Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II (16 page)

I didn’t laugh. Morgana wasn’t one you laughed at. Not to her pretty face. Well, not exactly pretty. I never could decide how she really affected me.

I thought I might as well keep everyone involved in this insane business where I could watch them. I’d get to the bottom of it. My last service before retirement — and not to the king. I’d not forgotten him, because I had to be in his troubled thoughts. I’d run away. His bully boys had failed to take me back, or even a piece of me. The threat would always be there.

We bounced and staggered on into the chill and pit-dark night.

*

Dawn’s gray. Wet and miserable. It was raining again. Brief, rattling bursts that clattered over the soaked timbers and beat the sickening sea to foam.

“I smell land,” Veers announced.

Sure enough, a minute or two later a dark line with softened edges lay before us. I had an impression that a misty swirl of cloud funneled down to touch the surface.

We came closer, faster than expected. The wind was still beating from starboard. It felt as if a tidal current were sucking us in. Chael looked up, pale and desperate. Wave-sickness.

“That ain’t the coast,” Beef cried to his father.

“That’s looking out shrewd,” Veers reacted. “He mighta missed that,” he explained to me, “and took it for a point.” He was pleased with his boy.

“It’s another island?” I asked.

“There’s more coming than that,” Veers assured me, grim. “It shouldn’t be there. Not in these waters. We should have made landfall hours ago.”

“Well,” I said, helpfully.

Lohengrin was alert now, rubbing his eyes. Morgana didn’t seem to have moved or slept. I was surprised she hadn’t tried for the precious spear during the night.

Veers shrugged and stood up, trying to re-angle the ragged sail.

“I don’t like this current,” he told us. The island grew too rapidly. We all felt the acceleration. And now we were against the wind. The sail billowed back the wrong way. It was as if we were being towed. Faster and faster. We tried backing off. My paddle snapped. I noticed we were running on an angle to the shore as if the land were the vortex of a whirlpool. Impossible of course. Veers was incredulous; Beef ashen. My son, bless him, was too busy cramming half a dried loaf into his maw, looking with contempt at Morgana, to notice much.

I think we circled the island once before spinning like a chip in the crisscross pounding near the shore. By then everyone was clinging for life to the slippery timbers. I noticed Lohengrin ultimately losing all he’d gained in the way of food and drink as we madly bounced and twisted. Most of his spew missed me. I think Beef absorbed a spare pint, however.

We dug into the shore and stuck fast. Most of us lost hold on impact and rolled onto the black, gritty sand. Jet black sand. Strange.

We all stood there taking amazed stock. Things kept repeating as if my life were being forced, shaken through a sieve of events to get at something separate, something … Maybe it all made sense to God, but he hadn’t shared the secret with me yet …

As far as I could see, this bleak place was all black sand. Almost level. A hand print of bitter desert in the coastal sea: no trees, bushes, nothing.

“If that current doesn’t ebb sometime,” I observed over the chewing breaker sound, “we’re in mud with iron boots.”

“What rises, falls,” philosophized my son.

Beef looked down at him, reddened, doughy face tense, eyes small with fear and outrage.

“Arr,” he snarled, “what goes down, comes up, you mean.” He kept wiping his wet sleeve across his lips with disgust.

“This is all witchcraft and curses,” Veers said, moving a few steps inland, favoring one foot. “I rue the day, though it were night, and the bad stars that brought you to me. All of you.” He peered at me. “Next time, let your damned son go where he pleases, that’s the advice I have for you, great knight. That’s all the advice I have left in me.”

“Next time I’ll heed it,” said I.

Morgana had her head cocked. Seemed to be listening to the sea or air or the cindered-looking earth. She wasn’t lusting for the spear for a moment at least.

“I believe I know this place,” she said.

Interesting. I said so.

Chael held Lohengrin’s arm, looking miserable and angry. She pointed at her mistress. “She’s evil,” she said. “Trust no word of hers!” Morgana just looked at her. Almost funny. Chael half hid herself behind my boy, who was amused. “A fit friend for Parsival,” he said. He leaned on the disputed spear. It looked even less remarkable in daylight. No rain now, finally. The normal gray had brightened to a whitish haze.

“I want to get to shore and to my old woman,” said Veers. Beef squatted on the black grit and stared despondently at the madly tipping and intersecting waves.

The day was getting muggy and uncomfortable. At every step the powdery stuff misted up in choking puffs. A great place to die of thirst.

“You’ve been here,” I asked, “for picnics?”

She was still listening to something or other.

“A hermit keeps a hut here,” she said.

