The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (26 page)

“Very well, then,” she announced, voice unsteady, nodding. “Very well.”

“Very well what?”

“Go on,” she said. Nodded. “Go.”

“Unlea,” he pleaded, “seems this a fit time for —”

“You never cared, that’s plain to see. I’m ashamed … ashamed … You’re helping me from pity only … pity!”

“What dung and nonsense, Unlea.”

“Ahaha,” she cried, “yet I see it plain enough!”

He saw her teeth nervously working on the finger. She wasn’t looking at him.

“This is absurdity!” he suddenly yelled, hoping for effect and frustrated too. “I love you!”

“Ahaha.”

“Oh, God in heaven!” He grabbed her wrist and she was struggling, wild, awkward, frantic out of all proportion, yelling:

“Free me! Free me, you bastard knight! Free me! You smug bastard! You faker! You sod of shit! Used me like a whore and murdered my husband …”

“No! Be still!”

“Used me used me used me! Faker! Smug bastard … Oh, God I’m alone with him … with him … I have nothing … nothing. Oh, God!”

He shook her violently, screaming now into her contorted, weeping, wild face:

“Be still! Damn you, be still! Unlea! I love you! I love you! I love you!”

And then they were both on their knees, her wrist in his hand, both sobbing, her greasy hair flopped across her face, reddened eyes running tears. He was gasping hoarsely for breath and remembering his life with Layla. He felt stupid, guilty, helpless …

“There’s nothing,” she kept saying, “nothing … nothing … nothing … I want to die please let me die … please …”

Though he believed he loved her he’d felt no truth in saying it. Looking at her he felt a sad, deep shock, thinking:

Oh
,
all
the
pain
…
the
pain
… so
needless
all
this
pain
…
here
we are at the end of the world and there’s still this pain …

He knelt and gathered her into his arms, pressed her hot face close, the wetness and unhappiness and pungent breath … holding her in the dried-up stream under the unrelenting sun, sobbing and kissing one another … then pulled and twisted and tore their garments free, stretching themselves out, gasping on hot, baked, sooty mud, ears roaring, blood beating, feeling himself arced hard, spearlike.

“Oh, darling Unlea,” he moaned, “Oh … Unlea … Unlea …”

Help
us
…
we
take
what
we
can
…
help
us
…
help
…

XXXVIII

“See here, see … see for yourself!” Clinschor was exulting, squatting at the fallen knight’s head. The brief flash of day was over, though it was barely past noon, because the canyon here was so high and narrow and twisted that the sun only showed when pouring straight down for a piece of an hour and then dusk rushed into dark down at the barren bottom. So he held the sputtering torch over Lohengrin’s gashed head, one long, thick finger aimed down, washed-out eyes reflecting the shaky light, hollowly, catlike, while his flesh seemed eaten to bone by the rocking shadows. John leaned in the wagon door to look on. Outside the remnants were squatting and sitting, chewing food and sipping from flasks. Broaditch and the other prisoners were close under the rock wall. One of the Truemen was handing out strips of dried meat. Broaditch dropped his piece without comment, staring with steady fury at the bent, bearded man who was grinning, mouth-breaking.
His
nose
seems
so
lost
in
hair
no
air
can
reach
it
, Broaditch commented to himself.
My
own
beard
at
least
grows
in
a
general
direction
and
not
looking
like
it
be
attacking
my
face
… and then the man handed him a drink and this time, gripping it between his bound hands, he grunted thanks.

Took a slug and it wasn’t just warm and clotted but metallic too (
As
though
I
cut
my
gums!
) and he was spitting and gagging and snarling a curse. There was enough light left floating in the dusk to show the thick black-red on the pale pebbles and spattered over his hands and lips.

Just as, within, Clinschor turned Lohengrin’s head on the dim planks and placed his pale finger in the glancing slice of a wound. His pale eyes rolled up and he shuddered and for a moment there was an image, a feeling, his mother’s round face across the table, his burly father working a beef bone into his beard and mouth, small very white teeth grinding and ripping into the flesh, and her voice too:

“Nay, my lord, that’s too hard a thing.”

“Be it?” the dark man replied. “What say you, boy?” Speaking now to Clinschor who was looking up at the big face and small, hard eyes. “He’s free with brag and boast most days.”

“Let him remain at home,” she insisted.

“But he claims to be a man already. And quite a one, eh, boy? Are you a great one, boy?”

He thought:
even
then
the
dark
magicians
worked
their
spells
against
me
…

“But no more,” he muttered … the feeling, the feeling standing there at the massive table, arms folded across his thin chest, nervous hands drumming and twisting, candlelight touching their faces with quivering fingers as if the flesh itself were loose, uncertain …

“What’s wrong with him, eh? He spoke large enough ere this!”

