The police officer set his jaw. “You know what they call me back at the precinct house, buddy? Iron-Spine Owens. Because I never backed down from anyone in my life, and I—”
Arthur wasn’t hearing it. “And do you know what they do not call me?” His voice never rose in volume, but it did in intensity. “They do not call me buddy, pal, friend, chum, or old sock. They treat me with the respect that I am due, and you will extend the same courtesy. Is that clear?” Without waiting for Owens to reply, he repeated, “Is that clear?”
Owens locked gazes with Arthur for a moment, but only for a moment, and then he dropped his stare and— sounding for all the world like a recalcitrant child—he said softly, “Sorry, sir. But—”
Arthur, with no letup, continued, “For your further information and, if you insist, for your peace of mind, the scabbard is empty. There is no sword in it, and therefore no need to concern oneself with concealed weapons. And I might add that if mankind had not worked so hard to perfect weaponry that any fool could hide in a pocket and use to launch a cowardly assault from yards away, with no more skill or finesse than a diseased crow, then we wouldn’t have a need for quite so many laws about concealed weapons.” He shook his head. “Most insane bloody process I’ve ever seen. Create the weapons, then legislate against them. It doesn’t stop in New York, you know. It pervades society. Create nuclear weapons, and then try to stop them from being used. The moment they used the first one they should have stopped when they saw what they had on their hands. I certainly would have.”
“Well, sir,” said Owens contritely, “it’s a shame you weren’t around then.”
“Oh, I was. But hardly in a position to do anything.” He sighed. “Hopefully I shall remedy that now.”
Owens looked at him with unrestrained curiosity. “Pardon my asking sir, but … are you a politician or something?”
Arthur reflected a moment and then said, “I’d have to say I fall under the category of ‘or something.’ Why, do I come across to you as such?”
“Well, sort of. Except you sure have the rest of them out-classed. You got a way with a phrase. Let me tell you, if you ever run for public office, you’ll have my vote.”
“Really?” Arthur was most intrigued. Considering that, only moments before, the man had been harassing him, he had done a considerable turnaround in an extremely brief time. “On what basis?”
“Basis?” Iron-Spine Owens laughed out loud, coarsely. “You don’t need a ‘basis’ to vote for people anymore. You vote for the guy who looks good or sounds good. It’s not about messages. It’s about sound bytes and guys who seem normal, likable. Most of the time it’s just a matter of voting for the guy who’s the least idiotic. Anyone who enters politics has to be an idiot anyway. Just look less like an idiot than the other guy and you’ll win whatever office you’re running for.”
“That is … very interesting. Well … good evening to you, then.”
Owens touched the brim of his cap with his finger. “Evening to you, too, sir. Oh, sir … you weren’t thinking of heading into the park, were you?”
Arthur looked across Fifty-ninth Street to the edge of Central Park. There were a few stray couples walking arm-in-arm along the sidewalk running around the park, but no one was actually entering it.
“That had, in fact, been my intention, yes. Why? Is there some reason I should not?”
Owens rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well … most of the time it’s safe enough. Sure safer than it used to be. Nevertheless, I’d advise against it. Unless you have a way of occupying that scabbard of yours with a sword.”
“But if I were to carry a sword, you would then feel compelled to arrest me for it.”
“First rule of being a New York cop is knowing when to look the other way.”
“I’ll remember that,” said Arthur. “Good evening to you, sir.” He watched the police officer walk off and then turned and headed into the park.
IRON-SPINE OWENS SPUN on his heel and went on his way whistling an aimless tune, his hands resting in a relaxed manner behind him. It was not until he was eight blocks away that he suddenly realized he had just totally violated the “Iron-Spine” character—the ultimate “tough cop”—he had created for himself and maintained all these years. With just a few choice words this lone, bearded man had taken Owens firmly in hand, and in moments had him rolling over and playing dead. And Owens hadn’t minded!
