  “Damn you, you white fool,” she cried in exchange. “Am I grown a hag? Am I loathly?”

  He twisted in the saddle, gripping her with his right hand, holding the false one up to her face. “See this!” he told her. Let go and drew his dagger, stabbing it into the palm of the wooden hand and left it sticking out. “See!”

  “Sad to lose your limb,” she said, just standing there, now, weeping. “Many have before you. What care I for that? Save you kept the best one.”

  “I have lost all hope of thee,” he said, quietly, plucking the blade free. “All hope… I came back because I could not help myself. Of all women it was only you I loved entire.” His eye was weeping now, in the dark mist and obscurity of his cowl. “There is nothing I would not have done… I… please, let me go, sweet Shinqua. I am a ghost and you must free me to join the shadowy pack.”

  The horse rocked his head and snorted but barely shifted in place. She still just stood there. “I am no child,” she said. “I can see thou art solid flesh and blood. What spirit has a hand of wood?”

  “I beg you, my love, my wonder, my dear night and magic… I beg you …”

  “What words… what words …”

  “Free this ghost and ask no more, my only love.”

  “Are you all words? A ghost of words?”

  “Ahhh.”

  “You seem flesh and blood,” she said again, baffled, not moving, staring at nothing. “You may be mad …” Paused. “Yet are you intact below?”

  “Lady, you know my meaning.”

  The soft light made her seem an exhalation of grace from the mysterious, murmurous night and he could bear neither to look at her nor look away. Then she gripped his steel-sheathed leg in both hands.

  “I know nothing,” she told him. “All I wish is here with me now. Show me what you must.”

  “Show you …”

  “Yes, fool. Or leave me cursed in doubt.” He clutched his hood.

  “Look then,” he said, sobbed. “Look.”

  PARSIVAL

  “At last,” the knight exclaimed. “I’ll not err this time.”

  A second chance, he thought, even in a dream may free me of questions and regrets… any dream might be a lifetime…

  Because he was crossing the moat on the carven and delicate drawbridge that might have been the same from twenty years before except all those memories swam in blurring denser than the fogs they’d wandered through.

  The gate was open and he went inside and was surprised by the rich tapestries and metal mirrors, bright painted carvings of holy beings, a rich, almost stifling mist of incense and strange perfumes that smelt of clean fields and herb-clogged gardens washed by soft rains…

  He went straight through the empty entrance passage, through the vaulted archway into the big (and suddenly low-ceilinged) chamber where he remembered (twenty years ago) seeing the wounded king who lay, forever bleeding, on the scented, sinkingly soft couch, awash in silken pillows with maidens and pages bearing strange objects… food, scented drink… stifling heat from masses of candles and roaring fireplaces… the castle of the Grail where he’d failed as a boy and left a shadow, a hole forever in his life that was always there, like a spot in the eye, even when he wasn’t actually noticing it…

  So he was sideways surprised that the place was empty, this time, except for a figure on a massively soft and silky bed.

  Lego had his arms folded. Gralgrim stood, stocky, wide, hands on hips, face halved by the dried blood streak; not quite smiling yet.

  Because there was Parsival confronting heaps of rock, saying:

  “I know what to ask now.” He knelt before a scrubby bush. The king moved his head from the shadow of the pillows and, this time, it was Arthur Pendragon. “My Liege!” exclaimed the knight.

  This was too many for the Berserker, who hooted: “He’s vassal to the bush!”

  “Go your own way,” snarled Lego, baited. “Begone.”

  “And miss these rare things?”

  “Bah.”

  “Hearken, for he speaks further with the leaves an berries.” Sank to one knee, chuckling.

  Lego shoved the Viking over with one foot; the fellow lay there, convulsed with guffaws.

  “Lout!” snarled Lego.

  “Parsival,” said the king. “Come nearer.”

  LOHENGRIN ET AL

  Lohengrin lifted Jane’s hand from where it lay beside her. It was cool and seemed unnaturally heavy. He understood. Winced and (his mother noted, sitting in her incrementally fading pain) with unaccustomed tenderness, laid her hand across her body, then turned away with a dark, baffled look and went outside. She could see him standing in the foggy yard, back to the door, softly lit by the softly tossing fireplace flames.

  Well, she thought, now he’s learned this…

  She wanted to comfort him, but her own pain kept her doubled-up. He was so young, she kept thinking. He’d ridden off almost like his father had.

  Never thinking about pain… Life was all theirs for the taking… now he’s already learned this… I fear this wound will keep ever raw and open and deform his nature…

  Hal was trying to give Jane a palm full of water. It trickled past her lips and down her chin.

  “I think she’s waking up,” he said. Layla sighed.

  Oh, Lohengrin, she thought. Be not as I, my son, confirm not your bitterness…

  PARSIVAL

  He leaned close to the listless king.

  “My Lord,” he said, “I swore to do no more murder for you. On my oath, no more killing save in defense.”

