Corbenic Page 3

  Cal ate everything. He was ravenous, and though he tried to be cool about such abundance, the flavors were so amazing that he attacked everything steadily, until his belt felt tight and he was hot and slightly woozy with the pale white wine Bron poured for him.

  The dark man spoke little, and ate less. He pushed the small portions around his plate, listening restlessly to the musicians in the gallery somewhere above playing dreamy melodies of flute and harp. Behind him his giant servant stood, arms folded, attentive. Once when Bron coughed and reached for water the big man had it there instantly, his cheery face clouded. Bron sipped it, and sat back. “Thank you, Leo,” he murmured. He looked pale with fever.

  Cal put his spoon down in the empty syllabub dish and Bron almost smiled. “You enjoyed it.”

  “It was fantastic!” He picked up the heavy crystal glass, turning it so the rainbow facets glinted. “All of it. If you knew what sort of place I live in . . .” He stopped abruptly. Never talk about home. Never. It was one of his rules.

  Carefully, as if some moment had come, Bron laid his own fork down and looked out at the crowded tables. “We all have our hidden pain, Cal. We’ve all been wounded.”

  “Not me,” he said recklessly. “I’ve walked away.”

  “You’re lucky.” Bron gave him a strange glance. “I could have said that once but not now. I can never walk anywhere again.” His face was drawn, his skin clammy. In that brilliant room the dark clothes he wore seemed out of place, even though they were rich velvets and glinted here and there with discreet emeralds. He leaned forward for a moment and held the table’s edge with an indrawn breath that was unmistakably pain. The osprey screeched, pecking at its harness. Cal looked around hastily, but the big man had gone. “Are you all right? Can I get someone?”

  “I am as well as I can be.” Bron tried to pour water but the jug shook in his long frail fingers, so Cal took it and poured. The man sipped, his eyes, a deep green to match the jewels on his coat, closed and hidden. Then he rubbed his forehead with one palm, pushing up his dark hair. “Cal, listen to me. I wasn’t born like this. Do you know how it is to have a wound that will not heal, a torment of pain? To want to die and not be able to? I think you might know something of that, or you would not be here.”

  “Not me,” Cal interrupted quickly. He felt embarrassed. He hated illness in any form and the wine was making him feel bold and harsh; he looked away and said, “Can’t the doctors do anything?”

  Bron stopped. He seemed tense. He said, in a quieter voice, “There may be one cure.”

  “Then go for it. You’ve got money. Go private. Money can get you anything.”

  “Can it?” The King’s green eyes were watching him. “You believe that?”

  “I’d like the chance to find out. Yes, I do. Why not?”

  Bron frowned wryly. “Maybe I thought that once.” He held out a coiled piece of fish; the osprey snatched it greedily. “I cannot walk, Cal, or ride or hunt, and because of that I amuse myself by fishing. Leo carries me down to the boat, and we row out onto the lake, under the moon. How cool it is there, and the waves lap so calmly. And we fish. All the silver, teeming life of the lake comes into our nets, big and small, good and evil. Many we throw back. Some we bring here, to the Castle. And Leo jokes that one night we might catch a real treasure, a great fish with a ring in its belly as in the old stories.” He glanced at Cal, sidelong. “Maybe tonight we did.”

  Cal drank. The wine was blurring his eyesight; he felt dizzy and awkward. He wasn’t sure what all this was getting at. Maybe now he’d eaten he could make some excuse and get to bed.

  “Where were you going,” Bron asked quietly, “on the train?”

  “To live with my uncle.”

  “For good?”

  “Too right.”

  “Your mother will miss you.”

  “She’ll get by.”

  “And your father?”

  It was against his rules to answer but something made him say, “My father walked out when I was two.” He shrugged, watching the candles, how they put themselves out, one by one. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this anyway. She doesn’t care. Not really. She drinks. Says she hears voices. Now she can get on without me.”

  “And will she?”

