The Broken Sword (12 page)

S
t. John's Eve. The
last time Hal visited Cadbury Tor on this day in midsummer, he saw a vision that had changed his life. On a deserted field, amid a pile of ancient rubble, Hal had seen a castle rise. A castle filled with ghosts who had called to him as if he were one of their own.

There were no ghosts this time. He sat on a rock in the field, watching while the afternoon sun grew from a bright disk to a fat, lazy ball on the horizon. The wind blew around him in a low whistle. The sun set. Hal had never felt so lonely.

Suddenly he heard a groan nearby, and jumped to his feet.

"Aahhggh," came the voice, followed by the unmistakable sound of retching. Hal squinted into the glare of the setting sun to see a figure rising from among the windswept bushes at the base of a line of fir trees.

Hal smelled him from fifty feet away. "You all right?" he called, hoping the answer would be yes. The idea of touching anyone who could produce such a stench filled him with dread.

"Blimy, what an ale head I've got." The creature was an old man dressed in dun-colored rags. His face, at least what Hal could see of it against the fierce dying light, was crusted with dirt and all manner of bodily effluvium which Hal preferred not to think about.

"How long you been there?"

The man scratched his beard, coughed, spat several times, and scratched his thigh while considering. "What day is it now?" he asked finally.

"Tuesday," Hal said.

"Ah." The old man picked something from his head and chewed on it. "Can't say as I recollect, then. Say, friend, got a tenner on you, by chance? For a bit of supper."

"A ten? Where do you eat, the Ritz?"

"I'll make it worth your while, so I will." He gave Hal a broad wink.

"Right. Here, take this." He handed the man a pound note.

The old man spat through a space left by a missing tooth. The stream shot over Hal's shoulder. "That all you can spare?"

"Sheesh." Hal gave him another.

"That'll do."

"Glad to hear it." Hal headed off toward the rental car.

"Wait!" the geezer called, loping after him. "I said I'd make it worth your while, didn't I?"

"What are you, a pervert?"

The old man laughed wheezily. "Got something for you." From the pocket of his Huck Finn trousers he took a hunk of brownish metal. "Found it yesterday." He frowned. "Or sometime. It brought me luck."

"I can tell," Hal said, edging downwind of the man.

"Found a quart bottle half full of Gilbey's in this very field not an hour later, so I did."

"Keep the rock, Pop. Your good fortune may strike again."

"Cross my palm with another quid, and I'll say it did."

Hal sighed. He took out another note and handed it over. "Okay, get out of here."

Chortling, the old man danced off.

"Hey, your rock," Hal shouted, but the beggar had vanished into the mist.

Mist?

In the encroaching twilight, the big fir trees surrounding the meadow were swathed in moving vapor. Tendrils of fog snaked around their low branches and crawled across the grass toward a pile of ancient cut stone in the center of the meadow, where they met and fairly exploded into a circle of frothing mist that extended outward with amazing rapidity in all directions.

"What the hell is this?" Hal whispered as the mist rolled out toward him like surf, engulfing his legs up to the knees and then moving beyond him, back toward the trees, toward the road.

The rental car he'd parked on the side of the lane was no longer visible. In another moment the trees, too, were obscured by the rising mist. Hal felt himself shrinking inside it, caught in the vortex of this strange force, feeling its power swirling around him.

He looked down at his hands. In them was the misshapen piece of metal the old man had given him. It was glowing bright red. Then, as he watched, its color transmuted into a vibrant orange, then changed again to yellow, green, blue, violet. He felt as if the top of his head were exploding into space as the nugget changed once more, this time to brilliant white, brighter than the light of a thousand suns.

The light blinded him. For a moment he could see nothing except a sea of dazzling white. Then it dimmed, and through the mist he saw, rising out of the thin air, a castle made of stone.

Red and gold pennants fluttered from its crenellated ramparts, flanking a great broad banner depicting a golden dragon on a scarlet background. Above a wide moat that encircled the building, a drawbridge held by chains with links the size of a man's forearm lowered with a thud onto the bank, and two massive oak and iron doors creaked open. From within Hal could hear voices shouting and the whinnying of horses. Then, traveling in a unit like one lone beast with footfalls of thunder, rode twelve men in armor.

