The Dragon King (15 page)

“Ah! Such freedom! Freedom for the body to die, for the spirit to soar!” the Fisher King said. “Give that cursed vessel to the Pure Knight as soon as you can, young king. Only he can keep it properly.” And then the man’s arms broke, as if his bones were made of dry twigs. He flopped back, his head whiplashing against the ground.

A smile crossed his face.

“Mordred? You mean Mordred?” Artie asked desperately.

“In my day he was called Galahad,” the man whispered. His face aged, his stomach sank—and then his leg stopped bleeding. “I am done. Blessed death, I am finally done.”

Thumb bolted toward the expiring man. “How has the quest changed?” he asked pointedly.

“Getting the Grail—easy. Leaving with it—not so easy. Godspeed.” And then the ancient man’s skin went from white to gray to charcoal in a flash. His cheeks hollowed, his eyes disappeared, and his hair fell from his head.

The Fisher King was dead.

His body was dragged hastily into the water by unseen hands, and when it disappeared the lake began to bubble and boil, and all the torches puffed out.

Artie handed the Grail to Kay, who slipped it into the infinite backpack. They had to get out of there. He unsheathed Excalibur and said, “
Lunae lumen!
”

Nothing.

“LUNAE LUMEN!”

More nothing.

“Dang it,” Kay said.

The lake hissed and the room became hot and humid. “Light!” Artie ordered. Excalibur lit with purpose. The knights stared at what they were faced with.

“Super dang it,” Kay said.

What they saw before them was not a welcome sight at all.

Lance, Qwon, and Dred stood
outside the double doors at Topkapi Palace, waiting for Shallot to come back with her distraction. Two minutes passed. Three. Four. And finally, five.

“What do we do?” Qwon asked.

Lance tapped his watch. “Wait some more.”

Six minutes. Seven.

“Fairies,” Dred said scornfully. “Probably bailed.”

Qwon shook her head. “Not Shallot.”

“Yes, Shallot,” Dred said.

Lance said, “All right, change of plans. I still don’t think we can risk a fireballer, so I’ll put in a flashbang. We’re not going to kill any of these guys—they’re just soldiers doing a job.”

“I don’t want to kill anything, ever,” Qwon insisted.

“Good. As soon as the grenade is off, you whip up a nasty storm, Qwon. One that will really put them on their butts.”

“And Shallot?” Dred asked.

Lance shrugged. “Hopefully she’ll show up and lend a hand. We can’t wait around all night. If she doesn’t show, we’ll rendezvous with her back in the Otherworld. You guys ready?”

Dred scowled. “Ready.”

Qwon held out Kusanagi. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

Lance pulled the flashbang arrow from his quiver and placed it on the string. He pulled it to his cheek, slid the door open with a foot, and let the arrow go.

A bright flare erupted, followed by four rapid rifle shots. Qwon shouted, “
Arashi!
” The doors flew open as dark clouds and lashing rain and crackling lightning streamed off the blade. Lance and Dred wasted no time rushing in, but as soon as they passed Kusanagi they were sucked into the storm. Qwon had her hands full—this one was strong, really strong.

“
Resu
,” Qwon implored, and the tempest calmed enough that she could steady herself. Lance and Dred bounced to their feet. One of the guards had been lifted up in the initial gust of the storm, and had crashed into a rafter, wrapping around it like a rag doll. He was out cold.

Two of the others had been thrown to the back of the room and were climbing from behind the glass cases, their gas masks blown clean off. One still had his rifle, and the other was unholstering a pistol from his thigh.

The guard with the rifle took aim at Lance’s head in the same moment that Lance let an arrow fly. It sailed across the room and, in the shot of a lifetime, went straight into the rifle’s barrel, pushing the guard backward. Lance nocked another arrow and spun as the guard with the pistol made a bead on him. Lance wasn’t going to be able to shoot quickly enough.

Qwon concentrated on the guard with the handgun. A bolt of lightning shot from the tip of the blade, crackling through the air, and hit the guard square in the chest. He was flung to the ground, completely knocked out, the pistol twirling away and out of reach.

