by J. R. Rain
The incredible speed.
But I had looked down for too long and was not fast enough to parry Merlin’s next thrust. The point of his sword reached my throat, punching through and spilling my own blood down the center of my sweatshirt.
It wasn’t fatal. Another fraction of an inch, and I would be choking on my own blood.
Focus, James.
The sword came again, meaning to finish the job, but this time I did parry. The force of the mighty blow caused me to lose my footing in the water. My right foot slid out from under me and I fell with a splash. His magical sword pounced, coming at me quickly, a big, swiping movement meant to disembowel me. But I was already moving, flipping from my back in an acrobatic movement that surprised the hell out of me. Merlin’s sword passed beneath my leaping feet, just missing me, and I next found myself between Merlin and his blade.
Face-to-face with the great wizard.
His eyes opened in astonishment, then fluttered wildly. His mouth opened next as he tried to speak, but no words came out.
Behind me, his sword clattered harmlessly to the floor.
Merlin’s eyes bulged out, and now blood spilled out from the corners of his mouth. I slowly looked down and saw that my own sword had gone through his stomach and out his back.
I pulled it free, and he dropped to his knees.
Chapter Forty-five
I staggered back, horrified, exhausted.
Merlin held his stomach with both hands. Blood dribbled between his fingers. Black blood. Blood that smoked and hissed.
I sucked wind. The fight with Merlin had depleted me more than anything in recent memory. Dazed, I watched in sick fascination as the liquid darkness continued to ooze from his wound.
And then something strange happened.
The hem of his black robe, which had been lying flat on the wet stones, slowly rose up on its own. It briefly hovered around Merlin like a jellyfish adrift in the ocean.
And then something really strange happened.
The robe began rotating around Merlin’s hunched frame, slowly at first, and then faster and faster, until finally the thing seemed to separate at the seams, exploding away from his body in a black vortex of screaming shadows. I could see many faces within the vortex. Many haunted faces. Anguished faces. Evil faces. Faces not of this earth. I saw forked tongues and empty eye sockets. Long-fingered claws and razor-sharp teeth.
I saw things I wish I had never seen. Things that I would never forget.
The robe spun faster and faster, nearly swallowing the wizard in a dizzying blur of claws and fangs and hatred.
Now some of the shadows broke away from the spinning vortex—and funneled straight into Merlin’s sword wound. The wizard convulsed. More and more shadows poured in, and when they had all disappeared inside him, Merlin’s eyes popped open and he looked at me.
I stepped back.
The wound in his stomach had healed shut, leaving behind a raw, blazing red scar. He looked up at me briefly, but he seemed confused and not entirely all there. His eyes were crazed and full of fear and something else.
Perhaps even someone else.
Amazingly, Merlin stood. He did so on shaky, unsure legs. Even more amazingly, he took a step forward...and nearly fell. In fact, he should have fallen, had something unseen not held him up, something supernatural. He took another awkward step and this time I was reminded of a marionette puppet being controlled by a puppet master.
Merlin turned, staggered away, splashing through the shallow puddles, his long legs moving seemingly independent of his body. His men watched in stunned silence as he stumbled through the exit, still holding his wounded stomach. They ignored me and followed him out, and shortly the church was empty. The magical orb of light above winked out. And all would have been dark again if not for the Godfire torches.
So who had been the puppet master?
I didn’t know.
I quickly grabbed my torch, still sizzling in one of the puddles, and rushed over to Arthur’s side.
Chapter Forty-six
The rain drove into the exposed chapel, churning the many dark puddles into boiling, frothing cauldrons. Water dripped off my cheeks, my nose, soaking my tee shirt.
Marion and I were alone with Arthur at the back of the church, kneeling next to the once and future king. He was still alive, but just barely.
As she had done for me, Marion now cradled Arthur’s head in her lap, stroking his cheek tenderly. His breathing was labored. Marion’s breathing was labored, too. This wasn’t easy to watch.
My cell phone had been crushed to bits and Marion’s wasn’t getting any reception, of course. It appeared Arthur was destined to die. I knew it and Marion knew it. Still, weeping hysterically, she begged him over and over to hang on.
I had staunched the wound in his chest with my sweatshirt, but more blood poured from the opening in his back. Arthur was a dead man. No man could survive such a devastating injury.
Then again, Arthur wasn’t just any man, was he? Couldn’t he perform just one more miracle?
“Arthur,” I said desperately. “Arthur, can you hear me?”
He cracked open his eyes. “You don’t have to shout, old boy,” he said weakly. “I’m right here.”
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Arthur, we need a miracle.”
“You could say that again,” he said.
“Then do it,” said Marion urgently. “Please, do it.”
Arthur smiled, and some of the dried blood that had collected in the corners of his mouth cracked.
“Even death is a miracle,” he said. “Moving from one stage to the next. It’s a beautiful thing.”
“Enough, Arthur,” I said. “Please, please heal yourself!”
The rain, if possible, angled down even harder. I did my best to shield the king’s upturned face from the brunt of it, but droplets still found his forehead, sliding down his cheeks and neck to disappear into his bloodied sweatshirt. He smiled at me again.
