By Force Alone

by Lavie Tidhar

  ‘A Jew,’ the master said, marvelling. ‘How would you like to go back to your ancestral home? I myself am heading to Judea. The order to which I belong is assembling there, in the city of Tiberias. I seek a most precious thing. We call it a grail, but that is just code, to confuse those who would do us harm. Really it is something else entire, something marvell– do you understand anything I am saying right now?’

  The boy stared, stubborn, unyielding, and the master laughed.

  ‘You will do, boy,’ he said. ‘You will do.’

  ‘Lancelot… Lancelot! Get up, you fuck!’

  He opens his eyes. A woman’s face framed in the light, staring at him furiously. He smiles.

  ‘Hello, Iblis.’

  ‘You fuck!’

  ‘So you made it, huh?’ he says weakly. He sits up and rubs his head. It thumps with pain.

  And something else. He realises he’s felt this thumping for a while now. It comes from underground. It comes from the walls. It’s like the beat of a great big heart. He stares around him. Old stone walls, a cold floor, torches burning in their alcoves. A dark ceiling.

  Doef doef!

  Doef doef.

  ‘I always knew you would,’ he says.

  ‘Is that why you came here?’ Iblis says.

  He stares at the walls. They seem to move in time with the beat. Contract and expand, as though they are the lining of some giant lung.

  Doef doef. Doef doef.

  ‘No,’ he says, distracted. What had he been dreaming, moments back? Something about the desert…

  ‘You shouldn’t have come.’

  He looks at her properly then. It’s still the same Iblis, the one he’d trained with, the one he worked with, the one he hated, the one who knows him better than he knows himself.

  Twenty years have changed her. There are new lines round her eyes. A new scar on her cheek. Her hair is short, and streaked with grey. But her eyes are the same, and they are ferocious. The eyes of a bird of prey.

  ‘Why?’ he says. ‘But it wasn’t my choice. I was sent here.’

  ‘We had a deal!’

  There is a strange panic in her eyes. He rubs his head. He has no energy for yet another argument. Once upon a time the two of them would argue for days.

  ‘But I honoured it,’ he says. ‘You had the map and all the time in the world. You must have—’

  Doef doef. Doef doef. Doefdoefdoefdoefdoefdoef!

  ‘He’s coming!’ she says. ‘Quick, we don’t have long.’

  She leans over him. Her features change, are seized somehow. Her lips open and she leans in for a kiss.

  ‘What the—!’ he says, and tries to push her away. Her mouth opens fully and something black and wet comes flopping out on his chest, and then another and another – he sees in revulsion they’re black slugs.

  He jumps up and wipes them off him savagely and stomps and stomps on them until there’s nothing left of the creatures but a wet sort of sludge on the floor.

  He looks at Iblis and she looks back at him in real horror. Then that strange convolution overtakes her again and her face goes blank and beatific, and she smiles.

  ‘He’s here,’ she says.

  Lancelot can hear the heartbeat fully then and the walls contract and expand and how could he have ever thought this was a castle? They are inside the stomach of some giant living thing, they must be, and then he hears the footsteps, slow, and one foot stronger than the other, and a man appears.

  He is not a tall man and he is walking with a limp, for he is wounded. There is a pussing open wound, infected in his groin area. A sword slash long ago, perhaps, which never healed. The man is short and old and fat but weirdly he is beaming happily.

  ‘Hello, hello! You must be Lancelot. I’ve heard so much! We get so few visitors round here. I bid you welcome!’

  ‘Um… Thank you?’ He stares at the man, who wears a golden crown on his head, perched at an angle. ‘I do not know—’

  ‘Oh, but of course! I am King Pelles. Lord of all that I can see!’

  He laughs, and stumbles slightly, and only then does Lancelot realise that the man is blind.

  ‘Won’t you join us for a feast? I fear we’ve grown accustomed to the local food, but Sir Gawain assures me he has some provisions from the outside.’

  ‘Gawain? He’s here?’

  ‘He worried that you might be lost and came to seek me. Luckily, I was able to assuage his fears.’