The one with the ruined rifle was vaulting toward Lance, an anodized knife in his fist. Lance dropped his bow, unsheathed Orgulus, and ran at the guard. The rapier’s tip glanced off the knife and the two men came face-to-face. Lance took a hit to the gut, ducked a swipe of the knife, and then jumped back, wielding Orgulus like a musketeer. He twirled his wrist and the blade made a series of whip-fast curlicues that hit the guard across the cheek and knuckles. The knife clattered to the floor as Lance brought the rapier upright, drawing the cage to his face. Just as he was about to knock the guard out with a punch, another of Kusanagi’s lightning bolts sizzled past and, with pinpoint accuracy, struck the guard in the side. He shuddered and fell to the wall in an unconscious heap.

As this happened, Dred looked frantically for the fourth guard. At first he didn’t see him, but then Dred caught glimpse of a watery image on the other side of the crossover—the guard hadn’t crossed, of course, he couldn’t—but just being on the other side of the portal helped to hide the guard from Dred.

Dred dropped to a knee. Three quick shots came from the guard behind the crossover and ricocheted off the Peace Sword, rattling Dred’s wrists painfully. He rolled across the ground and then came up, throwing the Peace Sword directly at the guard’s rifle. It spun end over end through the air, and the hilt came down hard on the muzzle, knocking the weapon to the floor.

“Qwon!” Dred called, hoping she could shoot this guy with one of her lightning bolts, but no answer came. And that was when Dred realized that the storm was gone. He chanced a look over his shoulder. Qwon was fighting with two
more
men over twice her size!

Dred ran for his sword—but the guard who he’d thrown it at was holding it—and running toward him!

Unarmed, Dred took off for the crossover gate and disappeared. He suddenly found himself standing in the middle of an endless field of spring wheat. “Shallot!” he called, just in case the fairy was nearby, but no answer came. Forgetting about her, he put his face right up to the surface of the crossover and saw the guard standing there, baffled as he tried to figure out where Dred had just gone. Dred dropped to a knee and thrust his hands through the gate, grabbing the guard by the ankles. Dred pulled hard, and the guard slammed onto his back. Dred vaulted to the Turkish side of the gate, snatched the Peace Sword from the startled guard, and hit him on the forehead with the pommel. He moaned and passed out.

Without hesitating, Dred rushed to Qwon, but she was so deft with Kusanagi that by the time he got there she had defeated her two attackers, leaving one unconscious and the other on his knees begging for his life.

“Nicely done, Q!” Dred cried, panting with excitement. Qwon stepped back, bowed respectfully, pointed the sword at the frightened man’s face, and barked one more word. A fist-size hailstone materialized and flew from the metal, striking the man hard in the head. He too slumped over and passed out.

Qwon spun to Dred, beaming. “I did it! I did it! I won my first fight with this thing!” Then, without thinking, she jumped forward and landed in Dred’s arms.

Dred blushed.

“Hey, guys,” Lance said, sauntering up.

Qwon let go of Dred and peeled away from him awkwardly, her round cheeks turning rosy. “Oh, hey. Good, uh, good fighting, Lance.”

“Yeah, really good!” Dred said a little too enthusiastically.

“You too—both of you. That was smart using the crossover, Dred. And the lightning, Qwon—that was really something. Although I had that guy, you know.”

Qwon shuffled her feet like a schoolgirl. “Oh, I know. Just thought I’d give you a hand.”

“Well, I appreciate it. Now—”

Lance was interrupted as Shallot bounded through the crossover, The Anguish flashing in front of her. “Ah-har!” she announced, sounding more like a pirate than a fairy. Her scentlock was so strong that Lance, who was closest, swooned and fell over.

“Where ya been, Tinker Bell?” Qwon managed to ask in a nasally voice, a finger jammed up each nostril.

Shallot looked around desperately. She dropped her scentlock and asked, “What happened?”

