The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (10 page)

XIX

“The holy citadel lies below,” Pleeka told them as Broaditch was just heaving the wagon to the crest of a suddenly acute slope that fell away into a stony valley where the twilight died in slow mists and campfire smoke among dim blots of what, he thought, must be huts and hovels and what seemed a broken-backed fortress or at least an uneven, high wall that (so far as he could tell) blocked off nothing from nothing …

The girl, Leena, was beside him, Alienor next to her. Then Tikla. The teenage boy and Torky paced along behind the cart.

Broaditch was sweating. The boy and Torky leaned into it with him at difficult twists and rises. The inert madman or hermit, tortured victim, he thought, or whatever he was, lay flat and still but for his almost random, sighing breaths. Pleeka hurried ahead like a man who finally sees home, long-striding down the twisting, slashed scrawl of trail, his form dimming, Broaditch fancied, as he descended like a sinking swimmer.

“From here,” he suddenly, shrilly said, “the brothers go out to all parts of the country to pray and bring peace to the suffering. This is the heart of the great crusade of truth.” As the dusk thickened his voice seemed suspended, bodiless. “To heal this wounded land where war, sickness and desolation hold sway …”

Broaditch was blinking to keep awake and his mind rambled abstractly … thought about roads and trails … about how the earth was so perfectly made that everything had its space and being, and only a hopelessly diseased mind could miss the tender wisdom of arrangement, of breath and air, light, growing, and all intricacies of leaf and blossom, food, water; earth beating like a vast heart, nourishing itself and its creatures endlessly … and then men tracking over it, their needs and fears and hopes pouring them down paths that feet made roads. Where men clustered huts sprouted (because the land ordered this too, its fecund nodes drawing life like water to a pool) and then the lord’s castle, the village … city …

Leena was staring above the hill at the last stripe of sunset and was thinking:

It’s
there
too not the burning it’s not the burning it’s the blood
…

Her fingers worked nervously with the stained linen blouselike garment, rolling, smoothing, bunching it over and over. Because there had been smoke everywhere too, pouring through the halls, filling the chambers, stinging … scorched flesh … and in the yard (where the gate was down) flamelight mounting, roaring, flinging the shadows all around the inner walls, cords chewing into her arms, iron fingers gripping too. The shadow bodies, arrows stuck in (her mind said) like sticks in mud … she wouldn’t focus so they were just curds and spillings of the flailed darkness and as they dragged her to the gate she couldn’t blot away the firecolor and then she knew flame bled too, the restless, running, spilling of it and she shut her eyes tight.

“Leena,” Alienor broke into her reverie, “that was the name you gave?”

“Yes.” She didn’t break her stare, holding the blood away carefully.

“Where came you from, child?”

She blinked slowly. The last rubyglowing trace was dimming into purple. She held it carefully, watching the night lap over it …

Broaditch was trying to see Pleeka on the descent. The trail twisted and vanished into the evening. He shrugged, leaning on the tracebar.

“Save for going backwards,” he announced, “there’s no choice of directions here.”

“You never cared to do that even when sensible,” his wife pointed out, still studying the teenage girl whose wide, still eyes held the last stains of the sunken sun almost without a blink. “Child,” Alienor asked gently. The girl had really said nothing beyond her name and “Yes, I’m thirsy …”

“You’re not stopping, are you?” Leena inquired, staring.

“Not for long, methinks,” Alienor answered, glancing at Broaditch.

“I want to sleep, Da,” Tikla said, rubbing her eyes.

“Not till we sound bottom here,” her father told her. Turned to the two boys. “Stay behind and when I tell you, pull back and dig in your heels, eh, lads?”

“Aye,” Torky affirmed. The other nodded in the virtual night.

The last red was gone and when Alienor looked the girl was already heading down the zigzag slope.

“What’s his name,” Broaditch asked.

“It’s Bink,” Torky supplied.

“Ah, Bink.”

“Yes, sir,” the quiet boy responded.

