One Knight Only

  “Appropriate?!” She had jumped down out of the chair and wasn’t just approaching him, she was stalking him. Reflexively he backed up, even though she posed no physical threat. Or it could be that he was overconfident, considering Gwen looked ready to tear him limb from limb with her bare hands. Indeed, not only ready, but capable. “Appropriate? My God . . . I don’t believe it! He’ll kill me! He’s going to kill me!”

  Taking her stated concerns as the literal truth, Arthur immediately tensed and felt completely on his guard, wondering where this new menace to Gwen’s welfare was going to emerge from. “Who’s going to kill you, Gwen?” he demanded briskly, reaching to take her by the shoulders.

  But she pushed him away, shrugging him off. “Merlin!”

  “What?” he asked in bewilderment, and then he understood. “Oh,” he said, much more softly.

  “You bet your ass ‘oh’!” Gwen said heatedly. She ran her fingers through her strawberry blonde hair as if she were going to rip it out in her consternation. “It was just what he was always afraid of! That somehow I was going to wind up interfering in your great destiny! And I did! I so completely did! Because of me, you—”

  This time he did grip her by the upper arms, and even though she struggled to pull away, he didn’t let her go. He managed to keep the anger and hurt and frustration from his voice, but it was a Herculean effort. For if he had been certain of one thing, it was that Gwen would always understand and support the decisions he made in his life and career. Maybe not always agree with them, but understand and support. But now . . . now she seemed baffled by the actions that he had taken, even though he had been so certain that they were the correct ones at the time.

  “Listen to me!” he ordered her, so sharply that it commanded her attention. “You were not responsible! Do you understand that? Sandoval’s people were responsible for shooting you. It was they who put your life in peril, they who brought you to the edge of death. It was nothing you did. And it was my decision to devote the fullness of my attention to you—”

  “The country needed you, Arthur!”

  “The country stands, Gwen! Don’t you see?” He choked on the emotion he was feeling for a moment before continuing, “When Camelot lost me, it came apart. The United States . . . it needs its president, in all likelihood. Needs its government and people to run it. But they never needed me specifically. Just someone with vision to fill the office, because the office is far greater than any one man, even me. And you have no idea how difficult and even galling it was for me to accept it. But it’s true. But you, Gwen . . . you truly needed me.”

  “I was in a goddamn coma! In what way did I need you?”

  “You needed me,” he pointed out, “to bring you here.”

  “No, I needed Percival to bring me here. You were just along for the ride.”

  The moment she had spoken the words, she would have given anything to be able to retrieve them. She stepped back and Arthur made no effort to hold on to her. Instead he simply fixed his hurt but level gaze upon her, and she tried to stammer out an apology, but Arthur simply nodded and said, “You are right. Never apologize for being right.”

  “But Arthur, I . . .”

  “Never.” He let out a slow, steady breath. “Gwen . . . we had one president who pardoned another, and it was a wildly unpopular move, but he did it because he felt the country had been through enough. If nothing else—removing this entire issue from concerns regarding you—I felt the country had once again been through enough. An opportunity was being handed to me to rid the world of Arnim Sandoval. I took that opportunity. I had to.”

  “Oh yes,” she said with ill-disguised bitterness. “My great and glorious supporter, Miss Basil, stepping in out of the goodness of her heart.”

  “She did the job.”

  “I don’t trust her, Arthur.”

  “She’s the Basilisk. There’s no reason that you should.”

  “And I don’t trust you.”

  If she had hauled off and slapped him across the face with a brick, he could not have been any more staggered. “How can you say that?” he was barely able to whisper.

  “How can I not? Arthur . . .” She looked ready to cry, and it was only through force of will that she kept tears from rolling down her face. “Arthur . . . after everything you went through, everything you achieved . . . to just . . . just throw it all away . . .”

  “I got something back for it. I got Sandoval . . .”