“There’s only one way into the Underworld, my friend,” he said, his voice weakening.
Marion buried her face in his neck. Crap. The man could be so damn stubborn.
“Please, Arthur...” I begged.
“Aren’t you going to ask me how, my old friend?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” I said. My mind was going a hundred different directions at once. “How, how does one get into the Underworld?”
“I don’t know,” he said, laughing. The laughing turned into a wet cough and blood bubbled up from his lungs, which he turned his head and spat away. When he regained control of himself, he added, “But the greatest swordsman in the history of the world surely knows how.”
I said, “Arthur, there’s no time for games.”
“This isn’t a game, old boy, although it has been quite fun.”
“Arthur, please....”
“Love always, James. Love thy enemies, love thyself, love the life God has given you. Oh, and love our sweet Marion. Please take care of her. She means so much to me.”
At the sound of her name, Marion cried even harder. The sound of it reminded me of a mortally wounded animal. Arthur coughed again. Harder. Blood and mucous and something yellow came up. He closed his eyes and took a deep, ragged breath.
He said, “You have much to learn, my friend, but don’t we all? Trust your instincts. Always.”
“I will,” I said.
“We will meet again,” he said. “We always do.”
“I love you, Arthur,” I said.
He reached out with his free hand, took my own, and placed it carefully around the pommel of Excalibur. The sword, which had been pulsating weakly, flared to life, virtually humming in my hands.
“It likes you,” said Arthur. “You will need it in the days to come.”
He held up three bloodied fingers, touched them to my lips, and the life drained from his battered body.
Chapter Forty-seven
We found a shovel in the storage shed behind th
e open-roofed abbey, and spent the next few hours digging a shallow grave beside the same little sapling I had seen the fairies singing and dancing around earlier.
Marion stood in the rain by my side the whole time. She seemed incapable of doing anything more than just standing there, weeping. When I was finished, she snapped out of her funk and together we carefully positioned Arthur within the shallow grave. With me using the shovel and Marion her hands, we buried our friend, the one-time King of Britain.
“Goodbye, old boy,” I whispered.
In that moment, I had a flashing vision of Arthur riding off on a white stallion, down a leaf-strewn forest path bathed in golden light, a path that led straight into the golden sun.
I sucked in some air, and the vision faded away.
Marion and I stepped back under the branches of a nearby oak tree. And as the rain pummeled the freshly turned soil, and as a thick fog rolled in over the grounds, four small bodies appeared at the crest of the grassy slope, skipping and dancing and holding hands.
Marion gasped when she saw the wee folk.
Somehow, I expected them.
They skipped down the slope and stopped at Arthur’s grave. There, they formed a small circle around the dark soil and bowed their heads deeply. Then, after a long moment, they danced again, encircling the grave, holding hands. When their small, angelic voices reached us, Marion wept hard and rested her head on my shoulder. Shortly, a fog moved in over the grounds, enveloping the little folk, and when it dissipated a few minutes later, they were gone, too, along with their tiny, haunting voices.
Left behind in their place was another tree sapling, this one planted squarely in the center of Arthur’s grave.
A tiny oak tree.
Chapter Forty-eight
We were back in the open air chapel.
“We must go on, you know,” said Marion, her voice flat, emotionless. She looked like she had lost a son.
“Yeah,” I said. “The Underworld, or something. Got to tell you, Marion, I’m not looking forward to that.”
“It’s not as bad as you think, James,” she said, standing over the very stone Arthur had indicated earlier. We were each holding a Godfire torch.
“Oh?” I said. “You know something I don’t?”
“I’ve been dreaming of it,” she said.
I was holding Excalibur in my right hand. Amazingly, the grip seemed custom-made for my hand, a perfect fit. I didn’t recall it fitting this well earlier today inside the tent.
“Fine. Then how do we enter the Underworld?” I asked. And hearing the strange words issuing from my mouth nearly sent me into hysterics. I was doing all I could to remain calm and salvage what sanity I had left.
“That was not revealed to me in my dreams,” she said. “Sorry.”
“Of course not,” I said. “That would have been too easy, right? Hey, let’s blow off this whole Underworld thing and go get something to eat. I’m hungry. Is there a Denny’s in Glastonbury?”
“I’m not very hungry, James,” she said, cutting me off.
“Neither am I,” I admitted, exhaling. “Well, Arthur said something about the greatest swordsman in the history of the world knowing a way in.”
“Indeed he did.”
“Any idea who he’s talking about?”
“Some,” she said, pursing her perfect lips. “Many consider Sir Lancelot the greatest swordsman in the history of the world.”
Like I said, I didn’t know much about Arthurian legends, but I certainly knew that one. Sir Lancelot of the Lake. The greatest knight. Ever.
“Well, maybe he’ll come out of the woods naked, too,” I said.
“Maybe,” she said, and might have grinned.
