Fall of Knight Read online

  He feels neither warm nor cold, neither the iciness of frigid water nor the heat of a tropical current. He stands there for a long moment, then tries to take a step. He does not walk so much as float several feet before settling again. He considers this mildly odd, but not too much so. He has lived a very long life and it takes a good deal to get a reaction out of him that goes much beyond, “Well, this is interesting.”

  He says it aloud because, well, it truly is interesting, although he still doesn’t hear his voice. Beyond that, he doesn’t know for sure what to make of it, but he can take some reasonably educated guesses.

  Nimue! Merlin calls out. The fact that he does still not perceive his own voice doesn’t mean anything. She will hear it. Nimue, what have you done!

  Saved your life, silly boy, comes Nimue’s response. He doesn’t hear it through his ears; instead he hears it within his head. The Spear Luin impaled you. Did you truly think you would have survived that without my intervention?

  Yes, I would have! I didn’t need your help!

  Her laughing voice rings between his ears. And yet you stood there on the edge of the water and begged me to help you. To aid you in finding the Spear. Well…you found it. Does that not warrant at least some token of thanks from the mighty Merlin?

  Thank you, he replies sourly. He studies the blood-soaked shirt, then pulls it up and aside to examine the wound. It is a fierce, gaping thing. It has, however, ceased bleeding. How long have I been here? Hours? Days?

  Time does not pass in this realm as it does in others, she informs him. I have no idea how much time has gone by in the outside world.

  And where is here, this realm?

  My home, sweet Merlin. The realm of the Clear. All water passes through here. Here I make my home, here is the nexus of all such realities. Time here is fluid, as are all other things. And you will reside with me here.

  The hell I will! Merlin rages. You betrayed me! Betrayed me to whoever that spear wielder was!

  I did not betray you. I was simply being loyal to my lover.

  Lover, he says in disgust. You love him, and you would love me too? Don’t you think that kind of diminishes the strength of your love?

  Of course not. The tide flows two ways with equal strength. Does that make it any less the tide?

  Merlin attempts to stalk back and forth, and does not entirely succeed as he once again floats from one area to the next. He feels that his annoying buoyancy does little to afford him the gravitas he feels he deserves. I don’t understand how any aspect of you, tides or no, can possibly ally itself with someone who supposedly wants to annihilate the Earth.

  He has no desire to do that. He just wants to annihilate the humans who walk the Earth.

  That’s the same thing.

  No, it truly isn’t, she replies. You keep refusing to understand that. He reveres the Earth. He believes that humans are infecting it, hurting it. And who am I to say he’s wrong.

  You’re the Lady of the Lake, that’s who!

  She still has not appeared before him, but he can sense the pitying smirk that her tone of voice reflects. Yes, that’s right. And how many lakes have become filled with garbage? How many oil spills or toxic dumps have found their ways into the oceans? How many fish have been hunted so thoroughly into extinction that it’s upsetting the ecological balance? There were gods who…

  Her voice trails off. The hesitation catches Merlin’s attention where her ranting was simply annoying him. He tilts his head like a dog trying to pick up a high-pitched sound. Gods who what?

  She makes no response. Gods who what, Nimue?

  He hears the water, or perhaps senses it coalescing, behind him before he actually turns to see it. Sure enough, there is Nimue, or Vivian, or the Lady of the Lake, floating there with her arms out to either side.

  Gods who watched humans when they first oozed their way out of the primordial slime and dragged themselves up to shore, Nimue tells him, and they looked upon those poor, pathetic, early incarnations of humanity, and said, “These are going to be nothing but trouble in the long run, mark our words.” And lo and behold, they were right. They were as right as any gods could be. But they stood by and allowed mankind to grow and develop, because they saw how eventually they could be used. Your beloved Arthur is playing into that, and now, so have you.

  You don’t seriously think this place can hold me, do you?

  She laughs lightly. I most certainly do. Your blood has touched a body of water, Merlin. That blood is all I need to keep you here for as long as I desire. In other words, forever, while my beloved attends to greater matters.

