One Knight Only Read online

  Enkidu slowly moves his great head and stares fixedly at his lord and master, his friend, his companion.

  And suddenly Gilgamesh has never felt more alone.

  PERCIVAL WAS POISED, ready. Every muscle in his body was an odd combination of tense and relaxed. Frankly, he did not like his odds. Percival had fought many a human foe, but Enkidu was not that. The creature was standing not twenty feet away, and Percival knew that the beast-man could cover the distance with one quick thrust of his legs. Which meant that Percival would have exactly one chance to react to Enkidu’s onslaught, and if he miscalculated the timing of his swing, or didn’t manage to kill the beast on his first try, he was going to have a problem.

  He was reasonably sure that Enkidu couldn’t kill him. Not only did the power of the Grail flow in Percival’s veins, but none who stood upon the island could die. On the other hand, if Enkidu lifted him over his head so that he was technically “off” the island and proceeded to tear him to shreds, Percival wasn’t entirely certain what his chances would be. Nor did he have the slightest desire to find out.

  And still Enkidu remained frozen, as one paralyzed. Percival gazed at him, assessing him as he had done so many foes back in his days as a knight, and he saw in the mighty beast-man no hesitation, no uncertainty. He was not frozen by indecision. He just wasn’t moving.

  “Beast brother,” Gilgamesh said slowly. “How now?”

  For a fraction of an instant, Percival saw misery on the creature’s face as he had never seen on the countenance of anything on God’s earth that walked upon two legs. He suspected that Enkidu had no tear ducts, for if he had, he might well have dissolved into sobs.

  “I cannot,” he said.

  Gilgamesh took a step toward him, eyeing him carefully as one would an exceptionally intriguing bug. “Cannot . . . or will not.”

  “Both, if it pleases.”

  “It does not please, beast brother.” The danger in the voice of the High King was escalating. “For all that I love you, Enkidu, do not think that I would hesitate to express extreme displeasure with you. This man. . . . this ‘Grail knight’ . . . he escaped you once. You have unfinished business with him. Attend to it. Now.”

  And once again: “I cannot.” And then, as an afterthought, “... or will not.”

  Percival saw Gilgamesh stand there, every emotion imaginable playing across his broad face.

  “You’re not . . . actually in agreement with these . . . persons? You do not actually think they are . . . right?” an appalled Gilgamesh asked.

  When Enkidu spoke, it was not without effort. Percival had not heard him utter more than a few words at a time. “Right and wrong . . . means nothing. They are . . . fictions of men’s minds.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Gilgamesh.

  “Is a female killing and devouring her mate . . . wrong?”

  “Of course it is!” Gilgamesh sounded horrified at the notion.

  In a soft voice, Enkidu asked, “And if the female . . . is a black widow spider?”

  Gilgamesh opened his mouth, then closed it. Percival was amused; it was the first time he’d seen the pompous High King stuck for an answer.

  Again, Enkidu said, “There is no right. There is no wrong. There is just . . . what nature intends. And what you do here . . . is unnatural.”

  “Unnatural!”

  “All creatures . . . should be free. All creatures . . . should die, sooner or later. In both respects, you defy nature and the gods. No one does such a thing forever, my brother,” he said sadly. “Not even you.”

  Gilgamesh began to shake with barely contained fury. “You would say this to me?” he demanded. “To me? After what I did for you! Damn you, Enkidu . . . I went into the afterlife and brought you back to the land of the living!”

  The beast-man served as stark contrast to Gilgamesh, the former becoming calmer as the latter got more agitated. “I did not ask you . . . to do so.”

  “You preferred that dreary, bleak land of shadows and nonexistence to this?” He grabbed Enkidu’s hand, clasping it firmly. “Feel the blood pounding through you! Feel the air in your lungs! Inhale and draw a thousand different scents through your nostrils! What possible advantage can dwelling amongst the dead have to offer?”

  “None . . . save that it is the natural order of things.”

  “The gods murdered you!”

