by Liam Perrin
"What do you mean?"
Pyralis shrugged. "She wants to help you."
"But, how?"
"She stole something from me, a piece of armor. It's very powerful and very dangerous. It's called the Gauntlet of Smashing Success, and it's cursed. It makes the wearer invincible as long as he fights, but as soon as he retreats, shrinks from a fight, or even pulls a punch, he's toast."
They stared at him blankly.
"Kaput. Wormsville. Cadaver City."
They continued to stare at him blankly.
"Dead?" said Philip.
"That." Pyralis frowned.
"Fine bit of work for its purpose if I say so myself. My, em, former employer commissioned it for his champion. He'd gotten tired of training people then having them use the experience he'd supplied to find other jobs. Of course, this was right when I was making my own career-shift, and I never actually delivered the piece.
"It was some of my best work," Pyralis said quietly. "Er, you know, back in the day," he added.
Philip, still suspicious, interrupted, "Hold on. You can craft a gauntlet that makes the wearer invincible, and you give Thomas a sword that just... stinks?"
Pyralis looked hurt. "Now hold on. Ambrosia is a very fine sword."
"Ambrosia?" said Thomas.
"The perfume of the gods?" asked Marie. "Are we talking about the same sword?"
"Where did you come from?" said Thomas, startled.
"I'm not talking to you. You're insane," she said.
"It's not easy, you know," Pyralis blistered. "I made cursed weapons and armor for so long, and no run of the mill stuff either. I was good at it, you see. It's a gift... of sorts. It's hard to work that stuff completely out no matter how much your heart changes. I can't seem to get entirely rid of the cursing part, so I work on ways to turn a thing's curse into its blessing. Anyway, if the gods made a perfume, what would it be like eh? Would it smell the same to everybody? Surely they'd be more clever than that."
Pyralis stopped and seemed embroiled in an internal struggle between his mouth, which wanted to say more, and his brain, which wanted him to put a cork in it.
"You're telling me that the sword," said Thomas, "that Ambrosia... can change how it smells?"
"Maybe," said Pyralis guardedly. "But the glove," he sighed in a way that was a little unnerving, "that was pure evil. I'm afraid when I was showing Gorgella the piece I never got around to actually mentioning the, you know, the evil bit."
Philip glared at him.
"Alright," said Thomas trying to work all this through.
"What do the gauntlet, Gorgella, and the black knight have to do with each other?"
"Well, first I thought Gorgella had stolen the glove to bring it to you, not knowing about the cursed part. But seeing as how you don't have the glove – now I think..."
"What?"
"I think," said Pyralis, pointing at the black knight, "I think Gorgella is the black knight."
Pyralis and Thomas stared at the black knight.
"Pardon," said Philip. "The theory here is that Gorgella..." He said the name carefully, and raised his eyebrows at Thomas.
"Uh huh," agreed Thomas still staring at the knight, eyes wide and worrying.
"Gorgella," continued Philip, "is the black knight?"
"Right," said Pyralis.
"And this Gorgella," said Philip, "is a giantess? That is, a female of the Giant species, characterized by, oh let's call it 'excessive anatomy'?"
"That is correct," said Pyralis.
"Have you noticed," said Philip in an I'm-trying-very-hard-to-stay-calm sort of way, "that the black knight is rather – how should I put this – short?"
Thomas broke his wide, worried stare to look at Philip.
Pyralis blinked.
"I'm just saying," Philip tried to continue patiently and failed. Instead he stomped, pointed and said, "Oh, come on. How can that be Gorgella? The black knight is shorter than me, and Gorgella is a giantess... You know..." He threw his arms and eyes wide. "...big!"
Thomas and Pyralis both said, "Oh!"
"Gorgella–" said Thomas.
"Has self-esteem issues," finished Pyralis.
Thomas added, "Try to be sensitive, Philip."
Philip let his hands fall to his sides, cocked his head sideways, and looked utterly exhausted. They all looked back at Gorgella.