“Hold on well when I say so.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A polite lad,” Broaditch said to Alienor.

A
rose
in
the
winter
, she thought.

“No doubt,” he muttered, slipping slightly, catching himself. “Curse it … no doubt I only do this …” Bit his lip as he twisted the stiff bars and flat cart around a violent bend in the spare footing of the trail down. “… this wonderfully senseless enterprise … Grip fast!” he suddenly called back to the boys. Alienor was ahead with his daughter, walking just behind Leena. “The Devil’s piss,” he muttered. “No doubt …”

I
only
do
this
because
I
started
it
…
no
,
I
amend
that
,
only
because
it’s senseless
…

He could see what had to be campfires in the valley. He could almost smell the roasting and broiling. A few steps on, cooking flesh scented the rising wind and just that hint triggered his hunger.

Potatoes
are
silver
these
days
, he reflected,
and
meat
gold
…
watch
it!

“Grip, boys!” he said, louder than he intended. Felt the slight tug as they held on and he dug his heels in the stony surface. A steep side went down into vague glimmerings and deeper blots …

I’m
mad
…
it
took
me
fifty
-
odd
years
to
be
certain
of
it
…
easy
…
easy
…

They were rolling smoothly again but just enough faster so that his legs had to dance a little and he knew it was too late to halt now. Gaining on Alienor and the girl he called ahead:

“Ali! Clear the path when you can.” Over his shoulder: “You lads hold well on unless I call
release
, you mind me?”

“Aye, father,” said Torky, voice quavering from the bounces.

The cart was terrifically loud now, booming, crackle-creaking at his back, leaping high (when he looked), a dark, tormented crashing out of all proportion to what he knew the actual bulk was, looming in fixed pursuit, the fragile tracebars seeming but straws holding off a vast, dark weight, rushing him faster and faster … legs snapping up and down, jarring his skull, stones digging through his sandals, ahead the blur of Alienor (Tikla invisible in her arms) and Leena’s blond hair a faint gleam, and him shouting now, voice feeble in his throat as the creaking, smashing exaggeration of sound and mass were swallowing up everything … faster … faster … Torky and the boy yelling too and himself, craning around:

“Let go! Both of you! Let go!”

The wagon seemed to lift over him, feet churning mainly air as the lank figure suddenly sat up and clung to the rattling sides against the madly shifting tilt and his tremendous voice flattened all other sound for a moment (Broaditch couldn’t tell if they were actually words) and Alienor flashed past, ghostly, pressed flat against a bulge of rockface, then the girl not even turning aside, barely glancing up …

Christ!
he thought.
Christ!

… and then, somehow, they were past as if shadow and substance had melted together (he never understood how) because the path was too narrow … then the terrific voice ceased and his own was shouting into the rattling din and rushing wind:

“Jump out! I cannot hold!”

And where was Pleeka, could he be far ahead? … Then he was suddenly sitting on air, then the racing earth pounded his buttocks with warm, dull pain and the banging dinning passed like a dark wing flutter over him and he waited for the impact and then it was past and lost and he just sat there, panting, numbed (the pain underneath just beginning to come through), halted in shock and silence, one leg over a sheer cliff edge, thinking:

What
a
thing
to
have
died
doing
…
Carting
a
madman
…

Listening to it going on, clacking, banging, suddenly frail again like (he imagined) a child’s toy … gone … and then Torky and the boy were breathlessly beside him while he just sat there looking out over the wide night, staring into the indecipherable emptiness below where faint spots of flame reminded him of smeared fireflies …

He felt the rush of air and opened his eyes, knowing instantly that the demons had shattered his defenses while he lay weakened and were dragging him through the earth to the pits of hell. Felt himself flung back and forth and sat up already fighting for control, beginning his chant for power, hands gripping what he didn’t know were the sides of the wagon, booming out his magic as he sped faster and faster down into the gaped darkness towards fangs of fire; he saw his magic drive the female demons back (heard their pitiful shouts of dismay), knew his power and fell silent and smug, holding on as the wild ride accelerated and he gathered his strength, calmly waiting for the bottom where he would subdue the king of devils because all this was ordained by destiny. He would descend and gather the forces he needed to fulfill his final quest …

