One Knight Only Read online

  “It’s not simply a pastime, sir,” Ron assured him. “You need something to focus on. Some great crusade that’s part of something bigger and greater than you could ever hope to be. Sir, I’ve read the medical reports. We both know that Gwen could stay like . . . like that,” and he pointed in the general direction of her room, “indefinitely.”

  “No.” Arthur shook his head sadly. “No. Hardly indefinitely. I know a bit about such things.”

  “She’ll age. She’ll die. And so will you. And you’ll never accomplish another thing in your life.”

  “So?” said Arthur with a shrug. “Haven’t I accomplished enough? Isn’t being a legend sufficient?”

  And in an unexpectedly harsh voice, Ron replied, “A legend is what others have made you into. What you’ve made yourself into is a quitter.”

  Ron never saw Arthur’s hand move, but he certainly felt it as it cracked sharply against his jaw. The next thing he knew he was airborne, and then he crashed against the far side of the porch.

  There was the sound of running footsteps, and two Secret Service men were standing there, looking around in confusion, their hands in their jackets to pull out their guns. They stared at Arthur, who did not appear the least perturbed, and then at Ron on the floor, who was trying to pull himself together and having only marginal success.

  “Do either of you gentlemen have a handkerchief?” Arthur asked coolly.

  The Secret Service men exchanged looks and then one of them reached into his lapel pocket and produced a small white cloth. Arthur took it from him, and then nodded and said, “Thank you. As you were.” Without a word, they pulled their hands out of their jackets and stepped away from the doors.

  Arthur tossed the handkerchief down to Ron. “Your nose is bleeding. You may want to staunch that.”

  Ron glared up at Arthur as he did so. “Your concern for my welfare is touching,” he said, his voice understandably congested.

  “It’s certainly greater than your own concern for your welfare, if you’re foolish enough to say such things to me,” retorted Arthur. “Honestly, Ron, how did you think I was going to react when you said that?”

  “I wasn’t thinking that far ahead.”

  “That much is obvious,” he said with an annoyed sniff. “I may not be what once I was, Ron, but that does not make me nothing, nor will you address me as if I were. I trust we understand each other?”

  Ron looked as if he were going to say something else unwise, but then obviously thought better of it and simply nodded, standing carefully as he did so.

  “Good.” Arthur shook his head sadly and said, “When you’ve been around for as long as I have, Ron, you learn not to toss around such terms as ‘quest’ lightly. A quest is a . . . it’s not just a search for something. Not just a walkabout where half a dozen jolly friends with swords are seeking out some glittering treasure somewhere. A quest is something that comes from the soul and defines a man. It’s not arbitrary or capricious. You don’t just stumble upon it. I can’t simply walk down to the nearest convenience store and order a quest from the counterman like a taco, or go down to the beach and discover that a quest has rolled up onto the shore . . .”

  “What the hell . . . ?”

  Arthur didn’t understand for a moment why Ron had reacted in that manner, but then he realized that Cordoba wasn’t looking at him at all. Instead his attention had been drawn to something at the water’s edge. He turned and followed Ron’s gaze.

  A man was lurching out of the surf. He was not dressed in any sort of bathing gear; instead he was wearing what appeared to be some sort of fatigues. Looking like the proverbial drowned rat, he staggered forward a few steps, and looked in the general direction of Arthur’s house, tossing off a cheery wave before collapsing to the sand.

  The name was out of Arthur’s mouth before his brain had even fully processed it: “Percival!” He was out the back door of the porch, sprinting across the beach, with Ron desperately trying to catch up with him.

  Arthur almost stumbled once as the sand shifted under his feet, but quickly he righted himself and got to the missing knight just as Percival rolled over onto his back and stared up at the night sky with wonderment. His chest started shaking; he actually appeared to be laughing. Arthur ran up to his side and stared down in incredulity at the Moor, his own chest heaving from the sudden exertion of the run. “Stars and blazes, it is you! Percival!”

  “So . . . so it is,” gasped out Percival, showing no inclination to sit up. He coughed deeply several times, clearing sea water from his lungs. “Good . . . to see you, Highness. Ah. And Ronald,” he continued as Cordoba skidded to a halt at Arthur’s side. “Here as well?”

