by Lavie Tidhar
The Red Castle was a series of nestled, vast barrows. It lumbered towards the horizon, mounds built on top of mounds, made out of some unnatural red earth, with stone archways leading into the dark inside at bizarre angles. No grass grew over the barren hills and swastikas decorated the stones and timber that could be seen.
Above the castle, bats fled across the falling sun.
‘Well, this is fucking pleasant,’ Lancelot said.
‘No shit.’
‘Sausage?’
‘Sure.’
So they sat down under the oak and ate the food Orgeluse had packed them, and shared the strong red wine the people of Germania are so fond of. They watched the castle for any comings or goings.
‘I’ll take first shift,’ Lancelot offered.
‘Alright.’ Iblis was already nestled between the roots. She yawned. ‘Wake me up when it’s time.’
‘Sure.’
But she was already asleep.
Lancelot watched the castle. As night fell completely, burning torches were lit among the barrows, and he thought he could see silent, shadowy processions moving in between the tombs, but he could make out no features and no details.
Past midnight a witch flew over the castle, cackling. Shortly thereafter three bears lumbered in from out of the wood, shook the frost from their furs in the moonlight, and transformed into men, then vanished into the openings in the artificial hills. As the moon dipped low in the skies a silent procession emerged out of the wood, men carrying between them a glass coffin. They halted before the barrows until some signal was given. Then they, too, vanished inside.
When it was time to wake up Iblis it was nearly dawn. She stole awake and glanced at the castle.
‘Anything?’
Lancelot shrugged. ‘General witchery,’ he said.
‘Figures.’
He yawned and slipped into the same dip in the earth that Iblis had occupied before. The ground was warm from her sleep. He closed his eyes.
How many more nights like this? he wondered. He was tired of sleeping in the roots of trees, tired of keeping watch over dismal, most likely cursed castles, tired of breaking in and out of places, of following orders, of scrabbling for his next meal. He could have really been somebody, he thought. There had to be something better than this.
Dimly in the back of his mind he replayed a conversation with the master about star stones. How gold wasn’t native to this Earth but fell from the sky. How it was dug up from the ancient craters of these fallen rocks.
Gold.
With gold you could buy anything, he thought. You could be anything.
But it was just a thought, as yet.
He fell asleep, dreaming of summer palaces on slopes, and silken girls bringing sherbet.
*
When Lancelot wakes up, the boy Agravain is standing over him with a drawn assassin’s knife, and the cat is hissing furiously.
50
‘Motherfucker!’ Lancelot screams. He raises his foot to perform the Leper’s Leap, with a follow-up of Yael’s Hammer to the temple, thus eliminating the pain-in-the-ass Agravain once and for all. But the boy is strangely still; he seems transfixed in the position, the knife hovering over Lancelot, one foot raised awkwardly to stomp or simply step; only his eyes are alive, and they dart wildly from side to side, as though searching for an escape.
The cat has transposed herself between them. Her fur is raised and her hiss turns soft and plain menacing. As Lancelot pushes himself upright the cat transforms into a woman. She takes the knife from the unresisting knight and puts two fingers on his neck. Agravain drops to the floor. The woman drops the knife on top of him and turns, smiling. Lancelot notices she isn’t wearing any clothes.
‘I’m Morgan la Fey,’ she says.
Lancelot says, ‘Charmed, I’m sure.’
‘And I have heard so much about you.’
‘You have?’
The woman smiles. He’d met enchantresses before. The world is full of magic and its ungodly practitioners. She wraps her arms around his neck and purrs.
‘I was curious enough to come look you up in person, at least.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ Lancelot says.
‘What a silly expression.’
She feels him up. He hardens, he can’t help it. He feels her smile against his neck. Small sharp teeth nibble on his skin. She bites him playfully. He yelps. She laughs.
‘Want to fuck?’ she says.
‘Look, lady…’
But she can tell the truth of his desire. He’s just a man. He’s weak like mortal men are weak.
Her nails rake his back. Then she’s on top of him, mounting him, and she does something unspeakable on top of him and he cries out and she laughs.