  Enkidu shook his head. “No. I died of a broken heart. I died ... because of you.”

  HE LIES. THE High King knows he lies. This is too much. Too much.

  And he is not aware that another voice is whispering within his head. “Kill them,” it tells him. “Kill them all. They seek to undermine you. To unman you. You must not tolerate it. You must do what needs be done.”

  ARTHUR SAW GILGAMESH reel back, as if gut-stabbed. He seemed stunned, even short of breath. Arthur could sympathize. It was how he felt the night that Gwen was bleeding upon him in the back of the limo.

  “What?” Gilgamesh was barely able to get the word out. “You . . . blame me . . . ?”

  It all came out of Enkidu then, like a sigh long contained, unburdened at last. “No. I blame . . . my own weakness. I saw . . . how far you had fallen. I saw you consumed . . . with selfishness. With impurity. With impiety. I was ashamed. I could not . . . stand to see you . . . in that way. My heart ... could not go on. It ceased its beating. Perhaps ... through willpower . . . I could have maintained it. But I did not. In a way . . . I myself was selfish.”

  Gilgamesh was shaking his head in disbelief. “And in all this time . . . you never told me of any of this? Why did you not?”

  And looking as if he knew the next words would hurt most of all, Enkidu said, “You never . . . inquired of me. You never cared . . . enough to ask.”

  The High King just gaped at him. He seemed to have forgotten that he was holding his sword. The world was spiraling away from him, as if something within him had broken. Finally he found his voice. “And . . . what would you have of me . . . ?”

  “Release the land,” Enkidu said. “Release the people. Be of the world . . . instead of simply in the world. And let nature . . . take its course.”

  He’s listening . . . gods . . . he’s listening, thought Arthur. Look at his face . . . his entire manner . . . he’s actually going to attend to Enkidu’s words . . . I can’t believe it’s going to be that easy . . .

  A heartbeat later, it wasn’t that easy at all.

  “KILL THEM!” COMES the voice in his head, louder, more strident, more insistent, refusing to accept any alternative. “You have the sword of the underworld! You can destroy them. Kill them, I say! Kill them all!”

  IT WAS GWEN who spotted it. Gwen who saw Miss Basil’s mouth forming the words just before Gilgamesh shouted, “Kill them all!”

  “She’s doing it!” shouted Gwen. “She’s making him say it! She’s doing something to him!”

  Miss Basil’s head snapped around to face Gwen, and her mouth drew back in a twisted expression of fury as a hiss escaped her lips, and Gwen felt Miss Basil’s gaze starting to bore into her, and she tried to look away but could not avert her eyes. And suddenly a bust of Gilgamesh slammed into Miss Basil’s head, thrown with unerring accuracy by Nellie Porter. Miss Basil let out a startled shriek and went down, blood welling up from a vicious wound on her forehead.

  Gilgamesh staggered, putting his hands to his temples, trying to regain his footing and then finding it. He pivoted and faced Miss Basil, who was on the ground, momentarily disoriented. “Was that you, just now? In my head? Telling me to kill them?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation, cold fury in her eyes.

  “Do you see your true enemies now, Gilgamesh?” Arthur called, his voice ringing out amongst the assemblage. “Do you see the way of things, the way they should truly be? Do you see that those who care about you want only the best for you?”

  Gwen didn’t want the best for him. The bastard had killed Baumann. She had not forgotten that, and although she resented the
hell out of him for whatever hold it was he had over Nellie, he certainly hadn’t deserved to die that way. But she restrained herself with effort. This entire insanity, after all, had occurred because of her. If appealing to Gilgamesh’s nobler side—presuming there was one—was going to get them all out of this intact, who was she to protest? Because obviously Gilgamesh, faced with evidence of the manipulation of his mind, was going to do the right thing. That had to be what was about to happen.

  THE HIGH KING bridles upon the realization that his demonic lover has insinuated herself within his mind. She had made him want to strike down Pendragon, to take the woman, to take the sword, to act purely on behalf of his selfish wants and desires.

