The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (31 page)

“Well,” he said, “this once would have been to my taste, before I was hit by the Grail or whatever … but I like not all the fellows to the feast here so well —” and broke off as he and Layla stared at one another. Broaditch was now scraping and kicking the others away, though they simply continued their sport wherever they fell in the heaps of hay and sacking spread everywhere.

“Lohengrin!” she cried. “Lohengrin!”

Broaditch paused, dagger poised to cut her cords, and stared at both.

“I …” The beak-faced knight began.

“Great God,” she said.

“Mother,” he said, “I …”

Broaditch just stared in the jerky reddish-dark waverings, the pale heap of entangled dwarves on one side (he’d tossed the fat shimmer of pendulosity into the center of it all), mother and son, incredibly reunited, on the other …

He found nothing (as he later put it) in his mouth but a stunned tongue and so, wisely, kept it shut …

The torch was sputtering to death. Parsival hadn’t actually registered anything as he skidded to a halt on the clay semi-mud, locking her close to his side with his free arm. The pit at their feet filled the tunnel from wall to wall. Here the bricks were loose and slimy muck pushed out between them under the sagging roof.

He held the flame down and stared into the soundless gape of darkness.

“Mayhap,” he murmured, “the bottom is in Satan’s bedchamber.”

“What can we do? What —”

“It’s not too far to overleap.” About seven feet, he guessed.

What had that vision of Merlin told him? …
The bottom
door
…
or
something
…

“Oh … But …”

“Peace, woman. What may we hope to go back to?”

I’ll
take
a
good
start
…
with
armor
and
a
woman
…
Christ
lend
me
succor
…

“My God,” she said. Repeated.

He heard the relentless feet splashing behind. He didn’t dare face them, not if the other world flipped back and blinded him again.

“I won’t have all my roads end here,” he told her. “Not in this sewer.”

She gripped him then, looking into his face, desperate, intense, eyes showing the guttering flame in a face of shadows and black filth, a last, lost tremble of brightness squeezed by the absolute dark.

“Hold around my shoulders,” he commanded.

Persistent
,
disgusting
maniac
children!
he thought.

She kissed him first and took it in to herself with closed eyes as if for eternity.

And then he drew back with her and charged for the rim, trying to gain traction, pointed footgear slipping, and he knew halfway it was no good and dug in his heels, hoping to stop without going over, and at the last moment, shrugging, flinging her off, gasping:

“Let go! Let go!”

Even as his legs went in he tried to twist around and push her to safety except she clung with such fierce strength (that would have amazed her had there been time), and so he hung half in, half out as the mad children, in a flashing and flutter of torches, arrived screaming and howling as if they’d just won some game …

He clung to the slippery lip, Unlea holding one arm, his tense, weary, furious face contorted, glaring at them with terrible bitterness. There were no fiendish shapes this time, just naked boys and girls, dancing and cheering with glee, flashing daggers.

“Why?” he cried at them and the walls and the dark too. “Why do this?!”

She didn’t look, kept her eyes on his face.

He saw the leader, the stoneblank expression, the bunched beard. He was panting. The rest watched him for a sign.

“Death in life,” he pronounced. The group sighed. “Life in death.”

The sighs suggested ecstasy.

“What mindless wretched nonsense!” he snarled. He struggled to claw himself up and draw his blade, his legs swaying over emptiness, fingers scrabbling, slipping.

The naked mud-and-soot-stained crew capered closer, smoky light leaping around them, at least a dozen blades snick-snicking, and then Parsival saw the dark shapes around them, growing out of the smoke and fitful fire, hovering, possessing …

“Bathe,” the leader cried, kicking his heels together in the air, “in the blood of love!” Sighs and gasps.
Lustful
, thought Unlea with shock, not looking, not taking her eyes from her lover.

The fish, the monkeylike thing, others, others, bodies of greenish smoke, clawfaces, clawing-eyed … the world dimmed again and with a kind of sobbing he let go and gripped her, pulled her over, clutched her to him, as the blades that were teeth too arced and ripped in vain, and they fell in silence, locked together, plunging down … down …

“I was here once,” Howtlande was telling Tungrim. They shared a torch tugged from the tunnel wall. They’d met on one of the bowel-like turns of the inner warren.

Now they were working (to the best of Howtlande’s recollection) their way around the main subchambers, although what lay farther and deeper than these was a complete mystery to him. “I spent the best part of a week in this miserable hole two years ago. This place was bustling then, let me tell you, fighters everywhere … part of my command, the best lads ever to march … that bentbrain led us all to hell … bad strategy, you see, Lord Tungrim, threw away the —”

“If he’s such a fool,” the other demanded, “why do you drag us behind him like this?” He was thinking about Layla. She was down here somewhere. That was the point. Go on with this fat flapmouth who knew something of the territory, until he found her.

“Here,” Flapmouth said, stooping by the wall, holding the torch high. There was a steady rill of water tracing down the mossy stones. He leaned in and pressed his surprisingly thin lips there as if sucking at a shadowcrease.

Tungrim’s body pressed close almost without his will, about to yank the bulky man away before he caught himself into his prince’s dignity. Waited, feeling his tongue fat in his ash-dry mouth as the other man sucked and coughed and lapped at the stones. Finally he pulled back and the Viking drank deep, the icy trickle splashing over his face and neck.