To take some of the weight off my exhausted legs, I rested the tip of the sword on the wide, flat stone, the same stone Arthur had indicated earlier. And the moment the sword tip touched the stone, the chapel came alive.
Literally.
Four glowing knights appeared in the four corners of the abbey hall, all dressed in full medieval armor. All wielding swords of fire, which they raised high.
And charged me.
Chapter Forty-nine
“Ah, hell,” I said.
They came at me fast, converging together. I jumped down from the raised altar, away from Marion. I instinctively knew they weren’t coming for her. They were coming for me.
The guy with Excalibur.
And they weren’t real knights, I was sure of it. At least not living knights. They were magical enchantments, perhaps akin to holograms, activated somehow by pressing the very stone Arthur had been interested in earlier.
As they came, Excalibur jolted in my hands. Crackling energy sealed the grip to my hand. The sword and I were one.
The four entities were upon me, all heaving their fiery swords at once, leaving behind burning contrails of wispy black smoke.
I had been lucky tonight. Indeed, I had been lucky enough for ten men tonight. But I suspected my luck was about to run out.
But until that happened, I did the only thing I could think of: I raised Excalibur and fought back.
And I fought like I had never fought before.
I fought like a cornered hellcat.
* * *
The four knights were inhuman, I knew that much, and each of their strikes was more powerful than anything I had yet to encounter tonight. More powerful, even, than Merlin’s enchanted sword.
They took turns raining devastating blows down upon me, and I did all I could to ward off their hammer strikes. Any other sword, I knew, would have shattered under such a ferocious onslaught, but Excalibur wasn’t just any other sword.
It was the sword.
One such blow hurled me back into the church wall. Air exploded from my lungs. Okay, this sucked. I needed to do something, and fast. Excalibur or not, they were going to wear me down.
And as I stood there with my back to the wall and the rain in my face, the four knights turned toward me as one, moving in choreographed unison.
Perfect unison.
Indeed, the enchantments had also attacked in a choreographed pattern, as well. I knew instinctively that I had to exploit the pattern if I hoped to live.
And I hoped to live.
Oh, yeah.
So I pushed off the wall and met them in a pool of inch deep water. They formed a circle around me and attacked viciously, same as before, each blow seemingly harder than the one before it. Sparks showered down. My world was a blur of fiery swords, repartees and grunts. Of course, I was the one doing all the grunting.
Most important, they fell into a pattern. And despite the awesome strength of their combined attack, I began predicting their movements. In particular, I noticed that when one spirit knight lunged at me, the knight opposite would step back.
So when one lunged, I stepped back.
And so on, and we did this until I saw that if I stepped back soon enough, the enchanted knight to my right was briefly exposed.
We did this some more. My strength was weakening. Sweat stung my eyes. Marion gasped behind me. I gasped, too.
And so I gathered my wits, focused my strength, and as the next lunge came, I anticipated it and stepped back into the vacated spot—and drove Excalibur deep into the side of the knight to my right.
It shrieked and threw back its head, and then disappeared in a puff of black smoke.
Sweet Jesus.
The remaining fighters immediately altered their choreographed attack to adjust to the remaining three knights. As they did so, their tempo seemed to increase, too, their strikes raining down upon me like the Hammer of Thor itself.
I staggered, my legs weakening under the onslaught. One particular chop caught me off-guard and drove me to the ground. One of the knights immediately pounced on me, swinging his fiery sword straight for my head. I met it with Excalibur and kicked the knight up and over me. It sprawled across the floor and slid against the stone wall, crashing in a heap.
I scrabbled to my feet, s
pun away from another strike, and was soon met by all three enchantments in the center of church.
Parrying and stepping, I finally got the hang of their new, ferocious pattern. And when I parried and stepped again, I drove my sword deep into the side of the knight closest to me. Screeching, it, too, disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.
And that’s when the two remaining knights went berserk.
* * *
They attacked with unholy ferocity. Their strikes were a blur. Furious. Harder than ever, desperate. How Excalibur held up under the onslaught, I don’t know. How I held up under the attack, I’ll never know.
Blow after blow rained relentlessly down upon me. There was no pattern. Nothing but a relentless beating. I parried one and then the other, moving faster than I thought I could ever move. I found myself in a rhythm, but I was weakening fast. I had to end this, and I had to end this now.
Without thinking or forethought, as neither was possible, I dropped to my back and rolled. A sword crashed behind me, reverberating through the stones. I kept rolling as another crashed next to me.
I hit the wall and sprang to my feet.
Like demon cats, the two knights pounced. I saw the smallest of an opening and lunged forward—
And drove my sword deep into the stomach of the knight to the left. He threw back his head and let out an agonized cry, then disappeared in a puff of curling black smoke.
The last knight stopped dead in its tracks, facing me.
Oh, crap.
I was drained. I had nothing left. I stood before the last knight, keenly aware that I might very well die in the next few moments. After all, I could only imagine the hellish fury that awaited me from this one remaining knight.
And then the glowing entity did something I would be eternally grateful for. It lowered its sword and kneeled to one knee.
I was too exhausted to breathe a sigh of relief.