  Now she is gone from his head, distracted, unable to reestablish her influence.

  Now he is free to think for himself.

  And the first thought that occurs to him is that he wants to strike down Pendragon.

  The second is that he wants to take Pendragon’s woman. The third is that he wants the sword, and his selfish wants and desires are the wants and desires of a being who is two-thirds god, one-third man, and how dare anyone, be they king, queen, or beast brother, tell him what he can and cannot, should and should not, do.

  Yes, the Basilisk influenced his mind. But that was just her enjoying her machinations, playing her games, making certain that all went as she wanted. The truth is that her priorities and his are already very close. That is why they get along so well. That is why, of the three kings in this room—the King of the Britons, the King of Babylonia, and the Little King—only the latter two matter.

  He grips his scimitar firmly. It has come to this. Fine. He will do what needs be done. May the gods have mercy on all their souls, for he most certainly will not.

  RON CORDOBA KNEW people.

  He had succeeded as much as he had, gotten as far as he had, because he was able to read them instantly. Faster even than such reliable judges of character as Arthur, Ron had an infallible sense of what people were going to do before they did it. It benefited him tremendously, allowed him to anticipate moves before others even knew they would be making the moves, and adjust accordingly.

  Within the course of a minute, as matters progressed, he knew the following:

  He knew Enkidu was not going to attack before Enkidu actually spelled it out.

  He knew that Miss Basil was somehow screwing with Gilgamesh’s mind. Gwen had shouted a warning barely a second before Ron was going to sound a similar alert.

  He knew that, freed of Miss Basil’s influence, Gilgamesh was nevertheless going to swing that terrifying blade of his and start hacking at whatever was within range.

  He knew that Arnim Sandoval did not share his ability to predict behavior and actions.

  The irony of that last statement would quickly become clear to Ron Cordoba.

  ARNIM SANDOVAL CAN still taste her lips on his.

  When his wife departed to visit family, she kissed him good-bye and he remembers that her lips tasted salty since she had been crying. He wonders belatedly if she had a sense that she would not be coming back.

  He has told Arthur Penn why the world despises Americans. He is not certain what he had been hoping for. Some sort of realization on Penn’s part? A mea culpa? A reassessment of American policies? No. Instead he receives a lengthy lecture on the glories of America because free exchange of ideas is so highly valued. Penn has no concept. No clue. He does not realize that he has just condemned his country with his own words. That it is the imposition of those ideas upon others, and the utter chaos and divisiveness caused by this love of totally uncontrolled speech, that serves to make America the great enemy it is of so many other countries. He has virtually admitted it: American arrogance dictates that the American way is the best, and heaven help any who disagree. How can any rational individual help but despise a country such as that?

  Penn does not understand. He will never understand. None of them will ever understand.

  Arnim Sandoval also does not understand. Much has happened to him. He spent an eternity in darkness. He has been reborn. He is in a place he can barely comprehend, encountering individuals he does not understand, facing circumstances that no rational man can be expected to accept.

  Yet he does.

  In some distant part of his mind, there is screaming and confusion and bewilderment at all that has happened to him, but that part of his mind is far, far away. Indeed, he truly has been reborn, and whenever he looks at the woman who had birthed him, it all makes infinite sense. He does not understand why that should be, but it is. He feels closer to her than he ever has to any woman. To any person. At first she had seemed to be the instrument of his punishment; instead she is now the woman who delivered him. Who has made him great, taken him to new levels. He has been stripped down to the purity of his essence. There is his hatred. And there is her. Nothing else matters.

  He sees her injured. He sees her angry. And that is all the trigger that is needed for the hatred he bears to rise up, great and glorious and terrifying to behold. He will physically reflect what he has become. He will become greatness incarnate. It will please her. It will fulfill him.

  How many times has Penn and his ilk, horrified in witnessing the retaliation that comes as a result of their own actions, called him a monster? More times than he can count.

  And Americans . . . so smug . . . so certain they’re always right . . .