He considered for a moment running back after the man, challenging him, rousting him, maybe even finding something to arrest him for. Just to gain back something indefinable that he’d lost. But when he even considered the notion, he was sufficiently dissuaded from it just by imagining the scowl of disapproval the man would give him. Owens whistled softly in awe. “I don’t know just what that man has going for him,” he said, waiting for the light to change at the corner of Fifty-first Street and Fifth Avenue, “but whatever it is, I wish I could bottle it and sell it. I’d sure as hell make me a fortune.” A woman with a dachshund on a leash looked curiously at the police officer mumbling to himself, and walked quickly away, shaking her head.
ARTHUR WALKED BRISKLY through the park, the soles of his shoes slapping with satisfying regularity against the blacktop. A cyclist sped by him in the opposite direction and didn’t even afford him a glance.
Although Officer Owens was dwelling upon the encounter with Arthur, Arthur was giving the exchange no thought whatsoever. Instead his energies were focused on the young woman he’d encountered earlier; the one who looked lost somehow. The one who’d threatened him with a mace, although she didn’t seem to be carrying one. The one over whom he’d made a total jackass of himself by tumbling down the stairs of the subway in full armor. The one who reminded him so much of …
... of her.
Gwynyfar … how are they spelling it now? Guinevere, yes. His queen.
He tried to shake the notion out of his mind in the way that a cat would thoroughly vibrate his body to toss off every last drop of water. First and foremost, it couldn’t be … her. She was gone, long gone. Second, she didn’t look all that much like her … well, maybe a little bit.
All right, a lot.
But then again, he hadn’t seen her for centuries. All he had in his mind’s eye was an idealized vision of a woman with beauty that was not so much surface as it was depth. His beloved Guinevere had never, upon first glance, appeared a great beauty. Instead her beauty had come from a deep, inner greatness of spirit that became more and more visible the longer people spent time with her. Individuals who met her and initially thought her little more than plainly pretty, came away believing that Helen of Troy would throw herself to her death upon meeting Arthur’s queen, convinced that the legendary Helen’s beauty had met not only its match, but its superior.
Still, this poor, befuddled, even frightened New York woman … she had some of that same old Guinevere magic about her. Then again, Arthur had to admit to himself, he might wind up feeling that way about any woman he encountered just because he missed his beloved Jenny so much. He resolved to dwell upon it no more; it was simply not worth the mental aggravation. Jenny was just gone, that was all, long gone. And no amount of fanciful reimagining of her was going to change that simple fact. Instead he returned his attention to his environment.
Arthur’s pores opened, his senses expanding to drink in the greenery around him. This was something to which he had an easier time relating. This wood-and-leaf forest was something that came far more naturally to him than the brick, steel, and concrete forest that loomed all around, hemming in the park at all sides. This brought back pleasant memories of home …
Home? What was home to him now? He had no friends, no loved ones. No family. Only descendants, and even they were completely screwed up. Held in high esteem by the modern British, Arthur had in his day actually fought against the ancestors of the modern-day Englishman. But a lot could be forgiven and forgotten in over a dozen centuries, he decided.
Camelot long gone, lost in the
mist of time and memories. Guinevere gone, Lancelot gone, all … all gone. But he had survived, only he …
Or … was he falsely assuming? Were they genuinely gone? None of the others had been locked away in an enchanted cave all this time, of course, as he had been … or had they?
But no, that was impossible. Only Arthur and Merlin had survived, and Merlin would certainly have told Arthur if any of his latter-day companions were still with them.
Wouldn’t he?
It was hard to be certain with Merlin. He was, after all, a wizard, and wizards were renowned for keeping key points of information to themselves. They were not the most trustworthy of individuals … and the fact that Arthur was depending so heavily on such a being made him exceedingly uncomfortable.
So lost in thought was Arthur as he made his way through the park that he failed to notice the two men lurking in the bushes.
But they most certainly noticed him.
