One Knight Only Read online

  The sun was drawing low on the horizon as she ran from the building. She dashed past residents of the island, all of them looking so young and relaxed and filled with contentment. God, it’s like the beach in Malibu, only a hundred times worse, she thought.

  There was a clearing ringed with towering, sculpted rocks that reminded her of Stonehenge. No one was around, and so she made for it, just wanting someplace where she could sit and think and perhaps clear her head, except her head had a bullet in it, and wasn’t that all wonderful, and how was she ever going to pass through a metal detector again . . . ?

  Insane, it’s all insane. Maybe that’s what this is: a deranged dream. Maybe I’m actually lying in a coma on a hospital bed somewhere and all of this is something I’m just concocting in my subconscious. Yes, I like that. I like that a lot more than the notion that I was responsible for Arthur walking away from everything that was real and important . . .

  She leaned against one of the stone columns and then, feeling overwhelmed by sheer spiritual exhaustion, she sank to the ground, trying not to cry. And suddenly she let out a startled gasp, her head flying back and causing her to crack the back of her skull rather nastily.

  Merlin was standing at the far end of the clearing. At least, the statue of him was. It bore that same, somewhat frustrated look it always had. She hadn’t realized he was there at first because he sort of blended in with the other stone objects.

  “Hey, Merlin!” she said, her voice giddy, waggling her fingers. “Good to see a familiar face! And you’ll be thrilled to know, you were right! You were right,” and her voice choked slightly as she said it. “And I didn’t even have to do anything actively to screw things up for Arthur. All I had to do was get myself shot and lie around like an oversized doorstop, and his guilty conscience did the rest.”

  She started to sob uncontrollably, and felt all the more foolish for coming unglued in this manner. Damn you! After everything you’ve gone through, after everything you’ve faced, this is how you react? By turning into a weeping mess? You faced down Morgan Le Fey in her lair! Nothing should throw you after that! But her mental chiding did nothing to rein her in, and she continued to cry and feel nothing but rising anger at herself, and the anger fed into the mourning, one building atop the other. And she found herself saying “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over, although she had no clear idea to whom she was apologizing.

  “Calm down, dear, you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

  Gwen rubbed her eyes with her fists, trying to clear them, to see who was addressing her. Her eyes widened as she saw a familiar face, with an expression as mocking as the tone of voice.

  “M-Miss Basil!”

  Miss Basil bowed slightly. She was dressed all in green, in a leotard so form-fitting that it almost looked like her skin. In fact, Gwen wasn’t entirely certain it wasn’t.

  She didn’t reply beyond the physical acknowledgment of Gwen’s presence, prompting Gwen to force herself to continue rather than let a silence build. “What . . . are you doing here?”

  “Why, I’m talking to you, little queen,” Miss Basil said. She appeared genuinely delighted to see Gwen, which naturally put Gwen all the more on her guard. “There should be no harm in that, should there? You do still talk? You remember how to do that?” Gwen, with effort, nodded. “You seem quite concerned, little queen. Are you not happy to see me? No, you don’t seem so. You seem distressed. How unfortunate. After all, did I not provide you valuable service in that business with Morganna? Your actions in that affair won you the undying loyalty of Arthur, did it not? So I’d think on that basis alone, you’d welcome your old ally with open arms.”

  Gwen took in a deep breath and let it out slowly to calm herself. She only partly succeeded in steadying her nerves. “Yes, you’d think that. On the other hand, since that time, you turned Merlin into . . . into that.” And she pointed at the statue.

  “He turned himself into that.” Miss Basil sniffed. “I simply provided him the opportunity and motive. The action was all his. Still, Gwen . . . it’s something of a pity that you’d hold that against me. It’s the nature of things, you know. It’s physics. For all actions, there is an equal and opposite reaction. On the one hand, I helped you . . . on the other hand,” and she shrugged, “I destroyed Merlin. These things all balance out.”

  “What are you implying, that Merlin turning into that is because of me? That some sort of karmic scale had to be evened out because you helped me?”

  “I’m not implying that, no, but . . . if it will serve to give you sleepless nights, then believe it. I won’t be bothered.”