  “I ask no more. You denied my knights who came to you. Yet it was not killing they were to ask you for. And I am not the same Arthur you knew as you are not the same boy who came to me for the same red gear you wear still.”

  “Aye, Lord. We change with time.”

  “Yes and no. We are not the same because we are here in this place where time is as with a sleeper, where moments can seem days or a lifetime.”

  “We are asleep? I suspected something since that odd monk …”

  “This is no dream to wake from in your bed. This is a place neither of us may stay in. We will go back and I will be the unhappy king, again.”

  The heat of the low-ceilinged chamber made the knight want to get outside but he stayed on one knee, listening.

  “My, ah whatever-she-is-to-me-through-copulation’s-conscience-smothering-blindness, she, Morgana, has poisoned the world with needless murder, plague and ill magic. She has opened gates that were well sealed. She has awakened Clinschor’s father in his ice cold hole and wants to bring him forth to darken and chill God’s light and sweet green earth.”

  “So I must fight this fight.” He was groggy from the stifling air; yawned. “But it’s not what it seems.”

  “Most true. It is not. You will battle and chop down and slay flesh and blood in a world of pain and loss, effort, hope, despair…”

  “Yes, yes, Sire.” His eyes kept shutting almost as they had in the strange monastery.

  “And in another place they will mean other things. The shadows of our acts in life matter more than the lumps who cast them. So I will give you a map.”

  Another map, Parsival may have said or just thought, eyes shut, now.

  “There is a tunnel back to the world. There is a chamber where
the knights and their horses sleep and you will find the rest of Excalibur’s blade.” The gaunt king held out a scrap of pale parchment.

  “Yes, my King …”

  The stifling heat was too much and the Red Knight sagged to his side with a dull clunk and snored, slightly. His last waking thoughts may not have been his own:

  Excalibur… Grail… words? Just a sword and a cup… or something?

  Things that stop the mind far short of truth and prove the mind a lie…

  Gralgrim hadn’t gotten up. He knee-walked over to Parsival and shook him.

  “I’m here to homage King Bush,” he declared, laughing.

  Parsival stirred and got up. Staggering a little in the close air he went quickly down the corridor and back outside, breathing deeply. There he held the map before his face.

  A map is a dream, too, he thought. Or, at least, a wish to believe something is really known about something…

  Behind them, still kneeling, the Viking had pulled a branch to him as if it were a hand and kissed it.

  “I pledge to serve you,” he cried, “an all yer leafs and berries.”

  GAWAIN

  “Look,” he said, softly this time, hand clenched to pull back the hood and show her his face. She held him, half-dragged along as the horse restlessly shifted and snorted.

  “What care I?” she insisted. “I had heard your face was hurt. What care I?”

  “Yet am I monster and man.”

  “Many are. You are my love. Even were you become a monkey-man all foul hair and stink.”

  Then she reached up and tore his concealment away. He wrenched his face aside so that only the fine profile showed in the gentle, fog-diffused moonlight.

  What? Her mind asked. He still looks like some pale god… “You are like some angel in the Holy Book,” she told him. “Angel?”

  “Then ever keep that single half to me, my love,” she whispered. “And I’ll put out this eye –” She held the dagger to her face. “— with this hand and see you only from one side, forever.” He knew she meant it.

  “Ahhh,” he groaned.

  “Then cover yourself, I care not, fool.”

  “Ah.”

  “Better to be half myself with you than live out this dull bitterness alone.”

  He threw himself from the saddle and crushed her to him, to his mail and plate and she gasped with pain and pleasure.

  “Shinqua,” he whispered.

  “I need but part of thee, my Lord,” she told him. “Which still you keep from me.”

  Easy to say, he thought, in night and fog… yet…

  “Yet daylight will come,” he murmured.

  “Give me the part I burn for now,” she said into his ear so that he sank within himself and his heart pounded. “Strip off this shell.” Her fingers skillfully worked at the armor’s lacing. “Or slay me here, if you be not white of heart as well as flesh. I’ll not part from you alive this night.”

  Then they just stood there, silent, breathing hard; the horse still too. Head twisted to the left, his eye stared across the flowing water into softened forms and shadows, into the misty night melting into morning, the high leaves now taking substantial form…

  He could go neither forward nor back and she knew that, too. He disarmed and let her help him lay aside his armor. She kissed his good cheek again and again and his good hand. They finished undressing and lay down together on the soft, warmish knoll. Her rich body astonished him as it formed out from the brightening vapors that concealed them both.

  “Let me hold you, now,” she said. “I know not what’s to come …”

  “Mayhap little or much. Let me hold you, my lover. And if you must leave me, then slay me.”

  MORGANA

  “Aunt, See there!” cried Modred, pointing. There was a high arch cut into the side of the passageway and their torchlight flickered into what must have been a vast room or natural grotto.

  Mimujin had gone ahead, not looking back. Morgana and her son climbed a few steps into the opening. “Look,” he whispered, excited, pointing at a welter of bright glintings, a slaughter!” The horses resisted, trying to pull back.