  “Where the hell have you been!” demanded Arthur. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or angry, and compromised by being both at once. “You disappeared, Percival! Bloody disappeared! Without the slightest . . . why are you laughing again?”

  “Because,” Percival managed to get out, “I’m seeing myself . . . in my mind’s eye . . . a whale on the beach . . . a great black whale . . . Moby Black . . .”

  “Stand up,” said Arthur, and there was no trace of amusement in his voice.

  Percival heard that tone and his response was immediate. His legs were wavering a bit, but that did not deter him from sitting up, situating his legs under himself, and then pushing himself to a fully standing position. He put his arms out to either side to balance himself as if he were upon a tightrope, and once he was fully confident that he was not going to topple over from what was clearly exhaustion, he bowed slightly at the waist to acknowledge his liege.

  Arthur very briefly embraced him then, relief flooding over him at the sight of his only remaining knight after a year’s absence. Then he took a step back and said, with as much of a scolding tone as he could muster, “You scared the hell out of me, you know. Disappearing like that.”

  “It was not exactly my option,” Percival told him.

  He was starting to shiver, his teeth chattering slightly. Arthur promptly removed his own jacket and draped it around the Moor’s shoulders. “Come. Let us get you inside, before the storm rolls in . . .”

  “It’s not going to. It’s going south to north, not east to west.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was in the middle of it,” said Percival. They started toward the house, and Percival’s words came out in an almost frenzied rush. “When I escaped, I swam and swam and was picked up by a tramp steamer bound for Singapore, and while aboard that I learned of what had happened to Mrs. Penn, so I jumped ship and caught passage on a tuna boat bound for the States, and then learned that you’d relocated to your house here in Avalon, so when we passed the Jersey shore I absconded with a lifeboat and made my way here, except the storm sank my boat, so I swam the rest of the way . . .”

  “You can’t be serious,” Ron finally managed to squeeze in.

  “Have you ever known me not to be serious?”

  “Gods above, Percival, what an escapade!” said a wondering Arthur. “But . . . I don’t understand. Escaped from where? Where were you?”

  And Percival stopped in his tracks, turned to face his liege, and—forcing his voice to stay calm and even—said, “I found the Grail. It’s on an island. It’s of an island. And the residents of the island don’t age and don’t die. I think . . . I think if you bring Gwen there . . . she can be healed.”

  Arthur and Ron gaped at him.

  “Is there anything around here to eat that’s not fish related?” inquired Percival.

  THE HIGH KING burns with a deepening fury.

  He is barely able to look at his beloved Enkidu. Enkidu has not groveled before him. Enkidu has too much pride, too much of the wild about him, to prostrate himself before even the glory of the being who is two-thirds god, one-third man. “You have failed me,” he says to Enkidu, and the lion-man does not dispute it or apologize for it or grovel over it or even offer his life in penance.

  Instead he simply says
, “Yes.”

  Gilgamesh supposes that he should be grateful, even appreciative for that. It is not within Enkidu, as it is within others, to serve up excuses. It is clear that, as far as Enkidu is concerned, he has done his best. If his best is not good enough for Gilgamesh, then clearly that is the High King’s concern rather than Enkidu’s.

  And yet, Gilgamesh cannot help but find this complacent attitude all the more annoying.

  He considers taking his mighty sword and hacking at Enkidu, but he knows this will be a waste of time. So instead he storms away from his great friend, moving through his palatial estate like a thundercloud, rumbling and fulminating in that unique way he has. All know to steer clear of him when such a mood seizes him.

  He endeavors to summon the Aged One, but no one seems to know where he is. This infuriates Gilgamesh all the more. Despite his great age, he can and occasionally does act like an overgrown brat, and this is one of those times. He resolves to close himself in his room and remain there with neither food nor water, without human company, without anything except a resolve to punish people by his absence. So taken with his own fabulousness is he, that it does not occur to him that one person’s punishment is another’s blessing.

