Corbenic

by Catherine Fisher

  Next morning, on the bus crossing the high plateau of Mendip, he thought of Merlin, because this was not how quests were achieved, not how the soul was saved, not squashed beside a fat woman with shopping bags and behind a kid defiantly smoking under a NO SMOKING sign. But he knew that unless he found Corbenic he would be lost, he could not move on. He would spend his life in regrets. He had caused his mother’s death, he had lied to the Company and betrayed Shadow back into the life she detested, and there was nothing he could do about any of that. But Bron was left. He might still be able to tell Bron he’d been wrong. And if Bron was real then he was not going mad.

  In Corbenic, there might be another chance.

  She would be waking about now. On the end of her bed she would find the CD, and would be staring at it. Listen to this, he had scrawled on the cover.

  Outside, now Bristol was left behind, the countryside was wide and green, the buds on the trees bursting with fresh leaf, the sky blue and windy with high cloud. They travelled through villages he had never heard of, with names out of lost stories: Farrington Gurney, Temple Cloud, Chewton Mendip, and people got off and on and the crush eased and the smoker was gone and he could breathe.

  And then the bus came down through a steep wood of birch and turned a corner, and before him he saw a wide plain, flat as a chessboard with its tiny fields, and rising out of it like a conical, mystical hill from a medieval painting, was the Tor, crowned with its ruined church.

  At the town’s entrance the sign said THE ANCIENT AVALON. He hoped it still was. Though as he got off and a sudden shower turned the world gray, it seemed farther away from Corbenic than any other place that he’d been.

  Cup

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Fair son, this castle is yours.

  High History of the Holy Grail

  He bought some food and spent a few hours sleeping in the corner of a grassy graveyard outside the church in the main street. Although he’d had some rest at Shadow’s his whole body still seemed weary, as if the time in the Waste Land, the time that had not existed, was catching him up. And he was thin. Worn thin.

  The first thing he did when he woke was to lie for a while watching the sky; the blueness of it slowly filling with great dark-edged clouds.

  Then he sat up and pulled on the rucksack and walked down to the post office. He put the change from the fifty-pound note Shadow had given him in an envelope and posted it back to her. On the inside of the flap he scrawled, I can’t take any more.

  Glastonbury was a crazy place. All the shops had books about the Grail; he flicked through them and found they were full of theories, history, photographs. Everything was brightly colored, hanging with crystals, swords, pentangles, healing herbs. The noise and the people seemed to hurt his senses; he felt bruised, wanted somewhere quiet, anywhere green. Sometimes he struggled to breathe. Like a fish out of water.

  At the cross in the center of town, he stopped and looked back up the pavement. A man in a bright stripy T-shirt was gazing intently into a shop window, face turned away. Thoughtful, Cal walked on.

  Owein. One of the Company. They must have been watching this place the whole time. He scowled, furious with himself. He should have known that!

  Quickly, he ducked around the corner and began to run, up the steep, shop-lined street toward the Tor. From the Tor you could see for miles. From the Tor you might see anything. He didn’t look back till the last turning. There was no sign of anyone following. But Cal knew the Company; they were on to him now. They’d find him. They were his friends; they’d want to look after him. Get him home. But he could only find the castle on his own.

  The footpath led over green hilly fields where yellow flies buzzed over dried cowpats and the hedges were white with cow parsley and campion. This was Chalice Hill, and beyond it, rising crazily, ridged in furrows and mysterious terraces, was the Tor. Crossing the last field toward it he saw the small moving specks that were people up there, and stopped, instantly still. You could see for miles. His own thought mocked him. So they’d have someone up there, wouldn’t they, watching for him. He swore.

  He waited till dark, holed up under a hedge. Slowly the daylight died, night coming early in a rush of high wind; it rustled the trees above him and the noise of cars and people faded until the wind became the only sound in the world, louder than he had thought it could ever be. When he sat up and brushed the leaves and soil off, it roared around him, buffeting him into the hedge, small raindrops spattering his face.