“You said five minutes, fairy,” Dred said, sitting on the ground. “We waited seven.”

“But it’s been five minutes.”

“And I came over there for a second,” Dred said. “I didn’t see you at all.”

“I was there. I was looking for a creature to distract the guards, but I couldn’t find one. It was just a huge field of wheat.”

“Whatever; it’s over now. We went ahead without you.”

Shallot looked around and saw the beaten men and the damage done by the storm. “Looks like it was a good fight. Sorry, I really didn’t mean to miss it. I swore it was five minutes.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lance said, waving his hand. “Everything worked out. Let’s get what we came for and bounce. You’ll get to fight soon enough when we go up against Merlin.”

They walked to the sword cases at the far end of the room. The one on the right was still intact and held two blades. Both were unsheathed, so neither could be the Sword of David, since the act of unsheathing it was suicidal for anyone but Dred. The case on the left had been shattered by the storm. There were three swords there, all unsheathed as well—but there was also a blank spot where a fourth sword had clearly rested.

Dred’s eyes widened. “Guys, the Sword of David is—”

A guard screamed, coming out of nowhere. His face was bruised and his hands were wrapped around the scabbard and hilt of a long sword. He ran straight for Dred, drawing the cursed weapon, and swung the blade through the air. Dred parried with the Peace Sword, but it wasn’t necessary, because as soon as the guard had finished his misguided attack, he fell over, his skin green and withered, his cheekbones and knuckles protruding like he’d been dead for weeks. He thumped to the ground, and the fearsome Sword of David clanked harmlessly on the tile floor.

“Omigod!” Qwon exclaimed. “That poor, poor man . . .”

“Yes,” Lance said solemnly, walking slowly to the deceased guard. “That was
not
a soldier’s death.”

Shallot stared reverently—and a little fearfully—at the sword. “Well, we found it, that’s for sure.”

Lance scratched his head before giving Dred a worried look. “Guess it’s time to pick it up and get out of here, right, kid?”

“Suppose so.” He knelt next to the Sword of David and held his hand over the hilt nervously. “Here goes nothing.”

“Wait!” Qwon yelped, running toward Dred. She dropped next to him, grabbed his face with both hands, and pulled him close. It was a short kiss—but it was still a kiss. “Just in case,” Qwon said with a grin.

“Thanks.” Dred was
really
blushing now.

But the kiss had given him a little oomph. With renewed resolve, he wrapped his fingers around the hilt and picked up the blade. Nothing happened. It didn’t even feel special. “No sweat!” He walked around the case and sheathed the weapon. Just to be double sure, he pulled it out and resheathed it. “Yep, totally fine.” Lance and Shallot shared a sigh of relief as Dred placed a hand on Qwon’s shoulder and whispered, “But maybe I should almost die more often.”

Qwon nudged him with her hip. “C’mon, guys. Let’s go back to Tintagel!”

The four knights trotted back through the palace. They could hear sirens wailing in the distance, but as they made their way back to the moongate, they met no resistance. They stepped into the hollow of the ancient tree, and just like that, their mission was done. All they had to do now was wait for Artie and the others to return too—with the Holy Grail.

Artie and his knights gazed
over the expanse where the lake had been, their mouths agape. In the water’s place was a valley of mud. And rising out of the mud like trees were dozens of long and writhing tentacles, blindly searching for prey.

Kay gasped sharply, and Artie reached over and squeezed her hand.

All across the muddy field, in between the tentacles, lay dozens of men in different kinds of clothing or armor spanning many different eras: English plate armor; a Spanish cuirass; a few flouncy French-looking shirts; and one guy in a tan button-down shirt, leather jacket, and a wide-brimmed hat. All of their heads hung forward, obscuring their faces. And each was completely legless and armless.

Then at the same time, they moaned.

Bercilak pointed across the lake bed and said, “Hark! Your brothers in amputation, Sir Bedevere!”

“
Those
are not my brothers, Sir Bercilak.”

