The Broken Sword (27 page)

He left the knights and walked through the meadow back to the road.

A
rthur wolfed down his
first hot fudge sundae within five minutes, and was working on his second one.

"Wuss," he mumbled between mouthfuls, kicking Beatrice playfully under the table.

She tried to smile as she stirred the liquid in her dish.

"What's the matter, Beatrice?" Zack asked.

"Nothing."

"Maybe it was the love bombs. They can take a lot out of you."

Beatrice's head snapped up. "I didn't make any love bombs," she insisted. "That was you."

He shook his head. "No, it wasn't. I wish it were, but I know better. You're an old soul, Beatrice."

"She is not!" Arthur said in the girl's defense.

"Wait a minute." Zack laughed softly. "I'm not insulting anyone here." He scraped the last of his ice cream from the bottom of his bowl. "Somewhere along the line, human beings got this idea that we all have to be just like everyone else, but the fact is, we're not. Some of us run fast, some of us play music… and once in a while there's someone like Bea."

"An old soul," Beatrice mused. "What exactly does that mean, Zack?"

"It means he spends too much time at the Center for Cosmic Consciousness," Arthur said between mouthfuls.

Zack was the first to laugh. "A lot of people feel that way about me," he admitted. "Anyway, an old soul is someone who's lived a lot of lives."

Arthur set down his spoon. Taliesin had explained the boy's own situation to him very carefully, and only after Arthur himself had experienced incontrovertible proof that he was, in fact, continuing a former life. But Taliesin was a very special being, whom Arthur had long suspected of being not exactly human. To hear a wizard's words parroted by someone as goofy as Zack vaguely offended him.

"Actually," Zack went on, "we've all been here before hundreds of times, sometimes thousands. We don't remember those lives because that would interfere too much with the lives we're living now. But once in a while there's a person who's learned so much in past incarnations that he—or she—just
knows
things this time around."

"Are you one of them?" Arthur asked sharply.

"An old soul? No, I don't think so. I make too many mistakes."

"Then how can you say that Bea's one?" He shoveled his ice cream. "I mean, how would you even recognize someone like that? And how would you know how many lives people lived, anyway?"

"Arthur, that's rude," Bea said quietly.

"No, it's important that we're honest with each other." Zack nodded to indicate he was listening to Arthur.

The boy rolled his eyes.

"Ah, to be young and eat anything you want," a fat man at the table beside them said as he lifted himself off one of the small wire-backed chairs. His table was strewn with papers and magazines, which he gathered together and stuck haphazardly under his arm. "Now I have a small dish of frozen yogurt, and feel guilty about that."

Zack smiled politely as the man waddled out the door, wheezing and sweating. Arthur continued eating, his face flushed with anger. "You could at least get mad," he mumbled.

"
You
get mad, Arthur," Zack said, smiling. "It'll do you good. You're too serious for a kid. Oh, that guy dropped some of his stuff. Just a second." He picked up a magazine that was lying on the floor and trotted outside with it.

"He drives me crazy," Arthur said.

"But he means no harm." Beatrice wiped a chocolate spot off his nose. "Really, I think Zack has a good heart."

He came back in a moment later. "Took off in a cab," he said. "Hope he doesn't need this." He tossed the magazine onto the table. It was a month-old issue of
International Artist.

Zack burst into laughter. "Hey, this is your landlord!" He read the caption beneath the picture of Aubrey Katsuleris. "'The Warlock Women Love.' Too much. Wait till Kate—"

Beatrice dropped her spoon. "It's him," she said, looking at the magazine.

"Aubrey Katsuleris," Arthur read. He looked over at Zack.

"Yeah, he owns the building the Center is in," Zack said, grinning and shaking his head.

Arthur stood up and grabbed Beatrice's hand. "Let's get out of here," he said.

She began to rise, but her legs wobbled beneath her. "No, Arthur. We can't go back. Not yet."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. It's just a... a feeling. You mustn't go near that building, Arthur."

"But we've got to tell the old man."

"No. Stay with me. Please..." Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped to the floor.

"Oh no, Bea, not now," Arthur moaned.

Zack leapt up from his chair and bent over the girl.

"Want me to call an ambulance?" the counterman asked.

Arthur shook his head. "She'll be okay in a minute."

"I think she just fainted," Zack said, listening to her chest. "She's breathing." He slapped her face gently. "Bea..."

"Get away from her!" Arthur shouted, pushing him aside.

For five minutes he knelt beside her. Finally Zack went over to the counterman. "Maybe you'd better call an ambulance, at that."

"I told you, she's all right," Arthur said.

