One Knight Only Page 14

  “In any event, I gave Percival duties that would give him plenty of freedom. I fully anticipated the possibility that wanderlust might seize him, or he might find himself falling into some sort of quixotic excursion that fired his imagination. Oh, he swore that that would never happen,” and he waved off the notion dismissively, “but I knew better.”

  “And have you given no consideration to the possibility,” she suggested, “that Percival might be in some sort of trouble and requiring your assistance?”

  “Percival survived just fine nearly half a millennia without my help,” Arthur pointed out, regarding her skeptically. “It would be the height of condescension and insult to think that Percival is in a predicament from which he cannot extricate himself. I have utter faith in his resourcefulness, Miss Basil, even if you do not.”

  With a shrug of her slim shoulders, she said, “I have given virtually no thought whatever to Percival’s resources, or lack thereof. I leave such speculations to the mind and imagination of a king, where such things rightly belong.”

  He rose from the chair, but did not move from it. Instead he leaned forward, his knuckles resting lightly on the tabletop. “Also,” he continued, “I want you to find Arnim Sandoval. I want you to find him, and his cronies, and bring them down. I want an end to their threat.”

  Miss Basil cocked an eyebrow lazily at that, and leaned back in her chair. Steepling her fingers and peering over the fingertips, she inquired, “A one-woman black bag operation. Is that how you see me, Pendragon?”

  “You are not a woman,” Arthur reminded her. “At least not in the way that anyone could remotely understand it.”

  “Yes, thank you for that clarification.” She tilted her head, making no attempt to disguise her quite obvious curiosity. “So you would bypass a war? Take matters into your own hands in order to avoid it?”

  “And why not?” demanded Arthur in return. He hesitated, looking both annoyed that he had to explain himself, and relieved that he was facing possibly the only being left to him in the world to whom he could speak his own mind—and she might well understand him. “I was a king. Ruler of a monarchy. It was not a democracy, nor did we hinge our decisions on such frail, nonsensical items as small dangling pieces of paper hanging from punch cards. My own hands is where I am accustomed to having matters. If there’s been any one thing that I find suffocating about this position in which Merlin put me, it is having to politic, deal, and finesse my way through alliances with little pissant representatives who aren’t fit to service my chamber pot, much less hold the awesome responsibilities that their elections have given them!”

  His voice had been getting louder and louder in his ire, but he took several deep breaths after the initial outburst and managed to calm himself. He paused for a long time, and Miss Basil was more than content to wait patiently.

  “Besides,” he admitted finally, “it would be impossible to fight the sort of war that America is accustomed to—softening up the enemy with air assault—without hurting noncombatants and civilians. I can’t ever . . .” He stopped, stared into the cup of tea he was holding as if the secrets of the world were within.

  “Arthur . . . ?” Her voice sounded surprisingly gentle when one considered that she was an ages-old monster.

  “There was one war,” he suddenly said, “one centuries-ago battle I remember, against this petty warlord.” He shook his head. “I look back on it now, and he was such a . . . a nothing. A pretender. But he was arrogant and self-assured, and made no effort to hide how much he despised me just because of who I was. His name was Malkon. I could have ignored him, could have let him just shout and bristle and make his noises, for he could not have harmed me. Not really. But no. No, I had to let my . . .” Arthur drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “My stupid, wretched pride get the better of me. So I marched my soldiers to his stronghold, and he had . . .” He gestured helplessly, as if trying to form images with his hands since words were failing him. “He had taken people . . . his own people, citizens, helpless people . . . and tied them to his weapons of war. To his catapults, to his war machines, to the very walls of the city, as human shields. Spreadeagled, helpless, struggling against their bonds.”

  Miss Basil made a clucking noise in the back of her throat. “And they call me a monster,” she said disdainfully.

