The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (8 page)

XV

Howtlande was eating a chicken wing, chewing the crispy skin, fraction by fraction, the grease slick on chin and cheeks. His eyes were narrowed and jovially wrinkled. He spoke as he chewed. The young amnesiac knight with the fiercely beaked profile was crosslegged across the low fire, the flames rushing in the uneven breeze, flaring the soft brightness into the heavy, starless, warm dark. Howtlande s round face glistened.

Ah
, he was thinking,
and why not me? Most men have no more energy than a serf whose crops are ripe and the sun presses him to sleep the long afternoons … men sleep, though they walk about, notwithstanding … It’s time to wake up curly-hair here … well trade him his memory for something useful … I was curdwit Clinschor’s sword-polisher years enough …

He glanced around to make sure no one was near. At the next bonfire a large group was still eating. The women were in a rope pen strung between trees, most of them: two were at the cooking fire and another was snoring at the edge of the rosy, restless light in the arms of a long man. The dour knight who wouldn’t name himself sat apart, hands on knees, staring straight ahead …

“Hear me well, fellow,” Howtlande said to the young man.

“I’m not deaf,” came the reply, “that I can tell.”

“Never mind, never mind.” He shifted the slick, bony fragments in his mouth, watching the younger man’s dark eyes that seemed as inscrutable as the wall of darkness beyond the feeble straining of fireflicker. “There’s time enough for wit when the world’s won.”

“When which?”

“Heed me, raw fellow. I will guide you to your memory if you help me in turn.”

“Can you do this?” And Howtlande nodded, sucking his fingers, face (but for the eyes) beaming. “How can you do this?”

“I knew you,” the fat lord whispered, spitting bone and gristle into the fire, which hissed.

His hearer took it in.

“Ah,” he murmured, suddenly wanting to get up, walk away, hear nothing more. “Well,” he said.

“Want to know your name, eh?” Tossed aside the fragile, unstrung remains and finally wiped his face with his greasy sleeve.

The other waited. Then spoke:

“I think you want something now,” he finally said.

Howtlande shrugged, heaving up his round shoulders.

“Who does not?” he philosophized. “You were a great fellow, you see. Oh, yes, by heaven. And I want you to serve me. Be my true vassal. I intend …” He shifted his rump and emitted a long, low, liquid fart. Sighed, eyes misted with brief satisfaction. “I intend, I say, to restore order to this land.”

“What has that to do with my name? Where did you know me?”

The tentlike shirt went lumpy as the huge man twisted around to make sure none had crept close to him.

“In the army of Lord Master Clinschor,” he informed him, “and you’re lucky such as
I
found you, young sir knight. For I never hated you. Ah, but countless do. You were a cruel lord, Lohengrin.”

“Lohengrin? So that’s it.”

“Aye, right.” Howtlande sighed and leaned back on a sack of garments, locking his hands behind his neck. The upper round half of his face was obscured, the lower glowed reddish, grease slick.

The name triggered nothing. He was disappointed. A name couldn’t be that important, he reflected. Frowned and tried to concentrate, bring something back … nothing came … Was this fat man lying? … Why would he?

“Now you know your name.”

“I need to know more, I think, if it’s to do anything.”

“Oh? Most folk would be pleased enough to forget all their old ills. Yet you seek them out.”

He probably was smiling, Lohengrin decided, but he couldn’t tell. He stared across the fire where the shifting heat suddenly raised up a long blackened twig, running sparks, snapping, bending with forked end almost like a crippled arm beseeching the night that pressed and blotted at the dwindling flames.

“My name isn’t enough,” he repeated.

“Whose is, young knight?”

“You say I was cruel?” He wondered what sort of man this murdering pillager would judge so. A disturbing idea.

“So many claimed,” Howtlande answered.

“Was I more cruel than you?”

The bulky leader wasn’t amused.

“Well asked,” he said. “You surely were more dangerous.” Pause. “In those days.” Let his massive legs flop down, belly mounded up behind the fire, bare where the leather shirt had ridden up. “What I now need,” he remarked, irrelevantly, “is a fair woman or a sweet boy.” Chuckled.