  “He was one man! Don’t you see . . .” Her hands flailed about. “The presidency . . . it’s more than one man. It’s an office. It’s greatness. It’s bigger than any one person, bigger even than you. And when you left it behind, you let down the office . . . and Merlin, and me . . .”

  “Stop it,” he snapped at her fiercely. “You don’t understand ...”

  “You got that right.”

  “Gwen . . .” His frustration was mounting. This was so completely off the direction that he had thought this reunion would take. “Don’t you see? I’ve spent my entire life doing what was expected of me. Doing things for Merlin, for the people, for you. But with you gone, with Merlin gone . . . I was left in a position of asking, What am I doing for myself? I ask you: When does it happen? When am I entitled to attend to my own desires, to what I want to do for myself?”

  And with such sadness as he had never seen in any human face, Gwen told him, “You don’t.”

  “What?”

  She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You said it yourself, Arthur. I’ll never forget. You said, ‘We are creatures of destiny, you and I.’ That’s what you told me. Do you remember?”

  He nodded. He couldn’t find the words, even a word as simple as “Yes.”

  “You can tell yourself that you left office because you wanted to rid the people of Arnim Sandoval. But in doing that, you elevated his importance above your own, and the truth is that you just wanted revenge on him. Quick, clean, easy. And you got it. But look at what it cost you in return. Just look.”

  “Has it cost me you?” asked Arthur, not certain he could cope with the answer.

  She looked down and said the three words that were even worse than “Yes, it has,” or “No, it hasn’t.”

  “I don’t know.”

  And Arthur wanted to scream at her. To grab her, shake her, make her realize everything that he had done, howl in fury over her inability to comprehend that which had been so clear to him.

  “You hate me, don’t you?” Gwen said, her voice choking in her throat. Arthur made no reply. His thoughts, his passions were so completely scattered that he didn’t know what to think or what to say, and in such cases it was always better to say nothing at all. “Well,” she continued, “I hate me, too. I hate me for what I caused you to do . . . and even if it was your decision, I was still responsible for it, and I . . .”

  She couldn’t speak. Instead she turned and fled the room, and every impulse that Arthur possessed told him to run after her, to hold her, to try and make it right again.

  He stayed where he was.

  AS THEY WALKED along the shore, Ron Cordoba couldn’t help but notice that Nellie Porter’s attention seemed focused on the sky. “The Osprey isn’t due back until tomorrow,” said Ron.

  “Oh. I know,” she said quickly, almost guiltily.

  Cordoba had shucked his jacket and also his socks and shoes. Nellie was likewise barefoot, her shoes resting with Cordoba’s property on a rock a short distance back. Ron crouched and picked up a fistful of the warm sand, allowing it to trickle between his fingers. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  “Which hard-to-believe thing are you referring to?” she ask wryly.

  “This. Look at it. Looks like normal sand. Hard to believe,” he said, shaking his head, “that this is some sort of . . . of Holy Grail territory. That just standing on this island somehow cures all your ills. It’s true, though. I can feel it.”

  “You can?”

  He paused and then said to her, “Do yo
u know what tinnitus is?”

  She was a bit surprised and confused by the change in topic. “Ringing in the ears, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Well . . . I have it.”

  “Really? I had no idea . . .”

  He shrugged. “It’s not something I like to advertise. Some days it’s better, some worse, but I’ve learned to live with it. Well, I was here for two hours and suddenly realized it was gone. Just like that.”

  Nellie shook her head, obviously scarcely able to credit what she was hearing. “You’re sure you’re not imagining it?”

  “I think I know the difference between reality and imagination.”

  And Nellie let out a laugh that was filled with confusion and bitterness. “Well, I’m sure glad you do! Because me and reality, we haven’t been on speaking terms for a while now.”

  “What do you—”

  “Ron, for God’s sake, look at us!” she shouted, her agitation painful to see. “We’re rational people! Or at least we’re supposed to be! Have you completely lost sight of how insane all of this is?”