  “And he stood there, at the top of the parapets, and taunted me, and challenged me to attack, certain that I would not. He was testing me. I was a young king at the time, you see, and everything was a test. Everything. My every move was being scrutinized by hundreds of men, great and small, all with their own ambitions.” He turned to her then, faced her, and spoke with an almost desperate energy, as if he had to make her comprehend. “I was trying to forge a nation of peace . . . but peace only comes from strength. I could not let myself appear weak, for if I did, my allies would have deserted me, and those who remained with me would have done so only because they were waiting for their moment to strike me down and take power from me.”

  Her eyes narrowed as, very quietly, she said, “You ordered the attack.”

  “Yes.”

  “You attacked through the innocent people.”

  “Yes.”

  “You had a choice.”

  “One choice, Basiliskos, is no choice,” Arthur told her. “I told you why I could do nothing else.”

  “No, you’ve told me why your ego and your own fears would not let you do anything else,” she corrected him. “Whether you could actually have done something else, well . . . you did not choose to explore that option, did you?”

  “No,” he said, and his eyes were haunted. Visions of people strapped to walls, writhing as flaming arrows hit near them, or struck them square on . . . visions of people attached to war machines, screaming as great rocks descended upon them, hurled by Camelot catapults, crushing the machines, crushing the people . . . these and other horrors danced behind his eyes, and he could see them all, and saw himself sitting astride a great horse, watching it all, watching it all until finally he had to look away. “No . . . I did not choose that option. We were as careful as we could be under the circumstances . . . but we did not allow ourselves to be dissuaded from what needed to be done.”

  “And Malkon?”

  “I beheaded him myself,” Arthur said with grim satisfaction. “That, at least, I was able to attend to.”

  “So all in all . . . it was a good day for you, then.”

  Slowly Arthur turned and looked at her, pulling his gaze away from scenes centuries agone. “I thought so at the time,” he said simply. Then he took in a deep breath and shook his head. “And then every night, for weeks thereafter, I dreamt of that scene, of those people. Of the horror of people writhing in the light of a burning city. I swore on that day that no civilians, no innocents or bystanders, would be hurt if I could humanly prevent it. That day, Miss Basil, was one of the cornerstones upon which chivalry and the Round Table were built. Might for right, and the protection of the helpless.” He glanced through the window as if he could see with his unaided eye all the way to Trans-Sabal, all the way to Sandoval’s lair. “Sandoval not only doesn’t care about the innocent . . . he revels in their suffering, as does any bully. My refusal to do so is what differentiates me from him.”

  “That, and the fact that you’re remarkably handsome,” suggested Miss Basil.

  “Yes, well . . . there’s that, of course.” He shrugged and even smiled slightly at the momentary leavening of the mood. But all too quickly, he became somber again. “Now you have some understanding, at least, why the notion of war is anathema to me.”

  “Then might I observe,” she suggested, “that—considering you are ‘commander in chief’—you might be in the wrong line of work.”

  “Your opinions are not really all that relevant,” he said, sounding a bit stiff. He straightened his jacket then, squared his shoulders, made himself look that much more presidential. “Now then,” he said briskly, “how long do you think it will take you to
accomplish these things?”

  “Accomplish them?” She sounded not only skeptical, but amused, as if Arthur was speaking in an alien tongue. “My dear Pendragon, it’s not that simple.”

  “It isn’t?” He seemed surprised.

  She had been leaning so far back in the chair that she was almost supine, but now she came forward and it was almost as if her neck was elongating, her head snapping like a cobra’s. For a moment Arthur was on guard, but she halted and simply smiled.

  “What’s in it for me?” she asked.

  “For you?” He stared at her uncomprehendingly, and felt anger beginning to bubble within him. “Your integrity, for one thing! Your honor!”

  Her arched eyebrow reached almost to her scalp. “You question my honor?”

  “If you give me reason to, yes!” he said, raising his voice. “I spared your life, and in exchange, you promised that I could call upon you to do whatever I bade you to do!”

