The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (9 page)

XVII

Stupid
curse
why
do
I
remember
him
now
?
It
cannot
be
the
drink
for
I
am
ever
drunk
and
he
taught
the
vice
to
me
the
pretty
bastard
…

“Don’t snore so,” she said, jabbing her elbow into the sleeping man beside her. “You’re all sons-of-bitches anyway.”

The man mumbled something between a gurgle and a gasp. Stirred.

“Well I know it,” she muttered on. “Why? … Why must the Devil poison my brain? …”

The man didn’t quite speak. Sputtered and sighed.

To
make
me
see
his
face
again
…
Dear
husband
,
I
don
t
forgive
you
… She saw him: tall, restless, eyes sparkling like sky in the stray sunbeam that slanted in the high chapel window, the priest’s voice a drone, all the guests a blur, just the whitish-blond hair that flamed in the light, she thinking:
I
have
you
now
I
have
you
forever
my
sweet
dearest
… not even aware of her brother John, the mad priest, in his vestments, watching, leaning on the stone wall in back watching from his pale, nervous face, eyes steady (
like
a
snake’s
, she often thought).
I’ll
never
forgive
you
,
Parsival
,
you
shitstain!
…
you
left
me
…
with
two
children
…
stupid
curse
…

“Peace, damn you!” she snarled, sitting up in the bed, the dried straw rattling and creaking. Hit him as hard as she could in the massive blur of chest and hurt her fist. He belched and said no words. “Son-of-a-bitch barbarian bastard!” she said. The narrow, low-roofed hut was spinning very slowly and steadily at an angle.

Sweet
Mary
, she thought,
that
brew
…
no
lady
drinks
suchlike
swill
…
I’m
no
low
-
born
bag
of
shit
…
like
this
barbarian
bastard
…

There was a blurring of moonlight at the window that traced some of the wall and the rough beams above.

“Sweet Mary,” she muttered, holding her torso with long, still graceful hands. Her body had stayed slim and the prints of years didn’t show in such subtle light. The moon caught fine traces of silver in her long, dark hair as she stood up and the floor spun faster … dropped to her knees … sucked in deep, desperate breaths …

Sweet
Mary
…

Crouched there, naked, shivering in the hot, sticky night. The man was snoring again.

“I want … to go home …” Nodded. “Yes … for I am a lady …” The snores penetrated the spinning blur around her. “Be still, scub … scubscum …” Crawled through the shifting darkness, desperate now, fingers scraping and clawing the planks, desperate for the cooler air spilling around the sagged door, fumbling, scrambling along the wall, hitting her head, then knotting, twisting, spilling, spewing on and on and on … finally she pulled back and sat on her hams, gasping and coughing, mouth and nose bile-fouled. She knew she’d be able to sleep now. Didn’t move, rested on her heels facing the wall, eyes shut and his face still there: the unstained eyes, the shadowy crease down his cheek like a faintly ruled line … so long … so long ago …

Her hands stayed in her lap as slow tears squeezed out one after another …

“Oh, you bastard,” she whispered. “You bastard …”

I’ll leave here tomorrow … no more of this for me … no more … I’ve been weak … go back south it can’t be bad as they say … something must be left … the castle’s still mine … I should find my children … what kind of mother are you?
… Nodded. Then laughed, short, sharp like steel on stone.

“Wonderful children,” she muttered. Opened her eyes, which changed nothing. Listened to him getting up now, the mattress crackling like fire. His grunts. A racking set of coughs and hawkings. Then big feet slishing over the planks.

“What’s that stench?” he wanted to know in a thick, blurry voice.

“Wonderful son …” She swayed a little on her knees.

“Did you befoul yourself again? You needs learn to drink like a Norse woman.” She heard him bump into a stool. It scraped ahead. “Where are you?”

He opened the door with strain and banging. Pale light spilled in. The setting moon was over the hills, framed as if in a painting, and then his shadow went through and she heard the spat spat spatting trickle hitting the packed dust outside in the hot, still night. A dog was yapping somewhere in the distance. There weren’t many animals left in the country. Wherever they’d been people were hungry and it was getting worse …

“Sweetsilk daughter …” Muttered, then, loud: “She’s dead, you bastard!”

“Be still,” he commanded from outside. She listened to him spitting again.

“You bastard,” she hissed.

His blurred shape dimmed the doorway, feet skissing on the gritty floorplanks.

“Have I been hard on you, woman?” he asked her through a creaking yawn. “Clean yourself, why don’t you? Ah, or come not to bed again this night.”

