One Knight Only

by Peter David

  Arthur inclined his head, and his voice raw from shouting, he replied, “Hail and well met Basiliskos, foremost of All Monsters, Scourge of All Living Things.” And then Arthur reached behind his back, gripped a hilt invisible to all, and withdrew it. Excalibur gleamed in the darkness as he held it before him.

  “You called me. I am come,” said Miss Basil, eyeing the sword watchfully. “Have you brought me here to try and slay me?”

  “No.”

  “Then,” she said, “may we get out of the rain? Warm me, as my cold blood would prefer, and then we may talk of whatever you wish.”

  CHAPTRE THE EIGHTH

  IT IS ONE month before the presidential election, and Arthur knows that something very serious, something very bad is going to happen. He is many things, but he is not stupid. He knows that it involves Merlin and Miss Basil, and he knows that it is going to happen soon.

  He is working until all hours in his office. Merlin is working as well, and he has been very quiet of late. He has resisted Arthur’s questions, become even more taciturn than usual. There is a ticking of a clock nearby and it may be Arthur’s imagination, but it seems as if it is getting louder and louder. There is a fearsome storm rolling in, a storm very similar in size and intensity to the one that will occur years later, when Arthur will face Miss Basil in the Rose Garden. Arthur does not know of that time to come, and yet he senses abruptly that something final is about to occur.

  “Merlin,” he says, half rising from his chair although he does not know why. Merlin looks up at him. He seems smaller, weaker than ever before, and there is a haunted look in his eyes. Is that fear? That cannot be fear. Not from Merlin Demonspawn. “Merlin?” he says again, and although he does not know why, he glances to the clock. The minute hand is nearly pointing at the number twelve. The hour hand is already there.

  “Arthur,” Merlin says, and it is the air of someone who is about to say something that he has been putting off for as long as he could. “Arthur . . . it is time.”

  “What?” Arthur does not understand.

  “To pay the piper, Arthur,” Merlin tells him. His black pants are neatly pressed, the line on his blue blazer immaculate. “The payment can be delayed for a week or an age or an eon, but sooner or later the bill comes due. It’s due now.”

  “What are you talking about? What’s happening?” Arthur raises his voice over the thunder, crackling like a boulder rolling over crumpled paper.

  “Immortals can be restrained for a time, but not forever. I knew that when I restrained her.” Merlin sighs, brushing a hank of hair from his face. “But the time is up. Do not interfere, Arthur. It is between her and me.”

  And still Arthur does not grasp it, but suddenly the lightning, which had been roiling through the sky, seems to leap right into the office. The impact knocks Arthur back, slamming him against the wall, momentarily stunning the once-king. He blinks furiously, trying to will away the blinding flash, and he hears Merlin’s voice, but from within his head rather than without, saying, “Farewell, Wart. Remember you flew as a hawk. Time for you to fly alone.”

  There is a chiming, echoing, filling the office. It is the chiming of the clock, striking midnight, like a death knell.

  “Merlin!” shouts Arthur, as the office recaptures its shape. There is no sign of the boy wizard, but the storm is a fearsome thing now.

  He pulls Excalibur from its sheath and it glows in his hand, firm and warm, and he clutches the mighty blade with both hands and focuses on Merlin, Merlin, begging and pleading as a parched man would clutch a divining rod searching for water.

  Ultimately he has no idea if the sword is actually attending to him, or if it is pure instinct that guides him, or some final last-minute change of mind and cry for help from Merlin, but something within him says, Up, up damn you, up, and Arthur is gone, out the door. As he runs past Miss Basil’s desk he sees a depression in the chair, only just now rising, that would indicate someone had been sitting there until recently, and that is when he suddenly comprehends. Not everything . . . but enough.

  He does not wait for the elevator, instead sprinting up the building’s emergency stairs, and the thunder seems to be everywhere, even here in the stairwell. The stairwell ends at a doorway, on which there is a padlock. One swipe of Excalibur and the lock clatters away, as Arthur kicks the door open, accompanied by a thunderclap for dramatic effect. He bursts onto the rooftop just in time to hear a high-pitched male scream such as he has never heard before come from what can only be Merlin’s throat, and there, revealed by a sheet of lightning across the sky, is Merlin as solid rock.