  “My, my, my.” She laughed, and there was something in her voice that chilled Arthur with its ageless confidence and disdain. “The tricks that memory plays on one. The certainty with which you speak, Pendragon. So much certainty for one so wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked dangerously. “You swore—”

  “I swore,” she overspoke him, “in very clear English. If you could not comprehend it, that is hardly my problem. What I said was that you could ask any boon of me. ‘Any’ as in one. ‘Boon’ as in the singular. Do not speak of requests for multiple tasks, because they are not yours to ask, nor are they mine to give. Nor is even the one yours for the taking.”

  On the outside, he was absolutely immobile, like a lion waiting to pounce, but his insides were twisting with fury. “And why would that be?” He could barely get the words out in a calm voice.

  “I said you could ask any boon of me. I never said I would grant it.”

  Arthur was across the room so quickly that even Miss Basil, with the reflexes of her serpent nature, was caught unprepared. His right hand swung, and had he been holding Excalibur, her shoulders would have been lonesome for her head. He was empty-handed, as it turned out, but he drove forward and his fist connected squarely with the side of her face. Miss Basil, who had been leaning back in the chair, was knocked clean off her perch. The chair clattered backward and she hit the floor with a thud.

  Instantly the door flew open as Secret Service men started to enter, and Arthur whirled, his face purpling. “Get out!” he snarled. The agents looked at the President, looked at the woman lying on the ground rubbing her jaw, looked at one another, and silently withdrew from the room. Arthur wondered if word was going to be leaked that the President of the United States had taken up the hobby of battering women. At that point he didn’t especially care. He turned to face her, reached his hand back to grasp the invisible hilt of Excalibur, the mighty sword strapped to his back.

  If Miss Basil was perturbed over the prospect of suddenly finding herself at the mercy of an infuriated king and cold, enchanted steel, she did not let it show. She remained where she was, but her voice was hard-edged as she said, “Now who stands in danger of dirtying his precious honor? I spoke plainly last time we met. You know I did. You did not think to clarify it, nor did I volunteer the information. We had an arrangement. If you attack me now, it’s simply because you have decided after the fact that you don’t like it, and would rather annihilate the one with whom you made it than deal within the parameters you agreed to.”

  Between clenched teeth he spat out, “You are the very devil, Basiliskos.”

  “Eve said much the same,” commented the Basilisk dryly. “And we all know what a deal with the devil is worth . . . and what it requires. You thought to get off cheaply.”

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance.” His hand still hovered over the hilt. “I could kill you now.”

  Somehow the Basilisk sensed that if she made the slightest aggressive move, Arthur would give in to the impulses raging within him and carve her up. Cannily, she simply stayed where she was, maintaining her human form, looking up at him with affected wide-eyed innocence. “You very possibly could . . . and that is not an admission I make lightly, nor one that many who walked this world could claim. But if you slay me, then you will have neither your Grail nor your vengeance against Sandoval . . . whichever you opt to pursue.”

  Slowly, very slowly, he lowered his hand. He did not, however, extend it to her to help her up. Instead he simply glowered at her, and Miss Basil hauled herself to her feet, dusting herself off. “That was an enchanting encounter,” she said.

  “So am I to understand,” he said, “that you are asking me to choose between the healing of my wife . . . and the destruction of he who assaulted her?”

  “Yes,” she said reasonably. She picked up the fallen chair, placed it upright, and sat in it once more. All the time she did so, she did not take her eyes off him, perhaps concerned that he would suddenly change his mind and decide that the world would be better off without the Basilisk in it. “And I can see the predicament you face.” Her voice sounded almost sympathetic to his plight, but he knew that truly she was mocking him. “On the one hand, you have the prospect of bringing back your beloved wife from—as you say—the twilight within which she presently dwells. However, in doing so, you will be accomplishing an action that will largely benefit two people and two people only: you and your wife. On the other hand, if I destroy Sandoval and his cronies—”

  “Can you? And will you?” His eyes were hard. “Spell it out for me.”