“A hermit? Indeed, if hermit he must be, this is the very spot for it.”

“Dangerous fellow. A magician.” Veers looked concerned. But he hadn’t witnessed her spells in action. I suppose my son had, because he sneered a soft guffaw.

“I don’t have to worry,” he said, “I’ve got the great spear.” He seemed to like that idea.

Morgan smiled.

“Better keep a tight grip little boy,” she advised, “on your pole.”

“Can we cast off here?” Beef asked his father, who shrugged. “Will not the damned seas relent, father?”

“My eminent sire,” said Lohengrin, “will build a bridge. And the great mistress of magic will fly back.” He grinned. “Myself, I think I’ll carve out a kingdom here.” Squeezed Chael. “You can be my queen.” I had to admit he had a sharp side I liked.

I was squinting at the smoky pillar I’d noticed as we came up on this dreary place. It rose in gritty looking clouds from the center of the island. Maybe that had something to do with how the water had behaved. Or the hermit. Yes, the hermit.

“The hermit,” I said to her. “Let’s look him up. I feel sociable.”

LAYLA

Life wasn’t much different, once I got used to it. Now I was literally a prisoner; in the past I’d just felt like one.

Mad Orlius had locked me and my two daughters in the tower where we had a good view of the dull countryside. I suppose he expected my husband to turn up sooner or later. I don’t think he’d studied him too expertly. Years could pass before that happy event might take place.

My ex-lover, the bastard piece of dung, stuck his head in the chamber one evening. The dusk was gathering in the corners. My children were at the barred window looking at a picturebook of the saints.

He hoped to make amends, I imagine. I nearly crowned him with a stoneware cup. It shattered satisfyingly near his skinny skull, which I had once thought fair and refined. He hadn’t been back since.

I had too much time to think, and the girls were restless. But at least I had wine to drink. That almost made up for the rest of it.

I wanted something … I knew it … could feel it in the warm and dreaming dusk … sometimes … the scent of what I wanted, the longing under longing that could never be drowned even under a sea of wine …

HOWTLANDE

They escaped us. I wasn’t clear why we wanted them. I’d had enough of that Parsival the first time around. There had to be better ways to gain our ends.

I thought about that, watching (with the others) as their bundle of sticks slipped out into curtaining mists.

The little killers made a noise like locusts, bouncing in frustration along the water’s edge. Gobble weaved with a scowl. He looked thoughtfully at where they’d melted into the mist.

“I think,” I said, “we might have done better to sail here after all.” Not that I relished the idea. I was developing a fine sense of futility. Perhaps I needed new associates, new concepts …

Gobble whirled around.

“We’ll meet them anon,” he said.

“Ah,” I said, “that’s an optimistic attitude. Optimism is a needed quality on great enterprises. I think —” He cut me off. Listening and delectation are lost arts. “Follow along,” he said, limping back the way we’d come.

There had been plenty of pleasant slaughter back at the castle, so the little ones should have been content. I suspected their meat. Cannibals, I had a notion. “When,” he went on, “you cannot catch a flying bird,” he went on, “you wait by the nest or where it feeds.”

“Ah, yes,” I agreed, “well put.” We clambered over the rocks. “Well put. I—”

“She has the spear,” he went on, as we cut across the open fields. “She’ll go back to the Grail castle. We’ll have the lot of them there.”

LOHENGRIN

Was I getting nowhere? Perfectly possible. But anything was better than sitting at home. I’d wanted the gold for the spear so that I could live by myself, buy a better horse, get out of the country if I had a mind … make a real fortune … capture a kingdom …

Now Chael had told me what she thought Morgana meant to do with the spear and my father. There had to be something of value behind all this. People like her didn’t toss pennies to the piper just for the sour notes.

I had no doubt I’d get off this black island. Swim if need be. The thing would be to push loose from Morgana and my father and beat everybody to the mysterious castle. Chael said she knew how to find it. Fine. She feared and hated her mistress. Hate was winning. She hadn’t really said why yet, but I suspected it had to do with wooly and wet twisted things in the sheets.

“I long to see her broken,” she’d said to me. “On her knees and broken.”

My father and the witch had gone exploring. The skinny navigator and his fat-faced, moronic offspring stared dully at the strangely swirling sea.

Chael clung to my arm.

“What can we do?” she wondered. “Will we starve here?”

“Wait and I’ll cast the sticks of prophecy,” I remarked, watching the water myself now because, if I wasn’t mistaken, the waves were rounding off a little.

