THE FOREVER KING

BY MOLLY COCHRAN AND WARREN MURPHY

Synopsis: Has King Arthur been reborn to live again at the end of the
Twentieth century?  And how do a washed-up alcoholic FBI agent and an
insane -or is he insane -- serial killer feature in the story?  To say
more would spoil this page-turner that spans the centuries.  "The
Forever King is a fresh and exciting view of the Arthur legend, full of
adventure ranging from ancient Babylon to Camelot to the present day.
I read it in one sitting because I didn't want to put it down."

A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK

NEW YORK NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be
aware that this book is stolen property.  It was reported as "unsold
and destroyed" to the publisher, and .neither the author nor the
publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book.
This is a work of fiction.  All the characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events
is purely coincidental.

THE FOREVER KING

Copyright 1992 by M. C. Murphy All rights reserved, including the right
to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

Cover art by Joe DeVito

Interior art by Mel Green

A Tom Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc. 175 Fifth Avenue New York,
N.Y. 10010 This is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates,
Inc.  ISBN: 0-812-51716-4

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-2677

First edition: June 1992 First mass market printing: March 1993

Printed in the United States of America

0987654 This book is dedicated to Tony Seidl You were valiant, knight,
and true.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are indebted to many for their help with this novel, and offer our
sincere thanks to those who generously shared their time, advice, and
expertise with us.
Most particularly we wish to acknowledge: Duncan Eagleson, for
condensing his prodigious knowledge of ancient weaponry in order to
teach us the difference between slashing and bashing; Kent Galyon and
Rev.  Paul M. Corson, for their insights into the theological aspects
of the book; Melissa Ann Singer, our editor, whose brilliance helped us
to write the best story we could; And Megan Murphy Coles, who read and
criticized the manuscript for this novel (and everything else we've
ever written) before its submission, thereby giving us one last chance
not to make fools of ourselves.
To these individuals, and to our friends, who have supported us with
their kindness through the years, we are grateful.

MOLLY COCHRAN AND WARREn N MURPHY

1992

PROLOGUE

The king was dead; of that there was no doubt.
The old man had gone to the castle and had seen the knights in
ceremonial armor carrying their ruler's body down to the lake where
they set it adrift on a funeral barge.
Later, after the knights had left, the old man went to the lake and
retrieved the king's jeweled sword from the waters where the knights
had thrown it.  He took it back with him to the cave where he now spent
most of his time alone.
For many nights, in the flickering light of a campfire, he stared at
the sword.  And more than once he wept for the young man who had been
his student and his friend and for whom he had had such high hopes.
Once he had even dared to hope that the young man would reign forever.
But now that hope had died.
Everything died in time, the old man thought bitterly.  He mourned
until the moon was new again and then walked back to the field outside
the castle.  There he mixed sand and pulverized limestone with water.
He dug a hole in the earth, lovingly placed the sword inside, then
poured the mortar mix over it until it was covered.
The sword would never be found.  In time, the castle too would be
destroyed.  There would be no songs or histories written of the dead
king.  It would be as if he never lived; as if none of this had ever
happened.
And perhaps it was best that way.  Perhaps it was best that dreams of
justice be allowed to die.
So why was it that the bitter old man paused momentarily over the
rapidly drying mortar in which the sword was encased and, with his
finger, scratched a message into the cement?
It was, he told himself, because he was nothing but a superstitious old
fool.  Then he strode away, turning his back on the giant castle, back
to his small cave where he bundled himself in animal skins and lay down
to die.
But he only slept: · .  . and dreamed.
· .  . and waited.

BOOK ONE

THE BOY

CHAPTER ONE

He was there again.
The bright orange blaze was scorching, suffocating in the July
afternoon heat.  Through the din of cracking timbers and the
air-sucking whoosh of the impossibly high and angry gasoline flames the
frantic voices of the Firefighters sounded muffled and small.
Hal Woczniak swallowed.  His hands rose and fell in a jerky motion.
The features of his face were contorted, still wearing the expression
of shock that had followed the explosion.  Nearby, sweating and
helpless, stood a small army of useless men---six members of the FBI, a
fully armed SWAT team, the local police.  A' heavyset, balding man
unwrapped a stick of gum and popped it into his mouth.  "Forget it,
Hal," he told Woczniak.
The house blurred and wavered in the heat.  Two firemen dragged a
body--what was left of it--out of the doorway.  "Leave him!"  Woczniak
shouted.
The heavyset man raised a hand to Woczniak's chest, a gesture of
restraint.  "Chief, there's a kid inside!"  Woczniak protested.  "They
know that," the Chief said placatingly.  "But they just got here.
They've got to move that body.  Give them a chance."  "What kind of
chance does the kid get?"  Woczniak growled.  He shoved the Chief's
hand away and ran for the house.  Into the thick of the smoke pouring
from the building, his lungs stinging from the black air, his legs
pumped wildly.  "Woczniak!  Hal!"  the Chief shouted.  "Somebody stop
him, for God's sake!"  Two firefighters flung themselves at him, but
Woczniak leaped over them effortlessly and hurtled himself into the
inferno.
It was pitch-black inside except for high licks of orange flame that
shed no light in the dense smoke.  Coughing, Woczniak tore off his
shirt and pulled it over his head as he crawled spider-like up the
fragile, superheated wooden stairs.  A timber broke with a deafening
crack and fell toward him.  He slammed against the far wall at the top
of the stairs.  In the blind darkness, a shard of glass from a broken
mirror cut deep into his cheek.  Woczniak felt only a dull pain as he
pulled it from his flesh.
"Jeff!"  Stooped and groping, he found a door.  He pulled it open.
The boy will be there, tied to the chair.  The boy will be there, and
this time I'll get to him.  This time Jeff will open his blue eyes and
smile, and I'll muss his carrot hair, and the kid will go home to his
folks.  This one will escape.  This time.
But it was not the boy with the carrot-red hair tied to the chair.  In
his place was a monster, a fire-breathing dragon straight out of a
fairy tale, with eyes like blood and scales that scraped as it writhed.
It opened its mouth, and with its foul breath came the words: "You're
the best, kid.  You're the best there is."  And then the creature, the
terrible beast Hal Woczniak had somehow known all along would meet him
in this room, cackled with a sound like breaking glass.
Screaming, Woczniak ran up to it and clasped the saurian around its
slimy neck.  It smiled at him with triumphant malice.
Then, fading as if it had been fashioned of clouds, it vanished and the
reality of his life returned.  In the monster's place was the
red-haired boy, tied to the chair .  . . dead as he had been all along,
dead as he always was in these dreams.  Woczniak was still screaming.
He couldn't stop.  He woke up screaming.
Honey.  Hey, mister."  Hal gasped for breath.  His sweat was slick and
cold.  "You musta had a bad dream."  It was a woman's voice.  He looked
over at her.  It took him a moment to orient himself to his
surroundings.  He was in bed, in a dingy room he reluctantly recognized
as his own.  The woman was beside him.  They were both naked.  "Do I
know you?"  he asked groggily, rubbing his hands over his face.
She smiled.  She was almost pretty.  "Sure, baby.  Since last night,
anyway."  She snuggled against him and flung her arm over his chest.
He pushed her away.  "Go on, get out of here."  "Watza matter?"  She's
not even angry, Hal thought.  She's used to it.  He pulled the filthy
covers off them both, then saw the bruises on the woman's body.  "Did I
do that?"  She looked down at herself, arms spread in self-examination.
"Oh.
No, bon.  You was real nice.  Kind of drunk, though."  She smiled at
him.  "I guess you want me to go, huh?"  She didn't wait for an answer
as she wriggled into a cheap yellow dress.  "What .  . . ah .  . . What
do I owe you?"  Hal asked, wondering if he had any money.  He
remembered borrowing twenty from Zellie Moscowitz, who had just fenced
some diamonds for a second-story man in Queens.
That had been yesterday.  Or the day before.  He pressed his fingers
into his eyes.  Hell, it might have been last week, for all he knew.
"What day is this?"  "Thursday," the woman said.  She wasn't smiling
anymore.  Her shoulders sagged above the low-cut bodice of her dress.
"And I ain't no hooker."
"Sorry."  "Yeah She zipped up her dress.  "But now you mention it, I
could use cab fare."  "Sure."  Hal swung his legs woodenly over the
side of the bed and lurched toward a pair of pants draped over a chair.
They reeked of stale booze and cigarette smoke, with a strong
possibility of urine.
There were four one-dollar hills in his wallet.  He handed them to her.
"It's all I've got."  "That's okay," she said.  "My name's Rhonda.  I
live over in Jersey.
In Union City."  "Nice to meet you," Hal said.  "What's yours?"  As he
replaced his wallet, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the
broken triangle of a mirror above the sink.  A pair of watery,
bloodshot eyes stared stupidly at him above bloated cheeks covered with
graying stubble.  "I said, who are you?"  Hal stood motionless,
transfixed by the sight.  "Nobody," he said softly.  "Nobody at all."
He didn't hear the woman let herself out.
You're the best, kid.  The best there is.
That was what the chief said when Hal had turned in his resignation to
the FBI.  The best there is.
He turned on the tap in the sink.  A thin stream of cold water trickled
out, disturbing two roaches that had apparently spent the night in a
Twinkie wrapper stuffed into a brown-speckled Styrofoam coffee
container.
Hal splashed water on his face.  Hands still dripping, he touched the
scar on his cheek where the piece of glass had cut him during the fire.
That was the problem: Too much of the dream was real.  If it were all
dragons vaporizing on contact, he could handle it better.  But most of
it was exactly as things had really been.  The fire, the boy, the
laughter .  . . that crazy bastard's laughter .  . . 'Look, Woczniak,
nobody else could have saved the kid, either.  You went into the
burning building, for chrissake.  Even the fire department couldn't get
into a gasoline fire.  SWAT couldn't go in.
You've just spent five months in the hospital for that stunt.  What'd
you expect, magic?  --Maybe.  --Well, welcome to the real world.  It's
got psychos in it.  Some of them kill kids.  That's not the way we want
it, it's just the way it is.  I'm telling you, you did a good job.
You're going to get a citation as soon as you're out of here.  --A
citation.  --That's right.  And you deserve it.  --The kid's dead,
Chief.  --So's the psycho.
After four months, you were the who that found him.  You were the one
who figured out why he went after the kids.  --I was the one who let
him kill the last one.  --Nobody expected him to blow himself up.  ---I
could have stopped it.  --How?  ---I could have shot him and covered
the grenade.  --With what?  Your body?  Jesus Christ.  How long with
the Bureau, Hal?  Fifteen years?  --Sixteen.  --That's a long time.
Don't throw it away just because you got too close to one kid's family.
Believe me, I know what it's like.  You see pictures, home movies, you
have dinner with parents 'cause you've got nothing else to do at night
.
. --I'm out, Chief.  --Listen to me.  You find a girl, maybe you get
Things are different with a wife.  --I said I'm out.
Hal Woczniak left the hospital after five months and a fire that killed
Jeff Brown and his abductor.  He left with a future and a past he
wanted only to forget.
Funny, he thought as he walked down the hospital sidewalk toward the
bus stop.  He had just spent half a year in the same hospital where the
killer had found His name was Louie Rubel, Hal remembered.  He worked
as an orderly in the Trauma and Burn Unit which Hal had just been
released.
Using the Registration records, Rubel would pick out boys of the age
among the visitors and then stalk them on their way home Before he got
to Jeff Brown, he had already killed mutilated four other
ten-year-olds.
Each murder acted like the first killing, that of his better-favored
younger brother.
Woczniak led the FBI team that cracked the case just as Rubel was about
to murder the Brown kid.  It had looked like a perfect collar, with
evidence in place, the boy alive, and a confession.  No one had counted
on the killer's own sense of drama.
As the authorities approached the house, Louie Rubel announced that he
had sprayed the place with gasoline.  Hal ordered everyone on scene to
freeze.  When they didn't, Rubel took a grenade out of his vest pocket
and pulled out the pin with his teeth.
The next few seconds were pandemonium, but Hal remembered only silence,
a silence welling and gradually filling with Rubel's high, shrieking,
monstrous laughter.  He laughed until the grenade exploded.
He blew himself to bits in full view of the police, the FBI, SWAT, and
an ambulance crew.
A moment later the house went up like a torch, but Hal could still hear
the laughter.
He had run into the fire, run to save the red-haired boy, kept running
even after the shard of glass had ripped his cheek in two and the
flames burned away the hair on his arms and chest and head, had run
into the upstairs room where the boy was sitting, tied to a chair.
You're safe, Jeff.  Just a second here, let me get these ropes off you
. . .
Jeff.
. .
And he carried Jeff Brown out the window and tried mouth-to-mouth on
him right there on the roof while the SWAT boys nearly roasted
themselves pulling a tarp over to the wall beneath them.  But it was
too late.
Hal had come to in the hospital a week later.  His first thought was
the memory of the boy's lips, still warm.
You're the best, kid, welcome to the real world you'll get a citation
for this what'd you expect?

Magic?

It had been almost a year since the incident.
The face in the broken mirror above the sink, the loser's face, shook
as if it were powered by an overheated engine.  His eyes---a strangers
eyes--were glassy and staring.  His teeth were bared.
He turned off the water.  The roaches returned.  "Screw it," he said.
It was time for a drink.  It was always time for a drink.

CHAPTER TWO

In the western part of Hampshire, on a hill turned black from a hundred
fifty years of exposure to the soot-belching factories and oil
companies of industrial England, stood an asylum for the criminally
insane.
Since the early 1970s, it had been called Maplebrook Hospital, but no
one in the vicinity ever mistook the forbidding Victorian edifice for a
place of healing.  The Lymington locals knew it as the Towers, a prison
whose thick walls exuded pain and madness.
The Towers housed fifty-eight patients on four floors, excluding the
basement.  There, in a dungeon reserved for lunatics of especially
heinous dispositions, lived one lone inmate.  He had no name.
Or so he claimed.  One of the points that had irked all the legal
personnel involved with his trial was that no legal document concerning
the man's identity seemed to exist.  In the end, the prosecutor charged
that the man had made a life's work of so obfuscating his personal
records that no one in Britain's legal network, including the
defendant's own barrister, had been able to find a single fact about
him that was not contradicted by some other fact.
The man was an artist of sorts, the creator of grotesque sculptures
showing human beings in the throes of violent death.  Although they had
never been exhibited en masse, several of these works had been sold to
private collectors around the world.  One had been on permanent display
in New York City's Museum of Modern Art.  None had ever been signed by
the artist.
It was when one of these--an eerily realistic statue titled
Washerwoman, which depicted a plump, middle-aged female with an axe
embedded in her chest--was enroute to a buyer in Berlin that the search
for the nameless artist began.
The delivery van carrying the piece skidded on a wet curve on the
Autobahn and crashed through the guardrail.  The driver of the van was
thrown from the vehicle, as was the statue.  Carefully wrapped though
it was, Washerwoman was cleaved lengthwise, from the point of the axe
blade.
The axe proved to be real.  So did the blood on' the edge of the blade.
The corpse inside was almost perfectly preserved.
When the artist was arrested, he said only, "The point of entry was
always a weakness in that piece."  After the ensuing publicity about
Washerwoman, the New York museum donated its sculpture to Interpol to
do with as it liked.  Two other owners came forth, demanding to have
the price of their statues refunded.
When asked how many pieces there were, Mr. X--as he had come to be
known to Scotland Yard--smiled and said, "Twenty-three."  He was
charged and convicted on four counts of murder, and sentenced to live
out the remainder of his days in the asylum at Lymington.
The other nineteen sculptures were never recovered.  In underground art
circles, the price of an "X" skyrocketed into the hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
Now, four years after his incarceration, the sculptor sat at a table in
his basement cell, a threadbare blanket around his shoulders to ward
off the perpetual dank chill of the place, reading an Urdu text.  He
had been a model prisoner almost from the beginning, and the nearest
big library--at Bournemouth--had agreed to provide him anything he
requested, as long as each order first received the approval of
Maplebrook's director, Mark Coles.
Dr. Coles had never objected to the prisoner's reading matter.  The
doctor was, in fact, constantly struck by the patient's literary
sophistication.  The solitary inmate to the basement was obviously a
brilliant man and, in Coles' observation, a gentle and civilized one as
well, impeccable table manners, elegant, well-modulated voice and a
bearing which could only be described as regal.  it not for the former
director's written instructions THAT the man be kept permanently in
solitary confinement, he would have moved him to a ward for the
less-disturbed long ago.
It was still something Coles considered every day.  the man had
allegedly killed an orderly with his bare hands the day of his
admission to Maplebrook, but even the violent patients were capable of
change.
Besides, Coles thought, the former director's methods were less than
conducive to rehabilitation.  Faced with life imprisonment IN A place
like the Towers, anyone might have attacked his guards in a similar
manner.  The dead orderly's neck had broken.  It could well have
happened by accident in the panicked scuffle.
Mark Coles was thirty-six years old, the youngest head of Maplebrook in
its century-and-a-half history.  In the three months since his
appointment as director he had all the interior walls painted, engaged
a nutritionist, introduced music and television, increased the wattage
of the lights, instituted recreational team sports, installed an
auxilary generator so that the inmates could stay warm in winter when
storms regularly knocked out the electricity and paid daily visits to
each of his fifty-nine patients.
But the lone prisoner in the basement was by far the most interesting
of Dr. Coles' charges.  He was, in fact, the most interesting human
being Coles had ever seen.  Standing nearly seven feet tall, with black
hair that touched his shoulders and an Elizabethan-style goatee, he
would have been physically imposing even had he not possessed an
intelligent mind.
But nothing about the man's mind was ordinary.  He was a psychological
phenomenon, for one thing, a confessed killer who felt neither remorse
nor a need to justify his crimes; yet he was unfailingly charming, a
man whom Dr."  Coles, in other circumstances, would have cultivated as
a personal friend.
And although he would not speak about his crimes or his past, the man
was completely forthcoming about neutral subjects.  He was prodigiously
knowledgeable about history, geography, biology, anatomy--naturally,
Coles thought, given the nature of the man's artwork--weather,
comparative religions, physics, chemistry, English literature,
mathematics, medicine, and art, both Eastern and Western.
He spoke eight languages fluently, knew enough to get by in twelve
others, and read in fifteen, including ancient Greek, Old and Middle
English, late Celtic, and Egyptian hieroglyphic.
He had no interest, however, in anything mechanical.  Coles warmed with
amusement when he remembered the patient's first encounter with the lid
of a paste pot.  Others, he explained, had always opened and closed
containers for him.
He had never driven a car nor operated a washing machine.  He had never
purchased anything from a vending machine.  He could use a telephone,
but usually left the receiver dangling when the conversation was over.
He could not type.  His handwriting was flowing and elegant.
Occasionally he played chess with Dr. Coles.  He always won, usually
within minutes, but sometimes he deliberately ignored one of Coles'
blunders in order to draw the game out toward some dazzling end game.
It was on these occasions that Coles felt he was making real progress
with the man, although he often wondered after these sessions why he,
the doctor, was suffused with a feeling of privilege after being beaten
in a game of chess by a diagnosed psychopath.
Still, the games were fascinating, and Coles sensed they were an avenue
into the man's extraordinarily complex personality.  With the right
approach and the sensitive direction of a gifted therapist, the doctor
was sure, that genius might yet be coaxed into productivity.
Coles whistled a tune to announce himself as he walked down the
basement corridor.  The sitting man ramrod-straight in his chair, gave
no indication of having heard him.  "Are you married?  Coles asked
cheerfully.
The man looked up from his book and smiled.  seated, he was so tall
that his eyes were almost level with the doctor's.
Coles shrugged as he set up the small table just outside the bars of
the cell and arranged a chessboard and pieces atop it.  He always began
his visits that way, with a question which his patient was not
likely-to answer.
What is your real name?  Who were your parents?  How you earn a living?
What games did you play as a child?  What is your favorite food?  How
many women have you made love to?  Anything, anything to open the door
to that vulnerable person behind the prodigious intellect and bestial
instinct to kill.
From the beginning, the man had ignored every question.  Coles had
nearly given up hope that he ever would.  Yet, perhaps someday .  . .
"Yes," the man said.
Coles looked up, dropping one of the chess pieces.  "I beg your
pardon?"  "You asked if I was married.  I was.  At least a few times.
But I do not remember any of their names."  Coles blinked.  It was a
lie, of course, but why?  For shock value?
Surely a man who had murdered people and then covered their still-warm
bodies with plaster could come up with a bigger stunner than that.
He bent slowly to retrieve the fallen piece, a pawn.  True.  false, he
knew, the statement had been terribly important.  It was the first
chink in the patient's psychological armor.  He was beginning to trust
the doctor.  "When was the last time?"  Coles asked casually as he
removed a small notebook from his shirt pocket.  Don't frighten him
now, he told himself.  Let him talk.  "I believe it was in Mexico.  She
was a lovely creature, although rather stupid.  But fecund."  "Is she
alive?"
Coles asked.  "Oh, my, no."  Of course not.  She's in a glass case in
some art collector's parlor."
"Did you kill her?"  The tall man's eyes narrowed in thought.  "No.  I
don't believe so.  I did kill her parents, though.  Tiresome people.
He came out of his revery with a smile.  "Sometime ago, you
understand."  , Coles nodded uncertainly.  You said your wife was, ah .
. ."  He checked his notes.  "Fecund.  You have children, then?"
"Descendants."  "As you wish.  How many descendants do you have?"
"Thousands, I imagine," the patient said with a shrug.
Coles exhaled.  Sometimes he almost forgot that the inmates here were
insane.  "Do you ever see them?"  "Of course.  They are obligated to me
by blood."  "But you've had no visitors."  The man half-closed his
eyes.  "I have not summoned them yet."  "I see," Coles said.  "By the
way, I have a name."  Coles sucked in a rash of air.  "What is it?"  he
asked softly.  "Saladin."  He spoke the name slowly, aware that he was
giving the doctor a gift.  "Is Saladin your first name?"  "It is my
entire name."  Coles looked into his patient's eyes for a long moment,
then wrote the name down.  "Why have you decided to speak with me?"  he
asked at last.  "I want another cell."  Coles tented his fingers
beneath his chin and nodded.  "I said I want another cell.  There are
rats down here.  I!  dislike rodents."  "Do they frighten you in any
specific--" "Stop playing psychiatrist, you ass."  Saladin's long
fingers splayed out, just once, as if taking the first preliminary
stretch before reaching out to strangle the doctor.
Coles flattened himself against the back of his chair.  The move had
been instinctive, a reaction to the lightning intensity of the man on
the opposite side of the bars.
When Saladin spoke again, his voice was calm.  "My name is of value to
you, Dr. Coles."  Coles picked up the notepad which had fallen to the
floor as he assumed a more casual posture, trying to erase the image of
bald fear he had shown a moment before.  "What do you--" He cleared his
throat.
"What do you mean?"  "Do you publish?

"Well, I--"

"Probably not," Saladin answered for him.  "You can't be very well
regarded in your field if you've ended up here so early in your
career."  He observed the doctor flush.  "Listen to me.  I'm going to
be here for the rest of my life, but you don't have to be.  I'll
cooperate with you.
I'll tell you everything about myself--my past, my childhood, the
murders .  . . anything you want to know.  I'll permit any kind of
testing, if you wish to study me.  My name alone will get you into the
newspapers.  A monograph on my case will make your reputation.
Afterward, you'll be offered positions in the best universities and
have a lucrative private practice on the side."  He crossed his arms in
front of him.  "You can leave the loony bin, Doctor," he said in a
whisper.
His eyes were laughing.
Coles ground his teeth together.  How was it that this mental patient
could see through to the very heart of him?  "The lower level of this
building has been designated the maximum security wing," Coles said,
heating the trace of pomposity in his own voice.  "Has any of my
behavior, in your opinion, warranted my being kept in maximum
security?"  "According to your file--" "I asked for your opinion,
Doctor, based on your own observations.
Not for a recitation of the prejudices of some quack who once worked
here."  Coles did not answer.  "Have you read anything--anything at all
in the reports issued about me by your staff during the past four years
to indicate I have been anything but an exemplary inmate?"  Silence.
Coles was thinking.  A monograph on Saladin--and of course he would
insist upon knowing the man's real name--would put Mark Coles' name in
the annals of psychiatry.  A donship at Oxford.  A practice on Harley
Street.  "This is your only chance, Dr. Coles," Saladin said.  "A warm
room on an upper floor.  That is all I ask in exchange for my
information."  "I'll have to---" "If you tell me you'll have to discuss
this with some board or other, I'll never give you any further
information about myself.  I promise you thaL"that."
"Saladin--" "Now, Dr. Coles."  His black eyes were like a doll's,
unblinking and hard.  "Coles sighed.  "All right.  We can do that."
"Tomorrow."

"Yes.  Tomorrow."

Saladin smiled.  Through the bars he extended his long, slender hand
and moved the white king's pawn.  "Your move, Doctor," he said
smoothly.
He won the game in ten minutes.
At 2:45 A.M long after the doctor had left, a night orderly walked
through the building to check the patients in their cells.
His name was Hafiz Chagla.  He had been working at Maplebrook for eight
months.  Before that, he had worked as an electrician.  Chagla was a
squat young man in his late twenties, with flat feet and an inner tube
of fat around his middle.  His face was not particularly memorable,
except for one thing which would not have been noticeable to any but
the most trained and discerning of observers.  His eyes looked exactly
like Saladin's.  Nobody in the asylum had noticed that.
As Chagla arrived in the basement, he passed Saladin's, and looked
inside deferentially, as if searching for a door knock or a bell to
ring.
Saladin glanced up from the Urdu volume.  On the on its inside front
cover was stamped the date 6/1.  On page 61 of the text were a number
of scattered pencil dots.  One the assistants at the Bournemouth
library, an Algerian named Hamid Laghouat, had put them there.
Mr. Laghouat had been working at the library for nearly four years,
the same length of time Saladin had spent at Towers.  Before that, he
had been a linguist at the University of Algiers.
He also had Saladin's eyes.
Each pencil dot on page 61 was below a letter in the alphabet.  When
the marked letters were written down consecutively, they formed a
message.
Saladin did not need to write anything down.  As his eyes scanned the
page, they saw the message at once.  it read: All is in place.  Bless
your name.

Four years.  It had taken four years for him to receive that message.

Saladin nodded.  The guard returned the gesture, but looked more like a
boy.

CHAPTER THREE

The steamy midtown air smelled somehow of meat--maybe from the sidewalk
food vendors--and it nauseated Hal.  He,: walked frantically, without
direction, only wanting to get away, first from the frightening image
in the mirror of the filthy room he now called his home, and now from
the awful putrescent city smells that, surrounded him.
His head pounded.  If he'd had a dollar and a half, he would have gone
directly into Benny's across the street from the transient hotel where
he lived and ordered a shot of whiskey.  But he had no money left, and
while there had been a time when Benny would have fronted him the
drink, those days: were over.  Benny weighed three hundred and twenty
pounds, and he didn't have to toss you into the garbage cans in the
alley very often before you got the point that you weren't welcome in
his place without some ready cash.
As it was, his best bet was O'Kay's, a yuppie hangout way the hell
uptown with enough ferns to choke Alan Alda.  couldn't get credit
there, of course, but a Greek pimp named Dimitri Soskapolis sometimes
dropped in for lunch around two or three in the afternoon, and he might
be good for a short loan.  Hal had fixed Soskapolis' Jaguar a couple of
times, and the Greek swore he'd never let another mechanic: touch it
again.
young men with expensive haircuts traveled in herds and the women wore
sneakers with their silk business suits.
It was lunchtime.  The streets were packed with people in a hurry,
striding incuriously between a glut of exotic street vendors,
seedy-looking men slapping their thighs with pamphlets advertising
massage' parlors, earnest women passing out pink brochures 'with
"PREGNANT?"  on their covers, hucksters delivering their pitches while
wearing miniature umbrellas on their heads, exhibitionists jerking off
in the crowd, keys and change jingling, and pickpockets so deft that
only a trained eye could spot them.
Hal watched one of them at work while he strolled.  The thief was an
Asian teenager, fifteen or sixteen years old.  Good hands.  He'd been
trained by an expert, maybe even Johnny Chan, by the looks of his
technique.  Chart, who had begun picking pockets in Hong Kong back in
the late forties, was a master of the art.  Now in rich retirement in
New York City, he supplemented his income by playing Fagin to a tribe
of immigrant street urchins.
The kid was circling behind him.  Hal kept walking, but he felt the
intense, almost electrified presence of the boy's fear coming closer to
him.
Christ, he's not going to try me, is he?  he thought wearily.
Then he felt the hand go into his trousers pocket, fast as a bird in
flight.
Today of all days, with the mother of all hangovers .  . . He slapped
his hand over the kid's wrist.
The boy dropped the wallet, his hand caked with debris from the inside
of Woczniak's pocket.  A crushed maraschino cherry dusted with loose
cigarette tobacco dangled from his thumb.  ** So he owed him, Hal
figured.  At least a ten.  For a couple "Zhulo."  the boy said, the
look on his face changing in an of days.
Maybe.  instant from surprise at his capture to pure disgust.  .
"Don't mess with me in daylight," Hal said.
As he walked, the scenery on Broadway changed from the, The kid let
loose with a stream of angry singsong Viet peep shows and welfare dumps
of his own neighborhood to namese as he struggled to wriggle free.  Hal
picked up his the grand office buildings of respectable Manhattan,
where!-wallet.
Then, holding the kid by his collar, he brought the boy's face in
contact with his own sticky hand and rubbed them together.  "Dung lai.
Dung /ai," the boy shrieked.  Stop!  Stop!  He was South Vietnamese,
Hal realized.  The youth had pronounced it as "Yung lie."  North
Vietnamese said "Zung lie."  "Di mau," Hal snarled back.  "Beat it."
He laughed and pushed the boy away, sending him reeling down the
sidewalk.  "Give my regards to Johnny Chart," he called out after him.
The boy turned around long enough:to give him the finger.  As he did,
he barreled full force into an elderly gentleman walking with a cane.
The old man's feet seemed to slide out from under him.  He fell on his
back with a whoosh of expelled breath as the kid disappeared into a
subway stairway.
Hal winced.  A fall like that had most likely broken every bone in the
old man's body.  He bent over him to look for signs of life.  "You
okay, Pop?"  he asked softly.
The ancient eyes fluttered open.  "Take it easy.  I'm going to get an
ambulance for you."  "Quite unnecessary," the old man said with a
smile.  He sat up.  "Hey, maybe you'd better wait .  . ."  "Nonsense.
Where's my cane?"  he demanded in impeccable Kin g's English.
Hal retrieved it for him.  When he got back a moment later, a fat man
eating a hot dog was bent over the old gentleman.  "General bodily
injuries, right?"  the fat man said, wiping mustard from his chin with
a paper napkin.  "I beg your pardon?"  "Here, take it."  He handed him
a business card.  "That's LaCosta and LaCosta.  Legal representation,
easy payment.
Hal helped the old man to his feet.  "Look, I'm sorry," he said.  "The
kid was running from me, but I didn't knock you down."  He looked down
the street at the retreating figure of Attorney-at-law LaCosta.
"Besides, it wouldn't do any good to sue me."  "I'm planning nothing of
the kind."  The old man sprang to his feet with surprising agility.
"There!  he said, grinning broadly.  "Good as new."
LaCosta's card sailed away, lost in the wake of a passing bus.
"Bertram Taliesin."  The old man tipped his homburg.
Hal rubbed his hands together, afraid of soiling the exquisitely clean
old gentleman ,with his touch.  "Uh, Hal I Woczniak.  Listen, if you
want, I'll take you to a hospital to get checked out.  I mean, you look
okay, but you can never tell."  "Oh, I'm in far too much of a hurry for
that."  He took a gold pocket watch on a chain from his vest.  "In
fact, I'm afraid I may already be late for my appointment, and I'm not
quite sure where it is.  Would you be familiar with the CBS building,
Mr. Woczniak?"  "CBS?  Sure, it's in Rockefeller Center.  Just go east
to Sixth--they call it the Avenue of the Americas on the street sign
,s-.  Then up to Fifty-second.  Big black building.
You can't miss it."  :Taliesin frowned.  "Go up to American Avenue .
. ."  "Avenue of the Americas.  Two long blocks up."  "Long blocks?"
"Blocks.  Regular blocks, only they're longer than most.
Then turn left, heading uptown."  "East, that is."  "No, north.  You
want to go uptown "But you said east."  "You'll be east," Hal said.
He felt his headache returning.
terms.  You definitely got a case here."  The old man shook his head.
"No, no, no.  I remember "Get lost, hairball," Hal said.
distinctly that the letter said midtown Manhattan, not eastern LaCosta
took another bite of his hot dog.  "Get this bozo's :Manhattan, not
northern Manhattan.  'Midtown Manhattan, name," he mumbled, jerking his
head toward Hal in a spray the core of the Big Apple."" of crumbs
before waddling away.  "He's a witness."  full Hal explained.
"Midtown's small.  It's laid out on a grid .  . . Oh, never mind.
I'll take you there myself."  "Well, that's bloody decent of you," the
old man said.  Hal spat onto the sidewalk.  "Think nothing of it."  The
old man fairly bounded across Broadway, with Hal struggling to catch up
with him.  "I'm going to one of your television game shows," he
chattered amiably.  "'Go Fish!'" "What?"  "'Go Fish!"  That's the name
of the show.  Have you seen it?"  "I don't have a TV," Hal said.  And
if I did, I'd sell it for a drink just about now, he added silently.
"Oh, it's delightful."  The old man chuckled.  "I watched it the last
time I was in this country, visiting some Indian ruins in New Mexico.
Laughed myself silly.  So when I found I'd be coming to New York, the
first thing I did was to write for a ticket.  I've got a personal
letter from the producer right here."  He patted the front pocket on
his perfectly milored jacket.  "Uh," Hal said, his eyes lingering on a
Sabrett stand.  The air had dissipated his nausea, and his stomach, if
not his brain, realized that it hadn't contained anything solid or
nonalcoholic in a number of days.  "I say!"  Taliesin whirled suddenly
to face him.  "Perhaps we could arrange for two seats!"  His eyes were
gleaming.
Hal could not think of anything he would rather do less than watch a
taping of a game show called "Go Fish!"  "No, no, really," he mumbled.
"It's probably all sold out, anyway."  "Do you think so?"  "Oh, yeah."
He nodded emphatically.  "A hot show like that--you've got to get a
reservation early, no question about it."  He steered the old man away
from the street corner, where two preppy college-age boys were trying
vainly to give away free tickets to any number of midday game shows.
"Sir," one of the boys called out.  "Shut it, kid," Hal said.  He
looked over to Taliesin and smiled.  "Probably muggers."  The old man
looked back in confusion.  "But they didn't seem--" "There's the CBS
building, right over there."  "Oh, I do wish you could come along,"
Taliesin said.  "I owe you something for helping me after my fall."
Did you hear me refuse money?  Hal thought.  But he said, "Forget about
it.  Enjoy the show."  He walked the old man up to the main entrance.
A sign reading GO FISH!  USE EXPRESS ELEVATOR stood on a portable stand
in the lobby.  Below it was a hand-lettered add-on.  It said FREE LUNCH
TODAY.  "Hey, look at that," Hal said, hearing his stomach growl.
"You hit the jackpot.  Lunch and everything."  "Oh, good heavens!"
The old man reeled backward.
Hal swooped in to catch him.  "What?  What is it?  Lie down.  Christ, I
knew I should have taken you to the hospital .  . ."  "No, no, it's not
my health," he said, wriggling out of his grasp.
"It's June the first."  "It is?  I mean, so what?"  "I have an
appointment with the curator of the Museum of Natural History on June
the first at half past twelve."  He took out his pocket watch again.
"Oh, dear, it's half past now."  "The Natural History museum's way up
in the West Seventies," Hal said.  "I'd best get a taxi, then."  Hal
looked up the one-way street.  Traffic was moving at a crawl.  "That's
not going to be so easy this time of day," he said.
The old man muttered something unintelligible and appeared to hold his
breath.  His face turned beet red.  "Hey, take it easy," Hal said.
"You find a phone, you give this guy a call .  . ."  Taliesin made a
loud popping sound with his mouth.  "That ought to take care of
things," he said.  "You feeling okay?"  At that moment, the near lane
of traffic suddenly cleared with the exception of a yellow taxi
speeding toward them.  Taliesin held up his cane, and the cab stopped.
"Works every time," he said with a grin as he opened the door, "I'll he
damned," Hal whispered.  "A Checker, too."

