The Dragon King

by Nils Johnson-Shelton

  She’s lying, Artie thought. Shallot has the bird. If Morgaine cares about it as much as Dred says, then she’d be scared for it.

  Artie took a chance. “And don’t bother with your attitude, Lordess Morgaine. I need to know about—”

  Morgaine waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. The Grail.”

  “You will tell me about it,” Artie commanded.

  Morgaine pointed a crooked finger at the young king. “Aha! So forceful, so determined. See, Dred? This is what I wished for from you. But answer me, Arthur—why would I tell you anything?”

  Artie gathered himself and said, “I’m the king of the Otherworld. You have to answer my questions.”

  Morgaine tut-tutted. “My boy, it’s going to your head.”

  “It’s not.” Artie pointed at Dred’s mouth. “Release my brother and help us. Now.”

  “Your brother? What do you know of your brother?”

  “That he saved us.”

  “That’s right! By abandoning his dear mum. That doesn’t bode well for you, king. Once a traitor, always a traitor.”

  Artie turned. “Come on, guys, this is a waste of time. We’ll have to find out about the Grail some other way.” Dred moaned in protest, but Artie started to walk away. “Don’t worry, Dred. Numinae’ll fix your mouth.”

  Morgaine rose into the air a few feet. “What if I were to stop you from leaving?”

  Artie paused as Lance strung two arrows and got ready to fire. Bedevere held up his stump, ready to activate his phantom arm. Erik started to vibrate with rage.

  “You can’t stop us,” Artie said. He thought of blowing Scarffern right then just to shut this annoying woman up.

  “I can if I want to. Especially if I stop using my power to hold on to certain things . . .”

  With that, Morgaine spread a hand over her face. Artie turned back to her as she moved her hand away, and with it came . . . her youth! Suddenly the witch appeared wrinkled and half wasted. Dred, recognizing this version of his mum from when he saw her during one of the sangrealitic blackouts, gasped through his nose.

  Lance was startled as something unseen jostled his wrist, causing the pair of arrows to inadvertently take off in Morgaine’s direction. As soon as Artie heard the string release, he jumped and swung Excalibur. With one swipe he cut the projectiles clean in half, and they clattered to the floor.

  “Shallot!” Lance yelled. “Don’t ever do that again!”

  Morgaine laughed. Artie let a few beats pass and announced, “I saw Nyneve recently. She told me some things.”

  “Such as?”

  “That Excalibur also wants Merlin dead. And that I am the only one who can strike him down!”

  “You think I didn’t know that? I can work around that constraint, fool king. I could hypnotize you. I could take your friends and torture them. I could—”

  Artie took two big steps toward Morgaine. “You’ll do none of that! Because I also realized that I could just give Excalibur back to Nyneve.” The witch frowned. “You know she’d have to take it. It’s her duty. And no one but me could get it back from her. Not you, not Merlin, not Dred, not Numinae. Her underwater grotto is the safest place in the entire Otherworld. I know it, and you do, too.”

  Morgaine was momentarily speechless. “You wouldn’t.”

  “Why not? The worlds are rejoined. When Merlin finds you, he’ll take care of you in a jiffy. If I were to give Excalibur back to Nyneve, Merlin wouldn’t have any reason to come after me. No, Morgaine. If you still want Merlin dead, then you need me more than I need you. Much more.”

  Artie tried not to sound too proud of himself, but he was. He’d beaten her, and he hadn’t needed Excalibur or Scarffern. That’s how kings rolled—good ones anyway.

  Morgaine’s face struggled to stay calm. After a few seconds she descended to the ground. When she touched down, a jeweled staff grew from her hand and met the floor with a light tap. Her baggy pants fluttered as she walked across the floor, her gait erect and graceful. Artie fought his nerves as she approached, the weak light of the lab flickering on her cat-eye glasses. She was shorter than Artie by a few inches, and old, but still strong. “Very well,” she said quietly, coming to a stop just in front of Artie. “But first the sprite must release my bird.”

  Artie nodded at Shallot. Reluctantly, Shallot held out her arm and let Eekan out of the choke hold. The bird flapped to Morgaine, clicking and cawing its hatred for the fairy, and perched on Morgaine’s shoulder. Morgaine cooed at the bird and stroked its beak. “Come,” she said. “Follow me and I’ll tell you what you need to know to find the grail.”