"Better safe than sorry, son," one of the other patrons said. They had all gathered around Beatrice by now, as if they could make her come to by staring at her.

Arthur had no idea what to do. Taliesin was in the apartment alone, and he had the cup. On the other hand, Arthur had promised Beatrice that he wouldn't let anything happen to her.

"Come
on
, Bea." Arthur spoke into her ear with quiet intensity. "We've got to get back."

When the ambulance came, she was still unconscious.

Arthur stayed with her.

"D
id this ever happen
before?" the paramedic asked Zack on the way to the hospital.

"No," Arthur answered. "She's never passed out." He gave Zack a cold stare. The man had been permitted inside the ambulance despite Arthur's complaints that Zack was not a relative and not necessary. Adults, he decided, always sided with other adults.

"Her blood pressure's okay, but her heart's beating kind of slow," the paramedic said. "Is she on medication?"

Arthur shook his head.

"You kids been doing any drugs?"

"No."

"You sure?"

"He told you he wasn't," Zack said.

Arthur's expression softened for a moment. Zack put his arm around him. "She's going to be all right," he said.

Whom do you suppose he'll send next time?
Taliesin had warned. A room service waiter with a stiletto under his napkin?

Or some guy who buys kids ice cream?

The boy shook him off with an almost violent gesture. He moved as far away from Zack as possible in the small space of the ambulance.

Beatrice was taken immediately for a CAT scan.

In the waiting room Arthur studied the floor map of the hospital. Somehow he would have to get Beatrice out of there. Since he couldn't very well drag her through the halls while she was unconscious, he would have to wait until she snapped out of whatever kind of trance she was in. But after that, they would need a route of escape.

The CAT scan, he knew from the admitting nurse, was on the fourth floor, in the neurology wing. There were several elevators, as well as stairways on both the east and west walls. On the lobby floor there was a secondary exit off the Emergency Room, away from the waiting area. If Arthur could only manage to be alone with Beatrice for a minute...

"Relax," Zack said, startling him. "You're like a coiled spring. Maybe you need a hug, huh?"

"Get lost." Arthur backed away from him.

Zack held up his hands. "‘Scuse me, I forgot. Tough guys aren't into hugs. Hey, we have to call your grandfather and tell him we're here."

"Who?"

"Mr. Taliesin. Isn't he your grandfather?"

"No. And there's no phone in the apartment you gave us."

"I can reach him through Kate."

Yeah, right. I know who you're calling. The International Artist with the gun.

While Zack was on the phone, Arthur asked the nurse at the desk about Beatrice's CAT scan.

"They usually take about thirty minutes," she answered with a smile. "Your sister will be out in no time."

"She's not—-" he began, then thought better of it. He might not be allowed on the neurology floor if they knew he wasn't related to Beatrice. "Thanks," he said.

A security cop strolled by, a genial looking man with white hair and a paunch, and tipped his hat to Arthur.

Big fat help you'd be if a killer got in here,
Arthur thought. As for the city police, he knew there was no chance they would even believe him if he told them about Aubrey Katsuleris.

He turned back to the floor map until Zack returned.

"There was no answer at Kate's, so I called Mrs. Neumeyer in the room next door to find your… You said Mr. Taliesin's not your grandfather?"

"Where is he?" Arthur demanded.

"Don't know. He doesn't answer the door. Maybe he took a walk with Kate."

Arthur felt himself shaking.
And maybe Katsuleris killed him.

"Hey, lighten up," Zack said. "I asked Mrs. Neumeyer to leave a note. Meanwhile, we can get a soda, if you want."

Arthur pushed him away, then ran straight into a balding man in a white lab coat. "Are you here with Beatrice Reed?" the man asked Zack.

"I am," Arthur said, swiping at his nose with his sleeve.

"I'm Dr. Coles," the man said, still addressing Zack. "Beatrice has been admitted."

"Is she conscious?" Zack asked.

"I'm afraid not. She appears to be in a coma, although her tests are very inconclusive on that score."

"How can you be inconclusive about whether someone's in a coma or not?" Arthur asked.

The doctor's eyelids fluttered irritably. "Beatrice is very fortunate in that one of the leading neurologists in the world, Dr. Shanipati, is in the hospital and is taking an interest in her case." He smiled proudly as he touched Zack's arm. "He's with her now, but you can wait in the visiting area of the neurology wing. I'll take you up."

"You can take me up," Arthur said. "I'm her brother."

"I'm afraid children aren't permitted—"

"I said I'm going up. Call an administrator if you want, but I'm all Bea has, and I'm going to be with her." Arthur pointed to Zack. "He stays here."

