The Squire's Quest

  "I didn't know I was, actually," Dinadan replied. "I was just playing what felt right. Terence? Are you not really from this world? I mean, aren't you human?"

  "Half," Terence assured him. "And I was born in this world. In Lancashire."

  "But your father's a ... what, a faery?"

  "A lot of people have faery blood," Terence explained. "Gawain does, even Arthur. I just have more than most."

  Sylvanus spoke again. "But if you didn't call me, my friend, who did? Someone was certainly doing so," Sylvanus said. "My lord Terence?"

  Terence nodded slowly. "I suppose you could say I was calling," he admitted. "Not you, particularly, mind you. But I've been looking for answers from beyond this world."

  "Why not ask your father?"

  Terence frowned. "Avalon is silent," he said. "There's been no traffic between the worlds for many months—no word, nothing. That's what I'm looking for. I want to know why. Do you know ... oris there someone in your world who might know what is going on in mine?"

  Sylvanus considered this. "Perhaps," he admitted. "There is one who sees into more worlds than any of us. But that one never comes here anymore. I would have to take you to Elysium."

  Terence stood at once. "If you would, friend Sylvanus, I would be deeply grateful."

  Sylvanus smiled. "Very well. Dinadan? Do you come with us or stay here?"

  "You must be joking," Dinadan said at once, rising to his feet.

  "And what about our friend?" Terence asked, nodding at the still figure of Acoriondes.

  "Don't worry. He'll sleep safely until your return."

  A moment later they were gone, picking their way through the jumbled masonry. Sylvanus skipped lightly along a path that Terence couldn't even see in the gloom, but neither he nor Dinadan stumbled in the dark. "So, Sylvanus?" Dinadan asked as they walked. "If that's only one of your names, then what else are you called?"

  "I been most often called Dionysos," the shadowy figure replied over his shoulder.

  "Dionysos?" Dinadan exclaimed. "Isn't that the god of wine?"

  "God is such a limiting word," Sylvanus complained. "People think they know what it means and then expect all sorts of nonsense from you."

  "All the same, you're that Dionysos?"

  "In past days, people certainly called me the god of wine," Sylvanus admitted. "That's why I don't use that name anymore. When people hear 'Dionysos they think only of drunken revels. Really, there's more to me than wine. In fact, when I first began visiting this world, in Thrace, people didn't call me that at all."

  "Oh? What did those people call you?" asked Dinadan.

  "The god of beer." Sylvanus stopped at what looked like a sheer wall. "Here we are. The cave of the oracle." Then, before Terence's astonished eyes, Sylvanus stepped into the rock.

  "Terence?" Dinadan whispered.

  "I didn't see it either," Terence replied. "Come on. And let's join hands."

  Together they moved to the place where they had last seen Sylvanus. The wall before them could not have seemed more solid, but taking a deep breath, Terence stepped into it, pulling Dinadan along with him. No rock touched them, and in a moment they stood in pitch darkness.

  "So that's why no one knows where the oracle was," Dinadan commented. "It doesn't actually look much like a cave."

  "Sheer provincialism," said Sylvanus's voice from a few feet away. "People always expect other worlds to have the same rules as their own. Why should a cave into my world look like a cave in yours? Come along."

  They walked in darkness for several minutes, until a faint red glow appeared before them, gradually lighting their path. Before long, they could see the walls on either side—not jagged rock but walls of polished white stone—and a few minutes later the smooth rock path became soft as their feet began crunching across gravel. A wide ribbon of pitch blackness crossed their path. "A river?" Terence asked.

  "The River Styx," Sylvanus replied. "Wait a moment: the boatman's coming."

  A movement of darkness flickered before Terence's eyes, and the shape of a long boat with a standing ferryman appeared, as if rising from beneath the surface of the river itself. A voice growled something, and Sylvanus said, "English, please."

  "Ainglish?" grunted the new voice. "Ye've brought Ainglish? Is summat wrong wi yer head?"

  "Just take us across," Sylvanus replied quietly.

  "Gaffers ain't dead yet!"

  "Don't be an idiot. Just take us across. And don't try that silly old lie about how the weight of the living will sink your boat."

