Lavie Tidhar - The Apex Book of World SF 2

I am Morholt! The one who is Decision.

“Your name, sir,” repeated Marjadoc.

“Tristan,” I said.

The chaplain appeared out of nowhere, sprang from the ground like a pukka. Groaning with the effort, he threw across the hall a huge, two-handed sword. Marjadoc leapt at me, raising his sword. For a moment the swords were up in the air—the Marjadoc’s and the one flying towards my outstretched hands. It seemed I could not move quickly enough. But I did.

I cut Marjadoc under his arm, with all the strength, in half-swing. The blade went in diagonally, as far as the line dividing the fields on his coat of arms. I turned back, letting the sword slide out. Marjadoc fell down, right under the feet of the other three who were running towards me. Anoeth tripped on the body, which meant I could easily crack his head. And I did.

Gwydolwyn and Deheu rushed at me from both sides. I stepped in between them, whirling round with the stretched sword like a spinning top. They had to back off. Their blades were a good arm’s length shorter than mine. Kneeling down, I cut Gwydolwyn on the thigh. I felt the blade grate on bone. Deheu swung his sword and tried to get to me from the side. But he slipped on the blood and fell on one knee. His eyes were full of fear now, begging for mercy, but I found none. I didn’t even look for it. It’s impossible to parry a thrust with a two-hander delivered from close range. If you cannot move out of its way, the blade will sink two-thirds of its length till it stops on the two little iron wings placed there especially for this purpose. And it did.

Believe me or not, but none of them let out as much as a squeak. While I…I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I dropped the sword on the floor.

“Morholt!” Branwen ran and clung to me, her body shuddering with waves of terror that were slowly dying away.

“It’s all right now, dear. It’s all over,” I said, stroking her hair, but at the same time looking at the chaplain kneeling by the dying Gwydolwyn.

“Thank you for the sword, monk.”

The chaplain lifted his head and looked me in the eyes. Where had he sprung from? Had he been here all the time? But if he had been…then who was he? Who the devil was he?

“It’s all in God’s hands,” he said, and bent over the dying Gwydolwyn. “… Et lux perpetua luceat ei …”

Still, he didn’t convince me. He didn’t convince me with the first saying, nor with the second.

Then we found Iseult.

In the baths; her face pressed to the well. Clean, pedantic Iseult of the White Hands, could not have done it anywhere else but on the stone floor by the gutter meant for draining away water. Now this gutter glistened dark clotted red along its entire length.

She had opened her veins on both hands. With expertise. Along the forearms, on the inner side, and then, to make sure, on her wrists with the sign of the cross. We would not have been able to save her even if we’d found her earlier.

Her hands were even whiter than before.

And then, believe me or not, I realised that the rudderless boat was leaving the shore. Without us. Without Morholt of Ulster. Without Branwen of Cornwall. But it was not empty.

Farewell, Iseult. Farewell. For ever. Be it in Tir Na Nog, or in Avalon, the whiteness of your hands will last for centuries. For eternity.

Farewell, Iseult.

We left Carhaing before Caherdin’s arrival. We didn’t want to talk to him, or to anyone who might have been on that ship from Tintagel. For us, the legend was over. We were not interested in what the minstrels were going to do with it.

The sky was overcast again, it was raining, a drizzle. Brittany, the usual stuff. There was a road ahead of us: the road through the dunes towards that rocky beach. I didn’t want to think what to do next. It didn’t matter.

“I love you , Morholt,” said Branwen without looking at me. “I love you whether you want it or not. It’s like an illness. A weariness that drains me of my free will, that pulls me into the deep. I’ve lost myself within you, Morholt, and I shall never find myself the way I was before. If you respond to my love, you, too, will lose yourself; you will perish, drown in the deeps and never find the old Morholt again. So think well before you give me your answer.”

The ship stood by the rocky shore. They were unloading something. Someone was shouting, cursing in Welsh, hurrying the men. The sails were being rolled. The sails…

“It’s a terrible sickness, this love,” carried on Branwen, also looking at the sails. ” La maladie, as they say in the south, on the mainland. La maladie d’espoir, the sickness of hope. The selfish infatuation, bringing harm to everyone around. I love you, Morholt, selfishly, blindly. I’m not worried about the fate of others, whom I may unwittingly draw into the whirl of my love, hurt, or trample upon. Isn’t it terrible? If you respond to my love… Think well, Morholt, before you give me your answer.”

The sails…

“We are like Tristan and Iseult,” said Branwen, and her voice came dangerously close to breaking point. ” La maladie… What shall become of us, Morholt? What will happen to us? Will we, too, be joined finally by bushes of hawthorn and brier-rose growing on our graves? Think well, Morholt, before you answer.”

I was not going to do any thinking. I suspected Branwen knew as much. I saw it in her eyes when she turned her face towards me.

She knew we’d been sent to Carhaing to save the legend. And we had. The simplest way. By beginning a new one.

“I know how you feel, Branwen,” I said, looking at the sails, “for I feel exactly the same. It’s a terrible sickness. Terrible, incurable malady. I know how you feel. For I, too, have fallen ill.”

Branwen smiled, and it seemed to me that the sun had broken through the low-hanging clouds. That’s what this smile was like. Believe me or not.

“And the pox on the healthy, Branwen!”

The sails were dirty.

Or so it seemed to me.

Beyond the aethership’s window, Catalonia shone like a brass and crystal star, lost and alone in the vastness of space. Kilometric antennae cast to the void, flowers carved over its colossal hull and around the main station’s atrium, beautiful stained glass and asymmetric lines. Art. Home, if everything went well. It had always bothered Fritz, this tick-tock speeding up inside his chest. It knotted his guts, tightened his pneumatics. And, of course, there was the noise, the clocks emphasising his anguishes, excitements, dreads and delights, right there, for everyone to hear. But now he tried to keep himself calm, the glassy-cold window against his icy, metal forehead, the battle breaking the silence in the cabin with a sharp sound.

“Soon it’ll be over, dear,” Chaya whispered, half asleep and still under the blankets. “Just a few more hours and we’ll be there.”

“Yeah, I know,” Fritz whispered back, turning his head to his fiancée, giving her a silly, theatrical smile. “It’s just, well, you know I’m easily stunned by beauty.” He turned his back to the window and rested his gaze on the non-human girl. Stunning. She lay nested amongst baggage packed too quickly and clothes discarded in the rush of desire. A golem with roots for hair, all spread out over the pillows.

“I see,” she said, stretching and finally sitting up, letting the blankets slide over her earth-and-wood skin, her breasts suddenly uncovered. “And I know you love to dramatise, too. Look, Fritz, don’t forget that thing is a factory. And factories are always about smoke, sweat and the whistle at the end of every shift.” She scratched her brick-coloured forehead, chose a single root and used it to tie a ponytail. “Also, you should remember there’s a war going on”.