"Oh, Mr.  Woczniak."

Taliesin took something from his jacket and pressed it into Hal's hand.
It was made of paper.
Soft paper.  Soft and folded into a roll.  Oh, yes.  "For your trouble.

Please."

"Oh, no, I couldn't."  "I insist."  Benny's was calling to him.
"Well.  . i."  "Jolly good meeting you," the old man called as he
slammed the door.
The cab sped away.  Within seconds, the lane was again jammed up with
cars.
Hal shook his head and laughed, then remembered the bill the old man
had placed in his hand.
Screw Dimitri Soskapolis.  Screw Benny.  He was going to Gallagher's
for a steak and a highball.  Happy days were here again.
He looked at it.  It wasn't money.  It was a ticket to "Go Fish!", worn
and crumpled after months of loving fondling.  "Sheesh," Hal muttered,
truly understanding the meaning of despair.
He was about to throw it away when a sudden strong breeze toppled the
sign in the lobby.  It crashed onto the marble floor with an
ear-splitting clang.

FREE LUNCH TODAY, it said.

Hal sighed.  Well, what the hell.  Nobody else was going to give him a
free lunch.

CHAPTER FOUR

Hal took the elevator up to the top floor, where a harried-looking
security guard was checking the tickets of last-minute audience members
pushing to get to their seats before the start of the show.
Hal flashed his ticket at the guard.  "Where's lunch?"  he asked.
"After the show," the guard said, scanning Hal with an air of disgust.
"You're kidding.  You mean I have to sit through the whole thing?"
The guard wrinkled up his nose.  "Yeah.  And somebody's got to sit
through it next to you.  Keep moving."  Hal looked at the clock on the
wall.
Still an hour and a half before the Greek pimp would show up'at
O'Kay's.  If he showed up at all.
He evaluated his options.  True, "Go Fish!"  was probably as
entertaining as walking behind a flatulent horse, but the room was
air-conditioned, there were comfortable seats inside, and nobody said
he had to stay awake.  Besides, the prospect of a hot meal in the CBS
cafeteria was looking better all the time.  With a shrug, he went into
the studio and slinked over to a seat near the back as the curtain rose
to reveal a stage set designed to look like a dilapidated hillbilly
farm.
Hal had, in fact, heard of the show, as had nearly everyone in the
country.  "Go Fish!"  was a phenomenon in the television industry, an
incredibly corny game show featuring a hillbilly theme, impossibly
difficult questions, and cruel stunts designed to humiliate the
contestants who failed to answer correctly.
The stunts were clearly the highlight of the show and the reason for
its ranaway success.  From its beginnings as a local program in
Birmingham, Alabama, TV audiences were entranced by the sight of
middle-aged women and game old gentlemen wrestling with rubber cows or
wading through vats of mud as punishment for failing to name the major
weaknesses of the Weimar Republic.  As the show went national, the
stunts became more varied, although no less sadistic, and its regional
host was replaced by a slick game-show veteran carefully dressed and
made up to look like a mountain man.
The mishmash of elements in the show was weird but mesmerizing, and the
fact that "Go Fish!"  was broadcast live gave it an edge that shot it
to the top of the daytime ratings almost immediately.  Now, two years
after its nationwide debut, it was already in syndication, and taped
repeats of the show were aired several times a day.
Hal could not have avoided seeing it if he'd tried.  At 12:30 P.M every
television in every saloon in Manhattan was tuned to "Go Fish!".
And now, he thought with a sigh, his degenerate ways had finally
reduced him to sitting through an actual segment.  He closed his eyes
and tried to sleep.
Seconds later, he was awakened by the din of strummed banjos blaring
over the loudspeakers to usher in the show's host, a toothy urbanire
named Joe Starr whose manner was completely at odds with the overalls
and tattered straw hat he was wearing.  Despite the fact that audiences
had watched him for years on a number of other shows, Starr affected a
Southern drawl while he explained the rules of the game.
Participants, he twanged, were selected from the audience at random,
their seat numbers having been placed in a device known as the Rain
Barrel at the center of the stage.  When their numbers were called,
contestants were given the chance to win fabulous prizes by answering
"some itty bitty questions ever'body ought to know."  The audience
laughed.  "And if you don't answer 'em right, why then .  . ."  Joe
Starr shrugged elaborately as the banjo music was replaced by the sound
of chickens squawking.  "You know what that means, folks."  A dummy
dressed in a man's suit flew across the stage behind Starr.
The chicken squawks were drowned out by the sound of water splashing as
the dummy landed offstage.  The audience cheered.
Starr pretended to wipe something out of his eye.
None of the first three contestants answered even one question
correctly and were immediately smeared with cream pies, forced to chase
a pig through a vat of gelatin or dunk one another in tubs of grapes in
a quest for a brand-new frost-free refrigerator and fifty square feet
of parquet flooring.
Hal settled back into his seat and folded his arms over his chest as he
felt himself drifting.  At least the music had stopped, and in his
condition, the audience noise didn't disturb him much.  "Doesn't look
like we got too many geniuses in the audience today," Joe Starr said,
shaking his head as if it were perched on the end of a spring.  "Well,
let's find a new contestant in the Rain Barrel, okeydokey?"  Hal
half-heard the applause from the audience and the wobbling of some
mechanical device on stage.  He could smell himself, a combination of
stale liquor and ancient sweat.  His head felt as if bombs were
exploding inside it.  His hair, he thought briefly, hadn't been cut--or
combed, for that matter--in weeks.  His breath felt as if it were about
to ignite.  "Two fifty-one!"  Benny's.  That was where he would spend
the evening.  A few quiet hours, maybe watch the Mets on TV.  No women.
It was always too rough the morning after when a woman was involved.
"Seat number two fifty-one?"  Soskapolis owed him.  That's the
attitude.  Hey, Dirnitri, you rich Greek bastard.  t A hand touched his
shoulder.  He opened one red eye.
A gorgeous redhead in a Daisy Mac push-up halter and a minuscule pair
of denim shorts beamed at him.  "Your seat number's been called, sir,"
she said through her immovable smile.
"What?"  "Here he is!"  the redhead shouted cheerily, waving and
bouncing up and down.
Hal followed the movement of her bosom with interest.  In another
moment, an equally ravishing blonde was also in the aisle beside him.
"No, no thanks," he said.
They ignored him, pulling and prodding him with the expertise of
downtown bouncers until he was On his feet.  "Come on down!"  Joe Starr
called out.  The audience applauded.  A thousand banjos strummed.
"Shit," Hal muttered.  As if his life weren't bad enough, he was now
about to be terrorized on national television.
Onstage, Joe Starr clapped him on the back.  "Howdy, pardner," he
roared into Hal's ear.  "What's your name?"  "Woczniak," Hal said.
"Whoa, Nellie.  How's about a name old Joe can say?"  "Hal," Hal said.
"Now that's better.  Where you from, Hal?"

"West Side."

"Oh, a real New Yorker, eh?"
"'S'right."  "I see we got a man of few words here," Joe Starr said.
"Ready to play 'Go Fish!'?"  "I'd rather go back to my seat."  Joe
Starr led the audience in laughter.  "This man looks like he's had a
hech of a rough night, ladies and gentlemen."  His head waggled
precariously.  "Okay, Hal, I don't want to get you riled up.  Know how
to play the game?  A hundred dollars for every kee-rect answer.  Five
kee-rect answers, and you win the Grand Prize.  And just what is that
Grand Prize, you may ask?"  At that moment, accompanied by "oohs" from
the audience, a curtain opened to reveal a giant blow-up of Big Ben
atop St. Stephen's Cathedral.  "A fabulous two-week, all-expenses-paid
trip to London!"  Starr boomed.  "How's that sound, Hal?"  "Okay."  He
picked some mucus out of his eye.  "I can tell you're all excited."
"Yeah."  Let's get this over with, he thought.  "Think you can answer
all five questions?"
"Dunno."  "If you can't, you're going to be doing some fancy stepping
up here, you know that?"
"Uh."  "Want to check and see if your hart's still beating, Hal?"
Laughter from the audience.  "He's going to wake up any minute, folks."
More laughter.  "Can we get on with this?"  Hal said.  "He's alive!"

Applause.

"Okay, Hal, you're a good sport.  Ready for the first question?"  "I
guess so."  "Okay, then."  Starr held up his hands as if conducting an
orchestra.  "Go Fish!"  the audience shouted in unison as the two
beautiful girls who had forced him out of his seat jiggled on stage.
They were pushing what looked like a well.  It was made of Styrofoam
and painted to resemble weathered wood, with the words Ole Fishing Hole
scrawled across the front in antic letters.  Inside was a wire-mesh
basket half-filled with little pastel-colored plastic fish.
Joe Starr handed Hal a fishing pole of sorts.  On the handle was a
lever that manipulated a clip at the end of a long steel tube which
served as the line.  "Now you just dip that in the Ole Fishing Hole
wherever you want, Hal, and pull us up a fish.  Got that?"  Obediently,
Hal extracted a pink fish.  Joe Starr plucked it off the clip and
opened it to reveal a small white envelope.  "Here's the question,
folks," he said as he pulled a card out of the envelope.  He read it
silently, then laughed and placed an apologetic hand on Hal's shoulder.
"Now, before I do this, I just want you to know I don't write these,
okay?"  More audience laughter.  "You ready, Hal?"  "Yeah, yeah," Hal
said wearily.  "Go ahead."  Unconsciously he squeezed his eyes shut in
a grimace.
Starr cleared his throat, then read: "According to Malory, who was the
legendary knight of the Round Table who actually found the Holy Grail
and died with it in his possession?"  He shook his head as if he were
the clapper in a bell.  "Well, I got to say that ain't something you
read in the National Enquirer every day.  Want me to repeat the
question?"  "Re .  . . no," he said, his voice hoarse with wonder.
Weird as it was, he knew the answer to the question.  "Galahad."
"Galahad is kee-rect!"  Joe Starr shouted, slapping Hal on the back.
Banjo music swelled to an ear-splitting level.  The two buxom women ran
on stage to kiss Hal.  The audience cheered.  "Now, how the Sam Hill
did you know that, Hal?"  Starr asked as the music died down.
Hal shrugged.  "Well, you just won yourself a hundred bucks, old
buddy."  He slapped a bill into Hal's hand.
It was not a real hundred-dollar bill.  It was a certificate with a
form on the reverse side.  "Balls," Hal said, but his comment was
drowned out by a new surge of music.  "Well, that's all the time we got
today, folks.  Hal's going to be back tomorrow, though, so you make
sure you're on hand to watch him .
. ."  "Go Fish."  the audience shouted.
Joe Starr waved to the camera.  "What do you mean, I'll be back
tomorrow?"  Hal asked crankily.  "You want the hundred, don't you?"
Starr said from the side of his mouth, still grinning and waving.
"Yeah .  . ."  The camera's red light went off.  "You don't get the
money till your run is over," Starr said without a trace of Southern
accent.
He walked into the wings.  Hal followed him.  "How long's that going to
take?"  Starr turned to face him.  "Tomorrow.  Count on it.  And for
God's sake, take a shower."  He jerked his thumb at a young man wearing
a ponytail.  "Tell our contestant the rules about coming on for a
second day."  The young man sniffed.  "Got to change your shirt," he
said.  "All right, all right," Hal said.  As he left the studio
theater, someone handed him a paper bag.  It contained a chicken
sandwich with a strip of wilted lettuce and a plastic cup half-filled
with Hawaiian Punch.  "Enjoy," the security guard said.
Hal ate his lunch on a bench in Rockefeller Center, reliving his small
triumph.  Who would ever have thought that jerk would ask him about the
knights of the Round Table?
He almost laughed aloud.  They had been his first love.  Ever since two
broken legs in the fourth grade had forced Hal to read for pleasure,
his alternate universe had been populated by the likes of Sir Launcelot
and Gawain the Green Knight and young Perceval.  They had become like
friends to him, and more.  They were the men who had raised him, with
their code of chivalry, their ideals of courage and faith.
Hal's mother had died in the accident that broke his legs.  A
hit-and-run up on East 115th Street.  She was spending the food money
to see some fortune-teller in Spanish Harlem and had dragged Hal along,
despite his protests.  "Didn't I tell you?  Didn't I tell you she'd see
that halo thing over your head, same as me?"  she had asked him after
they left.  "Jeer, Ma," Hal whispered, blushing horribly as two pretty
girls chattering in Spanish passed them crossing the street.
His mother laughed and swung her beefy arm around his neck, further
mortifying him.  "I seen it since you was a baby, Harold, and I always
knew it was magic.  Your life's going to be something special, believe
"Will you cut it out?"  He wriggled away from her grasp.  "She's a
phony, Ma.  She tells that to everybody.  That's how she gets you to
give her money."  "What do you know?  You don't know nothing."  She
swatted him.
"You're going to grow up to be President.  Or a millionaire.
Something.  I seen it since you was.  a .  . · But the car was already
careening toward them by then, moving too fast for either of them to
get out of the way.  Hal took a glancing blow that broke his legs, but
his mother was hit straight on.  Hal screamed as he watched her limp
body, stuffed into its heavy black coat, fly in an arc to the other
side of the street.
The driver slowed down momentarily, then sped off again.  He was never
identified.
Hal spent most of his time alone in the Inwood walk-up he called home
during the months that followed, while his father, known as Iron Mike
to his cronies, spent his evenings getting into fistfights in
neighborhood dives.
Mike Woczniak wasn't a bad sort, Hal would begrudgingly admit years
later.  Sometimes, when he remembered, he brought home hot dogs for the
boy, or a cheese sandwich, or a six-pack of soda.  And on good days,
when he wasn't snarling with a hangover, he sometimes took Hal with him
by taxi to the garage where he worked.  Weighted down by the double
casts, Hal would sit on a couple of crates stacked together and watch
as Iron Mike worked on a car's engine with the grace and precision of a
surgeon, explaining as he went the intricacies of the internal
combustion engine.
If Hal hadn't graduated from high school, if he hadn't gone to CCNY or
joined the Bureau, if he hadn't accomplished any of the things that had
so astonished and pleased his cabbage-eating relatives, he probably
would have made a first-rate mechanic.  As it was, Hal's skill with
cars was currently the only thing that stood between him and
starvation.
But the best things to come from the bleak months after his mother's
funeral were the books.  The first was T. H. White's The Once and
Future King, dropped off by the school librarian.  At first, Hal had
groaned at the size of the volume, but as the long days wore on and the
images on the fuzzy black-and-white television in the apartment grew
less and less visible, he began to read.
It was a revelation.  Here was a world of honor, of magic, of mystery
and truth and bravery, and it had been real.  From the first page, Hal
had believed in Merlin's outlandish wizardry and young Arthur's special
destiny to unite the world.
In time, of course, he dismissed the more farfetched legends, but he
never lost his interest in the castles and heraldry of the.  Middle
Ages and the feudal system which had saved Europe from chaos after the
retreat of the occupying Romans.  And he had continued reading about
the knights of the Round Table long after other boys his age had turned
their attention elsewhere.  Gawain and Gaheris, Lucan and Bohort and
Lionel, Tristam the lover, and Launcelot, the noblest and, in the end,
most human of them all .  . . These were the men who had shaped his
life, and they never stopped being real to him.  I make thee a knight;
be valiant, knight, and true/ Even now he remembered the words of the
initiation ceremony which had so entranced him when he read them in his
youth.  To have grown up during those times!  To have fought with the
great men whom history had made into legend!
Hal smiled.  How ironic that the Ole Rain Barrel had coughed up the one
question he'd been qualified to answer.  "Be valiant, knight, and
true," he said aloud.  "What, mister?"  A young boy stopped in
mid-sprint in front of him.  "Nothing."  Hal took another bite of his
sandwich.  "Hey, watch me."  Instantly, with the unselfonscious
arrogance which only five-year-olds possess, the boy turned a
somersault on the concrete walkway.
Hal applauded as the boy thrust his arms skyward, a blob of chewing gum
stuck to his hair.  "Tyler!  Tyler, come here this minute!"  A young
mother rushed up to the boy, brushed him off mercilessly, then wrenched
him away, scolding loudly.  "Don't you ever do that again, you hear me?
You could have fallen into the ice-skating rink.  And I've told you a
million times not to talk to strangers."  "But he was--" "He was a
dirty man, that's what he was.  It only takes a minute, Tyler..."
Her voice faded away into the crowd.
Hal finished his sandwich.  Well, she's right, isn't she?  Valiant and
true .  . · They were nothing more than words, read long ago by a boy
who had never become a knight.
He was just a dirty man now.
He crushed the sandwich's cellophane wrapper into a ball and tossed it
on the ground.

CHAPTER FIVE

"What was the medieval English name for Scotland?"  "Albania," Hal
said.
Joe Starr did a double take.  He looked back at the card in his hand.
"You're right."  He held the card up to the audience and shrugged.
"He's right, folks."  Wild banjo music played.  Daisy and Mae, as Hal
had come to think of the two generously endowed hostesses of "Go
Fish!", slinked on stage to embrace him.  The audience cheered,
although not so loudly as before.
They had come to watch zany sight gags, not an intellectual
question-and answer show.  Joe Starr shot Hal a wary look out of the
corner of his eye.
After the noise quieted, Starr pointed Hal to the Ole Fishing Hole
again.  "Let's try this one," he said.  "Go Fish!"  the audience
chanted obediently.
After Hal went through the motions of retrieving an envelope from the
Styrofoam well, Joe Starr opened it an frowned momentarily before
resuming his Amos persona for the camera.  "Well, I'll be dipped," he
drawled.  "Looks like another question on medieval English history
"Great," Hal said.
There was a mild rustle from the audience.  "Now, I got to tell you,
folks, this is one hech of a coincidence, and I ain't lying.  We got
questions in the Fishing Hole about everything under the sun, believe
me, for the same category to come up three times in a row .  . He
looked offstage at his producer.  "Well, .it just goes to show that
lightning sometimes strikes twice.  Up where I come from, we got the
stills to prove it."  The producer waved him on.  "Okay, Hal, Here's
the question: Before the Black Plague that hit Europe appeared, there
was another epidemic that went through Britain.  What was it?"  A loud
clock began ticking.  "The Yellow Plague," Hal said.
Joe Starr signaled for the clock to stop.  "What's that, Hal?"  , "The
Yellow Plague."  "By gum, that's it!"  "It came from Persia .  .
." Hal began, but the raucous banjo music drowned him out.  "Be
right-back after a word from our sponsors," Joe shouted, extending his
hand to Hal.
He dropped it as soon as the red light on the camera went out.  "What
the hell's going on here?"  he demanded.  "Hey, it's your show," Hal
said.  'You ask me the questions, I answer them."  "If you've been
tampering with these cards, buddy ..."  "Look, butthead .  . ."
"You're on!"  the producer rasped from the wings.
Starr plastered a smile on his face and slapped Hal on the back, hard.
"Well, folks," he said, "it looks like Hal here is on one hech of a
roll, wouldn't you say?"  There was some desultory clapping from the
audience.  'A few people booed.  "You've got three kee-rect answers.
Two more, and you win an all-expenses-paid trip to London, England!"
He waited for an audience response, but there was none.  "So what do
you say, Hal?  Dip that pole down into the Ole Fishing Hole and .  . ."
He waited.  "Go fish," a few spectators said flatly.
Hal poked the fishing rod into the receptacle, pulled up a green fish,
and waited for Joe Starr to take it.  "Just wondering, Hal," Starr
asked as he fondled the envelope.  "What happens if this is a question
about rocket science?"  "Then I guess you get to throw a pie in my
face," Hal said.  The audience cheered.  "Oh, it'll be worst than
that," Starr said with a grin.  "Lordie, yes."  He tore open the seal
and took out the card.  "Uh ..."  He tried a smile.  "It's another
question about Medieval English history."  The audience got to its
feet, hissing and catcalling.  "This show is fixed!"  someone shouted.
Joe Starr did his best to calm them down.  "Whoa, there," he said with
false heartiness.  "Wait'll you hear this friends and neighbors.  It's
a doozy.  Ready, Hal?"
"Shoot."  "Scare!"  someone screeched.
Starr wiggled his head confidently.  "The Western world's first
tragedy, Gorboduc .  . ."  He pronouced it Gore-bow-duck.  "Hey, he
sounds like the Russian version of Donald."  He waited for the laugh,
but there was not a sound from the audience.  "Think he knows Mikhail
Mouse?"

Silence.

Starr cleared his throat.  "Okay, Hal, this play Gorboduc told the
story of two ill-fated brothers.  What were their names?"  Hal grinned.
He'd read Gorboduc as a freshman in college.  "Ferrex and Pon'ex."
"You got it," Starr said wanly.
The sound technicians drove the level of the canned banjo music up to
maximum in an effort to drown out the shouts from the audience, to no
avail.  The spectators were leaving their seats, marching up to the
stage in protest.  Daisy and Mac, enroute to the contestant for their
ritual kiss, suddenly :: turned and ran offstage, out of the way of the
grim-faced army of advancing audience members being held at bay by the
stage crew.  The show's producer, with a telephone in his hand,
motioned to Starr from the wings.  "We're going to take a little break
here, folks, and when we come back, we're gonna .  . ."  Joe Starr put
his hand to his ear, beckoning the audience to shout the name of the
show.  "Go .  . ."  he prompted.  "Go shit in your hat!"  someone
offered.
The producer rushed onstage and huddled frantically with Starr.
Afterward, he approached Hal.  "Hi, Hal.  Frank Morton.  I'm the
producer."  He held out a clammy hand.  "Look, we're going to switch to
another contestant," he said, the sweat visible on his forehead.  "The
FCC's on its way."

"Oh, Christ," Joe Starr moaned.

Morton ignored him.  "We've got a room where you can wait for them," he
told Hal calmly.  "What for?"  "Because they think the game is rigged,
you jerk," Starr blustered.
"Oh, God.  God."  "Take it easy, Joe," Morton said.  "Take it easy?
Don't you understand?  This is the ffigging Sixty-four Thousand Dollar
Question all over again!"  "No, it's not."  The producer was struggling
to keep his voice low.
"This show is a hundred percent on the level, Joe, and you know that as
well as I do."  "Then how'd this guy answer those questions?"  They
both looked at Hal.  "Just knew them," he said with a shrug.  "Just
knew them?  Four in a row?"  "Hey, it's a game, Jack.  Somebody's got
to win sometime."  "Okay, that's enough."  Morton took off his glasses
and wiped his face.  "I'm sure there's nothing to worry about.  It's
just that with a live show, there are bound to be glitches once in a
while .  . ."  "Glitches!  This is my career, Frank!"  "We'll talk
later," Morton said.  He motioned to the big guy with the ponytail to
come take Hal away.  "You're dead, shitface," Joe Starr muttered.
Hal laughed.  "You don't look so hot yourself."  He waggled his head in
a parody of the show host.  "Old buddy."  Somehow Starr had managed to
get the audience to sit down.  On the greenroom monitor, Hal watched a
man being dumped from a crane into a vat of water balloons.  The
audience roared with delight.  The contestant had missed a question
dealing with astrophysics.
Weird, Hal thought.  There had to have been three or four thousand
cards in that well.  The odds of getting four questions in a row on the
same subject were impossibly small.
And yet it had happened.  Four questions on the one subject he knew
anything about.  "That's not true," he said aloud.  He knew other
things.  He knew automobile engines.  He understood firearms, police
procedure, a certain amount of law .  . .
Baloney.  If somebody had asked you those questions a week ago, you
couldn't have answered them.
It was true.  He had read Gorboduc, yes, but that had more than twenty
years ago.  Ferrex and Porrex?  Those had been buffed for two decades.
Albania?  Who was kidding?  He'd never even studied ancient Scotland.
It have been a footnote in a book he'd read somewhere along the line,
something he'd researched for a junior-high essay,:i maybe .  . .
You've never heard of any Albania outside of Europe, lunkhead.
He ran his fingers through his hair.
What had made him say Albania?
And while you're being truthful, Hal, let's not forget to mention you
don't know dick about any Yellow Plague.
He reached over and turned off the television just as men in suits
entered the room.
They identified themselves as investigators for the Federal
Communications Commission.  "Just a few questions, Mr .  . ."
"Woczniak."  "All right.  Do you realize that taking any part in the
manipulation of results in a contest of this nature constitutes a
federal offense?"  They loomed over him.  "Yes," he said.  "The FBI
explained it all to me once."  Four hours later, when the two FCC men
ran out of questions, Hal was permitted to leave the studio.  Joe'
Starr!  and the producer of "Go Fish!"  were on the stage with another
pair of inquisitors, the contents of the Ole Fishing Hole spilled onto
a table in front of them.