“So,” Howtlande went on, “mad as he be yet he’s
cunning
. When you think of the loot he took!” Nodded. “And it’s down here, by Freya. We all knew that. Why has he come here save to gather his wealth to raise a new army? Eh?”

Tungrim straightened up, panting a little, leather and steel tunic now soaked and chill. The fat ex-baron was vaguely less respectful, he noted. He watched the flabby, beak-nosed, desperately earnest face. He was still talking, he suddenly realized, amazed …

“… and make ourselves masters of —”

“Masters?”

“Yes! What can stop us? We take the booty. This island is a field left fallow, you see? All we need do is march —”

“This island is a clot of shit, mad talker.”

“But —”

“Be still, walrus. Keep the door shut and your fancies within.” “But —”

“Peace, I say!” Tungrim laid a hand on his sword hilt and they went on in the shifting, dulled torch aura. “Masters,” he muttered. “By Odin’s bleak stars … masters …”

Gobble was panting hard, struggling to keep pace as Clinschor bounced along the brickless tunnel. His deformed leg hurt with each splayed impact on the ringing, hard floor.

“I want the army shining with readiness,” lord master was rumbling cheerfully. His recent triumphs left him expansive and warmly serene. “You will bear witness to great acts, Gobbo.” His big, soft palm stayed closed over the sharp, bloodstained fragment. “Great acts …”

And then the passage ended under stalactites at a blank wall. They stood together, the flame shifting their shadows back and forth as if they rocked in bizarre unison: a skeleton beside a bent toad.

“So still you would thwart me!” Clinschor suddenly screamed, so wildly Gobble nearly dropped the torch.

“Know you not where we are, master?” he wondered, uneasy.

“The wizards, who soon will suffer greatly, have shifted the turning to confuse me.” He laughed. “No matter. I cannot lose my way, for all ways are mine, Golba …” Smiled and raised the Grail hand again. “I might open this wall with a single stroke, if need be …”

“Need it be?” Gobble was wary. Mad or not, this was Clinschor the Great. Who knew what he might do?

Howtlande saw the light whisk past down the cross-corridor and heard the unmistakable voice, thundering.

“… you see, I’ve found a new way to the lowest level and foiled my enemies once more …”

And the rest muffled away as Howtlande said:

“That’s him! We’ve stumbled onto him. What a fair fate I now follow!”

Tungrim raised both eyebrows and deemed this as good a direction as any in these ropy coils of confusion.

“Why,” he sullenly mocked, “we’ll be masters in the space of a seagull’s fart.”

Get
the
woman
, he thought. Go
home
.
Find
the
rest
of
Skalwere’s
kin
before
we
find
the
longhouses
burned
…

Broaditch had found Layla’s robes and helped her into them. The three of them stood there, Lohengrin, as the shock wore away, smiling and shaking his head. The swarming dwarves rolled and spread and regathered in their heap like a single creature many limbed and headed, struggling in the quavering light …

“Well,” said Layla, shaking out her matted hair, “there’s so much to say I’ll close my mouth over it.”

“What a delightful place to find you, mother,” her son commented. “I’m pleased you’ve kept from idleness.”

“Tm glad you kept from death, my boy. I’ve heard much of you.”

“Not much, I think, as was pleasant, mother.”

She shrugged.

“Either of you have a good direction in mind?” she wanted to know.

“No, mother,” he said, “we thought it best to stay here with your rutsy friends.”

“How like yourself you always are.”

Broaditch tapped his foot and cleared his throat and wobbled the mace, trying not to look at the constantly shifting, reforming mound of sex.

“I like a family reunion as much as any,” he put in. “But I think, lord and lady, there be other holes down here just as foul as this and not so filled up, so please you.”

Layla approved his irony and pondered him.

“Like your father too,” she said to Lohengrin, “you’re thick with the clods.” To Broaditch. “But you’re a rough old rogue, uncle, to have witnessed my shame.”

“Say, rather,” he suggested, “inconvenience, my lady.”

Holy
mother
, he thought, with a sigh,
I tracked through all the earth to find trace of any of these and here at last in this snake’s palace and mole’s delight
…

“How well he speaks,” she said, with surprised condescension.

“Is your husband here?” he asked.

“What?” put in Lohengrin. “Him too? Is all Britain in this sewer drain?”

“Your father?” she was humorous and scornful.

“I know not. I asked you, mother.”

“So did this great chunk of peasant.” Leaned close to Broaditch. “But say, fellow, have you such a thing as wine or ale about you?”

“Ha,” added Lohengrin, “father’s spirit is certainly present.”

He lit a torch at the big fire and then pulled several burning sticks from the coals and straightened up.

“Have you?” she persisted.

“Eh?” Broaditch was watching her son.

“A drink, clod Jack?”

He gestured at the orgy lump.

“Try them,” he suggested, “my lady.”

She took his advice so far as to stoop and peer around their garments, as suddenly dozens more of the pallid, voiceless folk emerged from the shadows (
one
must
have
gone
for
others
, Broaditch reasoned) and advanced, surrounding them, gesturing towards the unceasing action. Several males and females exposed their genitals, fingering themselves and dancing, swinging their hips to unheard music.

“Right enough,” said Broaditch, pulling Layla towards the fire where her son had started hurling burning sticks into the obscene mob. “Christ on high!” he cried.

“Mother,” Lohengrin yelled, laughing, “they mean to have the lot of us!”

They were burbling wordlessly, ducking the missiles that fell in fluttering, rushing arcs around the chamber.