Fall of Knight (26 page)

T
HE CAR HURTLED
down I-95 toward Washington, DC, with Gwen at the wheel. Night had fallen and she was maneuvering as quickly as she could, deftly threading through the traffic. Arthur sat silently in the passenger seat, staring out at nothing.

They had grabbed a car from the nearest rental place and were getting down to the nation’s capital as fast as possible. She had tried using her cell phone to get in touch with Ron, to warn him that something was up, that an extremely bad man armed with a Spear was on his way to the hospital. But Ron’s cell phone had simply rung, leading her to believe he didn’t have it on him. When she tried calling the hospital or Cook’s cell phone from his business card, she was met with a blaring busy signal and buzzing noise, so loud and annoying that it made her wonder whether someone or something was interfering with her signal. That was the problem when dealing with aspects of magic; it made you paranoid about everything, including things that could easily be ascribed to everyday screwups of technology.

So she stopped at one point and tried to use a pay phone, and hit the same obscuring busy signal…at which point all concern about paranoia was gone. Something or someone was screwing with her, and she could guess who.

Except…the name didn’t mean anything to her.

With all that, it was still several hours before she could bring herself to try and pry information out of Arthur. She had never seen him colder, more distant. Part of her said that this was certainly not a new experience for him. He’d commanded armies. He’d lost men before. But this was Percival. Her heart ached, for Percival had been strong, brave, and at once the most proud and most tragic individual she had ever known. And now he was gone, and she knew that whatever grief she was feeling couldn’t begin to touch whatever Arthur must be enduring.

She knew he loved her. She knew he valued her. But Percival was his comrade in arms, his good right arm. She wondered if, in the future, Arthur would have ghost sensations of Percival there beside him, tingling in the same way as when an arm has been lost and yet you still believe it’s right there because you can feel it.

Finally, though, as the steady stream of oncoming headlights gave her the initial stirrings of road fatigue, she began talking—if for no other reason—as a means of keeping herself awake.

“Who is Paracelsus?” she asked.

No answer was immediately forthcoming, which wasn’t exactly a surprise to her. But she persisted, asking every couple of minutes because she wasn’t entirely sure whether Arthur was even hearing her.

Finally, he stirred himself to speak. “An alchemist.”

“Alchemist.” She frowned, searching her memory. “One of those guys who gets all hot about changing lead into gold? There are really guys like that?”

“There’s a guy like him,” said Arthur, continuing to stare out the window, as the conversation had no real importance. “He’s one of the most famous of that breed. He was born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, in Switzerland—sometime toward the end of the fifteenth century…”

“Well, naturally,” said Gwen. “Because, y’know, you can’t possibly find yourself facing off against someone who was born
after
the dawn of the Industrial Age.”

“Do you want to know this or not?” he asked sharply.

She was taken aback by his tone although to some degree she was relieved to hear a bit of fire in his voice. She simply nodded.

“Celsus was an ancient Roman physician. Von Hohenheim came up with the name ‘Paracelsus’ to mean ‘superior to Celsus.’ He was raised in Austria and, from the very beginning, he was an egomaniac. If he had contented himself with his intense study of the human body, he might have simply been remembered as a brilliant doctor, because he did pursue some theories that were then radical but now commonly accepted. But he became obsessed with the occult in general and alchemy in particular. Traveled the world seeking to expand his knowledge into things best left unexplored.”

“And this is that guy? That same guy?”

“It’s hard to say for certain,” Arthur admitted. “Paracelsus is recorded to have died five hundred years ago. But there have been others who have purported to be him over the centuries. The facts of Paracelsus have been inextricably mixed with the legend, and it would be difficult for me to say whether what we’re dealing with is the original item…or some individual who has either assumed his identity or even believes that he really is the alchemist of legend. The problem is, if he has the Spear of Destiny—which I have every reason at this point to believe he does—it doesn’t matter whether he goes by Paracelsus or Mickey Mouse. Between having that and the Grail in his possession, he is unspeakably dangerous.”

“Because the Spear is such an awful weapon?”

“It’s more than that. There’s apparently some way of combining the power of the Spear and the Grail that will bring about unparalleled destruction.”

“Who told you that?”

“Merlin. He was in the toilet, and he told me.”

Gwen stared at him and almost forgot to put her eyes back on the road. “He told you this one day while he was sitting on the toilet?”

“Not on, in. He was looking up at me from the water.” He glanced at her. “I suppose that requires some further explanation.”

“I’m thinking so, yeah.”