Philip said, "I suppose next you're going to tell me that Ox is really a dwarf with delusions of grandeur?"
Thomas looked sharply at Ox who was busy trying to swat something on the back of his neck.
Pyralis shook his head. "Dwarves are far too practical to believe in the illusions that could change them. Giants, though, are dreamers."
Philip considered this. He mumbled to himself, "You could certainly say they've got their heads in the clouds."
"What?" said Thomas.
"Nothing," said Philip. "Come on. We'd better do something about this if you don't want your giant friend to get hurt."
He didn't move. Thomas and Pyralis looked at him. Thomas coughed.
"You have a plan?" said Pyralis, looking at Philip.
"Er, no. Not exactly. Was hoping one of you two did?"
Thomas shook his head. Pyralis shrugged.
"She's your friend?" asked Marie.
Thomas nodded.
"Then you have to forfeit."
Thomas grimaced. She was right of course.
"If there was just some way to tell Gorgella..."
"Tell Gorgella what?" said Gorgella from behind them. She was munching popcorn. All four of them jerked around so hard that they nearly fell over.
"Gorgella!" cried Thomas and hugged her. She smiled, hugged him back with one arm and protected her popcorn cone with the other. He stepped back. "But if you're..." He pointed at the black knight. "...and if that's not–"
"Kindly hand over the gauntlet Gorgella," said Pyralis.
"The gauntlet?"
"Yes."
"The black one you showed me yesterday?"
"Yes."
"The Gauntlet of Smashing Success? The one you neglected to tell me was cursed?"
"Yes. Er, how did you...?"
"I don't have it."
"You don't have it? Then who–"
"Beats me," Gorgella shrugged. "It was gone when I got up this morning. Maybe he's got it." She nodded in the direction of the black knight.
"Last call!" shouted the joustmaster. "Jousters ready!"
"I'm so confused," said Philip.
Thomas grinned. "Everything's okay. Gorgella is not the black knight, she's not wearing the gauntlet, and she's not going to die trying to make me look good. Now, all I have to do to free my brother is beat a knight who's beaten every other knight we've ever admired and who is possibly enchanted and invincible."
Thomas saddled up and rode away.
"I think he might be in trouble," said Philip.
"I think he's insane," said Marie.
"Sanity is overrated," said Pyralis.
Trumpets blew. The crowd roared. Thomas and the black knight started to charge.
§
It's not the kind of story that anyone likes to tell. Sometimes the bad guy plays the game better, or the good guy makes a mistake, and against all hope, the thing people fear will happen happens.
When you get knocked down, the good guys will say, the important thing to do is to get back up again. Thomas got knocked down a lot. First he got knocked off his horse. Then the black knight dismounted, and they went at it with swords and shields. That's where the real knocking-downs started coming. He kept getting up, which everyone applauded for a while until even the crowd was hoping Thomas would just stay down.
You want a hard slog like that to end with the bad guy losing. Through some last minute opportunity, or some deep fault of the villain, or even just sheer stubborn grit on the part of the hero, you want the good guy to stand alone in the end, battered but victorious.
It didn't end like that.
Thomas got knocked down a last time, and didn't get up. The black knight mounted and rode back to the jousting line as if to say, "Next!"
A group of knights carried Thomas off to a nearby pavilion where some nuns set about seeing if they could keep him alive. They shooed Philip and Marie away and wouldn't let Pyralis anywhere near their equipment. Apparently they recognized him.
To everyone's astonishment, there was one more challenger that day. He too was beaten by the black knight who, afterwards, simply mounted up and rode away without a word.
For a long while, the crowd wasn't sure what to do. They kept waiting for the twist at the end that would make everything work out right. It didn't come.
CHAPTER XIII
After All That
"Well, hello there."
It was Marie's voice. Thomas opened his eyes to a blurry mess of mostly white and various shades of gray.
"Can you move anything?"
The last thing Thomas wanted to do was to try moving something, but he gave it a shot. It hurt, but it worked.