He was smiling as he reached the long, smooth, grassy hill where the cliff path twisted suddenly straight. He watched the fires grow, his rags fluttering in the wind … grinned …

Broaditch finally thought he heard a crash sufficient to mark the end of the cart, but much later and far, far, below, so he couldn’t be sure …

Alienor was there now, close enough to see the hint of his big face. She said nothing.

“Mama,” Tikla said, “I’m
so
tired …”

Broaditch, aware of her, said nothing either. Finally, one leg still dangling down, he raised his heavy shoulders and shrugged.

* * *

He saw the fiend forms dark against the long, hot blaze, rushing up at him. Readied to will himself motionless, sorting over his spells for the purpose, then starting one so that the shadowy figures were turning, standing, reacting as he came bellowing vehemently, the wagon leaping high and wild, still gaining speed until suddenly (soundless to him) it was gone from underneath (he had no perception of the wall-like ridge that ripped it away) and he was flying (much to his satisfaction), sailing over the flames in a flash of bright and terrific heat that lit loose ends of his rags so that he trailed fluttering sparks as he sat comfortably on the wind, passing over the upturned faces (none of which had seen the cart anymore than he’d seen the rock), and then he was caught by a great, clawed hand that plucked him from the air and shook, bounced him violently as his breath struggled and arms gestured magically, fighting this lord of devils, spinning and rocking up and down in the sure grip of what he didn’t know was a gnarled treelimb, voice finally bursting forth again so that the astonished audience, peering into the night, heard the flying figure’s thunderings pounding rhythmically from midair as rows of them fell on their knees. Finally he felt, with satisfaction, the fierce grip impotently relent and drop him to soft earth where he incredibly stood on bony, vibrating legs and declaimed at them with titanic authority:

“I have come,” he roared, shaking their very bones and the trees and ground too, “I have come among you!! I have come to take hold of all that is mine!!”

XX

Howtlande looked with smug pleasure at his raiders as they marched (in semi-order, he had to admit, but at least with a look of purpose and force) across the misty morning meadows beside a gently twisting trickle of stream under the hot, sweet sky. He chewed a strip of pork rind as his mule tap-stepped almost delicately along.

When
I
came
down
that
mountain
after
defeat
, he was musing,
I
was
one
man
alone
and
now
I’m
over
a
hundred
strong
and
tomorrow
,
who
can
tell?

He squinted above the dry-looking treetops at a high battlement. Just as Finlot had reported, there was a castle in this rich riverbottom valley — he hadn’t completely registered the significance of the dwindling streams and browning, heat-shocked countryside. He was concerned with food, weapons, horseflesh … Finlot had seen few armed men. All these strongholds, he knew, were depleted by war and disease.

Glanced at bushy-haired Lohengrin who was walking ahead beside the dour knight. Decided he’d buy the young princeling with bits of his own history an inch at a time.

Lohengrin was frowning at the ground — sharp, dark face downtilted. He was leafing through memories, testing connections … feelings … repeating his name to see what that might bring to the surface. His wound had healed and the scarred tissue was less red. But it always ached.

He felt trapped, somehow, and tense. There was nowhere else for him, he believed, so here he was … But once there was a real clue, a clear road, he vowed, he’d follow it …

He glanced at the grim knight beside him, in grayish, pitted armor.

“Sir,” he said and the fellow cocked a long, hooked eyebrow in his direction, “what would you make of the name
Lohengrin
?”

The knight took it in, showed nothing.

“Why ask you?” he finally responded. The sun pressed steadily on the dry earth. Tree shadows flickered over them.

“I wish to learn things concerning him.”

“Do you mean to meet him in single combat?”