CHAPTER SIX

"We read every question in the barrel last night," the bleary-eyed
producer told Hal the next day.  "There were seven questions about
medieval England in the entire she-bang.  You picked four of them."  He
shrugged.  "It was a wild coincidence, but that's all it was."  "I
guess so," Hal said.  "The FCC guys want to supervise the final
drawing, but that'll be the end of it."  He smiled in a weary,
businesslike way.  "Sorry if we've put you to any trouble.  The show's
live, you understand .  . ."  "Sure," Hal said.  "Good luck."  Hal
nodded.
Morton was right, he told himself.  Coincidence.  That was all there
was to it.  A wild coincidence.
And the wildest part was that you didn't know the answers until they
came out of your mouth.  But you didn't tell the FCC boys that part,
did you, old buddy?
He shook the thought away.  When a man drank as much as Hal did, he
reasoned, there was no telling what he did or didn't know.  Things
happened to your brain.  You heard things, read things .  . . For all
he knew, he might have spent the past year reading up on medieval
history after he'd drunk himself into a stupor at Benny's.
Speaking of which, Hal figured some of the old gang had probably heard
of his TV success by now.  A snippet of tape from yesterday,s show had
appeared on the evening news.  It showed a swarm of angry people
leaving the studio.  A smiling man declared confidently that the fix
was in.  An irate woman blamed the government.  The same news item
showed Hal, looking even more scroungy than he'd felt, pronouncin the
names "Ferrex and Potrex."  No wonder they think the game's crooked, he
thought appraising his own image.  Not that it would make a whit
difference in his circle of acquaintances; the guys at Benny': would be
delighted that Hal had found a new way to money.
He could almost hear them all laughing around the bar, discussing Hal's
relative indebtedness to each of them and methods they would use to
collect.  He Benny's last night with a ten-foot pole.
Or at least that was the reason he gave himself for going for a drink.
He hadn't had a drink in two days.  "Ready, Hal?"  The guy with the
ponytail escorted backstage as banjo music played.  While Hal waited to
go on Joe Starr explained the presence of the FCC men on stage although
everyone in the country knew by now that episode of "Go Fish!"  would
be under close scrutiny by "Revenooers," Joe called the two
intimidating men stood behind him like pieces of scenery.
Starr had objected strenuously at first to being accompanied by Feds on
the air, but after learning that the audience for "Go Fish!"  would be
the largest in the show's history, he acquiesced.  After all, Frank
Morton told him, news stories about yesterday's near-riot had boosted
the show's visibility by a thousand percent.  "Are you ready for Hal?"
Starr shouted.
The audience sounded as if it were assembled to watch a football game.
There were cheers and boos, pneumatic horn: whistles, banners
proclaiming Hal a genius, and calling for his arrest.  "Come on out,
old buddy!"  The FCC men scowled as the contestant walked past them On
their instructions, Hal was dressed in a short-sleeved and plain
trousers with no belt.  "What do you think I'm going to do, hang myself
on TV?"  he had asked.
The Feds had not cracked a smile.
Joe Starr, too, made little attempt to hide his dislike for this
unpersonable contestant who had jeopardized his show and his career
with a bizarre streak of luck.  "Now, Hal," he said in his lazy,
down-on-the-farm voice, "how'd a guy like you get so interested in
medieval times, anyway?"  He shrugged again.  "Just liked it."  Behind
him, the two FCC men regarded one another.  "Well, I got to be truthful
with you, Hal.  Our friends the Revenooers have gone through every
question in the Ole Fishing Hole, and they tell me there are only three
cards left that have anything to do with medieval English history.
So it's not likely you're going to get one of them, is it?"  "Guess
not."  "Think you can answer a question on another subject?"  "Fixing
cars, maybe."  Joe Starr chuckled.  "Then I sincerely hope you draw a
question about fixing cars, Hal."
His eyes glinted malevolently above dark circles.  "Because if you
don't give me this one last kee-rect answer, I got a mighty special
treat for you here on the show."  The audience cheered.  "Oh, one more
thing, Hal!"  Daisy and Mac came on stage, carrying a length of black
silk between them.  Starr waved it with a flourish.  "This here's a
blindfold.  Care to check it, gentlemen?"  One of the FCC men men ran
his hands along it, held it to the light to check its opabity, then
handed it back with a nod.  "Just to show our good friends the
Revenooers and our studio audience that there's no way on God's earth
you could be reading the answers some kinda way, we want you to put
this on, Hal.
That okay by you?"  "Guess so."  The two women tied the cloth around
Hal's eyes.  "See anything?"
"NO."  "Good enough.  Are you ready, Hal?"  Starr shouted.  Hal nodded.
"GO FISH!"  The command from the audience was thunderous .  As Hal
blindly thrust the end of the fishing pole into the container, the FCC
men approached to stand on either side of him.  The plastic fish he
selected was immediately snatched out of his hand by one of the
"Revenooers," who opened and read the card inside before handing it
hesitantly to Joe Starr.  "Ready for the question, Hal?"  "Guess so."
Starr took the card from the FCC man, who looked strangely ashen.  "In
medieval times .  . ."  Starr's ann dropped.  He closed his eyes.
"This just can't be," he said softly, his accent forgotten.
The audience exploded.  The FCC men looked at each other.  One made a
helpless gesture of defeat.  "Should I read this?"  Starr asked them.
After a short hesitation, one of them spoke.  "Yes, sir," he said
quietly.
It took two minutes plus a commercial break to calm the audience.
"Now, listen up, folks.  The Revenooers say it was a fair draw, and I'm
here to tell you they're right."  The FCC men were roundly booed.
Joe Starr waggled his head ferociously.  "Man, oh, man, Hal, all I got
to say is you are one lucky son of a gun."  "Just read the question,"
Hal said impatiently.
Froth formed at the corners of Starr's lips.  "Oh, I'm going to read
it, all right.  But then you got to answer it."  A threatening clamor
rose up from the spectators.  "In medieval times, legends spoke of a
silk-like Substance that often appeared magically in connection with
extraordinary events.  What was the name ascribed to this unusual and
now-lost fabric?"  A clock began ticking loudly.  Hal took a deep
breath.  His mind was a blank.
It was a relief, in a way, not to know the answer.  For the past three
days he had lived in an agony of uncertainty, knowing things without
knowing them, wondering how information utterly alien to him had
somehow leapt into his mind like magic.  Now, at least, he knew he
wasn't crazy.
And he was four hundred dollars to the good.  Four hundred dollars,
plus one pie in the face, and it was filled with pheasant, pheasant pie
with bread ....
The cooking smells of pheasant filled the great hall, along with the
music of the singer and the barking of dogs.  It was strange to hear
the bird then, above all the other noise, but its song was so pure and
sweet that Hal looked Up, and then the bird flew in the open casement .
. .
my God, this is a memory .  . . with its wild song bursfrog out of it
and it came to rest on.... someone else's memory, not mine... It came
to rest on a man's finger, someone whose face Hal could no longer see,
a man who gave the bird a piece of bread.  And then the cup appeared,
floating above the table.
Hal gasped.  Stop it.  This is not my memory.  I never saw any cup.
All of them saw it.  The cup, floating in air, reminding the knights
that their work was not done.  Hal's knife fell noisily to the table at
the sight of it, but the bird did not stir from the long finger which
had become its perch.  It, too, watched the cup, the Grail, appear like
a rainbow in mist, draped in samite, shimmering like water .  . . "You
got an answer for us, Hal?"  Joe Starr barked.  The vision fell away
like a broken wall.  "Draped in samite," Hal whispered.  "Say what?"
"Samite," Hal said, feeling inexplicably on the verge of tears.
"Kee-rect!  You win a trip to London!"  The audience screamed.  Banjo
music began to play.  Hal heard only a few notes before he fainted.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The man who called himself Saladin squinted against the bright
afternoon sun streaming through the windows in Dr. Coles' office.  It
was the first time in Dr. Coles' entire tenure at Maplebrook that the
prisoner had been out from behind the bars of his basement cell.
"Please sit down," Coles said, gesturing to an armchair upholstered in
imitation leather.
The inmate sniffed in disdain.  He lifted his patrician head, making
the straitjacket which encased him look like an unnecessary barbarism.
"Are my new quarters ready?"  he asked softly.  "Yes."  The doctor
smiled.  "There was no room vacant, but then during the night one of
our other patients died in his sleep.  A curious coincidence," Coles
said.  "It is of no interest to me," Saladin said.  "I would like to
move into my room."  "I thought we might talk for a while first," Coles
said.  "A session of soul-searching before I'm allowed into the cell,
is that it?"  Coles fidgeted uncomfortably.  "Something like that."
Even with a distance of several feet between them, the doctor's neck
felt the effects of staring up at Saladin's imposing height.  "This
garment is humiliating.  Please remove it."  "I can't do that."  "Bring
an orderly.  If I attempt anything untoward, you can have me maced and
beaten before sending me back to the basement."  Coles knew the drill.
His predecessor had assured him that chemical spray combined with a
stiff stick was the most effective method in treating the criminally
insane.  Coles had hated the man from that moment.  "I've abolished the
use of mace here," he said.  "How humane, Dr. Coles."  There was a
glint of merriment in Saladin's dark eyes.  "Cruelty is not necessary."
"Not even if a patient tries to kill you'?."  "I don't believe you'll
do that."  "Then take off the straitjacket."  Coles blew a noisy stream
of air through his nose, thinking.  "That enlightened manner of yours
is really no more than a sham, isn't it, Doctor?  For all your
protestations, you're scared to death of me."  "Nonsense.  Now suppose
we chat about something else."  Saladin laughed, a deep and rolling
laugh, a sound like music.  Howard Keel in Kiss Me Kate came to the
doctor's mind.  "Of course."  He coiled himself into the chair
gracefully.  "What would you like to know?"  Coles picked up a yellow
tablet and balanced it on his knee as he leaned against his desk.  He
was looking down on his patient now and enjoyed the vantage point.
"Oh, whatever Comes to mind.  Your name, perhaps."  "You know that."
"I meant your full name."  "Saladin is the only name I have ever
known."  "Your mother called you Saladin?"  The tall man made a
dismissive gesture with his face.  "Perhaps not.
But I have not seen my mother since I was five years old."  "Where was
that?"  Saladin thought.  From his expression, it looked to be a
pleasant experience, mentally reaching back to realms long forgotten.
"Somewhere warm," he said finally.  "The women's breasts were exposed.
Tall reeds grew by the river."  "Which fiver?"  Saladin concentrated
for a moment, then gave up with an apologetic smile.  "It has been many
years, Dr. Coles."  "Quite all right.  Do you remember the country
where you were born?"  "No.  Just a few mental pictures.  As I said, it
was so long--" "Yes, yes.  Exactly how old are you, Saladin?"  "I've no
idea."  EXTRAORDINARY@@@@@@@, Coles thought.  He's negated his entire
personality.
Whoever "Saladin" is, this man has invented him from the whole cloth.
"Are there large segments of your past which you don't remember?"  The
patient's eyes blinked lazily.  "I know what I know," he said.  "Which
I suppose is what I need to know at the present."  "I see," said Coles.
"Dr.  Coles?"
"Yes?"  "The straitjacket," he said softly.  "I've told you.  I can't .
. ."  "Please."  Saladin looked down at the horrid device, then his
eyes met the doctor's.  "A little dignity."  Coles' mouth twitched.  He
had always hated straitjackets.  In other institutions, he had seen the
look on the faces of men forced to wear them for days on end, degraded
beyond hope by their helplessness.
Almost angrily he picked up the telephone.  "Send in an orderly," he
said.
Within minutes, a man in white hospital scrubs entered the office and
stood unobtrusively by the door.  With a nod to the doctor, he folded
his arms over his chest.
Coles walked behind Saladin and unfastened the restraints, then quickly
returned to his desk.  "Ah, much better," Saladin said as he shrugged
out of the garment.  He stretched his long fingers and looked at them.
"Thank you, Dr. Coles Then, in one convulsive motion, he lunged over
the desk and snaked his fingers around Coles' necktie.
Before the doctor could utter a sound in protest, Saladin brought his
head slamming down against the edge of the desk.
Coles gurgled, his eyes bulging.  Blood poured out of the horizontal
wound across his forehead, where flecks of frothy gray brain tissue
oozed.  His fingers twitched.
He looked up at his attacker.  Saladin was watching him with intense
interest, and a touch of impatience.  Behind Saladin stood the orderly,
his hands still crossed over his chest.
Dr. Mark Coles' last, half-formed thought was that the two men had the
same eyes.
Saladin's nostrils flared.  He held on to the necktie for a moment,
savoring the sight of the warm, dying object at the end of it.  "Get
the secretary," he said at last.
The orderly peered out the door.  "Doctor wants you," he said.
Coles' secretary, a young woman with a long mane of carefully styled
blonde hair, rose quickly and strode past the orderly into the office.

"Yes, Dr.  Coles?"

She barely had time to notice the blood spilling in torrents from the
doctor's body lying across the desk before Saladin grasped her by a
handful of her hair.
She screamed.  It was almost pretty, the high, sweet sound of it, but
of such short duration that, heard from outside the office, it might
have been a laugh.  Because just as the scream left her throat, Saladin
took her small golden head in his elongated hands and twisted it, his
eyes half-closing at the satisfying crunch of the small cervical
vertebrae as they snapped.
A stream of the girl's saliva pooled on the side of his hand.  He
released her with a cry of disgust.
The orderly watched the scene dispassionately and dialed the telephone.
At the same time he retrieved a shirt and a pair of long trousers from
a package hidden behind a bookcase in the doctor's office.
Beside the package was a cube of plastique with two small wires running
from it to an electrical socket into which a timer had been fitted.
Throughout Maplebrook, on every floor and on every wing, were identical
devices, ultimately hooked up to the new auxiliary generator.
The man who had supervised the installation of the generator had also
had Saladin's eyes.  "Clean this off me," Saladin said.  He held out
his hand as if expecting it to be kissed.
Dutifully, the orderly set down the telephone and wiped the dead
secretary's spittle off Saladin's hand with a tissue.  Then he picked
up the receiver again and spoke into it.  "Five minutes.
The lights blinked off for a moment before the auxiliary generator
kicked on.
A voice on the other end of the telephone answered, "Done."  Saladin
held his arms out and raised his chin, a'signal that he was ready to be
dressed.  As the orderly unbuttoned the blue prison shirt, a car pulled
up on the pavement in front of the asylum.  Another followed it.
The last item the orderly gave Saladin was a golden ring with a huge
opal set in the center.  Carved into the stone was an image of
Saladin's own face.
Three men got out of the cars and walked into the building, herding
between them a tall, cadaverously thin man, dressed in the rags of a
tramp.  The man looked around him, uncomprehendingly, as if he were
dragged.
In the lobby, one man walked up to the security desk, stationed at a T
where the east and west corridors met.
Behind the desk were two elevator doors.  "Name, please?"  the guard
asked.
The new arrival drew an automatic Beeman P-08 with a long webbed
silencer from under his jacket and slammed it across the guard's
forehead.  The crack of the blow echoed through the empty
marble-floored hallway.  The guard slumped forward, unconscious, his
head split and bleeding.  He looked as if he were napping.
The other men checked both corridors as the indicators above both
elevator doors spun downward.  One bell rang as the elevator reached
the lobby level.  The two men froze in their tracks, their guns poised
to shoot.
The door opened and a couple, obviously visitors, got out.  The woman
was dressed in a blue, puffed-sleeve Sunday-school dress.  Her eyes
were swollen and red.  She sniffed once, bravely, before seeing the
guard bleeding at his desk.  "Darryl," she whispered, clutching the arm
of the man with her.
It was all she had time to say before she too was clubbed across the
skull.  Reflexively, her mouth opened and closed like a fish's as her
legs buckled beneath her.
Her companion wasted no time on sympathy.  He plucked her convulsive
fingers off his sleeve and bolted for the front door and nearly made it
to the rubber mat at the entrance before one of the men caught up with
him and pounded him to the floor with powerful blows to the head.
The two men herded the tall tramp into the waiting elevator car.  The
door closed and the car headed down to the basement level of the
building.
The remaining gunman checked his watch.  The second elevator stopped in
the lobby and when the door opened, Saladin and the orderly got out.
The gunman bowed to Saladin.  Just then the other elevator returned
from the basement.  This time, the two gunmen stepped off alone.  The
reedishly tall man was no longer with them.  They too bowed to Saladin.
Then all five men headed outside.  Only Saladin, with his long legs,
was not running.
The cars had just passed through Maplebrook's front gates when the
building ignited like a fireball.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Five months before Maplebrook Hospital burned to the ground, just after
Hal Woczniak took early retirement from the FBI and began to drink
himself to death, two crack addicts robbed the safety-deposit boxes of
the Riverside National Bank in a suburb of Chicago.
The thieves left the bank with nearly ten million dollars' worth of
cash and jewelry but were apprehended a few blocks from the scene of
the crime.  The loot, which was stuffed into green plastic garbage
bags, spilled out of the getaway car onto the street when the police
made the arrest.  All but one piece, a hollowed lump of grayish green
metal which resembled a bronze art-deco ashtray, was recovered.
No one noticed the vaguely spheroid piece roll beneath the car and into
the gutter, where it gained momentum on its downhill run, floated for
half a block in a rivulet of melting snow, then came to rest in a heap
of cigarette butts in front of a draining grate.
It was here that a ten-year-old boy named Arthur Blessing found it.
He wiped off the mud with his mittens and discovered that the ball was
actually more like a cup, with a scooped-out cavity and an open end.
It greatly resembled the tiny handleless cups in his Aunt Emily's
Japanese tea set.
The cup was warm.  Even though he could see his breath in the cold
January air, Arthur felt its warmth through his soggy mittens.  He held
it to his cheek and experienced something he could not have explained,
something like the feeling he got when he hit the home run that won the
game at summer camp.  It felt like belonging.  "Emily!  Emily!"  he
shouted as he bounded up the stairs in the apartment building where he
lived.  "You never heard of an elevator, Mr. Elephant Feet?"  An old
man stood inside an Open doorway on the first landing.  He was wearing
a plaid shirt and the yellow cardigan sweater he had worn every day
that Arthur had known him.  His white hair stuck out in peaks around
the shiny bald center of his head.  His hands were spotted.  They hung
down at his sides, quivering in a rhythm of their own.  Through the
coke-bottle lenses of his glasses, his eyes looked enormous.  "Sorry,
Mr. Goldberg.  I hope you weren't sleeping or anything."  "Sleep, who
could sleep in this apartment?  Always people talking on the stairs.
Two feet away is the garbage dumper.  All day and night they bring
their garbage, then they stop and talk.  The middle of the night, it
doesn't matter.  You want a cookie?"

"No thanks, Mr.  Goldberg."

The old man pulled an oatmeal-and-peanut-butter cookie wrapped in
cellophane from his pocket.  "Here.  You take it.  I got two from the
dell.  They make you buy two, even if you only want one."  He bobbed
his offering again.  "Go ahead."  "Thanks," Arthur said.  The old man
smiled.  "Want to see what I found?"  Arthur took the metal ball from
the pocket of his wool baseball jacket.
Mr. Goldberg examined it, lowering his glasses to peer over them while
he touched the ball to his nose.  "What is it, an ashtray?"  "I don't
know.  I found it on the street."  "It's an ashtray," Mr. Goldberg
pronounced.  "You don't need it."  He handed it back.  "How's your
aunt?"  "She's okay, I guess."  "She don't go out at night."  "Not
much."  Mr. Goldberg shrugged expressively.  "Who can blame her, with
the crime?"  He craned over Arthur's head.  "Sooner or later, they're
going to come in here and shoot us in our beds," he shouted for the
benefit of the doorman, who ignored him.  "We got no protection here.
What we need is police security!"  The doorman shook his head and
smiled.  "Me, I could protect this building better than some they've
got."  According to Aunt Emily, Mr. Goldberg and the doorman had been
feuding for the past nine years, ever since the doorman had let Mr.
Goldberg's daughter-in-law into the old man's apartment to clean it
while he was in the hospital.  "I guess I'd better be going, Mr.
Goldberg," Arthur said.  "Okay.  You say hello to your aunt.  She's a
good girl.  Very pretty.
She should find a nice gentleman."  "Sure," Arthur said and rolled his
eyes.  "Pretty" was not a word he would use to describe his Aunt Emily.
He started edging up the stairs.  "I'm not talking about me, of
course."  "No, sir."  ':She should find a young man.  With a good job."
"Yes, sir."  "Tell her I got a nephew thirty-six years old, a lawyer.
Just divorced.
It was for the best, believe me."  He was leaning on the railing now,
shouting up at the boy's retreating form.  "Tell her to see me."  "I
will, Mr. Goldberg," Arthur lied.  There was no way he was going to
sic Aunt Emily on some unsuspecting jerk looking for a date with a
normal woman.  "See you in the morning," he called behind him.
The old man waved to him abstractedly as he began a new tirade against
the doorman.  "I'm home, Emily," Arthur said.
His aunt was seated at the computer, with her back to him.
She nodded to acknowledge his presence.  "I found something .  . ."
Emily raised her right hand, her index finger pointing upward, a signal
for silence.
Arthur took off his hat and mittens and placed them on the radiator.
They steamed, emitting a faint, oily wool smell.  He went to the
refrigerator, where the evening meal was set out on two paper plates,
ready for the microwave.  Tonight it would be green beans and braised
fennel, along with some speckled brown noodles.
Arthur groaned.  Emily Blessing had become a vegetarian years ago, but
since she didn't cook, she hadn't imposed her eating habits on her
nephew until a meatless take-out restaurant opened two doors down from
their apartment building.  Now, instead of the familiar TV dinner and
Dinty Moore stew which had sustained Arthur through his childhood while
Emily grazed on lettuce and raw carrots behind a newspaper, he was
forced to eat piles of Cilantro Rice, Rutabaga with Nutmeg, and other
delicacies which tasted even worse than they looked.
He poured himself a glass of milk and slammed the refrigerator door.
Emily raised her finger again.  "Sorry," he muttered.
He carried the milk to the dining table at the other end of the room
from Emily's computer.  There was a small paper bag on the table, next
to the stack of math worksheets and a freshly sharpened pencil.  Arthur
already knew what the bag would contain.  Every morning at seven ^.U
Emily bought a biscuit from the tea cart at work, and kept it in her
purse all day to give to Arthur in the afternoon.
It was part of a pattern, Arthur thought.  Everything was part of a
pattern with Aunt Emily.
The boy was up every weekday at five-thirty, cornflakes for breakfast,
downstairs to Mr. Goldberg's apartment at six-thirty, when Emily left
for work.  After an hour spent watching the news on television (to
Arthur's delight, the old man had decreed at the outset that television
had some redeeming qualities, despite Aunt Emily's ban on'it), Mr.
Goldberg would accompany him to the bus stop at 7:30, when Arthur left
for school.  Emily paid Mr. Goldberg a small sum of money each month
for these services.
Every day, when Arthur returned in the afternoon, his aunt was waiting
for him.  Or, rather, she was in the apartment.
She usually worked on her own at the computer until five or six
o'clock.
She rarely acknowledged Arthur before then.
He eschewed the sour-tasting biscuit in favor of Mr. Goldberg's cookie
and drank the milk while examining his new find.  He hadn't been
mistaken about the hollowed-out sphere.  It was warm.  Even in the
apartment it felt warm.  "Em--" She shook her head vigorously, her
fingers flying over the keys.
Arthur set down his treasure with a defiant clunk.  What did Emily
care, he thought sullenly.  She'd never wanted to raise a kid.  When
she was angry, she often reminded him that his bedroom used to be her
office, as if she'd made the ultimate sacrifice for him.
And in her mind, Arthur knew, she had.  Emily Blessing was a brilliant
woman whose work had helped to win two Nobel Prizes for scientists she
assisted at the Katzenbaum Institute, a "think tank" devoted to the
exploration of pure science.  If Emily had not had to curtail her
education in order to raise an orphaned child from infancy, those
prizes might have been hers.
He ran his fingers over the sphere.  The warmth was peculiar,
comforting.  He tried to balance it on his head but it fell and crashed
to the floor.
Emily jumped.  "Arthur, do you mind!"  she shrieked.  "Okay, okay."
"I've left some work for you."  "Yeah.  I see it."  "I beg your
pardon?"  "I mean ."yes, thank you."" "That's better."  Her fingers
resumed their clacking on the computer keys.
With a sigh, he picked up the first sheet of math problems.  They
involved cube roots.  Arthur solved them in his head, then went on to
logarithms and binary functions.  He used the pencil only for some
equations on the last page.  "Done," he said in a monotone, knowing
that Emily would ignore him.
He flipped the final worksheet face down on the table.  Beneath it was
an airmail envelope with a British stamp.  It was addressed to him.
Arthur tore it open eagerly.  With no relatives except for Emily, he
almost never received mail, certainly not anything from another
country.  "Dear Mr.  Blessing," it began.
It is our sad duty to inform you of the death of Sir Bradford Welles
Abbott .  . .
Arthur frowned.  Sir who?
According to our client's Last Will and Testament, a parcel of real
estate measuring approximately 300 meters square has been left to His.
Dilys Blessing or her surviving descendants.  As you are, to the best
of our knowledge, the sole living offspring of the deceased His.
Blessing, this property rightfully shall pass to you.
The above-mentioned real estate, referred to traditionally as Lakeshire
Tor, lies approximately three (3) kilometers southwest of Wickesbury,
on the southern border of Somerset County.  It is workable farmland,
although quite rocky, due to the presence of ruins from a post-Roman
hill fortification .... "Emily !"  Her hands flew up from the keyboard.
"Arthur, I have told you .  . ."  "Read this!  I've inherited a
castle!"  "Stop shouting."  "Okay.  Look," he said quietly, waving the
letter as he ran to her.  "Somebody died and left me a castle.  Well, a
hill fort, but that's practically the same thing.
His.  name's Sir Bradford Welles Abbott.
Isn't that a cool name?"  Emily's face froze in an expression of grim
surprise.  "Did you know him?"  Arthur asked.
His aunt took the letter without answering and read it silently.  She
had to clear her throat before she spoke.  "It says these lawyers can
sell the property and forward the proceeds to you here."  She tried a
strained smile.  "We can put it toward your college fund "But Emily .
. ."  His voice was a whisper.  "It's my castle..."  "Oh, it's hardly
that, I'm sure.  'Post-Roman ruins,' it says.  It's probably no more
than a few boulders."  "I want to see it."  "That's out of the
question.  My work .  . ."  "You could take a vacation, Em.  You've
never had one.  We could go to England."  "And what about school?"  "We
could go in the summer when school's out."  "There isn't enough money."
"Yes, there is.  I saw your bank balance on the computer--" "Stop
arguing with me!"  she screamed.  Her cheeks were a vibrant red.
She took off her oversized glasses and brought a trembling hand to her
forehead.  "I don't want to discuss this," she said quietly.
But she held on to the letter, reading it again and again.  "Emily?"
Arthur asked at last.
She looked up, as if startled to hear his voice.  "Why haven't you ever
told me about my mother before?"  "It just never came up, I suppose,"
.she snapped.  "I never .  . .
never .  . ."  Suddenly, inexplicably, two tears dropped onto the
letter in rapid succession.  Then Emily crumpled the letter into a ball
and threw it across the room.  "Keep it if you want," she said.  "It's
your property, not mine."

"Aunt Emily .  . ."

"I've got work to do."  She pushed him away with one of her narrow,
shaking hands, put on her glasses, and turned back to the computer.

CHAPTER NINE

Since Emily had steadfastly refused to discuss Arthur's inheritance,
the letter from Sir Bradford Welles Abbott's law firm remained
unanswered through the winter-and spring.  Nevertheless, news about the
boy's "castle" spread slowly through the apartment building and
eventually into the pages of the Riverside Shopper, from which it was
picked up by the Chicago Tribune.
The Tribune photographer took Arthur's picture in front of his
All-State Spelling Bee trophy.  It appeared in the Saturday edition,
next to an article about cooking with pine nuts.
Five days later, Arthur and Emily Blessing were running for their
lives.
It was the cup, of course.  Arthur had known there was something
unusual about the ball from the moment he first held it in his hands on
that cold January day when he picked it out of the gutter.  But Emily
didn't give it a thought until the Day of the Bacteria, as they came to
call it.
It was evening.  Emily was reading one of the Katzenbaum physicists'
treatises on the behavior of neutrinos in radioactive suspensions.
Arthur was playing with the microscope Emily had bought him for
Christmas.  He prepared slides of everything he could think of: a
scraping of broccoli from dinner, a drop of melted snow, oil from his
own nose, a pink smear of Emily's lipstick, a haft from his head.  Then
he watched them under the lens, marveling at the life inside these
innocuous substances, the motile one-celled organisms which lived
invisibly at his own fingertips.
Beneath the microscope they seemed to almost dance, their movements
quick and jerky, like Mexican jumping beans on a hot stove.
All except one.  On that slide, the bacteria had lined up end to end in
precise parallel rows and moved slowly back and forth in a display of
absolutely tranquil motion.  "Holy crow!"  he shrieked.  "You have to
see this, Emily."  His aunt got up with a sigh.  "What is it?"  the
eyepiece.  "Good God," she whispered.  "Hammer."  Arthur said,
imitating some of the boys at school who were fans of a wild-dancing
rap singer whom he had never seen.  "What is this?"  "Tap water,"
Arthur giggled.  "What was its environment?"  He blinked.  "The
container," she said impatiently.  "Did you have it in a clean
container?"  Arthur held up the metal ball.  Its hollowed center was
half-filled with water.  "I used this."  Emily rolled her eyes.  "But I
washed it out first."  She took an eyedropper, rinsed it in the sink,
then filled it with tap water.  Expertly she prepared a new slide and
placed it under the microscope.
She looked through-the eyepiece and then nodded.  "There," she said.
"The water's perfectly normal."  Arthur looked.  The bacteria was doing
what bacteria were supposed to do--jumping and dancing around the slide
in purely random motions.  "I know," Arthur said.  "But what about the
other slide?  Have you ever seen anything like that?"  "No," she said
honestly.  She tapped the ball disdainfully with the back of her
fingernails.  "This thing must be filthy."  "I used Pine Sol," Arthur
said.  "And I boiled it, too."  One of Emily's eyebrows shot up.
"How did you dry it?"  "I let it air-dry.  I used the same method for
all of the containers..
Slowly Emily's fingers wrapped around the spheroid cup.  ^ A distinct
sensation of well-being spread through her body.  "It's warm," she
said.  "Did you use hot water."?"  Arthur shook his head.
She inserted Arthur's original slide into the microscope carrier again,
stared at it for a long while, then shook her head.  "I don't
understand it," she said.  "Living bacteria, but in uniform motion."
She reached past the microscope to a pencil box on the boy's desk and
extracted a steel compass.  "Do you mind?"  "Guess not," Arthur said
begrudgingly.
With the point of the compass, she scraped on the bottom of the object.
It did not make a scratch.
Arthur touched the point of the compass.  The metal of the ball had
blunted it.  "Wow," he whispered.
Emily dumped the contents of the ball into the kitchen sink, refilled
it with tap water, made a new slide, and put it under the microscope.
She inhaled sharply as she saw the bacteria again lined up in perfectly
uniform rows.
She stood up and held the sphere in her hand like a living thing.
"Remarkable," she said.  "Where did you get this?"  "I found it on the
street."  "I want to have it analyzed."  "No," Arthur said, snatching
it away.  ``They'll keep it."  "It might be some sort of experimental
alloy.  It might have very unusual properties."  "I don't care!  The
institute's not going to have it."  There was a long silence before she
spoke.  "What if I do the analysis myself?."
she offered.  "I can go in early.  I'll bring it home tomorrow."  WAnd
you won't tell anyone?"  Emily hesitated.  "It may be something of
importance .  . ."  "It's mine.  That's the deal."  He had her, and
Arthur knew it.  Emily's curiosity was such that s he would have to
analyze the metal cup, even if it meant stealing it from her nephew;
but she wouldn't lie.  She didn't know how.  "All right," she said
finally.  "I won't tell anyone.". "Or show them."  "Or show them."
When Arthur got home from school the next day, Emily was not at her
computer.  She was sitting at the dining table, holding the sphere in
one hand and writing furiously with the other.  A strand of dark hair
had escaped the severe bun on the back of her head and hung over one
eye.  She didn't seem to notice.  The stack of papers beside her was
covered with drawings and equations.  "It cleaves in a curve," she said
immediately.  "At least I think so.
I was only able to get a fragment off the unit with the laser .  . ."
She shook her head impatiently.  "Anyway, its molecular structure is
unlike anything I've seen before."  Arthur had never seen his aunt so
excited before.  "What's it/nade of?."  "I didn't have time to run all
the tests, of course.  All I found out is that it doesn't contain lead,
gold, silver, uranium, nickel, iron .
. ."  She breathed deeply.  Her eyes were glassy.  "It doesn't contain
any known metal."  The silence in the room was palpable.
"Cheer-o-man," Arthur said at last.  "Dr. Lowry at the Institute is
working with properties of base metals .  . ."  "No!"  He snatched the
ball away from her.  "You promised!"  "Arthur, my analysis doesn't
begin to explain the activity of the bacteria .  . ."  "It's mine!  I
need it.  It's my goodquck piece."  Emily sank back in the chair.  "Oh,
Arthur, really."  "It is.  It brought me my castle."  "How can you be
so stupid?"  Her hands clenched.  "That thing might represent something
totally new.  An absolute scientific breakthrough.
You can't just keep it as a toy."  "It belongs to me," Arthur said
stolidly.
Emily leaped up, prepared to take it by force, but the boy wriggled out
of her grasp and ran down the hall.  "Arthur!"  she called.  "Come back
here immediately!"  All she heard in answer were the squeaks of his
sneakers as he bounded down the stairs.
She sighed and closed the door.
It had been the wrong approach, she.  knew.  In her eagerness to find
out more about the strange metallic object (It cleaved in a curve.),
Emily had forgotten that she was dealing with a ten-year-old boy.
Not that she had ever known how to deal with him.  Emily had never been
comfortable around children.  They were, to her, like Siberian tigers
or polar bears--creatures known to her, but whose existence never
touched her own life.
Emily Blessing was meant to be a scholar, not a mother.  She had flown
through school like a rocket.  Two skipped grades, a Westinghouse
Science Award at fourteen, graduation at sixteen, a bachelor's from
Yale at twenty, a master's at twenty-two, ready to go on for her
doctorate .  . · And then a note beneath the hanged body of a dead
woman.
Dear Emily, Please take care of my baby.  You are all he has now.
Love, Dilys Love, Dilys.  Dilys, with her flaming red hair so much like
her son's.
Dilys, the beautiful one, whose laughter always filled the room.  She
had come home only to die.
The police had cut her down.  And after the questioning, after the
funeral with its pitifully small group of mourners, after the item in
the hometown newspaper saying only that Dilys Blessing, 19, of East
Monroe township, had committed suicide at her sister's Connecticut
apartment, there nothing left of Dilys except for her infant boy.
She hadn't even given him a name.  Emily named Arthur, after their own
father who had died while Dilys living in London.
She had tried to raise the boy as best she could.  She left the secure,
mind-stretching atmosphere of the university, shelved her plans to get
her doctorate, and taken a researcher's job in Chicago with the
Katzenbaum Institute.  She arranged her hours so that she would be home
for Arthur as much as possible.  Through the years, she maintained a
frugal lifestyle in order to send him to the best private school in the
area.  On weekends, she took him to Kumon, a mathematics workshop.
During the summers, she enrolled him in computer courses at
Northwestern University.  Because of her efforts, she acknowledged with
some pride, Arthur showed every sign of developing a first-rate mind.
But he never confided in her, or shared a joke with her, or came to her
for comfort.  They had spent the past ten years like two trees in a
forest, near one another without ever touching.
That was her fault, she supposed.  Emily had never been close to
anyone.
That was Dilys' province.  She had always been wildly in love with
someone or other.  Passion had been the hallmark of her life.  And her
death, as well.
Still, Arthur would not have .run away from Dilys.  Emily began to walk
over to her computer, realized that she couldn't pull her thoughts
together, and changed direction.  She ambled instead into Arthur's
room.
She had never paid attention to it before.  There was a poster of Bart
Simpson taped to the inside of the door, and a smaller picture of a
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shouting "Cowabunga!"  in a white cartoon
bubble over his head.  TV characters for a kid without a TV.  Above his
desk was Rudyard Kipling's poem "If," painstakingly printed in Arthur's
own hand.  Next to it was a Gary Larson cartoon depicting a cave man
using a dachshund to paint on a wall, with the legend "Wiener Dog Art"
beneath.  There was a scuffed baseball in the corner of the desk,
probably a memento from the summer Arthur had spent at camp.
He'd liked that, Emily remembered, but there was no time for camp and
Northwestern's computer program too.
On the shelf above the desk stood the All-State Spelling Bee trophy,
thick with dust, and a red plastic lunch box.
Where had he gotten this?  she wondered, opening the box.  It was
filled with junk.  Sparkling rocks.  A piece of snake-skin.  A magnet.
A miniature magnifying glass.  The discarded carapace of a summer
cicada.
The letter from Sir Bradford Welles Abbott's solicitors.  All of Arthur
Blessing's worldly treasures.
Tears filled Emily's eyes.  Where had she been when he'd found the
cicada, or hit the baseball?  Had he told her?  Had she listened, at
least for a moment?
The doorbell rang.  She closed the red lunch box hurriedly, as if she'd
been caught snooping, then composed herself to answer the door.
Two men in good suits were waiting for her.  They had curious,
identical eyes.