  “I’m past caring.” Grimly, Cal filled his glass and drank again. It was the music that was doing it. The music had turned into a fog; it was winding down from the gallery and was snuffing all the candles out with deft gray fingers. Even the great fire that had roared in the hearth behind them was sinking, clouding over. The clatter of knives and forks, the chatter of the guests, was fading under the weight of it, an obscurity in the room, a gathering mist. Someone was turning down the world’s volume.

  Cal tugged at his collar. “It’s hot in here.”

  Bron’s fingers were white on the wineglass. “Cal, I need you to help. You must . . .” He stopped abruptly, then turned and said with sudden desperation, “This agony runs through all my realm. The kingdom is laid waste. You can heal it. If you went back . . .”

  “Back?” In front of Cal three candles winked out; he stared at them in bewilderment. “Back where?”

  “Home.”

  He stared at the man in amazement, his narrow, oddly familiar face. Then he stood up. “No chance!”

  Bron swiveled his wheeled chair with his bony hands. He seemed consumed with a secret torment. “Please. The Grail is coming. Only see it. Look at it. Do what you can to help us.”

  And the music stopped. It stopped instantly, like a CD switched off in midnote. The room was black. All the people had gone. Cal swallowed; for a second he knew he was somewhere lost, a palace nowhere in the world, deep in darkness, and then the doors opened, and a boy came in. He was one of the tall, fair-haired ones from the door, and he carried what looked to be a long rod, upright in both hands. He walked across the room quickly, without looking at Cal, and Cal stared, stunned at what the wine had done to his eyes. Because this was no rod, but a spear. And the spear was bleeding. Slowly, horribly, a great globule of blood welled from its tip; it ran down, trickling stickily over the boy’s fingers, down the rough shaft, dripping in dark splashes on the wooden floor.

  Cal felt sick. “This is crazy,” he whispered.

  Behind the boy came two more, each carrying a branched golden candlestick, and the candles that burned in them seemed to have such light that it made Cal bring his hands together and clench them on the table. Beside him, he sensed Bron’s rigid pain.

  The doorway was empty. But something else was coming. Something so inexplicable, so terrible that it made the very air shiver, a sudden breath of icy purity, so that Cal stepped right back without knowing it, shocked into fear. Sweat chilled on his spine, the very darkness in the doorway seeming to crackle and swell as if the room breathed in, all the curtains flapping, the casements gusting open with terrifying cracks. He caught the edge of the table.

  She had times like these. She’d see things, she’d scream, clutch her ears. How many times had he phoned the hospital, got a taxi, got her to Casualty. As if her head was bursting with visions, she’d say. Visions and angels. As if they were all in there with her.

  A girl came in. She was taller than the boys, and her hair was fair and her dress green. She carried a cup. She carried it carefully, as if it was precious, and he could see how ancient it was, how dented and scarred, and that it was gold, and there were jewels in its rim. For a moment he could see, but it shone, it shone so fiercely it almost burned and quivered in her hands, and he wondered how she could bear it, how he could bear to see it. Because it burned him too, in his eyes until he closed them and then like a heat and glow against his body, and yet none of it was real, none of it existed, he had to remember that.

  Bron’s fingers were tight on his arm.

  There was another room. There had been no door before, but there was now, and the boys with the spear and the candlesticks walked in there, and the girl did too, and as she passed she raised her face
from the glory of the Grail and gave Cal one look, quick and rapt. And he was seared with the sudden joy of it, the nameless, unbelievable joy, but the door swung shut and the light was gone and the music was back. As if it had never stopped.

  Knives and forks clattered. Glasses tinkled. All the candles glimmered. Cal rubbed his hand weakly down his face. He felt shaky, his whole body was wet with sweat. He collapsed into the chair.

  “Cal?”

  He turned. Bron was watching him, eyes bright, and behind him the red-bearded man waited, and the osprey stared, hawk-sharp.

  “Did you see?”

  “See?”

  “You must ask me about it, Cal.” Bron’s grip was so tight it hurt. “You must ask me. That’s all you need to do. Ask me about what you saw.”

  Cal shook him off, shivering. “Leave me alone. I’ve got to get out.”

  “But you saw! You must have seen.”