  Not three feet away from him is a creature that seems to be blurring and shifting in shape, and it is Miss Basil who turns to face him. Her eyes are green, her throat scaled, her manner unhurried. “This is none of your affair, Utherson,” she says, every “s” sibilant. “And it is over.”

  “No,” Arthur growls. He clutches Excalibur, and there is a pounding behind his eyes, madness of loss steeling his heart and clearing his mind.

  “My servitude to Merlin was at an end. He faced me in combat, as he knew would happen eventually.” She makes no move, but her confidence is an awful thing to behold. “He looked into my eyes, saw all the wretchedness and evil that filled his soul, saw himself as he truly was without the rationale and justifications and little lies that all creatures of human skin tell themselves to get through each dreary day. All who meet my gaze beg for death rather than live with that knowledge, and I provide them with that which they ask for. For Merlin, well . . . it was different.” She half smiles at that. “The stone in his heart, the stone in his soul, has overwhelmed him. He is on the outside as he was on the inside, and all is just. One side, Pendragon. Our business here is at an end.”

  Arthur does not move aside. Instead he advances, slowly, and although his body is trembling with fury to be unleashed, still is the great blade Excalibur not shaken in the least. The point targets the heart of Miss Basil, and she sees murder in his eyes. She does not retreat, but her confidence diminishes ever so slightly. “You cannot withstand my gaze any more than he could, Arthur,” she warns. “I do not desire to kill you, for I do not kill kings lightly, but I shall not simply allow myself to be slaughtered.”

  He does not respond. He keeps coming, and Miss Basil tosses aside the final bits of her human imposture as one would dispense with a threadbare coat, and he keeps coming, and she is a terrible thing, a horror to behold, with those appalling green eyes that can burrow into the recesses of the soul and shred it, and the scaled skin, and fangs bared, her small but powerful wings unfurling, and from that mouth a hissing like a thousand broken radiators in a thousand tenement buildings, and a shriek like the factory whistles of old London sending dreary and hunched workers home to their lives of poverty and starvation . . .

  And still he comes. The great blade Excalibur swings back and forth, a deadly scythe, and the Basilisk in full flower of her strength sends her mental power boring straight into the heart and mind of Arthur, and it makes no difference. For Arthur’s anger is his shield, his virtue is his armor, and the fire in his soul burns away any doubts that the Basilisk could even hope to rise within him.

  And for the first time in time out of mind, the Basilisk falls back, hissing and spitting and snapping, but Arthur will have none of it. She tries to flee, and Arthur slams forward with Excalibur, driving the great blade down and through the lower part of her great whipping tail, pinning her to the spot. She lets out a shriek that is drowned by the thunder, and then she is down, and he has one foot upon her long throat. He yanks Excalibur from her body, swings it up and is about to bring it down upon her throat, ready to cleave her head from her body.

  And she cries out to him, “You do not want to do this, Pendragon!”

  “Oh, do I not?” he snarls, but for the slightest moment the blade hesitates.

  She speaks quickly, desperately, knowing that at any moment the mighty sword can come singing downward, and she will be done. “You mu
st not destroy me! I am a work of art!”

  The blade does not move. He is unimpressed.

  And still she speaks, the torrent of words rushing from her. “When Sodom and Gomorrah were wiped clean by the wrath of God, I, who was in the heart of the depravity, survived. Pursued have I been by heroes of all size, of all stripe, of all race, and still I have survived them all, because I am meant to! If you slay me, you slay a piece of living history. One of the great immortals. All that I have seen, all that I know, would die with me. You may think me evil, but I am truly one of God’s masterpieces. To destroy me is to scorn his accomplishment. And more . . . the wheels of fate turn and turn for me as for others, and they are not done turning for me yet. I feel it!”