“Lad!” Thumb pointed the Welsh
wakizashi
at the far end of the cave. There, a crude stairway rose out of the drained depths of the lake. The knights followed it with their eyes and saw a figure standing at the top. Its face was obscured, and it stood in front of a pair of heavy-looking iron doors.

Above the doors were written the words
Way Out
.

“Guess we know what we need to do next, huh?” Kay asked.

“Looks like it,” Artie answered.

“Right. How hard could it be to cross a muddy lake full of limbless zombies?” Bercilak said. He swung his ax and walked to the edge of the muck. A tentacle shot out in his direction and he swiftly cut it down. “No sweating!” he announced.

“No
sweat
,” Kay corrected.

“Right you are, Sir Kay.”

Just then the figure at the end of the cavern started to laugh. It held out a hand, and as it lifted the hand higher and higher, the amputees rose from the mud.

“So they do have legs!” Bercilak called. But as soon as he said it, he choked on his words. “Oh my!” he said faintly.

The legs weren’t legs at all. They were tentacles, long and sickly gray, with puckering suction cups. Then the figures’ bleeding shoulder stumps grew tentacles too, and all at once, in a din of creaking bone, their heads swung up. Their faces were blank and puffy, as if they’d drowned hundreds of years ago. Snails and clams and worms filled their eye sockets and mouths.

“Gross!” Kay exclaimed, readying Cleomede.

And then the far-off figure called, “You cannot pass! These former Grail seekers will see to that!”

“Numinae, give him a shot,” Artie ordered quietly.

“With pleasure.” Numinae punched the air, and a green bolt of energy leaped forward, arcing across the chamber. But just as it reached the guardian, it hit an invisible wall and spread out flat like a pancake. Numinae recoiled, and the spell fizzled.

“Looks as though we’ll have to fight our way across, lad,” Thumb said.

“Fine with me. Phantoma!” Bedevere ordered, and his powerful ghost arm sprang to life. Before anyone could stop him, he pulled out his claymore and marched to the front of the line.

As Bedevere fired up his arm, Artie eyed the ground sternly. There was the indentation where the Fisher King had sat, and his trail of blood that had drained into the lake. It disappeared where the mud began. . . .

The mud!

“Bedevere,” Artie said urgently. “Wait!”

Just as Artie said the word, the foot of Bedevere’s parabolic leg touched the muck. The undead men nearest to Bedevere pounced—which is to say, their arm tentacles stretched and groped, their suckers making little kissing noises. In an instant, Bedevere’s fake leg was pulled into the mud to the knee. If he hadn’t reached out with his phantom hand to unfasten his stump, the rest of him would have been sucked in as well, and he would have turned into a Grail-seeking zombie like the rest of those sorry souls.

“By the trees!” Bercilak ran forward and grabbed Bedevere by his shoulders and pulled him out of harm’s way. The tentacles and the zombies grew calm. They resumed waiting.

“Ack!” Bedevere punched the ground with his real hand. “Phantoma,” he said weakly, turning his fake arm off for the time being.

Kay knelt next to him, pulling the infinite backpack off her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I have your backup somewhere in here.”

Bercilak pointed at the guardian, who laughed. “Sire, not to belabor the point, but pray how
are
we going to cross this infernal suck pit?”

“I don’t know, Bercy,” Artie said. “I wish I still had Rhongomyniad. I could just chuck it over there and make a rope bridge. . . .”

“Like back in Sweden,” Kay mused, helping Bedevere strap on the spare leg.

Numinae cleared his throat.

“Lads, lads,” Thumb said. “Don’t forget who we have with us.”

“Oh yeah!” Kay yelped. “Noomy, you can just fly us over there on some kind of magic green carpet, right?”

“Well, no, Sir Kay. I don’t know any flying spells. But that doesn’t mean I’m useless.”

Artie snapped his fingers. “Your vine thing! Like when you took Cassie! Can’t you shoot a bunch over there and we’ll climb across?”