The doctor stood indecisively for a moment, his eyelids fluttering wildly. Arthur strode past him. "Never mind. I'll find my own way."

He walked into an open elevator, pushed the fourth floor button, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared defiantly at the two men as the doors closed.

Then he cried.

T
he priests of the
Black Mass chanted.

Inside the circle of blood, the air grew thick, charged with the magic of the dark forces which had been appeased by the sacrifice of the animals and the suffering of the woman. Already the Merlin was weakening; Aubrey could feel the sorcerer's power draining out of the old man.

Yes, the dark ones would be pleased.

He thought of the Mass as an offering for the cup. Aubrey's gods were mercenary; they had demanded many souls as its price. But what the cup brought with it was worth everything Aubrey had paid.

And he had paid a great deal, even more than he had realized. The Merlin had shown him, for the first time, just how much he had sacrificed for the cup.

With the heightened perceptions brought on by the ritual, Aubrey had followed the old man's thoughts with absolute clarity. He had walked with him through the charred forest on the island of Mona, felt the scorched earth still warm beneath his feet. He had seen the bodies of the druids hanging like ornaments from the burned oaks, dangling by frayed ropes. He had seen the women in the grove, their while bellies exposed for the first time to light.

But it was not until he beheld the remains of the hag whom the druids called the Innocent that Aubrey realized that the memory he was experiencing was not only the Merlin's, but his own as well.

He had been Thanatos then, as he was now. With his hands he had cut the pentagram into the witch's body during that distant time, in precisely the same proportions that he had just used to mark the American girl. His arms had felt the Innocent's cloying blood as he sank them into her bowels to remove the viscera. His ears had heard her cryptic dying words,
Mother, bring us life from death.

But there had been no life from death for her and her kind. Nothing remained of the old religion. Its servants, killed by magic, had forfeited their souls.

It had been Thanatos' mission to destroy the gods, and in this he had succeeded.

H
e did not at
first know why he had been given the mission. He had been raised, in that other life, as one of the holy ones, familiar with the ways of the druids since birth.

His mother told him before her death that he had been born on the sacred island of Mona, and had been sent with her to the ancient grove in Gaul which had been their home ever since. This, she explained, was the practice for children conceived during the rites of Beltane, as he had been, because no one was permitted on Mona who had not made a conscious decision to serve the ancient gods. In the lesser groves, however, these special children were trained from birth to become druids, as they were the only ones who would be considered to replace the Innocent when that time came.

"It will be you," his mother said, straining to speak in her extremity. "I felt your destiny in your soul as it entered my body at the moment of your conception. The gods have great plans for you, my son."

And so they had.

At fifteen, he was expelled from the order for raping a girl several years his junior. He was led before dawn to the field outside the druids' forest and left there with only a short tunic and a pair of rope sandals, to make his way or be eaten by wolves.

He spent the day weeping and cursing those who had done this thing to him, but by nightfall he had formed a plan. He gathered a great bundle of sticks and twigs together, and two pieces of flint, and waited. Then, at the midnight hour, when the wind howled mournfully over the dry autumn grass, he stole back into the druids' deep wood to their sacred grove.

It was the time of the new moon, and the first spark of the flint lit the dark sky like a jewel. The twigs caught quickly, blossoming into flames that scurried among the ageless oaks like living beasts.

He stayed long enough to watch the oaks catch fire, imagining he could hear their screams. Then he heard the sound of running footsteps, and he left the way he had come, silent and triumphant.

From more than two miles distant he could see the bright blaze. By the time he reached the nearest village, he heard talk of nothing else.

"They must have angered the gods," an old man said in a tavern where he had gone to ask for work.

He had laughed aloud.
Yes, indeed,
he thought.
They have angered the only god I worship.

H
e killed for the
first time a year later, in the tavern where he worked. It was a worthless stewpot whose life he took, a smelly, feebleminded old pederast with no family to mourn him or seek out his murderer. The man had come into some money—he sold carvings of religious figures to the Christians—and was stupid enough to show it to him.

"Malva," the man whispered, for that was the boy's birth name, "take a look." The old man was grinning lewdly at him as he jingled a pouch heavy with coins.

Malva had been chopping wood behind the tavern, and was lathered in sweat. He knew his appeal. More than half of the married women in the village, and a fair number of unmarried ones who still called themselves maidens, had squealed in delight under his weight. So, although it was the first time a man had looked at him with that particular sort of longing, he was not surprised.

