by John Maclay
But Henry had figured out ways of getting around such things. What wasn’t officially found never became a problem. If he located some antique-looking stone and smashed it to flinders, it would become just more gravel to be hauled away.
George backed the dozer away from the obstacle, his blade shrilling along the obstruction. The dirt fell in behind it, but Henry glimpsed a pale gray length before it was covered.
“Come on, George, and bring your shovel. Let’s see what’s hanging you up,” he called, his voice pitched to reach no farther than the driver.
Together they scraped the damp clumps of soil away from the coffin-sized stone. Henry frowned. That was a hard son-of-a-bitch. He’d never break it with what he had. Then he wondered if it was as thick as it looked.
“Let’s dig down beside it,” he said.
They found, once they used the spade vigorously, that the thing was only some ten inches thick. Henry grinned. “We can pry it up, roll it onto its side, and break it with the blade,” he said.
They heaved, and it sucked free to stand on edge. It was a handsome thing, Henry noted regretfully. Carved with twining vines that framed a lion in one loop and a sword in another, it had to be extremely old. This area had been bog for as long as any local account could recall.
For an instant Henry hesitated. He loved old things, even when his work demanded that he destroy them. The ancient trees that had already fallen grieved him, but he had hitched his destiny to that of Jordan Harp. That meant he had to become a destroyer, building altars to wealth instead of creating structures of beauty.
But George was raising the dozer blade, shaking off the dirt, getting it positioned above the edge of the stone coffer. Henry stepped back, and George brought the heavy metal down onto the thing.
There was a grinding crack, a flash of light, and George screamed. Henry saw the metal of the bulldozer begin to glow, red to yellow to white, blindingly brilliant. George jerked spasmodically, and for an instant his skeleton was a shadow beneath his dissolving flesh.
Henry felt himself pushed backward to land against the wall of the cut, his face singed by the holocaust that enveloped the bull-dozer. As the light began to turn red again, dying away, he shook his head. Where are the men? Haven’t they heard or seen what happened down here? he wondered.
He staggered forward, his shoes heating against the smoldering earth. Beneath the blade of the dozer lay segments of gray stone, cracked apart in regular sections as if they had been assembled so. A glint of brightness shone amid the parts, and, compelled by some unknown power, Henry bent and touched it.
His fingers touched icy metal, there in the middle of that steaming pile. Without thinking about poor George or the ruined dozer, he lifted it free.
A sword. Long, exquisitely worked yet clean of line, it fitted into his hand as if designed for it. He watched, dazed, as the steel blade rose high, moving his hand rather than being moved by it. He struggled to control it, but still it moved, turning him to face the ruined bulldozer. The thing sank forward to touch, very gently, the fire-blackened blade.
Metal whispered on metal, as the entire mechanism crumbled into dust, which mingled with the ashes of its unhappy driver. In a heartbeat, nothing remained that might be identified as man or machine.
The sword tingled with a strange electrical charge, which now was dwindling. Henry managed to set it aside at last, his arm and hand numb, his mind overloaded with unanswerable questions.
Then the water began to come in. Henry grabbed the blade and climbed out of the ditch, frantically trying to outrace the flow. When he reached the top, he found that no worker was in sight, no bulldozer, no distant piles of girders.
Forest, ancient and unbroken, lay beyond the verges of a lake, now filling to its old measure. As Henry waded out of the lake, he saw with disbelief that he wore rags wrapped about his feet, a coarse tunic, and he could tell with ease that he wore no underwear.
He staggered into the shade of a great oak and dropped to the ground. The sword, still clutched in his hand, rang softly against one of the gnarled roots, and the sound seemed to still the breeze that had whispered through the leaves.
For one moment the birdsong that had filled the place went silent. Henry stared, stunned, at the lake, now filled with dark, peaty water, and the village that lay beyond it. Wattle huts were clumped awkwardly about a pole that held an oddly shaped symbol on the top. A woman sat on a bench before a door, holding up a tunic much like his own and shaking her head over its ragged holes. Two men came out of the forest carrying a deer slung to a pole.
What had happened to him in that moment when the blade struck the coffer? Was he dead? Mad? Or had he returned to a time before the England he had come to know?
He shifted his weight, and something rolled beneath his foot. He dug into the turf and uncovered a rounded shape, which he cleaned against the grimy tunic. Then he stared, appalled and confused.
He held in his hand a crystal sphere. He had seen it many times, for Claude, the foreman, carried it as a good-luck charm. Inside the crystal was a bit of fossil fern that he had found on some job in his youth. There was probably not another luck-piece anywhere like Claude’s. That meant that all the men, Claude, the machinery, everything had been reduced to dust, as George and the bulldozer had been. But the forest had been felled! How had it returned, in a matter of minutes, to its ancient glory? What power was contained in this long-buried sword?
Henry staggered to his feet. He must learn how far this alteration went. There had to be some limit to the change, and he would walk until he found it. Taking up the sword, which now was a heavy burden, he moved toward the east, where the sun climbed an unpolluted sky.