“Let him be, why can’t you?” she said.

But he refused to answer and felt his power gathering within, knew he was growing taller now and more massive moment by moment, concentrating on it, and knew his father would soon see his error and would feel the terrible strength of his son … felt himself towering, filling the hall with the massive force of himself.

“Clinschor,” she was saying, “are you ill, son? Son? …”

“I said no word,” he informed John, “and soon I smote the Devil with my magic!” the torchfire hollowed his sockets. “First there was only myself and then a time came of hundreds of thousands, yea, and more! A time came!” One large, pale hand flicked through a complex gesture expressing all these things. “And then, again, I was alone and betrayed by weakness, cowardice, stupidity!” Took breath.

John smiled a secret smile because he suddenly saw this being’s true form and this amused him and touched him with awe as well. It had instantly come clear to him. All the blood and pressure of the night had led him to this: here was no wandering madman, this was God’s own instrument. He saw splendid limbs and flaming eyes under the twisted, skinny, filthy, blasted guise and knew the pig face that spoke to him in secret, the pig that stood upright as a man in the shadows of his tent or on the lonely mountain trails, the red eyes fierce, commanding, the divine pig who’d found him in his wandering misery long ago and with stern compassion taught him God’s true and deepest will had now possessed this broken creature with his infinite spirit, force and wisdom.

“I lived in darkness,” he confided in Clinschor, who cocked his head to the side to listen, long finger still poked into the knight’s wound. “Aye, master.” Gazed with deep pleasure into the red pig eyes behind Clinschor’s sockets. “I was a priest, praying and blessing, hoping to heal the world’s pain … but I was young, master, and saw well the folly and wickedness of things, so I gathered the serfs and smashed at the foulness …”

The other blinked rapidly. This was a good servant, whatever he was saying he said “master.”

“Now it’s in my hands at last,” he said, “this scrap here —” Wiggled his fingertip in the shallow slash in the knight’s head that exposed a bright strip of metal, wedged into the temple bone, neither quite cool silver nor warm gold, in the changing light. “I bent close and lo! I read the writing in this hurt … Lo!” Moved his face near and peered into the split flesh edged with bared skull as if gazing into the head itself, it seemed to those men behind John who perched birdlike in the doorway.

John frowned, hearing these holy words from He whose name was known to him. He knew these were parables.

“Lord Sixsixis,” he said, leaning close to the upturned snout, that poked from behind the human bone, “divine one, I know it is written in the blood and flesh that we are to feed and drink from the substance of the unworthy. I have led my people to this. When all failed, when I were left helpless, searching in vain … in vain …” He was weeping. “… for truth and power … even then, lord, you showed me and lit my path … even before I knew Thee in Thy form, dread lord, Thou came when all my reasonings had failed, my plans confounded, and with a blade put to my throat by my selfsame hand to end this sorry life, Thy voice spoke unto me and shattered the false world and all appearances into shivers!” No numbers added, nothing grew straight, stars wheeled planless, men whirled among themselves like dustmotes in a turn of wind, babbling nonsense, dying for insubstantial dream after dream and he knew the madness was health because there was no sense save in nonsense. He found the end of all science and philosophy. And only nonsense freed him a last because there was no pity in anything but only the great grindstone of death smashing all things to meaningless dust and this pitilessness freed him from all inner conflicts. He saw the truth was pitiless and so became the truth and the pig whispered to him:
Feed
and
live!
Feed
and
die!
Feed
and
live!
Feed
and
die!

Clinschor squinted one reddened eye at him, face still close to the wound as if listening to it now. He clearly was listening to nothing else.

“I read the words and lo my strength multiplied,” he said.

Reached his arms wide as if everything could be embraced. The thundering voice suddenly rose to full force and shook and snapped in the confined space.

Broaditch, at the end of the rope, had moved close enough to the wagon to hear and see and then smell: a reeking of excrement poured from the doorway and he realized Clinschor must have been relieving himself without ever stepping outside.

“All things are my things!” the voice exploded.

As Broaditch edged closer one of the black-robes gripped him by the hair, yanked at his head until tears welled up.

“Back, sinner,” he snarled.