  12

  HOW MORGAINE FLIPS THE SCRIPT

  Morgaine pushed past Artie and the Knights of the Round Table and walked down the room of botched Arties and Dreds. As she passed her erstwhile son, she waved a hand and the strings on his mouth unlaced and dropped away.

  Dred stretched his jaw as Artie hurried forward to walk alongside the witch.

  “Much misinformation was spread on both sides about the Grail after Arthur’s death,” Morgaine explained as she led them through the castle. “By the high Middle Ages it was rumored to be in no less than a dozen places. It was in Roman-era ruins in Spain and prehistoric mounds in Ireland; it was in France, it was in Glastonbury; in subterranean sangreal pits in the land of Jag and frozen temples in northernmost Surmik. All were lies. The misinformation continued, on your side especially, where the Grail took on its freighted religious meaning. The Knights Templar had it, the Cathars, the Rosicrucian Order. It was in the Louvre in Paris; it was in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan; it had been sent into outer space during the Cold War. Blah, blah, blah. All nonsense.”

  At the top of a flight of stairs she ducked under a low archway and tapped her staff on the ground. It made an awful noise, and the jagged jewels set in it threw off a cool light. The wall opened in front of them as if it were some kind of wild 3-D puzzle, revealing a narrow hall. She glanced over her shoulder at Artie. “Shortcut,” she explained. Then she took off at a brisk pace. Artie followed, the other knights in tow. Shallot remained invisible.

  Morgaine continued. “Galahad was the last person from your side to hold the Grail. He was an insufferable knight. More full of himself than Merlin and Arthur put together. After he died, the Grail went back to the Fisher Kings, those woeful creatures missing limbs or sight or both”—Artie immediately thought of Bran—“and they took it through the King’s Gate. They were allowed to use the gate since they held the Grail. Where they put it in there, I have no idea. As you know, the King’s Gate is for the king. . . .”

  Morgaine stopped before a closed door and placed her hand on it.

  Of course! Artie thought. That was what Arthur’s ghost was trying to show him in the void of the King’s Gate. The Grail was somewhere behind that dark door that Arthur had pointed to—it had to be.

  Artie took another chance. “Do you know anything about a crown-shaped key, Lordess Morgaine?”

  The witch paused. “A key . . . ? No. Not one like that.” She pushed the door open, and daylight poured into the narrow passageway. “But I have something else to show you. It’s just across the yard, on the other side of the barracks.”

  She moved into the light, and Artie followed her, but then Dred yelled, “Stop, it’s a trap!”

  Artie spun as Dred smacked hard into an invisible barrier sealing the passageway from the yard. He looked really worried, and Kay, who was right behind Dred, did too.

  “Now!” Morgaine yelled. And then, right before their eyes, the witch disappeared.

  Dred banged on the invisible door as Artie pushed his free hand into his pocket. Time to see what the most powerful thing in the Otherworld could do.

  But before Artie could get his fingers around Scarffern, something snaked over his wrist. It was one of those silver ropes that had wrapped him up on the slopes of Surmik! The line pulled taut and his hand was yanked from his pocket, turning it inside out. The whistle flew free and hi
t the ground, rolling out of sight under a nearby hay bale.

  He’d lost it again!

  He slashed at the rope with Excalibur, cutting his hand free, and searched all around for Morgaine, but she was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a dozen of her knights were approaching from all sides. They were well over six feet tall and each wore a suit of purple-hued plate mail. There was something off about them, but Artie couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

  Then he realized they were floating about a foot off the ground, which was pretty weird. Were they ghost knights?

  Artie wrapped both hands around Excalibur and turned back to the doorway. But instead of seeing his friends struggling to escape, he was face-to-face with a huge knight rushing toward him with a gigantic rectangular shield.

  Artie reacted. Excalibur caught the top of the shield, shearing a section off, but the full weight of the bash knocked Artie onto his butt. He caught something in his peripheral vision and another rope wrapped around his arm. And then another. And then two on an ankle, and then his other ankle, and then around his waist, and then, at last, his sword hand.

