The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (13 page)

Lohengrin was waiting as they attacked the gate, watching the sunset discolor and die beyond the towers. He was watching himself too, monitoring his head, waiting to see if it would betray him again … there was just a dull, pulsing near-pain now …

The other knight stood next to him.

“Note how those bastards on the battlements keep so still,” he said, mockingly.

“Hmm?” Lohengrin was bemused. He was actually wondering if it wouldn’t be better to slip away from all this confusion and violent nonsense. Why overthrow this place? He felt pointlessly pulled along by that fat man’s odd hints and blurred part-promises. He sighed. Did he really
want
to remember anyway?

“They aren’t living men,” the knight told him, amused, “or my name’s not …”

“Not what?”
Mine
might
be
Lohengrin
…

“You wouldn’t know me, boy. But it was Galahad.”

“Was?”

“I let him die.”

“Why not tell the others no one’s up there? We could scale —”

“Is there anyone inside you particularly care to kill.”

“Nay. What reason would I —”

“Just so. Let them flee. I’ve slain enough to keep me.”

“Then why are you here?”

“One place is like another. I pass time.” He grunted. “All were shallow when I recall them. This jelly-gutted scum is no worse than great Arthur.”

“Say you so?”

The first nail sprang loose. Punngg!

“I saw much in my time,” the knight went on.

“What do you know of Lohengrin, then?”

“What? Still on that? They say he is cruel, unlike his sire. That he came to be Duke-whatever by fouler means than were common. And served the brute beast Clinschor.”

“Clinschor?”

“Can that name be unknown to you?”

The other nails ripped free and they heard the plank clatter loose. Howtlande was ordering someone to do something just behind them.

“I have forgotten almost everything, sir,” Lohengrin said.

“Then God has blessed you, sir,” said the other. “I remember everything. Which is why I don’t talk much.”

And then the flurry at the suddenly open entrance, cries, a crunching blow … another … They went forward and Lohengrin dimly saw a figure stooping, dodging, striking out, then shouting for his men and Lohengrin braced for the coming shock and the other knight called out over Howtlande’s irrelevant din and Skalwere’s vicious riposte:

“He’s alone!”

And then the suddenly flickergleaming, dancing shadow passed close and Lohengrin’s sword was barely up in time to save his skull (the power of that blow, he semi-thought, was like a lightning bolt) and he fell to one knee — cut hopelessly at the phantom. The other knight, cursing in a mutter, charged past and he heard the mule, shrill, startled, and the fat man’s nasal raging: the dark was all swirling men, grunts, outcries, crashing, as the terrible opponent weaved among them, Skalwere’s voice, diminishing:

“Follow me! Follow me! To the rear!”

Lohengrin stood there, head throbbing. He held it, waiting … waiting … afraid it was coming back, the strangeness that whirled self and the solid world away …

I
don’t
want
to
be
cruel
, he told himself.
I
don’t
want
to
be
Lohengrin
…

The crashing had moved farther off along the river road. Shouting drifted back:

“… bastard! … no … here … You cut me you dungsucking fool! … aiii! … help me … here … here …”

Then more screams, a different quality now. He knew they had seventy-odd fighters and no single anybody could conceivably …

Men were fleeing past him suddenly, routed, blurring up out of the night, Howtlande’s voice shriller, hysterical:

“… Castle! Inside! … Inside! …”

Others:

“Save me … Devils … aiiiiiii! …”

The night reeled with shapes and cries and blind clashing and he fell back with the rest, thinking.

Counterattack
…
all
this
for
what
? …

Parsival saw the thin gleam of the stream as he paused a fraction to crack a blundering pursuer across the knees and then saw them coming, shaped by the faint waterglow and knew:

They
followed
me
from
the
swamp
,
good
God
…

And there were many more this time. They loped and sprang snarling into the whirling confusion with the certainty of predators from hell. He decided this was diversion enough, and an act of heaven, from his point of view. Pounded himself a free path and took off at full sprint …

Lohengrin suddenly found himself moving as the elusive and terrible fighter passed like a ghost blown by a phantom wind. He followed as if an invisible tether joined them and the air rushed into his open helmet, light armor links ringing faintly. Passing close along the wall, the combat and agony fading behind, he felt (rather than actually saw or heard) the man ahead as they cut around the rear of the castle and someone shouted:

“Who’s that?”

