The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (23 page)

The
blood
, he was about to say,
we
will
drain
off
all
the blood
and
seal
it
… He stared at the droplike clouds high up.
Oil
to
keep
it
from
thickening
…
in
clay
jars!

“God has shown me,” he began, “that our people may not thirst and perish in the wilderness and dark places of the earth! Until our wanderings are done we … Broke off because no one heeded and at first he saw only his own people running back and striking blows in a senseless frenzy until the horn-helmed men (he instantly knew were Norse warriors) charged out of the gathering shadows, yelling, and clashing their weapons …

Broaditch sat up in the dark, rocking wagon, his body merely successive knots of pain that no posture could ease. They hadn’t even bothered to tie him this time. Alienor leaned close.

“Alive yet again,” she murmured. It was hard to believe.

He made a sound, then spoke:

“Spare me words …” The interior tilted one way, his brain another.

“Poor man.”

“Need I say,” he groaned, “all went not to perfection?”

“What of the girl and boy?” she asked, holding tightly as they banged over series of deep bumps and wood creaked terrifically.

He saw the image and refused to hold it, replaced it almost desperately.

“I didn’t find her … I suppose I was an ass again … You ought to have fled while you could.”

“Aye,” she said. “And what of the lad?”

He shut his eyes.

“Let it pass, wife. Ask me no more.”

Tried to get his feet under him and the pain came in series like (he fancied) pinching stone hands. Blinking hard he realized one eye was closed and one tooth at least was wobbly. His tongue found yet another broken. Her hands were gentle on his head and still he winced and heard her gasp touching the lumps there …

“Sweet saints,” she whispered.

“Peace,” he whispered, faint and sick to his stomach. “My top is better … better than many a knight’s helm …” And then he felt soft as water, slid, somehow, out from under himself and only dimly felt the hard boards bang into his wide back … then he was awake yet again.

Just
let
me
take
a
moment
, he thought he was actually saying.

“I’m up,” he finally articulated. “… a moment … don’t drag back the covers like that … I’m up …”

XXXIV

Gawain was quiet now. Parsival hoped he was sleeping it away. The madness. The peasants had settled back down near the last, purplish coals. Someone was snoring, steadily, rattlingly.

“He drank bad water, you say?” Unlea wanted confirmation. She was stretched out on the rumpled sleeping silks in the dark tent. He sat by the open flap, staring out towards where he knew his friend was lying, not really visible, a yard or so away: just now and then a hinted metal gleaming seemed to surface when he may have stirred slightly.

“Parsival?” she added, querulously.

“So I think,” he told her.

“Will he recover?”

“Am I a leech to know this?”

“No. You’re the great Parsival.”

He folded his arms, eyes tracking in the hollow darkness. “Need I be mocked?” he wondered.

“Do I mock?”

“I know not if you do not,” he sighed.

“Mayhap you pained me.”

“Forgive me then.”

A pause. The snores went on. There were no insects, no normal night sounds in that wasteland.

“Will you not,” she said, slightly hesitant, “come over here?”

“Hm?” He was preoccupied. “In a moment …”

Now
what
? he was asking himself, staring at shapes so vague that the night seemed to press flat and close against his face.
Now
they
say
my
family
lives
…
I
used
to
dream
of
this
woman
and
now
she’s
here
…
my
life
is
an
endless
wandering
…
now
what
? …
Content
lies
not
before
or
behind
for
if
it
be
not
with
you
where
you
are
you’ll
never
come
to
it
…

After a while he moved within and touched her. Though it might never be recovered, he would try because she was alone and needed … him? … Something, needed and that was reason enough.

And then he heard the first scream out in the darkness and thought:

Gawain!
… Then:
No
,
that’s
a
woman
…

And then he was charging outside into tumult, panic, another scream, raw and shrill and terribly long …

He drew the dagger (he kept for woodcraft) and raced past where Gawain had lain (not registering that he’d moved — only later realizing he would have tripped otherwise), plunging down towards the sounds into and among dim forms, demanding:

“What is amiss, curse it?”

“My lord?” A man.

“Yes. Who cried out.”

“My lord.” A woman. “My sister. Here all cut and horrible!” She was hysterical but quiet. “All wetness and terribly opened … oh … oh … oh …”

“What? What?” he snapped. “A light here!”

Gawain?
Gawain?

And the greasy, sudden torchlight (lit on fanned coals) showing the woman, belly ripped from chest to groin by half a dozen ragged strokes.

He grabbed the torch and raced through the night, blindly angry at everything and for the first time in months (perhaps years) ready and ripe to kill, sick of madness, horror, frustration …

And then saw the steel gleam ahead through the wildly shifting tree shadows his light flung everywhere and charged on up the crumbling, charred slope, the fire ash in his nose and mouth, yelling now:

“Gawain! Gawain!”

And the big knight turned, helmetless, head uncovered, single eye bright; the dark a deep pool in the missing side of his face where the bared teeth were terrible … and then he realized Gawain wasn’t even looking at him.

“What have you done?” he said, raged. “What have you done?!”

