Arthur stared at Ziusura, obviously trying to pull up a recollection, and then it clearly came to him. “Ut-Napisti? I . . . know that name. According to legend, you saved animals from a great flood, much like Noah.”
Ziusura shook his head. “No,” he corrected politely. “Noah was much like me.”
“And the gods rewarded you with eternal life.”
With a shrug, Ziusura said, “I wouldn’t say for sure just how much of a ‘reward’ it was, but yes. That is correct.”
The young woman standing near was apparently thunderstruck by what she was hearing, and the man with her was just shaking his head. They didn’t believe, or were having trouble believing. That was of little consequence to Ziusura. How did it possibly matter to him whether they accepted or not? His existence, his world, was not predicated on their acceptance.
“Well, this is an honor,” Arthur said, and bowed to Ziusura. The Aged One found, much to his annoyance, that he liked the younger king. It seemed odd that he should develop a liking for one who would very likely bring his world crashing down upon him, but Ziusura supposed that if one is going to be destroyed by someone, better that it be someone one likes rather than someone one detests.
“And these,” Arthur continued with a slight flourish, “are my associates, Ronald Cordoba and Nellie Porter. Come forward, my friends. Greet the foundation of all legends.”
“Uhm . . . good to meet you,” said the one introduced as Cordoba. He extended a hand. Gilgamesh eyed it for a moment, and then enveloped it in his. Cordoba blanched slightly upon seeing his hand vanish into that of the High King. Perhaps he was concerned he would not be getting it back anytime soon. But Gilgamesh simply shook it slightly, as was the custom, and then released it.
The one called Porter, perhaps stuck for something to say, stared up at the impressive-looking headgear atop Gilgamesh’s skull. “Those are . . . very large horns,” she observed.
“Thank you,” rumbled the High King. “It’s an interesting story, actually. You see, the goddess Inana desired me for a lover, but I spurned her. To retaliate, she unleashed the Bull of Heaven upon my people. But Enkidu and I killed it. And these are its horns.”
Percival eyed the horns and said solemnly, “That was a lot of bull.”
“Yes,” said Gilgamesh, who then appeared perplexed when there were titters of laughter from people standing nearby. They were quickly silenced by his look, and then he continued, “You have come a long way, Pendragon. Tell me why.”
“I believe you know why. And I feel the need to tell you, Gilgamesh, that I do not appreciate the manner in which my man, Percival, was treated by you.”
Gilgamesh bristled slightly, and it was the Aged One who promptly stepped in. “I daresay, Mr. Ex-President, that an uninvited trespasser in the White House would have been treated as ungently as your Percival was treated here.”
“A trespasser in the White House would have been subjected to the laws of the United States, not the whim of one individual.”
“Laws made by men,” Gilgamesh said disdainfully.
“With rights that come from God.”
“And I am two-thirds god and one-third man,” countered Gilgamesh, “giving my laws far more weight than anything conceived by mere mortal. For that matter, whatever ill treatment Percival may have received at my hands was solely because of his refusal to cooperate. Had he sworn fealty to me, as every other resident of this island has done, he would have been freed and given the same rights accorded any other. He chose his path, Pendragon. You cannot fault me for forcing him to walk it.”
Percival stepped forward, in between Gilgamesh and Arthur, and turned to face his liege. “I beg you, sir, do not protest on my behalf. We are here for a purpose, and that purpose is dependent upon this man’s good graces,” and he indicated Gilgamesh.
“The Moor speaks wisely,” said Gilgamesh. “You would be well-advised to heed him.”
Arthur’s gaze hardened for a moment, and then Nellie Porter said, “Sir, with all due respect . . . if the purpose of this was to help your wife, raging testosterone challenges aren’t going to help things.”
Ziusura was taken aback by the woman’s words. It seemed to him an inappropriate manner for anyone, much less a woman, to address a king. But Arthur smiled slightly, and said, “Indeed. Very well. If Percival holds no resentment,” and when the Moor nodded, Arthur continued, “then I would be straightforward with you, High King. It is my understanding that this island we stand upon is the holiest of holy grounds. Is that true?”