  ‘We are ever so happy here,’ Iblis says.

  ‘Ever so happy,’ King Pelles agrees. He beams at her and she weaves her arm in his.

  ‘Shall we?’

  Lancelot follows them, for all that every instinct screams at him to run.

  Through endless corridors like arteries, the torches flickering and the ground shivering and shaking with that endless beat, until they arrive at last at a cavernous throne room, where a small table, rough and inexpertly made of wood, is laid with simple clay plates and spoons for a meal.

  Lancelot does not comment, not on the rough uneven chairs, not even on the guest already seated.

  Gawain raises his head to him.

  ‘They have soup,’ he says.

  ‘Soup,’ Lancelot says.

  ‘Mushroom soup,’ King Pelles says. ‘They grow in profusion in the lower chambers.’

  ‘The lower chambers?’ Lancelot says.

  ‘Of the, err…’ He waves his hand vaguely. ‘The castle.’

  ‘The castle,’ Lancelot says.

  ‘They have soup,’ Gawain says.

  ‘And drink!’ King Pelles says. ‘Boiled mushrooms. Very good for the digestion.’

  ‘Digestion,’ Lancelot says. Then he gives up.

  They sit down. Lancelot does not eat, nor does he drink. From somewhere, Gawain materialises a sealed wine amphora. He opens it and pours.

  ‘How about you?’ Lancelot says to Pelles.

  ‘Oh, no,’ the king says earnestly. ‘I never drink… wine.’

  He beams at Lancelot.

  ‘This is so very pleasant.’

  ‘This is so fucked up!’ Lancelot screams. He kicks the table over and pulls out his sword.

  ‘Lancelot, no!’ Iblis screams.

  King Pelles beams. His blind eyes dilate, become black holes. Something shoots out of the ground and penetrates him. It animates him like a puppet in a child’s play. It makes his mouth move, pumps air into his lungs. When he speaks again it’s with a different voice.

  ‘You are… intruder…’

  ‘You bet your fucking ass I am!’ Lancelot screams.

  ‘Intruder… alert…’

  The torches, for some reason, begin to burn red. The light seems demonic on the contracting and expanding walls. Iblis reaches for Lancelot, he sees the desperation in her eyes. Then she is taken over by whatever it is, but she tries to fight it. She opens her mouth and vomits slugs.

  ‘Lancelot… Get… out!’

  ‘Iblis!’

  The ground shakes. The walls burst at the seams and tear. The heartbeat swallows up all sound. Pressure builds behind Lancelot’s eyes, his nose begins to bleed, he staggers back.

  ‘Iblis!’

  ‘Lancelot!’ She reaches him. For just a moment her eyes are her own again. She clutches him and holds him tight. A hole opens in the floor. It grows. Something vast and metallic begins to rise out of the ground then all around them. The floor they’re on rises. Iblis pushes Lancelot, he rolls, hangs from the side of the fast-rising edifice. He stares down, at the ground far below.

  Then Gawain is there, above him. He reaches for Lancelot and Lancelot grabs his offered hand.

  Gawain strains to pull him up. Then the world shakes and Gawain loses his balance; and he and Lancelot are thrown from the ledge.

  They fall.

  Down and down to the ground.

  66

  Not far from there, at the epicentre of the grail crater, the 63rd reiteration of Galahad the Pure wakes up and screams.

  Every small unkindn
ess and minor cruelty he’s ever dealt is played through in his brain. Every murder (and really there haven’t been that many). Every theft and every lie and every terrible action he had perpetrated, at some point or another, in pursuit of his goals.

  He really was somebody. He was a knight, a knight of the Round Table! His word was law, he ran the Gilded Cage, a staff of two hundred hurried to fulfil his every whim! Even the noblest of the lands had to respect him. He had Sir Kay’s ear!

  ‘You don’t get it!’ he screams.

  He is suspended inside a glass vase filled with a green, viscous liquid. The liquid is in his mouth and lungs. Metal filaments run through his body and out again. He squints against the awful murky light. He can just make them out outside his prison, studying him.

  The real masters of the Zone; the real keepers of the grail.