"Emily Blessing?"

Her first reaction was panic.  Police, she thought.  Arthur ran into
the street, he's been hurt, they've come to tell "Yes," she answered
quietly.

One of them reached into his jacket.

Police IA.D. Oh, God, not this, not this .  . .
The man pulled out a gun with a silencer.  Then, before Emily could ven
sort out the intense, divergent thoughts that were screaming in her
brain, two bullets slammed into her chest.
She fell back, tasting the blood that flooded into her mouth.  The men
stepped over her, one of them pushing her legs aside to close the door.
Then, systematically, they ransacked the apartment.
Blinking to ward off the fog that was enveloping her, still unable to
comprehend the outrage that had been committed against her body, Emily
gasped for breath.  Then a thought formed in her mind.
Arthur's not here.
The muscles in her neck relaxed.  She closed her eyes and allowed the
blackness to seal them.  Her bladder released.  She was dying.  'Don't
come home, Arthur.  The words spun in the darkness of Emily's fading
consciousness like living things.  Marching CHAPTER TEN As the bullets
tore through Emily's chest cavity, Arthur was downstairs in Mr.
Goldberg's apartment, looking at the high school photograph of
Goldberg's divorced lawyer nephew who, the old man insisted, was
exactly the man for Emily.  "He don't look like that now, understand,"
the old man was explaining.
"He's put on a little weight, lost some hair .  . ."  "That's good,"
Arthur said, examining the wavy Beatle cut in the photograph.  "It was
the style.  Sloppy was in.  You don't know how many times I said, you,
get a haircut, look like a normal person for a change.  But kids, they
don't listen."  He smiled and tousled Arthur's red hair.
"Even you; am I right?"  "!  guess so."  Arthur stared at the metal
globe in his hand.  "Drink your cocoa."  Arthur cringed.  Mr. Goldberg
made his cocoa with one level teaspoon of Nestle's Quik and one
measuring cup's worth of tepid tap water in a dirty mug.  He took a
polite sip, then set it down.  "How is it?"  % "Okay."

"So, Mr.  Mad-at-the-World.  You fought with your Aunt Emily?"

The boy's eyebrows knit together.  ".She doesn't understand anything,"
he said.  "Oy, if I could have a nickel for every time a kid said such
a thing about his mother .  . ."  "She's not my mother," Arthur said
sullenly.  "That's right.  She don't got to take care of you.  She
don't got to wear old shoes so she can send you to that fancy school.
She don't got to stay home every night just so she can be with you."
He was leaning close to Arthur, jabbing a gnarled finger at the boy's
face.  "She does it because she loves you."  ....
Arthur turned away.  "That's not:why she stays home."  "Oh, it's not,
is it?"  "No.  She stays home so she can work.  That's all she cares
about.
She doesn't even like it when I talk to her."  "So who needs a lot of
talk?"  Arthur sat back in Mr. Goldberg's romp-sprung sofa and tossed
the metal ball up in the air.  "Not me.  Not with her."  Goldberg
caught it.  "Don't play while we're making conversation."  He examined
the ball.  "What are you doing with an ashtray, anyway?"  "It's not an
ashtray.  It's a good-luck piece."  Goldberg snorted.  "You're so
lucky, how come you're sitting here telling me your troubles?"  '
Arthur looked up at him.  The boy's eyes were on the verge of tears.
"She wants to take it," he said.
The old man was quiet for a moment.  "You broke a window?"  he
ventured.
Arthur shook his head.  "I did an experiment.  It's .  . . it's some
kind of special thing."  Goldberg held the ball in front of his face.
"This?"  "Emily wants to give it to the Katzenbaum Institute so they
can figure out what it's made of."  "Ah," the old man said.  "Do you
understand?"  "No.  I should still be smoking, I'd put a cigar out in
it."  Arthur's lips moved in the trace of a smile.  "Why is it so
important to you?  Goldberg asked quietly.  The boy covered his face
with his hands.  "I don't know!"  he shouted.  "But it is.  As soon as
I picked it up, I knew it belonged to me.  Or I belonged to it, if that
makes any sense."  Slowly his hands came down from his face, and his
eyes focused on a spot outside the dirty window.
"It was like I'd been looking for it for a really long time, even
though I hadn't been.
And I need it.  That's just something I know."  He wiped his nose with
his knuckle.  "That sounds really stupid."  Arthur stole a glance at
the old man's face.  Goldberg was nodding thoughtfully.  "This, this is
something I understand."  "You do?"  Arthur's face screwed up.  "Why
should you?"  The old man stood up and paced behind the sofa.  "Do you
believe in ghosts, Arthur?  Spirits?"

:

The boy stared at him.  "No."  "Well, they're with us, whether you
believe in them or not.  And every once in a while, when a person
really needs something--and let me tell you, that person may not even
know he needs it---one of the spirits looking after him will make sure
he gets it."  "Are you serious?"

The old man nodded gravely.  "Let me tell you something.  My wife Ethel
died in 1968.  In that chair."' He pointed to an armchair covered by an
old mustard-colored throw in the corner.  "Stroke, the doctor said,
very peaceful.  She still had the book she was reading in her lap.  The
Valley of the Dolls, it was."  He came around slowly and sat beside
Arthur.  "Well, to make a long story short, about three months later I
was visiting my sister and her family in the city.  We ate a good meal,
we played cards.  By the time I left, it was after eleven o'clock.  My
sister says 'It's freezing, Milton, take a taxi."  I say 'Are you
crazy, a cab to Riverside?  I'll take the train,' I says.  "So I walk
to the E1 stop.  Almost as soon as I leave the house, I find a
paperback book on the sidewalk.  There's nobody around, it's late, I
think maybe I'll read something on the train, so I pick it up.
As God is my witness, it's The Valley of the Dolls."  : : He held his
hand up solemnly.  "Now, Arthur, I am a Jew.  Jews do not believe in
ghosts.  When a person dies, that's it, This is what our religion
teaches.  But holding that book in my hand, I knew it was Ethel trying
to give me a message.  We were married for forty-one years.  We never
talked.  You know why?"

Arthur shook his head.  "Because we didn't have to.  That woman knew
what I was going to say before I said it.  I'd think, it's cold, a
little macaroni and cheese might be nice, and the next thing out of her
mouth would be, 'Do you want fish or chicken with your macaroni and
cheese?"  Are you getting my drift?"  Arthur nodded.  His mouth had
fallen open.  "So I put the book inside my overcoat and walked on to
the El.  It's maybe a ten-minute walk.  When I get there, the platform
is deserted.
The train just left.  I'm standing there all alone, when a mugger in a
ski mask comes up to me with a knife."  "Holy crow," Arthur said.
"Holy shit is what I feel like, let me tell you.  This individual tells
me to give him my wallet, which I do.  He stuffs it into this jacket
he's wearing, and then looks around to see if anybody saw him.
Nobody.  'Go,' I says, ' I won't chase you."  'That's right,' he says.
But instead of running away, the bastard stabs me."  Arthur gasped.
"Right in the heart.  Only my heart's not there, because The Valley of
the Dolls is in front of it.  All four hundred pages."  He folded his
arms.  "So I don't care what anybody says.  That was Ethel looking
after me."  He pointed to the metal sphere.  "And maybe this thing's
come to you in the same way."  "It must be," Arthur whispered.  "Maybe
it's from my mother.  She died when I was a baby."  Goldberg shrugged.
"Maybe her, maybe someohe' else.  But it's not Emily's fault she don't
understand.  She probably don't believe in ghosts, either."  "No, she
wouldn't," Arthur said reasonably.  "Then you got to explain it to
her."  :"She won't listen to me."  , · "Not if you run away from her."
Arthur looked abashed.

.:;?

The old man nodded.  "Try again;' Arthur.  DO it now, before she can
think of a better argument."  "And tell her you love her.  Women like
to hear that.
He made a face.  "Okay."  He smiled.  "Thanks, Mr. Goldberg."  He got
up and ran to the door ....
"Arthur?"  The boy looked back, the excitement still in his eyes.
"Touch her with it."  What?  ' "The ashtray.  She should touch it."
"What for?"  Goldberg flapped his hands to shoo him away.  "Go, Mr.
What-For.  Who listens to an old man these days?"  Arthur ran up the
stairs.  "Emily!"  he shouted.  "Emily, I've got to tell you something
. . ."  There was no answer.  The door was ajar.
And the first thing he saw was the blood spreading around Emily's body
like great, red wings.  "Oh, God," he whispered.  There were two gaping
holes in his aunt's chest.  Her lips were blue.  "Oh, God.  God."  He
dropped the cup and ran for the telephone.  As he dialed 911, the metal
sphere rolled toward Emily.  It came to rest next to her foot.

:,:-:

"What is your address?"  the voice on the telephone demanded.

"Four twenty-two East Lansing Street, Number Three-A."

"What is the nature of the emergency?"  .: "My aunt .  . ."  He gasped.
Emily's eyes blinked open.  · "Yes?  Go ahead."

"My... Emily .  . ."

Emily sat up, a look of bewilderment on her face.  Her .cheeks were
flushed.  Her lips were red.  "What is the nature of the emergency?"
the emergency dispatcher repeated.
Slowly, Emily opened two buttons of her blouse and touched the smooth
skin above her bloodstained 'brassiere.  "Sir!  What is--" "Never
mind," Arthur said.  "It was a mistake.  Everything's all right."  He
hung up the phone.
He walked over to his aunt and knelt in the blood surrounding her .....
"He shot me," she said.  ·

"Who, Emily?"

"I don't know.  Two men .  . . two shots .  . . I was dying."  She
looked into his eyes.  "I was dying, Arthur, and' now there isn't a
mark on me."  "Did they take anything?"  Emily stood up shakily and
looked through her pocketbook on the dining table.  "My wallet's here.
The money's still in it.  There isn't anything else .  . ."  Her hand
slapped the wooden table.  "My notes.
They've taken my notes."  Her eyes fixed on Arthur.  He was holding the
metal cup in his hand.
They were both silent for a few moments that seemed much longer.  "He
said to touch you with it," Arthur said softly.  "What?  Who are you
talking about?"  Wordlessly he went to the kitchen drawer and came back
with a small steak knife.  "Arthur, what on earth--" He sliced it
across the pad of his index finger.  Bright blood welled out of the
narrow wound.
Emily rushed over to him, but he held up his hand.  A day before, it
would have seemed a ludicrous gesture, but the expression on Arthur's
face was not that of a child.  He commanded authority, and his aunt
obeyed him.
Then 'slowly, tentatively, the boy touched the cup to his finger.
"Arthur?"  she whispered.
His eyes rolled back into his head.  His knees wobbled, but he willed
himself to stand.  The heat from the cup was coursing through his blood
like liquid music.
When it subsided, he lifted the cup.  The wound was healed, gone
without a trace.  Only the spilled blood remained.  "It can't be,"
Emily said.  "This is what they were after."  ':' "Then .  . . then
we'll have to get world of it.  We'll give it to the police .  . ."
Arthur shook his head.  "No, Emily.  It's mine.  It belongs to me."
"You can't be serious.  They'll come back."  "They'll come back
anyway."  "Then we'll give it to them."  "Don't you understand, Emily?
They'll kill us after they take it.
" Her hand went to her mouth.  "But there must be something .  . ."
Arthur wasn't listening to her.  "But how did he know?"  he" asked
himself, unaware that he had spoken aloud.  "Who?  How did who know?"
"Mr.  Goldberg.  He told me about The Valley of the Dolls."  "The .  .
.
What are you talking about?"  He didn't have time to answer.  He was
running down the stairs.  "Mr. Goldberg!"  he called breathlessly, his
legs pistoning down the worn marble.
The old man was not at his usual post in front of his apartment.
Arthur beat on the door with his fists.  He made such a racket that the
doorman peered around the corner.  "He's not there, son."  "Where is
he?  Where'd he go?"  The doorman shuffled uncomfortably.  "Mr.
Goldberg died this afternoon," he said finally.
Arthur felt as if he were going to faint.  "What?"  The doorman took
off his cap and wiped his forehead with his sleeve.  "About
three-thirty.  He keeled over right here in the foyer.  It looked like
a heart attack."  Arthur stared blankly at him, unable to speak.
"Ambulance got here real fast."  Arthur bit his lip.  "Yes, I .  . . I
saw it out front," he said.  "Yeah.  I was going to tell you before,
but with all the commotion and everything, I didn't even see you come
in."  Or the men who shot my aunt, either, Arthur thought dimly.  "Well
. . ."  He put his hat back on.  "I'm sorry, kid.  Guess you kind of
liked the old man.  "Can I see his apartment?"  he blurted out
suddenly.  The doorman made a face.  "Gee, I don't know .  . ."  "I
won't go in.  I'd just like to see it.
The doorman thought about it for a moment, then-shrugged.  "Sure, why
not."  He lifted the huge key ring attached to his belt as they walked
up the few steps to Mr. Goldberg's apartment.  "There you go," he
said, swinging the door open.
A mug half-filled with cocoa was on the coffee table in front of the
sofa.  Beside it was Mr.  Goldberg's photo album.
Just the way it was ten minutes ago, Arthur thought.  He backed out of
the room.  . "Hey, you okay?"  the doorman asked.
In the hallway, Arthur turned and ran back up the stairs as fast as he
could.
Emily was on her hands and knees, staring at the stain of her own blood
on the carpet.  She looked up at him.  For the first time Arthur could
remember, his aunt's face showed fear.
Arthur put his arms around her.  "We've got to get out of here, Emily,"
he said quietly.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The apartment's white curtains billowed with a tropical breeze that
carried the faintly animal scents of Kowloon and the sea up to the
thirtieth floor.  Across the bay, bathed in early morning mist, stood
the Hong Kong skyline.  ::.
Saladin crossed the white carpet without a sound, then folded himself
like a long-legged spider onto a wicker chair.  He was dressed in fine
white linen, a tunic and loose trousers.  As a servant brought him tea
and a newspaper, he turned his face toward the sun.
How he had missed that, the sun and the warm air and the sounds of
civilization!  After four years of artificial light and endless
solitude, he felt like a lazy insect crawling out of the soil.
He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window, and it saddened
him.  Those four years had aged him.  The lines in his face were deeply
etched, and his head sprouted a scattering of gray hairs.
How old was he?  Forty?  No forty-one.  He had been thirty-seven when
he entered the asylum.  It was important to be specific.
Four years was a long time.  He would get none of those days back.
But he would lose no more.
Angrily, he turned away from the glass and picked up the London Times.
Inside he found an article about the burning of Maplebrook the previous
week.  Firefighters and other experts had apparently determined that
the explosion was not an accident caused by faulty wiring, as was
originally thought, but a deliberate act of sabotage.
"We are working very diligently in sorting through the debris," the
newspaper quoted a Scotland Yard source.
In other words, Saladin knew, the authorities had no clue.  There was
little reason to blow up an insane asylum.  Even the IRA had not
claimed responsibility for this one.  Yet the work, according to all
the evidence, was Of professional caliber.
It was a crime without reason, the article concluded, against men whose
faces society did not wish to see.  "Yet these faceless men are dead,"
it read ominously.  "Their deaths mark the final chapter in the tragic
story of the Towers."  Saladin laughed, his momentary pique forgotten.
He was completely free now.  He filled his lungs with sweet air.  The
smile was still on his face when his houseman announced a visitor, a
man named Vinod.
Saladin had not seen him for years.
Vinod had traveled more than seven thousand miles to see him.  He had
made the journey because Saladin disliked talking on the telephone.  ':
"Well?  Where is it?"  Saladin asked immediately.
The man trembled.  "There have been complications."  The look that
crossed Saladin's face would have been enough to turn Vinod's insides
to jelly, had they not already been in that condition.  "We had kept it
in a bank.  But the bank was robbed.  We didn't know about it.  No one
expected--" "Where is it?"  Saladin repeated, clapping the man around
his neck in a death grip.
Vinod's limbs twitched.  He could no longer speak.  Desperately, he
pulled a piece of paper from his pocket.
It was a clipping from an American newspaper.  The headline read: i
LOCAL YOUNGSTER INHERITS CASTLE Saladin released his visitor and read
the piece.  It was about a ten-year-old boy named Arthur Blessing who
had come into a twenty-four-acre property in England upon the death of
an unknown relative.  The land, it said, held the remains of an ancient
castle.
The story was accompanied by a fuzzy photograph of a grinning redheaded
boy.
He looked at the date.  The clipping was several weeks old.  "Why are
you showing me this?  Saladin asked.  "Look .  . . at the background,"
Vinod rasped, still unable to speak clearly.
Then Saladin saw it, on a shelf above the boy's head, next to a trophy
of some sort: an object, obviously metallic, shaped something between a
bowl and a sphere.
The cup!
Saladin's mouth suddenly felt dry.  He struggled to contain his fury.
"How did it get there?"  Vinod's breath was foul with fear.  "We are
uncertain of the details," he said.  "It was not among the items
confiscated by the police after the robbery.  Perhaps it was misplaced,
discarded .  . ."  Saladin cut him off with a gesture.  "What of this
boy?"  Sweat was heading on the smaller man's upper lip.  "We assumed
you would want him eliminated."
"And?"  "We tried his aunt's apartment.  The boy and the .  . . the cup
were not there.  We thought the woman was dead, but .  . ."  He
shrugged.
"We found these."  He gave Saladin the notes Emily had made on the
chemical and physical analyses of the metal ball.  "I cannot understand
them."  "No," Saladin snapped.  "Of course...not."  :':: "After that,
they left."  "With the cup."  "The .  . . yes."  "Where did they go?"
"East.  We made an attempt on the woman's car in Detroit, but it
misfired.  Someone stole the vehicle.  The explosion occurred less than
a kilometer from where the boy and his aunt were staying."  "So you
killed a car thief."  Vinod's face was a mask of humiliation.  "We did
not wish to draw attention to ourselves by injuring bystanders.  But we
were afraid of losing them again, so we tried to kill them both as they
left the hotel.
He paused for breath.  Saladin's eyes narrowed.  "Go on," he said.
"It was a freakish accident.  An old man fell from a window .  . . a
suicide, perhaps .  . . The bullet struck him instead of the child.  We
. . . we had to leave .  . ."  "Impossible," Saladin muttered.  His
voice was low and feral, the growl of a wolf.  "Yes, sire.  It seems
impossible.  It is uncanny.  We found them again in Pennsylvania .  .
." Saladin waved a hand for him to stop.  "Where are they now."?"  "In
England.  They left on a flight to London two nights ago from New York.
To see the estate, most likely.  That is why !  I came here.  My team
was ordered to remain in the United States.  If you wish, we will go to
England, but we will need new identification, contacts for weapons .  .
." Saladin shook his head.  "No," he said.  "I won't need you there."
"Thank you, sire."  Vinod backed away.  Saladin smiled at him briefly,
and the little man's face flooded with relief.
When he left, Saladin nodded to his Chinese houseman.
The servant understood.  By morning, Vinod would be dead.
Surrounded once again by silence, Saladin studied the newspaper picture
of the boy and the odd metal sphere behind him.  How curious that his
name too was Arthur.
The boy had found the cup by accident, no doubt, just as Saladin
himself had found it all those long, long years ago.  He too had been
only a boy.
His first memory was fear.  When the savages swarmed into his family's
great house in Elam and the servant women screamed, he knew his father
and older brothers were already dead.
His mother did not look at him.  Years later, Saladin would realize, in
retrospect, that her simple act of disciplined negligence had probably
saved his life.  Since the fighting had begun, she had dressed her
youngest child in the rough clothing of a servant.
She treated him as a servant now, ignoring his cries as she faced the
soldiers from Kish and their.  black swords running with blood.
They cut off her head.  They poured through the house like locusts,
screaming their grotesque war cries, cutting down the helpless women
and old men who were all that was left of the ruling family of Elam.
The few servants and their children who were spared were marched far
north into the moated city of Kish.  Saladin, who had never known
anything but luxury and privilege, was taken on as a house slave in the
home of a merchant.  He was fed scraps from the table of the other
slaves and slept on the kitchen floor.  For three years, until he was
eight years old, he brought water to the women's bedchambers and served
at the dining table.
And then came the destruction of the ziggurat.
It was already centuries old.  There had been temples in Elam, also,
but none so grand or ancient as the ziggurat at Kish.  It stood in the
center of the city, surrounded in concentric rings by the public
buildings and the residences of the wealthy, then by the mud shacks of
the poor, and finally by the wide moat which protected the inhabitants
from raiders.
From the memhant's house where he lived, Saladin could see the priests
climbing the ziggurat's hundred steps to offer sacrifices to the gods,
those immortal beings who bore the faces and bodies of men but shunned
the company of those whose puny lives could be extinguished in the
blink of an eternal eye.
There were those who claimed to have seen the gods.  A farmer from
beyond the protection of the moat came to tell the king of Kish of a
terrifying encounter on the banks of the Euphrates.  The god, he said,
had risen from the water of the river, carded on the back of a great
fish.  He was naked, save for a miniature moon tied around his waist.
His skin, in the moonlight, had been white as alabaster, and his eyes
were made of jewels, sapphires so bright that they shone like stars in
the night.
The farmer had not dared to speak to the god.  When the moon-colored
deity saw him, he had held up his arms, supplicating the moon to strike
down the mortal.  The farmer had prostrated himself then, covering his
face.  When at last he raised his head, the god had flown from his
place in the water toward the dark sky, riding on a beam of moonlight
"He has seen the moon-god," the elders agreed.
The farmer was given three casks of oil for this vision, and though he
waited by the banks of the river each night for many years afterward,
the god never returned.
Fish and meal cakes were sacrificed to the moon-god each month by the
holy men who climbed to the top of the ziggurat by torchlight.  They
chanted the moon-god's name and asked for his blessing in the hunt.
Then came the earthquake, and when the ziggurat lay in ruins in the
town square, the elders would whisper that their sacrifices had
displeased the moon-god.  He did not want fish and meal cakes but the
life of the man who had dared to look upon his face.  They dragged the
farmer out of his home and forced him to climb the rubble of the
ziggurat, where they tied him to stakes and cut out his living heart.
And the earth lay still again.  "The moon-god is appeased," said the
elders.
No one missed the young slave boy who disappeared during the
earthquake.
The members of the merchant's household assumed that he had been killed
by the flying debris which fell during the terrible moments when the
ground yawned open and swallowed the massive ziggurat like a honey
cake.
No one looked for the boy.
No one saw the small footprints in the mud where the moat had buckled
like a ribbon and spewed out its water.  No one noticed the small
figure running across the land that would be known centuries later as
Babylon, toward the Zagros Mountains, far to the east of Kish.  Even if
he had been seen, no one would have thought of going after him.  The
mountains were the end of the world.  Beyond them was nothingness.
Every one knew that because the priests and the elders had decreed it
to be so.
In the Zagros Mountains, the boy shivered with cold and fear.  When the
earthquake had struck, his only thought was to flee from the house.
He had been in the kitchen with the cook and her helper.  At the first
rumble, the oil-filled pottery jars tumbled off the shelves and crashed
to the floor, coating the tile with a thick film that flared up in a
blanket of flame when it reached the cooking fire.  For a moment,
Saladin watched the carpet of flame with terrified fascination as the
two cooks shrieked and tried to beat out the flames with rags while the
floor shifted crazily beneath them.
Then the cook's hair caught on fire.  Her hands flew to her burning
head, her eyes bulging.  -:: "Help me!"  she screamed.
Saladin backed away.  She looked like a monster.  He shook his head.
No.
No.  She lurched toward him, toward the door.  He ran from her.
The next shock caved in the roof.  But by then Saladin was already
running.
He stopped only once, at the moat.  Until then, he'd had no plan to
leave Kish; the sentries at the bridges would have known him for a
runaway slave.  But there were no bridges now.  There was not even a
moat.  The water had vanished to flood the other side of the city.
Here was nothing but a river of mud.
Tentatively, Saladin took one step into that mud with his small bare
foot.  Then he threw himself in, digging and clawing until he reached
the other side.  He would never be a slave again.
Hunger gnawed at his stomach.  He had been running all day, but he
would have to Wait until morning to eat.  His feet were badly cut from
the rocks on the barren slope of the mountain he had climbed.  As a
house slave, he had not been given shoes to wear, but the soles of his
feet were still not tough enough to endure a long trek through open
countryside.  The bloody footprints behind him were black in the
moonlight.  He could walk no farther.  He must sleep now, he told
himself, here beneath the stars at the end of the world.  Saladin put
his head down on the dry earth and closed his eyes.
He did not hear the old man's footsteps.  He awoke to a sensation of
exquisite pleasure that began at his feet and warmed his whole body.
It was a dream, he thought.  A lovely dream from a long sleep in a bed
of feathers in his family's palace in Elam.
But Elam was gone.  The barbarians of Kish had destroyed it.
Frowning, he forced his eyes open.  At his feet, an old man was hunched
over him.  The man was dressed in a tunic of animal skins, and his hair
was a tangle of long gray strings, like his beard.  When he saw the
boy's face, he smiled a toothless grin.
Saladin gasped.  The man's eyes were blue, as blue as the sea.  And his
skin was white.
He shook his head and made a clucking sound with his mouth when the boy
tried to scramble up, then gestured to an object in his hand.  It was a
small metal cup of some kind.  He was robbing it over the wounds on
Saladin's feet.
Only there were no more wounds.  They had been completely healed.
Saladin heard a low sound come up from his own throat.  He had met the
moon-god.  ,' ;:

CHAPTER TWELVE

His name was Kanna, and he had lived, as far as Saladin could tell,
forever.  Kanna himself could not remember much of the time before the
Stone, as he called the cup, had fallen to earth.
He did know that it was before the Semitic peoples had 'wandered into
the valley and begun the civilization known as Sumer, with its weaving
and pottery and trade.  His people, the people of white skin and blue
eyes, had been hunters.  Hundreds of generations before Kanna, they had
walked to the valley from the high steppes of a land where ice rained
from the sky and coated the earth each year with a white blanket that
was colder than the fiver.
The Stone had crashed into the trees--for there were trees in the
valley then, before the sun had grown too warm--near the place where he
had built his fire.  Kanna had been a holy man, a healer who wandered
from tribe to tribe in the valley to tend the sick and sing to the
families the stories of their ancestors.  But he had been old even then
and did not often seek the company of men.  Most of his days were spent
in the mountains, gathering the herbs and roots to make his medicines.
His children had grown and died, as had two wives.  He was already a
very old man when he found the Stone.
He had seen the explosion in the night sky, a fireball shooting sparks.
When one of the sparks streaked down directly toward Kanna, he had not
attempted to move.  It was the tongue of the night come to eat him, and
he would not object.  There was no point in running from death,
especially when one had lived as many years as he had.
But the fireball did not strike him.  It slammed instead into a massive
cedar growing out of the hillside and severed its trunk like a mighty
axe swung by the moon itself.  The place where it struck the tree burst
instantly into flame.
Had he been a younger man, Kanna might have fled from the burning tree,
yielding to the will of the gods.  But he had seen lightning strike
before.  In his lifetime, he had watched vast tracts of forest burned
to ashes by the fire from a single tree.  And so instead of running
away, Kanna scooped dirt onto the fire with his hands.  The hair on his
arms singed.  His fingers blistered with the heat.  An ember burned his
face.
But he put the fire out.
In the morning he found the Stone's mother, a pitted, cratered boulder
still smoldering with its own heat.  It had cracked open when it hit
the tree, and its interior lay exposed and gleaming in the sun.
It was a thing of weird beauty, a mass of concentric circles'
interspersed with bumps so perfectly round that they might have been
eggs growing out of the hot metal.  Where there were no bumps, there
were depressions of equal perfection.  One of these was deeper and
wider than the others.
Then he saw it, lying against a rock: a perfect sphere of a color
unlike anything he had ever seen before.  He bent to touch it.  When he
could feel, through his burned hands, that it was not hot, he picked it
up.
He was disappointed.  It was not a perfect sphere.  Its top had come
off and its interior was hollow, as if it had cradled .another perfect
sphere.  He looked for the missing piece.  If he found it, he would
have not just one, but two spheres nesting together.  A moon within a
moon.  A true gift for the gods.  But he did not find the other piece.
Karma stared at the Stone in his hand.  It would be useful, he decided.
He could drink from it, like a gourd.  And it was beautiful.  And it
had come to him straight from the sky.
Suddenly he noticed his fingers.  The blisters were gone.  The hair on
his arms had grown back.  The sore spots on his face had healed.
Then he understood.  The gods had given him the Stone to heal the sick.
It was time he left the mountain.
Quickly he gathered up his things and set off toward the valley.  He
would tell the families there that the gods had smiled and brought them
a gift.
Never did he consider that he would become their god, or that the gift
he carried would make him immortal.
Saladin listened intently to the stories of the Stone.  They had taken
Kanna years to tell, since the two of them had begun with no common
language.  By the time Saladin was fifteen, he had learned all the
skills the old hunter and healer could teach him and had surpassed
Kanna in many ways.
He began to realize that the hermit was not only an old man, but a
completely different type of being.  And not a god; not unless the gods
knew less than mortals did.  For while Karma could still heal most of
the lame and injured creatures of the mountain without the aid of the
sacred Stone, he could not fashion a net to catch a fish.
Saladin had tried to explain the purpose of a net, but the old man had
only stared at him, dull-eyed.  It was not until Kanna saw what the net
his protege had made could do that he realized the boy had made a tool.
It was the same with numbers.  No matter how many times Saladin
demonstrated it, the old man could not grasp the concept of abstract
numbers.  Two logs, yes; but the difference between "three" and "many"
was nonexistent.  ----- Kanna, the boy decided, was quite stupid.
He had come from a race of inferior minds, men so limited that for
hundreds of years--or perhaps thousands, since Kanna could not discern
the difference--not one of them had questioned the improbability that
the old man would continue to live while whole generations of valley
dwellers aged and passed into dust.  Not one of them had dared to take
the Stone from him.  Even much later, when the climate changed
noticeably and the vast plains which had held giraffe and antelope and
elephant dried into lifeless deserts, when the limitless expanses of
fresh water in which hippopotamus had waded dwindled into two muddy
rivers, when the hunter-tribes fled the valley or died with sand in
their mouths, not one of them had sought to steal Kanna's power.
When they were gone, the New People came to the valley.  They were not
hunters, but farmers who lived in the parts of the valley that had once
been swampland.  They irrigated their fields from the muddy rivers.
They built their houses of mud brick and burned animal dung for fuel.
They wove their clothing from fibers grown near the rivers.  They
created art and spoke a language which used a precise grammar, so that
it was not necessary to augment it with gestures.
Into the midst of this advanced society had walked Kanna, reeking of
the animal skins he wore.  "Kanna was empty."  He clasped his hands
over his heart to indicate his loneliness.  "Here.  Kanna see New
People."  Saladin nearly laughed at the clownish mask of sadness that
settled on the old man's features as he remembered the encounter.  "New
People many.  One, two, many.  Throw spears.  Many wounds."  He pointed
to the places on his angient, unblemished torso where the weapons of
the Sumerians had struck.
Saladin tried to picture the faces of the civilized men when the old
hermit had plucked the spears from his body and walked away without a
scratch.  "That's when you became a god to them," Saladin said,
maneuvering a thick piece of wood onto the fire that warmed the dank
cave where the old man and the boy made their home.
Kanna looked at him uncomprehendingly.  "The New People worship you as
a god.  A white god with sapphires for eyes, who rides on moonbeams."
He told the old man the story of the farmer who had seen Kanna fishing
at night.
The hermit laughed, the firelight accentuating the deep folds of his
brow.  "Kanna run.  Karma think New People man try to kill."  When his
laughter subsided, his gaze settled into the hypnotic flames of the
fire.  "Bad to live so long."  "Not as bad as dying, I imagine,"
Saladin said dryly.  The old man smiled.  "After New People throw
spears, Kanna come to mountain."  He patted the rocky earth as if it
were a favorite cow.  "Kanna stay.
Kanna.  . . empty."  He accompanied the word with the same gesture he
had used before.
Then the corners of his eyes crinkled.  "But boy come."  He could not
pronounce Saladin's name.  "Boy come, not empty."  His hand touched his
heart.  His eyes welled with tears.  Saladin sighed and turned away.
The old fool's sentimentality bored him.  For seven years he had lived
with Kanna's apelike stupidity, because there was nowhere else for him
to go.
There still wasn't.  He had no future back in the valley.  In Kish, he
would be executed as a runaway slave if anyone recognized him.  Back at
Elam--if there still was an Elam-he would be a stranger with no status
or property.  No, he would not return in disgrace to the land his
father had once ruled.
Two cities, and beyond them the deserts and the mountains and the void
of world's end.
Suddenly he started.  He was in the mountains.  Since childhood he had
heard that the Zagros was the end of all life, and yet he had lived
here with Kanna among all manner of living things for seven years.
They had roamed the mountains for miles and had not yet approached the
abyss.
He whirled to face the old man.  "Kanna," he said, his pupils dilating
with excitement, "is there a land beyond the valley?"  The hermit
nodded.  "Many lands.
Saladin thought his heart would burst from his chest.  "In which
direction.
Kanna pointed first to the east, then described a large circle with his
arm.  "Many lands."  "But the desert lies to the east."  "Past the
sands," Kanna said.  "Along dry river, past a tree of stone.
A great valley.  Many New People."  "Past the sands .  . ."  Saladin's
voice was barely audible.  The priests had declared that the mountains
lay at the end of the world.
"But there cannot be .  . ."  Kanna nodded stubbornly.
For a moment, Saladin allowed himself the luxury of a dream.  A new
land, filled with people like himself.  There, he would not be killed
as a slave.  And perhaps he would not have to go as a servant.  He
could trade on his knowledge of healing.  Kanna knew every plant and
root and rock within a hundred miles and had shown Saladin how to use
their medicinal properties to treat wounds and sick animals.  "How can
I go there?"  he asked hesitantly.  "What route do I take?"  The old
man shook his head.  "Boy not go.  Boy die in sands."  Then he smiled.
"Stay.  On mountain."  He took the boy's hand and placed it over his
own chest.  "Stay.  With Kanna."  Saladin yanked his hand away.  He
could not bear the touch of the old man.
Do you think I'm going to stay here forever.  he shouted.  "Stay here
as the pet of an old monkey man?"  Kanna drew back in alarm, which only
fueled Saladin's anger.  "Don't pretend to be afraid of me!  You know
I'm going to die here an old man while you go on with your worthless
life.  You shouldn't have the Stone!  It should belong to someone
worthy, notz--" He stopped short, his breath suddenly halted by the
magnitude of the idea.