“Is he a strong fighter?”

“He’s known to be. And a vicious bastard, so they say.”

They had just passed through a row of close-spaced poplar trees and the big, rambling castle lay just ahead. A few ragged peasants were already fleeing the half-parched fields, a plough still falling, the pale, shirtlike garments flapping around bare, skinny limbs.

The raiders spread out quickly with curses and yells. Howtlande was bellowing orders that were only partly effective.

“Come on, youngblood,” the longfaced knight at his side told him, “let’s pass the time. One way’s like another.”

They moved out at a half-trot in a jingle and clatter of arms, crossing bare, furrowed earth, fine dust billowing like smoke around their legs.

“Do you know this Lohengrin,” he called over to the other man. The line was fully extended now. They entered the ragged, chest-high, dried-out wheat that swooshed and crumbled around them. He thought how strange it looked: head and shoulders seemed to float as the wind blew long, slow brittle waves into them. They appeared to rush blindly at the looming walls as if borne by an irresistible tide. “Do you?” he repeated and the knight glanced over, eyebrow hooked.

“Never saw him,” he said. “I knew his father.”

“What?” For some reason this idea stunned him. His father. That hadn’t occurred to him — as if he’d had none … or mother either … mother … “Who?” he asked. “Who is his father?”

One of the fleeing farmers (who’d been scraping around the hopeless crop) was slow and fat and some of the fleeter raiders were all around him before they actually broke out of the wheat field. The serf’s round head bounced along, the rest of him covered and then his lump of hat flew off and he made (Lohengrin thought) a strange bleating oinking sound and vanished under the browned grain that shook the hot, slanting sunlight where he flopped and struggled.

They
must
have
struck
him
low
for
I
saw
no
blow
, Lohengrin thought.

“Who is his father?” he shouted now, because the men were cheering and hooting and clashing their weapons. There was a flash in his mind: the golden hair and the sweetfaced, dark lady and in a mixed rush of anger and outrage he knew them both …

The serfs ahead, shouting and gesturing, scurried through the moatless gate and Howtlande, behind everyone on the pale mule, was yelling something hoarse and moist. Then the gate banged shut in their faces and they pulled up, panting and cursing.

“That was well-crafted,” Skalwere piped up from under the outward tilted wall. “What cunning!” He spat into the dust and watched Howtlande, whose cheeks puffed in and out around his scowl.

“Rip down the gate!” he shouted. “It’s wooden. Hack it to shreds! There’s no army here.”

“Hack it yourself, you bloated toad!” Skalwere suggested.

Some of the men fell to work with ax and sword, chipping and banging away at the thick boards.

Lohengrin was suddenly swaying, legs rigid, locked, palms pressed to his head, an incredible white, flaring pain searing the side of his skull, so violent that the massive wall before him shook and shimmered as though a wind blew empty fabric and the solid earth went cloudy and he felt a raw brightness, beating, beating in his head, pouring out through his eyes so that the sunlight mixed into one blinding perception that seemed to suspend all movement and penetrate earth, stone, all open space … himself too … felt himself, the flowing forward of his life, saw (as if all time were a flat terrain) a road and a place that was solid in all the wild, roiling mists of life, smokelike castles, towns, people, deeds … a thin road running to a solid ground (not earth), a place closed without sides, shelter without roof or walls, water without flow or wetness … his imagination briefly flailed at these images that were not pictures of anything … people without form too but solid … so firm and safe and solid …

He realized he was falling, but since no falling was possible, knowing bubbled up like warm, sunny, melting laughter and he understood that Lohengrin had melted and yet was so solid, so strong, so irreducible … the names melted and the limbs, torso, head but what was left was solid …

He landed forward, hands gripping his skull as if struck down by a blow and fell about a foot or so into the rough-set stones under the battlements, locked legs holding him almost upright, back arched, face resting on the wall as if he meant, somehow, to push himself through it, body still as the mossy granite itself. Howtlande and the others stared …