  He crossed the small lane and began to climb. There was a concrete path, and then steps. They wound around the ridges of the strange hill; high steps, and soon he was breathless, but the higher he went the stronger the wind was, flapping the collar of his jacket and whipping his hair into his eyes, making him stagger as the steps came around to the west. Below, the countryside spread out, dark and shadowy on the flat levels, the roads marked with red streetlights, the whiter sprawl of house windows glinting, and beyond that the low hills, the far, far distant darkness of the sea, and Wales.

  Cal stopped, his side aching. Then, carefully, he left the steps and scrabbled up the last steep slope, gripping for handholds in the slippery grass, digging his toes in and hauling himself up. Wind roared in his ears. He lay with his face close to the sweet-smelling turf, and peered over the top.

  There was a tower—the tower of the old church. It rose, huge and black against the night sky. Inside it, small red glimmers, the reflections of a fire, danced and leaped.

  He listened. There were voices, low voices talking. The flattened roar of the flames in a gust of wind. Crackles.

  Carefully he pulled himself up and crouched, keeping low, off the skyline. Then he crawled to the long dark shadow of the tower and slid into it, into the corner made by the great buttress.

  A tiny scatter of music came out. An advertisement for a concert in Bristol.

  Cal grinned. He peered around the buttress and through the open archway, his hands gripping the crumbling, cold stones.

  Two men were wrapped in blankets by the fire. Both were asleep. Beside them a radio bleated into a pop song, so thin that he knew its batteries were almost gone. As far as he could tell in the shadows, the men were strangers to him. But that didn’t mean they weren’t in the Company.

  He stepped back, and back, watching them, but as they didn’t move except to breathe he let the darkness cover him and turned, facing out, into the wind. It hurtled itself against him like some beast; he held his arms out to it, wide, letting the rain hit him so hard he felt it would bruise him. All across the miles of the wide Somerset levels it roared, and he was the first thing it met, high in its wild, raging storm path, and above him the osprey soared, wings wide, and below the land was dark, the lights going out one by one as he put them out deliberately in his mind, like the candles in Bron’s banquet room.

  And he saw Corbenic.

  How could he have missed it?

  It was huge, its windows blazed with light! No more than a mile away, it rose up out of the dark lands like a mass of granite, its walls and turrets outlined with torches, a vast castle, the only castle, a haphazard conglomerate of every castle he had ever seen, in every picture, film, book. It was a stronghold, invulnerable. Birds cawed and swirled over its highest pinnacles, sentinels patrolled its battlements. In its hundred courtyards horses were stabled. Blindfold hawks slept in its mews, cooks worked in its kitchens, a thousand servants, squires and serving maids, knights and women, poets and singers thronged its halls. This was how a castle should be.

  And then the wind stung his eyes and it blurred and faded.

  “Wait!” he shouted in panic. “Wait for me!”

  “Cal.” Her voice was close behind him. He turned and she was there, in the old sweater and trousers that never seemed clean.

  He stepped back.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “You always said that.”

  “Did you think I never meant it?”

  “I do
n’t know.” He shook his head, baffled. “I don’t know, do I! If you meant it, why did you go on drinking? Why didn’t you change? Why did you let the time go on, days, years, all that time. All the time that belonged to me! That should have been mine!” He was yelling, he knew. The wind took the words away as soon as he’d shouted them; it flung them out into the dark land.

  His mother sat down on the grass, catching her hair to keep it from blowing across her eyes. “Because of the castle,” she said wonderingly, looking out at it. “That was the reason.” She smiled at him, and he saw she was calm, as she’d never been. “You see, Cal, I always thought they were voices but they weren’t. They were echoes. No one explained that to me. I was hearing them and they were real, but not in the way I thought. And I hated hearing them, so I did anything to get away, to drown them. And I’m sorry, Cal, love, because it was always you that got hurt. The fear was so stifling I couldn’t see through it. I couldn’t. The voices were all the world, but that should have been you, my little boy, my son. All the things you missed out on, never did, never had. I can never give you that back, Cal.”

  It was as if she was speaking about someone else. As if all that was over. Long finished.