The Stone.

With the Stone, he could cross the desert.  With the Stone, he could
accomplish anything, possess anything, learn any thing.  !  With the
Stone, he could live forever.  "Give it to me," he said in a low voice.
Karma backed away, toward the damp walls of the cave where they slept.
"Boy bad."  "The Stone," Saladin said.  The old man's lips drew into a
tight downward semicircle& ' He looked like a child about to cry.  His
eyes flickered down to his waist, where he kept the Stone inside a
snakeskin pouch.  , ': Saladin's young, strong hand reached out to grab
the thong guspending the pouch.  "No!"
Karma howled.  Saladin yanked it, oblivious to the old man's efforts to
push him away.  He forced Karma against the stone wall.
"No!"  The hermit's eyes darted wildly around the small cave.  "You
pathetic old bore," Saladin said.  He spanned his right hand around
Kanna's neck while he continued to pull at the leather thong at the old
man's waist.
Then, like an animal forced by desperation to action, Kanna burst
through the boy's stranglehold and butted his head against Saladin's.
The boy reeled backward; the old man's skull was thick as rock.  He had
barely had time to regain his vision when he saw the firelog coming at
his face.  Karma swung it savagely, filling the cave with the
ferocious, atavistic cry of the ancient hunter facing a beast.
The blow sent Saladin sprawling on the packed earth in a fountain of
blood.  Karma wept, his shoulders heaving uncontrollably.  He took a
step forward toward the body, then stopped.  If the boy was alive,
Karma knew, he would heal him with the Stone, and it would all begin
again.
Their time together had come to an end.
Kanna waited.  The boy would not live without him.  Shutting his eyes
tightly, the old man stumbled out of the cave into the sunlight.  He
would go far, far into the desert.  He could live there.  He could live
anywhere.  He would live, even though he wanted to die.
The old man began his descent down the familiar mountain.  He said
nothing, but as he walked he placed his clasped hand over his heart.
;.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

When Saladin regained consciousness, it was night.  He could barely
make out the embers of the cooking fire with one eye; the other had no
vision at all.  The blood on his face had dried into a thick crust.
His right shoulder throbbed with a dull ache that grew into a
screaming, searing pain when he touched it.  His ann hung uselessly,
the joint smashed by Kanna's terrible blows.
Who would have thought the old man would be so strong?  Of course, he
was a different sort of man.  An older species, made for the work of
beasts.  Saladin spat out blood and broken teeth.
I shouldn't have forced him toright me, he thought.  He had
:underestimated the old elephant.  All men, even those with no desire
to live, possessed the instinct to survive.
Slowly he got to his feet, fighting the dizziness that threatened to
overwhelm him, and rummaged through the · stock of leather pouches that
contained the.  old man's medicines.
He would need a poultice of some kind for his shoulder and something to
prevent infection in the head wounds.  Some saltwater, painful though
it was, cleared the blood and mucus out of his good eye, but the other
was utterly blind.  Yellowish fluid seeped constantly out of the
socket; and the eyeball itself, when Saladin could steel himself to
touch it through the lacerated lid, had flattened.  He had seen the
condition only once before, on a hare which had been attacked by some
larger animal.  A shard of bone from the hale's shattered skull had
pierced the eyeball and deflated it.  The hare had convulsed for two
days before Kanna killed it out of pity.
He felt himself trembling.  His wounds were too great.  The fever would
come soon, and he would be unable to care for himself.  Without the
Stone, he would die.
He thought frantically.  His legs were still strong.  He could walk
back to Kish, find a doctor.  He Would say he was a wanderer, lost from
his tribe; no one would know him for the boy who had vanished during
the earthquake seven years before.  Then, after he was healed--if a
doctor existed who could treat such wounds--he would escape once more,
come back .  . .
Come back here, he thought.  Back to the mountain, to live like an
animal.  To wander alone among the rocks until some wild beast killed
him for food.  To become Kanna, but without Kanna's assurance of
everlasting life.  . A low wail escaped from his lips, growing, echoing
through the cave until it became a scream of rage and despair.
"Kanna!"  he shouted.
But Kanna was gone.  To another part of the mountains, to .  . .
Saladin's head snapped toward the wall.  The medicines.  The old man
had left the medicines.  Some of them had taken years to gather and
distill.
Some were made from plants that no longer existed.  Some were taken
from animals that had not lived in the valley for millennia.  Whenever
they had moved in search of game or water, the medicines had been the
first things Kanna packed in his animal-skin bundles.  He would never
leave without them.
But they were here, in the cave.  His other belongings, too, were still
here.  The old man had taken nothing.  Yet Saladin knew he had left for
good.  Kanna would no longer trust him.
The boy would attack again.  Kanna had to know that.
But he loves me.
That knowledge was as sure as the fingers on his hand.  Kanna regarded
Saladin as his son.  The old man had not moved; he had fled,
brokenhearted, from his child's betrayal.
He could have killed Saladin, but he had not.  He had left his
medicines for him.
And he had gone to the one place where the boy would not dare follow.
.. .
Along the dry river, past the tree of stone ......
He had gone east, into the desert.
By the time Saladin reached the remains of the petrified tree, the
fever had already been upon him for two days.  His eye had begun to
fester and stink in the baking heat beneath the reed bandage he had
fashioned, and his shoulder joint was swollen beyond recognition.
The landmarks Kanna had spoken of had been a virtual map.  After
Saladin could no longer follow the outlines of the ancient riverbed, he
had spotted the speck on the horizon -which was the tree of stone.
And he had been lucky.  A day before he reached the tree, it had
rained.
The desert was no longer the lush grassland it had once been, but
neither was it the trackless waste of windblown sand it was destined to
become in the centuries ahead.  The hardscrabble earth still sprouted
clumps of hearty weeds that held enough moisture to keep rainwater from
evaporating.  In the stretches between the weeds, the rain sat on the
drying earth like a cloak, turning only its thin surface to mud before
baking hard again in the sun.
Saladin was lucky, because it rained at night, although he did not feel
in the least fortunate.  The desert was cold at night.  When the rain
came, there was no shelter.  Saladin stretched out an antelope skin to
replenish his water supply, then sat down shivering in the mud.
He dared not walk without the light of the moon to illuminate the speck
on the horizon.  If he lost sight of that, he would surely die.
But I'll die anyway, he thought miserably.  He was too tired to feel
the shock of fear that had propelled him on this journey; too tired,.
even, to give much thought to the terrible pain of his body.  It was
dying in segments.  His eye was already dead.  His melon-sized shoulder
would go next.  As the rain fell he took a stone knife from his pack
and lanced the obscene boil of his shoulder.  As it spurted, he
screamed mindlessly into the emptiness of the night.  Then he slept,
trying to keep the new wound away from the mud.
In the morning, the earth steamed.  The sun drew the water out of the
ground so quickly that Saladin could see it rising all around him like
smoke.  He stopped short, staring at it in wonder.  If Kanna had not
told him that there was a land beyond the desert, he would surely have
believed that this place was the end of the world.
His shoulder worsened during the day.  The fluid that wept from it was
no longer red, but a thick greenish yellow.  Hot air streamed from his
nose.  Chills racked him, despite the unrelenting sun.
The second day was worse.  He could not bring himself to eat even a
scrap of dried meat, but he drank thirstily.  Before noon, his water
supply was gone.  He threw his gourd away without a thought, his legs
moving automatically, his blistered, seeing eye fixed and unblinking on
the speck which had become the shape of the massive petrified tree.
The tree was the end of his journey.  At the beginning, he had felt
certain that he would find the old man before he reached it.  Karma
walked slowly, and hadn't had much of a head start on Saladin.  The boy
had not given thought to the possibility that his own injuries would
slow him down Now he had found the tree of stone, but the old man was
nowhere in sight.  He had moved on, or perhaps had never come this way
at all.
Saladin sat down woodenly.  He stared off toward the limitless horizon,
where the sandy earth crested in an unending ridge, took the filthy
bandage off his mined eye, and laughed, softly at first, then wild and
racking.
What if Kanna had never come to the desert?
What if he was back in the cave in the Zagros Mountains, tending to his
medicines, wondering what had happened to the boy who had so angered
him for a moment?  The old fool had no intellect to speak of; he might
have forgotten the entire episode by the next day.  And here was
Saladin, his face' disfigured like one of the clay masks the priests in
Kish would don before they climbed the ziggurat to the gods, his
fifteen-year-old body disintegrating before his own eyes, dying in the
sands for nothing.
He laughed until he shrieked, pounding the back of his head against the
trunk of the fallen tree, then pitching forward to vomit out the last
of his water.  When he was finished, he lay on the ground.  He would
die here, he decided.  It was as good a place as any.  He touched his
finger to an indentation in the dirt and closed his eyes.
And then opened them.  .
The indentation was a footprint.
Saladin whimpered as he scrambled to his knees, touching the sunbaked
outline of Kanna's foot.  The old man had halted here, at this very
spot, to shelter from the rain.  And after the rain stopped, he had
gone on, leaving his trail in the mud.
Luck had given Saladin another signpost, the next section of the map.
He looked overhead.  The sun was directly above him, blazing in full
heat.
Kanna was only a day and a half ahead of him, and the old man walked
slowly.
He crawled to the next footprint, and the next, then staggered to his
feet and began to run on the dry, hard earth.  He paid no heed to his
shoulder, which jolted with pain at every footfall, nor to the thirst
that already caused his tongue to stick fast to the roof of his mouth·
He had a chance to live, and he would take it.
By midafternoon he could barely see the footprints.  The sun had dried
the mud quickly.  Ahead of him lay a stretch of empty brown land.  But
the footprints had followed a straight line from the stone tree, and
Saladin concentrated all his thoughts on staying on course.  He picked
up some pebbles and tossed them one by one ahead of him to focus his
mind on the invisible straight line of the old man's path.  He forced
away all pain, all suffering, all fear of death.  The old man was near,
beyond the ridge, perhaps .  . .
Near nightfall he stumbled and knew he could not rise.  He raised his
head, then dropped it once again onto the ground.  If he slept this
night, he knew, he would be dead by morning.
With wildly trembling fingers, he pushed himself to a sitting position
and took out the knife he had used to lance his putrid shoulder.
Barely feeling its touch, he drew the chiseled blade across the back of
his hand and drank blood from his own body.
Then, with an effort greater than he had ever known, he willed himself
to stand and move, one foot after another, toward the top of the ridge.
"Kanna," he whispered without moving his blood-caked lips.  "Kanna .
. .Kanna .  . .Kanna .  . ."  He was there, at the bottom of the bare
hill and to the east, but near enough so that Saladin could make out
the unmistakable figure of a man.
The boy stopped and blinked.  The night came quickly here and played
tricks with one's eyes.
He was no longer certain of what was real and what he imagined.  He
wanted to see Kanna, surely, wanted it so much that his heat-boiled
brain might have invented him.  Or the figure below might be death
himself, come to claim him at last.  "Ka .  . ."  It was no more than a
croak, but the old man stopped and turned.
With the last of his strength Saladin held his arms out in
supplication.
His knees buckled beneath him.  He fell to the earth in the position of
a beggar, arms outstretched, head back, eyes closed.  He rolled,
insensate, to the bottom of the ridge while the old man loped toward
him.
Kanna knelt before the boy, moaning softly over the festering .wounds.
The starry night was cold, but Saladin was burning with fever.  His
eyes were half-open and glassy.  His breath was coming in ragged gasps,
rattling with the grotesque music of death.
Hurriedly, the old man pulled the small metal bowl from its pouch in
his belt and filled it with water from a skin slung over his back.  He
cradled the boy's head in his arms and tilted the Stone against his
lips.
The first stream of water spilled from the sides of Saladin's mouth,
but soon he began to drink.  Kanna parceled it out in small sips, so
that the boy would not choke on the water he so needed.  When he
finished one bowlful, the old man refilled it and wrapped Saladin's
wasted fingers around its smooth sides.
Slowly the boy's eyes opened.  He sat up, sucking air through his teeth
as the wonderful Stone did its work.  His shoulder shrank to normal
proportions as the green poison inside it dried and disappeared.
The deep wound where Saladin had pierced it narrowed to a thin line,
then vanished.  The marks on his hands and face were replaced by soft,
perfect skin.  His blisters faded to nothing.  Inexorably, the ruined
eye in his face rounded, filled, and healed.  And through it all the
Stone sang its song, thrumming through Saladin's blood with its own
powerful heartbeat.
He looked up.  The old man was nodding happily, smiling like a little
dancing troll.  "Thank you, Karma," the boy said.  He bent forward and
kissed the hermit's cheek.  "Will you forgive me?"  The old man's eyes
welled.  He touched the boy's face with his gnarled hands.  He lowered
his head.  "Good," Saladin said softly, a moment before he threw the
Stone into the night.
Kanna looked after it in bewilderment, but before he could rise to
fetch it, the boy took the knife from his belt and drew it across the
old man's throat.
The hermit's arms flailed in the gush of blood.  He pulled himself to
one knee before tumbling onto his back where he lay twitching, his eyes
wide with confusion and fear.  "It won't last long," Saladin said.
Kanna clasped his hand on the boy's wrist.  He was trying to speak, but
he no longer had the means.  "I know," the boy said gently.  "You would
have wanted me to have it."  He smiled, then pried the old fingers
loose and rose to find the Stone.
When he got back, Karma was dead.  Saladin removed the belt and pouch
from the body and strapped the metal cup around his waist.  Then he
slung the old man's water-skin over his shoulder and continued east, to
the land beyond the desert.
That had been so long ago, Saladin thought from his perch above the
city of Kowloon.  He had scarcely given Kanna a thought for years.  He
smiled.  Dr.  Coles would have loved to hear about him.
He uncoiled himself from the white wicker chair and stretched his long
arms with a sigh.  He would miss China.  During his incarceration, he
had dreamed often of its teeming cities and boundless enticements.
Revisiting rural England was the last thing he wanted to do, especially
so soon after fleeing it.  But there was work to be done.
The cup---Kanna's "Stone"--was missing again, and he knew he had to act
quickly.  He had been lazy once, during a holiday with a woman, and had
lost the cup for more than twelve years as a result.  : ':: ;; This
would not be so difficult a quest.  He could probably pay the American
boy for the cup and have an end to it.
He crinkled his long nose.  No, that would be a bore.  He had spent
four years in a single room with nothing but an occasional novel to
distract him.  He would give himself a small adventure.  Some horses,
some costumes .  . .
He laughed out loud.  ' A servant scurried out to check on him, cocking
his head with curiosity.  "Some traveling clothes, please,."
Saladin said.
The servant nodded and left.
Yes, yes.  It was good to be free again.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hal felt out of place in London.  NOt because of the black eye, which
had faded to a ripe yellow and which had been planted on him personally
by Benny the barkeep, after Hal explained that the Grand Prize he'd won
on the now nationally famous episode of "Go Fish!"  could not be
exchanged for ready cash to pay Hal's bar bill.  After the episode with
Benny, Hal had wisely chosen to hide out from his other creditors until
his travel arrangements could be made.
It was June, and his room at the Inter-Continental was stocked with a
vase filled with fresh flowers, a bottle of Mot et Chandon, and a
complimentary breakfast for two.
Those, essentially, were the reasons he felt strange.  The room was too
clean, the vase too fragile, the champagne too expensive.  He had
pompously given a five-pound note to the porter, who registered no sign
of surprise at the large tip, and had made what he hoped were
appropriately ceremonious sounds as he sniffed the cork from the Mot in
imitation of what he believed sophisticated people did with champagne.
But after the porter left, he took off his shoes, rubbed his
travel-swollen feet, wished for a beer, and felt like a hick.
What the hell was he doing in London?  He had never set foot out of New
York City until he was twenty-three years old and then it was to the
FBI training facility in Quantico.  After that, he had traveled
wherever the Bureau sent him, but he had never lingered to visit those
places, and he had never been alone.
That was it, he supposed.  The complimentary breakfast for two was the
kicker.  The double bed.  The two glasses set on the table by mistake.
Human beings traveled in pairs, at least when they were supposed to be
enjoying themselves.  The Grand Prize had been a trip for two.
And Hal had considered taking someone along with him, until he realized
that there was not one individual among his entire lifelong circle of
acquaintances whose company he could tolerate for two solid weeks.
Except perhaps for the pimp from O'Kay's; but he would have gotten both
of them arrested within twenty-four hours of their arrival.
So Hal sat alone in his flowery hotel room until the champagne was gone
and his big toe had stopped pulsating and his hunger forced him back
onto the street, where he felt more at home.
He settled on a small pub with a basket of dirty plastic flowers in the
window and a clock advertising Guinness Stout over the bar.  It wasn't
Benny's, but it didn't have ferns, either, and the two
sausage-and-onion sandwiches he wolfed down were magnificent.  "Nothing
like it this side of Little Italy," he said.  "But you wouldn't happen
to have a cold.beLin the place, would you?"  The harman shook his head
and smiled politely as he wiped off the bar in front of Hal.  "Enjoying
your stay, sir?"  "Just got here.
"Business?"  Hal grunted.  He did not want to elicit the harman's pity
by proclaiming himself a pleasure seeker.
A bell above the door tinkled, announcing the arrival of a new
customer.  "To tell you the truth .  . ."  The rest of the sentence was
forgotten.
An elderly gentleman walked in a stately manner toward the bar.  Hal
recognized him at once.  "It's you," he said as the Englishman sat down
beside him.  "Indeed," the old man said with a noncommittal smile and a
nod of his head.  Clearly he didn't remember Hal.  "I think we've met.
In New York, a couple of weeks ago.  You were going to a game show."
Slowly the light of recognition came into the Englishman's eyes.  "I
say, it's Mr. Woezniak, isn't it?"  "Hal.  Sorry, I'm not good at
names."  "Taliesin."  He offered his hand.  "Bertram, but no one calls
me that."  "Taliesin," Hal repeated in a whisper.  An ancient name.
"That's right, I remember.  Like the hard."  He saw the man's hand and
shook it quickly.  "Ah.  So you're a student of medieval literiure."
Hal laughed.  "I guess the people at 'Go Fish!"  think so."  He related
his experiences as a contestant on the show, leaving out the weirder
parts of the story.  He did not mention that he'd had no idea where his
answers came from.  "Anyway, I ended up winning the grand-prize trip to
London.  So here I am."  "Jolly good!"  Taliesin said, chuckling
heartily.  "And our paths cross again.  I'd hoped they would."  "Yeah."
The smile faded from Hal's face.  "It's funny."
"Funny?"  Hal shrugged.  "I meet you on the street, you give me a
ticket to a game show, I win.  That's funny.  Peculiar.  And now I'm in
England for maybe four hours, and I meet you again."  Coincidences
happen."  He felt uncomfortable inside his skin.  "Yeah.  I guess so."
He shook the feeling off.  '"What's your line of work, Mr.  Taliesin?"
The old man sipped from a mug o?  warm Guinness.  "By training, I am an
archaeologist.  By inclination, an historian.  By the infirmities of
old age, a pensioner."  "I thought you were in New York on business,"
Hal said.  "You had to meet somebody at the Museum of Natural History."
i( "Ah, yes.  I do some consulting work for the London Museum from time
to time.  The people in New York were planning to reconstruct a
Medieval English town, and I was sent to assist."  Hal felt a
low-wattage jolt of electricity course through his entire body.  "Your
specialty is Medieval English history?"  Taliesin nodded.  "I've always
felt particularly at home in that era.
They call it the Dark Ages, but it was only considered dark in
comparison with the fireworks of the Renaissance.  Actually, it was
quite an interesting time, bringing about the amalgamation of the
Celtic tribes with the influences left by the Romans .  . ."  He
stopped abruptly and smiled.  "What an old bore I am, lecturing in a
pub .  . .
I say, Hal, are you ill?"  Hal forced himself to swallow.  "No, it's
just .  . . just another coincidence, I guess."  -; Hal didn't like
coincidences.  He didn't like all the coincidences that had been
occurring since the first time he'd met Taliesin.  If he'd still been
with the Bureau, he would have had the man investigated.
But for what?  Hal Woczniak didn't have a nickel to his name, and his
penurious condition was obvious.  He had no secrets, not anymore.
Anyone associated with the Bureau would disavow any knowledge of him.
Even the Chief had ' written him off two months ago.
Taliesin ordered another pint for Hal.  He drank it down.  It tasted
like dog urine, but it did the job.  And truthfully, despite the vague
sense of unease brought on by seeing the old man again, Hal hadn't been
in such interesting company for a long time.

:

What the hell.  Coincidences did happen.  :,--'3:

Sometimes.  ·

"You might be interested in a project I'm working on now," Taliesin
said, several glasses later.  He had kept up with Hal drink for drink,
but was apparently unaffected except for a slight blossoming at the tip
of his patrician nose.  "A student at Oxford--an 'archaeolobaby,' we
call them--has made a claim announcing that the ruins of a medieval
castle in Dorset may have been Camelot."  He raised his bushy eyebrows
in amusement.  "The museum has asked me to go out to the site tomorrow.
Care to come along?"  "Camelot?".  Hal said thickly.  Even through an
alcoholic haze, the name was still magic to him.  "King Arthur's
Camelot?"  Taliesin laughed.  "Dear boy, I assure you we won't find
anything of the sort.  Every village with a pile of moss-covered rocks
on a hill claims to be Camelot, and every archaeology undergraduate in
Great Britain hopes to find it.  But it's a lovely bus trip, and I know
of an excellent inn near the area.  Will you join me?"  Hal slogged
down the contents of his glass, and while the harman refilled it, he
thought of how much he disliked London.  "Sure," he said.  "Why not?"
He hoisted his drink.  "To Camelot."  "To Camelot," Taliesin said,
laughing.
The old man came by the hotel at eight the next morning.  Hal had
managed to shower and shave so that he bore at least a minimal
resemblance to a human being, although his brain felt as if it were in
the process of shorting out.
Taliesin understood.  They walked in silence to Victoria Station, where
they boarded a decrepit old bus along with three other passengers.
Once inside, the Englishman offered Hal a thermos of coffee.
Coffee was the last thing Hal wanted.  The weather was getting warmer
by the minute and the bus had obviously been built when
air-conditioning was the stuff of science fiction novels.  "It would be
wise to drink it now," the old man said.  "The roads on this route
deteriorate considerably once out into the countryside."  Hal drank the
coffee.  It was strong and sweet, just the way he liked it, and the
open windows shot a cool breeze onto his face.  Within a half hour his
hangover had disappeared.  "So," he said, leaning back in his seat like
a new man.  "Where're we going?"  "Dorset County, near the Hampshire
border.  A place called Lakeshire Tor.  There's an old hill fort on an
abandoned farm."  "The one the archaeologist thinks is Camelot."  "Not
an archaeologist.  A student.  They're always finding Camelot, or the
tomb of Charlemagne, or other equally impressive things.
Unfortunately, their findings are almost always false."  "What'd this
one find?"
"A rock."  "A rock?"  Taliesin sighed.  "He claims it's got an
inscription of some kind on it."  : "What's it say?"  "He doesn't know.
It seems he spotted it during an outing of some kind.
Picnic with his girlfriend, most likely.  Archae-olobabies like that
spot, even though it's clearly marked as private property.  He spent a
whole blasted day clearing away brambles.  By the time he might have
been able to see the rock clearly, night had fallen, and the little
twit was so woefully unprepared that he had to go home."  "So?  Did he
go back the next day?  .... "An Oxford student?  Of course not.  He
went straight to the head of the archaeology department and demanded a
university-sponsored team to retrieve the rock for study."  He laughed.
"That would be quite premature, of course, as well as illegal."  "Then
why are you going?"  Hal asked.  "Insurance.  If Oxford mounts any sort
of investigation, the popular press will be crawling all over the
university and printing stories about 'CAMELOT FOUND!"  To avoid any
such embarrassment, the archaeology department head has asked the
museum to look over the student's rock and dismiss any connection to
the Camelot theory."  "But .  . ."  Hal was bewildered.  "Why would he
connect the rock to Camelot in the first place?"  "Because everything
on Lakeshire Tor connects to Camelot, at least according to the people
who live in the area.  They're quite insistent, despite an almost
complete lack of evidence."  "You mean the place has been explored
before?"  "Countless times.
Archaeolobabies adore Lakeshire Tor.  There was even a preliminary
exploration of the ruins in 1931.  A cutting of earth was taken.  Some
interesting artifacts were uncovered--Saxon, mostly, on the upper
layers, but there were some Celtic-style articles below them.  Jewelry,
pottery shards of the Tintagel type, as well as Roman tiles and even
earlier, Bronze Age items.  Apparently the castle was built on the site
of several previous fortresses from different eras.  But the
archaeologists found nothing to warrant a full-scale excavation."  He
studied the passing countryside.  "But the Arthur legend has always
been popular in the villages around the Tor.  The locals even claim
that children can sometimes see the castle."  "Only children?"  "Oh my,
yes.  That's always part of a good legend.  That children, in their
purity, can understand things quite beyond the ken of their word-weary
elders."  He gave Hal a wry look.  "It's how they explain the fact that
no scientific study has ever been able to find anything."  The old man
nestled back in his seat, his eyes sparkling.  "And yet the legends
persist," he said quietly.  "One maintains that on St. John's Eve in
midsummer--just a few days from now, actually--the knights of the Round
Table ride their ghostly horses around the countryside, searching for
their king."  "Do the children see them too?"  Hal asked, smiling.
"No.  The villagers hear them.  Or they hear something.  Tape recorders
have picked up the sound."  "Are you kidding?"  The old man shook his
head.  "After receiving hundreds of tapes of the same noise, the museum
sent its own team to record the hoofbeats.  And that is what they are,
according to the most sophisticated analysis.
I've heard them myself, back in the late fifties."  Hal realized that
his mouth was agape.  "Well, what do you think it is?"  Taliesin
shrugged.  "An acoustical anomaly, most likely.  Sound traveling from
another source, perhaps from a riding school or stable.
There are many in the area.  It:could be that at that time of year,
when weather conditions are right .  . ."  "-Then no one's heard the
horses during, say, a rainstorm."  "Some claim they have.  Some of the
villagers swear they've felt the ghost knights pass through their very
bodies on their midnight run."
He laughed.  "But of course that's no more than the imaginations of
some country folk with little else to entertain them.  At bottom, there
is not a shred of fact to establish Lakeshire Tor as Camelot.  Or even
that Arthur the King existed, for that matter."  "But the legends must
be based on something."  Taliesin's laughter pealed.  "My boy, you are
the romantic."  Hal blushed.  In all his life, no one had ever
described Harold Woczniak as romantic.  "Forgive me, Hal.  It's a
compelling story.  A boy, guided by destiny and aided by a beneficent
sorcerer, who comes to begin a reign that will unite the world in peace
and justice.  It's the kind of tale we all want to believe.  We all
want to think that Arthur will come again, and so we keep the old
legends alive."  He was smiling kindly, every inch the gentle teacher.
Hal grunted.  "I guess you're right."  :2 : He busied himself with the
rest of the coffee and looked around the bus.
Several people had boarded since Victoria Station, but his gaze was
drawn to one man sitting in the first seat, opposite the driver.  He
was a swarthy, dark-haired man with biceps like hams bulging out
beneath a blue polo shirt.
There was nothing particularly unusual about the man, who sat chatting
amiably with the driver and smoking occasional cigarettes, but all the
same something put Hal on guard.
It was a sense he'd developed during his years with the FBI, an almost
psychic ability to spot a criminal.  All experienced cops had it and
relied on it heavily.  They never included any mention of it in their
reports, and even among themselves they used words like "hunch" rather
than what it was, because what it was could not be defined.
The guy's probably just stolen some cash out of the register at work,
he thought.  Or he beat up his girlfriend.
He screwed the lid back on the thermos.  Or I'm just a jerk.  That, he
decided, was the most likely possibility.  He didn't have the sense
anymore.  Booze had washed it away, the way he'd seen it erase the edge
in other cops.  The man had never even turned around to look at him.  .

Jerk.

