The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (29 page)

“Unlea! Unlea!”

Slamming the huge portal against the gale as though it were a bedchamber door, then the slam echoing in a time-frozen stillness as otherness surrounded him again: the sweet shifting pastels, the cloudy scenes, the watersmooth women taking his hands, stroking his knotted, aching body, silver music sounding; kissing with lips that melted from his tongue like honeyed mist, featherlight fingers where everything soothed soft and invited him to linger, drift in unending, changing cloudiness that could take any form he imagined, where all dreams took instant substance …

The interior was not quite black, so she could see him vaguely where he stood, still in the center of the floor, swordpoint dropped. Outside the storm thumped and heaved and light powder drifted in the thin, high embrasure.

She heard them scraping and rapping at the door.

“Parse!” she cried. “Parse!”

She flew in a frenzy to the door and slammed the great bolt home. Their voices seemed part of the mad blowing that rattled the wood.

“What do we do, Parsival?”

Fled back to him, pushed, pulled, shook him, beat her small fists into his lean hardness, hair loosely glinting.

“What? What? What?”

And he came back, the women melting into a general misty dusk that was the room too, walls and arches … studied her pale streaked face, sorrow of bone and desperation. Caressed her gritty flesh.

“That water still has me,” he told her.
It
may
be
forever
… “But I won’t betray you, Unlea.” Sheathed his blade and led her across the chamber through the widest archway.
O
lord
,
draw
me
on
, he thought,
for
all
my
own
ways
have
failed
…
my
skill
foundered
against
children
and
empty
wind
…

Went down the wide stairs, ignoring shattered skeletons that tangled as if fallen while descending — weapons tilted and broken. Stepping over shields and armor fragments, kicking aside a skull (as she shuddered) that clattered down a long way before them …

“I’m thirsty, Parse.”

The stairs wound in wide turns, like a corkscrew driven into the earth. The light from above the shaft was wisping to nothing.

“There’s always water in cellars,” he suggested.

“Will they follow us?”

“No doubt.”

“They were but young people.”

“Yes.”

“Yet so terrible.”

“Yes.”

He paused to take a torch from a wall holder and strike flint and steel to it several times until finally it flared into flame. He heard her gasp, clearly seeing the broken bones, but he didn’t react because the light had soundlessly burst inside his head and the afterglow seemed to shine through the dark stones, and while he could still see her his sight went deep beyond into scenes that slowly rose, formed, absorbed his attention … he gripped her hand tight … he understood these were more than memories as he rushed down the well-like stairs with her. Felt them drawing at him, rich, layered color collecting into movement: antler prongs glinting, a brownish-roan form balanced on delicate legs, floatleaping, gusting from green-blue brush where sunlight lay broken and coinbright in the vivid density of shadows, the angled spear clattering, blood jetting into mist, eyes like dark jewels, profoundly calm … the steps flew underfoot and Unlea swayed into him … Blood mist was only color: the spear had slain nothing, simply changed life and substance to new forms and splendor as the deershape collapsed into the rich wonder of brightness where death was a melting from shimmer to shimmer … Saw the Red Knight again rising above him as the big horse reared and the blood jetted down the spearshaft over his own hot face and he felt himself melting into the death, into the bright blood, the other forever a part of him …

Suddenly he knew the children were on the stairs. He didn’t have to hear them. He wanted no more violence. The steps spun by. Unlea gasped and clung.

“I can’t …” she was crying out. “Help … I’m falling …”

The torch fluttered as they whirled and it seemed that the stairs and walls moved and they were suspended motionless in the vortex center …

“No stopping,” he called into the rushing spin, watching the next images gleam and shape themselves …

And then the stairs were over and they kept whirling out across a tiled floor, the wisp of light lost in a great hall. She fell and he went to his knees beside her looking (through his cloudy skull itself) at a dense pine forest and other trees tossing flames that were autumn red-golds under ice-blue air by a castle wall …

So
we’re
back
to
this
, he thought, recognizing the Grail fortress the way it had been when as a teenage knight he’d first found and lost it. Sick and weeping, Unlea clung to him as everything rotated. Then he helped her up, holding her hand and the torch, and they walked and wobbled a little.

“Come,” he said, leading her through the woods towards the yawning gate in the warm little center of their flame, empty darkness all around.