“Who was this Clinschor?” the younger knight asked. Howtlande grunted and again broke wind and Lohengrin said: “I’m glad the flames are between us.”

“So you’ve forgotten
him
? Small wonder, for he’s well worth forgetting. Him and his great plans …” Yawned immensely. “… and mysterious powers … bah … His helm was cracked … How he’d babble on about what he was going to do, until your ears buzzed and eyes lost focus …” Yawned and stretched out his limbs with a creak-cracking … let himself sink towards sleep. “Clinschor the great … ha ha … the ballshort wizard …”

“What?”

“Medusa with words …”

“What?”

“Turned men to stone with talking at them …” Howtlande heaved onto his side with a vast shifting of flesh and shadow.

“What things did I do?” Lohengrin asked, then waited … was rewarded by a long, shuddering snore …

So he sat there watching the coals glow and soften. All the twigs had sunk deep down into the general, dimming mound. It pulsed in the drafting air like, he didn’t quite think, a failing heartbeat …

There was nothing, just the vague spill of violet embers now, that seemed a trick of the sight … the sticky, lightless night … snores close and far … insects screeching in the trees … and he woke to find he was still sitting there, slumped forward, face near the vague coals and soaked-in heat. As though forming there he saw what he knew must be Clinschor’s long, bony, pale face and big cat’s eyes; silly, uptwisted moustache. He was standing on a hilltop in mists or smoke, grayish robes fluttering as he declaimed (silent in vision or memory) and gesticulated with one violent, abrupt arm … and then sound and words, the booming voice close behind him, Clinschor’s voice, saying:
All
my
secrets
are
yours
,
Lohengrin
…

He knew he had to be asleep now, saw the beautiful woman again (
mother
, he thought) in a long, pale gown, bare feet flicking up the hem, holding a single candle whose flame tossed wild shadows along the stone wall (he knew he was a child, just awakened, on his way back to bed, a urine droplet hitting his leg as he stopped and nervously held himself there; he’d just been to the bucket), turning into a chamber he knew wasn’t theirs (because he’d turned left as always coming out of his room in the stone stillness, through the long, rattling snores of his nurse, padding along the dim, moonstreaked corridor past the empty doors that he never would look into at night and open places where the stairs rose and sank into obscurity, moving quietly in his flannel sleeprobe, thinking the kitchen is only one more bend away, already tasting the soft cheese that always hung from the second arch, bravely ignoring the darkness at his back). He hesitated, rubbing his eyes, then went over. The door was shut and he stood there a few moments (or minutes even, he’d never be sure), then pushed it lightly and it swung inwards with one sharp creak, except he thought it was repeating again and again so he nearly fled and then, chilled, sinking within himself, stared through the blurring of moonbeams at the window arch and saw her face tilted back on the pillow, the bed creaking and the strange, bearded face seeming to float above hers until he registered the arched bodies, gleaming skin, creaking, rocking shadows … He stood in silence, stared, felt something stirring down there, shocking, surprising him, and his hand went to the heat and shock, something new opening as if the cold stones he stood on were sinking away into fathomless night depths … he wasn’t even thinking about it yet and then her voice, an endless sobbing moan that he somehow knew wasn’t pain, and by then he was already running back, bends flying past, air rushing at his ears with the pound pound pound of stricken blood …

“Mother,” he murmured, half into and out of his sleep, remembering his father too-smooth-shaven, light-haired, greenish-blue eyes brooding, inward (he always thought), stubborn, stonehard …

Father
.

No
.

But
father
…

No
.

Will
you
teach
me
to
…

When
I
get
back
.

Gone. And then to her:

You
don’t
love
him
,
mother
.

Be
still
,
son
.