Numinae grinned. “I can do better than that, sire.” He closed his wild eyes and held out his arms and began to hum, low and sonorous.

Numinae then changed before their eyes, shedding every part of him that looked human. His legs joined and his hips thickened as his lower half turned into a stout trunk. His arms shot out for the stone walls, and his fingers turned to many-branched roots that grabbed the rock, working their way into it, and from the waist up, he grew. With a loud cracking sound his body stretched out, reaching across the cave in an arc. Little branches sprouted here and there and leaves uncurled and bark hardened. He was a tree, growing in a sunless cave. Over the mud he went, the Grail zombies not even bothering to look, because why would they? Zombies want brains, not leaves.

Farther and farther he went, growing thinner as he reached the promontory at the top of the stairway. The figure at the other end grew hushed and dropped to the ground, his legs crossed. After a couple of minutes, Numinae’s tree form hit its target, and in an explosion of green the part of him that had been his head lodged itself onto the stone.

The bridge was complete.

“Bet you didn’t see that coming, dude!” Kay yelled, her voice echoing across the hall.

Artie put a hand on her shoulder, “We’re not out of this yet, Sis.”

“No, lad. But we’re getting closer,” Thumb said, sheathing his
wakizashi
and climbing onto Numinae.

Artie clambered on next, then Kay, Bedevere, and finally Bercilak. As they walked across, the poor creatures below them writhed and reached with their tentacles, trying in vain to capture the knights. Kay pointed at the one with the wide-brimmed hat. “Check it out. Indiana Jones wants to know where we’re going with the Grail!”

Artie looked. He wanted to laugh but couldn’t. How does she stay so upbeat? he wondered of his sister. There was no way he could have gotten through everything without her. “Yeah, he sure does,” he said quietly.

“You all right, Art?”

“I will be when we’re out of here.” He watched his feet. Crossing the Numinae bridge was like moving over a forest path strewn with roots and divots. If they weren’t careful, they could turn an ankle—or worse, fall into the lethal muck below.

After a few moments Bercilak chimed, “I always enjoyed walking alongside you, Lord Numinae . . . but never did I think that I would walk
on
you!”

They were very near the end when Artie said, “Tom, I think you’re smaller.”

“Me too,” Kay seconded. “It’s like we’re half in the Otherworld and half in our world.”

“Yes, lass. We are nearing some point between the worlds. I can feel it.”

Artie eyed the man who was waiting for them and realized, as they drew within fifty feet, that his face had not been obscured. Instead, he had no face—or rather, no eyes or nose. Only a mouth, and for ears only little holes, like on a lizard.

Once they’d all crossed, Numinae set about bringing himself over. They watched in awe as the end closest to them became thick while the other end became thin. It looked very painful, and when this process was done, two strong branches shot out close to the knights, grabbing the rock on their side. Then Numinae’s body released the ground where the Fisher King had been, and telescoped up and over the zombie mud pit. Finally he was with the others. The leaves and branches withdrew into his body, and the bark of the trunk softened and became mossy, like his skin usually was. His head and neck re-formed, followed by his arms and chest. Last, his legs separated and he planted his feet wide. He cracked his neck and opened his eyes and looked at Artie.

“Nicely done, Numinae.”

But before he could answer, the guardian of the mud pit, not more than a dozen feet away, began a slow clap. “Nicely done, indeed.” He waved his hand at the pitiful monsters below. “None of those adventurers thought to bring a creature as freakish as you.”

Kay stepped forward, “You’re one to talk, face-off!”

“Am I? I can see, you know. Not like you do, but I can see everything in here. So you brought some kind of alteration mage. Congratulations. That doesn’t mean you’re leaving with the Grail.”

“Yeah, it does,” Kay said defiantly. She felt for the invisible wall that had stopped Numinae’s spell and found it in seconds. Then she pulled out Cleomede and held its tip against the barrier. “This cuts through anything, chump.”

“Sir Kay, wait—,” Numinae said, but there was no stopping Kay Kingfisher.

