The Grail War (43 page)

As they climbed a rolling pasture, they could actually see the charred border of the fields like a line literally drawn …

Broaditch saw the churning storm front, and as the first erratic winds whipped dry weeds and creaked branches, he knew he had to hurry, that the moment was desperate. He could just see a battlement above the pine woods that closed around the place, insubstantial and drifting in and out of view through the vapors, as if it alternately dissolved and re-manifested …

“I must speed ahead,” he told Valit, who was squinting down the bending path. Irmree stood beside him.

“There’s no going on this way,” Valit said. “It’s all burning up.” This was the first reasonable sight of the holocaust they’d had.

“I’ll go alone. You wait here, if it please you.”

“Aye. Or go chat with the murderous bastard behind us, eh?” Valit spat into the wind, then wiped his face. “You’d like that, eh?”

“No.”

He’s
a
boy
when
all’s
said
and
done
…
an
old
friend’s
son
and
a
little
piece
of
mine
,
too
…
with
his
fool
ideas
and
dreams
of
profit
… He smiled warmly. He gripped Valit’s arm.
He’s
much
like
the
rest
of
us
poor
fools
and
bastards
., …
Why
,
what
a
world
he
has
to
face
and
how
little
of
it
will
be
left
…
for
him
…
or
my
own
…

He thought again about his children. He remembered squatting with them in the sunlight under fresh skies, picking small stones out of the rough furrows where the wheat was in, their short hands poking in the rich, warm earth, their grave intentness: Tikla standing on the hill slope above the field near an ancient pair of large shade trees, leaping up and down, barefoot, half-naked, a scattering of white flowers at her feet, bouncing herself off the resilient turf, leaping, hair flying out, arms flapping, leaping as if she meant to fly (or wouldn’t have been surprised), playing bird, perhaps, up … up … up … again … again … again … abandoned to the air …

He held Valit firmly by both shoulders and looked into his somewhat squinty face. He shook his windblown hair from his eyes.

“God keep you, lad,” he said with thick-voiced emotion that surprised and puzzled Valit, though he nodded.

“Why are you going there?” he simply asked.

Broaditch shook his head.

“I do not entirely know,” he half-explained. “But I think I have been called.”

“You think? But for what reason, Broaditch?” Valit was concerned. “How can you escape the fire? See how it advances …” He cocked his head, almost smiling. “You said there’d be more than riches! What?”

“I like you, lad, after all’s said and done. I know not what courage is, but I must tell you, go on without fear if you can, because your fate will prove the same in any case … And now I can ill spare time for talk.”

Perhaps
, he thought,
courage
is
more
than
riches
.

He hugged the strange boy to him and impulsively kissed his forehead. Then turned and went at a rapid trot until the clouds swallowed him up.
Love
well
, he thought, the image of his family still before him. Because they’d all lived, life had met in himself and them and he knew he could bear that lightly into the smoldering eye of death (where a sack of gold would anchor him to doom) and beyond … only that beyond …

Holding the smooth, time-worn spear, he went rapidly down into acrid clouds, the ground seeming to jump wildly as the lightning intensified. The winds sucked out his clothes and fluttered his beard. The echoing thunder rolled toward him. It would be night soon. A stray spatter of rain and light hail clattered around him …

Lohengrin felt weak and faintly nauseous. He’d propped himself against the curving, padded wall, bare face turned in to the muffling hangings that reeked of perfumes. The blood had caked and dried along his neck. His legs were doubled up, knees touching his chestplate.

The wheeled fortress was banging and pitching heavily now. Clinschor was gripping the silks, supporting himself by the open slit, rapping out orders to someone. It seemed as though he were speaking into a furnace. Incredible that people lived out there, Lohengrin dimly thought. He had difficulty paying attention to anything; he’d never felt so drained and hopeless and (though he would not have used the word) degraded. What had happened with the chanting left him feeling violated and apathetic, as though the other had somehow sucked energy from him in a ritual of tainted intimacy.

He shut his eyes but didn’t like the darkness of himself. He hardly noticed the sweetish, heavy incenses overpowering the bitter, biting tone of the smoke.

He was thinking, with a certain petulance, that he’d be damned if he’d live to please this man … He contemplated some obscure revenge … He was lord Lohengrin and not to be treated in such a fashion … Great Master Clinschor didn’t expect to be defied. They all feared him. Well, they’d see something, then … Why, if he hadn’t been hit on the skull by that mad boy … and if his eye were better, none of this Oriental mumbo-jumbo would have affected him … He nodded slightly as his aimless mind drifted from thought to thought … He was no longer impressed, he assured himself … all fine speeches, but what did they come to …? Not much … great armies … and the Grail … Grail … destroying everything, wasting everything … he could weep … waste … waste … and for the sparkling nonsense his father and the other village idiots dreamed up …! Oh, a fine thing … a fine thing … great Lord Master wizard ball-less … As soon as his strength came back, he’d see … he’d see a few things, the Lord Master would … This was Lohengrin here, not those other girlish fools he surrounded himself with …

Suddenly the vehicle tilted wildly and his stomach spun and he spewed sickness without moving his head, staining the silks. He was coughing, choking, still without moving, shivering a little.

I’ll
show
that
bastard
…
I'll
settle
the
great
magnificence
…

His head lolled and he kept shivering. He wondered if he were falling sick with fever.

They were stopped. Clinschor was shouting into the flames and smoke.

“Drive on! Drive on! This is the right road!”