He smiled, being sure to display his even, white teeth, then sauntered over to the man, the ax still in his hand. The old man, having drunk enough to sway on his feet, did not even react when Malva picked up the ax near its blade and cut his throat with it.

Several days later the body was discovered behind the woodpile, after the tavern had become overrun by rats. Meanwhile, the pouch of coins was hidden in a corner of the root cellar, where only Malva went. In time, it was joined by others—one quite large pouch, from a foreign sailor who had actually enjoyed Malva's body before dying, and several smaller ones—before the villagers began to look at him with something like distrust.

He left in the night, after relieving his employer of his savings, his horse, and his life.

G
aul was a large
country. There were many places for an enterprising young man to establish himself. Malva worked at many trades and learned many skills, but his way of life remained unchanged in the essentials. He robbed men and then killed them, all the while leading an ordinary life in every other respect.

In time, he no longer even needed the money. His victims' prestige and wealth had grown along with his own, so that every death yielded considerably more than the first bag of coins he had taken from the village sot. On one occasion, he murdered the garrison commander of a Roman fort right under the noses of the man's personal guard, and walked away with a box of Arabian jewels.

By the time he was twenty, Malva had grown weary of only one aspect of his life—that of masquerading as an honest man. On the southern shore of Gaul, he bought passage on a ship headed for the east, where he no longer had to work, and killed purely for profit.

It was in Egypt that he first encountered the dark magicians, and in the Black Mass he experienced a state describable only as bliss. Murder, in its ritual form, was not a secret act, like the elimination of one's waste, but an art. One killed with delicacy and refinement, and in a state of ecstasy. In the Black Mass, he discovered for the first time in his life that there was a force greater than his own will, and he bound himself to that force with the devotion of a lover.

During his initiation, the dark ones spoke his true name. "Thanatos," they whispered to his inmost heart.

For that gift, he gave the dark ones his soul, and they smiled on him.

T
hanatos was never certain
of the precise moment when he knew he had to return to the place of his birth. The idea grew as he embraced the dark way more and more completely. There was the question of payment—he felt his demon gods demanded more from him than merely his devotion and the sacrifices he was able to bring them. They wanted supremacy, not only among the esoteric few like himself, who were drawn to them from birth, but in the hearts of all who walked the earth.

So, in time, he came to understand his life's true work: He would become a harvester of souls.

That would be easy enough in a place like Gaul, where the people had long accepted foreign occupation and the loss of their gods. Since the triumph of the Romans, the Gauls had adopted the ways of their conquerors to the point where they looked down on the Britons, who had never willingly changed anything about themselves, as savage barbarians. For their cooperation, the Gauls enjoyed a booming commerce, a settled government, wide, paved roads, vermin-free homes, and luxuries such as the Britons could not even imagine.

Yes, the Gauls would be an easy harvest.

But the Britons... that was another matter. They were stubborn, rough people, accustomed to the rain and cold, stoic about the suffering of life, and indifferent to death. They laughed at the Roman deities, deriding their gorgeous flesh-painted statues as harlots. For the Britons, who still walked miles through snow-covered mountain passes to offer bread to the ancient gods while their own bellies growled with hunger, their souls were all they had.

And their souls were fed by Mona.

Mona. The last stronghold against the dark ones, led by an old wraith of a woman who, it was said, was more spirit than flesh… perhaps one of the ancient gods herself.

Yes, it would have to be Mona. Thanatos would appease his greedy demons by giving them the greatest gift possible—the souls of Mona's gods, bound by magic in the dark realms so that they would never rise to live again.

I
t took him nearly
six years to establish his coven and formulate his plan. Then, on a night the omens had foretold would bring strength to the dark forces, thirteen magicians, led by Thanatos, sailed from southern Britain to reach the shores of Mona at the hour of midnight.

They killed in an orgy of passion, chanting the ritual of their mass as they struck down the druids one by one. Each death was an offering to the dark ones; over each body the rite of sacrifice was said so that their souls would be bound forever to the power of the demon gods.

Only in one instance did he fail. When they reached the Innocent, she was waiting for them, unafraid.

"So you have come for us at last," she said calmly, even as the corpses of her closest attendants lay still warm around her.

"You and your gods will die by my hand," Thanatos said.

"I know. I have lived long in order to fulfill their destiny."

"Crazy old harridan," he said. "You don't even know enough to be afraid."

"It is you who should be afraid," she answered. "Do you not know what awaits you in the dark realms?"

"Nothing awaits me. After my death, I will be free. My gods have promised it."

"Your gods lie, Thanatos," she said quietly.

"How do you know my name?"