Heard their voices coming down the stairs and was surprised by their speed. Why were they so persistent? What was the point? Madness fed on madness, he supposed …

“Hurry,” he urged, as they crossed the deserted castle yard, though her eyesight showed only a narrow passageway lit by a fluttering torch. They were descending again on a long, smooth slope.

“God,” she said, “but I cannot … I’m weak as a child …”

But
we
must
, he thought, or
well
start
to
really
feel
our
hunger
and
thirst
and
once
stopped
too
long
she’ll
never
rise
again
…

“Never mind that,” he insisted, but compassionately.

“Why? To perish in pits and tunnels?”

“Lean on me at need,” he said. “There’s a bottom to all pits.”

No
plan
, he insisted,
no
thinking
…
no
trying
…

Because they were inside now and he saw the vaulted chamber lit by thousands of candles, warm, bright, rich, and saw his young self in blue and white silks drinking with the keepers of the Grail and falling asleep, his face so smooth … so fair it startled him …

Lost
shades
, he told himself, except he was there again in the stifling room, staring at the bearded, pale king propped on cushions, pages kneeling around him, one holding up the bloody spear.
King
Anfortas
, he remembered,
poor
man
…

And some blurry one uncovered some blurry thing on the table in the center — something round like a metal ball. Someone seemed to open it and all form dissolved and it was a hole in air, in walls, light, mind, sight itself, something the eyes couldn’t fasten and focus on …

Is
this
it
at
last?

Paused and felt her slump against his legs, gasping, spent.

He stared; avid, tense, because he believed he was going to see what he’d missed that night long ago, discover what revelation he’d forever regretted. Tried to look at the strange, spheric absence and then he knew they all were watching him, the king looking painfully up. (Had this actually happened in the past? Was time a sleepers dreaming of movement and scenes while he stirred not an inch from his bed?)

“Well,” he cried to them in the soft brilliance of candles and white-blue silks, “let me see it! Show me. Here I stand waiting!”

And a long, slender woman rose in a fluffing of shimmer-gauze and pointed to the blankess that swallowed sight, saying:

Look.

“See … see,” Unlea half sobbed. “What do you mean?” She climbed his legs and torso until she stood there weaving. “I hear them coming … what are you looking at?”

“There it is but … show me … show me the Grail, damn you!”

She was trying to pull him away from where he stared at the blank passage wall that dimly glinted in the steadily failing torchlight.

“Come,” she said. “Oh, I thirst, Parse … come … I hear them …”

A steady padding coming fast like cat feet.

“Show me!” he shouted. “Curse you!” Raging at the markless stones.

XLII

Lohengrin and Broaditch headed for the warm spot of light. Entered a tunnel into a foul-smelling draught. They could see the bounce-walking skeletal figure of Clinschor ahead against the rosy fireglow. Could hear the echoing mutters.

“Ugh,” Lohengrin said.

“At least there’s light,” Broaditch put in.

To see what stinks by … that maniac has friends or family here.”

They stayed in close to the dampish walls. Clinschor was just visible where the corridor turned. His bony, flame-wavered outline seemed to be towering over a pair of dwarves. His voice rumbled and rattled, the words jumbled and lost.

Broaditch’s thirst kept distracting him as they worked their way closer. He idly wondered if there were enough moisture on the stones to soak off on a bit of damp cloth and suck.

Lohengrin made out some of what was being said up ahead:

“… at last. So, where are the rest of my people?” Clinschor seemed expansive.

“What’s that?” a squeaky reply.

“I’ve serious business here.”

“Ah,” said one of them. Lohengrin could see he was poking his finger into the mucky floor, squatting. The other he could have sworn was urinating against the wall under the smoky torch set there.

“Attend me,” Clinschor commanded, and strode on without looking back at the two, who just watched him for a moment, the squatting dwarf seeming to lick his fingers. The dwarves stooped along after the great conqueror, more, it seemed to the knight, out of curiosity than anything else …

If
they
came
this
far
, Broaditch was thinking about his family,
they’re
likely
captured
…

“I see no better road than the one ahead,” Lohengrin said.

He decided his memories meant very little. Even reviewing the murders he’d done, battles fought, plans planned, even then it stayed dreamlike and, as amnesia taught him, might as well have happened to another. Memory was not such a great gift, A man called himself his memories and they were largely a trick of the mind. No wonder a condemned man felt innocent at the scaffold: the crimes were only memories and if all men would forget, then nothing would have happened …

Clinschor watched the short, jerky, limping figure labor towards him through the torchshadows. His robes were rent, patched, filthy. The almost lipless mouth parted in shock and went slack. Little hands fumbled nervous with ragged tunic.

