Catherine Fisher - Corbenic

“You’re lucky.” Bron gave him a strange glance. “I could have said that once but not now. I can never walk anywhere again.” His face was drawn, his skin clammy. In that brilliant room the dark clothes he wore seemed out of place, even though they were rich velvets and glinted here and there with discreet emeralds. He leaned forward for a moment and held the table’s edge with an indrawn breath that was unmistakably pain. The osprey screeched, pecking at its harness. Cal looked around hastily, but the big man had gone. “Are you all right? Can I get someone?”

“I am as well as I can be.” Bron tried to pour water but the jug shook in his long frail fingers, so Cal took it and poured. The man sipped, his eyes, a deep green to match the jewels on his coat, closed and hidden. Then he rubbed his forehead with one palm, pushing up his dark hair. “Cal, listen to me. I wasn’t born like this. Do you know how it is to have a wound that will not heal, a torment of pain? To want to die and not be able to? I think you might know something of that, or you would not be here.”

“Not me,” Cal interrupted quickly. He felt embarrassed. He hated illness in any form and the wine was making him feel bold and harsh; he looked away and said, “Can’t the doctors do anything?”

Bron stopped. He seemed tense. He said, in a quieter voice, “There may be one cure.”

“Then go for it. You’ve got money. Go private. Money can get you anything.”

“Can it?” The King’s green eyes were watching him. “You believe that?”

“I’d like the chance to find out. Yes, I do. Why not?”

Bron frowned wryly. “Maybe I thought that once.” He held out a coiled piece of fish; the osprey snatched it greedily. “I cannot walk, Cal, or ride or hunt, and because of that I amuse myself by fishing. Leo carries me down to the boat, and we row out onto the lake, under the moon. How cool it is there, and the waves lap so calmly. And we fish. All the silver, teeming life of the lake comes into our nets, big and small, good and evil. Many we throw back. Some we bring here, to the Castle. And Leo jokes that one night we might catch a real treasure, a great fish with a ring in its belly as in the old stories.” He glanced at Cal, sidelong. “Maybe tonight we did.”

Cal drank. The wine was blurring his eyesight; he felt dizzy and awkward. He wasn’t sure what all this was getting at. Maybe now he’d eaten he could make some excuse and get to bed.

“Where were you going,” Bron asked quietly, “on the train?”

“To live with my uncle.”

“For good?”

“Too right.”

“Your mother will miss you.”

“She’ll get by.”

“And your father?”

It was against his rules to answer but something made him say, “My father walked out when I was two.” He shrugged, watching the candles, how they put themselves out, one by one. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this anyway. She doesn’t care. Not really. She drinks. Says she hears voices. Now she can get on without me.”

“And will she?”

“I’m past caring.” Grimly, Cal filled his glass and drank again. It was the music that was doing it. The music had turned into a fog; it was winding down from the gallery and was snuffing all the candles out with deft gray fingers. Even the great fire that had roared in the hearth behind them was sinking, clouding over. The clatter of knives and forks, the chatter of the guests, was fading under the weight of it, an obscurity in the room, a gathering mist. Someone was turning down the world’s volume.

Cal tugged at his collar. “It’s hot in here.”

Bron’s fingers were white on the wineglass. “Cal, I need you to help. You must . . .” He stopped abruptly, then turned and said with sudden desperation, “This agony runs through all my realm. The kingdom is laid waste. You can heal it. If you went back . . .”

“Back?” In front of Cal three candles winked out; he stared at them in bewilderment. “Back where?”

“Home.”

He stared at the man in amazement, his narrow, oddly familiar face. Then he stood up. “No chance!”

Bron swiveled his wheeled chair with his bony hands. He seemed consumed with a secret torment. “Please. The Grail is coming. Only see it. Look at it. Do what you can to help us.”

And the music stopped. It stopped instantly, like a CD switched off in midnote. The room was black. All the people had gone. Cal swallowed; for a second he knew he was somewhere lost, a palace nowhere in the world, deep in darkness, and then the doors opened, and a boy came in. He was one of the tall, fair-haired ones from the door, and he carried what looked to be a long rod, upright in both hands. He walked across the room quickly, without looking at Cal, and Cal stared, stunned at what the wine had done to his eyes. Because this was no rod, but a spear. And the spear was bleeding . Slowly, horribly, a great globule of blood welled from its tip; it ran down, trickling stickily over the boy’s fingers, down the rough shaft, dripping in dark splashes on the wooden floor.

Cal felt sick. “This is crazy,” he whispered.

Behind the boy came two more, each carrying a branched golden candlestick, and the candles that burned in them seemed to have such light that it made Cal bring his hands together and clench them on the table. Beside him, he sensed Bron’s rigid pain.

The doorway was empty. But something else was coming. Something so inexplicable, so terrible that it made the very air shiver, a sudden breath of icy purity, so that Cal stepped right back without knowing it, shocked into fear. Sweat chilled on his spine, the very darkness in the doorway seeming to crackle and swell as if the room breathed in, all the curtains flapping, the casements gusting open with terrifying cracks. He caught the edge of the table.

She had times like these. She’d see things, she’d scream, clutch her ears. How many times had he phoned the hospital, got a taxi, got her to Casualty. As if her head was bursting with visions, she’d say. Visions and angels. As if they were all in there with her.

A girl came in. She was taller than the boys, and her hair was fair and her dress green. She carried a cup. She carried it carefully, as if it was precious, and he could see how ancient it was, how dented and scarred, and that it was gold, and there were jewels in its rim. For a moment he could see, but it shone, it shone so fiercely it almost burned and quivered in her hands, and he wondered how she could bear it, how he could bear to see it. Because it burned him too, in his eyes until he closed them and then like a heat and glow against his body, and yet none of it was real, none of it existed, he had to remember that.

Bron’s fingers were tight on his arm.

There was another room. There had been no door before, but there was now, and the boys with the spear and the candlesticks walked in there, and the girl did too, and as she passed she raised her face from the glory of the Grail and gave Cal one look, quick and rapt. And he was seared with the sudden joy of it, the nameless, unbelievable joy, but the door swung shut and the light was gone and the music was back. As if it had never stopped.

Knives and forks clattered. Glasses tinkled. All the candles glimmered. Cal rubbed his hand weakly down his face. He felt shaky, his whole body was wet with sweat. He collapsed into the chair.

“Cal?”

He turned. Bron was watching him, eyes bright, and behind him the red-bearded man waited, and the osprey stared, hawk-sharp.

“Did you see?”

“See?”

“You must ask me about it, Cal.” Bron’s grip was so tight it hurt. “You must ask me. That’s all you need to do. Ask me about what you saw.”

Cal shook him off, shivering. “Leave me alone. I’ve got to get out.”