Another:

“Gris?”

“Aye. Right enough.”

Then they were past and the earth was gone and his mind said
relax
and he hit and rolled in softness and mudreek.

There
was
a
half
-
moat
here
, he thought.

Crouched to his feet. Heard a whisper of metal and headed along the head-high ditch that ended, crumbling to no more than shin deep, and he was back in the open night straining by starlight at half-forms, following a ghostly hint, cold with sudden anger, determined to do something about something for once, memory or no memory.

“Where are you,” he muttered. Set his teeth. Followed another slight noise, passed through a hush of pine trees, tripped, rebounded … went on, compacted into the furiousness he knew would sustain him, preserve him until he came to solid grips with something … anything … Whipped out his sword as if that could help and charged on, believing his rage would keep him from hitting a tree full tilt, feeling like tensed steel. “Show yourself,” he crooned under his breath.

XXII

Broaditch had backed himself, his family and the two newcomers against a squarish shelf of rock, spear ready, watching the dim crowd gather in the wildly wavering shadows around the firelight. The air stank of sweetish charred meat.

Broaditch had noted the shattered wagon when they entered the camp. He’d assumed the man was dead and, looking for Pleeka, came out of the fallen night and met him almost at once, standing under the trees at the outer rim of reddish brightness. He seemed uneasy, watchful, not pleased. There were clumps of people nearby. The men all seemed bearded and the women wore hoods. Murmurous movement all around, fragmentary phrases surfacing here and there.

“… in truth … aye … a miracle … proves justly what father … Father is with him now … aye …”

“What ails you, fellow?” Broaditch wanted to find out, face close to the other’s flattish, brooding features. “You look stricken.”

“Things have … changed,” he partly replied.

“Ah,” Broaditch was impassive, “but they were ever ill, I’d take oath.”

One of the people passed nearby and Pleeka took him by the shoulder with his long hand.

“Brother,” he said.

“Aye?” the smallish, pointed-faced woman, hair fiercely pulled back from her narrow forehead, responded.

“Sister,” he corrected, “what means all this?”

“The flame spirit has come among us,” she said, voice dry, inflectionless.

“Sister,” he shook her shoulder, “what doctrine is this?”

“The father’s,” she replied, twisting her head back to stare greedily towards the spurting fire. There was a jagged wedge of rock behind it.

“Where are the hymns and the vesper brothers in white?” Pleeka demanded.

“What?” she responded, struggled vaguely to free herself to stare. “Are you Trueman?”

“I’ve been traveling. Converting.”

“The service has been changed by the father,” she informed him, inflectionless. “And the vesper brothers …” She craned her neck.

“Yes?” he insisted. “What about them?”

They proved false to God.”

“What’s this rot?”

“Father John discovered their heresies and denounced them a fortnight since. He then proclaimed a miracle to come, and lo, it has come.” She was exultant.

“What miracle was that?” Broaditch put in.

“The flame spirit appeared among us! The sign we awaited!”

She peered briefly into the shadows at the newcomers.

“Are these with you?” she asked Pleeka. “Where’s your beards? All must wear beards. It’s the law.”

“Law? Law? What …” Pleeka broke off. “What was done with the vesper brothers?” Broaditch guessed he must have been one himself.

The brothers and sisters took them as God instructed.”

A stir swept through the crowd and she struggled away to get closer. Broaditch leaned back to his wife.

“Ali,” he whispered, “I like this less and less.”

“The children need resting but my feet plague me to go,” she replied.

“We best wait for dawn.”

“And mayhap never see it, husband.”

“They don’t seem … well, murderous.”

“Don’t they?” she muttered.

Someone had mounted the rock, no, two figures, one a long sticklike shape that Broaditch, with shock, realized was the madman from the cart. He planted his long bony feet on the rock like birdclaws. The other moved with sudden jerks, gesturing in what must have been meant, Broaditch thought, as a benediction, then, reedy-voiced, spoke over the instantly hushed crowd.

“You have all eaten?” he rhetorically demanded.

The crowd howled back assent. Broaditch was startled by the flat, harsh grating sound.