  Excalibur fell to the ground with a thud.

  “Fool king! I don’t really need you!” Morgaine’s voice boomed from every direction. “I will kill your friends, including your brother, enslave you, and take your hallowed weapon. Then I will draw the wizard to me. And when he comes, my dragon and I will strike him down, and then at the last moment, you will be brought forth in chains to finish him off with Excalibur. You will do this because you will have no reason not to. You will be but a shell, thanks to me. A dragon, my king—do you understand? Merlin may be powerful but he doesn’t count the power of a dragon on his side! That, my liege, is where he—and you—fall short.”

  Artie whipped his head in all directions, trying to figure out where she was. As he searched, he realized that it didn’t matter if she was right or wrong—so long as she believed it, she was still a menace.

  As Artie struggled he was pulled into the air like a rag doll, his limbs stretched to their limits.

  And that’s when he finally saw Morgaine. She was perched on the thatched roof of the barracks, hunkered over the gable like a beggar and laughing like a madwoman.

  She was silenced by a shattering sound. Artie could barely see the doorway, now on his left, as Lance barreled through it, Orgulus’s ornate hand guard leading the way. He had used the sword that could punch through anything to smash the invisible barrier holding back Artie’s friends!

  Artie’s knights spilled into the courtyard. An arrow shot past Artie’s head and into the narrow eye slit of one of the purple knights. His arms fell to his side and he gurgled and fell over backward, completely dead.

  Bedevere launched into the circle. “Phantoma!” he yelled, his stump sprouting its magical arm. He faced the nearest knight, who dropped his rope and held up his empty hand. He flicked his wrist and a blade like a bayonet grew out of his forearm. He stabbed at Bedevere, but Bedevere simply grabbed the blade midthrust with his phantom arm and twisted. The knight did a cartwheel and landed hard on his side. Before the knight could gather himself, Bedevere reached down and with his superstrong hand crushed the thick purple plate mail around the collar. The neck inside was very much crushed as well.

  Another rope fell from Artie, and another and another. The purple knights drew swords and engaged their nearest adversaries. And Artie found that he was free to move and fight.

  “Kill them all!” Morgaine shouted from atop the barracks. “All but the king!”

  Something flashed on Artie’s left. He held up his buckler as a whip wrapped around it. The other end of the whip was yanked hard, and Artie crumpled to the ground.

  “Flixith, Artie!” Erik yelled from behind him.

  Of course!

  Artie pulled Flixith from its curved sheath and sliced his arm free of the whip. A purple knight was bearing down on him with a club. Artie spun his blade, and thanks to Flixith’s magic, his arms seemed to multiply. The purple knight swung wildly as Artie brought the real blade across the knight’s leg, catching a gap in the armor, taking his leg clean off at the knee. The knight fell and made a zombie-like sound—gurgling and angry, not desperate at all. And that’s when Artie understood: Morgaine’s purple knights were not living men at all, but undead ones. Big and strong and determined, but undead all the same.

  Which made the idea of cutting them to pieces a lot easier to swallow.

  The newly legless zombie knight was about to smack Artie across the chest when Kay appeared and promptly drove Cleomede halfway through the knight’s back.

  “Hey, Bro!”

  “Hey!”

  “These brain eaters are nasty, huh?”

  “Sure are. Let’s rid the world of ’em.”

  “Done!”

  Just then Shallot’s sweet smell whisked by them, and Artie suddenly found himself holding Excalibur once more.

  “Thanks,” Artie said. But the fairy was gone.

  “Morgaine!” Dred warned from somewhere.

  Artie looked to the witch as a gray jab of magic flew from her cane. Artie planted Excalibur’s pommel in Kay’s shoulder and pushed her away. She scooted across the ground and plowed into the hay bales where Scarffern had fallen.

  Artie was not as quick. The spell caught Excalibur on the crossguard, and the sword was momentarily charged with electricity. The sangrealite in the metal conducted the power harmlessly through Artie’s hands and body and down his legs and into the ground.