‘It’s called Bast’s Entrapment,’ she tells him.
‘Is that so, mistress?’
He understands now. He twists and scissors, throwing her off him. She flies through the air and hits a tree, bounces back and flips twice while airborne. She lands softly, facing him, and smiles, showing teeth.
‘Jerubbaal’s Well!’ Lancelot cries. He stomps on the ground with funnelled energy. The ground shakes and sinks into a borehole. Morgan loses her balance and tumbles in, but at the last minute flips up, catches a branch and loops around it, aiming a double kick that hits Lancelot in the chest and sends him flying back.
‘Mab’s Fury!’ Morgan sings, and then she’s a whirlwind of flame rushing at him, and he throws himself sideways. He swipes a leg and tackles her, bringing her down on top of him. For a moment their faces are close; so close. She inhales him.
‘Yes…’ she says. ‘Merlin was right.’ She shudders, as though Lancelot’s scent is intoxicating to her. He feels it draining him, somehow. He’s weak beneath her.
‘So heady…’ she says. ‘You could be the greatest of them, yet. Perhaps Merlin’s backed the wrong horse after all…’
‘Mistress? I don’t understand you.’
Her hand grasps him – painfully, pleasantly! – between the legs.
‘Do you understand this?’
‘Yes,’ he says. His voice is hoarse. ‘Yes…’
‘Then shut your fucking mouth and fuck me.’
‘Yes, mistress,’ he says. ‘Yes…’
Then he lets go entirely as the enchantress has her way with him; and all the while, the body of the unconscious Agravain lies nearby.
*
‘Wake up, fuckwit,’ Iblis said. Lancelot was shaken from a nightmare into life. In his dream he was being chased by—
‘Argh, get it off of me!’
There was a bat lying on his face. He fumbled helplessly. Iblis laughed and pulled the creature gently by a wing. It flew back into the canopy of the trees.
‘It’s only a fruit bat, you idiot.’
‘I don’t like bats.’
‘Well, they seem to like you.’
It was dusk again. How long had he slept? He felt groggy, as though the air itself was perfumed with some potion of sleep. Which it probably was, he thought. Hidden defences. It was the sort of lair he and Iblis had had to penetrate before. There had been that cave in Endor… He shuddered.
‘Any movement?’
Iblis suppressed a yawn. ‘Very few comings and goings,’ she said. ‘So what do you want to do?’
‘You got a plan?’
‘Sure,’ Iblis said. ‘Go in, kill everyone until we find Parzival, then kill him too… Same as we always do.’
‘Think there’s gold in there?’
‘Probably. Split it fifty-fifty?’
‘Same as we always do.’ He rose, stretched, fetched his sword. ‘Ready?’
‘When am I not?’
He felt so bone-weary then. How many more castles? he wondered. How many more senseless assaults on bewitched barrows filled with who knew what monstrosities, how many more murders of people who meant nothing to him beyond the price on their heads? He followed Iblis down the hill, silently, the sword drawn: two tiny shadows t
respassing under the rising moon. They found the entrance and went in.
There were no guards to stop them.
Lancelot didn’t like it. He liked guards. You knew where you were, with guards. Not having them on the door meant somebody was being confident. It meant they didn’t think they needed guards.
Meant they thought whoever was coming in was a sucker.
He didn’t like it at all.
The barrow was well lit. He couldn’t tell where the light came from. The walls were blood-red, adorned with swastikas. Their feet made no noise on the stone ground. The air smelled fresh and clean. They went deeper and deeper down the tunnel. It curved and split. They kept following, side by side now, weapons drawn, breathing in tandem. The master had fashioned them into weapons. They worked as one, like gears in one of those calculating machines the Greeks had built back in Antikythera or wherever it was.
Side by side, their faces stern, they advanced into the Red Castle.
And still they met no one and nothing. The whole place was silent, seemingly deserted. A clear wind blew. The ground was covered in fresh straw.
Gradually, he began to discern voices. Distant at first, but coming nearer. The clinking of cups and the murmur of conversation. Snatches of song.