You
don’t
there’s
no
love
he’s
always
gone
…
I
saw
you
…
I
saw
…

Woke full up. Sat there staring as the images fled. Let himself sink back onto his side, the warm hush of night filling his ears …

XVI

Broaditch leaned into it as the slope steepened, gripping the bar exactly like a Chinese coolie (though the simile would have been lost on him), tugging the flatbed wagon into the depthless gray morning, sky a dull wall above the hills. He went on steadily, wincing once as an uneven wheel jounced over a stone.

Alienor and the children followed a little behind, lean Pleeka strode ahead while the ragged, plaguestruck man lay on his back in the wagon and flopped with the bumps. He hadn’t stirred since speaking his last the previous morning. After he’d toppled on his face Broaditch had located the vehicle, refitted both wheels, telling Alienor (who’d been dangerously silent on the whole subject):

“We can always use it later for something.”

And she:

“Aye. We can load all the wandering madmen we pass on it. Save then
I
must pull it.”

“Why so, woman?” He enjoyed these exchanges.

“Because you’ll have to lie there too, being one of them.”

He’d grinned and felt warm, for some reason …

Well
, he was now thinking,
I
couldn’t
leave
him
to
die
.
He
weighs
no
more
than
a
man
of
straw
and
how
such
a
body
made
all
that
voice
…

“How about you lend your back here?” Broaditch called ahead to Pleeka, who didn’t turn.

“I don’t want him,” he said.

“Not even to swell the ranks of your faithful crusaders? He looks a fair choice man. Sound of wind and brain.” Chuckled.

“You’re the one finds him so precious,” Pleeka returned. “Truemen want the living, not the dying …” Then murmured inaudibly. “The best of us, at least … the best …”

“What’s that? But what do the
falsemen
want?” Felt a twinge in his lower back and carefully adjusted his leaning stride.

Be
this
the first pinch
of
old
age
? he asked himself.

Was just topping the little rise leaving the deserted village and valley behind them. The day was going to be hot. The flick of pain didn’t repeat.

“That’s your business, fellow,” Pleeka said, not turning.

“How far is it?” Torky asked. He had just come up beside the clunking wagon, half-trotting, half-skipping, walking backwards now, arms extended at his sides.

“To where, son?” his father inquired, glancing behind at his burden: the man still lay perfectly flat, filthy, feet wobbling beyond the rags, a few, he thought, happy flies circling and settling in.

“Which is what he wants to know,” Alienor put in.

“Woman,” he told her, tapping his forehead with a blunt thumb, “there’s a picture
here
and I’ll know it when I see it again.”

Because he intended to find that tiny kingdom again where he’d been a serf under Parsival’s mother … if it still existed …

After
how
many
years
? …
Yet
as
fair
a
place
as
any
to
make
for
…

They
were
never
happy
,
my
brother
always
said
so
, Leena was thinking, remembering, crossing the field beside a wall of pines: dense to the ground their bluish, hushed energy dulled by the sunless, tin-gray, hot, sticky day. Her feet and calves were sore but she kept the pace, goading the boy through his complaints, because she knew they weren’t far enough yet and she wasn’t going to risk either plague or capture.

They
always
were fighting
…
why
am
I
thinking
about
this
?
Lost
days
…
Lohengrin
was
older
so
I
think
it
hurt
him
more
…

She didn’t want to stop because then she’d have to think about what they were going to do next …

Hills
and
woods
and
hills
and
more
hills
…
my poor
brother
…
poor
Lohengrin
…

“No,” she’d said to him, “don’t go for then I’ll be alone here.”

And he, hookfaced, furious, eyes hard and remote like dark stones under shallow, still water, she’d thought, sitting his thicklegged black horse, sun spilling blood-red over the western hills behind him, saying:

“Then get out of here, Leena.”

“How can I?”

They were alone beyond the outer wall. The stones, she’d thought, seemed smeared with sun’s blood.