But the sinner stepped into the terrific pain so he could watch and saw Clinschor hook his fingers and rip the bright metallic shimmer out of the skull as the knight screamed and flopped wildly, horribly (Broaditch felt a shiver through his own blinding pain, hardly noticing the kicks raining on his dense body), thrashing in the torchlight like a man with falling sickness as Clinschor held high the sliver, yelling:

“The Grail! I have the Grail!” Seeing the host surrounding him, the calm, bearded giants and pale magicians weeping despair; female fiends with terrible, tender faces stretching out soft hands (he knew) to weaken him, tempting him to softness … he felt coming history shift toward strength and away from pale quoters of poems, singers of sweetness … prayers … held history in his clenched hand … away from soft arms and lying peace and empty embraces … away … Clutching the bloodwet fragment, he danced.

Lohengrin still howled and flopped around his feet. John crouched, transfixed, beholding the pig rise, expand trunk and trotters until it stooped, immensely filling the wagon, red eyes fist-sized, dimming the torches with their glare as the voice, beyond, he believed, anything human, cried:

“Hail victory! Hail victory!”

And Broaditch, stubborn and amazed, watched (head still sawed back and forth by the hair as the blows hit) John caper on the steps and gleefully raise his fist in wild salute, crying out between Clinschor’s boomings:

“Praise … all … the glory … all praise … highest pig … the pig! … Thine eyes surpassing … bless … bless … wonder … Thy form …”

As Lohengrin spasmed into Clinschor’s legs and sent him reeling forward into John, who beheld the holy one reaching to embrace him and held him on the wagon step like a lover.

Broaditch finally gave ground and stumbled back with the others on the rope. Lohengrin suddenly sat up, blood streaking his face as Clinschor squealed, gibbered and frothed, snapping his teeth, clutching the metal, clawing free of his worshipper with the other hand, screaming and raging:

“It’s mine alone! Mine! None else may touch it!” Rolling and scuttling back into the recesses of the vehicle, squatting, gesturing with his free hand in intricate passes, massive voice intoning now, harsh, abracadabric …

As John stood still, nodding rapidly, blinking, understanding the meaning, parabolic hints, saying:

“Yes … Yes … I see … I see …”

Here was the mystery he was not perfected to grasp yet: “None else may touch it.” That question needed pondering … was there truly an “it” that could be grasped? He smiled as he reasoned. There were many subtle points to be considered … the divine one was taking him yet another step on the path to wisdom and perfection … He nodded as Clinschor frothed and spasmodically scribbled on the flame-shaken air, voice muttering like stormwind in a chimney.

John turned to the remainder of his followers, raising his arms, benedictory (as Lohengrin was still trying to rise) and victorious.

“Brothers and children, the spirit has made it plain. Nothing can be possessed for death flows among us like water among weeds and the strong wind leaves only the best trees so those who’ve perished have left us stronger than before! And we go forth again to devour the sinners!”

The men cheered. Broaditch found energy to dryly spit, which brought back the blood taste. His companion on the line, the gatherer of the dead, Vordit, touched him with bound hands.

“Why did you bear those blows?” he asked.

Broaditch shrugged. They were moving again.

“They’re going to slaughter us like sheep,” he said.

“They’re all dead mad.”

“They eat human meat. I saw it. And swill blood.” Spat again.

They followed the tremendously creaking wagon, crunching over the dry pebbles. John still stood on the steps, arms gripping the doorframe. Inside it was dark again.

“They’ll find little enough on me,” Vordit said, “as things stand … anyway, I’m dead … what matter?”

“There’s no humor in such horrors.”

“Hah. You say so. There’s nothing horrible no more. It’s all one thing … all one thing …”

“No.”

“They can roast gooseshit. What care I if they bury us dead in ground or in themselves? We all come to be death’s dung in the end … So there’s nothing neither way …”

“No,” his massive companion repeated, gritting his teeth, thinking about the walled arbor he’d built at home, the clustered grapes in mellow sunlight … quick birds gusting and rattling the leaves …

Never
, he thought,
all
one
thing
…

The rope bit his raw wrists, his new bruises starting to ache.

“Never,” he muttered.

Father
, Lohengrin was saying, the tall blond man with blue eyes like dew on crystal leaned above him, and he felt himself reaching up slowly as if the air were liquid, arms too short …

Father
… helpless under a great, soft weight, reaching for the remote face framed by the shoulder-length shimmer of fine hair and then the warm, firm hands gripping him …
Father
… tipping, lifting up into magic terror and exhilaration, thrilled in fear and joy and surprise as the view unfolded, the rich brightnesses (he knew to call candles), the vast blank and shadowed rushing into mysteries and strange perspectives … an open space, white hard white light points quivered around a perfect glow, …
moon
, he thought,
moon
… and then he felt himself scream as he spun and floated in gripless nothing and then the safe hands closed, soft, irresistible and then tossed and caught him again and he screamed with the fearjoy this time and wonder:
Father!
Father!
Father!