“My son … my son was sad … always sad … In his eyes, you could see it in his eyes …”

“Your son.” The door swung shut and the feet scraped away and then the bed burst into cracklings again. “Clean yourself and sleep …” Grunting … cracklings … yawns … “Wine is your curse, I fear …”

“What wine, Tungrim?” she wanted to know, struggling upright, suddenly frantic, holding onto the rough wall of this hut they’d found deserted yesternight. “Cheap swill brew!” Laughed in derisive triumph. “Cheap swill brew, you bastard! Whore’s son! … I’m noble … and drink noble drinks … whore’s son …”

“Be still,” he muttered, from just the near side of sleep. “I do … you … well indeed …”

“You scum!” She reeled along the wall, splinters rasping her forearms. “Clot of asshole spillings …” She took breath and leaned there, pale, naked, frail-bodied, as the door swung open, sucked by the freshening wind. His face was still there, looking at her, tender, remote …

I’m
going
away
right
now
…

The tragic blue eyes, the fine girl’s blond hair, Parsival as he looked twenty years ago …

“Leave me alone! … Leave me alone! … Scum …”

She moved and the wall was suddenly gone and the moon, hills, stars went tilting overhead and the warm, packed dirt hit her softly on the back and her body knew there was no point in trying to move while her mind was taking her away … she saw the castle, long table set … servants, knights, ladies … she was talking, smoothing her gown in rich candlelight … the young, smoothskinned knight in red silks leaned in close and it was
his
face again and she shook her head in violent spasms and (from where she lay) the moon was bitten into by the wall of trees, the last beams like a mist over the dooryard and the other huts … the distant dog yiped shrill and petulant and a bass voice wordlessly cursed and there was suddenly a violent silence … the nightmare returned, the ropes on her arms, the stinking oil torches filling the halls with greasy smoke … then outside, barefoot in her shift, the voices she didn’t listen to … they dragged her to the waiting horses as fighting still flurried in the castle yard. Voices raged and suffered, torches and shadows rushed everywhere in tumult and then she was staring at the girl on the dark ground in slashed silks, drowned in blood and shadows (
Leena
, she’d thought once only, then stopped her shocked, overloaded mind), face chopped to shreds, arms and legs outflung as if she were actually leaping away … then the warm horsereek, massive muscles under her, her own voice screaming (she didn’t hear it or realize until the raw pain in her throat finally closed it off) and the night rolling and bouncing past, wrists gripped by steel hands, yieldless armorplate against her flesh, hopeless sinking within beyond even fear and her voice only whispercrying over and over into the rush of air, sounds lost utterly:

“You weren’t here for this … you weren’t here … you weren’t here …”

XVIII

He kept running, steady, easy, watching the forest fly past, feeling very good after miles, his legs still fairly firm at each impact. His breathing was even. Tomorrow everything would hurt, but that was tomorrow …

The trees were old here, massive, bent and turned as if the woods were sagging down under a vast weight of sky, everything grayish-green under strips of tin-bright cloud. The scribble of trail he followed had become a faint thread. He wondered who might use it, as he’d passed nothing but unworked landscape and no travelers. Trails, Parsival reflected, should link something to something else.

He sensed something suddenly … felt odd … slowed into a walk, listening hard behind himself … nothing, just leaves stirring sluggishly overhead. Sweat clung to him in the humid air now that he moved slowly. Something, he believed, was somehow familiar here. Something …

They’re
not
too
hard
on
my
heels
, he thought.
If
they
followed
.
Even
that
lean
devil
would
have
his
work
cut
out
to
hold
my
pace
.

His flushed legs carried him through floaty, pleasant steps. He was hungry.

I’ve
been
here
before
…
wherever
this
lies
,
between
God’s
navel
and
the
Devil’s
asshole
…

Another fifty steps and he broke through into a screen of dead saplings, moving carefully, the slightest touch of elbow or foot snapping one or more — they’d fall dryly and lean on the rest. The path had vanished in a scrawl of moss and pebbles. He could only see an arm’s length in any direction, sight blending away into impenetrable grayness.

There
must
be
a
swamp
close
at
hand
…

He went on, twisting through the brittle interstices, ground damp, black and slick. The important thing now was not to turn aside because he’d have to come to low ground and water soon and if this belt of rotting trees was at all thick he could wander pointlessly and be forced to retrace his steps. Meanwhile the grayness was subtly dimming as he used up the afternoon …

Except it wasn’t really a swamp, just a sluggish twist of stream banked by reeds and soggy-looking, cabbagelike plants.

One direction or another there’s bound to be a river or lake near … Smiled, sarcastic. Lost again, mighty finder of the nonexistent Grail, among other nonexistent things … Finder in the main of women who dream into his stupid, lost eyes!
Stopped smiling.

And he was almost past it before he noticed the campfire ashes and the straw and timber huts that sat like mushrooms along the bilious shore, vacant, gaping but not quite deteriorated enough to be altogether deserted … It wouldn’t surprise him if those “Truemen” lived here because, he thought, they’d suit a place with scummed and slimy water at the doorstep.

He paused at the campfire, kicked at the wet, old coals. There was a chunk of what looked like meat on a stick. He idly picked up the charred wood and frowned in surprise; decided his imagination had him in thrall but it looked (the bone and burnt shreds) like a smallish hand … human … thumb and forefinger at least … possibly …

No
, he thought,
nonsense
…

There wasn’t enough left to be certain.

He tossed it back to stick in the ash, incompletely gesturing, fingerlike bones tilted as if to pluck at the darkening air.

He went on, following the stream now, against the current, hoping to find the main source … he was passing the last, squat, tilted hut when the blur-faced, naked, dead-white man half-crawled out of the doorhole and half-stood on bandy legs, frizzy, wild beard bushing around his head into his filthy, knotted mane. His voice, Parsival decided, was about what you’d expect.