There
was
always
blood
everywhere
, she thought now, tilting herself up the hill, the boy laboring in front, drifting from side to side, ready (she knew) to complain any second, and she prepared to say:
No,
keep
on
… she wanted to halt, drop in her aching tracks but the blood was behind like a creeping, tidal wall. Always blood and the shadows and loneliness … and those men … those men … she refused to think about that, or about where they were actually going, because the first thing was distance and time, which were the same thing only so long as you kept moving, she thought, since time was no friend when you were still, waiting, chained to blackness or cold stone … back … back to where her father had lived, find it somehow … perhaps … perhaps … distance and time …

“Leena, can we —” the boy started to pant, rocking his head from side to side.

“No! Go on.” He said nothing more but she repeated: “No.”

“Please don’t go, my brother,” she’d said at the horse and man shape, a motionless, dark sculpture in the burning, dying light, the road winding down and away stained by the ruby glowing that fired his black armor (
the
blood
touches
each
of
us
it’s
a
marking
I
know
it’s
in
my
eyes
too
, she’d thought) and she knew he didn’t really see her.

“I want to find him,” he’d said, cold, furious, the light bleeding and old.

“Father? Is that —”

“No,” he’d said. “No.”

“I don’t under —”

“All of them, then.” His hand was on the hilt of his sword where the light dripped. “Those sons-of-bitches … all of them … I’ll teach them something.”

So
melancholy
, she thought now,
and
then
he
was
gone
too
like
father
…
mother
was
always
wet
-
eyed
…
no
one
was
happy
…
always
going
…
going
…

Hollow-eyed mother, Layla, flesh purpled beneath where the creases showed in the candlelight, brushing her hand at her loose hair, smoothing it, swaying a little across the table.

Mother
, she remembered,
you
didn’t
cry
that
time
and
you
were
always
crying
…

“But he didn’t tell me,” she’d said.

“It matters not,” Layla’d said.

“I said please stay.”

“Yes,” her mother’d replied, staring, swaying, and from the bedchamber the deep voice she didn’t really like to have to hear called something she wouldn’t register or recall and her mother said: “Yes ...” again. The deep, male voice.

“I asked him if he went to find father.”

Layla laughed dryly, without smiling. The flames moved and ran like blood on the red silken robe as she swayed and caught the winestains at her mouth. The male voice.

“Wait,” Layla said, “I’m just coming.”

“Mother …”

“Look for him,” she said and didn’t even laugh this time, bloodlight rippling …

And then time went past and she didn’t recall much and then coming out of the sewing room holding a candle and the shock, the shadows moving in the hall, crashing and cries, a servant staggering past, mouth open, full of blood, his silver hairs parted with a neat, dark gash, the whiteness chipped and he fell, vanished into the shadows that moved and there were big men and stairs fleeing beneath her and terrible sounds, shadows, swords, and her mother shouting from above somewhere and the man, the bearded man, falling out of a sheet (
he
must
have
wiped
his
blood
with
it
), she watching as he lurched and twisted, feet still tangled, body spouting like a fountain (so
many
holes
), like, she’d thought, the saint on the church altar sprouting arrows (she used to stare at it during mass), neat red arcs spilling gracefully from his curved and tranquil form … the nakedness of the falling body a shock too (“Call me uncle, child,” he’d liked to tell her in that deep voice she pictured somehow as changed by the beard), rolling past her on the stairs. She’d held her head in a rush, a soundless vacuum of knowing that she was screaming as if she screamed silence, blood splashing and sprinkling over her pale face, arms, loose robe, hot and raw from all the holes and the shadows moved and the men and the long silence rushing away …

“We don’t stop now,” she told the boy, breath short, legs shaky as they topped the hill and looked down the smooth grayness and dulled green to where the thin road slashed through the empty country and she thought:
It
must
have
circled
around
us
… and then noticed the people and the wagon and hesitated, reached for him, thinking
No
, hands just missing because he was already running, wobbling downslope, calling out, and the coppery-haired woman had stopped, looking up, and then Leena saw the two children and relaxed a little as her legs suddenly sat her down on the stony earth among bleached tufts of weedy grass. She watched him go on, wide-legged and weary.

They all were waiting, the young boy down there pointing, she could see his mouth moving. She let herself not think now … not anything … for a while … she absently brushed a smoothing hand across her hair …