At last they emerged onto a cavernous hall. They must have been deep in the centre of the barrow.
A man who must have been Parzival sat on a crude stone. He was youngish, with yellow hair, and around him stood a guard of knights in full armour, with heavy swords, their visors down, their hands crossed over the hilts of the swords.
Torches burned, secured to the walls. Rich tapestries hung behind the throne. A swastika in a white circle within a cross, against a blood-red background.
‘It’s quite a theme,’ Iblis murmured.
They were clearly visible. But no one paid them the slightest attention.
They watched. Presently a small figure emerged out of the shadows. A page boy, or perhaps it was a girl, it was hard to say. Carrying a large saucer, filled with a dark, viscous liquid.
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘I’ll give you three guesses.’
‘Urgh,’ Iblis said, and made a face.
The page passed through the rows of attendant knights and brought the saucer to Parzival. The man, with a weary look of resignation on his face, reached for the saucer. He lifted it to his lips and drank. He drank and drank, and the thick red blood fell down round his lips and down his chin and stained his tunic and fell on the throne and on the floor. Parzival drank and drank and drank. The blood never emptied from the saucer and Parzival never seemed fulfilled. He just kept on drinking, until he’d drunk perhaps as much as the blood of two or three men.
At last he lowered the saucer. It was as full as before. He passed it to the page, who carried it away.
‘Now?’
‘I guess…’
They made their move. They leaped and jumped but no one paid them any mind. The knights with their heavy swords never moved and Parzival on his throne never stirred. Only his eyes were alive, tracking them.
They reached the throne.
Lancelot’s sword flashed.
Parzival’s head was neatly severed from his neck. It fell into his lap. Surprisingly, there was no blood.
‘That it?’
‘Huh.’
Presently Parzival’s fingers twitched. He reached for his head and lifted it up and placed it back on his neck. He made minor adjustments. He blinked.
‘Well, fuck.’
They really went to work on him then. Hacking and slashing with swords and knives. First came off the head and then the hands and then the legs and joints. They carved up his chest like a butcher dismantling a cow.
The ruined organs quivered and were drawn back onto themselves. The body reassembled. Parzival sat on the Red Castle’s throne. He blinked.
‘I had such high hopes…’ he said in a high, reedy voice.
‘Motherfucker!’
‘Poison perhaps?’ Parzival suggested helpfully. ‘A stake through the heart? How about setting me on fire?’
‘Are you,’ Iblis said, all but spluttering with indignity, ‘are you enjoying this?’
‘Not at all,’ Parzival said. His mournful eyes rotated in the hollows of their sockets. ‘Rather the opposite, in fact.’
He stood from the throne. He stretched. The sound was like a thousand tiny bones breaking and re-knitting. Lancelot winced.
Parzival assumed a fighting stance.
‘Balder’s Spear,’ he said, with that same high-pitched, sad-sounding voice.
When he moved he was inhumanly fast. Lancelot felt time slow as Parzival’s outstretched palm elongated and came for his throat. He slowed down his breath – the world crawled to a halt – he dodged out of the way in the freezing air of slow time.
‘Plague of Moab!’ Lancelot screamed, and his hands blurred in motion as he fired tiny, poison-tipped darts at Parzival.
The man did nothing to dodge the attack – nothing! Lancelot watched him in fury. The needle-like arrows struck the man’s flesh and quivered. Parzival looked down, began plucking them out, then gave up in boredom.
‘I really wished you were better,’ he said. ‘Your reputation is stellar, Master Lancelot. Mistress Iblis. But I fear it may have been overrated.’
‘The Pillar of Fire!’ Iblis said. ‘You prick.’ She launched herself up overhead and opened her arms, gathering heat from the stones and the torches and the warmth of the sun in subterranean plants. She flung roaring flame at Parzival.
He screamed as the fire engulfed him. It burned his hair and melted his skin. Then he shook his arms until the fire was flung from him to the ground and he stomped on it. He grimaced, and his skin regrew.