“Lord master,” he said, mouthbreathing. Blinked his restlessly rolling eyes.

More of the male and female dwarflike people had dully gathered from farther ahead. They were largely naked in the humid air. Some carried clubs or warp-shafted spears.

The cripple, Lord Gobble, formerly of the great, worldshaking armies, looked apologetically around.

“Most of the others,” he murmured, “fled … Cowards and deserters. I …” He gestured emptily. “I’ve organized this cave folk as best I could … I did the best I could but …” He gestured around expressively at the dull-eyed, grubby, worm-pale faces of the little people. Some were picking lice and staring blankly, a few carrying on murmured guttural conversations which were totally obscure to Gobble. “… you see what I’m up against. Nevertheless I remained loyal to you, lord master …”

Clinschor kept his left fist tight shut over the blood-crusted fragment he’d ripped from Lohengrin’s head. He more or less recognized the drawn, wolfish, avid features twisted up to look at him. He partly smiled. Was thinking of the tunnels twisting down and down the labyrinthine ways to the common center, where the well was sunk to the center of the world where the vast, implacable, magnificent lords of time and power waited frozen in the dark … he felt the Great Lord calling him, aware of the Grail fragment, that could melt the ice and pry back the stone and free them to rise through the shaft to the surface …

Clinschor’s grayish-blue eyes showed troubled fires that the twisted Lord Gobble drank in with delight. He was recovering from his surprise and general depression.

“Lord master,” he breathed, “you have passed through much. Mayhap you have returned greater than before.”

Clinschor went past him, rapt, absorbed by distant things. The toadlike people looked incuriously at him as he passed. He was vaguely aware of them and made a note to chide Gobble (whose name he kept forgetting) for not keeping their gleaming black and silver armor spotless. He was sure he noticed specks of stain and rust here and there. He didn’t glance back and assumed the tall and terrible elite warriors with their fierce face masks had fallen in behind. He pictured thousands of them filling the chambers and galleries of this stony warren.

“I know you’ve done your best, Gob …” he said, forgetting the whole name this time.

“I’ve done all I could, lord master,” he replied, twisting his frail body to hurry after his lord, the bent, lumpy foot crashing down on the loose planking that partly covered the mucky floor. “Let us wash some of the soot from you. I think I recognized you only by your eyes, lord.”

As from far away (because he was striding through great jewel-dazzling halls beamed with silver and gold over deep, rich fur rugs) he heard him.

“The great days are come again, Gobble,” he thundered suddenly and the little man, as if injected with fire and fury, jerked up his bulge-eyed head and nodded once, instantly excited, pressing close to the spindly, blackened, twitchstepping conqueror.

“Yes,” he said, “yes! Thank God you lived! Thank God you’re back! I crouched here helpless and alone with these … these lumps … betrayed, deserted, eating filth to live …”

“The great days have come forever.” Bounced along with Gobble struggling to keep pace, a few of the half-naked dwarves ambling, semi-interested, in their wake through the foul halls, past feeble, scattered torches. One of the dwarves stooped, bent over what seemed scraps of food lying in a mass of rotted straw.

“Arrr,” one grunted, poking at it. “Very like … very like …”

This here’s where the kitchen tunnel cuts over,” another mumbled. “Them dogs feast an we sweats and starves …”

The first sucked his finger, tasting.

“It’s good flesh,” he said, judiciously. “Not above a day old.”

A third crowded close, amazed and delighted with the find. The first held up a pointy head with part of the neck still holding on. With many looks ahead and behind the lucky three gathered up the bony fragments and wrapped them in the hides they wore.

Up ahead Clinschor and Gobble were just passing a group of bowlegged women and sickly pale children sleeping, nursing, creeping on heaps of uncovered straw.

A few steps beyond all the wall torches were burned out in their sconces and Clinschor strode on in the shifting oblong of Gobble’s flamelight, bouncing his shadow across the rock floor and walls. His left fist stayed locked closed around the scrap.

“My armies stand ready,” Clinschor declared in stern thunder. “I’ve been too merciful in the past but that’s all over. They all mistook my compassion for weakness … no more …”

The darkness before was luminous with his vision of all the defiant nations, all the thick-brained defiers of truth laid waste by the searing fires of his magic. His powers would find out every traitor in his very thinking and smite him. He tossed his arms well back and Virtually hopped at the end of each stride.