Panting, holding the dagger up like a pointing finger. The staring eye didn’t see him. “Gawain!” He stepped closer, not looking at the horrible side of his friend. “Gawain …”

“There’s no such name,” the other said, bending the half of his mouth that could into a smile. “He’s gone at last. WE drove him off.”

“Why did you slay that poor woman?” the light boiled through the smoke, the flesh seeming to melt and reform in the flameflow.

“Woman? I need no woman.” the terribly bared teeth glinted dead white. “I am both and whole now … whole …”

“Whole?”

“Behold!” he suddenly yelled, pointing the handless arm at the virtually halved face. “Whole! Whole again!” the eye was streaming tears, over the creased, handsome cheek and jaw. “At last …”

“Show me your sword, then,” Parsival insisted. “Show me!” He didn’t know why it mattered so tremendously but it did and he wasn’t really focusing on the rest yet.

Gawain seemed in ecstasy, looking far beyond the shadowy figure before him whose part-naked form shook like a mirage in the flame.

“Gawain is gone,” he was saying. “Gone … and were healed … Task not us with what Gawain did …”

Parsival jerked the other’s sword free and saw it unstained, a clean glitter.

Who
ripped
her
then
? he asked himself.

“Gawain,” he said, “come back and rest for a time. This spell will pass. It was but the strange, tainted water you drank.”

“He’s gone and we’re free, being of no substance.” His voice was exalted, serene. He seemed, Parsival finally realized, deeply sober. “We’re going away. What matter the means so long as there is healing? This is all poor Gawain ever sought … This is all … and now it’s found. His body and soul restored again. This has now been done.” the single eye shut and reopened. Next he began walking into the night, leaving the other knight standing there holding the superfluous broadsword, watching the other melt beyond the ring of flame into the leafless, limbless trees …

On the way back to the fire Parsival felt eyes in the darkness: swung the torch a few times and stepped aside. A hint … a dim gleam that might have been eyes, possibly an animal, he reasoned. But who ripped the woman? Why?

There were other torches now and the little group huddled near his tent. Unlea was wrapped in light robes, streaked with the inescapable soot. They’d covered the slaughtered woman with a pale fabric.

“Is that his weapon?” Unlea asked.

“Yes.”

“Did … where …”

“Gone,” he told her, still taking it in, understanding it, thinking:
It
may
be
better
who
am
I
to
say
nay
?
Of
all
poor
,
hopeless
,
sad
men
,
who
,
by
Satan’s
piss
,
am
I
to
say
any
other
nay
?
Let
him
be
whole
and
so
please
him
… “Gone,” he repeated. “Gawain is gone …”

“This place is damned,” somebody was saying.

“I say we fly now,” another male added.

“At first light,” Parsival said, “we go on. Build up the fire. I’ll stand watch.” Lifted the sword and bent and flicked the torchlight. “None will come too near.” He tried to spit the black dust out but it sucked the moisture from his tongue. “Bring me water,” he said, seating himself on a round stone, his back to the tent. “Try to rest, Unlea,” he told her.

He was suddenly thinking about Layla, his lost wife, remembering the first time they’d drunk too much together, so many lost years past … rolling in the grass together under a sweet, clear autumn sun … in bed winter nights, discussing the trivialities of the day, the absurd pomp and silliness of court … analyzing the infighting and lecheries of the castle … and her revealed hopes told in trust, dreamings, remote to his knowing, yet fascinating childhood wherein she’d once walked and it gone past anything but a reflection of a reflection, something he could never know, roads he would never walk … and he knew she was still there, had always been there all along and it had been all right until he found Unlea again and she was really free this time and now he had to face that as well … that she was really free … and Layla was still there too …

He half-consciously took the flask someone handed him, tilted it up and drank, barely noticing the water was slightly bitter, almost fizzy … drank deep and set it by the rocks.

“Might I stay by you, my love,” Unlea asked.

He didn’t look up.

“Better to rest, I think. You’ll need all your energy come the morrow.”

Sat with the sword resting across his knees until he knew she was gone. Set the flickering torch in the earth before him, watching the flames shifting on the absorbent blackness … the others settled down again away from the dead woman. Sat waiting for the dawn.

Took another drink. Blinked at the slow, starless night … Blinked again sometime later … the heat was steady and thick and he felt wilted, a film of sweat soaking into his shirtlike garment … drifted into sexual thoughts … wondered if he’d always have trouble. Blinked, then kept them shut and then was struggling to reopen them as if they were somehow sealed skin to skin … he felt deadly watchers close around, keen steel looks cutting from the darkness … couldn’t feel the stone under him now or the hot night air … couldn’t feel himself, as if (part of general numbness) he’d melted into the surroundings without being able to feel them. He struggled to wake up from what he believed was sleep and then he knew, saying or thinking:

The
water
…
the
water
…
they
gave
me
the
water
…

Sat there locked in night, afraid, shadow-watched, losing all sense and shape of himself, not even feeling the heart he knew would be racing on, only the words in what had to be his mind giving any proof that anyone existed there:

The
water
…
the
water
…