  Gwen’s anger was beginning to overcome her fear and even her common sense. Now on her feet, she approached Miss Basil, her clenched fist trembling as if she were planning to punch the taller woman in the face. “Why are you like this? Why do you insist on trying to make people miserable when you have it in your power to help them?”

  “I do help them,” Miss Basil said casually. “Or hadn’t you heard: I was responsible for putting an end to the person who engineered the attack that put a bullet in your head.”

  “Yes, I heard,” Gwen responded in a heated voice. “But the condition for it was blackmailing Arthur into giving up the presidency.”

  “Is that the way the story was told to you?”

  “Do you deny it?”

  Miss Basil laughed. “Deny it? Darling, I revel in it. But the truth was that Arthur’s heart really wasn’t in it anymore. I did him a favor. I gave him an excuse to lay down his burden.”

  “You exploited him when he was at his lowest, is what you did.”

  “Same thing,” she said carelessly. Then she smiled, the light of her eyes dancing as if in contemplation of something so greatly mischievous she could hardly contain her delight. “Does it bother you so much? That I removed Sandoval from this world in exchange for your husband’s resignation.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, it bothers the hell out of me.”

  “Well.” She clapped her hands with pleasure. “If that’s the case, I have a surprise for you. I’d actually been saving it for Arthur, but I suspect you will appreciate it even more.”

  And then Miss Basil began to open her mouth, wider and wider. In seconds her jaw had distended beyond anything that any human being could possibly duplicate. It was as if her head had split in two. Her neck began to stretch, to undulate, and her entire body was lengthening, twisting around and back. Her clothing did not tear from the stretching, making even more suspect the notion that it was any sort of fabric at all.

  The air was filled with a low hum, as if some sort of power were building up, and Gwen might have been imagining it, but it seemed that the ground was beginning to vibrate beneath her feet.

  Miss Basil was no longer recognizable as anything human. Gwen shielded her face, looking askance so as not to stare straight on at the creature before her. She had no clue what, if anything, would happen to her if she did look full upon Miss Basil, but she had no desire to find out.

  There were hideous sounds then, although she had no idea whether her refusal to look directly at the source made the sounds better or worse than they would have been. There was a deep coughing, and the sounds of liquids being spat up and hitting the ground, and she could resist the impulse no longer as she looked squarely at Miss Basil, or more accurately, the winged serpent that she had become. Gwen gaped in confusion, unable to comprehend what she was seeing.

  For a heartbeat, she flashed back to an awful, awful moment when her parents had taken her, as a child, to a zoo. She had stared at a hamster-shaped bulge in the middle of one of the snakes and inquired of her father what that bulge was doing there. Her father’s unadorned, straightforward answer was met with shrieks of hysteria and a hasty and premature departure from the zoo.

  What she was seeing now was evocative of that bulge, but there were two differences. The first was that Gwen was not screaming, for her throat had completely closed up so that she could barely draw in sufficient air
to breathe, much less shriek. And second, it was not in the shape of a hamster, but rather in the shape of a man.

  The Basilisk thrust upward, her muscles contracting with effort, her mouth exceedingly wide. And then, in what could only be described as a grotesque perversion of the birth process, the top of a head became visible in the creature’s open mouth. It was impossible to tell what color the hair had been, or even if it had at one point possessed any hair. The Basilisk convulsed once more, and then a third time, and then with a rush of liquid and a splattering and spattering that would haunt Gwen to her dying day—however imminent that might be—Arnim Sandoval was vomited up from the belly of the beast.

  He flopped onto the ground eight months after having been consumed, and he was still alive.

  The digestive juices had worked very, very slowly upon him. His clothes were mostly eaten away, as was some of his skin on his back and arms. His flesh looked as if it were starting to curdle like milk, and the stench of him washed over Gwen so violently that she dry-heaved, slumping back against one of the stone columns for support. He was shaking, like a man who was freezing, or perhaps seized with a horrific case of Parkinson’s disease. He stared up at her without truly focusing upon her, without having the slightest clue where he was, and then he started to reach for her and murmur something that did not sound at all human but instead came out more like a vile gurgling noise.