“Where are the brothers?” it crackled and strained to say. “Has not the father taught that none should walk alone save himself only?”

It was as if the greenish-gray muck, water, and soggy, crumbling forest were melting into the air, and dusk itself into seamless dankness.

“Whose father was that?” Parsival said, watchfully.

Did
only
creatures
like
these
monkeys
survive?

As the head was cocked to the side there was a fugitive gleam that, he thought, might have been eyes.

“Not one of the brothers, are you?” the screechy voice demanded.

“Whose?” Parsival watched the man trying to decide how deeply sunk in madness he was.

“You are not,” he concluded, shambling forward, walking on two feet and one hand (more or less). “Well, abide awhile.”

“To supper?” Parsival wondered, thinking about the strange, clawed fragment that might have been a hand.

“Ah,” said the man, “if you wait a bit the pot will be full.”

“What place is this?”

The beard nodded. There were signs of possible amusement.

“A place of brothers,” was the answer.

“Forgive me, fellow, but I’m in haste.” He turned to go on and the hunched man with surprising speed scuttled over the slick slime and stood in his path.

“Wait a bit, sir,” he suggested. “The pot will soon be full. Wait for the brothers.”

Parsival moved on, not fast. Watched the beard still resting one long arm on the dark ground, a blotted distortion in the failing light. Dusk ate deep blanknesses into the woods and the stream seemed to fall away into a void, a grayish gleam …

The man gave before him, keeping pace on the narrow space between the foul water and the netted dead saplings massed alongside in a blurry wall.

“Who are you?” Parsival asked.

“Ah. I?”

“No. I but spoke to the frogs as is my custom,” the tall knight said scornfully.

Which were booming here and there. He brushed his hand at a cloud of gnats that were suddenly, faint and frantic, flicking at his head.

“I am called Mogwut,” Parsival was informed.

“And what do these
brothers
do, brother?” he further queried the humped blot that still retreated, keeping pace, long arm down like a monkey’s. They were past the last hut. The water-reek was heavy with mud and decay, almost sweet.

“The brethren be the Truemen,” Mogwut explained. “We follows the father.”

Parsival was listening above the growing swamp din of insect and frog, chittering, ringing …

“Lord Jesus Christ, you mean?” he wondered.

“The living father. John. John of God.” He’d halted now, the dimness like a cloud around him, and Parsival slowed, squinting to see where he was … everything was one blurring … He knew (without actually seeing it) Mogwut had moved again but he didn’t realize how close he was until the shapelessness had scuttled into him, low, hard, all harsh, slippery angles and hot spoiled breath, ripping fingernails, and Parsival felt surprise first, that he’d been so easily closed with, then anger as he tried for a grip on the obscene, panting, tearing, terribly strong, crouching thing (a touch of fear now) that kept grunting and spouting about God as it gnashed at him and Parsival was skidding sidewise, back foot going down the invisible bank, on his knees now, defending his face quick and desperate, blocking and ducking his head as his opponent spoke like a barking:

“Unbeliever … Unbeliever … stay for the feast … unbeliever …”

Felt the snaggly teeth rip a strip from his forearm and he was swinging now, snapping terrific punches, catching edges, bone, hair, the creature incredibly rapid and active, teeth snapping, chewing at his midsection, too close … too close … heaved him back, driving to his feet and flailing his elbows, and heard it grunt and curse in the near darkness and a fraction later (
too
fast
, he thought,
by
Christ!
) the ripping, snapping, stinking whirlwind was back, drawn as though yanked by an elastic rope.

“Jesus!” Parsival swore, embraced it now, teetering on the skiddy embankment, short-stepping, puffing, reeling backwards again, going over locked tight, nails, mouth, barking, steaming breath all close to his face and then the sickening moment, the tepid, foul watershock as the faintly luminescent darkness arced and staggered, then under and up (it was shallow) and the thing he battled was a churning of muck, hung with slimy weeds. Bottom ooze sucked at their steps. The malicious creature was fearfully strong. Parsival worked his elbows again, desperate with fury, and inexplicably found himself with a grip on the pumping, bony arms that felt like leather and steel, and roaring in frustration he lifted the surprisingly light form free of the sloshing, scummy flow, that poisoned each breath and clung in gobs, and spun him, still gnashing his spitting mouth and flapping his hard clawing hands (Parsival felt his own blood running warm over his face) and jammed him, reversed, into the thick bottom and plunged and dragged himself to the shore, hearing the others coming now, the popping rattle as they cut through the dead trees. He ran, blood and breath bursting within him, sight torn by light flashes that illuminated nothing.
If
there
’
s
but
a
single
other
like
that
one
I
am
lost
…

Running, keeping the dim gleam of stream on his left, skidding but holding the pace, the barking screech (it was out of the mud already) raging, calling out to the others:

“Follow,” it screamed, “follow Mogwut!”

Running, running through his scrapes, bruises, rips, thinking he was just starting to discover how ordinary a man he’d really become … or always was, perhaps …