Corbenic (12 page)

Chapter Thirteen

Don't you think it right I should go and see my mother,

whom I left on her own in the wood called the Waste Forest?

Conte du Graal

“W
hat IS that?” Trevor stood in front of the mirror straightening his tie.

“Opera,” Cal said shortly.

Around them the music soared, deep and strange. He was getting to like it. He couldn't stop playing it.

“I know that! I mean which one?”

“
Parsifal
. It's by Wagner. German.”

“Oh, the Quest for the Holy Grail. All that stuff.”

Cal's pen paused over the paper. “What?”

But Trevor was absorbed in the accuracy of his tiepin. “Percival the wise fool,” he said absently.

Cal sat rigid. “Who was Percival?” he whispered.

“He left his mother behind and went off to be a knight.” Trevor stepped back and studied his appearance. “Does this look straight to you?”

Cold, Cal nodded. He was doing an assignment for college, but the figures kept jumping around in his head, so he put the pen down and said, “Going out with Thérèse?”

“Business. Round Table dinner.”

Cal almost snorted with laughter.

Trevor looked at him curiously. “What's got into you? And why opera? Most kids of your age are into grunge and garage and all that claptrap.”

“I like the finer things,” Cal said acidly.

“Like that tie.”

Cal frowned. Yesterday he had had his first month's salary; he had gone into the bank and asked for the balance of his account and stared at it in delight in the porch, pushed past by irate shoppers. Then he'd deducted the rent for Trevor and it hadn't looked so great. Food for the next month. Christmas presents. And he should send something home.

But two shops down was the classy men's wear window he looked in every morning on the way to work, and he'd gone in and bought the tie. Palest gray silk. Expensive. Tasteful. Designer.

Signing the check had been a moment of real pleasure; he had taken the slim box home wrapped in tissue paper and felt buoyed up by it, happy, almost as exhilarated as when he did well in the fighting with Hawk. At last he was getting somewhere, starting to be what he wanted to be, well dressed, confident, well-off.

Thérèse had seized on the box and opened it almost as soon as he'd got into the house. For a second he had been nervous, but she had whistled and felt the silk with her carefully manicured fingers.

“Nice! Pricey?”

“A bit. But it's for work.”

She had held it up to his neck. “It suits you. You always know what you want, Cal. You're like your uncle.”

But he still hadn't sent any money home.

Now Trevor turned from the mirror and picked up the cream coat lying over the arm of the chair. He checked the pockets absently; watching him, Cal knew he was working out how to say something, and knew only too well what it would be. It had been coming for days.

Silver lighter, wallet, mobile phone. Trevor shrugged into the coat. Then he turned away and picked up his cashmere scarf and said it. “What are you doing about Christmas, Cal?”

At once Cal knew his mother had phoned again. He put the pen down and stared ahead. “She's rung then.”

“Twice this afternoon. Look, I know how you feel.” He turned, and looked away, down at the CD player. “You don't want to go back. I know, I'd feel just the same. But . . . well it's Christmas. I think you should go, just for a day or so. If you're short of the fare, I'll pay it. She's making a big effort. She's desperate to see you.”

Cal was silent. A long time.

Trevor went awkwardly to the door. “Thérèse and I are going away on Christmas Eve, so you'd be stuck here on your own otherwise, and that's no fun.” He turned, as if a sudden thought had struck him, and said firmly, “And I don't want those eco-warriors round here while I'm gone. That's totally, totally OUT, Cal. I have to say I wouldn't have thought they were your type.”

“They're not,” Cal growled. “I've finished with them.”

“Good. Well ring her, will you?” Trevor opened the door and paused, fussing with his scarf. His voice was a little softer when he said, “You'll feel better when you tell her. She's your mother, after all. You owe her that much.”

When he'd gone and the car had roared away the music rose from its background into a great soaring crescendo of passion.

After all
, Cal thought, white with fury. After all the years of falling asleep in class because he'd been up all night waiting for her. After all the parents' evenings she hadn't gone to, the school plays she hadn't seen, all the lies, all the days she hadn't moved from the squalid sofa while the rubbish piled up around her. All the smells, the vomit, the nights under his pillow with a chair jammed against his door and next door's baby wailing and her voice, talking, answering, screaming at the nonexistent people to go away, to stop, all the arguments, the long tirades of abuse, the holidays he'd never been on, the birthdays he'd loathed, the kids in school he'd had to fight. Years of living with two people in one, never knowing who'd be there when he got home.