  That was when Gwen screamed, and screamed, and kept screaming, and somewhere in the distance of the moment, Miss Basil was laughing loudly, but Gwen did not hear a thing.

  GILGAMESH, RON, AND Nellie were a distance away when they heard the scream, and immediately started in the direction from which it had originated.

  Elsewhere, Percival, who had been fighting a feeling of unease about the Osprey but could not determine exactly why, also heard, and he started running from the other direction. Seconds later, he was passed by a fleet-footed Enkidu, moving so quickly that Percival felt as if he’d been standing still. So much so, in fact, that he briefly did stand still just to give himself some basis for contrast.

  None of them got to the scene first, however. That honor belonged to Arthur, who was not only the closest to begin with, but had finally gotten up off his metaphorical ass and gone after Gwen because, really, dammit, what else was he supposed to do?

  So barely had the first sounds of Gwen’s initial shrieks faded when Arthur appeared over the rise, running as fast as he could. Even as he sprinted, he stared in confusion at the liquid mess of a human who was lying on the ground five paces from Gwen, and then the human lurched to his feet and Gwen screamed even louder, and that was when Arthur recognized who and what it was that was menacing his wife.

  “Oh my God, no,” he whispered, but the shock didn’t cause him to break stride. Nothing short of getting his legs cut off could accomplish that.

  Remarkably, he did not notice the twenty-foot-long (or longer) serpent with the small wings that was lurching about the area. The serpent with the voice of a woman that was laughing loudly at what it had wrought. It was a measure of Arthur’s focus that his sole concern was Gwen and the monstrosity that was facing her. So it was that when he pulled out Excalibur from its place upon his back, preparing himself to wield the glowing weapon, his attention was upon his wife and her threat, rather than the greater jeopardy posed by the Basilisk.

  The Basilisk, for her part, was overlooking absolutely nothing. The defeat she’d known at Arthur’s hands, the bargaining for her existence, all still rankled her. Yes, she had accomplished some small measure of vengeance, but it was insufficient as far as she was concerned. More was required, and more she was prepared to deal out. So it was at the moment Arthur drew within distance, the fearsome tail of the Basilisk whipped around and caught Arthur on the side of the head just as he was closing on Sandoval.

  The intensity of the blow knocked Arthur flat. The fact that he was able to hold on to Excalibur was nothing short of miraculous, but Miss Basil was not prepared to let that thrice-damned sword stand in her way. Arthur lay on the ground, clearly disoriented, but still a dangerous foe.

  Miss Basil’s impulse was to strike quickly. It was, after all, in her nature. She feared, however, the precipitous action lest she rush headlong into a situation that was not going to be to her liking.

  A quick movement to her right caught her attention and her head snapped around, her forked tongue lancing out with a threatening hiss. Gwen had been advancing on her, carrying no weapons, offering no real threat of any kind, but still trying because she felt like she had to do something. She froze in place the moment that the Basilisk saw her.

  “Gwen! Don’t look at her!” Arthur shouted, staggering to his feet. He drove forward, swinging Excalibur, but the Basilisk saw it coming and, quick as lightning, ducked under it, slamming her body around and trying to knock Arthur’s feet out from under him. He vaulted lightly over the coils as Gwen tried to shield her eyes, and suddenly there was an animalistic screech and Sandoval plowed into Arthur. How in God’s name the wretched thing that had been a terrorist leader was functioning enough to do so, Gwen would never be able to figure out, but Sandoval accomplished it. Perhaps he was just that driven by hatred, or perhaps all that was transpiring was little more than a dream to him and he was simply reacting within that context. But the fact remained that Sandoval saw a person whom he obviously hated above all others, and he was responding with pure gut instinct. Under ordinary circumstances, Arthur could easily have brushed him aside, but he was distracted by both Gwen and the Basilisk, and so it was understandable that Sandoval was able to blindside him. They went down in a tumble of arms and legs.

  Gwen automatically moved to help him, and the creature with the eyes of oblivion and the voice of a human woman intercepted her. Again Gwen froze, and the soft voice of Miss Basil emerged from the serpent’s mouth, hissing, “Ssssweet little queen, you never truly appreciated my generosity in the past. But since you’re deprived of it in the present, perhaps you’ll appreciate it more, for the time that’s left to you . . .”