Hal stood awestruck and terrified as their horses crossed the moat and pounded toward him. With a swift motion, one of the knights raised his visor. His eyes, blue as the sea, glowered with a cold fire.

Hal recognized him. He was Launcelot, First Knight and Galahad's own father. This man, in a long-ago vision, had charged Hal with the safekeeping of his king.

And Hal had failed.

Launcelot bent over, his arm outthrust, and lifted Hal off the ground. Panicking, Hal clutched the knight's metal-sheathed back as Launcelot spurred his stallion. The horse leapt forward into a gallop.

Beside them, a knight bearing the red and gold Pendragon banner gave a shout. The other horsemen tore off behind Launcelot and his frightened passenger, the animals' hooves digging up the dry grass beneath them, speeding over the meadow as if charging into battle, racing through the wall of mist that separated Camelot from the rest of the world.

"Hey!" Hal found his voice at last. "What do you think you're..."

On the other side of the mist, he saw the village of Wilson-on-Hamble in the distance, shimmering like a mirage.

"... doing...?" Hal finished absently. Because the village
was
a mirage, he realized. As they drew nearer, he saw that the houses and shops and automobiles parked along the sides of the streets were transparent. He could see through them to the trees and rivers beyond, as if the town and its inhabitants were no more substantial than holograms. In the middle of the main street stood a figure listing precariously, as if he were deciding whether to walk forward or fall in a heap. Hal recognized him as the old man from the meadow.

The beggar, who was as unreal and ghostlike as the rest of the village, solved his dilemma by having a drink. As the horsemen galloped on a direct course with him, the old man threw back his head and tilted the bottle skyward.

"Get out of the way!" Hal shouted. The old man paid no attention. Hal pounded on Launcelot's back. "Slow down!" he screamed into the knight's ear.

Launcelot twitched in his saddle.

"You're going to run him down, for chrissake!" He leaned over, trying to grab the reins away from the knight, but succeeded only in throwing himself off balance and nearly falling off. By the time he righted himself, the riders were almost on top of the drunkard. Hal watched with horror as Launcelot's stallion bore down on the old man...

And rode through him.

The knights never slowed for a moment. With a gasp, Hal craned his neck to lock behind him. The old man was still guzzling from his bottle, oblivious to the fact that he had just been run through by a dozen horses.

"What is this?" Hal breathed, and felt himself trembling.

The knights stormed through the make-believe streets, listening to the tinny, distant shouts of make-believe people. At the far end of the village, beyond the last dim street lamp, a young mother stood on the corner of the sidewalk, holding the hand of a small girl no more than four years old. As the knights rode by, the child held out her arm and pointed at them solemnly. The mother looked around, an expression of bewilderment on her face.

Within minutes, the village had receded into the distance. The knights rode on, over plains and hills, through farms and valleys and industrial parks.

By nightfall they had veered into the forest, cantering expertly through the foliage.

“I get it," Hal said. "The village back there wasn't a mirage. Those people who looked like ghosts—they were real. They're real, and
you're
the ghosts, isn't that right?"

No one answered him.

"Of course it is. It's St. John's Eve. You're looking for Arthur, right? The way you do every year." He had been bouncing behind Launcelot for hours. His thighs felt as if they'd been brushburned. "I suppose you're taking me with you because I'm the one who lost him."

They rode on in silence.

Slowly now, the horses exhausted, they headed toward a meandering stream, where Launcelot finally allowed his stallion to drink. The knight himself hung his head with fatigue and disappointment. The others milled around or dismounted, leading their steeds to water.

"Can I get off now?" Hal asked.

Launcelot half turned in his saddle and cuffed him with his forearm. Hal tumbled off the horse onto the mud of the bank.

"Look, I know you're pissed that I'm here without Arthur!" Hal shouted. "Well, you don't have to find him. That's my job. You can go on your little once-a-year ride, and then disappear back into dreamland, but I can't!"

Some of the knights, removing their helmets, turned to stare at him.