  He pounds his fists against the blanket of water that envelops him. You can’t do this, Nimue! By all the gods, you cannot! Arthur needs me! Even now he wilts under the awareness that I have disappeared again. I must attend to him, and to the backstabbing bastard who caught me in that cowardly attack.

  Well, says Nimue, as it so happens, I have my reason and desires for keeping you right where you are. Get used to it, Merlin Demonspawn. You are going to be with me for a very, very long time. Or would you rather I’d have let you die?

  It would take far more than one idiot with a spear to kill me!

  Do not worry. She smiles. There is much, much more.

  And with that comment, Nimue releases her hold on the attractive form she is presenting him. It dissolves around her as her body rejoins with the elements around her, and within moments she is gone.

  Merlin endeavors to imitate her. He calls upon his abilities, tries to remove himself from her sphere of influence. But the forces that he calls upon to transport him away from this place do not answer him. He is cut off.

  Isolated.

  Trapped.

  Nimue! Merlin shouts in frustrated impotence, and her name echoes and echoes in the vast flowing void, but there is nothing now except his voice and the endless crashing of the seas.

  And somewhere far, far away, a hand with long fingers is staring at a globe in which the minuscule form of Merlin is visible. He pumps his tiny fists in frustration. The tiny Merlin does not see out, but the holder of the sphere can see him perfectly. The water swirls around like a snowglobe, and his face draws closer and studies the trapped mage with fascination.

  The demonspawn is contained, observes the man known as Cardinal Ruehl, while others in the darkness nod in agreement. Now…to attend to his leader…

  CHAPTRE

  THE THIRTEENTH

  ENOUGH WITH THE clanging!”

  Gwen thought she was going to go completely out of her mind. The sounds of swords smashing together had been a nearly endless thing in the castle. She had lost track of how long they had been there, although she suspected it had been a few months. It seemed like years and felt like centuries.

  It wasn’t simply that Percival was there along with them. Percival had actually been the model of propriety and sensitivity, making himself scarce when Arthur didn’t require him or when Gwen and Arthur needed time just for themselves, but mysteriously at Arthur’s right arm when the king sought his presence. Part of her wondered if this was any sort of remotely fulfilling life for Percival, but she had stopped worrying about it early on. She had stumbled across Percival alone one day and found him simply staring in blissful peace at the Grail. He looked as if he was communing with it on some level. It was a relief to her that the Grail was indisputably a force for good. If it had been something even the least bit evil, she wouldn’t have been sleeping too well imagining what the thing was doing to Percival’s mind. Indeed, she would have been constantly worried about waking up with the Grail transformed into its sword form, driving through hers and Arthur’s sleeping bodies like a spit through a shish kebab.

  Percival was so considerate about not imposing his presence upon Arthur and Gwen that she made a point of trying to include him at all times. He seemed pleased to be a part of things when she so desired, but equally happy to be off on his own, because it meant more time with his beloved cup. Honestly, it didn’t seem mu
ch of a life to her, but certainly Percival had spent enough of his existence hanging around and accomplishing not a damned thing, so he was definitely entitled to spend the rest of eternity however he wished.

  But the time was preying upon Gwen nonetheless, for she had no Grail to contemplate for hours at a time. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have diversions. This transdimensional castle, created by Merlin to be Arthur’s home away from home, certainly had its amenities. TV screens that enabled them to keep apprised of what was happening in the world. A telephone that they could call out on, although how in the world Merlin had rigged any of this up she couldn’t even begin to guess. Endless supply of food in a magical larder that was always well stocked whenever they opened it. Everything they needed to live…

  “Not living,” Arthur had said though, not too long ago. He had growled to himself while seated on the edge of the throne that had been set up for him. He looked like a brooding barbarian king out of a Robert E. Howard work, having withdrawn Excalibur from its sheath and leaning on the pommel. Gwen, happening by the throne room, glanced in at Arthur as he muttered again, “Not living.”

  “Arthur?” she had asked. He hadn’t moved his head; his eyes merely shifted their gaze to her. “Arthur, what do you mean, ‘Not living’?”

  “We’re not living,” he had replied. “We’re…existing.”