"Feeling better now?"  Taliesin asked.  "Huh?  Sure.  Fine.  Thanks."
He gave the thermos back to the old man.  "So look at the bright side,
Taliesin.  Maybe this time you'll find something.  Maybe you'll really
discover Camelot."  "It would be quite a nice thing to have in my
obituary notice, wouldn't it?"  Taliesin said.  "Of course, I would be
long-dead before any such discovery could be announced."  "I don't
understand," Hal said, his eyes wandering involuntarily toward the dark
man at the front of the bus.  "Science works slowly, my friend.  First,
surveys of the land would have to be made, aerial photographs.
Something like wheat would have to be planted to show the exact sites
of previous habitation.  They would show up dark in a photograph after
the wheat grew.  Then a series of earth cuttings would be made .  . .
But it won't come to that."  "Why not?"  "Oh, a number of reasons.
For one thing, the land is privately owned."  "I thought you said it
was already explored," Taliesin nodded.  "The Abbott family gave the
museum permission to excavate the preliminary cutting sixty years ago.
We'd always assumed they would grant it again, if any new evidence
turned up.
Unfortunately, the last of the family, Sir Bradford Welles Abbott, died
earlier this year in an automobile accident and willed the Tor property
to a complete stranger."  "Wouldn't the new owner give permission to
excavate?"  The old man shrugged.  "We've no idea what he'll do.  The
sod may build a shopping center on the Tor, for all we know."  A pak of
wide blue eyes swiveled over the top of the seat in front of them.  Hal
stared back.  Suddenly he felt horribly uncomfortable.
';.:: A boy, about ten years old, craned his head .above the seat back.
He had md hair.  He would have fit the profile of Louie Rubel's murder
victims perfectly.  "I wouldn't do that," the boy said.  "Build a
shopping center."  Taliesin smiled.  "I think the place you're talking
about belongs to me."  His accent was American.  A woman who had been
dozing beside him woke up then and crankily urged the boy to turn
around.  "Don't bother people," she snapped.
She was small, Hal saw, but formidable-looking.  Her brown hair was
pulled back into a severe schoolmann bun, and the only adornment on her
face were a pair of thick glasses.  Underneath them, she might have
been pretty, but her scowl made it difficult to determine.  "They know
my castle," the boy whispered excitedly· She gave him an exasperated
look.  "Haven't you learned anything?"  she said, her voice shrill.
"Don't talk to strangers."  The red-haired boy looked back at Taliesin,
studying the old man's face.  "He's not a stranger," he said finally.
"At... at least I don't think so."  Two frown lines developed between
the bright blue eyes.  "I know you, don't Taliesin crinkled his eyes
kindly.  "Maybe it's your voice.  You sound just like Mr.  Goldberg."
"Arthur, that's enough!"  The woman grabbed the boy's shoulders and
forced him to sit straight in his seat.  "I'm sorry he bothered you,"
she said, blushing.  "It's been a long trip, and boys sometimes get
restless."  "Quite all right," Taliesin said.
The boy peered around furtively to steal another glance behind him.
This time he was concentrating on Hal.  "You, too," he said, his soft
voice filled with wonder.  "I know you, too."  Hal forced a grin.  "You
do, huh?"  "Yes."  The boy smiled at him, his face filled with innocent
trust.
"You were the best."  Hal felt as if a cold fist had just punched him
in the gut.  "What did you say?"  "Get over here," the woman commanded.
She rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a prescription bottle filled
with enormous lozenge-shaped pills.  She shook one out and held it up
for the boy.  "Take it.  "No, I'll miss everything."  He shielded his
face.  "Lady--" Hal interrupted, but she wasn't listening to him.
"I said, take it."  Fighting the boy all the way, she finally stuffed
it into his mouth.
He spat it out, then ran down the length of the aisle to the door of
the bus.
"Arthur!"  The driver screeched the bus to a halt.  He looked back at
the woman, then leveled a stare at the youngster and jerked his thumb
toward the rear.  "Better go back to your seat, lad," he said.
The boy didn't move.
Hal saw the pill lying in the aisle and picked it up.  "Just what is
this?"  he asked the woman.  "None of your damn business."  She rose to
move toward the boy, but Hal blocked her path.
· "I'd like to know what kind of stuff you're forcing down 'the kid's
throat," he said.
Blushing furiously, she peeked beyond Hal's big frame and pleaded to
the boy with her eyes.  The driver and the other passengers were
silent, watching the scene with interest.  The swarthy man in front
smiled and winked at her.  "You don't understand," she said, her voice
quavering, her eyes not daring to look at Hal's implacable face.  "No,
I don't.  Why don't you explain it to me."  She began to tremble.  She
covered her face with her hands, and a great sob welled up inside her
and burst out.
Hal felt extremely awkward.  The lady's wire was obviously stretched to
the limit.  She looked like some kind of bird quivering in front of
him, or a little girl playing dress-up in her too-long dress and clunky
shoes.
The boy finally broke the silence.  "It's Seconal," he said quietly,
Walking back toward them.  "I haven't been sleeping well."  He took the
pill out of Hal's hand and swallowed it dry.  "This was my fault."
Then he squeezed past Hal and put his arm around the woman, who was no
more than a foot taller than he was, and led her gently back to her
seat.  "Sorry, Emily," he said.  "It won't happen again."  The woman
kept her hands over her face, but allowed him to seat her.
Then the boy chose another seat for himself, directly across from
Hal's, and slumped into it.
The bus started up.  Hal sat down quietly.  When he glanced across the
aisle, the boy was watching him.  "Will you wake me when we get to the
castle?"  he asked.  Hal nodded.
"You bet."  The boy smiled and closed his eyes.
You were the best.
There was no mistake about it: He had used those very · words.
You're the best, kid.  The best there is.
Hal shuddered.  He looked over at Taliesin, but the old man had also
dozed off.
He stared out the window.  He wouldn't sleep, he knew.  Not now, not
tonight, maybe not for a long time.
Things had gone far beyond coincidence.  The chance encounter with
Taliesin, the strangeness of the game-show questions, the boy quoting
from his dream .  . . They were all connected somehow.  He believed
this with the same instinct that had singled out the dark man in the
first seat as trouble.  He believed, but he didn't understand a damned
thing.
No, he wouldn't sleep.  The dream was too close to the surface.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A few minutes after the boy fell asleep in the seat beside Hal and
Taliesin, the woman with him came over from her own seat to cover him
with a jacket.  She touched him tenderly, Hal saw, smoothing the red
hair on the boy's forehead.  When she turned to face Hal, her eyes were
glassy with tears.  "I apologize for my rudeness," she said quietly.
"My nephew and I have been under a strain for some, time.  I was afraid
that you might try to harm him."  : Her hands were still trembling.
Probably chronic, Hal thought.  His own hands shook for months after
Jeff Brown's death, until he discovered the no-worry of the bottle
after his release from the hospital.  "I thought the same about you,"
Hal said.
She nodded.  "That's understandable, I guess.  The Seconal--I wasn't
forcing it on him.  He hasn't been able to sleep.  He has nightmares .
.

."

She stopped abruptly, as if sensing she'd said too much.
With another tight, controlled smile, she stood up.  "Hal Woczniak," he
said, extending his hand.  She shook it.  "Emily Blessing."  :
"Vacation?"  "Yes," she answered.  Too quickly, Hal thought.
She was about to scurry back to her own seat when the bus suddenly
veered off the road into the parking lot of a country inn with two
small, old-fashioned gasoline pumps outside.  Emily thumped back onto
the seat next to Hal.  "Oil light's on," the driver called out with a
sigh.  "It won't take but a few minutes to set things right."  He
pulled up to the rear of the old stone building, turned off the engine,
and rose.  "Sorry for the inconvenience," he said, "but we want to
assure your safety.  Go on inside for a cup of tea if you like.  I'll
let you know when we can be off again."  He dashed out before the
passengers could Start complaining.  Slowly, they stood up and
stretched, murmuring in futile protest.  Taliesin woke up, blinking.
"I say.  Has there been an accident?"  "Oil leak, I think.  The driver
said to go inside."  Taliesin looked out the window at the old stone
building.  "Oh, I say, the Inn of the Falcon.
This is the place I told you about.  It's quite nice inside."  Hal
turned back to Emily.  "Will you join us?"  "No, thanks.  I don't want
to wake Arthur.  We'll just wait here."  Hal and Taliesin followed the
other passengers into the inn, where most of them made a beeline for
the rest rooms.  The place was quaint but sweltering.  Almost
immediately Hal felt a thin trickle of sweat running down his back.
Just his luck, he thought, to come to cool, bonny England and run into
a New York City-style heat wave.
The old man seemed unaffected by the heat and chattered amiably about
the structure of the place.  Hal pulled up a chair at one of the small
tables and waited for Taliesin to sit down.  "Oh, my, no," Taliesin
said..  "We've been sitting for hours."  .: .  "Sit down," Hal
commanded.
Taliesin complied, raising an eyebrow.  "As you wish."  "I want to know
what the hell's going on," Hal said.  "Right now."  "What on earth .
. ."  Taliesin was visibly relieved by the appearance of the waitress
and kept her attention for as long as possible, contemplating and
rejecting a number of teas.  He finally decided on Earl Gray, smiling
as if he had made a momentous decision.
Hal leaned back in his chair, his arms folded over his chest, his face
dark and blank.  When the waitress asked for his order, he only shook
his head.  His eyes never left the old man.  "Start talking," he said
once they were alone.  "I'm sure I don't have the slightest idea .  .
."
"Cut it, Taliesin.  The 'coincidence' theory isn't holding water
anymore.  You wanted to meet me.  You set it all up.  I don't know how
you did it, but you fixed the game show somehow, just like you somehow
managed to have that taxi show up out of nowhere.  This trip of mine is
your doing.  So's that boy outside who knows more about me than he
should.
I want to know why."
" "The boy?  Which boy?"  "The one who looks like a dead kid in New
York .  . . enough like him to be his brother.  His picture was in all
the papers.  Mine, too.
Don't say you didn't know who I was the minute you staged that pratfall
in Manhattan."  "You're speaking gibberish."  "How's the kid involved?"
Hal went on flatly.  "Involved in what?"  Taliesin asked.
"The woman's a wreck.  The kid's on Seconal.  Exactly what is going on
here?"  "Hal, you really ought to hear yourself ..:J ."  "And the cops
ought to hear you.  But I'm going to let you The old man sputtered.
When the waitress brought their order, he fairly melted in gratitude.
He sipped his tea and smiled.  "Now," he said at last.
"Suppose we talk reasonably about your apprehensions."
"Apprehensions, my aunt's fanny.  You brought me on this trip for a
reason, and I want to know .  . ."  His train of thought left him.  The
bus driver came in, his hands covered with oil.  As he took his place
at the end of the washroom queue, the swarthy man who had been sitting
in the front of the bus rose slowly from his table and put on a jacket
he'd been carrying.  It was an innocuous piece of business, except that
the air inside the inn was hot enough to explode dynamite.
Why put on a jacket."?
The dark man placed some coins on the table, then casually walked out
the front door.  "This is utter nonsense," Taliesin said, but Hal had
stopped listening to him.
He stood up and followed the dark man outside, slowly and at some
distance.  The man walked quickly up to the bus and climbed aboard.
Instinctively Hal reached for his gun.  It wasn't there.  He hadn't
carried a gun for more than a year.  For the first time in all the
liquor-soaked months since his resignation, he felt afraid.
He cast about for a weapon.  The best he could come up with was one of
the fist-sized decorative rocks around the juniper bushes that lined
the inn's foundation.  He wrapped his fingers around it and ran in a
crouch to the side of the bus.  !  The dark man was slowly making his
way up the aisle, toward Emily and Arthur Blessing.  Emily saw him and
stiffened.
When the man slid a gun out of his jacket, she moaned.  "Take it," she
said.  "It's on the seat, in the red lunch box."  She pointed to the
seat she had occupied.
The man looked over at the place she'd indicated, then back to her.
The movement took less than two seconds, but during those two seconds
Hal understood worlds.  He knew the man was going to kill Emily
Blessing, and probably the boy, too, whether or not he got what he
wanted.  He also knew that he was not in a strong position to stop him.
If Hal shouted, the gunman would shoot him first, then go after the
woman.  If he tried to storm the bus, he would be giving the man even
more time.
All he had was the rock.  That, and the good fortune of a bus without
air-conditioning.  The open windows gave him a chance, if he could find
a line of sight.  But the man's head was above the window edge.  No
matter how well he threw, Hal wouldn't be able to do any real damage.
A tap to the man's gigantic upper arm would have all the effect of a
feather.  "Please don't kill us," Emily pleaded.
The man straightened up to fire, and Hal threw the rock.  It was as
good a shot as he could have hoped for, hitting square on the man's
elbow.
The gunman leaped in surprise.  His gun fired.  By the time he got his
bearings, Hal was in the bus, hurling himself up the aisle as Emily
screamed in terror.
He kicked the weapon out of the man's hand.  Then, using the
counterforce of the same movement, he yanked on the gunman's leg to
send him toppling onto the rubber mat of the aisle.
Hal planned none of his moves.  They had all been drilled into him for
so many years that they came as automatically as breathing.  Once the
man was down, Hal slammed him on the underside of his jaw, kneed him in
the groin, then swarmed over him to pull one of the hugely muscled arms
into a hammerlock.  "Are you all right?"  he asked Emily.  She nodded
and he said, "Yell to someone to call the police."  She bobbed her head
but did not move.  Next to her, Arthur started to pull himself out of a
deep, drug-induced sleep.
Suddenly, Emily's eyes widened as she looked toward Hal.  "My God, what
are you doing?  He's turning blue."  The gunman began to convulse in
Hal's arms.  Immediately Hal switched the position of his arms to span
the man's wide chest and jerked on the solar plexus with his fists in
the Heimlich maneuver, hoping the man would spit out whatever was
choking him.  But the dark man's seizure worsened.  Within seconds, his
chest bucked feverishly and his eyes were bulging.  "Give me something
to prop his mouth open!"  Hal yelled.  Emily handed him a pen.  He
shoved it sideways into the man's mouth, then reached in with two
fingers to get at whatever obstruction was in his throat.  He could
find nothing.  The man made a rattling sound.  His body quieted and
stilled.  By the time the police siren could be heard, the dark man was
dead..
The local constable and a doctor arrived first.  The constable was a
young man in his twenties who swaggered up to the bus with a
self-important air.  "Please remain where you are," he ordered the
passengers who were gathered around the scene.  He pointed to Hal,
Emily, and Arthur.
"You.

Out."

Ten to one the guy's never seen a stiff before, Hal thought, rubbing
the knuckles of his right hand.  The dead man's jaw had been like a
rock.
Hal had hit him hard, he knew, but not hard enough to kill him.  Not
even hard enough to break his jaw.
The policeman emerged a few minutes later with the gun in an evidence
bag and placed it in his car.  "Now then," he said, turning back to the
crowd.  His lips were white.  "You feeling okay?"  Hal asked.  "You'll
have your chance to speak," the young officer snapped.
While the doctor examined the body in the bus, the constable worked his
way around the crowd of passengers, all of whom had run out of the inn
in time to watch the man expire.  .:} "It was the left hook to the jaw
what done it," an elderly man volunteered.  "The big Yank tore him limb
from limb."  "He had a gun.  I seen it."  "Oh, there was a gun, sure
enough.  We all heard it go off."  "All right, all right," the
constable said officiously.  "I'll hear you one at a time."  "And
When'll the bus be leaving, officer?"  "We'll be keeping it at least
overnight."  There was a collective groan from the passengers.  "But
you'll not be detained that long.  Another bus is being routed here.
You'll be on your way soon."  The constable interviewed each of the
witnesses in turn, beginning with Emily Blessing.  "I never saw him
before we left London," she said.  "My nephew and I were waiting in the
bus.  He was asleep, and I didn't want to disturb him.  And then that
man got on, and pointed a gun at me."  "Was he attempting to rob you,
ma'am?"  the officer asked.  "No.  I don't know what he wanted."  Hal
had been looking around at the crowd.  At Emily's blatant lie, he
turned around in disbelief.  Her cheeks were bright red.
She's the worst liar i ever saw, Hal thought.  And this · dickhead
Coles isn't even looking at her.  "Did he make any move to attack you
physically?"  She shook her head.  "No.  That is, I don't think so.  He
didn't have a chance.  This gentleman stopped him."  She indicated Hal.
"He threw a rock through the window.  The gun went off, then he got on
the bus and the two of them started fighting.  "Thank you, ma'am," the
policeman said.  "ACID@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@---a detective--is on his way from Bournemouth.
He'll want to speak with you as Well, if you don't mind."  "Of course."
He turned to Hal with a completely different demeanor.  "How is it you
happened by the bus when you did?"  he asked, hooking his thumbs into
his belt.  "Oh, brother," he muttered.  "What was that?"  "Officer .  .
. Constable .  . . I just didn't like the guy's looks.
I followed him outside."  "You didn't like his looks, you say.
Hal sighed.  "That's right.  Now, when's the detective coming?"  "I
don't see what that's got to do with you."  It was going to be a long,
long day.  "Now suppose you tell me what happened after you allegedly
removed the weapon from the victim."  "The victim?  He was going to
shoot the lady!"  Hal shouted.  "Are you forcing me to use restraints
on you, sir?"

"Oh, Jesus."

He was rescued by the doctor, who emerged from the bus and came
straight for them.  "Gunshot?"  the constable asked.
The doctor shook his head and gently pulled the constable away from Hal
and the witnesses.  "Broken neck, then," the constable suggested:':
"Cyanide."  "What?"  The policeman made a face and stared at Hal
accusingly.  "There's a metal capsule inside a tooth.  I've left it in
place for the M.E of course.  He'll confirm it."  "Are you saying he
was poisoned?"  The doctor made a facial equivalent of a shrug.  "The
postmortem will determine the cause of death, of course, but the
cyanide capsule had been recently broken.  The odor of the poison is
still in the fellow's mouth."  "Could the bloke who hit him be
responsible?"  "It's possible.  The seal may have been accidentally
opened during the brawl, but it's unlikely.  My guess is that the
pathologist is going to rule this death a suicide."

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was late when Hal got back to the Inn of the Falcon.  Emil and
Taliesin were waiting for him in the small downstairs lounge.  "You
should have left with the bus," he growled at the old man.  : "The
castle's only a few miles distant.  And I wouldn't just go off and
leave you alone here," Taliesin said.  "Why not?  Think I might find
out what you're up to?"  "Now, really, Hal--" "What happened?"  Emily
interrupted irritably.  "The guy killed."  Hal looked at her for a long
moment.
himself."

"What?"  ' "The M.E. just phoned in the autopsy report.  That's why
they let me go.  They gave me back my passport.  They'll bring yours in
the morning."  "Why would he kill himself?."  Taliesin asked.
Hal laughed.  "I guess you'd know the answer to that better than I
would."  "What's that supposed to mean?"  "Nothing.  Forget it."

"Mr.  Woczniak .  . ."

"Look, whatever you've got going is none of my business, okay?  I want
to keep it that way.  When's the next bus back to London?"  "Tomorrow '
'" morning, Taliesin said.  "You've got to be kidding.  Tomorrow?"  The
old man shrugged.  "It comes by once a day.  I've taken the liberty of
renting a room for you here."  "Thanks, but I'd just as soon get as far
away from both of you as I can.
Where's the next-closest hotel?"  Taliesin's eyebrows raised.  "There
isn't one.  This isn't America, you know."  '.; "Great," Hal sighed,
plopping down on a sofa.  "Just great."  "Mr. Woczniak, what's wrong
with you?"  Emily demanded.  "Oh, nothing.  I get into a punching match
with a guy who's got a cyanide capsule in his teeth, I spend all day at
the police station, I haven't had anything to eat in twenty-four hours,
my fist feels like a bag of broken bones, and I come back to you two
lying sacks of sewage.
Everything's just fine."  Emily stood up in outrage, cheeks blazing,
but she was interrupted by the high-pitched scream of a child in an
upper room.  "Arthur!"  :: Hal's heart started pounding immediately.
"Which room?"  he shouted as they ran for the stairs.  "Number Eight,"
she said breathlessly.
He took the stairs three at a time.
The boy screamed again.
Just a second, Jeff, just hold on .  . .
He was sure the railing was going to collapse and a shard of window
glass was going to come down out of the sky to cut open his cheek and
inside the boy would be waiting for him, tied to a chair, tied down and
not breathing .  . . He kicked open the door.
The red-haired kid leaped out of his nightmare with a gasp.  Hal could
only stand and stare, speechless.  There was no chair.  No smoke.  The
kid was sitting up in bed, robbing his eyes.
Emily ran past Hal to take the boy in her arms.  "We heard you
screaming," she said.
Taliesin brought up the rear.  "Everything all right here?"  he asked
gently.  "I guess I had a bad dream."  Hal turned away, sickened with
relief.  "It's all right," Emily said.  "No, it's not.  They're still
after us.  They're still--" "Arthur, stop it."  His thin shoulders
shook.  "Who's after you?"  Hal asked quietly.
"No one," Emily said.  "Arthur's just--" "I asked the kid."  .: · Emily
put a restraining hand on Arthur, but the boy only stared at Hal.
"He's all right, Em," he said.  "He fought the man with the gun."

:

"But we don't even---" "He's come to protect me."  The big blue eyes
passed from Hal to the old man.  "They both have."

"You don't know what you're--" :: "Who's after you?"  Hal repeated.
The boy wet his lips.  "We don't know who they are.  But the man today
was one of them."  "How do you know?"  "They look the same.  They all
have the same eyes."  "What do they want?"  Emily stiffened.  "I'll
tell him," Arthur said quietly.  "I'll tell him alone."
Taliesin nodded and touched Emily's elbow.  "Arthur, don't .  . ."
she began.  "We have to trust someone," the boy said.  "I choose him."
When they were alone, the boy bent under the bed and took out a red
plastic lunch box.  He opened it and sifted through his childish
treasures.  "How long have you known the old man?"  Hal asked as
casually as possible.  "Taliesin.  Or Goldberg.  You called him
Goldberg."  "He isn't Mr.  Goldberg," Arthur said, not looking up.
"Mr. Goldberg's dead."  He stopped what he was doing for a moment,
then rubbed his pajama sleeve across his nose.  Mr. Taliesin reminded
me of him.  He reminds me of a lot of people."  "Like who?"  Arthur sat
back, leaning thoughtfully against the wall beside the bed.
He's a little kid, Hal thought.  Except for the eyes.  His eyes are
old.  "Like when we were in Pittsburgh.  Two men tried to shoot US."
"Tried to shoot you and your aunt?"  :' The boy nodded slowly.  "But
they couldn't, because someone fell in front of us.  The police said he
jumped from a window in the building we were walking in front of.  They
said if we'd taken three steps forward, he would have landed on top of
us."  "So the guys with the guns ran away before they could shoot."
"They did shoot.  The bullets hit the guy who fell out the window."
Hal took a deep breath.
i:.  "I won't tell you more if you refuse to believe me," Arthur Said.
The old eyes were somber.  "That's a tall order," Hal said, "I know.
That's when I started not being able to sleep.  But it's the truth."
"Okay.  I'm trying."  "Well, here's the strange part.  The guy--the
dead guy--looked just like Mr. Taliesin."  Hal stood up.  "Is this
some kind Of joke."?"  he asked angrily.  -, .  "It's not a joke."
"Half the guys you see look like Taliesin, and the other half look like
the guy on the bus.  Do you expect me to believe that?,.  ;?: Arthur
didn't answer.
Hal exhaled noisily.  "I think you've been taking too much Seconal."
: .::.
The boy looked out the window.  "I said I'd tell you the truth, and I
have."  He blinked rapidly.  "But I guess I can't force you to believe
me."  Hal put his hands on his hips.  "You're a hell of a strange kid."
Arthur shrugged.  "I'm not strange.  I've just been put into
circumstances nobody my age should be in."  Hal smiled despite himself.
"What's your aunt say?"  "She's losing it," the boy said simply.
"This is hard for her.
Really hard."  Hal thought for a moment.  There was no way this kid
could be telling the truth.  And yet there was something compelling
about the cool, intelligent eyes and the mind behind them.  "Got any
idea why all these guys who .look alike would want to kill you?"  he
asked.  -- ;, .  "Yup."  He took out the dull metal cup and tossed it
to Hal.
why."  , "Look at it.  It wasn't much, a baseball-sized sphere and.
the inside hollowed out.  Even if it it weren't the kind of action the
boy was describing.  And any fool could see it wasn't gold.
And yet there was something extraordinary about it.  Hal felt that as
soon as he touched it.  It was warm, for one thing.  Its warmth spread
in fat, pleasurable waves through his body.  And it was .  . .
It was a strange color.  Bronze, but greener.
And it passed by, floating, draped in white samite.  I did not see it
again until the day of my death.  Hal squeezed his eyes shut.  "You
okay?"  the boy asked.  "Yeah.  Fine.  I could use a sandwich," Hal
said.  "My aunt says your name is Hal.  I don't remember your last
name."  "Hal's okay."  He held the cup out to Arthur.
For you, my king, I thought.  They were the last words in my mind
before the darkness.  Covered with silver and precious stohes, it stood
in the abbey, the chalice of the King of Kings.  I reached out for it,
to be certain that my longing had not created another vision, like the
magician's trick at Camelot.
The cup floating above the table had been an illusion, the sorcerer's
enticement to the Quest.  But here it was, true and splendid, and I
touched the cup of Christ with my own hands.  "Thank you," said a man's
voice behind me.  It was rich and liquid, the voice, and on the verge
of laughter.  There was no reverence in it.  "I knew that you, of all
the High King's lackeys, would find it."  The man was as tall as a
tree.  I had heard of him, the Saracen knight who had come to Camelot
to claim a seat at the Round Table; his arrogance had sent him straight
to Hell.
But he had somehow returned.  I do not claim to understand the ways of
God or the Devil.  I knew only that without the Grail, the Great King
would die before his mission was complete.  And so I moved to fight the
black knight for the cup, but I was weary and sore, wounded from my
long journey, and he was upon me before I could draw my blade.
I faded.  The fate of the world had hung on my skill, and I could not
summon it in time.  The knight's blade flashed silver in the sun for a
moment, then pierced through my neck.
It was finished: the King, the land, the dream, all gone, spilling away
with my blood.  Perhaps, !  I remember thinking, I was struck down for
daring to touch the holy relic with my unworthy flesh.
For you, my king.
The boy took the sphere.  "You look like you're having a problem, Hal,"
he said somberly.  · Hal stared at him for a long moment, weak and
drained, sweat coursing down his face.  "Can I do anything for you?"
"No.  He stood up to go.  "Please," the boy said.  "I need your help."
"You need the cops.  Get your aunt to tell them the truth."
"It isn't that easy."  He looked down at the sphere in his lap.
"Those men are going to kill us whether or not we have the cup."  .?:,
"Why?"  "Look at your hand."  Hal held both hands out.  The bruises on
his knuckles were gone.  "Jesus," he whispered.  "Are you telling me--"
"I'm not telling you anything.  You're seeing it for yourself."  "How
do you do that?"  "I'm not doing it.  It's the cup."

The Chalice.

Hal let out an involuntary cry.
"Hal?"  With an effort, he pulled..himself together.  "How did you find
it?"  "By accident."  He toudhed the sphere.  "At least I think it was
by accident.  I'm not sure about anything anymore."  "You .  . .
you could give it to the police," Hal offered.  "Do you think that
would stop whoever's trying to kill Emily and me?
Considering what we already know?"  Hal looked into the wide blue eyes.
"No," he said truthfully.

': · "Then will you help me?"

:

"Kid, I can't--" "I need to get to the castle."  Hal wiped his hand
slowly across his face.  "What?"  "My castle.  The one I inherited.  I
know it's probably just a pile of rocks, but I have to get there.  I
don't know why, exactly, but I have to see it.  At least once."  Hal
sniffed.  He wanted to be out of the room, out of the country, away.
"What's that going to accomplish?"  "Nothing, I guess.  But I won't
mind dying so much."  A jolt ran through Hal.  "Don't talk like that,"
he said.  But the boy's eyes remained level.  "I've thought it through
pretty well," he said.  "I'm going to leave the cup at the castle.  I
don't want Emily to go along.
If I make it back, we'll both try to get lost in London."  "And if you
don't?"  The boy took a deep breath.  "If I don't, I want you to get
her home safely.  She's very smart, but she's naive.  Do you know what
I mean?"  Hal nodded.  ' "There are ways to get a new identity.  I've
written everything down."  He rummaged through his box of treasures and
came up with a small spiral notepad.  "It's all in here."  He gave it
to Hal.  "Will you see that she's all right?"  Hal blinked.  "I'm
running out of time," the boy said quietly.  "How do you plan to get to
the castle?"  "I'll walk.  It's only a few miles from here.  IfI leave
at four in the morning, I can get there by dawn."  "What if you're
followed?"  "That's a chance I'm willing to take."  Hal looked out the
window at the stars in the clear sky.  "You're crazy," he said.  "Okay.
Whatever you say.  Will you do it?"  He sighed.  "I'll go with you to
the castle."  "You may be in danger."  "I said I'll go.  And we're
telling your aunt."  "She'll want to go along."  "Nothing's going to
happen."  "Something might."  The boy paused.  "Hal, this quest is just
for us two."  There was an earnest sound in his voice that made Hal
reconsider.
Finally, he nodded.  "All right.  We'll go alone."  The boy smiled.
"Good."  He leaned back on his pillow.  "Thanks."  Hal walked toward
the door, then stopped.  "Arthur?"  ' .  "Huh?"  "Does anything happen
to you when you touch that .  . . cup?"  "It feels good."  "Yeah.
But do you think things?  Imagine things?"  "No.  I just get a good
feeling.  Like it belongs to me.  Did you feel it, too?"  I have
touched it with my unworthy flesh .  . . "No," Hal said.  "It doesn't
belong to me.  (Jet some sleep."  He opened the door.  "I'll be
around."  "Be valiant, knight, and true," Arthur whispered.
Hal whirled around.  But the boy was lying peacefully, his eyes already
closed.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was still dark when Arthur knocked on Hal's door.  "It's time to
go," he said.  A small drawstring pouch containing the cup dangled from
his belt.
Hal stumbled back to bed.  "You've got to be kidding."  "You said you
wanted to go with me."  The boy waited,: somber-faced, for a moment.
When Hal didn't show any inclination to rise, he turned away.  "See
you," he said softly.  "Oh, for crying out loud."  Hal lumbered out of
bed.  "What time is it, anyway?.  : Arthur looked at his watch.  "It's
four-oh-four," he said.  "We'll have to hurry."  "For what?"  "I need
to leave before dawn."  "Art, nobody's chasing you.  Not here, anyway.
If they were, they'd have come during the night."  "Are you coming?"
the boy asked stolidly.
Hal sighed and pulled on a pair of trousers over his boxer shorts.
"Yeah, I'm coming."  It was nearly pitch-dark outside, with only the
sliver of a new moon and a scattering of stars.  "How far is it?"  Hal
asked.  "About ten miles."  "Great.  That's just great, Arthur."  He
eyed the shiny chrome of a Volvo in the inn's parking lot.  The
driver's-side window was open a crack against the heat of the day.  He
could get inside with a coat hanger in less than a minute, then hotwire
the engine .  . . "Hal, would it be stealing if you took something that
you needed and brought it right back before the owner ever missed it?"
Hal's eyebrows raised.  "Well .  . . no, not really.  I mean, not if
it's for a good cause."  "That's what I think, too."

"Good.