THEY WERE EXACTLY the reason that most people didn’t walk around in Central Park at night. Calling them “men” might have been a bit too generous a term. With their wild manes of black hair and their equally scraggly beards, they were of an indeterminate age. They each gave off a fairly pungent odor but, because they had hung with each other for as long as they had—since the 1960s, when they’d first met at an antiwar rally, gotten stoned, and fried just enough brain cells to remain in a permanent haze—neither of them came close to noticing it. Both of them bone skinny, they acquired their wardrobe through the simple expedient of crawling into the narrow chutes of the Goodwill boxes and scavenging clothes from them. Their fingernails were permanently dirty, although, curiously, their teeth were in perfect condition (since they were both big believers in flossing.) One had blue eyes, the other brown, which was pretty much the only way anyone could possibly have distinguished them. Indeed, on some days it was the only way they had of telling each other apart.
Much of what was real and what was not floated in and out for them, and there had only been a handful of things that they agreed upon that absolutely, truly existed. Artificial stimulants headed the list, followed by money. Then came superheroes—after all, in the whole world there had to be at least one, somewhere. And the fourth was rock and roll, which they were convinced would never die. Their own names long forgotten, they had adopted sobriquets that were in keeping with that philosophy.
The blue eyed, taller one, Buddy, stood slowly, disentangling his beard from the snarl of the branches. “There he goes,” he murmured. “You see him?”
Elvis nodded and chewed on the remains of a stale pretzel. He stood as well, coming just to Buddy’s shoulder. He wiped his large nose expansively with his shirtsleeve but said nothing. Talking had never been his strong suit. Nor was he very sharp on conscious thought.
Their most recent foray into clothes shopping, this time into a Salvation Army drop-off box (or, as they referred to it, their Uncle Sal) had garnered them dark sweatshirts and tattered jeans with holes in the knees. Buddy was also wearing battered basketball Nikes and a thin wind-breaker. In his social strata this alone was enough to qualify him for the best-dressed list.
Buddy said, “Look at him. Like he’s got the whole world for his oyster. He must have enough on him to keep us goin’ for a few days, at least. Geez, he must be from out of town. C’mon.”
He and his partner, or what there was of him, stepped out of the bushes. Buddy looked down and scowled. “Who told you not to wear shoes, you idiot. Geez, aren’t your feet cold?”
Elvis looked at him blankly. “Feet?”
The two ill-equipped, ill-advised, and generally just plain ill muggers found themselves quickly at a disadvantage. Their intended victim was walking quite quickly, and they felt compelled to remain in the background. The general intention was not to be spotted by the victim until it was too late.
Their own paranoia made this problematic. They insisted on taking refuge behind trees and shrubbery every time they thought, even for a moment, that they might be detected. These brilliant attempts at camouflage consisted of noisily rustling bushes or tripping over projecting roots. Colorful profanity and frantic shushing usually accompanied such endeavors. At one point Elvis and Buddy were almost within striking distance, but out of nowhere a police car materialized. It prompted them to dive headlong into the bushes to avoid detection. When the police car drove on past, they emerged cut and bleeding, and Elvis wiped at his nose and asked if they could go home now.
“That’s it,” growled Buddy. “We’re endin’ this right now.”
They scuttled ahead but found, much to their chagrin, that they had lost their quarry at the fork in the road. Trusting to his luck, which had not served in good stead for over a decade, Buddy pulled his partner to the right and walked as quickly as he could.
ARTHUR SMILED, ENJOYING the game. There was no way of his stalkers knowing that the man they were pursuing was possessed of a warrior’s sixth sense, which warned him that a couple of badly intentioned but inept thugs were following him. But he made no effort to discourage them. They seemed harmless enough, and in a perverse sort of way he was very curious as to how they would react to the events that would shortly transpire.
At one point he felt he was losing them, so he waited and watched from the shadows, and when he saw them coming, stepped back out onto the path. If they had guessed wrong, he’d been prepared to clear his throat loudly to guide them on their way. He began to walk, paused momentarily, and cast a glance over his left shoulder. There was the expected crash and curses as the two leaped into the bushes once again. Arthur laughed to himself. He hadn’t had this much fun in centuries.