  Dully, Cal licked his lips, obstinate. He wasn’t drunk. He wouldn’t be like her. Never. He’d sworn long ago he’d never be like her. “I didn’t see a thing,” he whispered.

  Bron looked as though someone had struck him. For a moment his disappointment was so terrible Cal felt worse, chilled with terror. “Could I have some water?” he croaked. The big man poured it and pushed it over with a look of disgust. The coldness was wonderful in his seared throat. Putting the glass down he breathed out and said clearly and bitterly, “Either you or I are drunk, your majesty.”

  Leo had both his hands on Bron’s shoulders. When the dark man looked up he seemed haunted, more haggard, as if an eternity of pain had fallen on him. There was a grim despair in his face. “I should have known,” he whispered.

  Chapter Four

  And near to the gate the vegetation was taller than elsewhere.

  Peredur

  His head hurt. The dull ache came prodding down through layers and layers of sleep; it was an annoying throb, a knocking in his temples and throat. Cal groaned and rolled over, dragging the coarse blanket over his head. But the pain wouldn’t let him go. He lay there, awake, eyes tightly closed. For a moment he thought he was at home, tense in the bed, listening for the old noises downstairs, but then he remembered and let his body relax. Though the room seemed oddly cold.

  He had come up to bed straight after the meal, had said a shame-faced good night to Bron and the dark-haired man had nodded bitterly. “Good-bye Cal. It will be a long journey, as I feared.”

  He remembered the osprey’s yellow eyes, round and fierce. It was as if they had expected something great of him, as if he had failed them. But he’d drunk too much—he must have done. Because spears didn’t bleed and there was no light in the world like that which had scorched from the battered, golden cup. It had been some normal thing, people carrying dishes, and he’d seen it all wrong.

  He shivered. He’d heard her going on about things like this. Maybe it was schizophrenia, psychosis, one of those terrible words he’d looked up in the reference library that hot endless weekend she’d been in the hospital. He knew it was in his blood, in him. Maybe this was the start of it.

  Terrified, he sat up. Ignoring the headache he groped in the dimness for the marble bedside lamp with its ornate tassels, but he couldn’t find it, so he pulled the blankets aside and slid out of bed. The floor felt oddly rough under his bare feet. He padded across and drew the curtains. Then he turned, and stared in amazement. Where was the room? The beautiful, glossy magazine furnishings? What was happening to him?

  He saw a small stark cell, the walls plain and gray, with vast black stars in places where whole lumps of plaster had cracked and fallen off. On the rough planks of the floor old straw was scattered, and there were bones in it, gnawed and yellow.

  Cal sidestepped in disgust. “God,” he whispered.

  His rucksack was propped against the door. The ceiling was high, green and dripping with damp. The curtains were rags and the bed a simple wooden frame with a gray mattress and the filthiest blanket he had ever seen lying crumpled on it. And it was bitterly cold.

  He turned fast, as something spoke behind him, but the window was cracked and only the wind whispered in its corner, high-pitched in the green ivy. Cal put his hands up slowly to the vibrating pane. Outside, through the flapping leaves, was the garden. Wet, dripping, overgrown. A waste land.

  Instantly he turned, grabbed his clothes, and struggled into them frantically. He had to get out! Either this was a madhouse, or it was him. He didn’t want to talk to Bron, or the big man, or any of them. He just had to get back into the real world.

  And then he saw the sword. He froze, one arm in his shirt. In the silence his heart thudded. It was a narrow blade, and it looked wickedly sharp. Small crystals of ice glinted on its edge. It had been thrust through the pillow and into the wooden headboard, hard. Just above where his head must have been.

  Suddenly weak, Cal sat on the bed. Finally, warily, he reached out and took hold of the corded handle of the weapon. It fitted his hand perfectly, and he felt the icy metal slowly warm against his fingers. He pulled, then again, hard, and the sword came out.

  It was a beautiful thing. The pommel and guard were of steel, chased with intricate patterns and small red garnets, and down the blade a ripplework of beaten metal reflected his face with cold precision. He touched the cutting edge carefully, his breath clouding the steel.