He was soon completely lost in the tangle of ancient boles and grasping roots. Stumbling, almost sobbing, he kept moving, afraid that he might be circling, for the sun was invisible through the thick canopy of branches.
Again the metal tingled with life, his fingers clenching harder about it. The sword moved, rose to point a direction. Henry had no other guide. He must follow its guidance.
For a long, long while he moved through the forest, and as it grew dark the sword itself began to glow, a faint glimmer that was only a little better than no light at all.
He wondered why he never tired or grew hungry. It could only be some property of the sword, he thought, before his mind went numb. After that, his legs moved, his feet walked, his hand held the sword as if he were some robot, moving to the will of another.
Nights passed, and days, as he trudged through the forest. From time to time he came to a skimpy clearing, where huts held people who tilled small fields with crude wooden tools. Always the trees closed in again, and he began to understand why old texts referred to ancient England as a single forest from end to end.
His mind waked from its rest and began worrying with the questions that tormented him. Was there no end to this? Would he never emerge into the modern world of cleared lands, crowded cities, clogged skies?
When the sword rested, he forged ahead blindly. When it roused to life, he followed its pointing tip. And after many days of walking, he came to a spot where a ray of sunlight struck through a rent in the canopy. It sparkled on something dangling at arm’s reach above the path.
Henry reached up and caught the golden bauble. Then he caught his breath in wonder and despair. He held Jordan Harp’s medallion, which the man always wore: a golden harp on a golden chain with the initials J.H. engraved at the lower edge.
Had the helicopter dissolved as the bulldozer did, along with its riders? Was this all that was left of the empire of chrome and steel and stone that Jordan Harp had created in a world that seemingly no longer existed? Had the strange effect of the sword moved outward like a ripple in a pond, changing all in its path?
He lifted the chain, settled the harp onto his chest, and sighed. The sword was not done with him yet. There was somethin
g left for him to do, it was clear, for the haft tugged at his hand, and the point quested eagerly forward, pulling him along as if it were a hunting dog after game.
When he came out of the forest into clear sunlight and broad meadows, he blinked rapidly. It had been days since he had seen such brightness, and now it almost blinded him.
When he adjusted to the clarity of light and air, he realized that he was looking across a vast lake toward a city—a real city, though not a modern one. The tallest building was a tower inside the crenellated walls. Roofs of dull gray slate and red tiles rose higher than the walls, but were none of them of any great height above the ground.
For the first time since the strange quest began, Henry felt a flicker of excitement. He was looking at a medieval city, at least, perhaps one from the Dark Ages. As an architect, he found himself fascinated. Artists’ conceptions and photographs of restored buildings were not, he saw at once, enough to show how one really looked.
He tried to move toward the lake. There must be some path or road that ran along its shore to that distant vision. But the sword would not yield its dominance. Instead, it jerked him, resisting and complaining, along the edge of the forest, toward a gap where a road cut through the trees.
At last he surrendered and followed, regretting the lost opportunity. In some strange way, his fate was compelled by the sword, and he knew that he must submit.
The road was only a cart-track, two worn marks winding through the forest, avoiding big trees or rocks or bad places to ford streams. After some distance, the land began to slope upward, and the trees became smaller, less tangled. And then, rounding a bend, Henry found himself staring up at a castle out of some book of fairytales: golden towers, battlements, gay flags snapping in the breeze from the sea below the cliff on which it stood.
The sword, which had been exerting a steady pull, began to pulsate, like an eager dog that sighted its master. Henry found himself running to keep up with his own hand and the blade that now sliced forward toward a gate in the wall. Its gleam had become a blaze and grew even brighter as Henry came near the moat that surrounded the wall.
Must I swim? Henry wondered.
But the sword did not hesitate. It swept into a figure eight, and pulleys began to creak as the drawbridge descended slowly to bridge the moat. Pulled along helplessly, Henry sprang onto the near edge, before the bridge was entirely down. Pell-mell, he hurtled toward the heavy gates, the blade leading the way. When it touched the iron-banded oak, the great gates shivered into splinters.
Henry felt his arm sink beneath the weight of the weapon. For the first time since he had started, the sword was entirely quiet, though his fingers still clasped it, unable to loose their grip. He had to raise it to keep the blade from trailing in the dust as he entered and looked about. This was a place built for serious defense, he saw at once. Inside the gate was a small chamber with walkways about the top. Anyone breaching the gate in war would find himself trapped here while archers above poured arrows into his men. But the gates that should have closed it off stood open, letting the soft air of May sweep through into the space beyond.
Four men in chain mail turned at his approach, staring at Henry with stunned gazes. Two women skittered across the cobbles and into open doors, which slammed behind them.
Henry held up the sword. Now it took on life again, began to tingle, then to throb. As two of the men drew swords and a third bellowed to the archers on the battlements, a tall man came down the steps of the inner keep and strode toward them.
Henry felt his knees move. He had never knelt to anyone in his life, but now he went down onto the cobbles and dust, holding out the sword to this lordly man who now stood gazing down at him through quizzical hazel eyes.
“I have brought this...to you,” he gasped. It was the first time he had spoken since George disappeared, along with his bulldozer.