Gilgamesh laughed softly. With his hands clasped behind his back, he walked in a small circle around the group. “And what do you think makes it holy, eh?”
“It belonged to our lord,” said Arthur.
“Your lord. Your lord. Do you hear them, Aged One? Do you hear their words, my beast brother? Their lord. How little you know or understand of such things. Tell me, Arthur Pendragon . . . has it never occurred to you that, rather than the cup you seek deriving its power from your lord . . . your lord, in fact . . . derived his power from the cup?”
Arthur made no immediate reply. He looked stunned at the notion. So did the others.
Gilgamesh, however, was looking at Percival. He smiled and pointed and said, “This one knew. Or at least he sensed it, did you not?”
Instead of answering, Percival shot back, “You know what my liege wants. I know you do. You and I both know we stand upon the Grail. That it has different forms, and the land is one of them. So will you grant him aid? Yea or nay?”
“Such petulance for one who is asking a favor,” said Gilgamesh.
And then Enkidu spoke, in a voice filled with more human pity and sadness than possessed by many humans that Ziusura had encountered. He turned to Gilgamesh and said in a voice that was both firm and pleading, “Help them.”
The High King was clearly surprised. But then he shrugged his mountainous shoulders and said, “If it pleases you, beast brother.” He looked back at Arthur and asked, “The woman is on the vehicle?” When Arthur nodded, he continued, “Very well. But for a wound as severe as I know your woman to have, it will take the Grail land time to work. And I do not like having that . . . thing,” he gestured to the Osprey, “upon my land any longer than is necessary. Once you have brought your woman upon the land, it must depart immediately.”
“Now wait just a minute . . .” Cordoba spoke up.
“This is not a negotiation,” Gilgamesh said firmly. “It will be as I say, or you may all climb back upon the vehicle and depart straightaway.”
The newcomers exchanged looks, and Arthur said, “Ron ... Nellie ... perhaps it would be best if you returned to the—”
“No,” Nellie said firmly. “I came this far. I’ll see it through. You can do what you want, Ron.”
“Thanks for the permission,” said Ron. “I came, I saw, and . . . well, I haven’t exactly conquered, but I’m not bailing at this point either.”
The Aged One felt a flash of admiration for the two of them. These were not trained warriors or ageless beings. These were clearly two utterly ordinary people, trying to deal the best they could with extraordinary circumstances. Then the admiration was quickly replaced by pity. Poor bastards have no idea what they’ve let themselves in for.
It was the work of but a few minutes to offload Pendragon’s mate from the waiting vehicle. She was strapped to a wheeled bed, with all manner of tubes protruding from her. She looked pale and barely alive. The Aged One knew all the details, of course; unlike Gilgamesh, he had remained aggressively part of the real world. He knew only of Gwendolyn Penn, however, through what he had seen of her on on-line news items and feeds. He knew enough to know that what one presents to the world via the media oftentimes bears little resemblance to reality. So he had no true idea of what Mrs. Penn was like in real life. He could only think that she must be quite a remarkable woman for a man to have gone to all this trouble over her. Ziusura had not met many women of that caliber, and he’d been around qui
te some time.
He was extremely puzzled, however, at the second thing that was lowered—not without effort—from the Osprey. It was a statue of what appeared to be a young man, standing there with a rather pained expression on its face. Gilgamesh looked as confused as anyone else, although Enkidu naturally maintained his customary deadpan expression. Pendragon’s concern, however, was quite evident, and amidst cries of “Careful! Careful with him!” he did not relax until the statue was safely upon the ground. The ship’s pilot, a young and handsome fellow with a square jaw and confident manner, crouched in the doorway as Arthur spoke to him, clearly giving him instructions. The pilot, who was wearing a small name tag that said “Roderick,” was obviously not enthused about what he was being told to do. He even began to offer some meager protest. But Arthur was quite firm, and some minutes later the hatch door had been closed tight and the Osprey was lifting off. It stayed low to the water as it angled away and soon disappeared behind a grove of trees.
