Blackest Knights

by Phipps, C. T.

  “If you are correct, it will be a very peaceful place,” I said. “If there is no conflict—you may find it dull. I am not a pilgrim only, but a writer. I find my tales in the divergence. Parallel lines do not make a good story, but perpendicular lines—that point where things go a direction you never expected? That is the key. That is where true magic lies. If all is gold, there is no story.”

  “I would be glad,” the man said softly, “for an end to stories. I would be pleased to live my life in silence or the company of others without dreams to drive them. I would be content… to rest.”

  “Then I pray you find your El Dorado,” I said. I rose and held out my hand to him. He breathed deeply, then reached out and took it, and I raised him to his feet. He leaned down and retrieved his helmet. He took his sword and cleaned it on the matted hair of the slain creature before sheathing it.

  “I cannot stay,” he said. “There will be others, different, but no less dangerous. I am not the only seeker, and they are a distrustful lot. They believe I know the way. They believe I will find what I seek, so they will either enslave me for the knowledge or kill me to prevent me from reaching a goal they covet as their own.”

  “You are tired,” I said. “Your horse is tired… you must rest.”

  “We will camp,” he said, “Before dawn. Farther along the road.”

  “You know the way, then?” I asked

  He shook his head. My head. My thoughts jumbled…

  I did not know. He did not know… but the words I had penned came to me, and I concentrated, bending them slightly from the original and aiming them at this man—this knight. I put my hand on his shoulder.

  “Listen,” I said. “I do not know if I can help, but if I can, I will. This is what I know…”

  He gazed at me expectantly, and I concentrated. He did not need to hear it all, but it seemed that if I did not recite what I felt, I would say nothing, and so, I spoke:

  Gaily bedight,

  A gallant knight,

  In sunshine and in shadow,

  You’ve journeyed long,

  Singing a song,

  In search of Eldorado.

  But you grow old—

  A knight so bold—

  And o’er your heart a shadow—

  Fell as you found

  No spot of ground

  That looked like Eldorado.

  And, as your strength

  Fails you at length,

  You’ve met a pilgrim shadow—

  ‘Shadow,’ said thee,

  ‘Where can it be—

  This land of Eldorado?’

  ‘Over the Mountains

  Of the Moon,

  Down the Valley of the Shadow,

  Ride, boldly ride,’

  The shade replied—

  ‘If you seek for Eldorado!’

  I have kept those words close, changed somewhat from the poem I penned for Sir Walter. I have sent them into the world as a warning to those who would quest, and to those with dreams of gold. I never saw the knight again, but I dream of him often… when I do I whisper, ‘fare thee well… in El Dorado’.

  The return to the labyrinth, and my study, was quiet, and I bore the spear the knight had left behind, planted deep in that creature’s dark heart. It rests on a stand on a table in the corner… and I think, one day, if time and life permits, I will have the tip plated in gold.

  Now and then I dream of that gleaming road, and a valiant, graying knight. In those dreams, the words echo. “Ride, boldly ride, if you seek… for El Dorado.”

  This story would not have happened without a late-night conversation with C. T. Phipps, a random Google search for Edgar Allan Poe and knights, and my apparently uncontrollable urge to continue writing stories in Poe’s voice, channeling the character from my novel Nevermore—A Novel of Love, Loss, & Edgar Allan Poe. In that novel, we meet the poet’s love, Lenore, the raven, Grimm, and enter the world of the DeChance Chronicles, via North Carolina and the stomping grounds of Cletus J. Diggs. Everything connects.

  Jane Versus the Black Knight

  By C. T. Phipps

  This story is set in the Bright Falls Mysteries series.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said, staring at the man across the table from me at the Deerlightful Dinner. “You want to find Charlemagne’s sword—”

  “Joyeus,” Doctor Chuck Pepinson said. He was a pale, balding man with a goatee and dressed in a Grateful Dead T-shirt, jean shorts, and sandals. He was also a vampire. “The one in the Louvre is a fake. It’s younger than Charlemagne by about two centuries.”