  Then tell us, they whisper, into his mind. He thrusts and struggles against his cage.

  ‘Let me go!’

  He can see two shadows behind the glass, whirring and clicking. A terrible light shines through the green murk of the liquid they keep him in and he screams again.

  They reach into his mind. They draw the words out of him. They want all of him, all he knows, all he is. The sum of his parts.

  He sobs.

  ‘You don’t get it,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t like that. Those were the good times.’

  He tries to tell them then. He goes over the story one more time. Starting with Uther. His glorious ascension—

  So he murdered the other man? This Vortigern? For power?

  ‘It’s not like that, don’t you ever listen—’

  He explains about Igraine, Uther’s love for her, how it overcame him, how he transformed his features just to be with her, while her husband was away—

  He raped her? the voices say, angry, confused.

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t—’

  They just don’t understand. He wants to convey to them the warmth and nos-fucking-talgia of the tales. The glory of it all! The… The fucking chivalry!

  But they don’t fucking listen, do they. They make him question everything. As though it’s all so awful, this story of Arthur, just a sad, simple tale of violence and greed.

  He sobs again. He sounds like a wounded dog.

  His eyes are closed, but there is so much light.

  ‘Alright,’ he says. ‘Alright.’

  We tried so hard, they say, almost in apology, to keep you all away. It is almost done, now. That thing you call a grail is not a weapon. It will be no use to you. We will go, now, and take it with us. Will you come?

  ‘No!’ he screams. ‘I fucking won’t!’

  We could show you worlds…

  He screams and bangs his fists against the glass. But they don’t listen. They never do.

  In time the light fades. Consciousness flees.

  Galahad dies.

  His body decomposes. The waste material is reassembled. They are almost done, and yet they cannot leave. They do not understand. They do not understand this story.

  Just one more time…

  *

  The 64th reiteration of Galahad the Pure wakes up and screams.

  *

  Gawain and Lancelot stand at the foot of the hill and watch the ascension of the grail. It really does look a little like a drinking cup, if you squint hard. It’s huge and metal and it rises out of the ground and it keeps on rising, until it casts its shadow over the entire Zone.

  They’re still alive, remarkably. Some unseen force had cushioned their fall, let them escape.

  They wait and watch. There is nothing much to say.

  A hatch opens in the side of the object. Light shines out. Figures appear.

  Lancelot can only see them as shadows. Tall, willowy. The real keepers of the grail.

  How his master would have wished to see them. Give them a message, perhaps. But what it would have been, Lancelot has no idea.

  He wonders whatever happened to Galahad. But he doesn’t really care.

  A small figure emerges out of that frame of light. Gawain runs to her and hugs her, crying. When they turn back, the girl’s mute but Gawain’s smiling through his tears.

  ‘My daughter,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ Lancelot says.

  The girl touches her father’s face with one finger. Her expression’s serene.

  ‘No,’ Gawain says. ‘No, you can’t, please.’

  She hugs him again. He hugs her back as though he would never let go. ‘Helena, stay—’

  She strokes his short-cropped hair and then parts from him. For just a moment, she smiles. It transforms her face, makes her radiant. She lifts her hand and it’s goodbye. Then she vanishes into the light, and the door closes.

  A terrible screeching and keening sound erupts behind them then. Lancelot turns – nothing surprises him, not anymore – and sees some hideous beast run in a shambling gait towards the vessel.

  Behind her comes a figure he now knows – Sir Pellinore.

  ‘Don’t go!’

  The beast halts. She turns back. She looks at the elderly knight and screams in rage and pain and affection. Then she darts past the vessel and vanishes into the woods.

  Sir Pellinore passes them by on his way after her. He smiles as he passes, and waves.

  Lancelot waves back. The ground shakes and, with no sound, the great silver vessel rises into the air.

  In moments it becomes a mere dot in the sky.

  Then it’s gone.

  *

  ‘When I file the report back in Camelot,’ Lancelot says, ‘it might be best to leave out the otherworldly apparitions.’

  ‘It might,’ Gawain agrees.