  And suddenly there was another rumbling, but this came from another source, from above and around. A shadow fell upon them and Gwen barely had time to look up before she saw that one of the great stone pillars that had been embedded in the ground surrounding them was now floating horizontally overhead. It sailed past Gwen, hovered for a fraction of a second above the Basilisk, and then—as if an invisible hand had been supporting it—was suddenly released.

  “Oh, shit,” the Basilisk barely had time to say before the pillar crashed down upon her. The pillar did not shatter. The Basilisk, pinned under the weight of it, was not quite so lucky as Gwen heard something break within the creature. Her head was still partly visible, but pinned beneath the column, and most of her body was likewise immobilized. The only thing moving was the end of her tail, whipping back and forth in frustration but not accomplishing much otherwise.

  The sound of the impact distracted the still-confused Sandoval, and Arthur brought the pommel of Excalibur up and around and slammed Sandoval in the side of the head. The terrorist fell over, more from the violence of the contact than any actual pain. It was entirely possible that he wasn’t capable of feeling pain at that moment; his mind was likely not yet functioning to that high a degree. Having been shoved off Arthur, he lay on his back and—his thoughts wandering—started to make incoherent noises.

  Gwen knew that she was supposed to be angry with Arthur, to be resenting like hell his decision to leave office, but at that moment all she cared about was his safety as she ran to him, dropping to her knees and throwing her arms around him in a fierce, protective embrace. But he did not respond, and she pulled back and looked at his face, and saw that he was staring elsewhere with amazement. She turned and looked where he was looking, and her jaw sagged in disbelief.

  Merlin was standing there, distinctly not paralyzed and most certainly not dead. He was brushing some dirt off his sleeves in a very particular manner, and without even glanci
ng in Arthur and Gwen’s direction, he said dismissively, “Please, don’t say anything, because it will likely be cliched drivel amounting to perplexed questions that I’ll answer when I’m damned good and ready, or relief that I’m alive, which is expected and predictable, or thanks for my dropping that oversized paperweight on top of Miss Basil, which, if you weren’t so bloody out of practice, Wart, I wouldn’t have had to do. And don’t think it wasn’t a strain considering I broke out of paralysis about forty-five seconds ago. And please, if you were planning to make any coy comments about no longer being ‘statuesque’ or some such, save those as well.”

  There was a long silence, and then Gwen looked at her husband and said, “Why did we miss him again?”

  CHAPTRE THE TWENTY-FIRST

  ARTHUR WAS STUNNED, unable to say a single word as, ignoring Gwen’s somewhat snide comment, Merlin strode toward the pinned creature and said cheerily, “Hello, Miss Basil. It’s been a while.”

  “You little bastard,” she managed to spit out.

  “Right on all counts,” replied Merlin with no diminishment of his good spirits.

  “I killed you!”

  “You overpowered me. Be proud; that alone is an impressive feat. As for failing to kill me, well . . . a great many people have failed, so at least take further pride that you’re in good company. Ah! Well, hello, you’re a lusty chap, aren’t you.”

  Enkidu had arrived on the scene. He surveyed it with dispassionate curiosity. Arthur noticed his nostrils were flaring, apparently as he caught Merlin’s scent. “You were the statue,” he rumbled.

  “Yes.”

  “Now you’re not.”

  “Right again.”

  Enkidu considered that a moment, and then moved toward the pillar, clearly preparing to lift the thing off her. Merlin stepped forward, putting up a cautioning hand. “I wouldn’t.”

  “I would,” replied Enkidu, and Arthur didn’t see how it would be remotely possible for anything of flesh and blood—even this bizarre creature who stood before him looking like an upright lion—to even come close to budging it. But Enkidu braced himself, one clawed foot on either side of the Basilisk’s head, and getting a firm grip on the stone column, he grunted and started to shove. The muscles in his arms, in his neck, stood out like sinewy cords, and it seemed as if there was just no way it was going to move. And then, just like that, he thrust with one arm and one leg and the pillar rolled to one side.