  He goes to his room and does indeed shut himself in. The doors slam with a thundering thoooom and he remains in the fairly dramatic pose, leaning forward against the doors with his palms flat against them. His jaw is set and his breath comes in ragged gasps even though he has not especially exerted himself.

  “Alone at last,” says a voice from behind him.

  He whirls, caught flat-footed. It is a slightly exciting experience, to be so off guard. It has not happened to him for many, many a year.

  The woman is standing several feet away from him. She looks human. She smiles like a human. Her eyes glitter green, and he is Gilgamesh, two-thirds god and one-third man, and he knows in a heartbeat that she is very far from human.

  “What manner of creature are you?” he demands.

  She appears impressed, her head tilted inquisitively to one side, like a cocker spaniel. “You see me, not perhaps for what I am, but at least for what I am not. You have learned much, High King.”

  “Since when?” he says suspiciously.

  “Since I first came to you millennia ago, when you were king of Uruk in Babylonia, and it amused me to pose as a serving girl. You were in your later years at the time. Older. Not the handsome specimen which you have become.” She moves toward him, and does not seem to walk so much as she undulates. She runs her fingers over a faint white line that crosses his chest, almost invisible to the naked eye beneath the deep tan that adorns his vast expanse of muscled flesh. “I gave you this. Do you remember?”

  His eyes go wide. “Of course I do,” he says, his body tensing in preparation for a possible offensive maneuver on the woman’s part. “The meat was hanging off my body in a great slab. Some thought I would die from such a mortal wound.”

  “Some, yes. But not you. Never you. You never doubted,” and she runs her tongue across the tops of her lower teeth, “did you? Not for a moment.”

  Slowly he shook his head. “No. I never doubted. It was . . . simply another challenge. The High King likes a challenge.”

  “I was young . . . and new to the world.”

  He tries to disengage her, but does so halfheartedly. After a moment he ceases doing so, and instead looks down at her firmly. His thoughts fly back to a time when he was in a jungle several centuries ago, searching for large game, and he discovered a great snake wrapped around a ferocious leopard and slowly, methodically, squeezing the life from it. “How young and new to the world could you have been, if I had my way with you?” he asks.

  “I never knew you to shrink from even the youngest of girls, High King, but I was not young in that sense. Tell me, High King . . . tell me the story of the Plant of Life.”

  He pauses, now completely disengaging himself from her. He stares at her suspiciously, and part of him wishes to remain silent. But he is being asked to discuss an aspect of his legendary adventures, recorded by Sumerians in clay tablets two thousand years before the man known as Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. The High King is incapable of ignoring such invitations.

  “I . . . traveled to speak with he known as Ziusura. It was said that he knew how to defy death, to live forever.” He watches her eyes carefully, searching for some reaction to his words, although he doesn’t know precisely what it is that he seeks. “Finally, I found him. He explained to me that the gods had rewarded him with immortality, for he had served them well and helped the world’s animals survive the Great Flood. Obviously his peculiar situation was of no use to me. But before I left, his wife told me of a magical plant that could at least restore me to my youth. At great risk, I obtained the plant, which grew at the bottom of a great sea. On my way home, however, while I was bathing, a passing serpent snapped up the plant. The last I saw of it, it was slithering away and shedding its skin . . .”

  He pauses then, and looks into those eyes, and he has a glimmering of comprehension. She smiles in a grim and yet amused manner.

  “You begin to comprehend,” she tells him, “the debt I owe you. For I was that serpent, High King. An ordinary, ground-crawling serpent.” He stands immobile, staring down at her, and once more she insinuates her arms around him. He does not at all resist this time, although he is not entirely sure why he does not. “When I ate that plant, however, it had a much greater and more catastrophic effect upon me than it would have upon the humans for whom it was intended. It made me, High King, into who I am today. A creature of human and serpent qualities. The first of my kind, although I have spawned others since.”

  The High King trembles with suppressed rage. “You . . . are a monster. I am a slayer of monsters.”

  “Indeed. But all things must even out, High King. If a stroke of your sword destroys, then fate decrees that you must in some manner create as well. That is the way of the world.”