  “I should have come home,” he said bitterly.

  She stood and reached out, her hand almost touching him. “When you left, all I thought of was your father. How he left. He never came back either.”

  Cal closed his eyes; only a stinging second of darkness. When he opened them she wasn’t there, had never been there. The sudden emptiness of it was a torment, and he turned and looked out at the great castle, and suddenly tore the straps of the rucksack open and rummaged in it furiously, pulling out the crumpled card he had brought from the flat, with its childish rounded writing and the picture of the flowers, carefully drawn in crayon.

  “Don’t go without this!” he screamed. He opened his hand, and the wind took it. In a flap of sound it was there and it was gone.

  The castle went with it.

  And when the urgent voice behind him said, “Stand still, Cal. You’re too near the edge,” he even smiled as he turned.

  Kai stood in his dark coat beside the tower. Behind him, in a wide semicircle, were some of the Company—Gwrhyr, Owein, a dozen of the Sons of Caw. And Hawk.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  I am a messenger to thee from Arthur, to beg thee come and see him.

  Peredur

  Cal stepped back. Behind him the sheer slope of the hill plummeted into darkness.

  Kai looked anxious. “We’re here to help.”

  “Then leave me alone.” He glanced around at them. They were tense. They were afraid of what he might do. He realized how wild he must look and laughed, a hollow, vicious laugh that even scared him.

  “For God’s sake, Cal,” Hawk said hoarsely. “We’re your friends. We just . . .”

  “How did you know where to find me? Shadow?”

  Kai flashed a glance at Hawk; the big man nodded. “You can’t blame her. She was worried.”

  Cal shook his head, savoring the irony. So she had done it to him now. Stepped in, interfered. She had shown him what it felt like.

  “Come back with us,” Kai said quietly. “You can stay at Caerleon. No questions, no bother. The Company will look after you.”

  They only wanted to help; he knew that. So he said, “I can’t. I have to find this place. Corbenic. I’m close to it, I know I am.” He waved into the dark. “It’s out there. Just out there.”

  Kai took a step to the side. “You say you’ve seen the Grail.”

  “And I don’t suppose you believe me.”

  The tall man laughed calmly. “On the contrary, Cal. We know about the Grail. The search for it goes on always. Don’t you think we haven’t searched for centuries? But then, you don’t believe us either, do you?”

  For a long moment only the wind raged between them. Until Cal said, very quietly, “I believe you are who you think you are.” Then he turned, and stepped off the edge.

  Hawk’s howl, the grab of his great hands, the thump of the grass: he remembered those, and then his whole body was out of control, a breathless, crashing, flailing roll down the sheer slope, banging, bruised, tumbled, flung out and smashed back against the ridges of the hill until he hit the stone and the night went black.

  Maybe only for a second. Because when he came to, the pain was so intense he could hardly draw a breath, and he knew he’d broken a rib, maybe more than one. His arms and shoulders were so sore he groaned as he pushed himself up, but he could stand, and even run, in a doubled-up, uneven agony. The hill above him was alive with shouts and torches; they were coming down, skidding, wild with anxiety. He backed into a hedge, forced his way through, snapping the thick stalks of hemlock, wading through stiff grass.

  “Cal!” Hawk’s shout was a nightmare of fear; gasping, Cal stumbled away from it, through a field into the garden of a cottage, deep in weeds. They must think he’d broken his neck. It was a miracle he hadn’t.

  The castle had been close. Beyond Chalice Hill. At the bottom of the town.

  There were hens in the garden; they cackled and set up a terrible clucking racket. Then a dog barked, and a back door opened.

  Cal swore, flung himself at the wall and clambered over it. It hurt so much he had to stop then, coughing and retching, holding onto the wall to keep on his feet. Breathing was an agony. Maybe he should give up. Let them take him home.

  Home. There was no home. Not Sutton Street, not Otter’s Brook. Not the farm at Caerleon. Not Shadow’s Georgian palace. None of them was his. Only Corbenic was his.