So he told her all he knew, which, as he realized upon the retelling, wasn’t as much as he wished. “Why didn’t you tell me any of this earlier?”

“Because I knew how insane it sounded.”

“Arthur,” she said slowly, “when one looks back at the history of my life since you and I first met, I think it’s safe to say that there’s nothing you could tell me that would sound more insane than what’s already happened.”

“Fair enough. I’ll try to be more forthcoming.”

“And you think he’s going to try and cure Nellie with the Grail…so he can then turn around and destroy the world?”

“Well, if you can’t develop a sense of irony in the course of six centuries, when can you?”

She nodded, then said softly, “I’m…”

“If you’re going to say that you’re sorry about Percival…I’d rather you didn’t,” he said, not ungently. “Honestly…I’m not entirely certain I can discuss the matter while keeping my eyes dry, and tears over such a matter would be…what’s the word…?”

“Lugubrious?”

“Unmanly.”

“Oh. Well…I wouldn’t want that.”

There was silence for a time, then Arthur said, “Gwen…when I catch up with Paracelsus…I…don’t want you to be there.”

“What are you talking about? Of course I’ll be there. I don’t pretend to be a knight of Camelot, but I’m not slouch when—”

“Not because of that. Because of me.”

“I don’t understand.”

Gwen had known Arthur for many years…in some ways, she felt as if she had known him her entire life and before that even…but there was something in his voice now that she had never heard before. Something dark and terrible that caused her spine to chill. “There are aspects of me that you’ve never seen…that I’ve never had need to show you. I fancy myself a…a civilized man, Gwen. But I hail from a very uncivilized time, and the forces that influenced me in that time remain in me still. And the standards for civilized behavior have changed over the centuries. Once upon a time, it was considered civilized to parade a prisoner naked through the streets…to castrate him, disembowel him, draw and quarter him…it was considered justice. Even…even entertainment.”

“So…so it was entertainment back then,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, trying to keep the shakiness out of it. “So you didn’t have cable and had to make your own fun. I…I get that, okay? It was a long time ago…”

“Not to me. To me…it was practically yesterday. I have done…terrible things in my life. Terrible things. Things that if you saw them, by today’s standards…you would think them barbaric. And more…you would be repulsed by not only the actions I took against my enemies…but the satisfaction, bordering on glee, that I displayed while taking them. The historians tend to tidy things up. Gloss over the more unpleasant realities of life back then in the greater pursuit of presenting tales of chivalry. Geoffrey of Monmouth didn’t make mention of it, Tennyson gave it a pass, and God knows Malory wouldn’t touch it with a ten-meter cattle prod.”

“Arthur, I don’t understand why you’re telling me this,” she said. “I mean, it’s all in the past…”

“That’s the point. It’s not. It’s in the future.”

“What?”

“I will catch this man, Gwen,” he told her, and his voice became even lower, “and there will be no mercy for him. For what he has done—for the magnitude of his crimes—I will kill him, oh yes. But that will not be immediate. I will kill him slowly. I will make him suffer with every small, meticulous stroke of my blade. I will have him begging for death, and I will withhold the boon and continue to torment him and torture him until his soul runs screaming from his body. No judge and jury trial for him; I will be both, and I have already decided his guilt and his sentence. I will be brutal and terrible and civilized only in the sense of what passed for civilized eleven centuries ago.”

She knew it was her imagination, but in the back of her mind she could hear the screams of past victims of Arthur’s wrath as he spoke.

“And because of that,” he said, his voice coming from deep within the darkness of not only the night but his very being, “I don’t want you there because it is a side of me that I don’t want you to see. I am concerned it will repulse you. Turn you away from me. That you will no longer be able to love me because of it.”

“Arthur, that’s ridiculous. I love all of you…even the aspects of you that you’re ashamed of. There’s nothing you could do or say that would ever—”

“Gwen…when you…when an earlier incarnation of you…betrayed me by sleeping with Lancelot…I sentenced you to be burned to death for your high crime.”

“I know,” she said easily. “I saw
Camelot.
But you knew Lancelot would come and rescue—”

He shook his head.

“What?”