She looked haggard, afraid, but very soft and sensual. She was more innocent than shrewd. But her hate focused her purpose.

“What did she do to you?” I asked her.

Her eyes went remote. Lips tensed. A light rain was pittering down again. The waves were definitely softening their edges. “Things,” she murmured.

“A solid answer.”

The skinny seaman stood up. I didn’t much like him. He had that knows-best attitude. “The currents are shifting,” he announced. My father and the witch were out of earshot. I could see them on the gradually rising sand, moving towards the source of the mass of smoke in the center of the island. “They’d best come back if this tide reverses … or whatever it is. “

I had other ideas.

“I’ll get them,” I said. “Just make ready to cast off.” I stood up. “Busy yourself.” He raised thin gray eyebrows. “Are you chief of all you see now, young knight?” he asked, know-all.

“Yes,” I said, “that’s who I am. Busy yourself.” I meant it. My eyes meant it. He saw as much.

My father, I knew, would be finding some great meaning in our having been cast up here. That would distract him. I considered my own greatest virtue and advantage was in not confusing myself with warring claims on my attention. Stick to the point, I always told myself. Getting away came first, just now.

Veers said no more, though I could see he wasn’t worried. He and his silly son began checking the lashing that held that miserable bundle of sticks together. You have to watch clever peasants; they’re more trouble than any Latin-stuffed scholar.

“You’re sure we can find the place?” I said quietly to her.

“What?”

“The castle where the mighty power lies.” It was probably gold or something else useful.

“Oh, yes. I’ve been there … or almost there. She sent me once with Orrina, her half-sister.”

“Where’s Orrina now?”

She shrugged, pressing into my body.

“She never came back. As far as I know.” It didn’t mean

much to her.

“I thought you’d never been off the island?”

“What? I didn’t say that. I was born in Brittany. But there were never boats unless
she
arranged it …” She shuddered slightly. “Will we really be able to get away from her?” Not here, I noticed, but
her
.

“Fear not,” I said, watching my father and Morgana moving near the crest of the smoking, black sandhill.

“You don’t understand,” Chael told me, nervous again. “She is —”

“Going to find her reward,” I assured her. “I still owe her for making me a little taller.” She looked blank. “On the rack,” I explained.

PARSIVAL

It was a volcano. Amazing. I’d seen one in the holy land and one off the Scots coast. The heat was pure pressure when we reached the edge of the cone. We were walking on hot, twisted rock that had obviously melted recently.

We looked down into billowing, ashy smoke. There was nothing for us here. No hermits in sight or scent.

“Where does he live?” I asked. “In the hole?”

She said nothing. Her head was cocked as if to listen, but besides a faint hissing from the depths, not much was going on. I looked back towards the beach. My heart sank in my soul: the raft was heading away from shore! I could just distinguish four figures on it. Very sweet twist. Deserted on a volcanic slag heap.

“Black shit,” I commented. It seemed we were going to be the hermits. If it didn’t rain every day we’d die of thirst. My mind wandered along those byways when I heard the lady gasp at my shoulder. Then came a deep, calm, remote voice, which recalled someone long lost in the gray mists of memory:

“The wise child and the foolish child,” it said.

“So,” hissed Morgana, “I might have known.”

By the time I had turned, she was already making her exotic gestures at a big, wide man in robe and cowl. His face was lost in shadow. He seemed to have come up out of the pit.

He took little notice of her outstretched, straining fingers.

“Save your spells,” he told her in a bass rumble. “I am long past any geas.” She fell back a few steps.

“You’re having poor luck lately,” I pointed out. “You’d best rest your sorceries.” I studied the massive man. “Are you the famous hermit?” I assumed that if he survived here, we could as well. He didn’t appear underfed.

“You’ve never learned how to look at anyone,” he told me. Good thing I’m used to criticism.

“I know,” I agreed, “I’m defective in ways past counting.”

Morgana was pale with rage and fear. I was thinking how she might try some new approaches to human intercourse besides psychic assault or imprisonment. “Your heart has hardened, Parsival,” he said, resonated. “You now speak before you feel.”

“Everybody knows me where ever I go.”

“The molten rock will soon spill out,” he said, “and cover this isle. The sea will blacken and boil.”

I sighed. “The kind of news I’ve come to expect,” I said. “How did you escape?” she wanted to know. “Was I caught? I think that you, sad witch, were the one trapped.”

I let that one go by.

“How do we get away?” I wanted to know, in a practical vein. This man reminded me of Merlinus the Great, who had haunted my seventeenth year. “Do you have any good advice, sir?”

“He means to destroy me,” she said.

“Not at all,” was the deep, rumbling reply. “Cease being so petty of mind. Have you learned nothing in all your years?”

“Nay,” I said, “never recite a lady’s age, sir.”

He paid no mind.

“You long to be my friend,” she was saying to him, with fine sarcasm. I was waiting for the promised eruption to blow us all away in a gout of steaming, runny rock. “Your twisted purposes,” he said, “may do more good to this business than many a noble aspiration.”

“Which business was that?” I wondered.

“Twisted,” she repeated. “You old fool. You’ll never see the truth.” She was very pale and irate, as well as frightened. She dreaded this hooded old man, yet she tugged his beard, so to speak. “Power must be used or it drains to nothing. This material world is meant for shaping.” She was very passionate about it. I was starting to like her, in a way. I was well used to fanatics.

He was already turning down the slope into the heat and smoke. “Follow me,” he commanded in that remarkable voice, “to your one hope.”

“Down there?” I was struck by the notion — as with a fifty pound sledge.

“There’s a narrow way out for you,” the voice said. He was already in the smoke. “You have only moments before the blast. Come or perish.”

Her face was fixed in rage and indecision. “Curse you, Merlinus,” she yelled into the choking blur. “Curse and damn you forever!” She thought this man the old wizard himself. What an idea. I hadn’t heard of him since my late childhood. “When there’s only one gate —” I started saying, but she overrode me.

“Come on,” she said. “We’ve no choice.”

“— one gate,” I finished, “you can’t worry about who opens it.”

“Come.”

“Yet he may be luring us to our doom.”

“You?” She looked baffled. We heel-walked down the steep, black, lavic slope. “You imagine he would injure
you
?” After twenty years, why not? I asked myself. Yet, who knows? I never pretended to comprehend Merlin’s motives.

We were in the smoke now.

“I’m his boon and hearty companion?” I wondered at her.

“You’re his black heart’s joy.” She was waning in the hot, ashy billows.

My eyes burned and ran wet. I was choking. Madness, again. I turned violently and scrabbled to climb out into wholesome air, but the powdery stuff schluffed underfoot like fine snow.

“Christ Lord!” I gasped, pumping my legs, clawing at the weightless stuff, skidding down now faster than before, trying almost to swim up to bright air and soothing breath.

Part of my mind was clear and thought it was somehow fitting that if I wasn’t wandering through fogs, hopelessly, I was plunging to destruction down black pits to the grim bottom of the world.

There was a moment of terrible shriveling … then sickening speed … then impact and smothering darkness …

I wasn’t hurt. I was buried in hot dust. She was near me. We didn’t meet Merlinus again, if that’s who he was. Obviously we’d slid down a channel that veered off from the volcanic cone. It was not unbearable here.

When I struggled out of the dust heap, Morgana was already brushing her clothes off. The wall glowed faintly dull red. I had a wild idea it was nearly molten. But that was impossible. We’d have roasted to cinders.

We were in a tunnel at the beginning. It curved away and seemed to descend slightly.

“He’s forced us,” she said. “There’s no way back.”

There was a deep rumble I didn’t like. The volcano was stirring. “Where is he?” She shrugged. “You wouldn’t understand,” she told me. I took a few steps down the passage. “What next?” Not that it mattered. “I assume this leads to some other door than doom’s?”

She was beside me. Her eyes seemed to have rolled up into her forehead. I didn’t like looking at that. She was trembling too. Not good indications.

“Are you all right?” I asked. An optimist walking with his eyes closed.

Her voice had gone shrill and strange.

“Parsival,” she intoned, “beware! Doom waits ahead. You must grasp doom’s hand and live!” We stopped. She was tottering and vibrating, running her hands through her hair.

“You must win the sword that will overcome the guardian,” she managed to say in a tone that reminded me of the old wizard. Then she fell and rolled into the wall. I tried to help. Fumbled around.

She suddenly subsided and her eyes clicked down.

“Ahh,” she murmured. I could see her coming back again.

“A spell?” I wondered.

“Did I speak?” She sat up weakly. She seemed swollen around the eyes yet, somehow, more attractive. I liked the scent of her breath.

“Yes,” I said.

“Heed it, if you’re wise. What I say at such times is sooth, untainted by purpose. Be sure it is never what I would advise you otherwise.”

I knelt over her.

“It isn’t safe here,” she said. Looked closely at me.

I grunted. Helped her up except we got tangled partway and I was suddenly eating her mouth. It was sweet. It’s always sweet. She held me, then pulled loose. Her eyes were dreamy.