  “And you came to Bright Falls, Michigan to find it?” I asked, confused.

  The Deerlightful Dinner was an old-style 1950s diner with checkerboard print tile and a circular bar. The diner had been cleared out for this meeting as Doctor Sam Pepinson had rented the place for an hour. It turned out it was because he wanted to have a meeting with me. I wasn’t sure why until he told me the most ridiculous story I’d heard in years.

  And I was a weredeer.

  “Ms. Doe, I know it sounds strange—” Doctor Pepinson started to say.

  “No, it sounds stupid,” I said, pausing. “Err, call me Jane. I don’t mean any offense by this—”

  “Some taken,” Doctor Pepinson said, raising his hands. “However, I have reason to believe the sword fell into the hands of the Knights Templar after being looted from a Burgundy monastery by King Phillip II to fight the Moors.”

  “Muslims,” Jane said.

  “Sorry,” Doctor Pepinson said, pausing. “I was transformed at Berkley in the sixties, and we were just beginning the whole political correctness—”

  “Please stop,” I said, already bored with this conversation. I was already regretting I’d agreed to meet with the man. Well, not really, because I was deep in debt and just barely keeping the place open.

  Doctor Pepinson took an entirely unnecessary breath. “The short version is after the Knights Templar were driven underground, a small group of werewolf knights—”

  “Werewolf knights?” I asked. Now the story was getting interesting.

  “Yes, ancestors of the O’Henry clan,” Doctor Pepinson said, speaking of a local family of werewolves. “They fled to Ireland and stayed there until the late 19th century. Then they immigrated to Bright Falls, Michigan where they formed a marriage pact with the Finnigan werewolves.”

  “And they had Joyeus with them?” I said, wondering how he’d come up with such a crazy story.

  Mind you, my revolver was made from the melted down remains of Caliburn and possessed by an angel, so maybe I wasn’t one to talk. The Merlin Gun, as it was called, occasionally talked to me and gave me advice on what to kill.

  This time, it was silent.

  “Yes,” Doctor Pepinson said, pulling out several books that looked like the kind Indiana Jones used. “But the family had internal conflicts. After the death of the old patriarch at the hands of Marcus O’Henry, his two other sons took the sword to be buried in the woods as to deny the kinslayer his prize.”

  I blinked then pulled out my cell phone. “Stop right there. I’m going to go verify your story right now.”

  “Uh, I’m not sure—”

  “Shh!” I said, raising my pointer finger to shush him. I then called my best friend, Emma O’Henry, who was the spoiled but sweet daughter of the werewolf family who ruled Bright Falls Michigan.

  Emma picked up seconds later. “Hello?”

  “Yeah, did your family used to have Joyeus? The sword, not happiness,” I asked, still certain I was being punked by the vampire across from me. I was half-expecting Ashton Kutcher to pop out from behind a pair of bushes at any second—that would have made the whole thing worth it.

  “Yes, we did!” Emma said, cheerfully. “It was the sword used to anoint the King of the Werewolves until my grandfather lost it.”

  I blinked repeatedly. “I see.”

  “Yeah, the family would do almost anything to get it back,” Emma said, he
r voice cheerfully ignorant of what was going on. “But it belongs in a museum.”

  I pulled my phone away, stared at it and then put it back to my ear. “Yeah, thanks for that. Buh-bye.”

  “Wait, what—” Emma started to say.

  I hung up.

  “Are you satisfied?” Doctor Pepinson asked, looking at me with a bored expression on his face. I caught a brief glimpse of his canines elongating in amusement.

  “How the hell did you know all this?” I asked.

  “One of Marcus’ brothers recorded the story in a set of journals I acquired when he passed on. He was my co-chair of supernatural studies at the University of Los Angeles. I believe recovering the sword could be my crowning achievement as an archaeologist,” Doctor Pepinson said, smugly.

  “Recovering a sword that was apparently never really lost and you found exact directions to?” I asked, blinking. “Not exactly Indiana Jones material.”