The man spoke but, strain as he might, Henry could not understand his words. Still, the gloved hand stretched toward him and took the sword, which began to glow, its fires rising to new heights. A delicate humming filled the air, and Henry felt it inside his bones, which now seemed attuned to the weapon.
“Artorius Rex!” the guardsmen shouted. “Excalibur!”
Those hazel eyes met Henry’s brown ones. Henry rose slowly, feeling himself compelled now by the power within the man. He felt the chain about his neck, lifted it over his head, and held it out to the King.
“It belonged to another king,” Henry said. “Now it is yours, and you will be a force for good. Why else should all this have happened?”
The long face smiled down at him. The King held the harp high, sparkling in the sunlight. “This is a symbol of power that is dark,” he said, and though Henry did not understand the words he heard the meaning clearly.
The King climbed a stone stairway to stand on the seaward battlement and look down at the curling waves. He spun the golden harp around his head and let it go. The bright sparkle whirled over the edge of the cliff and was quenched in the water below.
Then Arthur turned, his face blazing with joy. Again he spoke in that archaic tongue that now Henry could understand clearly. “The world is renewed. Not again will we see the dark days come. Men will be freed. Land will be tilled to richness, but the forests will not be destroyed. Cities will rise, but cleanly, without poisoning their people.
“Come, my friends. We must go out into this restored England and tell our people that the evil times have ended and the past has returned in better form and more hopeful guise.”
Henry felt his heart thudding. Was the entire world changing as England had? Would he have the opportunity to see Arthur, returned to life as the old prophecy had predicted, take up his sword again and create a new and better life for mankind?
Smiling, he strode after the King and his men. Something inside him, long dormant, began to flower. This was going to be a life worth living!
GRYPHON’S NEST
Having become old and somewhat near-sighted myself, I wondered what would happen IF....
Griselle flapped irritably through the fog, peering downward from time to time in search of her nest. Short-sighted as she was, it was hard enough to see when the weather was clear, and now, after casting about for hours in this mucky weather, she was totally confused. Not a single mountain peak loomed through the mist to give her guidance toward her nesting place, which was neatly situated in a sheltered valley among the Drachenberg Mountains.
Not that she was terribly happy with nesting. A Gryphon was simply not designed for sitting on eggs, and that was a fact. The lion’s body wasn’t designed for it, though the wings did a fairly good job of keeping the dratted things covered warmly and the mist off them.
It was not an easy life, being a female Gryphon, and Griselle was not naturally maternal. Young griffins were nasty tempered and their beaks were painful when they tried to suckle. That was another mistake of nature that she resented rather bitterly.
She hoped that the present batch would be her last clutch of eggs. She was getting too old for this, not to mention entirely too blind. Keeping track of the young monsters was no easy task, once the boring job of hatching was done with.
She tangled with a small tree and found her wings flailing desperately at flexible branches and wet leaves. Was this the rhododendron growing on the ledge just above her nest? She pecked at a leaf, decided it must be, and dropped through the damp foliage to land springily on her lion legs.
Her tail switched with impatience as she made her way among stones that were like any others anywhere. She never had made a study of them, and whether they were granite or sandstone she couldn’t truly say.
There were, however, rocks around her nest, so she must be headed in the right direction. And after a half hour of stumbling and bumping and thrashing around in the fog, she found a huddle of jagged boulders in the midst of which lay three pale eggs. They seemed a bit
smaller than she remembered, but her memory wasn’t very good any more either. It was a nest, and that was good enough for her.
With a whistling sigh the Gryphon settled painfully onto the rock pile and scuffled her legs to arrange the eggs so her leg-bones wouldn’t break them. Strange—they felt comfortable for a change. Instead of having slick shells, they seemed to have become leathery and slightly soft. They didn’t seem quite as large either. A nice change! There were too few pleasant surprises these days.
The night-mist lifted, but Griselle was sleeping, her whistling snores echoing among the distant heights. When the sun topped the eastern mountains the Gryphon opened one eye and looked about. She raised her head and peered short-sightedly toward the blue peaks. Their shapes swam dizzily before her, not exactly like those she remembered but not exactly unlike, either. Near enough.
Warmed by the sun, she dozed away the summer days, waiting for hatching time to arrive. Garamond, her mate, did not visit her, which was not surprising. She had left him sitting on their nest while she went to find a sheep or a man or some other tasty bit to keep her from getting hungry while she sat, and she had found it unattended when she returned. He knew better than to face her after such slack behavior.
The visit of the Manticore almost caught her unaware. Deceived by his lion body, too blind to note the lack of wings and the leering man’s face, she moved lazily at first, thinking it was that laggard Garamond. She opened her beak to dress him down before she caught the gleam of those human-like eyes.
She sprang into the air with a desperate flap of her powerful wings and a surge of energy to her furry legs. The Manticore lunged, but she was out of reach and the thing squirmed out of the nest and backed away, its triple rows of teeth grinding together in fury. Nasty things, Manticores!
Griselle might not be maternal, but this was her nest; he was threatening her property. She settled back, her wings covering the nest jealously, her razor sharp beak ready to amputate any part of the creature that came near.