I'll get a coat hanger."  "What for?"  "For the .  . ."  Arthur patted
the handlebars of two bicycles leaning against the porch.  "Bicycles?"
"We'd make good time.  We'd be back before daylight," Arthur said.  "I
guess the rap isn't as bad as it is for car theft.". "Did you say
something, Hal?"  "No.  Nothing."  He climbed on one.  "It's been a
long time since I rode one of these," he said as he steered in a wobbly
circle.  "Hey!  Mine's got a light!"  A pale circle shone down on the
roadway ahead of Arthur as he zoomed onto the blacktop road, his wheels
humming.  "How do you know where it is?"  Hal called, struggling to
catch up.  "The lawyers sent me a map.  We turn left at a crossroads
near here, then it's straight ahead."  Hal pedaled furiously for more
than an hour, keeping his eyes focused on the circles of light on the
otherwise empty road.
Sweat poured off him.  It stank of ale from the night before last,
transformed through time and the mysteries of the human body into
effluvium.  He had not had a drink since then, or anything to eat.  The
night before, after his strange meeting with Arthur, he had gone back
down to the lobby in hopes of raiding the inn's kitchen and possibly
liberating a drink or two from the bar's locked cabinets.  But Emily
had been waiting for him.  "Look, I've been through a lot," he began
crankily.  "I understand, Mr. Woczniak," she had said.  "Can you help
us?"  "I don't think so."  ..... "I see."  "I'm sorry."  ; · Emily
nodded.  "For what it's worth, I told the kid I'd go to the castle with
him tomorrow.  Afterward, I'll take you both back to London.
We'll talk to the cops there."  "That won't do any good," she mumbled.
"Is that why you lied to the police?"  She looked away.  "I saw you
offer the thing .  . . whatever it is .  . . to the guy who tried to
attack you.  "Then you saw him try to kill me anyway," she said.  "And
they're going to keep trying.  If we tell the police, we'll be asked to
stay in one place, and those men will find out about · it and they'll
kill us for sure."  "You can't keep running forever."  "I've thought
about that.  When we get back to London, I'm going to mail the cup to
the Katzenbaum Institute.  That's where I work.  The scientists there
will know what to do with it.  And Arthur and I will get lost until the
killers lose track of us.  In time, there'll be too much publicity
about the cup for them to bother with us for what we know."  Hal
nodded.  "Sounds good."  He decided not to mention the young boy's plan
to leave the cup at the old castle ruins.  "I should have thought of it
before we left, but everything got out of hand so fast."  She shrugged.
"I'll try to rent a car tomorrow to return to London.  Will you come
along?"  "Sure.  What about the castle?"  "Arthur can go.  The castle's
taken on great importance for him.  I think he should see it.  I'll
feel safe if you go with him."  "He'll be all right.  And by the way, I
think I've been misjudging you."  Emily shrugged.  "I'm used to it."
He hadn't eaten after that.  And he hadn't even tried to steal a drink,
though the small lock on the bar would have been easy enough to pick.
Instead, he'd gone to bed, hungry and sober, like an athlete fasting
before his trial.  And for the first time in a year, he had not
dreamed.
Now, gasping for breath on the bicycle, he no longer felt like an
athlete.  He felt like a grunting, suffering, aching imbecile.  "How
much farther?"  he panted.  "I think I see it."  Arthur switched off
his light and swung his leg over his bicycle.  "Over there."  He
pointed to an outcropping of rock in a field nearly a half mile from
the road.
"You sure?  It doesn't look much like a castle to me."  Arthur ignored
him, wheeling the bike onto the rocky ground.  With a sigh, Hal
followed him.
The sky was just beginning to lighten.  As Arthur approached a long,
broken line of rocks, he set down his bicycle and stared off toward the
scattered boulders beyond.  "We're here," he whispered.
For a long moment he said nothing more, his small face silhouetted
against the cobalt sky.  "This looks like it used to be a wall," Hal
said finally.
Arthur nodded.  "Do you suppose there could be a moat?"  Arthur shook
his head.  He walked over the ankle-high "wall" toward a large flat
area dotted with stones and red clover.  He picked up a pebble.  "It's
all gone," he said.
Hal's heart Sank for the boy.  "Your aunt tried to tell you it wasn't a
real castle."
"But 'I thought something would be left.  Some trace .  . · With a
single motion, Hal swept the boy to the ground and rolled with him back
toward the wall.  Someone s here, he whispered.
A figure stepped out from behind a high mound of earth and waved
cheerily.  "I say, what's brought you here?"  he called.  "It's Mr.
Taliesin," Arthur said.  "I noticed."  Hal stood up irritably and
walked toward the old man.
Arthur trotted behind.  "What are you doing here?"  he demanded.
Taliesin smiled.  "I've come to see the dawn break," he said.  "It's
June the twenty-second.  The summer solstice.  The druids placed great
stock in this day.  They viewed it as the beginning of the good times,
so to speak.  And it's the date the locals say that children can see
the castle."  He chuckled.  "Beautiful morning.  Marvelous."  "How'd
you get here?"  "I walked."  "Ten miles---to see the sunrise?"  ' "It
keeps me young.  Actually, I was anxious to see the stone."  "I thought
you said it was worthless."  The old man shrugged.  "Even the most
jaded archaeologist can't help being excited at such a lovely fantasy."
"Well?"  Hal asked.  "Did you find it?"  "Not yet."  While they spoke,
Arthur wandered around the field, picking up rocks and casting them
away.  "I don't think this place is what the kid thought it would be,"
Hal said quietly.  "He was no doubt expecting a castle with banners
flying and knights clanking around in armor."  "Who could blame him?
He's ten years old, and he's traveled a long way."  Hal walked over to
Arthur.  "There's nothing left," the boy said.  "Not even the tower."
"Nothing lasts forever," Hal mumbled lamely.  "Come on.  Do what you've
got to do, and we'll go."  "Hal!  Arthur!"  Taliesin called,.
motioning them toward him.  "Over here!"  Arthur took off at a trot.
By the time Hal arrived at the bramble-covered spot on the edge of the
woods, Arthur was already exclaiming excitedly, "Look at it, Hal!"  It
was an enormous boulder which was painstakingly set upon another, even
larger boulder.  The earth had been dug up around them and now the
snowmanlike structure was balanced precariously on a mound of dirt that
rose some four feet off the ground.
Taliesin shone the beam of a flashlight on it.  "This must be where the
student was digging.  There's an inscription, certainly," he said, "but
it's far too faint to read."  "Maybe we could make a rubbing," Arthur
offered.  "Like people do with the tombstones of kings."
"Intelligent boy," Taliesin said.  "I plan to do just that."  He took a
thin sheet of paper from inside his tweed jacket and unfolded it.
"Hal, would you mind?  My old bones are a little brittle for this
work."  Hal climbed on top of the boulder, balancing carefully as
Taliesin handed him a long, thick piece of charcoal.  "Okay, what now?"
Hal asked.  "Just rub it back and forth, the way detectives in films do
when they're discovering a telephone number on a used notepad.  Keep
the paper steady, boy."  Arthur held the two lower edges of the paper
while Hal bent over the rock, tracing the outline of the ancient
inscription.
Slowly, as the words were uncovered, Taliesin read them by the light of
the flashlight: "Rex .  . ·Well, it's something about a 'king, anyway.

And that looks like a Q. Q,U .  . . Rex Quondam .  . ·

Oh, no."  "Oh no what?"  Hal asked.  "What is it?  My arm's breaking in
this position."  "You can stop," the old man said flatly.  ' Hal
straightened up.  "What's it say?"  "Rex Quondam Rexque Futurus.  'King
once and king to be.""

"The once and future king!  Holy : ."  Hal turned, wild-eyed, to the
old man.  "That's right out of the legend."  "Unfortunately, it's right
out of La Morte d'Arthur, published by Carton in 1485," Taliesin said
dryly.  "A thousand years after Arthur's death."  "Oh."  Hal felt
ridiculous at his own disappointment.
The old man walked close to the rock and peered at it.  "It doesn't
even look very much like a rock, actually," he muttered.  "More like
mortar of some kind."  "Why would anyone inscribe mortar?"  Hal asked.
"I wouldn't know.  Particularly with all the true rock around here."
The first rays of dawn struck some boulders a few feet away.  "Well,
we'll be able to see it more clearly in a few minutes," Taliesin said.
"Why did they call him the once and future king?"  Arthur asked.
The old man smiled.  "Legend has it that the great King Arthur, for
whom you or one of your ancestors was probably named, was destined by
God to unite the world.  But he failed, because he was killed before he
could fulfill the prophecies.
When he died, the story sprang up that the king would live again one
day to finish his work."  "At the millennium," Hal said.  "Correct.
But 1000 ^A.D. came and went with no sign of any such king."  "Then he
never came back," Arthur said.  "No.  It's only a legend."  At that
moment, Hal, who had been leaning against the big, man-made boulder,
let out a sharp cry and toppled off the narrow edge of the supporting
rock.  In reaction, the great boulder tipped southward with a creak.
"It's going to fall!"  Arthur yelled.
Hal sprang to his feet, but it was too late to stop it.  The rock
tumbled off and thudded onto the sloping ground, where it rolled with
ever-increasing momentum toward the pile of sunlit boulders at the
bottom of the small valley and then collided with them in a thunderous
crash.
The three of them watched, speechless, as a small cloud of dust rose
into the patch of light.  "I .  . . I'm sorry," Hal managed at last.
The old man's lips tightened into a thin line.  "That inscription may
have been six hundred years old," he said with deep annoyance.  He
worked his jaw.  "Ah, might as well take a look at it.  See if there's
any of it left.
Grimly they walked toward the fallen rock.  The sunlight lashed across
it in strips.  "It's damaged," Taliesin said accusingly.
Hal leaned over it.  An enormous crack ran down the length of it,
through the ancient inscription.  "Maybe it can be glued or something,"
he said, feeling miserable.  He touched it.  A big slab of the mortar
fell away.  "For God's sake, man!"  Taliesin barked.
Hal jumped back.  His fingers were covered with gray powder.  "I didn't
think it'd be so fragile."  "It's medieval mortar that's been buried
for centuries," Taliesin shouted.  He touched the broken piece himself,
then looked at his own fingers.  "No doubt its only protection was the
earth the student dug away."  Hal straightened up.  He cocked his head.
"The only consolation is that it's of little historical significance."
The old man was rattling on, though neither Hal nor Arthur were
listening to him.  "Except, of course, for the questions it raises
about why it was placed here, of all--" "When's St. John's Eve?"  Hal
asked suddenly.  "I beg your pardon?"  "St.  John's Eve.
Isn't that when the ghosts of the Round Table ride around the
countryside?"  "Oh, that.  It's not for two more days yet.  What made
you ask?"
"Listen."  All three of them stood in silence as a distant rumble from
the north grew louder.
Taliesin cleared his throat.  "As I said, there are several riding
academies .  . ."  A rider shot out of the woods.  He was followed by
five others, all coming toward them at full gallop.
The leader was a giant of a man, so tall that at first Hal thought he
was standing in his stirrups.  He was dressed strangely, in the finery
of an ancient Persian prince, and carded a broad curved sword that
blazed silver in the new sunlight.  "Something tells me they're not
from the local dude ranch," Hal said.
He looked to Taliesin.  The old man's face was frozen in horror.
He said only one word.  "S aladin !"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Hal wheeled toward the old man.  -"What?"  "Protect the boy."  "With
what?"  The old man grabbed the boy and pushed him toward the center of
the castle ruins.  "Stay inside!"  he called as he ran back across the
low piles of stones that might once have been castle walls.  "Forget
that!"  Hal shouted.  "Get Arthur into the woods!  Go hide in the
woods!"  But the old man paid no attention to him as the homemen · drew
nearer.
Hal cast about.  Once again, he had no weapon except the scattered
stones on the ground.  The riders were coming closer, their strange
curved swords poised.  "Tell me this isn't real," he muttered,
frantically picking up an armful of stones.
The cartoon riders bore down on him.  Taking aim, Hal pelted the leader
with two of the rocks, but he deflected them with his long sword arm.
His expression never changed as he raised his weapon to strike.
Hal dropped the remaining stones and fell to the ground, rolling out of
the way of the singing blade.  "Hal!"  Arthur cried.  Hal was
struggling to stand up.  He did not see the second rider coming
straight for him, attempting to crush him beneath the pounding hooves
of his horse.
Arthur stood up inside the old fortification and hurled a rock the size
of his fist at the rider.  It struck him on the forehead, and he
toppled off his horse.  The rider got to his feet and staggered toward
Arthur, his sword flashing.  The boy took aim again, but missed.  The
fallen man came at him with a menacing grin on his face, tossing the
sword to his left hand and pulling out a short dagger.  "Hal .  . ."
the boy said softly, backing away.  "Hal .  . ."  Hal leaped at him in
a flying tackle, flattening the man.  They rolled, fighting for the
short knife, oblivious to the rider who had swooped around them in a
big curve and was now riding toward them.  His sword was drawn, and his
gaze was directed at the boy.
Taliesin saw the tall man galloping toward Arthur and shouted, "No!"
, Hal's head shot up at the sound.  The man struggling beneath him saw
his opportunity and thrust upward with the knife, jamming it into Hal's
shoulder.  Hal jerked back with a cry of pain as the man with the knife
scrambled on top of him.
And still the rider galloped toward Arthur.
Taliesin loped directly into the rider's path.  "Give me the cup," he
shouted over his shoulder.
The boy blinked.  "The cup!"  the old man screamed.
Deftly, Arthur unhooked the pouch from his belt and tossed it to
Taliesin.
The rider drew back his sword and let it fly downward.  It split the
old man's skull.  A fountain of blood shot out from Taliesin's white
hair as the old man's features smed to crumble beneath the weight of
the heavy blade.  Arthur screamed But even as his body fell, Taliesin's
arms remained outstretched, reaching for the metal cup.
He caught it, somehow, as his knees crashed to the ground and his
bloody head smashed against the small stones at his feet.
Everything seemed to happen in a split second: the approaching rider,
the swinging sword, the old man suddenly standing in his path, the
blade coming down to cleave Taliesin's skull, the flying metal cup,
Arthur's terrible scream .  . .
And then, suddenly, a blinding flash on the exact spot where Taliesin
had fallen.
It was as if lightning had struck him.  White light, dazzling and
blinding, filled the meadow for a moment before being replaced by a
cloud of thick white smoke.
When it cleared, the old man was gone.
The homemen looked uncertainly to their leader, who had come to a stop.
The tall man's face betrayed nothing.  It was as if all the figures on
the meadow were frozen in a tableau.
Arthur was the first to move.  He leaped over the low wall and ran
toward Hal, sobbing.
His movement broke the tension.  Whispering in a frightened voice to
his gods, the man with the knife shrank away from Hal and slid onto his
horse like water streaming upwards.  Following him, the others
regrouped around their leader.
Blood streaming from his shoulder, Hal rose to a kneeling position.
He held out his good arm to Arthur, but his eyes never left those of
the tall homeman, the man Taliesin had called by name.

Saladin.  His name was Saladin.

Saladin paid no attention to his men.  His gaze had only wavered for an
instant toward the place where the old one had vanished.  He had lived
too long to be surprised by even the strongest magic.
He sat perfectly erect, his eyes resting intently on the small
red-haired boy.  "It is he," Saladin whispered.  ' For the first time
since his arrival on the meadow, he showed a trace of expression.  His
lips curVed into what might have been a smile.  Then, almost lazily, he
charged at full speed toward the boy.
Hal struggled to his feet.  Desperately, he saw how close the swordsman
was to Arthur and surged forward.  "No!"  he called out hoarsely.
Saladin paid him no attention."  Bending low in his saddle, he scooped
the boy up in his long arms.  "Hal .  . . Hal .  . ."  Arthur cried as
the giant horseman beckoned to the others.  Hal saw Arthur implore him
with one outstretched hand while the rider turned expertly.
Saladin's eyes met Hal's.  For the briefest moment, with a look of
mocking amusement in his eyes, the horseman acknowledged him with a
nod.
Then, in a precision maneuver, the horsemen all wheeled away from the
ruins.  "Come back, you bastards!"  Hal screamed.  He ran after them,
but before he was even halfway across the meadow, they had disappeared
into the woods.
Hal dropped to his knees.
He had failed.  He stared vacantly out at the open field, remembering
the look of terror in the boy's eyes as the tall horseman carried him
away.
He felt so numb that he did not notice that the birds had stopped
singing.  He did not see the shadow which rose beyond him, reaching
almost to the distant line of trees.  He remained staring fixedly at
the ground until he heard the music.
Slowly then, he looked over his shoulder toward the castle ruins, and
gasped.
The ruins were gone.  Enveloped in mist stood a castle made of rock and
timber, with ramparts and parapets, and on its great towering keep
fluttered a flag bearing a red dragon.  . His mouth agape, his throat
parched with fear, Hal stood Up and walked slowly, warily, toward the
apparition.
The music was the sound of a lute, coming from inside.  There was the
sound of laughter with it, and the barking of dogs.
At the top of a flight of stone steps, a huge wooden door stood open.
Although he wanted to run away, knew it would be best to run, he could
not.  Not from that door.  He climbed the steps and walked through the
giant entrance way.  ' He blinked at the scene within.  As if a
tapestry had come to life, the huge drafty hall was filled with
boisterous people from another world: bearded men wearing tunics of
leather and rough cloth and women in long shifts covered by togalike
gowns, pulled in at the waist by wide jeweled belts.  They wore their
hair long, to their waists, or twisted into strange configurations of
braids.  They were all seated at long wooden tables laden with platters
of meat and tankards of drink.
Around them milled the servants in their dirty aprons along with dozens
of dogs fighting over scraps of food.
No one looked at Hal when he entered.  It was as if he had stepped into
some ancient painting in which the subjects carried on their fictional
lives while he looked on, as detached and invisible as the eyes of the
artist.
But of course, he thought.  That's what it is.  None of these people
are real.
A rib-skinny mongrel dog trotted up to him, sniffed the air around
Hal's feet, and moved on.
Did he see me?  Hal shook his head.  Don't be a jerk.  Of course the
dog hadn't seen him.  He wasn't really there.  He was still in London,
asleep on the the big bed in the too-pretty hotel room, the dregs of a
bottle of champagne wetting the sheets.  This castle was his version of
Oz, and like Dorothy, he was seeing it all inside his own mind.
Hal was certain of this; yet to confirm it, he walked up purposefully
to the table and placed his hand on the head of one of the diners.  It
went through both the man and the chair on which he was seated.  "Ha!"
Hal gloated.  Air.  They weren't real.
But the smile faded from his face.  What about the horsemen?  What
about the dark man on the bus?
Were they apparitions too?  Was the red-haired boy who had asked him
for help?  Was Arthur real?  Was Emily Blessing or the British police?
Am I real anymore?
Maybe he wasn't still in bed, he thought.  Maybe he was out there in
the field somewhere, knocked unconscious against a rock, maybe dying
with a blade in his chest .  . . And maybe I'm already dead.
He shivered.  Dead?  Was this place not Oz, then, but some purgatory
where Hal Woczniak was doomed to wander forever, alone among ghosts?
"Hey!"  he shouted.  He could barely hear his own voice above the din
from the vast room.  "Somebody has to be able to hear me!"  he
screamed, running to the far side of the hall in a panic.  "Get me out
of here!  Get me out Someone laughed.  A low chuckle, but Hal could
hear it.  "Good heavens, man, get a grip on yourself.  You haven't even
tried the door.
Hal stopped suddenly, squinting through the Sweat running in his eyes.
Someone was walking down a curving stairwell.  The bottom of his
garment--a blue robe that reached to the floor---came into view.
You talking to me?"  Hal asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Yes, Hal."

The old man appeared at the bottom of the stairs.  Except for his
costume, which was even stranger than the medieval clothing the other
dream people wore--the blue robe was embroidered with silver moons and
stars he looked exactly the same as he had a few minutes ago out in the
meadow.  "Taliesin," Hal said.
The old man inclined his head."My name by birth.  But here I am known
as Merlin."  He smiled and bowed with a graceful flourish.  "Welcome to
Camelot."

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Oh, God, I am dead," Hal said miserably.
The old man laughed.  "I assure you, Hal, you're very much alive."
"But I'm with you."
"And?"  "And .  . . well .  . ."  He made a gesture of discomfort.  A
look of recognition came into the Englishman's face.  "Ah, yes.  The
blackguard with the scimitar.  Well, set your mind at rest.  I'm not
dead, either."  Hal regarded him for a long moment, then poked a finger
into the old man's midsection.
Hal withdrew his hand quickly.  "I don't mind, if you need the proof.
Care to check my teeth?"  Hal touched him again.  "But .  . . out there
. . ."  The old man smiled.  "Who is to say what is illusion and what
is not?"  "But I saw it," Hal sputtered.
"That joker split your head open.  Saw it with my own eyes."  "Pah,"
said the old man.  "You saw it, so you believe it.  You see this castle
and you do not believe it.  So much for both your eyesight and your
logic.  Come."  He turned on his heel without waiting for an answer,
crossed the great hall, and held open an arched wooden door decorated
with a metal cross.
Hal walked inside and froze.
The room was bare of furniture except for a large, round oaken table a
dozen feet in diameter.  Surrounding it were thirteen chairs.  Only two
seats were empty, yet the room was completely silent.  The men who
occupied it sat at their table dressed in battle regalia, tunics of
chain mail and helmets of beaten metal, as still and erect as statues.
"They look like .  . ."  Hal whispered.  "But they couldn't The door
closed behind him.  Without the din of the dining hall, the room seemed
tomblike, cold and forbidding.  Hal waited for a moment, unsure of what
to do.  Then, hesitantly, he stepped toward the immobile knights.
He stood behind one, a big man, fair and blue-eyed, with muscles that
bulged beneath the linen shirt covering his arms.  "Sir Bedivere," Hal
said, remembering the stories which had come to life in his imagination
as a child.  "Arthur's master of chivalry."  Next to him, and just as
lifeless, sat a young man with a boy's face, his light eyes filled with
the passion of innocence.  "Tristam," Hal whispered.  A few chairs away
sat a middle-aged man with ruddy, weather-beaten cheeks and intelligent
eyes.  He was dressed entirely in green.  "Gawain?"  He looked to the
Englishman who now called himself Merlin.
The old man nodded.
Hal walked a few paces, then stopped alongside a knight of almost
shimmering presence.  He was dark-haired and handsome, and shaved his
face in the Roman manner.  His clothing was impeccable, and over his
coat of mail he wore a heavy silver cross.
This must be Launcelot," Hal said.  "He looks just like I thought he
would."  He reached out his hand to touch the man's broad shoulder, but
there was nothing there.  The knight was an illusion, insubstantial as
air.  "They are spirits," Merlin said quietly "Like the castle.  Only
on special days do they approach the visible plane.
Even then, not everyone can see them."  "But I can."  ``Yes.  I've
arranged that."  "By coming into my dream."  The old man colored.
"Damn it, man, this is not a dream!  How many times do I have to tell
you?"  His white mustache worked up and down agitatedly.  "I wish it
were.  I've had just about all I can bear of this eldritch old place.
Dash it all, that's why I've brought you here."  "Whoa," Hal said.
"Go back a few light-years.  You brought me here to get you out?"  The
old man sighed.  "Exactly."  ``Are we trapped in here?"  "We're not
trapped.  I am."  He sighed.  "I passed into this realm when I took the
cup from Arthur.  It was the only way to keep it from those thieves."
"How about these guys?"  Hal passed his hand through Sir Gawain.
"Them?"  Merlin rolled his eyes.  "Well, of course they're confined
here.
What would they do in the outside world?"  "I don't get it.  They're
not real, but you are."  Merlin grunted.
``But you're stuck in here, and I'm not."  "Yes, yes," the wizard said
impatiently.  "And I saw you drop dead, but that doesn't mean
anything."
"Precisely."  "And you're Merlin the Magician."  'At your service."
"I'm getting out of here."  Hal headed for the door.  'Come back this
instant!"  the old man snapped.  "Then stop conning me!"  Hal shouted.
"I want to know what I'm doing here.  What you're doing here.  What the
hell all this is .  . ."  "I'm getting to that," Merlin said with a
placating gesture.  "You're just going through a shock of disbelief.
You'll have to get over that before we can talk reasonably."  Hal
laughed, thin and hysterically.  "Disbelief?.  I guess you could call
it that.  I just happen to walk in on the knights of the Round Table
shooting the breeze on a summer day.  No big deal.  Happens all the
time."

"Now, Hal--"

"And you're just a regular guy, I suppose.  You get killed, you vanish
in a puff of smoke, you pop up again .  . ."  The old man looked down
his long nose at Hal.  "In case you hadn't noticed, I am nothing
resembling a regular guy.  I am a wizard.  Or I was.  I seemed to have
used up all my juice out on the field.  Dying is a difficult feat for
anyone."  He shuddered.  "The ways we go!  Being exploded into bits
inside an automobile.  Getting shot while falling from a thirty-story
building "He shook his head.  "A ghastly business, believe me."  "But
you said you weren't dead, remember?"  Hal reminded him acidly.
"Here you are, in the flesh and twice as pretty."  "Oh, why did you
have to be the one?"  the old man muttered.  "I don't die permanently.
Still, it's no picnic to have one's brains cleaved in."  He touched his
head.  "Goldberg had a considerably easier death."
Hal stared.  "Goldberg?  The kid thought you were someone named
Goldberg."  "The disguise was one of my best."  He smiled.  "But then,
Arthur was always able to see through me.  But I'll get to that soon
enough."  He walked around to the far side of the Round Table, between
two empty chairs.  He touched one of them.  "This is the Great King's
place," he said.  "It has been kept for sixteen hundred years, until
his return.
And the other--" "The Siege Perilous, I suppose," Hal said mockingly.
"For none but the pure of heart."  "Galahad's seat," Merlin said with
tenderness.  "So why isn't he here?"  The old man's eyes sparkled.
"Now you're starting to be intelligent about things.  The Siege
Perilous is empty because Galahad's place is with the king.  He was a
knight in the most real sense.  Valiant and loyal and clean in his
soul.  He could not rest until he found the king again."  The old man
looked up to the narrow windows letting in arrows of light.  "I felt
his presence in generation after generation as I slept through the long
ages in my crystal cave.  He was the soul of Richard Coeur de Lion, of
Charlemagne, of Thomas Becket, St. Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc,
Martin Luther, John Locke, Benjamin Disraeli .
. . and more others than I could recount to you.  Often he was someone
ordinary, not famous, a soldier, a shoemaker.  He never knew that he
was searching for the Great King, but something drew him toward
greatness--and disappointment, ultimately, because the king did not
come in any of those lifetimes.  "I felt these stirrings in those men,
that one soul.  I felt it calling to the king.  But the king did not
come.  And so I slept."  He looked gravely at Hal.  "And then, after
sixteen centuries, I awoke.  Because the king at last was born again."
Hal felt his breath coming shallowly.  "He's alive?  King Arthur is
alive now?"  Merlin nodded slowly.  "I've been with him since he was a
year old."  Hal couldn't help smiling.  "Just like the old days, huh?"
"Almost.  The boy didn't need to be educated this time around.  He had
that from another source.  But he needed a friend."  He smiled.  "I
became Milton Goldberg."

"Oh my God," Hal said.  "Arthur.  That Arthur."

"He is the one."  Hal sat down, oblivious that he had superimposed
himself on one of the insubstantial knights.  "Wait a minute.  Arthur's
not even British.
Let alone a king."  "His nationality is of no importance?"  Hal stared
at him a moment, then pinched his eyes closed with his fingers.  He had
almost begun to believe that he was awake.  "What's he going to be king
of?."  he asked sarcastically.  "His junior high school class?"  Merlin
shook his head.
"His work will begin at the millennium, as foretold.
The coming millennium."  " .  . ."  "Not 1000 A.D as people thought,"
Merlin went on delightedly.
"Things would have been too similar to the way they were in Arthur's
time.  The world had to change, don't you see?
The time for him had to be right."  "But the millennium .  . . That's
only eight years from now."
"Exactly."  Despite himself, Hal was beginning to take the conversation
seriously.  "Is that why those men took him?"  Merlin shook his head.
"I don't think so.  They only wanted the Grail."  "The what?"  "The
cup.  Arthur isn't aware of its full power, but Saladin is."
"Saladin," Hal repeated.  "He was the leader of the Halloween Brigade."
"Don't joke about him, Hal.
Saladin is a dangerous man, more dangerous than you know.  He has
possessed the Grail, and he will not give it up lightly.  "You keep
calling it the grail," Hal said.  "You don't mean .  . . the Holy
Grail?"  "Christians have ascribed its power to their God.  I do not
know its true source, although I suspect that it existed long before
the coming of Christ."  Hal remembered the peculiar warmth of the cup
in his hands, the strange images it evoked.  "It couldn't be the
Grail."  "Why not?"  Merlin asked, arching his eyebrows.  "Because the
Grail that King Arthur's knights went looking for was this gorgeous
thing, wasn't it?  A silver chalice."  "Now, now, Hal.  Jesus of
Nazareth was by all accounts a poor man.  Do you really think the
fellow would have been drinking out of a silver chalice?"  "No, but it
wouldn't have been a high-tech teacup, either.  It was probably some
nondescript clay bowl.  And four hundred years later, when the knights
from Camelot went looking for it .  . ."  "It would have vanished into
obscurity."  "Right.  Or been ground into dust somewhere along the
way."  "So it was most peculiar that the knights insisted upon finding
-it," Merlin said.  "They didn't insist.
Merlin--you, I guess---insisted.  Arthur didn't even like the idea.
But you kept hammering away at them, hinting, nagging .  . ."  Merlin
laughed.  "You're a fine student, Hal.  You've studied your history
well."  "It's something I used to think about.  If the knights hadn't
left on the Quest, King Arthur would have had more men around him when
the crunch came."  The smile left the old man's face.  "The battle of
Barren-down," he said thickly.  "Whatever.  When Mordred brained him."
Merlin was silent for a moment.  "Hey," Hal said awkwardly.  "Don't
think I'm blaming you or anything.  It was a long time ago."  "Yes.  A
long time," Merlin said.  "He needed the Grail.  I thought that if I
could only get it to him in time .  . ."  "Why?  Why the Grail?  You
just said it was probably just a plain clay bowl .  . ."  "There was
something within the bowl," Merlin said.  "Something containing such
magic that, with it, a great ruler might live not only through one
battle, but for all the ages of the world."  Hal could not speak.  He
was remembering how the bruises on his hand had healed at the touch of
the cup.  "It bestows the gift of immortality, Hal," Merlin said
softly.  He opened his hands.
In them, or rather, above them, hovered the small metal cup Arthur had
thrown to the old man before the horsemen swept him away.  "By touching
this, I banished it to the spirit realm where we are now."  Hal tried
to touch it.  His hand passed through.  The cup faded from his sight.
"Since I made it disappear, only I can bring it back into the real
world.  But here, in Camelot, I may not leave without permission."  He
looked around the room, at the immobile forms of the spirit knights.
"Like them, I cannot live again in the world of men until summoned by
the Great King."  You mean Arthur?  Arthur has to call you?"  Merlin
nodded.  "And Arthur's life is in danger.  I cannot protect him from
here.  Only you can do that."  "Me?"" Hal asked.  Then he saw the cup
again, almost transparent, covered with a film of billowing .  "Do you
remember it,Hal.?"  the old man asked, his voice no more than a breath.
"It wasn't covered with clay then, when you found it .  . ."  The
Chalice shone with jewels.
Its silver was white as sunlight.  I reached out my hand .  . . "For
you, my king," Hal whispered.  He closed his eyes as the memory came
crashing in on him again.  Merlin touched him gently.  "Rise," he said.
Hal obeyed.  The tears in his eyes half-blinded him.  The old man
raised himself up to his full height and gestured slowly to the empty
seat beside the king's.  "Take your place, Galahad," he intoned.  Then
his expression softened.  He looked on Hal with a gaze of profound
love.  "For your time, too, has come at last."  Hal closed his eyes.
The waiting is over, a voice inside him spoke.  And now, for the first
time, he knew that this was no dream.  Some part of him had been
longing for this moment for a thousand years and more.  In this place,
this netherworld of spirits and illusions, he had found the truth.  His
head lowered humbly, Hal sat down in the Siege Perilous.  Suddenly the
dark room was infused with iridescent light.  Trumpets sounded.  The
very air was charged with a crackling, vibrant power.  A swirl of
moondust rose out of the chair and enveloped Hal.  When it cleared, the
ghost knights were standing, saluting him, proclaiming his name.
"Galahad."  they chanted, soft as summer air, then growing louder,
louder, until the sound seemed to shake the walls.  "Galahad!"  Gawain.
Bohort.  Gaheris.
Launcelot.  All of them, all of them back again, my brothers .  . .
"He has come," Merlin proclaimed.  Hal rose and knelt before the old
man.  "Tell me what I must do," he said, his voice choking.  "Saladin
has our king.  Find him," Merlin commanded.  "Find Arthur and return
him to his rightful place with us."  Hal looked up.  "I will," he
whispered hoarsely.  "I swear it."  A light fog snaked inside through
the narrow windows.  The walls grew misty.  The old man looked around
sadly.  "The magic is leaving," he said.  The knights, still standing
in their salute, softened to dim silhouettes.  Merlin himself was
disappearing.  "We are returning to the plane of Avalon to await the
call of the Great King.  Until then, it will be only you, Galahad."
Hal reached out to him in a panic, but there was no substance to the
vision.  The old man was no more real than anything else around him.
"But how .  .
." Hal struggled to his feet.  "How will I find the boy?"  The mist was
thick now, obscuring everything.  Hal felt as if he were in the middle
of a heavy cloud.  "Tell me!"  he shouted.  Faintly, the voice came.
"Saladin has taken the boy to a place of darkness," it said.  "A place
fearful to you.  A place you will remember."  Hal could barely hear the
last words.  "A place I'll remember?  New York?  Is he taking him to
New York?"
There was no answer.  "Wait a minute!"  Hal yelled.  "What's that
supposed to mean, a place I'll remember?  I've never even been in this
country before!"  He stumbled around in the thick fog.  "Don't go, damn
it!  Tell me what I'm supposed to do!  Don't go!  Don't go!"  But it
did go, the castle, the banners and trumpets, the knights, the old man
himself, vanished into the mists.  Hal blinked and found himself
standing in the middle of a pile of ancient rubble on top of a grassy
hill.  He looked around for a trace of the castle, but there was
nothing left of it but moss-covered ruins.  The meadow was the same.
The rubble was the same.
But nothing else would ever be the same, he knew, not for Hal Woczniak,
reborn in this single moment of time as Galahad, champion to an ancient
king.  "Hal!"  It was Emily Blessing's voice, shrill and frightened.
"I've been looking for you for hours.  Where's Arthur?"  "He's been..."
He rubbed his forehead.  "He's "Did you see it, too, mister."?"  piped
a high voice nearby.  Hal turned to see a little dirty-faced urchin
dressed in a ragged shirt and a pair of cotton pants too short for his
gangly legs, standing barefoot on the hillside.
"What?  Hal said groggily.  "The castle.  I seen it," he said proudly.
"I come here every day to see it, but most of the time it ain't here.
But sometimes it is.  I ain't told anybody about it."  He looked up
apprehensively.  "You did see it, though, didn't you?"  His eyes met
the boy's.  "You saw it?"  The boy nodded.  "Hal, you're bleeding!"
Emily cried hysterically.  Hal touched the place on his shoulder where
the horseman's blade had sliced into the flesh.  It was the first he
had noticed the wound since he'd watched Saladin ride into the woods
with the boy.  "Arthur's been taken," he said.  Her hands flew to her
mouth.
Hal's legs buckled.  "Get a doctor!"  she commanded the boy.  "Get the
police, as fast as you can!"  "Yes, ma'am," the boy said, white-faced,
and took off at A RUN.  Emily knelt beside Hal.  "How did it happen?"
she shrilled.  "Saladin," Hal said.  "His name is Saladin .  .