  Then he went back to his kingly frustrated musings, unwilling to say anything else despite all Gwen’s prompting. But really, she didn’t need to prompt him because she understood perfectly what he was talking about.

  They were not living in this castle, this hideaway, this retreat. They were merely existing there, accomplishing nothing and waiting for a call to action that would likely never come. Because Gwen knew, as well as Arthur, that that call would very probably come from Merlin. It had always been that pint-sized bastard who had been the mover, shaker, and planner of Arthur’s life, and now he was gone yet again. He had a nasty habit of disappearing: the forces of Morgan Le Fey had kidnapped him, and the Basilisk had transformed him into a life-size paperweight. Granted, the little shit had come back from those dire straits, one time with Gwen’s help, an occurrence for which his gratitude had always seemed tepid at best. He had more lives than a cat, that much was certain. But the bottom line was that he had an annoying habit of not being around when Arthur needed him the most, and this was definitely one of those times.

  At least Arthur typically had other things going on in his life during Merlin’s poorly timed absences. He’d had an election to win, or a country to run. Now, though, the time dragged as heavily for the ancient king as it did for anyone else. The first time that Gwen had mentioned the phrase “stir-crazy” to him, he had stared at her blankly, not understanding the term. Now, he’d come to understand.

  One way he tried to deal with it was keeping his battle instincts sharp. There were other swords around the place aside from the unbeatable Excalibur, and Percival was perfectly happy to test the reflexes and power of his king. At first it had been once a day, or whatever passed for a day in this castle. But by this point, to Gwen, it seemed almost constant. Day and night, from somewhere within the castle confines, she could hear the crashing of swords as Arthur and Percival sparred with one another. Gwen had no idea who was truly the better swordsman, nor did she remotely care. As with any sound that is endlessly repetitive, all she knew was that she going nuts from it. If she was going to be required to spend the rest of her days listening to raging testosterone with accompanying sound effects, she was going to throw herself in between Arthur and Percival and hope that one of them inadvertently gutted her like a marlin. Anything was better than this.

  She was seated in her study, trying to read a book, when the crashing of the swords finally took its toll, and she had screamed out, “Enough with the clanging!” To her relief, it had promptly ceased, the stone walls carrying her voice in a most efficient manner. As she knew would be the case, there were footsteps moments later, and Arthur appeared in the doorway of her study. He was frowning.

  “Problem?” he asked.

  “Not anymore,” she replied without looking at him, staring at the pages of her book without making any serious effort to focus on them.

  He remained where he was for a moment. He was wearing loose black pants and a simple white tunic that was sweated through. He wasn’t holding a sword, although she assumed that Excalibur was hanging at his side as always. Then he crossed the room, rested his hands on the armrests of her chair, and leaned in toward her. To her surprise, there was barely controlled anger in his voice.

  “Do you think this is easy for me? Do you?” he demanded. “Merlin has disappeared. We’re effectively in exile, stranded in the midst of millions of people who could use our aid. I’m supposed to be a leader of men, dammit. The leader of men. And instead I’m here, hiding…”

  “We’re not hiding…”

  “Then what the bloody hell is it that we are doing?”

  She lowered her head and sighed. “We’re hiding.”

  “Thank you for admitting that, at least.” He turned away from her, hands draped behind his back. “This isn’t like our being on the boat, Gwen. This isn’t us sailing away into the sunset with our well-deserved happy ending. This is us with our tails between our legs, whiling away the time without the slightest hope of something better coming along.”

  “Merlin could still…”

  “Could still what? We don’t know that, Gwen.” He looked back at her with pain in his eyes. “We don’t even know if he’s alive.”

  “He’s alive.”

  “We don’t know that,” he repeated, and she knew he was right. “That concept alone is difficult enough for me to deal with. What makes it all the more stinging is the thought that we would waste away waiting for him, like Godot. Besides, I’m the damned king. Not Merlin. I shouldn’t be lounging about waiting for him to tell me what to do. I should be taking the actions, initiating the strategies.” He paused, then said with renewed vigor, “Perhaps we should do something at that. Are there still people lurking about the castle?”

  “No.” She sighed, looking relieved.

  Arthur seemed a bit disappointed. “No?”