  He lifted his head, dragged a breath in. “Show me,” he hissed to the dark. “If you want me to come, show me.”

  “Cal!” They’d heard the hens. The yell was close. He ran, loping down the lane, around the corner into the main road.

  Amber lamplight dyed the night; cars droned past him, a truck. He ran along the narrow pavements, past the entrance to the Chalice Well, every breath a struggle, an ache clutched tight to his chest.

  They were close; too close. He could never outrun them. He ducked off the road into a garage forecourt; it was closed and dark, but he slipped into the shadows and found a doorway and slid down onto his heels, head on knees, a knot of pain, gasping.

  Footsteps. Running, then slow. Still.

  Then Kai’s voice. “He can’t be far. He’s in no state . . .”

  “When we find him, let me talk to him.” That was Hawk, sounding anguished.

  “You two that way. The rest, up into the town. Work your way down to the abbey. Get a grip, Hawk of May. We’ll find him.”

  Cal knew that was true. Kai was relentless, and would find him. Soon. He waited until it was quiet. Then edged out.

  Glastonbury was silent. The pubs had shut and in the houses televisions flickered blue and gray behind the curtains. He walked slowly, warily, his footsteps echoing, his shadow lengthening as he left the lampposts behind, until he came to a high wall on the right and he knew this was the abbey, the grounds of which took up most of the center of town. But the castle had been here.

  If he stayed on the road the Company would find him, so he reached up with both hands and grasped the top of the stonework, then dug his toes in and pulled. The pain was so staggering he let go at once and crumpled onto the pavement; he wanted only to lie there and die, but it was already too late.

  A sound in the street made him turn. Two dark figures flitted behind a parked car.

  Instantly, without letting himself think about it, he grabbed the wall and climbed, got to the top, kicked out at the sudden tight grip on his ankle. Then he was over and running across the dark expanse of lawn, racing toward the twin stark ruins of the abbey, and behind him boots were scrambling over the wall, Hawk was calling his name, and his heart was thudding behind the pain of his ribs as if it would burst out.

  “Where?” he gasped. “Where?”

  The building was a bewilderment of shadows; in the cold dimnes
s of the windy night its trees roared and small fragments of masonry rattled from the snapped stumps of windows. Cal swung into the vast roofless nave and stopped dead.

  A man was sitting on an enclosed rectangle of grass there. A big man, in a scruffy tweed jacket. He stood up slowly. He seemed unsurprised.

  Cal held out his hands. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  Arthur nodded. He looked down at the stone. “This is my grave,” he said wryly.

  “What?”

  “Only that nothing is what it seems. Death, even. It’s never too late, Cal.”

  Shadow was with him. She was sitting so still Cal barely registered her; the tattoo was back on her face, and for a second then he was absolutely certain that none of this was real, that it was all in his mind and that he’d wake soon, in the room at Trevor’s maybe, and hear Thérèse singing in the bathroom.

  Shadow stood up, and said, “What will happen if you find it?”

  “Bron will be healed. I’ll be healed. There will be no Waste Land.”

  Sadly, she shook her head. “Will you come back?”

  “Would you want me to?”

  “Of course.” She glared at him.

  “Then I’ll come back. If I can.”

  She went to step toward him, but Arthur held her wrist. “That’s all I want,” she whispered. And for a second, it was all he wanted. Then he sidestepped past her, and saw the castle. It was there, over the grass. Heedless, he ran toward its open gates.

  “Cal! Be careful!” The shout was Hawk’s, close; Cal turned, stumbled backward, tripped over some stonework. Then he fell with a splash and a yell, and before he could even breathe, water closed over his face. He kicked, fought, swallowed black gunge, found the air, coughed it up, sank. Darkness filled his eyes and nostrils, choked his throat, rose into his lungs, webbed his mouth, trapping an unheard scream like a bubble that grew and grew and would never burst, and he was caught and tangled in a net of terror, drowning, dying, dead, surely, till the big hands came down and hauled him out, into an explosion of air, a lifting, a gripping of the wet grass with both hands, a retching, vomiting relief.