  They ride through the old forest. Gawain looks around him in marvel. The trees are just old trees, and the grass is grass. Earlier, he’d picked up a ghost wheel but it crumbled in his hand. When he checked for his stash of leprechaun gold he found that it, too, had vanished.

  He reaches for an apple tree, plucks fruit and bites it. It tastes like apple.

  The Zone is gone.

  ‘What will you do now?’ Lancelot asks him.

  Gawain shrugs. ‘Rustle cattle, perhaps,’ he says.

  ‘You could come with me, back to Camelot. We always have need of good men.’

  Gawain says flatly, ‘There are no good men in Camelot,’ and Lancelot laughs.

  ‘True,’ he says affably. ‘But the king’s coin’s solid, all the same.’

  Gawain thinks of his daughter. He’s all alone. Already the past twenty years seem like a dream. Did the Zone really exist at all? Or was it not so much a place as a state of mind? Had he been trapped there all along?

  He grieves for what he’d lost. They ride over the Big Water – now just a gentle river, and with an old but solid bridge still spanning it – and by dusk the next day they reach the edge of the old forest and come back out.

  They find the way station much as they had left it, though the building’s old, decayed, and the two ancient watchmen who had occupied the place are gone as if they never were. Lancelot opens a wine amphora and they drink it, watching what had been the Zone.

  ‘Look,’ Lancelot says. He points to the sky.

  Gawain squints. A bright star, floating in the heavens. It grows bigger in the sky. The radiance turns night to day, erases stars.

  ‘Uther’s dragon,’ Lancelot whispers.

  Something plunges down from the skies above the Zone. It falls to Earth. The brightness grows. It almost blinds.

  And then it hits.

  The burst of light is followed by a towering cloud. The sound only rolls over them later, an earth-shaking, monstrous wave.

  ‘Well,’ Lancelot says. ‘I guess that’s that.’

  *

  Somewhere high up in the firmament of heaven, the 65th reiteration of Galahad the Pure wakes up and screams.

  PART TWELVE

  MORDRED

  67

  The blade of a sword is subjected, throughout its lifeti
me, to extraordinary stresses. It is forged in fire, then tempered and quenched. To last, a sword must be pure, without the tiny imperfections that could break an inferior make.

  A sword is wielded, and it has one use.

  And war is but the use of violence in service of the state.

  Outside the window the nights grow long. Camelot’s festive, same as it ever was. The merry drunks are crammed into the many hostelries, and on the avenues the prostitutes wear fur. The torches burn over the city. The year is turning, and the winter’s cold.

  The wizard broods. The air in the castle is draughty, but that is not what bothers him. It feels emptier, somehow. The tapestries are drabber. The servants walk more quietly. As though someone is ill.

  It is the taste of things that is different. He remembers it with Uther. The taste of power is so strong in youth. So… intoxicating.

  But a blade when subjected repeatedly to force must suffer stress. Eventually, all swords shatter. No weapon’s made to last.

  The taste of it is on Merlin’s tongue now. Sour, like an old man’s sweat. Bitter, like ground mint leaves after they’ve been soaked too long. Still with hints of greatness, though: the warmth of blood and the salt of tears and the false sweetness of a poison when administered to an unsuspecting dinner guest.

  And Merlin wants it all. It hurts him when it weakens. He craves it like a blind man craves the light, like a knight craves murder, like a junkyard dog needs rats on which to feed.

  Merlin is hungry!

  The very thought makes him ill-tempered and rude.

  In the queen’s chambers, he can hear Lancelot and Guinevere rutting like pigs.

  They had given up all decorum or pretence. Since the knight’s return they had been at it all but openly. Earlier, the king himself walked in on them as they fucked. They didn’t even stop. Guinevere’s pale legs wrapped around Sir Lancelot’s brown buttocks. The king said nothing, walked out quietly and shut the door.

  They’d always had an arrangement, the queen and he. He isn’t sore. But now propriety’s abandoned, and in the stories they will write of him, in centuries hence, is this how they will tell it? That he’s a cuckold, old and weak? And why? Because a woman dared to choose her own affections?