The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) (30 page)

“O God …”

“Do you!?”

“Yes … O God …”

“I love you. I love you, Unlea,” he said. “I’ll do what I may …”

“O God …”

He could hear the slapslapping of the following feet, and voices too now.

Why
must
they
follow? Let
them
but
come
close
when
my
brain
is
all
mine
and
I’ll
instruct
them
in
regret
…

“Fear not,” he said, but perhaps to himself mainly, because he felt the other world coming the way a dreaming is already on you by the time consciousness grasps the change. Heard the voices and the padding bare feet …

Layla felt it was a comedy. She only wished she were drunk enough to laugh. She realized she needed water but her mind was on wine, even here in this black cavern under the mountain.

She kept recalling the last few swallows she’d managed after discovering the gourd in a discarded pack as the ash storm broke over them in black whirlwinds. There’d been just enough to flush her with delicious numbness and she knew she could deal with all other problems, even here buried alive. It was a comedy running and hiding and chasing through the desolate, pitiful world …

Tungrim … had he survived? She decided he wouldn’t be easy to kill. He was a man, that one, no mistake … pity he was so crude and that they’d not met in early years.

Except
all
years
have
been
dismal
in
their
fashion
, she reminded herself. The winesoft blurring lay around her like a soothing touch. She wobbled slightly and wasn’t particularly concerned at seeing nothing in all directions and having no formed notions of what was to come …
A
man
as
others
weren’t
if
it
comes
to
that
.
But
do
I
go
to
his
frozen
lands
with
him
and
become the lady
of
his
longhouse? Imagine
what
his
mother
must
he
like
…
At
least
Parsival’s
was
dead
… She frowned now that she was thinking about him.
The bastard
…
did
he
ever
trouble
to
stir
to
my
side
of the bed?

“No more,” she muttered, “no more …”

Hugged herself suddenly, feeling the dank draughts that sucked foul stinks along with them. She believed, without having to phrase it internally, Tungrim would find her one way or another, simply because that was another unsatisfying alternative to nothing better. She believed the calamities would somehow run their course (they always had) and strand her again in the wrong place in the wrong life with the man who wasn’t quite right enough … not quite, though good …

She wasn’t really aware of the sickly torchlight until she was already sloshing and stumbling over the half-submerged planks that served for flooring in the inhabited sections of the tunnel system. Blinked at the flames … went on … blinked at the runty folk who suddenly emerged from a cross-corridor. The shortest and widest of the crew had a beard that coiled in patches along his jawline like coppery wires, face fishbelly pale. He gawked at her with washed-out eyes widened in something between awe and outrage.

What
repellent
little
things
, she thought.
Do
they
grow
them in the
slime
here?
She giggled. There were even females, she noted. No shorter, the near one was, but laced with fat and sags like, she quipped inwardly, a bound roasting beef, half-naked as the rest.

What
charms
…

“Have you tongues?” she asked. It turned out not all did because the wide one yawned his mouth and pointed at the stump.

“Blaaaaerr,” he said. Then smiled. Gawked. Moved closer, still smiling. Touched her stained leathers with stubby fingers as if wonderingly.

How
well
spoken
, she thought,
and
what
fine
teeth
…

“You live here?” she asked, raising her voice pointlessly.

Scatterbeard nodded with vigor and tugged at the fabric.

“Blaaahhher,” he explained, gesturing, smiling.

“This is no doubt your court,” she said. “Is there feasting and dancing this morrow?”

She walked past the group and wasn’t really aware that they were all closing in around her until she caught her foot between two boards and reeled forward, half-running, and several sets of hands clutched her and she was down, kneeling, staring into the flabby woman’s faces, shadows setting off the bulges and sinking the tiny eyes out of sight.

Layla didn’t struggle. Wondered why they didn’t help her up or release her.

“I have a thirst,” she told them. “Have you any wine?” She shrugged in the softly firm gripping hands. “Or ale, for all of that? But wine’s a noble’s drink … still …”

The woman, almost face to face with Layla on her knees, stood there, expressionless, nothing moving but the flame-wavers. The hands kept firm. She was only just beginning to be afraid.

“Alllbhhhhooo,” the voice said in her ear now and some one of them laughed. The breath in her face was like soured flesh. “Blaaatoooo!” Violent, spittle spraying.

She somehow knew he’d still be smiling. Reality was penetrating as no one moved.

Oh
, she thought.
Oh
…
oh
…

The pig stood there, upright, scarlet gaze glaring, spacious head near the roof of the passageway, great body gleaming, a pale reflection of the baleful eyes, and John trembled with awe and fell to his knees, hands gripped, interlocked against his lean chest.

“Thou hast preserved me in the midst of Thy wrath, Lord!” He felt the terrible look penetrating him, burning his soul naked. He felt exalted. Felt an inner trembling surrender. Thou hast brought me whole through the storm of Thy darkness. I serve Thee only, Lord!”

The vast shape remained fixed. Eyes glared, blank fire. John waited for its voice to sound … waited for a sign … Felt no hunger or thirst. Watched the sleek, luminous, towering porcine form as if all nourishment flowed from the raised front trotters, the thick snout itself: the mystery of its substance …

Clinschor and Gobble and several ragtag dwarves came out of a cross-corridor. The pig whispered and John called out:

“Wait!”