  Because (at the outskirts of the wavering flamelight) armored men lay in part of what must have been a large circle extending around the chamber. They were laid out, side-by-side.

  “Hush!” she hissed at him. “Leave this place!”

  Seized his horse’s bridle as she backed them both out. “Aunt Morgana?”

  “We’ll come here later. Let them sleep.” They went on through the rock corridor. “They are not dead?” he wondered.

  “Death meets in sleep,” she said.

  They came out of the passageway into a perfectly flat field that could have been used for a tourney. Mimujin was waiting, sitting his pony.

  The mist was fading here and they could see for nearly a hundred yards all around.

  “They will have to come this way,” she said. The little man glared at her, twisted around in the saddle. Snorted through his split nose. His eyes were slits of fury. “Go my little hunting beast,” she said. “Find your quarry. You smell them, I think. Bring back the broken sword that Parsival, your beloved, will have found.”

  “I find beloved, witch,” he said, twisting his pony’s neck as he held it side-stepping violently. “Then I bring you something back. Yes.”

  “Call first your brothers whom I sent before you,” she added.

  “Brothers here?”

  “Call them. I doubt those two will have slain them all. Go!”

  He started the shaggy, quick mount across the gray-green field.

  Maybe I bring the brothers back to you, here where you are too weak to do your own business…

  “Wait here,” he called back.

  “Good hunting,” she said.

  One of the women was close to her.

  “I feel weak,” she said. “Almost as when I bleed of the month.”

  “It is this land,” Morgana told her. “Well let them come who comes. They will pursue and we flee until we’ve caught them.” Smiled.

  And the sword we could not have found here ourselves as we are near blind in this place… if the little assassin fails it is no matter as the knight will follow…

  She sat there watching across the pale fields into a blurred distance where all edges went to mist, and considered how in days to come when all magic weakened, this island would reverse and the powers gather here and fade elsewhere on the earth… unless she succeeded completely, this time, and woke and freed the sleeper in the fortress…

  Wondered when the ships of the pilgrims would arrive here led by the demented priest and her sister sorceress. The idea was to populate this isle with serfs for her son to rule and breed legions so this would be the great place as the world beyond went dull and dark. Part of the Great Plan.

  “Do we fight when they come?” he asked.

  “The point of war, child,” she explained, “is not to seem brave but to win and live.”

  PARSIVAL

  He held up the map before Lego and Gralgrim in his mail-gloved left hand. “We follow this and soon we’ll have both halves of the sword,” he told them.

  “You need to find both halves of yer wits, mad knight,” responded the Viking.

  “It seems a blank piece of bark, lord,” said Lego, looking closely at the thin, silvery stuff that must have been peeled from a smooth, grayish tree like a birch.

  “It’s perfectly clear,” he said. Here is this dream so deep I wonder I can ever wake again… here where that king I never really trusted has a majesty and meaning as if he were no man but a fable in seeming flesh…

  Gralgrim pinched the edge of the bark and made to study it. “Ar hoo,” he emitted, “what could be plainer.”

  Parsival was already turning and heading back through the jagged heaps of broken stone. The other two followed at a little distance, Lego trying to keep a pace or two ahead of the Berserker.

  Or I’m awake, the knight went on, inter
nally, and magic and amazement overlap the substantial earth and leave us in two worlds at once so all is now new or all is nothing but vapor…

  MIMUJIN

  The pony seemed to know so he let it canter. The mist closed in and drew back as he went. The small hooves thumped softly on the moist ground. The gently rolling field ended at a wall of shattered rock, black, volcanic-looking. He rode parallel, sensing his moment might be close. Loosened his bow.

  Soon we see, he said to himself.

  PARSIVAL

  As they followed a twisting path with the dark rock on both sides making a kind of canyon, a gust of mist (it had, generally pulled back hundreds of feet) spilled over and down the broken slope on one side like an airy waterfall. At the edge of Parsival’s sight it seemed to shape itself into the archway of a small chapel where (in blurry stained glass gleaming) a couple seemed to taking vows before the vague outline of a priest. When he looked directly there was just mist. It made him think of his marriage to Layla, so many years past…

  “I wish I’d bolted,” he said, loud enough for Lego to hear.

  “My Lord?”

  “From that wedding.” Pointed, unconsciously, at where the mist was spilling shapelessly onto the ground. “What unhappiness might have been averted.”

  “Which wedding?”

  “Mine.”

  “You cannot be sure,” Lego considered, “what good it may have brought and may yet bring.”

  Gralgrim came nearer, not wanting to miss any new madness. He thought the entertainment almost as good as a meal. “Hoo,” he voiced. “Be these fairy-folk dancing afore ya, now?”

  And Parsival saw a huge knight in black and silver steel with a demonic faceplate, mounted on a massive charger. He resembled one of Clinschor’s mutes from twenty years before.

  “This monster is for me alone,” he told them. “Stay back.”