  Thanks to Excalibur’s scabbard, Artie was able to weather this attack. He sprinted across the yard as more bolts of magic exploded at his heels. He saw Erik, who was a blur, Gram glinting here and there, as he took on two of the zombie knights at once. Bedevere had his claymore out and was fighting the big one who’d shield-rushed Artie. Judging by Bedevere’s yellow-toothed smile, he was enjoying himself. It didn’t matter that he had a parabolic prosthetic leg or a phantom arm: Bedevere was in it to win it.

  Lance stood on top of the breastplate of a felled zombie, shooting arrows at Morgaine at a furious pace. This was one reason she wasn’t able to land a good hit on Artie—with her off hand she was catching the arrows and throwing them onto the roof as fast as she could.

  Artie ran straight for the only unengaged enemy. The knight bent forward eagerly, his visor guard up, and readied his long mace. His eyes were green and clouded, and skin peeled from the bridge of his nose. He was ugly, but he was still dangerous.

  When Artie got in striking distance he swerved, and the knight’s mace came straight down into the ground. The zombie released the mace and slapped at Artie’s face, but Artie ducked under the strike like a boxer and came up quick. He was right next to the knight now. Artie pulled Excalibur hard and fast, aiming for the middle of the knight’s chest, and as the blade passed in front of Artie’s eyes, he caught the reflection of Morgaine parrying the close-quarter strikes of The Anguish, as wielded by Shallot le Fey.

  Excalibur was on its way to cutting the zombie knight in half like butter—except that the knight somehow used his right hand, which was farthest away, to grab Excalibur by the blade and stop it in its tracks.

  Artie looked into the knight’s milky, undead eyes. The zombie pushed down hard on Excalibur, and Artie’s knees buckled. All of a sudden, he found himself on the ground.

  The knight moaned, his metal gauntlet prepared to punch Artie square in the face and crush it like a grape.

  “Artie, catch!” Kay said. Artie could momentarily feel her, just as he had all his life until recently. He knew exactly where she was and what she was throwing. Without looking, he reached up and caught it.

  Scarffern.

  The zombie punched. Artie dodged the strike by leaning in so close that his cheek pushed against the cold metal of his opponent’s purple breastplate. Artie looked up and, holding Scarffern like a tiny knife, drove it hard into one of the knight’s eyes.

  Without so much as a zombie peep, the knight fell onto all fours
. Artie let go of Scarffern and in one motion stood, pirouetted, and brought Excalibur down across the thing’s neck.

  Its head dropped to Artie’s feet and rolled away. Artie put a foot on the zombie’s shoulder and pushed the body onto its side.

  “Sire!” Bedevere yelled. “The witch!”

  Morgaine floated above the roof now, out of Shallot’s reach, as Shallot jumped like a kitten chasing a toy. Artie did a quick scan of the yard. Erik was flushed and panting but calm. Dred coiled a silver rope that he’d taken from one of the zombies. Bedevere leaned on his claymore like nothing had happened. Kay was still near the hay bales. The undead purple knights were defeated—no longer undead, but actually dead.

  “Morgaine, give up!” Artie announced. “If you still help us, I’ll forget this ever happened.”

  Her eyes burned. For an answer she put both hands on her staff and pointed its business end at Artie. She let everything she had fly. So much for not killing the king.

  Kay and Dred shouted, “No!”

  The spell was on Artie instantaneously. It hit Excalibur, and light and dark exploded off the blade, swirling along the blood channels. The Latin inscriptions—Iacta me and Tolle me—twinkled with golden light. Then the sword gathered all the energy into its metal. Artie pointed it at Morgaine, and the spell flew back at her, multiplied in strength by the purity of the blade.

  It hit her full in the chest and exploded in red and green sparks. Morgaine’s staff splintered into a million little pieces. She spun and fell. In the sudden silence they could hear her loose clothing flapping as she cut through the air.

  She landed on the side of the roof with a thump. Dred was closest. He ran to the eave and waited. Her body rolled down the pitch and over the edge and fell into his arms. He placed her on the ground and stepped back, feeling sad and angry and relieved all at once.

  The witch moaned as Artie jogged over. Dred secured her sangrealitic dagger. When Artie reached her, he ran Excalibur’s tip over the bracelets on her arms. Effortlessly, the blade cut through them, and they came free.