She pushed. Cleomede’s tip slipped to the side, and she fell awkwardly forward into the wall with all her weight, smashing her cheek against it.

The guardian laughed. “Nothing can breach this wall, m’lady.”

“He’s right,” Numinae said. “That spell was the same I’d used on Morgaine’s dragon bubbles. If it can’t break this thing, nothing—”

The guardian stood. “Did you just say
Morgaine
?”

Artie stepped forward. “Yep.”

The guardian pointed at the knights. “So you did not come here through the secret tunnel—the one in the church in Glastonbury.”

“Glastonbury, England?” Thumb asked dubiously.

“Yes—that’s the one,” the guardian said.

“No, we did not,” Artie said forcefully.

“Then how did you get here?”

“The King’s Gate. Heard of that?” Kay blurted.

The guardian took a couple of steps back. “The King’s Gate . . . I . . . I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it, good sir faceless man!” Bercilak said.

“But that would mean that one of you—”

“Is King Arthur. Bingo. Now step aside,” Kay said.

Artie drew Excalibur for emphasis and said, “I am the king.”

“But . . . how?”

“Never mind that. I am the king and I demand that you let us pass.”

The guardian was silent for a few minutes as he processed all this. Then he crossed his arms and said, “I am sorry, but . . . none shall pass.”

“Bollocks!” Thumb yelped. “
We’re
passing. This is the king of both worlds you’re talking to.”

“None shall pass,” the guardian repeated.

Artie stepped back and swung for the fences at the wall with Excalibur for good measure. It put off a few sparks but accomplished nothing.

And that was when the sword told him something:
Answer.
Artie stepped away from the wall, his face twisted in thought. Answer? Answer? What did that mean?

Hadn’t the ghost of King Arthur I said something about an answer? That meant . . .

“You’re supposed to ask us a question!” Artie blurted.

“None shall pass.”

“That’s right, lad! Perceval hinted the same thing back in the olden days!”

The guardian stammered, “I . . . I . . .”

“Ask us the question,” Artie insisted.

“It’s just that, well—no one’s come for the Grail for eighty-two years, and besides, no one has made it as far as you have since this Perceval that the little fellow just mentioned. . . .”

Artie bristled. “Are you trying to say that you’ve
forgotten
the question?”

The creature hung his head. “Y-yes.”

“
What?
” Kay yelled. “You have got to be kidding.”

“Perceval and the Grail knights—they were here so long ago!” he cried defensively.

Artie turned a small circle, thinking.

“Did Sir Perceval ever tell it to you, Master Thumb?” Bercilak asked.

“No, of course not. The Grail was one of the biggest secrets anywhere, at any time.”

“Guardian,” Numinae announced in an officious voice, “you are derelict. If you cannot administer your duties, lower this barrier and let us leave. Since you are not fit, we
shall
pass!”

Artie waved his hand. “It’s all right,” he said loudly. Everyone was quiet, including the flummoxed guardian. “Because I know the answer.”

“Lad, how would you know the answer to an unasked question?”

“A friend told it to me,” Artie said. “Listen, guardian: If I give you this answer, then you will let us go?”

The guardian stroked his chin. “I suppose I have to. But you just get one try! I do remember that. Get it right, and you may leave with the Grail. Get it wrong, and you will
be stuck here forever!” He pointed to the undead knights in the mud pit below.

“Understood,” Artie said confidently.

“You sure about this, Art?” Kay asked.

“Don’t worry. I got this.”

“Okay, lad,” Thumb said. “Let him have it.”

Artie took a deep breath and said, “The answer is ‘me.’”

The faceless guardian didn’t speak at first. But then he laced his fingers together proudly and said, “Wrong.”

Artie stamped his foot and pointed to the exact spot where the Fisher King had sat. “No! That man was . . . King Arthur Pendragon. Or it was his body, at least. His ghost told me. And I am King Arthur remade, so the answer is ‘me.’ If you want to be technical about it, the answer is ‘King Arthur,’ plain and simple. But that is who I am. That is me!”