“No,” he said softly. “Lance was under siege. He had no way of getting to Camelot. There was no ulterior motive on my part other than revenge over my humiliation, wrapped in the comforting cloak of justice. There was no expectation of rescue, and none was forthcoming. I stood there in the window of my castle, looking down upon you, and you begged me. Gods, you begged me for forgiveness, and there was none in my heart. I watched from on high, like a vengeful deity, until you were a charred corpse. It took a long time, as burning always does, and I monitored every agonizing minute. To this day, I can still smell the burning of your flesh, like roasting rancid meat, the—”

Gwen pulled the car violently over to the side, skidding onto the shoulder of the highway and almost hitting the guardrail. She threw open the door, leaned out, and vomited violently onto the pavement. When she was done, she simply hung there, holding on, gasping for breath, her hair hanging down around her face.

Finally, she hauled herself back into the car and pulled the door shut. She slumped back in the seat until her breathing returned to normal.

Very softly, he said, “I told you the historians cleaned things up. What you see in movies, in plays…it’s romanticized. It’s…entertainment, except real people aren’t being tortured to death for public consumption.”

She sat there a moment more, then started the car up again.

“For what it’s worth, I spent every minute of my subsequent thousand-year captivity regretting what I had done…”

She speared him with a look. “It’s worth shit, Arthur.”

He sighed and leaned back in his seat. “Yes. I rather thought it would be.”

The car moved back out onto I-95 and continued its path toward Washington, DC.

T
HE HOSPITAL’S SMALL
chapel was deserted at three in the morning. It wasn’t as if the lateness of the hour was a contributing factor; there had been other instances where the chapel had been fairly crowded with individuals praying for the recovery of their loved ones.

Then again, since the introduction of Grail Ale, there’d been a general rise in health and fewer supplicants for the favors of God. This was not lost on Paracelsus. But it didn’t surprise him all that much. Why, after all, should one throw out cries for divine intervention that might or might not be heard, and might or might not be answered, when one could go down to the local convenience store and—if they had it in stock—plunk down money for a much surer thing?

He stood in the doorway of the chapel for a long moment, then walked in and up to the image of Jesus on the crucifix. Paracelsus paused a moment, then crossed himself and picked up one of the votive candles. He lit it, murmured a prayer, and put the candle in its proper place.

“Offering up a prayer, my son?”

Paracelsus glanced over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow. “Hello, your Eminence,” he said. “I’m a bit surprised to see you here, of all places…and somewhat underdressed, as it were.”

“Why not here, of all places,” asked Cardinal Ruehl. As Paracelsus had observed, Ruehl was not attired in his normal, elaborate robes. Instead he was dressed in the dark brown cassock of a monk. The hood was dropped back so that his face was easily seen, but his hands were tucked into the copious folds of the sleeves. “I am wherever God’s work is required. And why are you here, my son?”

“Just…paying my respects,” said Paracelsus, nodding toward the icon.

“Indeed. And are you not concerned about the crisis of faith that has been occurring lately in the world?”

“It’s not lately, Eminence.” Paracelsus shook his head, looking discouraged and frustrated. “It’s been centuries now. Centuries of a slow, steady decline into decay and squalor.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that…”

“I do. There used to be…” His voice trailed off.

“Used to be what?”

“There used to be…” Paracelsus sought for the right words. “There used to be grace in the world. There used to be a sense of personal responsibility. Mankind used to celebrate that which was the greatest in all of us. Now we’ve become obsessed with that which is the lowest. There is no greatness because we can’t wait to tear down that which is great. No matter who our heroes are, we keep searching and searching until we discover their feet of clay, so that…what? We can feel better about ourselves and our own inadequacies? Do you know,” he continued, “that the vast majority of the country had no idea that Franklin Roosevelt was in a wheelchair? It’s true. Even as recently as that, there was a sense of—at the very least—dignified distance. Now we want to know the type of undergarments our leaders wear, and television cameras are going up people’s rectums. What the hell is it all coming to? What’s the purpose?”

“You sound very disappointed with the state of humanity.”

“And you’re not?” Paracelsus smirked. “I mean, are you really going to stand there and tell me you’re not disappointed with the state of humanity?”

Ruehl inclined his head slightly. “I…wish for better. And I figure it’s my job to try and work for better.”

“How can you?”

“Because I have faith.”

“Ah. Well, see, that’s the difference between us, then,” said Paracelsus. “I don’t. I’ve seen too much. Become too disgusted. If there really was a divine presence that put us on this planet, either we’ve totally failed to live up to our potential, or if this was truly what He was expecting of us, then it was just a bad idea to begin with and we’re not worth the planetary resources we’re consuming.”

“You say you have no faith, and yet you light a candle. You pray to our savior.”

“Professional courtesy.”

“You fancy yourself a savior?”