  Doctor Pepinson frowned. “Would you accept that it’ll still make me rich and famous?”

  I blinked. “Yes, actually, I would.”

  “Well, I want to hire you to stand guard over my team as we excavate the hidden gravesite of William O’Henry to recover the sword,” Doctor Pepinson said.

  “Why me?” I asked, confused. “Also, shouldn’t you be getting the permission of the family?”

  “You have a certain reputation as a problem solver even outside of Michigan,” Doctor Pepinson said, coughing. “You allegedly have killed gods and ancient vampires.”

  I paused. “Would I get paid more or less if I said that was true?”

  Doctor Pepinson gave a bemused smile. “As for the other part, the existing O’Henrys are descendants of the kinslayer branch of the family. They would also call what we’re doing graverobbing.”

  “Probably because it is.”

  Doctor Pepinson shrugged. “Like all vampires, I have a certain level of moral flexibility.”

  “Because you’re a damned evil spirit trapped in a corpse?”

  “That’s just racist,” Doctor Pepinson said, narrowing his eyes before his expression returned to normal. “Also, very true. In any case, I am less worried about the O’Henrys than another problem that I hope you’ll be able to help me deal with.”

  “Breakfast, lunch, and dinner?” I asked, looking around my diner. “Because, really, we could use the business.”

  “No,” Doctor Pepinson said, blanching. “It’s something else.”

  “He wants you to be his dig’s bodyguard?” Emma asked as she walked along the path toward the dig site in the middle of the woods. I had decided not to keep robbing her family’s graves a secret from her but instead had told her everything.

  I’d just told her after Doctor Pepinson had set everything up and been digging for two days. Okay, dick move, I know but I had a good excuse for it: money. I felt guilty about it, but Emma was taking it surprisingly well.

  My friend looked like one of the women you’d cast in a movie to play someone who existed in the real world. She was beautiful, with scarlet red hair, a generous figure, and perfect white skin. It was a side effect of being a shifter that the homeliest of us tended to be pretty while the beautiful were stunningly gorgeous. Unfortunately, I was more the former than the latter and always felt a little self-conscious next to my network teen drama-looking friend. Today, she was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a House Stark t-shirt but looked like she was modeling them. I was wearing the same but looking considerably shabbier.

  “Yes,” I said, sighing. “He thinks your magic sword may be haunted and wants me to take care of it.”

  “Is it a magic sword?” Emma asked, looking over at me.

  “I dunno, don’t you know?” I asked, assuming the sword would be magical because why not?

  Emma shrugged. “I always assumed its value was purely symbolic. A way of proving the werewolves of our family were of a superior stock related to ancient kings.”

  “That you were purebred?” I asked.

  Emma glared at me.

  “What?” I said, putting a hand over my chest. “You wouldn’t have respected me if I hadn’t made that joke. You gave me too much of an opening.”

  “I’m pretty sure I would, actually,” Emma said, simply. “In any case, why does Doctor Pepinson think the site is haunted?”

  “Something, something blood curse by your great uncles something, something dark magic.”

  Emma stopped in mid-step. “You didn’t think to tell me about this earlier?”

  I shrugged. “I’m telling you about it now.”

  Emma felt her face. “Blood curses are a big thing among werewolves.”

  “Well, I’m a weredeer so I don’t know about those sorts of things.”

  Emma took a deep breath. “You said he only knew about one of those brothers surviving?”

  “Yes.”

  “It means the other was probably sacrificed to bring a terrible doom upon those who would disturb the grave.”

  I blinked, processing that information. “Huh, well that would have been good to know a couple of days ago.”

  Emma stretched out her hands and made strangling gestures. “We need to keep him from digging it up.”

  “Right,” I said, giving her a pair of thumbs up. “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got plenty of time to stop all of this. I’ll do it, even if I have to give back half the money.”

  “Jane—”

  “I know, I know!” I said, sighing. “It’s just you can exchange it for goods and services!”