Gilgamesh sauntered over to the bedridden woman, barely casting a glance at the statue. Arthur stood nearby, watching the woman with obvious concern. “So . . . what happens now?” inquired Arthur.
Without a word, Gilgamesh knocked Gwen, gurney and all, to the ground.
Arthur’s reaction was immediate as he lunged toward Gilgamesh, uttering a curse, and he started to reach behind his back as if to pull something from it. But Enkidu was faster, interposing himself between the two of them, and Percival was now gripping Arthur from behind, saying urgently, “No, my lord! Wait!”
“You bastard!” snapped out Arthur. “How dare you! A helpless woman! A—”
“Arthur?”
The voice floated up to Pendragon, and he stopped in his tracks, eyes wide, body rigid. Gilgamesh had a confident smirk on his face, and Enkidu relaxed his tense posture as the immediate danger obviously subsided.
Gwen was lying on the overturned gurney, staring up at Arthur and blinking in confusion against the brightness of the morning sun. As dissipated as her body seemed, her eyes were filled with life and light and considerable bewilderment. “Arthur?” she said again. “Darling . . . would you mind telling me why I’m tied up? I mean, yeah, I know I had this kinky birthday wish that one time, but . . .” Then her gaze fell upon Nellie Porter, who was staring at her with unmasked astonishment, and she said in a mortified voice, “Okay, uhm ... you didn’t hear that ...”
RODERICK IS NOT pleased with the current situation.
Even as he propels the Osprey across the water, his mind is racing as he is confronted with the reality of what he has to face. He must now return to base and inform his superiors that he has dropped off a former president of the United States in the middle of fricking nowhere. He must explain that Arthur Penn gave him a direct order to depart for twenty-four hours and then return. But a good deal can happen in twenty-four hours. He is even less happy over the certainty that he will be taken to task and held personally responsible for this growing debacle, particularly considering that he is now aware that the Secret Service men whom he had assumed were with the ex-president are, in fact, nowhere to be seen.
He should have refused to leave. He tried to do so. Technically Arthur Penn had no say over him since he was no longer the commander-in-chief. But Penn had been forceful and confident and even though every scrap of common sense in Roderick’s mind told him to stay put, here he is flying away from Pus Island and mentally flagellating himself.
Well, he is going to return, and in considerably less time than twenty-four hours. He is going to return to base and tell command personnel there exactly what happened, and he’s going to come flying back in short order with more bona fide army men than anyone knows what to do with. And that bronzed giant who was standing there like he was God Almighty, and that other guy next to him wearing the weirdo Halloween outfit that made him look like some sort of whack-ass lion . . . well, let’s just see how large and in charge they feel when they’re looking down the business end of an AK-47.
“Yup,” he says out loud, as much to convince himself of the rightness of his intended actions as anything else. “Yup. I’m coming back and we’re gonna show those local yokels just who’s in charge.”
And suddenly the headset he is wearing is ripped from him, and a female voice whispers in his ear with honeyed sweetness, “They already know.”
He turns in his seat, and he just barely has time to see a flash of green eyes, and they are driving deep into him, into his soul, and he sees himself for the pathetic, wretched, posturing fool that he is, and he cries out in horror at the miserable creature he now knows himself to be even as he drives the Osprey down, down to the water, sending the Osprey into a coffin roll. It plummets four thousand feet at just over a hundred miles an hour, and when it hits the water, it crushes in on itself, metal creaking and rupturing in one huge, ear-splitting shriek. Roderick, divorced father of two, is mashed into unrecognizable pulp. The possessor of the green eyes, whose name means Little King, is already gone through means known only to herself.
She is not a big fan of the water. Oh, she can swim well enough, and the slithering return to Pus Island will not overtax her. Nevertheless, she mildly resents the inconvenience to which she has gone, but decides to consider it simply another case of noblesse oblige.