“Where are you going, my lord?” Gobble called ahead.

He was nervous about going too far into the unmarked and untraveled maze of carved passageways that no man knew the end of, or when they’d been constructed. Did Clinschor know, he wondered? He went on without hesitation. Anything was better than rotting back there with those filthy degenerates, he decided … he had wanted to die for months here, and now … it had to be a miracle.

Clinschor went straight down a long, straight slope ahead of the flickering light, the immense voice muttering on like wind in a drain.

All
the
old
force
is
still
in
his
eye
, Gobble assured himself. He remembered the irresistible flow of their armies sweeping over the green earth, the wild excitement and sweetness of it; a new age about to be shaped from the sullen lead and dough of the old … and then the flaming accident that destroyed them, caught in their own fires. Crawling here to hide in the earth without hope … and then, thinned to bone, blackened, the master had reappeared from the cindered world, coming out of the darkness while Gobble was dragging himself on his hopeless, meaningless rounds in a parody of his old activity. And then, as if taking form in the reddish light, solidifying into tight, ironhard substance with all the force of an omen or a dream.
I
will
follow
and
forget
…
Follow
and
forget
…

“Parsival,” cried Unlea, bracing herself, yanking at him, dragging him out of the glowing Grail Hall — she didn’t see — towards the nearest archway. “For mercy, come! Come!” Because she heard the footsteps rushing faster …

Except he was in a dim, mistladen forest of towering, darkwet trees. Moved in a kind of twilight silence. He felt her hand and had a dim sense of the actual darkness they hurried into. He felt the deadly children following behind among the trees that were chilly corridors and empty stone … a mounted knight floated out of the mist, greenish armor wetly glinting … familiar … calling something … his name:
Parsival
Goddamnit!
… cantering past …
Parse!
…
Parse!
… and as he vanished into the shifting fogs he recognized Gawain … features whole as they were twenty-odd years ago, and next there was himself (he half-expected it) helmetless in the red armor, riding the thickformed charger he’d won from Sir Roht the Red.
So
young
, his mind noted,
and
so
fair
,
by
Christ
,
I
seemed
a
woman
. And he remembered what was coming next. From far, far away something (he didn’t realize was Unlea) was trying to pull him out of this scene. He remembered what was coming next as the young Parsival, golden locks flowing, rode through a wall of mist and reined up as the old man stepped into his path, dark, big, bald and heavy-bearded.

Merlinus
, he thought, and, arm stretched out, pulled unseen Unlea along in the other world that was less than shadows to him.
Merlinus
…

Spoke over his young voice (saying something about graybeards interfering …) and saw the wizard’s deep-set eyes flash to him, looking past the youth.

“Merlinus,” he called through the fog, “I need your help again!”

From
a
ghost?
the eyes somehow said.

“Yes. Am I not a ghost as well?”

Do
you
trust
me
at
last?

“I need help. I’m lost.”

Then
let
yourself
be
led
.

“Where? Where?”

He was still moving into the swelling grayish veils, drifting away from the scene, though he still struggled to get nearer against the invisible grip he couldn’t understand, because his own body seemed but a thickening of vapor …

The last door is at the bottom.

“Bottom? Bottom of what?”

And then he veered, tried to duck away from the fanged and taloned monkeyshape that suddenly sprang out of the dark trees, struck and bounced him reeling, and something screamed in a wailing voice: the dark world came solid again, flashed painfire, and he saw the stone pillar he’d crashed into and heard Unlea’s desperate cry clearly now:

“Parse! Great Jesus … are you struck blind? They’ll be upon us!”

She held the torch now as he groped for his bearings.

“All right,” he told her without conviction.

“Are you come mad to hold fierce converse with nothingness? My God, lost in this terrible place with —”

“All is well. It’s the poison water!”

He headed across the long hall, set with hundreds of pillars in echo of the dark forest from the past.

All
is
well
except
it
will
come
back
…

“You stumbled like a blinded man,” she was saying, “straight into that pole though I pulled at you.”

“Yes. All is well now. Come on … come …”

They entered another sinking, twisting corridor. He gripped her arm. Heard her laboring breath.

“O God … Parse … Parse …”

“If the poison grips my brain again just guide me as best you can. Do you hear, Unlea?”