  “What you shall feel is cold steel through your throat, and then oblivion reaching up to claim you.” Overhead the thunder rumbles to punctuate this pronouncement, and rain begins to fall in large drops.

  “On my honor, I know my time is not yet done, and I know that you need me!”

  He spits upon her, full in her face. “A creature such as you has no honor, and I have no need of you, now or ever.” The rain begins to soak him. He is in his shirtsleeves, the shirt already sticking to his chest.

  “Wrong, and wrong again,” she says, and now she speaks with some of the old confidence, although she remains wary. Her forked tongue flickers out her mouth for a moment and then withdraws. “I possess more honor than such as you can ever know, and you will need me. Think, Arthur . . . think with your mind, not your sword. Slay me now, and it will not bring Merlin back. He is done and gone. But allow me to live, and at a time of your choosing in the future, you may ask any boon of me it is within my power to grant.”

  “After you have taken revenge on those near and dear to me,” he shoots back.

  But she shakes her head. “No, Utherson. This I swear: No harm shall come to you or any within your sphere. I shall take my leave of you and our paths will ne’er cross again until you will it. And when you are ready to seek a boon of me, you need but summon me and I shall come to you.”

  “What could I possibly need you for?”

  “You will know when it happens,” she says, and there is something in that voice, in those words, that suggests she knows more than she is telling.

  For a long moment, there is no sound but for the rain splattering. Then, pressing the point of his sword against her throat just hard enough to garner a gasp from her, he says, “What if I desire more? What if I wish you to be in my power, my service, as you were for Merlin.”

  She does not hesitate. “Then slay me now,” she says, her green eyes narrowing, “for I should rather be dead than a slave ever again.” Having had her say, she rests her head back and prepares for the killing stroke.

  Another moment then, longer than before, and he lets her wait and wonder, but in his heart he already knows, and slowly he withdraws the blade from her throat. She lifts herself up, never taking her eyes from him. “You will not regret this, Utherson,” she tells him.

  “I regret it already,” he replies. He does not lower his sword or his guard for an instant, despite her promises. Her vast, twining serpent form looms above him, looking down at him. It remains odd to hear a human voice emerging from such an ungodly form. He continues, “If I have need of you, I shall summon you . . . how? Through mystic incantation? A crystal ball of some kind you will give me?”

  She looks at him with disbelief. “Arthur . . . don’t be an ass. This is the twenty-first century,” comes the voice of Miss Basil from within the great monster, dripping with scorn. “I have a website: www.basiliskos.com. Contact me in that manner.”

  He should laugh. He doesn’t.

  She shakes her large, diamond-shaped head. “You have yet to fully accept what century you live in, Arthur. Have a care. It will be the death of you.”

  There is a flash of lightning then, so bright that Arthur’s arm flies of its own accord to block his vision of it, and when the lightning is gone ...

  ... so is she.

  “TEA?” MISS BASIL nodded, and Arthur lifted the tea-pot and carefully poured out a cup of hot water, which darkened moments later as the flavor from the leaves seeped through the tea strainer already in the cup.

  “Gwen furnished this place herself,” Arthur said, indicating the private room in the residence to which he and Miss Basil had retired. It was a sedate little chamber, done up in comforting pastels with a painting of John Adams hanging, and a single canopied bed against the far wall.

  The Secret Service men had been dumbfounded, shaken, and profoundly disturbed when Arthur had emerged from the Rose Garden with Miss Basil at his side. She was wearing no identification tag as was standard-issue for the White House, and they could not begin to fathom how the hell she had gotten in there. They were extremely bothered by the notion—particularly during these times when security was at its highest level, and assassins seemed to lurk around every corner—that some woman could simply slip into the White House. Arthur made no effort to appease the Secret Service men’s bewilderment, since he likely would have failed at it anyway. Instead he had said, with darkly furrowed brow, “Miss Basil is black bag covert ops, highest level. I decided to have her test security procedures. Her presence here indicates just how lacking they are. Work on that.”