CHAPTRE THE NINETEENTH
ARTHUR HAD IMAGINED all the ways that Gwen would react to her return to the land of the conscious. He had played it over so many times in his head that it had reached the point where it hurt just to contemplate it, for it seemed so impossible a goal.
But now the goal had been achieved. A hell of a feat, even for one who had already racked up so many accomplishments. Somehow, though, in all those imagined scenarios involving Gwen’s unlikely resuscitation, the notion of her being absolutely furious with him never crossed his mind.
The events immediately following Gwen’s miraculous recovery—which had occurred within seconds of her physically coming into contact with the hallowed ground that was Pus Island, or Grail Island, or whatever one wanted to call it—were something of a blur to Arthur. He remembered the stunned look on Ron Cordoba’s face, and that Nellie Porter was crying, openly and unashamed. Gwen continued to look perplexed even as he hastened to release her from the straps that had kept her bound to the gurney. She yelped as tubes were pulled out from her, and she seemed completely disoriented.
Through it all, Gilgamesh had looked on with a satisfied air. On the surface he seemed quite happy for the good fortune of Arthur and his wife, but there was just enough reserve, just enough distance in his attitude that it sounded faint warning bells in Arthur’s head. But they were very faint indeed, and when Gilgamesh offered to provide them with accommodations in his own vast residence, Arthur was only too glad to take him up on it.
Only Percival seemed detached from the controlled pandemonium that followed Gwen’s return to life. He seemed far more interested in fixing his attention upon Gilgamesh and Enkidu, particularly the latter. Arthur could guess the resentment that was likely filtering through Percival’s mind. He had, after all, once held the Holy Grail in his hand. It had disappeared, and it was evident that Gilgamesh had been the one who had absconded with it. Or . . . could such a thing really be considered any one person’s property? Did it not, in many ways, belong to the ages? Perhaps it was presumptuous for any one person to say that it was his. Of course, by that train of logic, Gilgamesh was no more entitled to “own” the Grail, in any of its forms, than Percival was. Arthur suspected, however, that it was unlikely that the High King would willingly relinquish possession of it.
Well . . . why should he? He was living peacefully here on this island of miracles with his followers, harming no one and presenting a bona fide miracle to Arthur and his wife. Who were they to say that he was acting inappropriately or unfairly?
The chambers that Arthur and Gwen had been brought to were elaborately furnished with rich tapestries upon the wall and intricately carved furniture that would have fetched th
ousands of dollars were they on sale back in the United States. Arthur marveled at the craftsmanship even as Gwen sat there, trying to pull her scattered thoughts together and develop a chronological comprehension of what had occurred.
It was when she finally managed to do so that the trouble began.
She was sitting in a chair that was much too large for her, her feet dangling several inches above the ground. She was attired in clothes given her by Gilgamesh, a simple one-piece white garment that looked vaguely similar to a toga. She looked lovely in it, although she would have looked lovely in anything. Her color and vitality were already returning to her, and her face was looking cheery and pink, which would have pleased Arthur no end had he not realized that she was in fact becoming flushed with mounting anger.
“You . . . quit?”
She was barely able to form the two words, and what was most disturbing was that Arthur had told her that five minutes earlier. He was already long past that part of the narrative, having moved on to describing Percival’s first encounter with Gilgamesh and the events that had led to their arrival upon the island. Yet she was only just now processing the information that Arthur had resigned his office.
Still, there was nothing for it but to deal with the situation in as straightforward a manner as he could. And so, gamely, he nodded and said, “Yes, Gwen. I quit. But you see, it isn’t as bad as all th—”
“You quit?”
He blinked, a bit concerned over her inability to grasp such simple concepts. “Yes.”
“The office of the presidency?”
“That’s right.”
“They . . .” She seemed barely capable of framing the words. “They didn’t force you to go? Tell you to get out or anything? You just . . . left on your own?”
“That’s right, Gwen. Under the circumstances, I didn’t see how I could—”
“You asshole!”
Arthur was utterly taken aback at her fury. “Gwen! I . . . I really don’t think it’s appropriate for you to—”