  "Serve ye roight if it did," the boatman muttered, but he stepped back and made room for the three travelers. They crossed the river in silence but for the boatman's subdued muttering about how he'd never seen an Englishman before and didn't care to see any more if these two were what they were like. Sylvanus led Terence and Dinadan onto the shore, and boatman and boat disappeared silently behind them.

  "Pleasant chap," Dinadan remarked.

  "I've often thought that it must be exhausting to keep up such an attitude," Sylvanus said, "but Charon never disappoints me."

  "If he's never seen an Englishman before," Terence asked, "how is it that he speaks English?"

  "Would you call that English?" Dinadan murmured.

  Sylvanus smiled. "Many of the barriers that divide humans from each other are unimportant here, my lord Terence." Then he turned to Dinadan. "Charon's English was rather odd, wasn't it?"

  "What would you say, Terence? Yorkshire?"

  "Maybe," Terence agreed. "Northern, anyway."

  Sylvanus chuckled. "Hardly surprising," he said. "You should hear his Greek. Fellow has a dreadful Macedonian accent."

  "Why was he surprised that we weren't dead?" Terence asked.

  "Most who make this journey are," Sylvanus explained. "You'll meet some former residents of your world before long, I imagine. But don't be disturbed by his ill temper; Charon's often given rides to the living, coming and going. Step this way. We'll need to hunt around a bit to find the one we're looking for."

  They went on together toward the growing red light, and after several minutes Terence heard the sharp tapping of goat hooves approaching. "Pan?" called Sylvanus. "Is that you?"

  "Here, master," piped a shrill voice. "What in heaven's name have you there?"

  "Lord Terence of Avalon and Sir Dinadan of England," Sylvanus replied. "We're looking for the Old One. Have you seen him?"

  "She hasn't been around recently," the voice replied. "In one of his moods, I would guess. Are you really from Avalon?"

  Assuming that this was addressed to him, Terence replied, "I am."

  "Delightful!" the voice cried, and a skipping goatlegged figure no more than three feet high appeared and began dancing around Terence. "I've an old friend there, I have! Perhaps you know him? Pook?"

  Terence nodded. His friend Robin often went by the name Puck. "I do. I'm afraid I haven't seen him in a long time, though. Shall I give him your greetings when I do, Master Pan?"

  "Give him my greetings?" the little figure asked. "Whatever for?"

  Terence hesitated as he realized that he had no idea what purpose a secondhand greeting might serve. "I don't know. It's just something that people do."

  "A good enough reason not to do it, I would think," Pan chirped. He turned back to Sylvanus. "You might look in the lower region. Dismal place, but if the Old One's in a funk, she might go there."

  Sylvanus nodded and turned off the path to his right. "This way, friends," he said. "And if we go quickly, we might slip by the Thirsty."

  Terence exchanged a glance with Dinadan, but neither asked for an explanation of this ominoussounding designation. They trotted behind Sylvanus down a long slope. "I say, Sylvanus," called Dinadan.

  "Yes?"

  "This 'Old One' we're looking for—is it a man or a woman?"

  "Very likely," Sylvanus replied. "Watch your step, there."

  Terence and Dinadan had to veer sharply to the right to keep from stepping into a str
eam that flowed sluggishly downhill beside them, carrying thick clumps over the rocks to plop loudly into viscous pools. "Eugh!" muttered Dinadan at Terence's side. "No wonder someone's thirsty here, if the water's like that."

  "Oh, that's not water," Sylvanus called over his shoulder. "That's blood. It must be a peaceful day in your world. When you're having a war, this stream's a torrent. Hurry, now ... Oh,blast!Never mind."

  A moment later, the three travelers were surrounded by flitting, gibbering phantoms stretching their arms toward Terence and Dinadan and kneeling at their feet. The shadowy, insubstantial figures opened their mouths like baby birds, gaping and closing, gaping and closing, all the while pleading in Greek. Terence halted, unwilling to push the figures out of his way, and sensed Dinadan doing the same. "These are the Thirsty, I suppose?" Dinadan asked Sylvanus.

  As soon as Dinadan spoke, the figures shifted to English. "Please, sirs, a drink! I beg you! Give me once again a taste of what you know always! A drink! Give me life, though only for a moment! A drink, a drink!" But the figures seemed to have strength enough only for a few words, and after speaking would collapse to the ground, only to be climbed over by others gasping out the same plea.