He staggered to his feet and lumbered away from the men. This had to be some kind of dream. Maybe he had fallen asleep here in the meadow sometime in the warm afternoon, before he'd ever met the beggar. Or maybe he was still lying half dead on the Portuguese sardine boat. Or maybe, with some luck, he was sleeping in a cheap hotel room in Tangier with Arthur in the next bunk.

Let that be it,
he thought thickly.
Make it so that Arthur's still here.

Someone clasped his arm at the elbow. Hal turned around and saw Launcelot, bare headed, his long sandy-colored hair plastered down with sweat. Dirt accentuated the lines around the piercing blue eyes. Those eyes no longer challenged Hal with anger. They showed only weariness and despair.

Wordlessly he led Hal back near the stream, where some of the others had started a fire. It felt warm, the motion of the flames almost hypnotically restful. Hal lay back on his elbows, enjoying the feeling of the springy grass against his skin. A young knight no more than twenty years old, with hair the color of summer corn, reached across with a smile to offer Hal a piece of dried meat. He ate it gratefully.

"Why are you camping out here?" Hal asked suddenly.

The other knights all looked up from their rations. Some of them glanced at one another.

"Well?" he persisted. "Don't you have to be in the castle by morning or something? What about that wall of fog? Don't tell me it was just the weather."

The young blond man's eyes traveled from Hal's face to Launcelot's.

"Come on, guys." He tried to laugh. "What's the big secret?"

Launcelot rose and gestured with his arm toward a clearing amid an outcropping of boulders in the woods behind him. A clearing scattered with the dead twigs of what had once been a dense thicket. Piles of rock and rubble lay over the twigs.

Hal squinted. The place looked oddly familiar. He walked over to the area and picked up one of the stone pieces. "It's got marks on it," he said, dropping it and collecting several more. "They all do. It's as if someone smashed up one of these boulders on purpose... Oh, no." All of the pieces but one fell to the ground.

From a place deep, deep inside him, a well of panic and despair began to rise. In his hand was a slab of rock bearing the imprint of a jeweled sword hilt.

"Excalibur," he whispered.

T
hat night, when Hal
could finally sleep, he dreamed about Taliesin.

The old man, dressed in a flowing blue robe embroidered with silver half-moons, sat on a wide stone bench against a background of a city skyline at night.

"And I thought the pith helmet was bad," Hal said.

Taliesin sniffed. "As if you knew anything about clothes. This garment is far more comfortable than those trouser things you're so fond of. Besides, it is a mark of my status."

"Your status as what, a trick-or-treater?"

"As the Merlin," he said with icy dignity. "How easy it is to forget one's betters."

"Oh, I didn't forget who you were. While I was freezing to death in the ocean, I cheered myself up by recalling that I knew a real live wizard who wasn't lifting a finger to help me. It was heartwarming."

"Testy, testy," the old man said. "You found a boat, didn't you?"

"After two days!"

"Well, then, I don't know what you're complaining about."

Hal emitted a squeak of exasperation.

"Be that as it may—"

"Hold on. I'm not done complaining yet. The sword in the stone is gone."

"Yes, yes," Taliesin said calmly. "It's why I came to fetch you in Marrakesh, before we got sidetracked. Ah, well. No matter. You're here now."

"Okay," Hal said slowly, trying to follow the old man's drift. "I'm here, and the sword isn't. Are you saying you want me to go look for it?"

"Oh, that wouldn't be of much use. The sword hasn't been
taken,
you see. It's been
destroyed.
Broken into fragments and swept away. You had to be here for the Companions."

"Whose companions?" Hal asked, confused.

"Good grief, Hal, but you're thick as a plank. The Companions of the Round Table, naturally."

"Them?"
Hal asked, appalled. "I spent two days as fish food for a bunch of
ghosts?"

The old man folded his arms across his chest. "Now, that's a fine way to talk about men who've fed you and welcomed you to their fire."

"But they're not real! That is..." He grimaced. "You're right. I've been with them all night." His face blanked. "Does that mean
I'm
not real, either?"

Taliesin glared at him. "Please try not to be such a dolt, Hal. In the first place, they've always been real, at least for the past sixteen hundred years. They've just been existing on a plane other than yours. Except, of course, for the summer solstice."