The road angled down, and within a few more moments Arthur stood at the edge of Central Park Lake. His nostrils flared. He could smell the magic in the air, like a faint aroma that lingered long after a great feast had been cleared away. It was a pleasant scent, a familiar one. After all, he had lived with it for more years than any man could rightly expect to live. Magic had cured him when he’d been struck down through the duplicity of his bastard son, Modred, and magic had kept him alive. It was as mother’s milk to him … except he distrusted it. But sometimes one has to learn to live with that which one distrusts.
He looked out across the lake and waited. It would be here, he knew. It had to be. All he had to do was wait. The stillness of the night air hung over him. Faintly he heard an ambulance siren, or perhaps a police car. Closer, he felt the small animal life all around him. The creatures of the woods had tensed as well. They, too, sensed it.
Arthur let his breath out slowly, and mist filled the air in front of him. It was chilly, rapidly approaching thirty-two degrees—the point at which water freezes.
Which did nothing to explain why the middle of Central Park Lake was beginning to boil.
Arthur stared in rapt attention as the water in the center of the lake bubbled, swirled, and undulated, as if a volcano were about to leap forth, spewing lava into the park. Then, somehow, the water folded in on itself, creating a small whirlpool. The air seemed to hum, as if energy was building up towards a powerful release. Now there were no nearby sounds of forest animals scavenging for the last scraps of food, or faraway sounds of ambulance sirens. It seemed New York City had shut down, leaving only the noises of the churning water.
It was then that it emerged from the center of the lake. Arthur’s eyes widened, and for one moment he was no longer Arthur Rex. He was Arthur the wondering boy, dazzled and stunned by the wonders that were his to witness. Arthur, he who had once been called Wart, whose entire world had been small and isolated, and suddenly discovered—through the tutelage of a great mage named Merlin—all the infinite possibilities that were his to explore. All the powers and spectacle that a world of nature and magic had to offer, if only he knew where and how to look.
He was looking now.
At first only its tip was visible, but then it rose, straight, proud, all that was noble and great and wondrous. The tip of the blade pointed toward the
moon, as if it would cleave it in two. The blade itself gleamed, a beacon in the night. There was no light source for the sword to be reflecting from, for the moon had darted behind a cloud in fear. The sword was glowing from the intensity of its strength and power and knowledge that it was justice incarnate, and that after a slumber of uncounted years its time had again come.
After the blade broke the surface, the hilt was visible, and holding the sword was a single strong, yet feminine hand, wearing several rings that bore jewels sparkling with the blue-green color of the ocean. It was a moment frozen out of time—another time—as the man at the lake’s edge watched the entire scene, unmoving but not unmoved.
Slowly the hand began to glide toward him, cutting through the water and yet amazingly not leaving a wake behind it, bringing its proud burden straight and true. As it neared Arthur, the water receded as more and more of the graceful arm was revealed. Within moments the Lady of the Lake stood mere feet away from Arthur, the water reaching the hem of her garment.
She looked like hell.
Weeds and slime had ruined her beautiful white dress. Her hair, also filled with slime, hung limply. In her jeweled crown a dead fish had somehow managed to lodge itself to stare glassy-eyed at the world. She pulled another dead fish, plus an orange rind, out of the cleavage of her dress while Arthur, onshore, glanced away in mild embarrassment. She glared at him for a moment and then, in an attempt to restore some measure of dignity, took a majestic step forward. But she missed her footing, slipped, and fell flat into the mud.
Arthur reached down to help her but she waved him off, pulling herself to her feet. Using the sword to balance by thrusting it into the silt, she lifted one foot and pulled an empty cigarette pack off the bottom of her shoe. While one hand made vague attempts to wipe off the sludge, with the other she gave the still-gleaming sword to the man on shore.