  There was a stiff piece of parchment on the pillow; the sword had pinned it there. He picked it up reluctantly and read: My parting gift to you. Take it. It will serve you as you have served me. Go with God. It was signed, in a jagged scrawl: Bron.

  Cal sat silent. He had no idea what to do. “What the hell do I want with a sword?” he muttered aloud, and as if in response a drip of water fell from the ceiling and trickled down the blade. It broke the spell. He jammed the paper in his pocket, and the sword, roughly, in the mesh at the back of the rucksack. He’d leave it on the table downstairs. He had enough to worry about.

  The corridor was deserted. It smelled of damp and neglect, and the carpet was gone. As he walked quickly along it his footsteps echoed, and when he came to the stairs his worst fears lay before him. The curved banister was the same, but it led down into desolation. There was no fire, no table, no chandeliers. The hall was a ruin, the roof long fallen, ivy growing inside all the walls. Cal came down and stood on the bottom step and looked at it, fear clenched in his stomach like an agony. He knew what he had seen last night. And it hadn’t been this.

  Suddenly panic-stricken, he jumped down into the rubble of bricks and plaster and shoved the great doors wide to the banqueting room. The gilt ceiling lay in pieces on the floor; black mildew coated the walls. A great thicket of weeds grew out of the chimney. He pushed his way in. The tables were gone, the luxurious feast, the dishes, the guests, the shining cup. None of it was here. He must really be crazy. Except that the sword clinked reassuringly at his back.

  And there was no door.

  It was only a small thing among all the betrayal of his senses but it caught his curiosity through the fear and bewilderment. The spear and candles and the golden cup had been taken across this room and through a door. The room was the same—ruined and aged, but the same. But there was not, and never could have been, a door. He could see the brickwork through the buckled gilt panels. If he climbed over there he could even put his hands on it.

  Quickly he turned, scrambled back across the hall, and found the entrance he had come in through the night before. The glass panels of knights and horsemen had long since fallen in; ivy choked the porch so thoroughly he had to grope for the bolts in a green, musty dimness and then shove and shudder the whole warped door to get it wide enough for him to slip through. Even then the ivy was too thick, a dusty smothering curtain, stinking of damp. After a moment he pulled the sword out and sliced through the woody stems; he found he could slash an opening, force his way out, and as he surfaced from the leaves the gray daylight was cool, and he breathed it deep. But the rotting garden made him think again of
that old story, the prince, the sleeping castle. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. This was all the wrong way around.

  It was hard to get out. Great umbels of hogweed had grown down the path and he had to snap through them, seed drifting in his face, and the statues of bears and foxes were fallen or lost in swaths of bramble, decades of growth that snagged him and barred his way. He had to cut a tunnel and edge through, crouching, furious at the torn scags of his clothes.

  At the gate in the wall the latch was broken; the outer door banged in the wind. He pushed through it and looked up. There was a rusty bracket. But no hotel sign.

  For a moment he stood there in the pattering rain with the sword dripping in his hand. The castle was a shadow behind its tangled wilderness, silent, without even birdsong. There was no one here.

  He had meant to toss the sword back inside; instead he found himself pushing it into the rucksack. Then he turned. When he spoke his voice was bitter. “I’m sorry. It’s not me you need. I don’t even know what you want me to do.”

  Rain dripped. And the wind whipped the door out of his numb fingers and slammed it in his face.

  The tramp to the station seemed endless; after half an hour he was soaked and thirsty. The lanes were dripping and muddy with dead leaves, the ditches overflowing, all hedgerows bare. He had a sudden terror that too much time had passed; that the night in the castle had been weeks out here, and it almost made him run in panic, but the rucksack was too heavy and he had to stop, breathless. Stupid. Calm down. And the lane was different. He hadn’t remembered any turnings last night but they were here now, and around the next bend the lane divided into two, with no signposts, the fields silent but for a few cows that chewed and watched him. Far off, a flock of rooks rose noisily from some trees. Cal chose the left-hand lane, and walked on, soaked and hopeless.