And Clinschor turned, eyes tracking, vaguely.

“Who’s this?” Gobble asked.

“We must bring the Holy Grail —”

“What?” Clinschor focused, frowned. “What?”

“I have been told. By our Beloved.”

“What?”

“Where did you come from?” Gobble wanted to know. He was wondering whether these two might not be brothers, both emaciated, filthy and wild-eyed. While he believed in lord masters greatness, he remained concerned by his condition.

“We must take the Grail with us and raise statues of the Mighty Beloved in every church in every land.”

Gobble watched Clinschor ponder this idea with deepening frowns.

“Who’s this mad creature?” Gobble wondered.

Clinschor was now making intricate passes with his free hand.

“Back, devil!” he commanded. “Grababebble Grabab Grabab!” He incanted. “You cannot steal my power. Begone, devil, begone! I adjure thee!” Leaped up and down and flailed his bony arm in the other’s face. John stood, swaying. Clinschor spat next, frothing with fury. “I’ve been too soft and tender,” he said, nodding. “No more of that … no more …” Whirled and walked away. Gobble followed and then John staggered after, skinny fists clenched.

“Betrayer!” John cried, frantic. “We must save the churches! It’s His command! Men’s souls must be cleansed! This is our work!” He clutched at Clinschor, who swung the Grail hand just as Gobble whacked the fanatical priest with the flat of his blade. John fell flat, raging, agonized, clawing at the mud, blood in his eyes, cried after them:

“Betrayer! … Betrayer! …” The pig voice whispering instructions.

Clinschor was smiling, holding up the fist that prisoned the sacred splinter.

“No magic can stand against me,” he explained. “You saw with your own eyes.”

Gobble’s own eyes were watching his master sidelong as he sheathed his sword. Blinked. Frowned faintly …

“I think we should rest and eat something, lord master,” he suggested.

“Nonsense. I need no mortal sustenance anymore.” Smiled. “I have returned from the land of the dead. I cannot die again.”

“Ah,” breathed Gobble. Frowned and watched as they labored deeper into the tunnel. Then his eyes went back to their customary restless rolling, as if ever searching for an exit or watching for a foe.

“I belong, as soon as you will, Gobba, to the powers.” Smiled and stuck out his chest with simple pleasure. “Soon all will belong to them,” he added, chipper, refreshed …

Broaditch actually heard the scream. He was holding a long, thin-stemmed mace. He’d just found it leaning against a damp wall as they carefully moved from torch to spread-out torch.

“A woman,” he told his companion.

“What?” Lohengrin, who was nearly past the entrance, wondered. He peered ahead hoping to sight Clinschor. He assumed he’d find the nearest way out.

Broaditch, thinking of Alienor, was instantly heading down the darker passage even as the knight hesitated a step.

“It makes little sense to go this way,” he called after him.

“At this point,” the other responded over his bulky shoulder, “it makes little sense to put one foot before the other.”

Around a bend … another, no torchlight here. Broaditch banged and scraped along, ripping his hands on the gritty stones … heard another female cry, much closer. Lohengrin, losing ground, cursed and rasped his chain mail until sparks flew …

Broaditch was suddenly standing, panting, in a low, squarish chamber lit by a central fire that smoked back into the place as the flue sucked the flames into the rockroof. He thought:

The
picture’s
come
to
life!

Remembering instantly (what he hadn’t been likely to forget anyway) the bizarre paintings on the walls and ceiling of the wagon full of whores he’d traveled in before reaching the country where he’d found the famous Grail castle. The paintings had amazed him and now he froze, seeing the slender, long-haired nude woman shockingly outspread in the smoky light, limbs stretched in four directions (he couldn’t see the ropes on wrists and ankles yet), a small, flaccid-bodied female bent forward between her legs as if drinking from her groin while several (
children
, he first thought) pale little naked males writhed around and over her, small hands plucking at her flesh and one another’s, joining together like acrobats, grunting and gurgling, the bound woman yelling as Broaditch broke his brief trance and moved forward as Lohengrin crashed through the last twists of the passage.

“… you fucked, foul, diseased mute filth!” she was yelling. “Oh, Christ!! Remove that fat asshole of a face from my private garden else I’ll piss in your scummy mouth! You pig bitch! Fat, fat dwarf filth! Untie me, I say … you pack of dwarfed degenerates! Free me, I say!”

And Broaditch was even laughing a little as he raced past the flames and heard Lohengrin’s stunned expletive behind him as he stopped and uncertainly shifted his mace in his grip. He felt vaguely like a parent finding children in the hayloft while he resembled, in the flameflaring, a demonic judge of hell’s remoter pits.

Some of them looked up, pale, interlocked with organs of action that large men might have envied, and beckoned him into the heap with grunts and choice, proffered flashes of anatomy; while the fat little female licked and slobbered in the bottom of the lady’s belly … they tugged and sucked at her, reminding him of kittens round a dam.

“Great God,” Broaditch said.

“… disgusting, loathsome,” Layla was going on, then, seeing him: “Are you another of these
things
?”

“Free her,” he told them. It had little impact.

Lohengrin had arrived. Broaditch heard his breathing.