The Grail War (44 page)

“But,” he muttered, “there
is
only nothingness. I have seen — ”

Clinschor cut in, fixing him with his somber eyes.

“You,” he told him, “are a cloud of nothing. Like your title, Duke. You are all words, fancies, fears … You see …? But I'll destroy everything else and let the power fill you and possess you!” He smiled and nodded, rhythmically, hypnotically. “Yes … yes … yes … out of nothing all is born, my little Dukeling … yes … yes … yes …

And then the first blast of sheeting rain slammed and tilted that iron mass, tearing, popping the slit open, pressure and drafts rippled and tugged at the hangings around the interior. The dinning on the metal shell was shockingly loud. Lohengrin went to his hands and knees as the floor swayed and bucked …

Foaming torrents spilled over the rocky ledges and poured in muddy floods down the slopes. Parsival saw the castle lit by lightning as he came out from under the muffling forest. The winds were still gusting and he cut into them at a half-run. His body shivered. The air was just the wet side of the freezing point. The sky ripped, cracked, hissed, seemed to bend low to pound at him as the earth seemed to dance and stagger. In all his life he’d never known such fury: the rain would veer, spin, and needle straight into him, billow away, feint … pause … cascade …

Parsival was wading through the great moat’s seething overflow when he spotted the gate. The drawbridge looked to be half-lowered. He put his head down and shouldered into the sucking, twisting, pushing wind that howled and keened through every fractional lull in the thunder. He heard the hollow rattle of his teeth in his head … As the flashes flung shadows around the towers and walls, he was astonished by the size of the place. It was not so big in his memory, though all else was the same.

He breathed violently and flapped his arms to warm them. Was he going to have to swim in? He was up to his shins in muddy water now. Great streams crashed down from the walls and battlements and slapped into the moat.

He thought there was just a chance he might reach the end of the bridge with a good jump. He was almost close enough to try when he felt it: the “claws” that had ripped at his heart. They were just touching the outer aura of his power, just maintaining contact, poised, waiting … He felt his pulse quicken and his shivering stopped for the moment.

He was craning around, but all he could see were bounding and rebounding fragments of torn sky, quaking woods, masses of piled stone, sheets of violent water …

“Very well, then!” he shouted into the over-roar that blew his muffled words to whispers at his mouth. “I’m here! I’ve returned! Parsival!” Boom! Roar! Hiss! Crash! Howl! “I’m waiting!!”

Broaditch reached the back of the castle just as the worst of the mad storm hit: clouds mixing with smoke and steam, driving overhead, streaming through the towers.

He smiled wryly and accepted the fact that a long, massive tree had uprooted and fallen to bridge the rising moat. He raced across the open heath and climbed onto the trunk and (as the wind and sleet mounted to a solid blow) quickstepped across, skidding and slipping and finally diving the last few feet to keep from toppling in …

Coming back, he realized, watching everything churning to froth, was going to be another tale to tell …

Huddling close to the fortress wall, stumbling blindly around the periphery, Broaditch began to feel ridiculous again. There was really no proof of anything, and his mind kept wanting to smooth over the past and convert it to coincidence, confusion, dreams … He found his mind preferred even the most terrifying and meaningless horrors of sword, fire, storm, and flood to the inexplicable other worlds … It kept telling him to turn, crawl across that fallen tree and run, hide, survive … find his way home …

“Home,” a voice said, and he jerked his head around, holding up the spear, looking, thinking,
no
doubt
I
spoke
aloud
just
now
and
knew
it
not
, seeing no one in the multiple crackling blazings.

His body involuntarily leaped as a bolt shattered a tree near the moat, igniting it into a briefly steaming blaze and showing a shadow in the wall that turned out to be a fracture. He scrambled into it, clambering over wet, fallen blocks and soon found himself out of the rain in a vaulted passageway dimly, fleetingly lit by the unceasing flashes filtering in from high window slashes.

Being inside, he thought, he might as well go on as not, after coming so far, senseless as it no doubt would prove … The thunder was steady, hollow, muted … Even if he beheld a miracle a minute, he mused, he would still find space to doubt between them … The fact was, to his mind and feelings, the only real things were these cold stones, his soaked, chilled body, the howling night … almost, because he sensed something that he kept saying
no
to … something … formless … tidal, that worked through all the chinks in all the solid blocks …

He accepted being afraid and in doubt since there wasn’t any choice except to curl up helpless and cower in emptiness. He gasped in a deep, deep breath.