"It seems you're back in the land of the living." Marie's face resolved out of the white and gray fuzziness, more beautiful than ever and very close. Thomas's heart tried to leap, but then everything came rushing back at him. He'd blown two chances now to help William, and he had no guarantee there would be a third.
"I thought you weren't talking to me."
Marie frowned exquisitely. "I was hoping the tossing you got might've knocked some sense into you." Her eyes sparkled with tears ready to spill.
Thomas sighed and laid back.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It's just – I had to try. And now, ugh, I don't know where to begin.
"What a mess this has all become."
"He's alive!"
Philip was walking down the row of gurneys carrying a giant basket of flowers. Gorgella and Pyralis followed.
Thomas smiled, waved, and immediately regretted it. One time when they were younger, William had convinced Thomas to climb into a barrel and roll down a hill in it. He felt like he had after that ride – if there'd been several large rocks in the barrel too, and instead of a sloping grassy hill it had been a tall scraggy cliff, and if at the end when the barrel smashed to pieces, an armored knight had picked him up and punched him repeatedly.
Pyralis rushed to his side and began prodding, pinching, and bending various bits of Thomas's person.
"I'm fine, Pyralis!"
"I'll be the judge of that. How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Er, none?"
"Good. Who sits on the throne in Camelot?"
"...the king?" Thomas said smiling.
Everyone but Pyralis laughed. Pyralis raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, come on." Thomas waited for Pyralis's stare to break, but it wouldn't. Thomas rolled his eyes. "Arthur. Arthur sits on the throne. I'm fine!"
Pyralis frowned, but seemed at least momentarily satisfied.
"Everyone must think I'm a fool," said Thomas.
"Well, yes." They were all nodding.
"But a brave one. And not as big a fool as Bane," said Philip. "At least you had a good reason."
Thomas gave a puzzled look.
"After you rode up against the black knight, Bane took a whack too."
"You're kidding."
"Nope. He rode right up to the challenging line acting for all the world like he had the contest in the bag. I've never seen someone look so pompous."
"What happened?"
"Well, same as everyone else basically. He got destroyed. Then the black knight rode off and that was that."
Thomas mulled this over.
"That doesn't make any sense. Why would Bane..." Thomas trailed off shaking his head, but stopped because it felt more like he was shaking a bag of bricks.
"Who knows," said Marie, still sounding a bit perturbed by the whole affair. "But you can ask him yourself at the commissioning ceremony tomorrow."
"Ugh," Thomas groaned.
"It won't be that bad," said Philip. "No one faults you for trying. We'll get assigned to our table, you can stop fretting about it, and then we can all think of some way to help your brother."
"It's not that," said Thomas, "though that all sounds great."
He scooted himself into a better sitting position and grimaced. "It's just – I imagine – the ceremony's going to require things like..."
"Standing?"
"Yeah, that," said Thomas.
"Leave that to me," said Pyralis who pulled something foul from his satchel and began to grind it in a pestle.
Thomas and Philip shared a horrified glance.
Marie patted Thomas lightly on the arm. "I'll get the nuns," she whispered.
§
The hall had been divided into two sections. The back half was packed with seats for what Thomas estimated was roughly a hundred knights. The tables and devices here were nondescript. The uninterrupted ordinariness of this back section of the hall pushed the eye toward the front section, which wasn't ordinary at all.
Three tables dominated the front of the hall, one table a bit larger than the other two. The two smaller tables flanked the larger table, one to each side. The flanking tables were ornate, richly varnished, and polished so that they reflected the dancing torches on the walls. One could imagine that the tables burned with some inner fire that failed to consume them. They looked important. Their chairs looked important. Clearly, the twelve knights who would sit at each of these tables would also be important. But these two tables were to the third like barren moons to a blazing sun. From its position between the flanking tables, the Round Table asserted its presence. Everything else orbited this one thing that among all seemed singularly confident and securely fixed. Ringing the Round Table were thirteen of what an unimaginative person might call seats. These majesties of carpentry were for sitting the way an ocean is for getting wet. In other words, they looked like they'd be very, very good for it, and then some.