‘Ouch,’ he said.
‘Cocksucker!’
‘Plague of locusts!’ Lancelot said. He whirled round and fired tiny metal balls at Parzival. They travelled with awful speed, hitting the man across the face, sinking through his skull, bursting his eyes, cutting across his chest and into his heart.
Parzival shuddered. He screamed and raised his arms, and the balls flew back out of his body. Lancelot dropped down just in time. They missed him by a thread and embedded themselves in the far wall.
‘Rise, knights!’ Parzival said. ‘Bring them and bind them, bag them and tag them, wrap them and ready them, for the sacrifice!’
‘Oh, shit,’ Iblis said.
The silent knights who lined the path to the throne all turned as one. They lifted up their heavy swords. They advanced on Lancelot and Iblis.
‘Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!’
‘Don’t panic—’
One knight lifted his sword and tossed it at them as though it were made of paper. It sliced through the air and narrowly missed decapitating them both with one stroke.
‘Alright, panic!’
They tried to run. But the door was suddenly shut and there was no escape. Parzival resumed his throne. He yawned and looked at them sadly. The knights surrounded Iblis and Lancelot. The swords were drawn. The page reappeared from the shadows, carrying the same self-replenishing saucer of blood. Performed the same ritual of marching up to the throne. Parzival took the saucer and drank. The blood gushed down his chin, over his fingers, stained his teeth red. The page accepted the saucer back and carried it to the shadows. The knights, as one, raised their swords. Lancelot and Iblis prepared to die.
‘I want to say it’s been a blast, but—’
‘Yeah,’ Iblis said. ‘It’s been pretty shit, really, all of it, hasn’t it, Lance.’
‘There were some good parts.’
‘Sure,’ she said sadly. ‘Sure.’
The swords came down.
Something fell from the ceiling. A piece of shadow, detaching from the dark. The master materialised between them, coughed, flung out his arms. A massive burst of what the Greeks called energeia exploded outwards and tossed and scattered the knights across the hall.
�
�The bowl, you fools!’ he screamed. ‘The bowl!’
‘What fucking b… Oh,’ Lancelot said.
The saucer, he realised. The saucer of blood.
‘Destroy it!’
Parzival rose from his throne. He threw off the shredded remains of his clothing and faced the master naked as the day he was born. He stretched and with two hands broke his own jaw bone. He adjusted the wound as long new predator teeth grew in his mouth. He smiled, but sadly.
‘I really do hope you make it,’ he said. ‘I had such high hopes, you see.’
His arms grew long and stretched and his chest expanded out. Lines of red, like an infection, shone all across his skin.
‘Master Joseph of Arimathea, I presume?’ he said.
The master nodded curtly.
‘Get the bowl,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and hold him off till then.’
‘And I will hope you succeed,’ Parzival said.
‘How long?’ the master said.
‘How long, Master Joseph?’
‘How long have you been under the thing’s curse?’
Parzival shrugged. ‘Time has no meaning here,’ he said.
‘It’s got into you, hasn’t it.’
‘Master, there is more of it than me,’ Parzival said. ‘If there is anything of me at all.’
‘Parasitos,’ the master said with loathing.
Parzival nodded sadly.
‘Sinthgunt’s Countenance,’ he announced. He almost smiled, then. ‘I’ll start you off easy.’
‘The Breaking of the Ten Commandments,’ the master said calmly. He assumed the relevant position. ‘Let’s see how powerful it is.’
‘Oh, it is powerful plenty, I’m afraid,’ Parzival said.
Then the two men simultaneously attacked.
51
When Lancelot stirs from his post-coital slumber, Morgan la Fey is already dressed and armed. She stands over the still-unconscious Agravain with a stone knife in her hand.
‘I think he has a concussion,’ she says. ‘Should I bleed him?’
‘Is that a medical procedure?’ Lancelot asks, yawning.
‘No, I just like to watch them bleed. Like pigs, you know.’
‘I’m a questing knight, not a butcher.’
She snorts. ‘Butchers are more useful to society.’