  Let them be right this time. Let them take joy in their accuracy, for all the good it will do them.

  RON CORDOBA HAD the distinct impression that, had Sandoval not done anything ... if he’d just stood there . . . an enraged Gilgamesh would have torn into the hated Arthur Penn. He might well have caught Arthur flat-footed, although Ron might well have gotten an “Arthur, look out!” into play. For that matter, Arthur himself was no slouch. He might have anticipated the attack himself and adjusted for it.

  But Sandoval did not choose to stand there. For Sandoval was apparently of the opinion (which Ron did not share) that Gilgamesh was going to take this matter in stride. That he was indeed going to turn Arthur loose, give up full control of the land, freely share the healing qualities of the Grail with whoever wanted it, in a way that would not make them eternally dependent on his good graces.

  So Sandoval obviously decided to take action.

  Once upon a time, that decision would have meant very little unless Sandoval happened to be armed or with men under his command, neither of which was the case here. But that was an earlier time. This was the present. A present where Arnim Sandoval had spent apparently eight months in the belly of the beast . . .

  As a result, before Gilgamesh could match his own thoughts to actions, he was surprised by an animalistic roar from behind him that wasn’t coming from Miss Basil nor from Enkidu.

  It was coming from Sandoval. His back twisted, spasmed, and suddenly two small wings burst out of the back of his shirt. They were gray and flapping piteously, but they were there and they were real. He snapped his head back and forth, like a large cat shaking off water, and his body began to distort and distend. There was a rapid-fire series of cracking noises that sounded like firecrackers until Ron realized that it was bones breaking.

  Now all of Sandoval’s skin had turned that same slate gray, and his eyes were angled and slitted and a combination of yellow with flecks of emerald green. He stretched up and out, his clothes ripping, his neck elongating, his arms growing, his fingers extending and becoming taloned even as his legs shrunk and merged with the lower half of his rapidly growing body. There was a loud thud as his body reoriented itself to its new form and shape, thumping onto the floor in a display of thick, heavy coils.

  Flinging his arms out to either side, Arnim Sandoval—transformed into a towering twenty-foot-long young Basilisk—let out a shattering scream that gave a preview of what billions of souls screeching protests in hell over their fate must have sounded like.

  And Ron heard Percival mutter, “Well, this can’t be good.” />
  CHAPTRE THE TWENTY-FOURTH

  ARTHUR PENN, NEE Pendragon, never lost his cool. Never came close. He did, however, take a step back to assess the situation, and was not ecstatic with what he saw.

  Gilgamesh whirled and faced Miss Basil, who was staggering to her feet, nursing the wound to her head. “What have you done, woman?” he demanded. “What have you done?”

  She gestured grandly and said, “I’ve given birth. Isn’t he grand?” Miss Basil regarded the thrashing, roaring form of Sandoval and cooed, “My biological clock was ticking. I felt the need to reproduce, and Arnim was prime material for me. He’s glorious, isn’t he? He will dispose of Arthur, of Percival, of all of them—”

  There was a blur of steel so fast that Miss Basil neither saw it coming, nor anticipated it. She was still in the middle of a word when the great scimitar cut through the air and her neck and the air again without slowing. The force of the blow sent her head flying across the room and ricocheting off the far wall like a handball. Miss Basil’s body remained standing for a moment, as if trying to register the fact that its head was gone, and then it slumped forward, shifting in form even as it did, so that although it was a woman’s body that slumped forward, it was a mass of headless coils that actually hit the ground. Blue ichor seeped out of the top of the body where the head was missing. Obviously there were limits, even to the healing power of the Grail land. Either that, thought Arthur, or the Holy Grail wanted no part of the unholy Basilisk.

  Insanely, Gilgamesh turned and bellowed at the lifeless head of Miss Basil, which had rolled back across the floor and come to a halt at his feet. “Were you under the impression I could not attend to them myself? Is that how far you think I’d fallen? Is that how little you think of me?”