Catherine Fisher - Corbenic

A man was sitting on an enclosed rectangle of grass there. A big man, in a scruffy tweed jacket. He stood up slowly. He seemed unsurprised.

Cal held out his hands. “Don’t try to stop me.”

Arthur nodded. He looked down at the stone. “This is my grave,” he said wryly.

“What?”

“Only that nothing is what it seems. Death, even. It’s never too late, Cal.”

Shadow was with him. She was sitting so still Cal barely registered her; the tattoo was back on her face, and for a second then he was absolutely certain that none of this was real, that it was all in his mind and that he’d wake soon, in the room at Trevor’s maybe, and hear Thérèse singing in the bathroom.

Shadow stood up, and said, “What will happen if you find it?”

“Bron will be healed. I’ll be healed. There will be no Waste Land.”

Sadly, she shook her head. “Will you come back?”

“Would you want me to?”

“Of course.” She glared at him.

“Then I’ll come back. If I can.”

She went to step toward him, but Arthur held her wrist. “That’s all I want,” she whispered. And for a second, it was all he wanted. Then he sidestepped past her, and saw the castle. It was there, over the grass. Heedless, he ran toward its open gates.

“Cal! Be careful!” The shout was Hawk’s, close; Cal turned, stumbled backward, tripped over some stonework. Then he fell with a splash and a yell, and before he could even breathe, water closed over his face. He kicked, fought, swallowed black gunge, found the air, coughed it up, sank. Darkness filled his eyes and nostrils, choked his throat, rose into his lungs, webbed his mouth, trapping an unheard scream like a bubble that grew and grew and would never burst, and he was caught and tangled in a net of terror, drowning, dying, dead, surely, till the big hands came down and hauled him out, into an explosion of air, a lifting, a gripping of the wet grass with both hands, a retching, vomiting relief.

The hands held him tight, around his shoulders, till he had finished. Then they peeled the wet strands of net from his hair, passed him a rag that he took and wiped his face with, his fingers trembling with exhaustion. Finally, shaking, sick, desperate, he looked up.

“So,” Leo said sourly. “It’s you.”

Chapter Twenty-six

What we have been longing for ever since we were ensnared by sorrow is approaching us.

Parzival

He was on the banks of a lake; above him a steep slope rose, spindly birch trees rustling against the dim sky. The wind was loud here too, rushing in the branches. There was no abbey, no pursuit. Instead only the black waters rippled, sloshing against the reed bed.

“I came out of that?” he whispered.

Leo laughed mirthlessly. “Didn’t we all?” He pulled on a rope; Cal saw the small wooden boat loom out of the night.

“Get in,” the big man said.

Weary, Cal clambered in and sat, bent over the pain in his chest. He was soaked and cold and couldn’t stop shivering. There was nothing to wrap around himself but his arms, so he gritted his teeth and stammered, “I’ve seen you. And the girl.”

“Can’t have,” Leo muttered.

“It’s true. A few times. And the osprey.”

“Not us.” The oars dipped rhythmically; the boat rocked on the current. Leo was a silhouette of blackness. “We don’t leave here.”

“I know what I saw!”

“Do you?” The voice was acid. “You weren’t so sure of it last time you were here. You didn’t see a thing then.”

Furious, Cal shut up. When he could speak again it was in a quieter voice. “I was wrong.”

Leo rowed, saying nothing.

The wind buffeted them, and when the stone quay appeared out of the darkness Leo had to struggle to lay the boat against it; he grabbed Cal and handed him out roughly, so that Cal stumbled and turned angrily. But there was no one in the boat.

For a moment Cal stood staring at it; then he turned away. Because this was Corbenic. This was not a place where anything was as it seemed.

There was a small thread of path upward; he followed it, gasping and grabbing at tree trunks and low branches to haul himself up. The pack on his back weighed him down; he tugged it off, and threw it into the bushes. But before he had taken two steps he went back, and pulled out the broken pieces of the sword.

At the top was the lane. It looked just the same: dark, wet, leading into nowhere between high hedges. But now the sky had a streak of brightness, and there was a blackbird singing somewhere, as if the dawn was coming.

He turned right, and came almost at once to a vast gatehouse. It must be the front entrance; it was not the way he’d come before. Torches of wood dipped in pitch smoked acridly in brackets on the wall; the gate was wide open but overgrown with ivy, as if it had been years since it was closed. Cal walked beneath it, and stopped in its shadow.

Before him was a wide, paved courtyard; on each side the gray walls of the castle rose into darkness. The courtyard was empty. Great weeds sprouted between its cracked stones; the half doors of the stables hung askew. There was no sound. Only the wind whistled in the high stonework and the windows; the castle was derelict, a stillness of shadows, its blown dust eddying in tiny whirlpools in the lee of buttresses. He had found Corbenic, and it was deserted.

He gripped the sword tight. “Bron!” His voice was small, pitiful; he scowled and called again. “BRON. I’VE COME BACK!”

No one answered.

A bat, high in the sky, flitted briefly between turrets. The wind gusted a shutter, banging it so that Cal turned instantly. Only the blank windows looked down at him.

He was too late. Maybe the mistakes he had made—no, not mistakes, the lie he had told, his betrayal—had been too much. Maybe he would search the world and beyond it for all of his life and he would never see the Grail again. Maybe you only had one chance, and he had blown it, as he had with his mother.

He went on, quickly now, over the slabbed yard, in through a rusted portcullis, squeezing through a gap, forcing the brittle bars to snap.

It was not the same. It was worse. The stairs were there, and the wide banqueting hall, but it had no roof now and the trees had sprouted inside; the ivy was a mass of leaves and the only table left was rotten and soft with green lichen and pulpy mushroomy growths, yellow in the paling light. Paneling had fallen from the walls; a chandelier lay in pieces among the brambles and willow herb; as he pushed his way through, glass cracked and crushed under his feet.

He found a door and beyond it was a corridor, filthy with dust, blocked halfway down by a roof-fall. Desperate, he forced his way back and found the stairs, but they were a tangle of bindweed and as he climbed them they became soft, creaking ominously, so that by the turn in the elegant ruined balustrade he dared not go farther.

“Bron!” he called, his voice hoarse. “Please. For God’s sake!”

They were dead. All dead. Because they had never been here. He was as ill as his mother had been, undiagnosed.

He turned, sat down. His whole strength seemed to go. His legs were weak; he couldn’t stand, or breathe. As he doubled up he felt the whole staircase creak, an infinitesimal shift. It was unsafe, on the verge of collapse. But he didn’t care. He threw the sword down, at his feet.

Upstairs, a door creaked. He jerked around. It was above him, up there in the hanging rooms, the floorless corridors. As if someone was there.

He stood. “Where are you?” he whispered.

A whisper of sound. The drag of material over dust, a soft slither.

He grabbed the hilted end of the sword, held it tight.

And then, a flame. Tiny, in the distance, a candle flame; flickering, barely there, but it was coming toward him down the long corridor, as if it was being carried, carefully, with a hand cupped around it to keep off the drafts. In its light he saw doorways, a gilt mirror, a sweep of cobweb.