"The gods have spoken it to me. Your gods, and mine as well, for they serve the same purpose."

"To see you dead?" he asked with a smile.

"Perhaps." She gave him a small bow. "You will know soon enough." Then she walked, lightly as a feather, to the great altar stone and lay down upon it, offering herself to her gods.

"Mother, bring us life from death," she murmured, and then her breath stilled.

Thanatos watched the life go out of her. For a moment a white aura, like the thinnest smoke, surrounded her. Then it gathered itself up into a light so bright that Thanatos thought he would be blinded for life by it. He threw his fists over his face, but it was as if his hands were transparent and his eyelids did not exist. He cried out in pain.

Then, in the hundredth part of a moment, the light was gone. The Innocent lay lifeless on the altar, safe from his magic.

"Did you see it?" he demanded of his initiates.

The black-robed men only stared at him, their expressions bewildered.

Thanatos ran to the corpse, lifted an arm, and dropped it again with a shudder. "She's already cold!" he bellowed in a fury.

Two of the magicians looked at one another. "Cold?" one asked diffidently, but Thanatos never heard him. Shrieking with rage, he ripped the Innocent's thin garments off her until her body lay naked, her withered little dugs of breasts hanging above the loose flesh of her belly, her arms and legs like sticks, her white hair streaming around her face, wispy as mist.

"Witch!" he spat, drawing his dagger and thrusting it deep into her bowels for the first cut of the pentagram.

Hesitantly, unsure of what to do, the priests formed a circle around the altar and began the chant for the rite of sacrifice which Thanatos performed with a vicious exactitude upon the body of the Innocent who had deprived the demon gods of her soul.

On the way back, after they had set the fires, Thanatos did not speak or even look up from the dark water of the sea.

T
hough Thanatos' ambitions never
vaulted so high again, he lived for many more years. While forming new covens around Britain, he learned that the destruction of Mona had produced just the effect he had hoped for. Without the island at the heart of their religion and no member of the order qualified to succeed the Innocent, the druids slowly died as a spiritual force.

There were occasional wanderers wearing the long gray robe of the old religion, but they came to be regarded as little more than beggars. After all, the druids had not touched the common people in any real way for years. Their magic was complex, and required years of study. They talked about the movement of the stars, and other things that were of no interest or use. While it was true that they had once given their blessings to tribes going into battle, there were now many holy men who were willing to enlist the aid of any number of new gods, from the Roman pantheon of deities to the Christians' merciful Father.

In the decades following the massacre, there were other raids on the sacred groves throughout Britain and Gaul. It was all the same to Thanatos whether these places were burned by Christians or Romans or his own initiates or even rowdy youths with nothing else to occupy their time. What was interesting to him was that they were never rebuilt, and their inhabitants hardly mourned. Some ignorant mountain folk still set out offerings of food for the ancient ones, but for most of the people, the stories of the druids and their magic were little more than folk legends.

At the age of seventy-three, Thanatos died of gout in Egypt, in his mistress' bed. He was a wealthy man, and left no heirs.

The last sound he uttered was a scream.

D
own he fell, through
a tunnel so dark that it caused him pain. He had no body—he perceived himself as a dim shape throbbing with sound, but a sound unlike anything he had ever heard. He in fact did not hear it, any more than he saw the darkness, but rather felt these conditions with some sense that he had never before used. Had his gods had lied to him, then, as the Innocent had warned? In exchange for his soul, they had promised him no retribution at the end of his mortal life. He had expected, when he closed his eyes for the last time, to enter the void outside the wheel of life, where he would rest without thought or pain or punishment. Instead, Thanatos found himself on a turbulent journey through what looked like what the Christians called Hell.

Here he encountered all manner of beings, many of whom looked quite human, although he passed through them as easily as if they were made of dust. And when he did, he understood everything about each of them during the instant that their spirits met. One was a suicide who had killed her child at birth and then taken her own life in remorse. Another was a drunkard who craved a tankard of mead above all other things, even though he no longer possessed a body to drink it. He met the first man he had murdered, the leering old pederast, and one of his own initiates, who had died young in a fire.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"Why, it's home," the pederast explained as he wandered out of the tunnel and back into the village in Gaul where Thanatos had cut his throat with the blade of an ax. The man tried to speak with people on the street, showing them some wood carvings he had made, but the people walked right through him, unaware of his existence. The woman who had killed herself sat by a river, rocking the body of her drowned infant. The drunkard stood inside a tavern, his throat parched with thirst, futilely attempting to grasp the cup set before him. The initiate ran repeatedly out of a burning barn, his hair afire.