  “You mean with Gilgamesh—”

  “I mean with all of it!” She was walking in a small circle in the sand, gesticulating broadly. “Look what’s being handed to us! I mean, I could barely wrap myself around the whole Arthur and Guinevere thing! And now you’re asking me to accept Gilgamesh, and gods, and Noah . . . Noah, for crying out loud, and a great flood, and gods making people immortal, and it’s all just . . . just nuts! I am a twenty-first-century woman, Ron!”

  “And I am a twenty-first-century man.”

  It was not Ron who had spoken. It was Gilgamesh, standing directly behind Nellie, who jumped several feet in the air because she was so startled. She came down with her feet tangled and staggered back, falling against Ron, who caught her and prevented her from hitting the ground. She clutched at her bosom as if afraid that her heart was going to explode through her chest.

  “Well . . . more like a twenty-seventh-century man, actually,” continued Gilgamesh quite casually. “It’s just that my century is B.C., whereas yours is A.D. But that shouldn’t pose too much of a problem, should it?”

  “Where did you come from?” Nellie gasped out.

  “Uruk, in Babylonia,” he replied. “In the territory that you would now call Iraq.”

  “No, I mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean. I can be most stealthy if I am so inclined,” he said.

  Ron was not ecstatic with the way Gilgamesh was looking at Nellie, as if she were some worshiping slave girl that he could just snap up as a between-meal snack at any point he was so inclined. But he said nothing, and instead simply steadied Nellie so she was able to stand on her own two feet.

  Gilgamesh sighed in a sad, almost pitying manner. “It seems too much for you, doesn’t it? Yet your leader accepts me, accepts the things that I have told him. Why can’t you?”

  There was no hesitation in Nellie’s response. “Because at least he’s mortal,” she said. “He’s never claimed to be anything else. A normal man who has incredible things happen to him . . . okay, it’s a stretch, but it’s a stretch I can handle. But you! You say you’re . . .”

  “Two-thirds god, one-third man.” He nodded. “My mother was the goddess Ninsun. My father was Lugalbanda, born mortal man but later deified.”

  “Okay, see, that’s what’s getting to me. Gods and bulls from heaven . . .”

  “Oh, the bull of heaven was nothing in comparison to true challenges, such as Huwawa,” Gilgamesh said casually. “Guardian of the Cedar Forest, protected by seven deadly radiances, slain by Enkidu and me—”

  “That’s another thing! Enkidu! He’s like an animal on two legs! Creatures like that, they . . . they don’t exist!”

  “According to whom?” asked Gilgamesh, genuinely interested.

  “To rational minds! It’s stuff from the Bible or fairy tales—”

  “There are those who believe that the Bible is literal truth,” Gilgamesh reminded her.

  Ron snorted in grim acknowledgment of that. “Tell me about it. The people who gave us grief about teaching evolution, even in this day and age, you wouldn’t believe . . .”

  “This day and age.” Gilgamesh said the words with remarkable sadness, as if speaking of someone long dead and still sorely missed. “This day and age, my friends, is vastly overrated. You have no idea, no . . .”

  His voice trailed off for a long moment, and Ron found himself fascinated by the great man before him. If he truly was what he claimed he was, he was indeed the foundation for all legends, all heroes who had come after him. He wasn’t just “living history.” He transcended history.

  Gilgamesh slowly walked away from them. He stared out at the water lapping upon the shore, looked with attentiveness to a flock of birds angling overhead. “You don’t understand,” he sighed.

  “Then explain it,” said Ron.

  He didn’t even look back at them. It was as if he were staring into a world they could never hope to see.

  “The world is far more subjective than you realize,” he said. “Perception shapes reality.”

  “Oh, well, I could have told you that,” said Ron. “I’m in politics. It’s never more true than there.”