There
must
be
a
thousand
out
here
, he thought.
That’s
a
few
mouths
to
feed
in
these
times.

“Has the miracle come?” he demanded.

Another howl sprang back from the firewrung night.

“Have I given my promise?!” he virtually shrieked.

This time Broaditch made out:

“Yeesssss!!”

“All the world has been put to God’s sword,” he yelled, and Broaditch found the thin, fierce, whip-cracking voice familiar. “All the. world is dark, brothers and sisters …” There was a low tremulous moan. Broaditch noticed a dwarflike fellow clambering up the back of a near giant, with a pointed knob of a head, to improve his view. The woman was on tiptoes in front of Pleeka.

“Who is this?” Broaditch asked him.

“John. The golden eagle.”

“John?” Broaditch was incredulous and not-quite-outraged yet. “Did you say John?”

There was more shouting and agreement in the crowd and then John was kneeling before the skinny figure who suddenly stepped forward into the wavering, dramatic forelighting, John’s voice, screaming:

“The spirit of fire beloved of the Almighty! Did ye not behold him descend?!”

“Yyyeessss!” Ecstasy and pain. “Yyesssssss!”

Broaditch felt Alienor’s hand dig into his upper arm. Tikla was collapsed, sleeping at her feet. Leena and the boy were pressed to the treebole; Torky was drifting a little closer. The dwarf was perched on the giant’s shoulders as if a single creature with a doubled, ominous body towered there or, Broaditch fancied, a demonic father playing with his distorted child.

He shuddered as the new voice crashed into the night like a great stone. The madman spoke.

And
the
other
is
him
…
John
…
my
God
,
what
a
fit
pair
if
this
be
so!
Except he still didn’t want it to be.

Alienor remembered more: recalled that voice from behind two decades (as she’d first heard it standing in the castle yard, a prisoner, when he rode up with his black-armored mute knights and hurled a savage speech into them that set the barbarians dancing in frenzy; when he was fuller fleshed, with those absurd upcurled moustaches flipping up and down as he spoke that now were pressed flat to his filthy face, and she instantly wanted to flee from all the impossible madness of all impossible meetings …

We
bore
him
here
, she thought,
we
bore
this
thing
…

“Broaditch,” she was saying, crying out, “Broaditch, we did this …” Voice lost under the mounting, hoarse shocks exploding from that spare, shadow-hollowed, gesticulate frame. He bent closer to her.

“What?” he yelled. “What?”

“Clinschor!” she raged in his ear. “Clinschor!”

Clinschor stared at the balding, intense man in the priestlike dark robes a short time after dropping from the pine branch, which he now believed was the giant hand of providence, and watched him tremble with a mixture, he well understood, of cunning, excitement and awe too. He was satisfied. Victory was certain.

“Are you
He
that I raised?” Father John had asked.

“I am the power and the flame,” Clinschor found himself saying. Then he muttered a spell of control. Heard the people gathering, calling to one another, pressing as close as they dared. The circle of space they left around him, he clearly understood, was due to the pressure of his inner potency. He took the man’s right hand in both of his own. Felt cold, irresistible strength flowing into himself as if drawn from all of them. The man John was shaken even through his cunning.

“Speak to them,” he asked, eyes rolling a little, staring into the other’s unfathomable, grayish hollows. “Come, my lord of flame.”

Yes
, Clinschor thought,
that’s
correct
,
my
lord
is
the
correct
form
…

Standing at the edge of the rock, the fire and shadowforms at his feet, he saw what had to be done. The enemies were already doomed. This time nothing would save them. Root and branch … He’d been purged to utter cold and would never relent again! Stood and let his vision penetrate the night and saw his enemies in the air, on the earth and under it, the walls and spell-barriers that he would shatter to black dust! … yes … Looked over his gathering forces without the slightest hesitation. Felt the feeling, the growing as if he were tall now as the stone he stood on, his head among the treetops. He let all the vast, dark, wheeling space fill him, felt his vast voice and the earth tremble and his eyes fill with tears …

“I am the fire and the sword,” he told them. “I have come back from death and the bottom of heaven. I shall lead you to the glorious presence. I am come to make all things new!” Barely aware, as he soared, of the howling response as his words took fuller hold … “All things new!”