“Yes.” Tears began to well in Paracelsus’s eyes, and he wiped them away with the back of his arm. “Because I loved humanity so much…and I see what it’s become…and sometimes, that which you love, you have to be willing to let go. It’s the only way that it can be saved.”

“Saved…by destroying it?”

There was a silence then, and slowly something changed in the atmosphere of the chapel as Paracelsus turned to face Cardinal Ruehl as if truly seeing him for the first time.

“So,” said Paracelsus, sounding amused and regretful, “we see each other plainly. Not just happenstance in the selection of the ensemble, I see. The monks of Montserrat in Catalonia?”

Ruehl inclined his head slightly. “That is where our society had its origins, yes. Since then Montserrat has cast its influence in a far wider net than Catalonia…”

“To Sainte Chappelle, perhaps?”

Ruehl smiled. “You know your history, I see. Your holy orders.”

“My enemies.”

“We have no enemies, except the enemies of mankind.”

“It’s amazing,” said Paracelsus, his hands draped behind him as he walked back and forth, as if studying a museum painting from different angles. “The Holy Order of the Monks of Montserrat. The Secret Society of Sainte Chappelle. All dedicated to holy relics that you don’t have in your possession.”

“We had them. We lost them. We intend to regain them, then keep them safe.”

“Been searching for quite a while, haven’t you. So let’s see if I have the time line straight. After an indeterminate origin, the Grail came into the hands of St. Luke, who carved a statue eventually called
La Moreneta
or
The Black Madonna.
An interesting color for the mother of the savior, don’t you think? Black?”

“That’s simply the way the wood has discolored over the centuries.”

“So you say. In any event, the real intention of the statute was to hide something in plain sight, namely the Grail. The statute depicted the Virgin holding her infant, and the Grail was in her upraised left hand, affixed there by St. Luke in such a way that people simply assumed it was part of the statute. There it sat, in a grotto beneath what would eventually become the monastery, until it was discovered some centuries later.” Paracelsus smirked. “Except what Luke had not anticipated, or realized, was that the Grail can change shape. So it became something else…the belt, perhaps, or the sword. The shepherds who found the statute had no idea that the Holy Grail was lying next to it. They doubtless thought it some relic left behind by an errant pilgrim. So the two became separated, although the statute still had enough of a touch of the divine—thanks to its lengthy contact with the Grail—to perform the occasional miracle for the truly devout.”

“You’ve learned a lot about these things,” said Ruehl.

“Well, I’ve had plenty of time. Now the Spear…ah, that bounced around even more, and had even more pretenders to the name than the Grail. Especially with the staff going in one direction and the head going in another. Except the true Spear never became separated but remained in one piece. Vanished from Saint Chappelle around the, what? Eighteenth century?”

“Thereabouts.”

“And then the Nazis got their hands on it.” He shook his head. “I think…it was at that point that my faith first began to crack. I mean, all these holy orders running around, spending centuries searching in futility for these holy relics, and who gets his hands on the Spear of Destiny? A demented little hanger of wallpaper who rose to power on the backs of millions of innocent people. What does that tell you about the way of things?”

“It tells me that we cannot question God’s plan.”

“Of course not, any more than you can question the master plan of the dodo. You can’t question what doesn’t exist.”

“My son—”

“So anyway,” said Paracelsus, as if Ruehl hadn’t spoken, “the Nazis had the Spear of Destiny in their possession, until…”

“Until the Allies reacquired it.”

“Except you know that’s not true,” Paracelsus said quietly. “Because I acquired it first. I went down into Hitler’s bunker, and I took it away from the Nazis, for which you might want to bloody well thank me. My removing it from their possession guaranteed the fall of the Third Reich.”

“So it was you who made the switch. We always wondered.”

“Well, wonder no more. Of course, carrying a Spear around can be a bit…noticeable. But as an alchemist, I’ve learned a few tricks. Not just transmutation of elements, but also tinkering with size. Watch. Nothing up my sleeve…”

He extended an arm and Ruehl stepped back quickly as the Spear of Destiny snapped out from Paracelsus’s jacket sleeve and into his hand. He held it there at its full length, and now in his other hand was the Holy Grail.

“Looking for these?” he asked calmly.

Ruehl’s face could have been carved from stone. “They are not yours to possess, Paracelsus.”

“Ah, so you do know me.”

“Think of it as an educated guess. Although, frankly, I was expecting former President Penn to be in possession of the Grail. To come down here and cure Mrs. Cordoba…”

“Cure her of an illness that you inflicted upon her.” Ruehl didn’t answer at first, and Paracelsus prompted him, “Come on. You can admit it to me. I hear confession is good for the soul.”