Arthur stood beside one. Merlin stood beside Arthur. The knights were assembled in lines on either side of the hall, and the courtiers mingled behind them. Guinevere and her ladies sat on a balcony above it all.
Arthur motioned for quiet, and quiet went to work straight away. Thomas thought this was probably one of the most critical abilities a leader could possess, the ability to get people to settle down and pay attention. He wondered if the ability had gotten Arthur the job or if the job had gotten him the ability, or if they came hand in hand like chickens and eggs.
"Two sieges," said Arthur.
"Two what?" whispered Thomas.
"Sieges," said Philip.
"Sieges?" said Thomas.
"Aye, well, you can't really call those things seats, can you?"
Thomas said, "Ah, right. Good point."
"Two sieges," said Arthur, "have been revealed."
An excited murmur wafted through the crowd like a nervous breeze.
"Did he say 'revealed?'" said someone.
"Aye," said another.
"Does he mean 'announced'?" said the same someone.
"Shhh," said a third.
Merlin stepped forward, raised his staff and said in a very serious tone, "Two names have appeared on the table.
"Mysteriously," he added and casually brushed something from the table that looked to Thomas like wood shavings.
"Magically," he added, "these names have appeared, and therefore pre-ordained are the eponymous to claim their sieges and sit with the king as his peers."
"I can never understand a word he says," said someone.
"Aye," said another.
"Shhh," said a third.
Arthur put his hand on Merlin's shoulder, smiled and said, "Sir Kay and Sir Bedivere, come take your seats."
The assembly cheered, stomped and applauded. Kay and Bedivere came forward, bowed to Arthur and folded themselves into their chairs like one might fold oneself into the sea for a bath.
Merlin cleared his throat and said something in Latin. Latin always ma
de Thomas a little edgy. It was the domain of wizards and priests and he always felt a bit nervous about what might come of it: lightning shooting from fingertips, or statues weeping, or the sudden inexplicable need to go to Confession.
Apparently, the rest of the assembly shared his opinion. Silence descended on the hall with an almost audible 'fwump.'
"He's going to prophesy," someone wanted to say and thought better of it.
"Aye," another would have replied.
"Shhh," said a third because he could see what the other two were thinking.
"Thirteen seats," said Merlin into the absolute lack of hubbub.
"Thirteen seats at a table that hasn't been full since our Lord's betrayal in Jerusalem. But I tell you today, these seats will be filled in this generation. And when they are..."
He paused so long that people began to glance left and right to see how others were handling it. Most everyone was pretending not to be uncomfortable, which oddly enough, Thomas found rather comforting.
"And when they are," Merlin continued, startling everyone who'd forgotten he'd been speaking, "a miracle will be visited upon it. A stunning manifestation will betide those present that day, invigorating the virtuous and ensnaring the vainglorious.
"But this gift comes not without cost. For the thirteenth siege," he said and stepped up behind it.
"The thirteenth siege is perilous. Only one of greatest virtue, of noblest heart – only the one who will achieve the vision that shall come to pass may sit at this, the Siege Perilous, and live."
Some of the knights looked at each other. The courtiers blinked. No one moved a muscle.
"Right then," said Arthur, "we won't be filling that one any time soon, eh?"
§
Gawain, his brother Agravain and his cousin Owain, along with Pellinore and his son Lamorak were inducted into the Knights of the Watch. Sir Marrok, the Watch's captain, welcomed them to the table to the left of the Round. Colorful, paper table-tents illustrated with their titles and crests marked their spots. They also received a lovely stationery set.
The other table, it was explained, was the Table of Errant Companions. It was set aside for those knights of any order who had left on extended quests. Thomas wondered aloud to Philip what use was a set of seats reserved for people who were certain not to be there. Philip replied that he thought the main point of the empty seats was to remind everyone else that they weren't allowed to sit in them.