  “And the way of Gilgamesh is to hunt down and slay prey . . . which is all that you are,” he tells her. He even tries to reach for his sword, but is surprised to discover that—although he envisions his hand motioning toward his weapon—it is, in fact, not budging.

  “Why slay, or at least attempt to slay, that which poses no threat to you. Indeed, that which has come to warn you.”

  Her hand wanders across the hard flatness of his belly and is continuing in a southerly direction. He feels as if he should be repulsed by this . . . this creature in the shape of a woman. Yet his attraction to her is palpable, like a thing alive. He feels as if it is another aspect of his personality altogether, previously unknown to him. “Warn me?” he says roughly, and feels as if there is too much blood in his throat, making it difficult to speak.

  “Yes. Warn you of impending disaster. I am able to follow the threads of fate, High King, and see to where they lead. I am she who perceives the turning of the wheels of fate. I know things even before those who are most affected by them could possibly perceive them. I am drawn to disaster, not unlike a tornado drawn to a trailer park.”

  He stares at her blankly. The edges of her mouth crease, as if she finds his inability to comprehend her comments to be delightfully enchanting. He sees the amusement in her expression, and his face hardens. Clearly he is not enamored of even the slightest possibility that he is an object of fun. “I have warnings already,” he says, adding archly, “from one even older than you. I have interpretations of my dreams. I am not concerned over facing Calad Bolg.”

  At that her eyes narrow. She is not someone accustomed to having disassociated new names thrown at her. “What is Calad Bolg?” she asks, albeit with reluctance, for one as old as she does not like to admit to ignorance of anything.

  Quickly he speaks to her of the sword of hard lightning. She listens, and nods, and then she says, “I know this sword. No one can stand against it.”

  “I am not no one. I am Gilgamesh, the High King of Uruk, builder of walls, he
who was born two-thirds god and one-third man and defies death even to this day.”

  He pushes her away for a moment, although it is with effort, and then he strides across the room to an ornate trunk. There is no lock upon the trunk. It is not necessary. The cover is so heavy that none but the High King could lift it. It opens with a resounding creak, and then Gilgamesh reaches in and down and withdraws a great sword. He holds it flat across his two powerful hands, displaying it so she can see it. The serpent woman recognizes the type immediately. It is a scimitar, the blade curved and fearsome. Its handle is ornately carved, bearing the head of a lion with—curiously—the ears of a donkey set upon it.

  “The blade of life and death,” says Gilgamesh with satisfaction. “Taken from the hand of Nergal himself, lord of the underworld. The blade of hard lightning cannot stand against it, should it come to that.”

  “It might well,” the woman tells him, “but I admit that it is a marvelous thing, this blade. The way the light reflects from it warms my cold blood. Do not underestimate his power.”

  “Whose power? Who is the individual who will oppose me?”

  She smiles. “Arthur Pendragon. Arthur, son of Uther.”

  The High King appears surprised by this news. He steps back away from her, no longer looking at her, but instead appearing to be staring inward. “I have heard of him,” he admits.

  “You sound surprised.”

  “I am. More often than not, I forget the names of those I meet since they are not of sufficient greatness to warrant my attention. But Pendragon, I know. I have seen him.”

  Now it is her turn to be surprised. “Have you?”

  He does not seem inclined to continue the conversation in that direction. Instead he refocuses his attention upon her. His lips thin into a curled sneer. “And what, I wonder, shall I do with you?”

  “With me?” She is slightly taken aback by the flat way in which he speaks, and her own pride rises. “None do anything ‘with me’ that I do not desire to have done.” She circles him, never removing her gaze from him. He likes the way she regards him. To be the total focus of her attention is equal parts exhilaration and fear, and since the High King knows no fear, there is a disproportion of satisfaction for him. “You speak so proudly of your royalty. Of all that you are. Yet you began life with a father who was a king elevated to divinity, and a mother who was a goddess to begin with. I was a mere serpent. Yet look at all that I have accomplished. Immortality is mine, as is the most feared reputation of all monsters. I have crawled beneath humans and walked alongside them, but have always truly been above them. I am the Basilisk. Treat me dismissively at your own great peril.”