He hated her. For a long time he hadn't been able to think that, but he could think it now, from this distance. He hated what she'd done to his life. He wanted to love her but it was too late for that; sometime, years ago, all that had washed out of him and left a tiny hard core of bitterness and resentment and utter, cold anger. It was too late.

And Trevor couldn't talk, because he had walked out of it years ago, and never gone back.

For a long time Cal didn't move, staring ahead. Finally he looked at the phone. He ought to make the call. Tell her.

Instead he rang Sally. Her daughter answered; there was a wait, he could hear the television blaring and a baby screeching, then Sally's voice, sounding breathless. “Hi, Cal. Nice to hear from you.”

“How is she, Sal?”

Sally breathed noisily. He knew she was picking her words. “Up and down, I suppose. She's on this program, and it was doing her good. Meetings. Social events, you know. I suppose . . . it's hard for her to keep it up, Cal. She's missing you, boy.”

“But she's okay?” he asked desperately, wishing the answer.

“She's got you a Christmas present. Don't faint.”

He closed his eyes. “That's a change,” he whispered.

“And she says she's going to buy a tree.”

“Oh God, don't let her.”

“I'll check it, or Ryan will. We won't let her burn the place down.” Then she said, “You'll be up for Christmas, Cal? She's banking on it.”

And all at once he couldn't bear it anymore; his legs felt weak and his skin was cold with sweat and he said, “Yes. Of course.”

He heard her silent relief. “That's great! You can come round.”

He didn't want to go round. Not to talk rugby with Ryan. Not to crowd into the tiny sitting room, moving the piles of ironing. He said, “Tell her I'll ring tomorrow. Okay?”

“Is that music? God it's loud, Cal.” The opera. He'd forgotten it.

“See you, Sal.” The phone went down. He stared at it, face taut, hands clenched.

Then he went and flung the papers off the table, and the pens, and the file of accountancy notes, and the chessboard with its glass and silver pieces, flung them with a bitter fury all over Trevor's immaculate carpet, the chorus of singers so loud the walls seemed to shake, and he laughed, because there were no neighbors and no one to care or hear.

He threw himself down on the leather sofa. And closed his eyes.

He was in a chair. A golden chair. He was sitting in the wreckage of the banqueting hall of Corbenic, and had been there forever. So long that the chair had grown roots into the ground; so long that the weeds had crept over it. As he sat there the weight of ivy was heavy on his lap, smothering his legs; its palest green tendrils had reached as high as his neck. Shuddering, appalled, he pulled it off, feeling the tear of its supple fringed growths velcroing away from his sweater, dragging great armfuls off his chest and shoulders, and dumping them.

Then he tried to get up, and gasped in agony. Pain shot through him. It seared him, like a spear thrust. Like a heart attack. Tears blinded his eyes; he felt sick, and then the intensity of it ebbed and it was a dull, endless ache down every channel of his body, every vein. And looking down he saw that the chair had wheels.

There was a mirror. Dim, green-smeared, it showed him the room and the place where the door had been, the door the Grail had passed through, the door that didn't exist, and it showed him a man and that man was him.

Dark-haired, dark-eyed, tangled in ivy and bindweed, the ghostly white sweet-smelling flowers of it around the wheels of the chair, a man wearing his clothes, his face.

“Bron?”
he whispered. And the lips of the man in the mirror whispered it too.

High in the roof, the osprey screeched. It looked down on him with its pitiless yellow eyes, and he sat rigid, remembering the ferocity of its attack on the castle battlements.

And then Leo was there, leaning against the crumbling doorway, arms folded.

“Now you know how it feels,” he said acidly.

Cal struggled to stand. His legs had no feeling. He collapsed back in the chair, sweating, trapped in the nightmare.

“It's not me,” he hissed.

“No?”

“NO!” Somewhere there was music; not the soft flutes and harps of the Grail procession, but a wilder music, despairing, heartbroken. It was so loud he could barely hear his own voice as he shouted again, “NO! NO!” and then he was up from the sofa and the opera was all around him like a crowd, a ring of voices, the thunder of drums, the agony of violins.

In an instant he crossed the room and hit the off button. The music stopped; then, as he turned, it burst back on, louder, and he spun and stared at the tiny red sensor on the CD.

“
I won't go back
,” he hissed, and he turned it off again, but it was still there; relentlessly the voices sang of their pain, of the beauty of the Grail, its splendor, its agony, its high enchantments, its healing.

“Stop it,” he muttered, and banged the button again, then went and tugged the plug out, smacking it against the wall. But the music went on, it couldn't stop, it would never stop till it reached the thundering crescendo of its chorus, and he didn't know anymore if it was real or if it was in him.

He turned and stumbled outside, slamming the door. The night was frosty. Without a coat, shivering, he ran. Out of Otter's Brook, down the dark, lamplit streets, fast, his footsteps ringing under the town arch, past the drunks on the post office steps, under the glitzy gold and red of the Christmas Santas and reindeer.

By the church he was breathless, and held on for a second to the railings. The dark bulk of the tower blotted the stars above him; gargoyles with grotesque outlines peered down. Above them a shadow flapped. Bats? The osprey?

But the music was gone. He had outrun it. Here he heard only his heart, thudding as if it would burst, and his footsteps, and as he swung into the castle car park and around the Dell he was praying, praying they'd be back, that someone would be there.

He slid and scrabbled down the mud bank.

The castle was black. But parked in front of it, with smoke coming from the jaunty tin chimney, and the sunflowers looking wan and ghostly in the starlight, was Hawk's van.

He caught his breath.

He waited a long time, getting calm, getting clean, rubbing mud from his hands, letting the sweat that soaked his back turn icy, before he walked up to the door and knocked. He was shivering, but that was the cold.

When Hawk answered he stared. “Cal. Haven't seen you for a few days.”

“Been busy.” He shouldered his way into the wonderfully warm interior, saw the cat on Shadow's lap, the pieces on the chessboard, the dirty dishes in the sink, the extravaganza of fabrics. The mess that he had left at home hurt his memory.

“Hi,” Shadow said, surprised.

Cal turned to Hawk, urgent. “I need to train every night. I want to fight in the Christmas display. I need to, Hawk!”

Hawk folded his arms across his dirty vest. “All right. Calm down. What brought this on?”

Cal sank onto a chair and wiped the soaked hair from his forehead. “I need to be here over Christmas,” he whispered.

Shadow leaned over and moved the white knight. “What he's not telling you,” she said, “is that it's not that easy. You have to challenge someone first.” She looked up at him then, serious behind the web of lines. “A real contest.”

He shrugged, careless.

Until Hawk said, “With real weapons.”

Chapter Fourteen

There was not a more handsome knight in all the world.

Conte du Graal

“A
re you sure?” Arthur said quietly.

Cal looked down at the cracked slabs of the farmhouse floor. The kettle was boiling; Arthur waited till it switched itself off, then leaned over and poured the steamy water into all the mugs. Odd herby smells mingled.

“I'm sure,” Cal said firmly.

“Is he ready?” The Company's leader looked across to Hawk, who gave a short sigh.

“Probably.”

Arthur stirred his tea. “Yes or no, nephew mine.”

“Yes, then. He's fast and has good control. Thinks on his feet. Parries well. Ought to build himself up more, though.”

A few men laughed. Through the open window the eternal
thwock
of arrows thudded into straw targets. One of the Sons of Caw drank noisily and muttered, “He could fight one of us. We wouldn't hurt him too much.”

Cal frowned. He swallowed a burning mouthful of tea. Then he said, “I want to fight Kai.”

No one spoke. They were all staring at him. He had a sudden frisson of terror. Then Hawk said, “No way,” and Arthur, at the same time, “That won't be necessary.”

“And why not?” It was Kai's voice. Even before he turned Cal knew that the fight would happen now, that he had made the challenge in front of them all and Kai could not turn it down.

The tall man had come in through the door with Shadow and Teleri and Bedwyr.

Arthur said, almost sharply, “No. He's young and foolish.”

Kai laughed, a dry chuckle. “All the more reason to teach him a lesson. You heard the challenge, brother.” He turned. “All of you heard it.” Then he looked at Cal, came up to him, close. “Why me?” he said quietly.

Cal shrugged. He wanted to say it was because they said Kai was the best, but that wasn't the answer. And it wasn't even because he was handsome, and arrogant, or because of the Armani coat or the spoiled T-shirt. It was for a reason Cal didn't want to find. Instead he said, “Worried?” It was a mistake.

Hawk closed his eyes.

Kai's smile did not change or flicker, but for an instant there was a look to him that came and went like a cold flame. And Arthur put the untasted tea down on the draining board and said hastily, “The challenge is given, and accepted. So be it. When do you want to begin?”

Kai turned and looked at him. “Now, brother,” he said mildly.

“I didn't realize it would be today!” Cal let Hawk take his coat off him, blankly.

The big man looked grim. “God knows, Cal, what you think you're doing.”

“I mean, I thought . . . a few days. A bit more practice . . .”

“Get that sweater off.” Hawk turned to Shadow who came running up with the sword, hastily unzipping its case. “Gloves.”

She pushed them into his hands and he shoved them onto Cal's cold fingers; long, heavy gauntlets, tied tight. “Keep your guard up,” he said hurriedly. “Don't relax. He'll attack when you do. Keep a good distance; he's tall. He's fast too, so if you parry the thrust there'll be another behind it, and from an angle you won't expect. He's heavier than you, so try and use his own impetus against him. Remember . . .”

“I
can't
remember. Not all of it.”

Shadow put the sword in his hands and stood back. Cal glanced, wide-eyed, at Hawk. “Where's all the protective stuff?”

Hawk shook his head, the bristle of red hair catching the low sun.

It took a second to sink in. Then Cal was appalled. “What! Nothing? That's crazy . . .” He looked down in disbelief at his neatly pressed jeans and white T-shirt. He'd be cut to pieces!

Shadow said, “You're the crazy one. Why did you have to pick Kai?”

“Because he's so bloody full of himself.”

“He has every reason to be.” Hawk turned him around quickly. On the far side of the muddy field Arthur's men used for jousting, an arena had been hastily cordoned off with tape. Around it the Company were gathering, running from the outbuildings.

In the middle of the space, Kai was already waiting, leaning on his sword, talking to Arthur.

Cal stumbled forward. Then he stopped dead. “What do I do? I mean, how do I win?” For a second a thought of pure terror swept over him like sweat.
“Do I have to kill him?”

“You really are a fool.” Hawk was stalking grimly forward. “If you stay on your feet for five minutes I'll be amazed. Get him down or disarm him. Shed blood if you must.” He turned then quickly and Cal's heart sank like a stone as he caught his arm. “But listen. If it . . . if he gets ferocious, really dangerous, then throw your sword down and spread your hands wide. Back right off. Yell to Arthur that you want out.”

“You mean surrender.”

“That's exactly what I mean. Believe me, you'll want to.”

“I can't do that . . .”

Hawk looked at him hard. Then he turned and walked on.

Cal whirled on Shadow. “I can't! I won't.”

She was uneasy, fingering the blue lines of the cobweb. Finally she said quietly, “Hawk knows them better than I do. Just . . . be careful. Don't get hurt.”

Fat chance, he thought, pushing past the backslapping, cheering, whistling crowd. They hustled him into the arena and closed up the line behind him and he walked out, across the muddy grass to where Arthur and Kai were waiting.

It seemed an endless walk. The wind was icy; it cut through his thin T-shirt and brought instant goose pimples prickling out on his arms, and he shivered with it, and with a sort of light-headed fear and disbelief that this was even happening. Most kids went to the pictures on Saturday afternoons, or hung around the shops. He thought of Trevor swinging a five-iron on the golf course and almost giggled, a hysterical laugh that died in his throat as Arthur said, “Are you both ready?”

He nodded. He couldn't speak. His heart was hammering and he gripped the sword tight, the corded hilt rough through the thickness of the glove.

Kai was all in black. He was smiling too, a wry, confident grin that really got Cal's back up. But then it was probably supposed to. Make him come rushing in. He wouldn't. He'd be wary.

They circled each other. The crowd yelled and whistled; a few flakes of snow fell between them, the wind hissing over the frozen grass.

Clutching the sword, Cal watched the tall man, every nerve intent. Kai flashed out a feint attack; instantly Cal's blade went up to meet it, but there was nothing there, and he jumped back, cursing.

“Careful,” Kai muttered, mocking.

Cal snapped. He knew he shouldn't but he did, dived in, struck wildly, the sword whistling through the cold air. It met a rock-hard parry; Cal pushed away but already Kai had whipped his sword around and sliced it so close to Cal's body that he had to stagger back with a gasp and yell of fear.

The crowd roared. Somewhere Shadow was shouting.

Keep his guard up. He had to!
But already the sword was heavier than in practice; for a moment he knew he barely had the strength to wield it. It was growing, treacherously, in weight, and then he'd twisted and with a sudden, abrupt fury, raised it and was hacking at Kai, once, twice, thwacking into the contemptuous defense, stumbling and sweating but keeping on, forcing his opponent back, and back, the roar of the watching Company a pain in his numbed ears.

Until Kai stopped.

He chose his moment, and stopped dead, and Cal clashed into him and was held, briefly, face-to-face, sweating, gasping for breath, and he saw that Kai was still smiling, but grimly now, mirthlessly, and in that instant he knew with sickening despair that the tall man had never even been worried at all.

Then Kai shoved.

Cal stumbled back, winded, all confidence shattered.

The yells of the Company went faint: he seemed to be in a sudden realm of silence, of breathlessness and chest pain, of the harsh screeching of a bird.
The osprey
.

Panic grabbed him; he flashed a wild glance around. It was perched on the ridgepole of the farm, the great yellow beak wide, screaming at him.

Then noise surged back, roared over him, Hawk yelling, “Cal!” and Kai was on him, cutting hard, twisting, a furious energy, a devastating anger that crashed down, stroke after stroke. He parried, but his arms were numb now, each stroke weakening him, but he wouldn't give up, he wouldn't, though the mud made him slide and his breath was ragged and the gray sky was a rage of snow.

He slipped, toppled, was on his knees. Kai struck hard; the blades met with a clang that made Cal sick with the shock; it rang in his teeth and nerves. Then a blow he never even saw took his sword at a crazy angle right out of his hand and with a yell that was barely human Kai whipped his sword up high and brought it whistling down.

Cal fell. Knocked flat, he made one desperate scrabble to get up, closed his eyes, gave a gasp of terror.

And nothing happened. No crunch of metal on flesh. No agonizing blow.

Just Kai saying quietly, “I think that's enough, don't you?”

Cal opened his eyes.

Kai was leaning on his sword, grinning, not even breathless, his fair hair dark with sweat. For a moment he looked down at Cal, then held out a hand. Bewildered, Cal let himself be pulled up. Every muscle he had was aching. Blood was on his fingers.

Arthur was there, and Hawk, and he turned to them. “Is that it? It's finished?”

Arthur smiled at him. “You gave the challenge. You fought. That's all we ask.”

“But . . . I lost. I didn't win.” He was trembling.

Hawk groaned and threw him his sweater. “Nobody said you had to win. Nobody expected you to win.”

Shivering, Cal looked at Kai, who grinned back. “It was a good fight,” the tall man said. “You've got guts, though you're reckless.” Then he went and picked up Cal's sword and brought it and handed it to him. “I don't know who or what you were fighting,” he said, oddly quiet. “But it was more than me.”

As he handed it over the sharp blade slipped in his fingers, willfully, viciously slicing his hand.

And it didn't cut him.

Before he could even think about it, Cal found himself some sort of hero. The Company swamped him with congratulations; Shadow kissed him and so did a few of the other girls, and when he had managed to struggle out of their good-natured jokes and punches he glanced up at the ridgepole of the farm, but the osprey had gone.

“Did you see the osprey?” he asked Shadow anxiously.

She stared. “I was watching you, idiot.”

“Hear it then? Screaming.”

“No.” Her eyes narrowed. “But that doesn't mean it wasn't there.”

He scraped mud off his face with his palm, still unsteady. “You all did this deliberately. Winding me up. Making me think he was going to kill me!”

She laughed, walking backward. “You looked so scared! But you still did it.”

He managed to laugh with her. Then he said, “Does this mean I get to fight at Christmas?”

“Of course.” Hawk had come up; now the big man caught hold of him and marched him firmly toward the house. “You're in. On Christmas Eve you get to the Round Table at last. But I think we'd better find you a few clean clothes. You should see yourself.”

Feeling the mud-plastered shirt clinging to his back, Cal grinned. Just for a moment, to his own astonishment, he didn't care.

He had a shower in the farmhouse bathroom, and then Kai came in, to his surprise, and dumped a pile of clothes on a chair. “Take your pick. They'll be a bit big.”

“Thanks!” Cal fingered the fine linen of one of the shirts. Then he turned quickly. “Can I ask you something?”

Kai paused, then propped himself elegantly on the side of the bath. “What?”

“The sword. It didn't cut you.”

“You should keep it sharper.”

“It's razor-sharp.”

Kai picked up a cake of lavender soap and smelled it. “What do you expect from immortal warriors?”

“Oh, come on. You're not . . .”

“Aren't we?” The tall man smiled.

Cal scowled. “Reenactment is one thing. You lot are obsessed. Addicted. I know about people like that.” He struggled angrily into a pair of trousers. “Besides, if you really were Arthur's men you'd be asleep in some cave till people needed you.”

Kai flipped the soap. “Ah, the dear old cave. Trouble with that was, people always need us. They need someone to fight their nightmares for them, the dragons, the black knights. They need dreams to dream, quests to follow. Or they get trapped in the world. Like you.” He stood up. “You'll have to choose a name, now. A character from the old stories.” He tossed Cal the soap and went out of the door. Then he looked back in, amused. “Though Merlin says you've already got one.”