There
are
no
half
-
measures
in
life
, he explained to himself,
no
practice
.
It's
all
to
a
finish
every
time
…

He went on, steadily, taking a turn … another … The bluish flickers faded now as he arrived at a branching: one passage slanted down; the other rose and curved inward. He had no basis for choice. So he grinned. No more basis than for being here at all. And he'd never seen this forking in any visions. But he wasn't about to hesitate. That would finish it right here. He flourished the spear (for no particular reason) and plunged into the rising right-hand passage, into pitch blackness, holding the weapon out before him, tapping floor and walls as he went up and around and on past side tunnels and cross branches, grimly pursuing the irrevocability of it …

How
long
have
I
been
in
here
? Broaditch asked himself. Time was a blankness. And when he saw the warm glow of light up ahead, he was positive (in a mix of anxiety and relief) that there were others in this deserted place — even if it had to be the bearded mage, after all … or worse … At least there would be guidance, however ambiguously expressed in mystical hintings. He allowed himself a mild smile.

However, it was an empty chamber shaped like a barrel, and he stooped, checking the ceiling height with his hand. There were three diverging doorways yawning black and vacant in the unwavering light from an immense oil lamp, whose light might burn, he could see, for years unattended.

So it was all up to nothing again. He squatted, then knelt to rest. His garments were drier. He cocked his head, thinking he heard a voice coming from one of the arches.

He listened … nothing …

He sighed. No easy way. He forced himself to get up and march without hesitation for the central passage. Since he considered there was no chance, his only hopeless hope lay in senseless — no, reasonless — decisiveness. His mind, at this point, was slyly entertained. He now assumed he was being watched and was playing to the unseen watchers. At some point they’d appear to help him. Gradually this idea moved toward conviction, except (though underlying everything he did) this belief was unstated and his surface thoughts kept denying it.

The way was narrowing steadily until he had to twist his heavy shoulders sideways and was trying to convince himself to turn back from moment to moment … but the idea was too disturbing: it snapped the thread he was subliminally following, clutching at … so he pressed on into the gradually funneling tunnel … felt alternately hot and cold, felt both kinds of sweat soaking him, and for the first time he noticed how neutral and pleasant the temperature was in here, not damp or chill, as might be expected … He tapped on with the spear haft …

He was almost dry, so how long had he been wandering?

The passageway seemed to curve constantly left, and he was going faster now, on the edge of being frantic, groping ahead with the spear, scraping himself along the rough-cut wall …

He kept imagining he glimpsed terrifying spectral shapes formed from the purple-violet flashings in his eyes, and in the echo of his own feet he heard others, and the drumming of his heart filled his ears with frightening rumbles until his senses became a terror to him that he sought to escape, plunging through this otherwise stone-silent, utter darkness …

On and on … until he saw a distant gleaming. He couldn’t tell how far away it was. Part of his mind suddenly took a red-orange spot for a single, demonic eye glaring, and he almost stopped but didn’t … The passage was gradually widening again, and in his present state he believed this to be a very positive sign, going faster now with greater confidence, sure, for some reason, that he’d finally reached the end of his senseless winding through this absurdly designed fortress. Perhaps this was where they meant him to reach before showing themselves. This was clearly some kind of test … Yes, the watchers would soon show themselves … His senses were focused and stable again. Amazing what a single fragment of light could do. He felt brisk and confident as he stepped into the illuminated, round room and looked at the same three dark doorways again …

On the hill above the castle, Valit and Irmree were crouched under a jut of shale cliffside, sheltered somewhat from the billowing, seething storm. His arm rested around her thick shoulders, and her plump, blue-eyed face pressed against his chest as one hand, very gently, with apprehension and tenderness, stroked the back and crooked fingers of his.