  Emma shook her head ruefully.

  Right before there was a voice nearby that shouted, “We found it!”

  “Oh dammit,” I muttered, rushing through the trees with Emma following close behind.

  The two of us found ourselves in the middle of a grove that was full of a dozen university grad students around several dug-out plots that were cordoned off by stakes with string around them. In the middle one, Doctor Pepinson, held up an ugly dirt-encrusted sword above an eaten-away skeleton buried in the ground.

  This surprised me, not only for the fact he’d managed to find the sword so quickly, but it was daytime, and the vampire should have been on fire. He hadn’t been at the daylight portion of the dig until now, so I’d been happy to bring Emma here so we could deal with it while he was gone. The only vampires that could move around during the daytime were exceptionally old and powerful ones. That was when my brain caught up with my thoughts.

  Oh dammit, I’d been hustled.

  “The power of the Second Empire is mine!” Doctor Pepinson shouted, sounding not at all dissimilar to a supervillain.

  Above our heads, the sky clouded over, and there was a crack of thunder. I felt a terrible wind pick up and wash over us. The supernatural energy in the air tripled and tripled again before becoming a blazing inferno of power. The various grad students, sensibly, all dropped their trowels and other tools to run in every direction but closer to their professor.

  “That doesn’t belong to you!” Emma shouted, perhaps missing the forest from the trees.

  “Joyeus is mine,” Pepinson shouted, pointing the weapon at me. “It belongs to me by birthright!”

  “It belongs to Charlemagne!” I shouted, doing my best impression of Indiana Jones.

  “Exactly!” Pepinson cackled.

  I blinked. “Seriously?”

  Emma leaned over. “People were shorter back then. He also has the beard.”

  That was when a fog on the ground rolled over us, and a shadow emerged from it. The shadow shifted into the form of a black horse with blazing eyes. I instinctively labeled it a Nightmare because weredeer can’t resist punning the way vampires can’t resist counting and boggans can’t resist betting.

  On top of the horse, appearing with a flash of lightning, was a black armored knight who looked straight out of the High Middle Ages. His plate mail was a lot more elaborate and beautiful than anything the Franks would have possessed in Charlemagne’s time. Historical accuracy was
n’t a huge concern with magic, after all.

  “Destroy that ghost, Jane Doe!” Doctor Pepinson, Charlemagne, said. “It’s what you are being paid for.”

  The Black Knight spoke, “Time has brought us together again, my king. Hell has no hold on my soul thanks to the curse woven on your blade. You will not wield it again, though. Its power belongs to one who has not betrayed his oaths!”

  “Um, who the hell are you?” I asked, not sure if I should get involved in this.

  “I am Roland,” the Black Knight spoke. “Prefect of the Breton March and he who was slain at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.”

  “Ron-ce-what now?” I asked, stunned.

  Emma, a lot more familiar with classical literature and history than me, spoke up, “Roland, hero of the Song of Roland? Why are you here? You should be in heaven! You’re the original generation chivalric knight! The flower of chivalry! Everyone was inspired by your battle against the Basques!”

  “A battle he lost!” Charlemagne hissed, displaying fangs. “The followers of Muhammed made a mockery out of my forces.”

  Roland conjured a lance out of thin air. “Poets have a way of making heroes out of villains and villains out of heroes. I began an invasion of the Basques land even though a peace treaty had already been negotiated between my Emperor and Sulayman al-Arabi. I chose, instead, to slaughter and burn the villages of the heathen to create a war. I sought victory and glory by slaughtering God’s enemies.”

  “Does he know Muslims worship the same God?” I asked Emma.

  “I don’t think he’d care,” Emma said. “They weren’t fond of Jews in Roland’s time either.”

  “You ruined my chance to rule Zaragosa and all of Spain!” Charlemagne hissed.

  “I learned such vile tactics from you!” Roland hissed. “You who slaughtered all who dwelled in Verdun and yet were worshiped as greater than—”