  “It’s more than that,” Gilgamesh said. “Reality . . . the world . . . is far more fluid than you can even begin to comprehend. Once upon a time . . . in a world that to you is purely the stuff of myth . . . people knew very little about what you would term the ‘reality’ of the world. And so they filled in the gaps with their collective consciousness. They believed those things you would attribute to science—lightning and thunder, earthquakes, eclipses—they believed them to be the work of gods. And so they were. Even earlier than that, on a primal level, when man was huddling around fires and yellow eyes gleamed at him from the forest, man imagined those eyes to belong to monsters beyond describing. And so . . . they were.” Now he turned toward them, and his face was alight with an excitement that had been absent before. “There were giants in those days, my friends. Giants and magic and gods who stalked heaven and earth amidst the worship of those who trembled before them. And their presence was a very real thing, and their wrath was real, because the mind of humanity made them real. The love, the adoration, the fear, and the worship made them real . . .”

  “And you?”

  Nellie had posed the question, and his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re two-thirds god, one-third man, or so you say. Does belief help make you real?”

  He did not answer, save for a slight and even sad smile. “It was a more interesting time,” he finally said. “A time when anything was possible. When the world was not circumscribed by science. Ignorance is not necessarily bliss, but it is oftentimes preferable to the reality that is created by a little knowledge . . . which, as I recall, is said to be a dangerous thing.”

  “And are we supposed to believe that reality is just that elastic?” asked Nellie.

  “It still occurs,” Gilgamesh said. “For instance: A man is accused of a crime. More often than not, he is believed to be guilty, for it is far easier to believe the worst of people than the best. In short order, the actuality of whether he committed the crime is beside the point. He is treated by society as a criminal. Even those who are friends, or loved ones, look at him differently. In the eyes and belief of the world around him, he is guilty. The perception of him creates his new reality, a reality in which he is guilty of a crime. Tragic for him, I suppose. But I’ll have you know that it’s a mere vestige of what the world was once like, before so many people thought they knew so much. It was a far more interesting place than what we have now. I miss it. Miss it terribly. And I have had plenty of time to compare it and consider it. I’ve wandered the earth for so long . . . so long. So many names I’ve acquired in that time. Methusaleh, some named me. Later I was Ahasuerus. Heracles was another popular name . . .”

  “Heracl . . . you mean Hercules?” asked Nellie in surprise. br />
  “A being of great strength and godlike descent. The legends grew and grew. And who am I to say no to a legend?”

  A gentle breeze wafted across them, an invigorating scent filling Ron’s nostrils. The world smelled new just from Gilgamesh’s recounting of what it once had been. “How are you here?” he asked at last. “How are you still alive? Is it because of the Grail?”

  Slowly he nodded. “Yes. My birthright gave me extended life. Life beyond anything that any mortal has known. But even that life was not an eternity, for that the gods denied me. When I happened upon the Grail, my existence was nearing its end. But with the Grail in my possession, everything became different and anything became possible.” His voice rose, almost musical in its sense of triumph as he continued, “My beast brother was able to return to me as I braved the gates of the underworld itself. Magic, old and powerful magic such as was almost crushed from the world by those who would not believe. But the legend of the Grail is too strong, even for modern man, who ‘knows’ so much. And from that legend and that belief comes strength, and none here will ever die, and I will be strong and young forever . . .”

  “And what about us?” Nellie asked the question that had occurred to Ron, but he was a bit too apprehensive to ask it.

  Gilgamesh looked at her, his face unreadable, and Ron felt a chill because there was something in the way that he did not immediately respond that warned Ron they were potentially in over their heads.

  And that was when they heard Gwen scream.

  CHAPTRE THE TWENTIETH

  GWEN WASN’T REALLY paying attention where she was going when she bolted from the room she’d been sharing with Arthur. Her mind was whirling and confused, and she was beginning to feel just like that time when she had first been pulled into Arthur’s world. Here she was, having fully adjusted to such things as trans-dimensional castles and youthful wizards, even taking them for granted. And now she was right back with that feeling of disorientation that her initial exposure to the unreal reality of Arthur instilled within her.