“Not yet, darling,” she whispered. “Not yet …”

I made a wordless sound. She avoided my next kiss and got up. “All right,” I said. “It’s not safe to dally.”

“All right. Tell me what I said?”

“You said later we kiss.”

“No. Not that.”

“You talked about a sword.”

She shrugged. “I’m not likely to help you learn things that might work to my disadvantage.” She smiled. “Sweet lips or no sweet lips. Besides, I remember nothing.”

*

About two miles on, deeper into the underworld, with no branches, things got stranger. Yes, it was possible and it happened.

I think I must have sighed at that point.

She was walking, looking tranced at times — though she said no more in that strange and obscure manner. Actually, half tranced like that, she reminded me of my wife. After half a jug. I didn’t dwell on the resemblance.

“You’ll have to …” she began.

“Yes?”

Shook her head.

“I lost it.”

“Lost it?”

“The image.” Shook her head like a baffled terrier. “I’m trying to help you, you brick wit.”

“You’ve been wonderful up to now,” I allowed. “How would I have managed alone?”

I could already see the next problem: the passageway ended in a furnace. The heat was terrific even at a distance. You could hear the comforting sound of bubbling lava.

“Looks like we took a wrong turn,” I remarked, “except there weren’t any.”

I hoped there was a side passage. There wasn’t. It was just bearable at the end where the tunnel opened into a round, vaulted cavern that might have been carved by heatproof trolls. The floor was semi-molten slag. Sparks hissed. A narrow ridge of black stone, an almost natural bridge (I suppose) led out to a kind of stone island lapped by molten waves. I strained to see against the pressure of the heat.

“What a place,” I commented.

She reeled against the wall. The hot wind fluffed her short hair. It was another full trance. Her eyes rolled back. And then she spewed forth the sooth, or whatever:

“Ah! … aiii … Darkness covers all things … The sword is here … Ah, the sword … aiiii … O, Parsival, free us … free … aii …”

She spun. I caught her. Then she came back.

“Amazing,” she said, “I’ve never had so many flights.” She looked fine. The heat pushed at us. I was almost used to it. Like a Roman hot bath. “What did I say?”

“Something simple and clear.” I shrugged. “Since there’s no going back, this way,” I gestured, “better lead somewhere.”

She studied my face.

“You’re a brave knight,” she decided to tell me.

“I’m over that nonsense. I just put one foot ahead of the other.” It was like walking on a stove. As we approached the island I had to half carry her. She kept fluttering into her flights.

She kept softly raving about the sword; the evil ones (whoever they were), and the guardian that had to be overcome; the holy fire that was supposed to consume my polluted substance and make me a beacon to all men … There was plenty of fire, anyway, though I can’t swear it had been blessed by priests.

I carried her the last few yards, running, feet seared. It was just a little better on the roundish mass of rock out there. And then I was shocked because there was a sword embedded in the stone. It looked like pure gold, which was absurd and impossible.

She was talking, conversational now, but it wasn’t exactly her voice. Sounded more like the hooded magician, Merlinus. “Draw the weapon,” she or he or it said. Her body was limp.

“Can you hear me?” I tried.

“Yes, fool.”

“Like old times. But why must I draw the thing because some epileptic woman insists on it?”

“There’s no escape otherwise, fool,” she said, to the point. I set her down. She lay flat, eyes shut, still talkative. “Fine, fine,” I responded. “But this is King Arthur’s proper work, I think.”

“Stop insulting me, if possible.”

I went to the blade. Took a breath. Grasped the hilt. It wasn’t hot. And then a pressure seemed to flow into my arm. The bone and muscle felt about to burst. I tried to let go. Too late. Tried to jerk the blade free. It came. That must have been wrong, because blasts, hissing beams of light, sprang from the molten mass around me and fastened on the bladetip, which instantly glowed deep red. Heatless red. I was paralyzed, the sword over my head as if in a mockery of triumph.

I felt (as in some dreams) as if I were being pulled out of myself. I felt I was looking down at my body, rooted there, with unconscious Morgana at my feet.

Except that she was standing outside of herself too. But it wasn’t quite her … it was the hooded priest-like figure.

Cannot
you
control
yourself
? he somehow asked, wordless.
Need
you
drift
like
a
leaf
?

I tried to reply. Dreamish. No sense of words. Just a feeling. He appeared to understand. Then I realized I’d simply tried to make what he said into words because they weren’t either. I felt and saw him telling me:

Learn
to
use
your
power
.
You’ve
wasted
years
.