  “That was very cruel, Utherson,” she had commented in a low voice as they headed down the hallway, with Arthur’s protectors keeping a respectful distance.

  Arthur had merely shrugged. “So security around here will become even more stringent. Personally, I have no problem with that.”

  Now they were alone, an ancient king and an ancient monster, sipping tea in the White House. No words passed between them for a while. “Good tea,” Miss Basil commented finally.

  “Nothing but the best.” He put his cup down carefully. “You did not,” he said severely, “respond to my e-mail.”

  “I know, and for that I truly apologize,” she said, bowing her head. “I did not have access to a computer for a time. By the time I did, I had already heard your little ‘slip’ on television. Very canny.”

  “Well, I am the President of the United States and the once and future king, so I’m not entirely a lackwit.”

  “Indeed.” She sipped the tea again, and regarded him with her glittering green eyes over the rim of the cup. Her legs were daintily folded at the knee, and Arthur couldn’t help but notice that—whereas he’d been dripping from the storm outside—she looked completely dry. Damnedest thing, that. “So, Arthur . . . a cowardly foe has struck at you from hiding.”

  “Not like the old days, is it?” Arthur sighed.

  “You paint a bit more rosy of a picture than it was, Arthur,” she said reprovingly. “Even in those days, there were still assassins, hired by men with little honor to strike in a dishonorable fashion. Still, I agree, there was far less rank cowardice then than now. Furthermore, do you know the main difference between now and then?” When he shook his head, she leaned forward as if she were warming to a subject. “Life was cheaper back in the day. Men stood ankle-deep in defecation, disease, and death every day of their lives. Women popped out children by the cartload since they knew that barely half of them would likely survive to adulthood. Men are less anxious to make themselves targets unnecessarily these days because they anticipate being around for much longer than we ever thought possible.”

  “We?” Arthur laughed self-mockingly at that. “I do not see how ‘we’ are qualified to speak of such things. I, a centuries-old king, and you, a creature who very likely has been around long enough to have suggested the wonders of apples to Eve in the Garden.”

  “Perhaps,” she said noncommittally. “It might have been me. Or a relative. I don’t think I shall say. A woman, after all, should be allowed a few mysteries at least, don’t you think?”

  Arthur said nothing; he merely stared down into the tea as if all life’s answers could be found within the neat white cup with the White House emblem upon it.

&nbs
p; “So,” she said finally, “what would you of me, Pendragon?”

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I want you to find the Holy Grail.”

  At that, Miss Basil laughed. “Oh, is that all?” she demanded, seeming tremendously amused by the prospect. “Now there is an intriguing notion: me, one of the greatest evils of humanity’s history, on a quest to obtain the mythic relic considered the holiest of the holies. Do you find any irony in that, Utherson?”

  “I care not for your concepts of intrigue or irony, Basiliskos,” Arthur told her firmly. “What I care about is that the Holy Grail is her only chance. She resides in a twilight between life and death. No one should have to exist there. No one. The Grail may well cure her.”

  “It might,” she allowed. “However, one would have thought that—if the Grail did exist—Percival in his wanderings would have located it. Do you not think so?”

  Arthur, to his annoyance, could not meet her level gaze, although he held no fear of dying at her hands. “I do not know where Percival is. That does not entirely surprise me.”

  “It surprises me,” said Miss Basil. “He is a knight, sworn to his liege lord, namely you. I would think that with his sense of duty, nothing could pry him from you.”

  Smiling slightly at the recollection, Arthur tapped the edge of the cup with his spoon. It gave out a tinny clinking noise. “Percival is by nature a questing knight. He was chafing remaining in one place, under my direct supervision.”

  “Really.” She eyed him with skeptical curiosity, even challenge. “I seem to recall that before he reentered your service, Percival spent years as a washed-out drunk and homeless vagabond. Pray tell, for what was he questing during that time?”

  “For himself. And for a reason not to be that way.”

  She promptly opened her mouth to reply, but then shut it again. “Very well,” she admitted, “that is a valid enough response, I suppose.”