“We did what we had to do,” Ruehl said tersely. “Our concern is for the greater good. We needed to get the Grail away from Arthur. It belongs to the Church. To the world.”

“Not anymore. Too bad your plan didn’t work.”

“Obviously, though…it did.”

Six more men slowly entered the Chapel. They were clothed identically to Ruehl, and two were holding shields with the sign of the cross upon them. The rest were carrying truncheons, which they slid out of their sleeves, as Ruehl also did. “For whatever perverse reason, you came here instead with the cup to complete Arthur’s mission,” said Ruehl. “Why, we cannot begin to guess. But you are here, and we are here, and you will turn both the Grail and the Spear over to us…”

“Well…in answer to your question,” Paracelsus said, “I came here with the cup because I killed Percival, the Grail’s previous protector.” He was pleased to see the slightly ashen tint that Ruehl’s face took on. “But the Cordoba woman doesn’t matter to me. She can lie there in whatever coma you bastards induced in her until the end of time, for all I care. No, I came here because I’m not stupid. I sensed the fine hand of your society or order or brotherhood or whatever you call yourself. I need to have the Grail work another miracle or two, you see, and I knew you’d be waiting for me. I didn’t come here to cure Mrs. Cordoba.” And he smiled. “I came here to slaughter the lot of you.”

He whipped the Spear around as the Holy Order of the Monks of Montserrat charged.

There were no screams, not because the monks were inured to pain, but because in one, fast sweep, Paracelsus brought the Spear around and severed their vocal cords.

When the blood really began to fly, it spattered on the statute of Jesus. He stood there, looking on in silence, as crimson tears flowed down his face.

R
ON CORDOBA SHOULD
have been at home. The middle of the night was hardly the time for visiting hours. But he was who he was, and that certainly carried some degree of influence with the hospital staff, thus allowing an exception to be made. They’d brought in several chairs of the nonplastic variety, and Ron had managed to fashion a makeshift bed that he was certain was still going to destroy his back. He was drifting in and out of sleep when he looked up, convinced he was dreaming, to see Arthur staring down at him. He half smiled at the comforting sight and closed his eyes once more.

“Ron?”

The speaking of his name startled him to full wakefulness, and he almost fell out of the chairs. Arthur reached down and steadied him before he hit the floor. His vision clearing, Ron saw Gwen standing directly behind Arthur.

“My God,” he whispered, as Arthur helped him to his feet. “I…I thought I was dreaming.”

“No.” He glanced toward Nellie. “How is she?”

“No change in her condition…Arthur,” he suddenly said, “you can’t be here. The Grail…”

“We don’t have it.”

That brought him up short. “You came without it?”

“It was taken from us.”

“Where’s Percival?”

Gwen spoke up, her voice hollow. “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Ron laughed nervously. “He can’t be dead. He’s…”

“He was killed, Ron,” said Arthur. “By Barry Seltzer…who, as it turns out, is an alchemist named Paracelsus.”

“Para…what the hell are you talking about? Percival can’t be dead—”

“Ron!”
Arthur said sharply, gripping him by the shoulders so hard that Ron gasped from it. “This really isn’t the time to discuss it. We think he’s coming here for Nellie. Thank the gods I got here first.”

“But…why for Nellie? I don’t understand…”

“You explain it to him, Arthur,” Gwen said, and she headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You said you didn’t want me around. So I’m going to find the chapel and pray. I figure we need all the help we can get.”

C
ARDINAL RUEHL, HOVERING
in blackness, felt something liquid and burning being forced between his lips. He was so disconnected from everything around him that he didn’t remember at first where he was, nor did he have a clue what was happening. Then it slowly began to dawn on him. He remembered that he had eyes, and he forced them open.

The cup of Christ was just within his sight line, and he saw Paracelsus’s face hovering just beyond it. Paracelsus was actually smiling at him gently, and he was upending the contents of the cup into Ruehl’s mouth. “Excellent,” he whispered. “There you go. Come on back. Don’t try to sit up. It’s going to take you a little while to get fully up to snuff.”

Ruehl found that he indeed couldn’t move. His mind was telling his body what to do, but it refused to obey. He turned his head slightly, then gasped, a low moan of distress.

His brethren lay scattered about the room, unmoving. There was blood everywhere. It was like something out of a horror film rather than a chapel.