  “Yes,” she said with no hint of prevarication. “I can, and will, put an end to him, and to his organization. And I can, and will, do so in a way that the world knows Sandoval is no longer a threat. And should I do that, why . . . think of all the future terrorist acts that will not occur thanks to you . . . and me, of course,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “Of course, in that event, you will not have the Grail in hand, and Gwendolyn may never recover. A tragic choice.” Her lips twitched. “I’m pleased I don’t have to make it.”

  A silence hung over them then, for there was something else remaining, and they both knew it.

  “What do you want?” he asked finally. “You said that the boon was not simply mine for the taking. You want something in exchange, I presume.” She nodded almost imperceptibly. “Well? Out with it. What do you want, devil? My soul?”

  Miss Basil laughed lightly at that. “Arthur, Arthur . . . how quaint. Not your soul literally. And what I want, really, is a very little thing in the grand scheme of the world, and what you will get in return—either the end of a formidable foe, or the return of your beloved mate. No, no . . . I don’t want your soul.” Then she stopped laughing, and Arthur was sure a chill swept through the room as she said, “Not . . . your whole soul. Just a piece of it.”

  “Name your price,” he said stiffly.

  She told him.

  Giving it to her was easier than he expected. In retrospect, he would have thought that agreeing to it should have been harder than it was. But it wasn’t. Indeed, the choice of which boon to request was harder than the meeting of the Basilisk’s price . . . but he made that choice as well, even though it sickened him to the portion of his soul that he had remaining.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered when the agreement was made, and the Basilisk was gone, but it was impossible for him to be sure just to whom he was apologizing.

  CHAPTRE THE NINTH

  THE DARKNESS SLOWLY lifted from around Percival, to be replaced by another darkness altogether.

  It had been quite a long time since Percival had been knocked unconscious. It had been back during the Depression era, when there had been a riot in Birmingham, Alabama, that erupted from the sense of frustration overwhelming the city. A police officer’s truncheon had knocked him cold. When he’d come to, his brain having sloshed around in the brainpan like a loose omelet, he’d endeavored to obtain medical assistance. No hospital would admit him. “We’re full,” t
hey’d told him before admitting white patients who came in behind him. Eventually he’d healed on his own; the enchantment of the Grail that still flowed through his veins even after all these centuries had attended to that. Still in all . . . it had not been a happy time for him, and the sensation of that club smashing him in the head was as vivid now as it was for him then.

  But this was a new assault, with a feeling all its own, and there had been no club involved. Instead there had been a creature, a creature that walked like a man and, if the legends were accurate, spoke like one as well. A creature of bestial strength. Its breath had been hot and overwhelming, and the deep-throated roar had seemed more appropriate to the wilds of the Congo than the interior of an immaculate, polished building of marble and ivory.

  As Percival slowly came to full consciousness, he fought off the nausea that threatened to wash over him in waves. Instead he took in a deep breath through his nose, smelled the dankness in the air, heard the steady dripping of water from nearby. All of this told him, even before he managed to open his eyes and fully view his surroundings, that he was in some sort of dungeon.

  He’d hoped it would be decorative or innovative in some way, but he was disappointed to see it was just a plain old dungeon. Heavy walls of brick and mortar, and at the far end a door of metal . . . or, at the very least, a metal sheet attached to heavy wood that would be impenetrable to anything short of a jackhammer. There was a very, very narrow window at the top of one wall through which Percival might have been able to escape if he’d possessed the ability to transform into a squirrel. Unfortunately that was not a power in his repertoire, thus limiting his options all the more.

  Hay was strewn around the floor, which was of the same sturdy surface as were the walls. The situation did not look especially promising. His fatigues were lying in a heap.

  Percival took a step toward the door to examine it, and then staggered. The room wavered around him, and this time the nausea overwhelmed him. He sagged to his knees and dry-heaved violently, bracing himself with his hands flat on the floor. It seemed an eternity before he finally managed to compose himself. He had a feeling that if he weren’t who he was, with the restorative and recuperative powers he possessed, he’d probably be suffering from a concussion. Slowly Percival stood again, and this time, although there was slight dizziness, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle.