Tales of the Once and Future King

by Anthony Marchetta

I saw the other knights land behind us. Isolde lunged for me, but I hesitated to take the opening. Too late. One of her swords stabbed through my armor’s chest and severed the control tethers. The Durendal fell over, but the other knights reached me and she fled.

  I did not die that battle, although I was nearly stepped on twice in the mélee. Yet I knew that if she had remembered I was not in the chest, and so struck for the helm, I would be dead.

  “Sire,” I said, looking up at the star. I couldn’t bear to look at my liege. “I don’t think she could have fooled everyone completely.”

  “She did a good job at it,” the Arthur said bluntly. Though we were far from the Wall’s crenelations, his guards surrounded him protectively.

  “But you, the Silver Lady, Mary, the Merlin, the archbishop, myself—we all thought she was sincere. She had to be, at least partially. The greatest lies are mixed with an extent of truth. And—I know she betrayed us in the end. But...”

  “But?” the king asked. There was no judgment in his voice.

  “But I think there was more behind this. When we fought, I think she said ‘sickness.’ I know how horrible her illness was—No, I don’t. But if it was great enough, so much that she wished to die, perhaps she willingly chose vampirism, if that would cure her. And after choosing that, they ordered her to find some way into Neo Logres, then convince us to make that white armor...” I trailed off.

  “The darkness would have turned her into a vampire, no matter if she agreed or not,” the king said. “As she did Mary.”

  “Sire, is she doing better?”

  “Her health is not so much the issue as what we shall do next. How can anyone trust a vampire again?”

  I did not know what to say. “But rather than turning Isolde into a vampire, the darkness could have fed her to a monster, or used her as a sacrifice. And even if she was a vampire unwillingly, she chose to deceive us. Sire, yes, she chose this, but I believe, even as she did so, she truly regretted it.”

  “And that is why you do this?” the Arthur motioned to my Durendal VI. Even with new alchemical treatments to repair the breastplate, it was clearly scarred. Any more and it would be for a junker.

  “Sire, if you are here to forbid me,” I said hesitantly. “If the Merlin would rather still have the prototype...”

  “Isaac is doubtlessly working on a Durendal VI-b, or a VII for all I know,” the king said. It was odd hearing the Merlin referred to by a given name. “I take it that automatic mushroom grower of his strapped to your great armor’s back is his doing, in any case. No, I came to give my blessing.”

  “Thank... thank you, sire.”

  “If you do desire to return,” the king said. “You are always welcome. I shall let not one stain of suspicion on yourself for what happened remain.”

  “Again, thank you sire,” I said. “But I must do this. I cannot let myself wonder, night after night, if the choice to betray was hers. I must find her. Even if I never do, even if I die somewhere in the wasteland... it will be worth it. I can do nothing else.”

  “You have a lot of hope for something so hopeless.”

  I held the silver ring, a ring she still might one waking wear, up to the starlight of Polaris. “Though there may be only one star left in the sky, it is worth all the hope in the world.”

  CHAPTER 5

  “I don’t get it,” said Lance bluntly. “Did that actually happen? Obviously the battle robots did. The world would never have been destroyed if those accursed machines hadn’t been invented, but that bit with Arthur? I thought Arthur was from a more ancient time. And the vampires obviously weren’t real.”

  Fox raised his eyebrows at Lance. “True and false mean different things to me than they do to you. Sometimes what is fact and what is true are not the same thing. However, if forced to hazard a guess, I would say that the stories about Arthur and his knights weren’t literally true, no. But the message is to be remembered: We risk our lives for a faint, but noble hope.” At the “we” Lance snorted, and even Maddie had to resist rolling her eyes; from what she saw they were the ones putting themselves on the line, but she let it slide. “And…” He hesitated. “I have one more story to tell, and please listen to me. This tale comes from even further in the past, when the seeds of our destruction had only barely been laid, and the world was a better, more innocent place. This tale is known as ‘The Hounds of Camelot’, and I implore you all to try and hear me when I speak.”

  Maddie didn’t know what he meant, but before she could puzzle it out Fox began.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Hounds of Camelot, by Morgon Newquist

  Charlie Warner was having a bad day. He was usually a pretty cheerful person, but today had been one annoyance and weird occurrence after another. First he had woken up late, and had to rush to school. That caused him to leave his book at home so he’d had to spend the entire day at school actually paying attention to lessons. That was bad enough, but then he’d had several obnoxious incidents at work. A set of kids decided to go wading in the algae-infested decorative pool and stained their clothes, and all of this had been Charlie’s fault when their mother showed up to get them, despite the rules that they shouldn’t have been unsupervised until they were older. And then a nutcase had attacked a woman right in front of his ticket booth—which also was, obviously, his fault. The incident had led to the police showing up. That meant lots of questions and angry customers and dancing the apologetic employee dance about things he couldn’t control. Also, now all the homework he had been planning on doing was sitting in his backpack—not doing itself—while he dealt with all of this. That would cut into the gaming time he had been looking forward to after work.

  It was just warm enough that june bugs were starting to bounce off of the dim lights that lit up the Camelot Funland and Arcade, but not warm enough that he could avoid wearing a jacket in the evening. He hated jackets—he was easily irritated by fabrics and tags, and much preferred to have his arms bare. It might not have been so bad if he could have worn one of his own pullovers, but he was working so he had to wear his work jacket. It was bright yellow and trimmed in blue, with a black castle embroidered on the back. It wasn’t even really his jacket either—just a loaner from the store room. It smelled musty, and made his arms itch.

  However, there were worse jobs than working the local putt-putt course as a teenager, and Charlie knew this, even if his uniform was hideous. Sweeping up intrepid bugs that were crawling into his little booth in between finishing his homework assignments was hardly the worst thing he could be doing. It was almost closing time, anyway, and since school wasn’t quite out yet the place was like a ghost town hours before closing.

  Working here he could read his books, complete his homework, and earn a little side money to pay for his hobbies. His mother worked nights at the hospital a lot, and he had no desire to ask for money out of her small paycheck for gas and books. He’d worked here since he was fifteen, and now the owner even trusted him enough to let him close up the park. He had a manager’s responsibility without the pay, but he didn’t mind.

  Especially when that meant he got to work with Lauren. It gave him an easy excuse to talk to her, even if it was only short sentences about the customers or that it was time to close up the slushie booth between holes 14 and 15 that she managed.

  Lauren was everything that Charlie had ever dreamed of in a girl, and he desperately wished he could at least be friends with her, but he was too afraid to talk with her too much. What if he said something stupid? She was smart—she was in his physics class, and his literature class. He saw the types of books she brought to read during the slow times: The Lord of the Rings, various Shakespeare plays, Dune and dozens of other books that Charlie had already read. He knew that he could find something to speak about with her, he just hadn’t been able to work up the courage to start the conversations. She was always nice to him. And with her dark eyes and very long braided hair, she even looked pretty in the terrible yellow polo shirt she too had
to wear when working.

  Prom was coming up soon, and he wondered idly to himself what she would look like all made up and wearing a pretty gown. He wanted to ask her, but didn’t feel like she knew him well enough yet. That was his plan—talk to her for a while, become friends, and then ask her to their senior prom. He thought it was solid, but the only problem was that he was running out of time. He’d sat in that very booth night after night for six months practicing conversations in his head. But he never crossed the park and actually talked to her.

  Charlie sat back down on the worn hidden stool that sat behind the counter. His physics book was open on the counter. He tried to focus on it so when he left work he could log onto World of Warcraft. But his mind kept jumping between Lauren and the annoying evening he’d been having.

  Charlie had never had to call the police on a customer before, not even when Jim Annes had gotten drunk and tried to ride the jousting horses. He’d just called the owner then. But something about tonight had been different, and his mind was still playing it over and over.

  He had picked the man out of the early evening crowd. It was still a Friday night even though it wasn’t summer yet, so there had been a reasonable crowd right after dinner. Amongst the teenagers and a regular elderly man named Gil, and a small crowd of young families, he had stuck out like a sore thumb.

  The man was rail thin - not just gaunt, but all skin and bones. He had the pallor of printer paper, brittle dark hair, and wide eyes that seemed like they should be bloodshot but weren’t. His clothes hung on his bony limbs, and had dirt in odd places—under the collar of the worn suit jacket he wore, in the pockets of his pants, and clinging to the ties on his dress shoes.

  But it was the eyes that really bothered Charlie. Charlie had seen crazy eyes like that before, when waiting to speak to his mother at the emergency room late one night. The man had later stabbed a doctor with a scalpel, accusing him of being a lizardman working in cahoots with Elvis to take him to Mount Everest as a sacrifice to the aliens that lived there.

  He had already decided to refuse to sell the man a ticket. The six dollars he would pay for a round would not be worth the trouble he would bring. Charlie had a sense about those kinds of things. He hadn’t wanted to sell the games to Jim Annes either.

  But it didn’t even come to that. The man had been waiting nervously in line, licking his lips and staring hungrily about when he’d snapped. Charlie had almost seen it in slow motion. The crazy man’s eyes had focused on the back of the neck of the woman in front of him. Then he’d lunged for her, trying to sink his teeth into her.

  Unfortunately for him, her husband was an ex-Marine. A giant, intimidating Marine with elaborate crucifix and dragon tattoo sleeves. The man had fled when the angry soldier turned on him, and Charlie had called the police to report the incident. It had been quiet the rest of the night, but Charlie was unconvinced that the man was really gone.

  It didn’t help that he could hear dogs howling all night. It was usually pretty quiet at the mini-golf course. But tonight, it sounded like all the dogs in town were upset. He could hear them in the woods around them, and it made him nervous. He knew there were houses around them, but it sounded to him like the dogs were nearby in the trees, just out of sight.

  He checked his watch. It was almost closing time, and no one else would be coming for the evening. He grabbed the walkie-talkie from the shelf on the wall and called Lauren.

  “Hi Charlie!” she greeted him cheerfully over the radio, and his heart skipped a beat.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and close up? I’m not going to let anyone else in for the night. Meet me out front when you’re done?” he was talking to her almost normally. Girls were such a mystery to him. He wished his father was still alive to help him. Charlie wasn’t intimidated by most things... but he was intimidated by girls. It was embarrassing. Maybe when they met at the gates for the course he could ask her about whatever book she was reading. He nodded to himself, accepting this plan. Now if only he didn’t chicken out when he saw her.

  “Great! I don’t mind an early night. I’ll see you up there,” she replied. Charlie smiled at her voice. He probably could have gotten away with texting her when they worked, but he liked to hear her. It let him pretend for at least a little while that he wasn’t a coward.

  Charlie pulled the grating down over the window of the front booth and flipped over the open sign. Then he went about completing his closing tasks. They were almost second nature to him, he had been doing them so long. Total out the cash drawer. Wipe the counters. Move all the clubs into the lockbox out back, walk the parking lot for trash, and check for any stray balls. After Lauren joined him he would power down the front lights, lock the big metal gates, and then they would both go home.

  He finished all of his work, put all of his books back into his green backpack, and went to stand by the gate. He knew about how long Lauren would take to finish up. They’d both worked there long enough to have a good routine down. They worked well together. Charlie hoped this was a good sign that they would work well together in other, less work-related matters.

  But the minutes crawled by as Charlie stood there practicing conversation starters in his head. The wind picked up, and the dogs began howling again. He was growing more and more nervous as time passed. Lauren should have been finished by now. He decided as the clock slid past 11:15 that he was going to check on her. He had been waiting long enough that it wouldn’t be weird to come looking for her. Maybe she had spilled one of the tubs of leftover slushie mix all over when pulling the machine apart. She had done that once and it had taken them both forever to clean it up.

  First, he opened the door to the front booth again, and tried her on the walkie-talkie. There was no answer. That wasn’t unusual, though. She might have just left the radio behind on the counter when she was moving items back to the storage room.

  Charlie returned to the gates and shut them, locking them behind him. He didn’t want anyone else to enter the park if he wasn’t there to watch the entrance. The dogs still howled in the distance, and goosebumps prickled along his arms at the sound.

  It had not escaped Charlie’s notice before tonight how eerie the park was when it was empty and dark. It seemed particularly spooky tonight with the ambiance of the howling dogs. He had shut off the large flood lights for the property as part of his closing routine, so the area was lit only by the street lights and solar lights the owner had installed for his employees. He was always finding ways to save money, and the earlier the expensive lights could be turned off, the better.

  Charlie found himself wishing they were still on, and then frowned at his own nervousness. How many times had he walked this way at night? More than he could count. Crazy customer or not, there was nothing to be afraid of.

  At first sight everything seemed to be in order, despite Charlie’s jittery nerves. The fountains were off, and so were all the various moving parts giving flavor to the mini-golf holes. The waving dragon tail, slowly clashing swords of the knights, and the plants at hole nine that were a part of the Green Knight were all motionless.

  He followed the concrete path up the hill that dominated the center area of the park, absent-mindedly looking at the signs he’d seen a dozen times. They were old and faded, telling the “travelers” how they were working their way through a quest to find the mysterious Holy Grail. Charlie wondered if anyone read them anymore. Probably not.

  He came quickly to the small rest area placed in the middle of the eighteen holes. There were several benches, some trash cans, and a pair of dirty blue picnic tables there, along with the stand where Lauren worked.

  The blue and green medieval-themed slushie booth was empty. The cash register had been totaled out, the supplies moved back inside the stock room, and all the equipment cleaned. The radio was in its place behind the counter. But Lauren was not there.

  Charlie frowned. He could feel that something was off. Lauren should have been finished by now. Any other night he would hav
e met her upfront, taken her cash from the register, and then walked her to her car in the parking lot to make sure she was safe. They both should have been on their way home by 11:00.

  Maybe she was finishing up in the stockroom. He silently grumbled at himself for being too much of a coward to have her cell phone number. She’d probably laugh at him when he found her, wondering why he was so worried.

  He continued toward the looming shape of the arcade located at the back of the park, passing more Arthurian-themed golf holes. If she was still in the park, she would be there. The arcade was a large faux-castle. It had grey stones with blue grout painted all across the walls, and the faded door was painted like wood. There was a concrete arch painted like a drawbridge that led over a drainage ditch. The building hadn’t actually been an arcade for years; it sat empty most of the time now, unless someone rented it out for a birthday party.

  Charlie was walking past the final hole of the course, which was themed like a cave. Players were to putt the ball down a hill, around rocks and piles of treasure, until they could get it in the hole. The hole was the Holy Grail, tipped over sideways so the golf ball could enter the cup and disappear into the underground tank. Then it would be held there so patrons of the establishment had to pay to play another eighteen holes. It was Charlie’s job to empty that once a week, usually on Saturday, and take all the balls back up to the front desk.

  He paused as he came to the silly fake drawbridge, the hair on his arms and neck standing on end. Something was terribly wrong. He could see a shadow moving inside the arcade, but the lights were off. Had Lauren hurt herself somehow? His heart rose high in his chest and he fought a minor wave of nausea that came from the adrenaline surging in his veins. He quickly crossed to the doors, and started to run when a high-pitched shriek shattered the night quiet. It was coming from inside the arcade.

  Charlie reached the doors and was touching the handle when they flew outward, sending him flying. The doors rattled on their hinges from the force that threw them open. Charlie tumbled into the drainage ditch, taking a hard fall that skinned his hands and tore his jeans.