The rain slashed past, spattering off the rock face, stinging where it caught their flesh. Her hand moved over and over, softly, almost wonderingly … He glanced at her, somehow puzzled — no, questioning. He frowned slightly. Then he turned his palm and grasped her firmly, kissed her flushed cheek, then, hesitatingly, her lips … He pulled back, looking still puzzled …

* * *

Broaditch stood a minute, heart racing, feeling sick and wobbly, frustrated, angry, and desperate. He looked wildly around the warmly lit chamber. Then, running, spear held out before him, he tore through another archway, going much too fast, tip sparking, giving a bare fraction’s warning as he twisted aside and rebounded violently from a wall, cracked his head, light flashing, staggering to another wall, realizing this was a dead end.

He pressed himself against the stones and moaned under his breath.

What
have
I
done
to
myself
…?
It
was
madness
to
come
here
…
I
am
full
mad
,
yet
not
mad
enough
to
be
content
with
it
…

He slid down the rough wall to his knees and stayed like that, bearded face to the stone.

I
followed
fever
dreams
…
help
me
now
…
help
me
…

“Help me,” he said aloud, voice ringing in the chamber. Stood up in one motion, straining into the darkness. “Speak to me!” He was shouting now. “You tormentors! Show yourselves! Speak! Guide me … I know you’re there … or am I truly mad and lost … ?” He paced in a nervous circle, the spear swaying loosely in his grip. “Help me, curse you! Get me out of this darkness!”

He stood still and caught his breath in the pitch-black silence and, after a time, smiled to himself.

“Ah,” he said calmly, “so it is, nothing but myself … In this my wits are whole and sound.”

He gathered himself around his center of disgust, frustration, hopelessness, self-mocking outrage. He felt like a priest begging God to speak back to him in a human voice. He felt like a hypocrite-fool. He rocked back and forth, then gathered himself like a goaded bull, angry now only because there was no hope … no, not even angry — he just gave up, gave himself up so completely that nothing mattered in the slightest, not himself, nor darkness, nor time, nor place — no, nor wall, neither, and so he launched himself, as if he were free to move anywhere, and when he hit the bricks he smashed feet, shoulders, and forearms against them with all his strength and more and a strangely casual heart, and boomed, without hysteria, but with terrific force: “Open! Open! Open!”

And the space in him that casually watched, calmly expected what swept the rest of him along as one, then another, brick bounced free, clunked on the other side and then several at once as the crumbling, rotted mortar gave altogether and the wall dissolved around him and he stood at the hole in a cloud of dust, squinting against (to him) the blinding lightning flashing from high up in what he gradually realized was a tremendous tower whose roof was invisibly high. The thunder was a vague, hollow ringing here.

He went through and was casting about for a way out, walking carefully across the huge interior, telling himself he was never going to get involved in anything again, was going to live in Scotland, if he had to, with the savages and pretend to speak no language …

The floor was smoothly tiled and he walked with a skating motion straight across the center, looking through the trembling shadows at the outside wall. He made out an archway. And then one foot slid and groped into space and he hopped frantically at the edge of what seemed to be a well ten feet across or a shadowed pit. He squatted down to gain his balance. He poked with the spear to test the depth and found it about two feet deep. The faint flashes didn’t reveal the shallow bottom.

He stood up in it and wondered what purpose it served. Maybe someone ran small dogs around it or filled it with water for fish … It seemed as senseless as anything else to build this great hall around it …

As he was walking to the other side, he stubbed his foot on something heavy. He felt the big toe begin to mountingly sting.

“Bloody piles,” he muttered.

What's
this
?
A
stone
?

He picked up a massive sphere about the size of a large apple. He was impressed by the weight. Well, why not? An empty castle — no, a
huge
empty castle all a maze within, a floor with a giant basin cut into it … a stupid ball of metal with … He peered at it in the erratic illumination and thought he distinguished crude-looking writing graven around it. He shook his head.
Mayhap
, he considered,
this
he
the
blinding
light
…
gone
a
trifle
dim
… He grinned. He stuffed it into his belt pouch, which then tugged uncomfortably and banged against his thigh, and climbed back out of the “basin.” Headed for the archway, still looking around hoping for the sight of something … anything that might faintly justify those night visions of ineffable, golden luminescences streaming through the ethereal, prismatic castle … He almost bumped into a bent, straight-backed chair that sat before a three-legged table that was meant to have four. Otherwise, the hall appeared empty. He touched the table and it sagged and nearly fell …