Faintly from without came the words, “The wheel, Lord Master …”

“Are you hopeless imbeciles? Must I do everything myself? Drive! Drive! Drive!”

He reeled back a step and pounded his fists into the padded wall. The metal faintly rang.

Fearful
he’ll
be
burned
like
a
capon
,
is
he
?
The
great
fart
-
noise
, Lohengrin thought, miserably.

A moment later, to heaving and curses and shouts, the iron ball of coach humped forward and continued its laboring, twisting climb.

Clinschor went back to poring over the map; then he rushed to peer at the mounting inferno. He muttered something as Lohengrin came suddenly alert, nerves wincing in fear, afraid he’d begin the terrible chanting again. He whimpered faintly, unconsciously.

“You’ll feel better after a time,” the master told him. “You adjust.” His magnetic, hollow, flashing eyes held him, and for the moment Lohengrin was calm. “In any event, you have little choice. You have been started on the process — no turning back.” He shook his head almost primly. “You will be changed.” The stooping, pale man in the dull-gray tunic smiled with what seemed a tic, but the immense voice rumbled on, masterful, profound, ultimately certain, and the eyes were now unwavering penetration above the absurd, upcurled moustaches.

Lohengrin was sorry and a little shaky again once the voice stopped talking to him, filling him with its own somber, resonant strength. The timbre and phrasing, the flow from murmuring thunder to mounting sweep, to flashing bolts, stilled his own thoughts and left him vaguely, childishly ashamed of his carping, petty little notions … It was more than just trust … much more than sincere faith, it was here and present, it was happening while the voice spoke and you moved in the actual flow …

He shifted his body experimentally and found he was slightly better. He was sure he had no fever now.

“My personal guard has been committed to battle,” Clinschor said, perhaps to himself only. He’d shut one eye in contemplation of his tented fingers. “The way to the stronghold is open. This is the hour!”

Clinschor leaned back in his seat looking meditatively at Lohengrin. He munched a piece of dried fruit. Smiled distantly, eyes suddenly remote and peaceful …

“I never married, you know,” he rumbled, quietly. “A man like myself is denied ordinary life. But I took it as consecration. I am like a priest, in many respects …

He opened one hand in a rueful, self-conscious gesture. “I often dream of a peaceful old age. Once the realm is firmly established I’ll give place to younger men. That is how things should be: the young follow the old, spring follows winter. The strong supplant the weak …” He gave a meager sort of smile to Lohengrin who was trying to move into this mood with the Lord Master. “I’ll live in quiet and meditation … yes … I only took on these powers because no other could do it. I don’t love this work, young man.” Shook his head. “Not in the least. But it must be done. I was chosen, you see, as I’ve chosen you.”

“By what or whom?” Lohengrin asked.

“By power itself. By the need … My sweetest recollections are of my youth … My father never understood my ideas. He had a narrow view … But my mother was very intelligent. We would talk for hours …” He smiled with fond indulgence. “I recall once reciting a poem I’d devised …” Shook his head. “Oh, I was filled with great feelings. I told of the holy wars … in very good style for a youth … yes …” He shut his eyes, the smile flickering still. “I had ever a gift for expressing myself … yes … I want to create gardens filled with herbs and great orchards. Once we’ve fixed up the world I intend to set thousands upon thousands of men at work upon that task … yes …” He rested his arms peacefully across his chest. “Men will live in these gardens. All need for grim and dark castles will be past. Such places are not healthy. I’ve looked into these matters. Foul humors gather indoors … and men should eat only fruits and uncooked vegetables. This helps develop the spirit … It will be paradise regained for those strong and vital enough to merit it …” Shut his eyes. “Yes … men and women will live in nakedness again eating only the pure fruits of the earth.”

Lohengrin frowned.

“Naked?” he wondered. “Like a whore-stew?”

Clinschor’s dreamy eyes flickered with momentary impatience.

“This will be a pure race,” he replied. “All the scum will be purged from it.” His eyes now stared, lidded and complacent, across the swaying interior. “Sex as we know it will have little place there. But the serf will breed and be kept alive to tend the gardens, of course …”

“But won’t everyone die out in time if there’s no sex?” Lohengrin didn’t quite know whether his master was mad or subtle, at this point. Clinschor brushed him aside.

“When I was a boy,” he said, tilting his head until it rested on the back of his chair, “my happiest hours were spent in the garden. Time seemed to pass so sweet and slow there.” He sighed. Murmured, “This whole land will eventually become a single, sunny garden with magnificent, beautiful people walking along the fragrant, cunning paths … singing and rejoicing together at the mystical wonder of life …” Sighed.

“But, master,” Lohengrin put in, frowning, “You swore to sacrifice this country as an example and — ”

“This will all come later. The two things are the same.”

Lohengrin was bemused.

“But what about
nothingness
?” he demanded. “Hmm?”

“Nothingness. You showed me that we’re all nothingness. Why do you talk about
gardens
and … you know religion is superstition yet you sound like a priest, I — ”

Clinschor was frowning, serious.

“Christianity will be stamped out!” he declared. “It’s political and senseless. But never imagine that I deny
God
! God is the power of life, young man. The law of God is to destroy all weakness, burn away weeds and filth and grow a divine man! Yes … this power is beyond your personal nothingness, Duke Lohengrin. To grow my garden I needs must turn it under with a ruthless plow!” He smiled. “Don’t think I am destroying. I am preparing the soil.” He coughed as a stinging draft of smoky air sucked in through the loosely shut window slit where the darkness and fire raged. Lohengrin just stared, uncertain and feeling ill again.