  "I have no water," Terence said kindly.

  "They don't want water," Sylvanus said. Terence looked at their guide, then glanced incredulously at the stream of blood that ran beside them. "That's right," Sylvanus said. "These are some of those who have come here after death."

  "And they want blood?" Dinadan asked. "Is this what death is like?"

  "Only for them," Sylvanus explained. "These shades, when they were alive in your world, existed by sucking life from others. Here are the callous rich, the wheedling poor, domineering husbands and wives, hypochondriacs, beggars, princes, bishops. All sorts are here, existing exactly as they did in life, but without their pretenses. Here they live forever in their natural state."

  "Live forever?" Dinadan repeated.

  "Oh, yes, my friend. The only thing that dies in Elysium is a lie."

  Terence felt his gorge rising, but he fought down his nausea. "And they want blood to drink? Why don't they just drink from the stream?"

  Sylvanus shook his head. "They are only able to drink what someone else gives them. Justice is often cruel."

  "And if someone gives them a drink of blood?"

  Sylvanus shrugged. "For a few fleeting moments, they feel a surge of strength."

  Terence turned toward the throng and picked out a tall young shade who stood near the front. Alone of all the jostling shadows, he didn't gape his mouth or cry pitifully for blood. There was an empty cruelty in his eyes that Terence couldn't look at without feeling sick, but he seemed stronger than the rest. "You!" Terence said. "If I give you a drink, will you answer my questions?" The shade hesitated proudly, then nodded once. "Vow it!" Terence demanded. The phantom nodded again, and Terence knelt beside the clotted stream and dipped his hands into the gore. All the shades around him wailed and threw themselves forward, but Terence ignored them and took his cupped hands to the tall shade, who tilted his head and let Terence pour a mouthful of blood past his lips. At once the young man grew more solid and took on color. Closing his eyes, he drew a deep breath.

  "Your name?" Terence snapped.

  "I am Alexander." Terence blinked and stared more closely, but this was not the Alexander he knew, the emperor who had loved Sarah.

  "Ask quickly, Lord Terence," whispered Sylvanus.

  "We are looking for the Old One. Is he ... er, or she, below?"

  "Yes," the shade said. His face was already growing gray.

  "Where?"

  "By the rock of ... of..." Then Alexander crumpled and almost disappeared from sight.

  "Come," said Sylvanus, plucking at Terence's sleeve. "You won't get anything else from him."

  They set out down the path, and the crowd of shadows turned away from them to pounce instead on the faint shape of Alexander, as if they meant to tear the young man apart and suck every last drop of blood from his shadow.

  Dinadan glanced over his shoulder at the pawing and scratching mob. "Was that ... Alexander the Great?" he asked.

  "Did he look great to you?" Sylvanus replied.

  "Did his information help at all?" Terence asked.

  "Perhaps," Sylvanus said. "He never finished telling us which rock he meant, but there are only two or three rocks in the lower region that are notable enough to use as a landmark. I'm going to bet it's the rock of Sisy-phus. Now I think of it, I recall seeing the Old One there before."

  It was never easy to judge time when visiting other worlds, Terence knew, so he didn't ask how much longer it would be. Instead, he concentrated on placing his feet firmly in the path behind his guide to Lower Elysium. At last—though it could, of course, have been only a moment—the path opened out to a wide valley, dimly lit by a reddish orb that hung in the air above it, like a dying underground moon. There was a vast lake at the far end of the valley, and to their left there rose a long, conical hill up which a man was pushing a jagged boulder. "That's Sisyphus," Sylvanus said. "And there she is, the Old One. Just at the foot of the hill."

  Together they approached. The Old One sat quietly on what appeared to be the bones of a huge creature. He was bald and had a tangled gray beard. "There, Dinadan," Terence said. "The Old One's a man."

  "You're sure?" Dinadan said. "Look at her chest."

  Terence looked more closely and saw that the Old One's loosely gaping robe clearly revealed the withered breasts of an old woman. Sylvanus chuckled. "We don't even wonder anymore. We just take him as she is. But whatever else you can say about her, she knows more than any of us. The trick is getting him to say what he knows." Sylvanus stopped about a stone's throw from the Old One, and said, "You go on, Lord Terence. She's more likely to speak to a lone questioner."