  She felt her annoyance with him ebbing. Gwen reached over and placed the palm of her hand against his bearded face. “Arthur, there was no proof that you were here, remember? And people being the way they are, there were reports that you were sighted by people everywhere from Indiana to Istanbul.”

  Then Gwen jumped in surprise as Arthur turned quickly and slammed a fist into the wall in frustration. “People I’m letting down.”

  “Arthur, you can’t help everyone in the world…”

  “Why not?” he asked defiantly. “Why shouldn’t I at least try?”

  “Try going to every needy person in the world and giving them a shot of Grail ale? Arthur, you could spend a lifetime doing it and never get it done.”

  “As lifetimes go, don’t you think it would be a better way to spend it than simply hiding here and waiting to be forgotten?”

  “Maybe. But what about the healthy ones? Percival says that a healthy person who drinks of the Grail is granted immortality.”

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Arthur said. “We know it happened for Percival. Perhaps it was unique to him because he was the Grail Knight, destined for a singular relationship with the Grail. Perhaps other people will simply…I don’t know…feel better.”

  “And what if you’re wrong? Are you going to provide them with a ticket to immortality? Do you really think that’s wise? Do you?”

  He stared at her in annoyance. “You’re starting to sound like Merlin.”

  “I’m not sure whether to take that as a compliment or not.”

  “That’s all right. I’m not sure how I intended it.”

  He slumped against the wall, shoving his hands deep into his pockets, looking more like a dejected youngster than a king. “Of course we can’t go around dispensing immortality,” he
muttered. “There is a natural order to things. Death is part of that order. If mankind knows immortality as a whole…”

  “Overpopulation. A lack of striving. Hell, look what happened to Percival after a while, before Merlin salvaged him.”

  “I know. Still…”

  “Still what?”

  He looked up at her. “Jesus didn’t have a problem going around healing the sick. He didn’t feel compelled to go to everyone. He simply did what he could…”

  “Yeah, well he didn’t have to do it on CNN. And, by the way, they still crucify people, you know. They just do it without the cross, in the court of public opinion.” She drew closer to him. “And Arthur…you’re not Jesus. You’re not the savior of humanity. You know that, right? You understand that?”

  “Did Jesus know that as well?” Arthur asked her.

  “Oh, Arthur…”

  “Did he?” he insisted. “Gwen…I am…or at least was…as serious a Christian as anyone you could meet. And that’s back when it was far more commercialized than it was now. I mean, you think that Christianity has become commercialized simply because they start tossing up decorations to celebrate Christmas right after Halloween? You’ve no idea what it was like when the crucifixion was far more recent history when I first started. I went to Jerusalem, did you know that? Traveled to the Middle East.”

  “No, I didn’t know that,” she said in wonderment. It was amazing to her that, even after all their time together, he could suddenly hit her with the most astounding reminiscences and make them sound almost mundane. Afterthoughts that he’d only just now gotten around to mentioning. “I never read…I mean, there weren’t any stories about…”

  “The stories didn’t mention Percival was a Moor, did they? The stories don’t cover everything, you know.” Arthur got that faraway look in his eyes that she had come to know. “You’d walk through the streets there, or what passed for streets, and there would be peddlers, selling everything you could imagine. Pieces of the one true cross. Finger bones of Jesus, or one of the saints. Pieces of cloth from dresses worn by the Blessed Virgin. Holy Grails. Holy plates. Holy shite, all of it. Yet the suckers would grab it up, hoping that it would bring them that much closer to their lord. I watched them willingly subjecting themselves to the wiles of street peddlers and merchants. I’d see the hope in the eyes of the pilgrims…and the gleam of contempt in the eyes of the sellers. And here I am, with the genuine item in my grasp, and I can’t say of a certainty whether it brings the supplicants nearer to God…or further away. I mean, Gwen,” he said, and she had never seen him look more helpless, more confused, “I talked a good game with the Cardinal because, well, the man annoyed me. But what if the whole of Christendom really is based on a lie? What if the savior truly was no more of a Son of God than I? What if he is simply the beneficiary—as are you, and I, and Percival—of an ancient magic, the origin of which we can barely understand?”