  Leaving the others behind, Terence walked up to the Old One. He sensed that he was being closely observed, but as he approached he realized that the Old One's eyes were blank and covered with a thick white film. "And what," rasped the Old One, "brings the Duke of Avalon to Elysium?"

  Despite all that Sylvanus had said, Terence was mildly surprised at being recognized, especially by his rank. He often went months at a time without thinking of his official title himself. "I'm looking for you, sir. Or madam."

  "You may call me sir," the Old One said. "I feel more a man today. Or you could use my name. I am Tieresias. Why do you seek me?"

  "If you know that I am from Avalon, you know that I have frequent communication with my father, Ganscotter, both in person and through messengers."

  Tieresias yawned. "Is that so?"

  "But all that communication has stopped. I have heard nothing at all from Avalon for most of a year."

  "So?"

  "I am anxious. Just before Avalon grew silent, my father told me that there had been a deep plot laid against my king—Arthur of Britain. I am afraid that the one who has laid that plot is also preventing me from speaking to those beyond the World of Men."

  Tieresias shrugged. "It could be. There are those who have such power."

  "Is it so? And who is it?"

  "Why do you care?"

  "Arthur is my king and friend. If there are plots against him, I want to protect him."

  "Why?" Terence blinked at this, and Tieresias went on. "Do you suppose that you can prevent your Arthur from dying, or his kingdom from collapsing? You cannot."

  "I can keep it from happening now."

  "Now, next year, ten years from now...when means nothing. Look about you. In this place, do you think that ten years matters? Arthur will die. Your master Gawain will die. You will die. Arthur's kingdom will fall and be replaced by another, like every kingdom and empire before Arthur's and after. In the end, the time it happens matters not at all. You waste my energy with childish questions. Go away."

  Terence stood uncertainly before Tieresias, feeling the weight of the Old One's own jaded weariness settling on his own shoulders. Behind Tiere
sias, on the conical hill, the man who had been pushing the large rock arrived at the summit. The rock quivered on the top for a moment, then rolled down the other side. The man took a breath and followed it down the slope. At the bottom, he set his shoulder to the stone and began pushing it back toward the hill. Terence turned to Tieresias.

  "Sir, perhaps you are right. But I still wish to serve Arthur. If I can help him against his enemies, I will do what I can."

  The Old One shrugged. "You may do what you like, but why should I pretend to care about what does not matter?"

  "You don't have to care, sir, but you have knowledge that might help me."

  "And why should I care if I help you? Go away, I said." Tieresias bowed his head and rested it on his staff, to all appearances sound asleep. Terence stared at him helplessly, unable to think of any more arguments. It occurred to him that perhaps the Old One was right. Maybe trying to change the course of history was pointless.

  Then a new noise intruded on his despondent reflections: a faint but cheerful whistle. Terence blinked and looked around, seeing nothing. He looked behind Tieresias and realized that the whistle was coming from the man pushing the rock up the hill. The cheerful little tune broke off abruptly as Sisyphus braced his shoulders against the boulder and muscled it over a bump in the hill's surface, but then it resumed. Terence looked back at Tieresias, then again at Sisyphus, and leaving the Old One he walked up the hill toward man and rock.

  Still whistling, Sisyphus gave Terence a welcoming nod, but he didn't speak. Instead he bent his knees, braced his shoulders against the stone, and began pushing it up. The whistling broke off for a second, but the rock didn't move. Without thinking, Terence stepped up beside Sisyphus and began pushing with him. The stone seemed almost to push back, but after a moment the gravel beneath it slipped, and it lurched a few more inches upward. Terence found himself breathing heavily from the exertion and heard Sisyphus panting beside him, but neither spoke. Sisyphus braced himself again; Terence joined him. Again they forced the rock uphill. And then again. Between shoves, Sisyphus would resume his whistle. Terence suddenly grinned and, once he was sure of the tune, began to whistle with him. Side by side they grunted and whistled and heaved until at last they had the boulder again at the top, where it balanced precariously for a second, then rolled down the other side.