."

"What?  I can't hear you."  Hal turned to her.  "I'll find him," he
said.
"I promise you I'll find Arthur."  Emily stifled a sob and sat a little
straighter.  "What about Mr.  Taliesin?"  she asked quietly.
Hal looked over to the spot where the old man had died, disappeared,
and then reappeared again in a world that had vanished before his eyes,
in a dream that was not a dream.  "We'll see him again too," he said.
"I'm sure of it."

CHAPTER TWENTY

The red-haired boy lay asleep on a brocaded divan in a country house
near the English Channel, some twenty miles away from Maplebrook
Hospital.  The house had lain vacant for almost fifty years before
Saladin issued instructions from his cell for his men to buy it.  For
the duration of his incarceration, it had served as headquarters in the
operation to free him.  It was a rambling stone manor, one of many
homes Saladin owned all over the world.  Like the others, it was kept
immaculately clean inside.  Saladin could not abide filth.  But the
exterior of the place was decrepit and forbidding, poking out of the
overgrown lawn like an immense tombstone.  It was a place for hiding.
He sat in a straight-backed chair opposite the boy and gazed with
patient wonder at the sleeping child.  "So the king has returned, after
all," he said.  He did not lower his voice; the boy had been drugged to
keep him quiet after the horses were taken away to the stables behind
the house, which also sheltered a sedate Mercedes-Benz sedan.  But
there were no neighbors to see any of those things.  That was one of
the reasons the house had been chosen in the first place.  "This place
suits you.
Saladin stood up and walked to a window and looked out toward the dark
woods.  "It resembles Tintagel, where you were born.  I made a
pilgrimage there after your death, Arthur."  He laughed softly.  "I
wanted to see the land you came from.  I wanted to man who could come
so far in such a short life."  The breeze from the sea ruffled his dark
hair.  "I was young myself then, even though you'd caused me to lose
twelve years."
Twelve years.  Most of the legends had put the Quest at much longer,
decades upon decades, but that had not been the case.  The cup had been
lost to all of them---Arthur, Merlin, the foolish questing knights--but
none had felt its loss as acutely as Saladin, for only he had truly
understood its power.  He had been fifteen years old when he stole the
cup from Kana, and twenty-five when he arrived, centuries later, in
Britain.  The ten intervening years of his life had been lost all at
once, during a sojourn in Rome.  Some thieves had stolen the cup while
he slept in a doorway on a darkened street.  He had chased after them,
but he was not familiar with the meandering streets of the city and
soon lost them.  The thieves Were apprehended by Roman soldiers that
very night, and the odd metal ornament confiscated.
The foot soldier who took the cup had considered turning it over to his
superior officer, but decided that it was not of sufficient value.
Or that was what he told his comrades.  It would have embarrassed the
soldier to say that he kept it simply because he liked the feel of the
thing, that its pleasant warmth filled him with an inexplicable
sensation of well-being.  He kept it as a charm.  When he was sent to
Jerusalem with half his garrison, he wore it on his belt, attached by a
thong, much as Arthur Blessing would nearly two thousand years later.
The soldier never had the opportunity to ascertain just how lucky the
cup was, since occasions for battle in erusalem were few.  The Romans
had little trouble quelling the occasional unarmed uprisings of the
Jews.  More often, the soldiers were called upon to police violence
between one sect of the contentious locals and another.  It was during
one of these, a brawl in a tavern; that the Roman lost his talisman.
He had not noticed that it was missing until he was walking back to his
barracks; then he turned around immediately and went back to search the
place, but it was nowhere in sight.  Even heating the tavern owner did
not yield any results.  Finally, with a sense of immense irritation,
the soldier gave up the metal hemisphere as lost and in time forgot
about it completely.  During the scuffle in the tavern, a panicked man
had yanked it off the soldier's belt.  The cup, wrapped in a leather
pouch and secured with a thong, had rolled out the open door, where a
dog picked it up and carried it back to his master, a young potter's
apprentice.  "What's this?"  the boy asked, grabbing the metal oddity
from the dog.
Aaron was fifteen and quite bored with the endless stream of plain clay
bowls he had to turn out each day for the master potter.  What was
worse, he knew that his task would continue for several more years
before he might be permitted to work on more interesting projects,
since the plain glazed bowls were the staple of the potter's business.
All of the inns and households bought them in quantity.  It did not
matter if they were imperfectly formed; so long as they were not
cracked, they would sell.  The boy had a gift.  As a child, he had
sculpted animals from stone with a piece of flint.  His father, who was
a laborer, had beaten him for his lazy, time-wasting ways, but nothing
seemed to stop the boy from his carvings.  Then once, when the father
found a secret cache of stone figures hidden inside a hole in the wall
of their house, the idea had come: He would sell the child.  He was of
little use in a household with four other sons and not enough food to
feed them all, and the right buyer might even have use for
Aaron-Good-For-Nothing.  He extolled the boy's virtues to the master
potter Elias.  Taking a chance, he even showed the potter the carvings
he had found.  "Is this not the work of a genius?"  he rhapsodized,
though he himself had no idea if the carvings were good or not.  "My
wife and I had hoped that our son might one day become a fine craftsman
like yourself, but alas .  . ."  At this he shook his head sadly.  "We
are too poor to give the boy the attention he needs."  Elias looked at
the stone pieces indifferently.  "How much do you want for him?"  he
asked, whereupon the boy's father set to a lively dispute about Aaron's
worth.  He settled for a modest sum, but at least he was world of the
boy.
And Elias the potter had a new slave who might, if he lived up to the
promise of the childishly crude but interesting sculptures, eventually
become a real asset to the potter's business.  On the day Aaron took
the metal cup from the stray dog which had slept with him in Elias'
outbuilding for the past year, he had already fulfilled his quota of
plain clay bowls and had some time to play.  Elias was gone for the
day, delivering merchandise to the innkeepers who were his regular
customers.
Aaron examined the object carefully.  It was a strange shape, almost a
ball, except that the top had been sliced off.  Making a bowl from it
presented a marvelous challenge.  He set a fat wooden block on the
wheel and placed the cup on top of it.  As the wheel spun, Aaron
applied wet clay to the metal cup with both hands, covering it evenly.
As he approached the inward-curving lip, he first pulled the clay in,
following the shape of the sphere, then flared it out and eased it in
again so that the final effect was of gently rippling waves growing
from a central pedestal.  It pleased him.  When he was finished with
the exterior he covered the inside painstakingly, using a stiff brush
to apply the almost-liquid clay slip.  Then he fired it in the
fellows-fed kiln and painted it immediately with a motif of fish
swimming through ever-darkening tiers of water.  As he fired it again
to make the designs permanent he realized that it was fully dark
outside.  In his pleasure at working with a piece on which he was able
to employ his talent, he had lost track of the time.  Indeed, he
thought briefly as he lit the small oil lamp in the workshop, it had
not seemed as if time were passing at all.  The bowl was beautiful.  He
was admiring it when old Elias came in to see why the kiln was running
so late at night.  He spotted the painted bowl in the boy's hands and
took it from him with a scowl.  "I fired all the bowls," Aaron
explained, gesturing toward the pile of plain glazed pottery he had
made.  For even in his zeal to finish his creation, he knew that Elias
would not have permitted him to use the kiln for only one object.  The
potter cast an eye at the new bowls, then returned his gaze to the
fluted fish bowl.  "And this?"  he asked.  "It was an experiment."
Elias turned the bowl around in his hands.  "What is inside it?"  "A
metal cup I found."  The old man hefted it from one hand to the other,
judging the balance of its weight.  "The ware was not clean when you
painted it," he said.  The boy frowned.  He did not know what the old
man was talking about.  "For work like this, you have to clean all the
nubs and specks of clay off the object before you fire it the first
time, so that it will be perfectly smooth.  You feel this?"  He took
the boy's hand and passed it over the side of the bowl.  It felt just
like all the other bowls he had fired.  "Rough."
"But--" "All right for common bowls," the potter said, raising one
shoulder in a shrug.  "But for a decorative piece .  . ."  He made a
face.  "No one would want such a thing."  He tossed it into the pile of
plain bowls.
"You've wasted my paint."  Aaron hung his head.  At least old Elias
hadn't broken it in a rage.  The bowl would be sold as part of a mass
shipment.  "I'm sorry, master," he said.  The old potter looked at him
sternly.  "You've missed your supper," he said.
The boy did not answer.  "Go to bed.  You're using valuable oil."  As
he left the workshop, Elias said, "Tomorrow I'll teach you how to clean
the ware."  Aaron could not believe what he had just heard.  Trembling
with joy, he went over to the pile of pottery and picked up his bowl.
It was weighted perfectly.  Even the master had found no fault with
that.  The ripple design, too, was good.  And, if the truth be told,
the fish were quite pretty.
He laid the bowl back where Elias had put it and blew out the lamp.
The next stop for the cup, now disguised as a drinking bowl, was an inn
in Jerusalem, where three years later it was placed on a long table
where thirteen men gathered together for the last time.
The innkeeper set the fluted fish bowl--his own personal
favorite-before the leader of the group, because although the man was
only a carpenter by trade, he had achieved some prominence lately as a
prophet and teacher.  Some even claimed that the fellow had performed
miracles, including turning water into wine and bringing a dead man
back to life.
Of course, those tales were undoubtedly false, but who knew?  A man who
could inspire such stories might well become rich.  If an innkeeper
were to prosper, he had to pay attention to things like this.
Although the innkeeper was disappointed that his famous guest declined
to eat that evening, he brought the group the best wine he had to offer
when they asked for it and loitered near their table as the man called
Jesus of Nazareth performed a strange ritual.
He poured the wine into the beautiful rippled bowl, then passed it
around to the other men at the table, even though they had wine of
their own.  "Drink," he said in a gentle voice.  "Do this in
remembrance of me."  And as the innkeeper watched Jesus pass the bowl
with his long, expressive hands, he was suddenly filled with a terrible
sense of desolation.  For there was something in the man's calm eyes
that bespoke an utter resignation and a sadness beyond knowing.
This man would never become rich.
Jesus looked up at him.  The innkeeper bobbed his head and withdrew.
He was glad he had given him the fluted fish bowl.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Saladin had almost despaired of ever finding the cup again when he
heard about a Jew in Jerusalem who had risen from the dead after some
kind of ceremony involving a cup.
The Jew had apparently been a politician of some sort.  He had promised
the gift of eternal life to thousands and, as an example, had already
brought at least one dead man back to life before he was arrested and
crucified for his wild talk.
Saladin could only shake his head at the news.  This was exactly the
sort of person who should never have had possession of the cup.  For
what if the authorities had believed him?  Its priceless magic would
have passed into the hands of some dictator, who would keep his
position for countless ages.  As Saladin himself would not feel the
urge to rule for several centuries to come, he viewed this possibility
as a disaster of great proportions.  Politicians were bad enough;
immortal politicians would be a catastrophe beyond contemplation.
At least the loose-lipped fellow seemed to have learned his lesson.
According to the talk around Rome, Jesus of Nazareth had been quietly
buried after his execution.  Then, after three days, his body had
disappeared from the vault where he had lain.  Now, God knew, he might
be anywhere.
Still, it was the first inkling Saladin had had concerning the
whereabouts of the cup in ten years, and he had to follow it.
Feeling less than hopeful, he packed a few things and made plans to
travel to Judea.  He had been working as a physician in Rome.  During
his wanderings in the Arab world, he had pursued the healing arts which
he had begun to learn from Kanna.  In the growing civilization of
Assyria and Babylonia, he learned much about the workings of the human
body, about which the Romans, for all their political sophistication,
were still ignorant.  Despite his ostensibly young age--still a
teenager--the doctors in the city soon came to respect the knowledge of
the mysterious youth from the East and often sent their own patients to
him.  Of course, since the physicians only referred to Saladin those
cases which they themselves could neither diagnose nor treat, a good
number of Saladin's patients died.  Before long, he became known as a
healer of last resort, and was even referred to, behind his back, as
"Doctor Death."  Saladin did not mind the reputation.  His practice
brought him a good income without many social obligations, as the
foreign doctor of the moribund was not considered sprightly company in
fashionable circles.  As he grew older, he took to wearing black, which
set off his now-imposing height as well as his melancholy air.  In his
way, he had been accepted into Roman society.  It was the first time in
some twenty-five centuries that he was considered a respectable man.
As he boarded the ship sailing eastward, he actually felt a twinge of
indecision about leaving.  Was it necessary, he mused, to live forever?
If he remained in Rome, he would have a reasonably good life.  He had
already lived for nearly three millennia.  Perhaps it would not be
unpleasant to grow old.  The last ten years of aging like a normal
human being had not been troublesome to him, and he had met many men
well beyond their middle years who spoke of their "long" lives with
affectionate memory.  Even death, from his experience with his
patients, was not so terrible.  During his life, he had endured pain
far worse than death.  Had he not been tied to posts and left to die in
the desert sands after the death of the Pharaoh Ikhnaton?  Had he not,
immediately before his arrival in Rome, been tossed into a burning
funeral pyre by a mob of barbaric Macedonians?  No, death was not so
fearful.  And yet, he had tasted life.  Endless life, such as only one
other being before him had known.  The white-skinned, half-beast Kana
had had no appreciation for it; indeed, at the moment of his death, the
old creature had seemed almost relieved.  But Kanna had done nothing
with the timeless ages that had been his.  He had stayed on his
mountaintop scratching for roots while mankind was leaping up all
around him, performing wonderful feats.
He had seen nothing of the world, learned nothing, achieved nothing.
Saladin had used the cup as it should have been used.  He savored life;
always, he wanted more.  His moment of indecision had passed by the
time the ship set sail.  He would find the cup again.  He would find
another life.  He would never let go.
Once in Jerusalem, Saladin went straight to the tomb which had been
vacated by the allegedly immortal Jew.  It was not difficult to find;
since the bogus death, the place had been surrounded by superstitious
peasants, many of them lame and sick, seeking a cure for their ailments
in the stone where the "miracle" had taken place.  Most, Saladin saw,
were more in need of simple medical care than miracles.  If he'd had
the inclination, he could have set up a practice on the spot that would
have kept him busy for years to come.  But these were poor people who
would not know how to appreciate a physician's skill even if they saw
it in practice; whatever he did would be attributed to the miracles of
the vanished charlatan anyway.  Besides, he did not have the time.  He
pushed himself through toward the senior officer among a small group of
Roman soldiers guarding the tomb from the mob.  In their zeal, Saladin
supposed, the wretches who'd come seeking miracles might set up a
shrine right in the tomb.  Saladin did not involve himself much in
politics, but it was common knowledge that the Jews were an unruly lot
who had never taken well to Roman rule.  Unlike Britons, who openly
fought the occupying Roman forces, the Jews talked meekly and
officially submitted.
Then they just went on doing whatever they wanted.  Converting them to
the Roman religion was out of the question, at least for the moment.
They would never give up their vengeful, solitary god in favor of the
convenient pantheon of Roman deities.  It was the only point the Jews
were really adamant about, so Rome, in her wisdom, let it go.  As they
became more civilized, it was thought, the Jews would eventually
abandon their strict religious code and come around to a less demanding
mode of worship.  But the "miracle" cults were a problem.  Not only
were the Jews themselves annoyed with them, but the disruption these
radicals caused made the administration of the province hellish.  It
seemed to Saladin that the Nazarene who had escaped the tomb had
inadvertently created yet another troublesome cult.  "Who was he?"
Saladin asked pleasantly.  The soldier looked him over, noticing
Saladin's fine Roman clothes and perfect speech.  "A nobody," he
answered with a smirk, pushing back a woman who was keening like a
harpy.  The woman had long red hair and a face that in a bedchamber
might have seemed wanton.  She seemed to be oblivious to the soldiers'
barrier, throwing herself again and again at them in an attempt to
enter the tomb.  "I don't envy you your job," Saladin said.  The
soldier smiled grimly.  "I've had better postings, that's sure."  The
woman flung herself at him once more.  In exasperation, the soldier
swatted her across the face with the back of his hand.  "They're like
lunatics," he muttered, massaging his knuckles.  "This is the worst,
but they're crawling all over the city, following the blackguard's
footsteps.  They're camped up on the execution grounds like ravens.
I've heard the cross itself has been torn to pieces."  He shook his
head.  "By Jupiter, even the tavern where the poor devil took his last
drink is overrun."  This time the woman threw herself at Saladin,
clutching the sleeve of his black robe with her spindly fingers.  "Do
not listen to the Roman!"  she exhorted, her eyes glassy.  Apparently
she took Saladin to be one of her own people.  "Jesus is the
Christ--the anointed one sent by God.
The Romans killed him, but he lives again.  I have seen him with my own
eyes .  . ."  Her words tumbled out in a wild rush while the soldier
methodically loosened her grip on the tall stranger.  "Where have you
seen him?"  Saladin asked, but the soldier had pushed her away and
drawn his sword.  "Get the woman away before I have her flogged!"
he commanded.
The crowd screeched in protest.  "Where have you seen him?"  Saladin
repeated, shouting.  It was no use.  He could hardly hear his own voice
above the noise.  Craning his neck to see over the heads of the people,
he watched someone take hold of her and lead her, sobbing, out of the
crowd.  "See what I mean?"  The soldier put his sword away.
"Lunatics."  Saladin pushed his way toward where he had spotted the
woman.  "Wait!"  he called.  But when he finally freed himself from the
press of bodies, she was gone.  He questioned the others at the tomb,
but none could identify the woman he described.  Nor had any of them
seen the vanished Jesus of Nazareth.  Several, though, were able to
give him the location of the inn where Jesus had last been seen
publicly before his execution.
It was probably a waste of time, Saladin thought as he walked the dusty
road into town.  The people here were feebleminded.  They would believe
anything.  Had such a thing happened in Rome, he would have found a
dozen men within a half hour who would tell him the man's location for
a price.  But what could one expect in this backwater, where the
buildings were constructed of mud and even the roads were unpaved?  The
inn was at least a start.  People there might have known the man and
where he was living.  He groaned inwardly as he approached the place.
It was overrun with noisy people, clamoring at the door for a peek
inside.  Once again Saladin had to muscle his way through the crowd.
It was jammed inside with tables--some of them nothing more than crates
or blocks of stone pushed so tightly together that he wondered how
anyone could move among them.  The innkeeper, a rotund man who sweated
profusely, shouted orders at his help.  When Saladin tapped him on the
shoulder, he turned irritably, then softened as he appraised the tall
stranger's moneyed appearance.  "Yes, sir.  In one moment we'll have a
table for you and a meal like you have never tasted!"  "I'd like to
have some information about the man they call Jesus of Nazareth,"
Saladin said.  "Yes, yes, of course.  This is where he took his last
meal.  Lamb, it was.  The finest, prepared with leek.  It is the
specialty of the house.
Shall I order some for you?  It will be ready by the time you're
seated."  Saladin leaned close to the man.  "Were you a friend of his?"
The innkeeper looked up, startled.  "No, sir!"  he pronounced
vehemently, shaking his head so vigorously that his jowls trembled.  "I
am an honest tradesman.  How was I to know he was a criminal?"  At
this, Saladin was somewhat taken aback.  "I only meant--" "I knew
nothing of him," the fat man insisted, sweeping his stubby hands in
front of him as if to erase all doubt as he backed away.  "Or his
friends.  They have not been back."  He turned, but Saladin grabbed his
arm.  He could feel the man tense.  "I mean you no harm," he snapped.
"I am a stranger here and wish only to learn his whereabouts."  "His
whereabouts?"  The innkeeper looked at him askance.  "He is dead, sir."
The frown left his face.  "You did not know?"  "I heard his tomb was
empty," Saladin said cautiously.  If the man knew anything, this was
the time to negotiate the price of his knowledge.  "I understand he was
a great teacher.  I would be willing to pay a considerable sum to see
him .  . . or one of his followers."  The innkeeper sighed.  "I'm
afraid it's too late for that," he said.  "They've all been arrested,
or gone into hiding.  As for the man himself .  . ."  He spread his
arms in an elaborate shrug.  "They say he rose from the dead.  What can
I tell you?  Now, if you'll just be patient a few minutes more, I'm
sure I'll be able to find a table .  .
." He was anxious to be about his business.  "You heard no discussion
when he was here?"  No, sir, except for the ritual of the cup."
"What?"  The innkeeper suddenly beamed.  "Ah, you have not heard about
that?
It was in this very room that he passed his wine bowl to all at his
table, asking them to remember him.  It was as if he had a premonition
of his own death, you see.  I heard that with my own ears," he said
proudly.  "Would you care to see it?"  "I .  . . All right."  At least
it would give him a moment to talk with the man privately.  He may have
heard more than he remembered.  "Splendid.  Wait in the storeroom
around the corner.  I'll be with you in a moment."  He shouted for
someone to bring wine to the table.  "The fee for viewing it is small .
. . only three shekels."  He smiled ingratiatingly and bustled back
into the dining room.
Saladin made his way slowly around the corner.  To his annoyance, the
storeroom was also crowded with after-dinner loiterers willing to pay
three shekels for a look at a worthless bowl.  He joined them, bending
almost double to pass through the low open doorway.
Inside were stacks of ceramic bowls, casks of wine, and assorted
litter, including an old trunk of some kind.  The repository of the
sacred cup, no doubt, Saladin thought irritably.  The ceiling of the
earthen-floored room was too low for him to stand erect, forcing him to
lean against the wall like a lazy schoolboy.  The air in the small
place smelled of leeks and sweet wine.
This was ridiculous, he thought.  The innkeeper knew nothing, except
how to squeeze a little extra money out of his customers.  But where
would he go next?  Back to the tomb, perhaps, to see if the crazed
woman might return?  Or should he wander about the city, as he had for
so long in Rome, asking discreetly if anyone had seen a man with an odd
sphere-shaped metal ornament?
He sighed.  Such a search might take another ten years, and again yield
nothing.  He did not think he could bear ten years in Judea.  He
swallowed to hide his dismay.  Back to Rome, then.  Back to the life of
ordinary men, lived in the shadow of death.  He felt like weeping.
"Move aside," he murmured as he passed through the crowd on his way
toward the exit.  "Forgive my tardiness," the innkeeper cried, the
solid bulk of his belly pushing Saladin back into the fetid chamber.
"Three shekels, please.  To defray the cost."  He held out his apron,
which had a large pocket in the front, as the sightseers dropped coins
into it.
Saladin was about to leave in disgust when the apron opened in front of
him.  "You won't be sorry, sir," the innkeeper said with a wink.
With a resigned sigh, Saladin dropped in three coins.  The fat man
briskly unlocked the chest with a key he brought from beneath his
apron.
Puffing from the exertion of bending over, he lifted the lid and
produced a blue-green bowl.  Some of the women made "oohs" of
appreciation, although Saladin could not imagine what for.  It was an
execrable piece of pottery, garishly decorated with primitive-looking
fish.  "Some called him Messiah, some heretic," the innkeeper said in a
mysterious whisper, as if he were a pagan priest reciting an
incantation as he raised the bowl ludicrously above his head.  "On the
night before his arrest, Jesus of Nazareth passed this very bowl to
twelve members of a secret society and gave them his final orders."  He
paused dramatically.  "What were they?"  a woman asked finally.  "The
orders."  "That I cannot tell you," he said, maintaining his theatrical
voice.
"But he told his men to remember him while they carried them out."
The woman gasped.  "A plan to overthrow the Romans," someone suggested.
"Each man drank solemnly from the bowl, then passed it to the next."
Slowly he handed the fish bowl to the nearest onlooker.  "Careful."
The bowl was passed reverently from hand to hand.
This is worse than the cheapest street carnival show, Saladin thought.
He was almost embarrassed to accept the bowl, but when he did, he
noticed its weight.  It was too heavy to be made of clay.  The ripple,
too, was unusual.  The indentations were too deep, He ran his fingers
along the grooves.
Saladin had spent a number of years as an artist, most notably in Egypt
during the Eighteenth Dynasty, working in the tomb of the Pharaoh
Ikhnaton.  He had produced a great deal of pottery, as well as the
quasi-realistic sculpture and painting which were the hallmark of the
period.  And so he realized, as he studied the exaggerated ridges in
the innkeeper's crudely painted bowl, that something was inside its
base.
He turned it over and tapped on its underside.  The sound produced was
different from the dry click of his fingernail upon the fluted sides of
the bowl.  'The base itself could fit easily into a man's hand, and if
one listened, if one paid very careful attention, he could hear the
faint thrum-thrum of his own heartbeat in his ears.
And then it grew warm in his hand.  "Sir, please, everyone would like a
chance to .  . ."  Saladin smashed the bowl against the wall.
A woman screamed.  "Sir!"  the innkeeper shouted, his face beet red as
he parted the crowd imperiously.
It was his.  Saladin closed his eyes as his long fingers wrapped around
the warm metal of the sphere and felt its ancient magic coursing once
again through his body.  "The authorities will be called, I assure
you!"  Saladin laughed aloud.  He took a bag filled with gold Roman
coins from his belt and dropped it into the innkeeper's hand.  "For
your loss," he said, and swooped through the low doorway like a bird of
prey, his black cloak billowing behind him.
For a moment the people crowded into the storeroom were silent as they
watched the tall man leave the inn.  Then the innkeeper, with his
practical turn of mind, opened the drawstring of the pouch and peered
inside.  "Look, a fish, whole," a woman said as she picked up a broken
piece of the bowl.  Others followed suit, scrambling for the pottery
shards on the floor.  "Please, please," the innkeeper said
exasperatedly.  "Those are precious relics from the true cup of
Christ."  He opened the pocket of his apron and smiled.  "Thirty
shekels."  Outside, the spidery figure of Saladin fairly danced toward
the stables.
He would ride out of this cesspool and buy passage on the first ship he
found headed for Rome.
What luck!  He had found the cup on his first day in this godforsaken
place.  Encased in a bowl covered with fish, of all things!
Then he stopped, so suddenly that an elderly man bumped into him from
behind.
He squeezed the metal sphere in his hand.  So the man called Jesus
hadn't kept it, after all.  He probably hadn't even known of the cup's
existence.  For all his talk about eternal life, he had literally let
the opportunity to live forever slip from his fingers.
And yet the tomb was empty.
Saladin shuddered.
When he arrived back in Rome, he did not speak of his journey to Judea.
After thirty years, he vanished to India, where he worked as a trader
in silk for a time before returning to Rome.
By then the Christians had been recognized as a danger to the Empire.
They met in secret, known to one another by the symbol of the fish,
which they displayed in clever ways.  "Lunatics," an acquaintance of
Saladin's said as they sat together in the Colosseum watching a group
of Christians kneeling in prayer while a lion mauled one of their
number.  "They won't fight.  They're even proud to be crucified."
"Perhaps their belief is strong," Saladin offered.  "What belief?.
That a man can live forever?"  His friend laughed harshly and pointed
to the dead man at the lion's feet.  "It didn't work for that poor
fool."
"Some things are beyond the logic of our eyes and ears," Saladin
answered.  But the lion had attacked another of the Christians, and the
crowd was on its feet, hooting and cheering.
No one heard him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The next time Saladin lost the cup, a woman was responsible.  She was a
barbarian, even by the Britons' standards, which were far below his
own.
If Saladin had thought Judea backward, he was aghast the first time he
set eyes on the northern island Of Brittania.
There were no roads at all here, except for the highways the Romans had
built during their long occupation, and these were crumbling and fallen
into disuse.  Now the grassy countryside was crisscrossed with a series
of dirt footpaths.
Since the Roman legions had left, the entire country seemed to have
reverted to barbarism.  Saladin thought of a neglected garden that had
been overran by thorns and bramble.  The villas of the nobles had
become ruins, replaced by primitive thatch huts.  The cities and
villages, once efficient centers of trade, had degenerated into
rambling slums where none but the most scrofulous peasants dared live.
Even the military garrisons themselves had been taken over by filthy
locals who lived in the tumbledown barracks with their animals,
surrounded by offal.  There were no laws here.  Everyone was
illiterate.  The great concepts of government brought by the Romans had
been utterly forgotten.
The British did not even understand the rudimentary skills of plumbing.
It was a horror.  Saladin sat astride his horse--which, fortunately, he
had brought with him, since these Pale-skinned northerners did not even
have decent animals to ride--and wondered how soon he could get out of
this place.  Ships seldom came to the island.  He might be stranded
here, he thought with dismay, for six months or more.  And then, too,
there was the question of where he would go.  He was finally weary of
Rome.  The Visigoths had invaded some years before and actually sacked
the great city itself.  The invasion had come as an unspeakable shock
to the Romans, although Saladin himself was not much surprised.  The
decadence and corruption of the nobility--which, he had to admit, had
provided a number of quite enjoyable evenings for him over the
years---had not made for good government.  The Romans had in fact
become so cynical that the barbarian Visigoths even tried to negotiate
with city officials.  They had offered to keep the peace, for a price.
The emperor's representatives had condescendingly refused to pay
"protection" money to the nomadic horde, but they did not bother to
fortify the city, either.
The parties just went on amid a spate of fashionable jokes about the
Visigoths, until the Romans found themselves at the mercy of
foul-smelling warriors who dressed in boarskins.  Saladin himself had
seen the wind shifting and took the opportunity to absent himself from
the city before the attack.  But to his dismay, he found that similar
atrocities were occurring in practically every center of civilization
in the world.  Vast confederations of horsemen from the plains of
Eurasia were attacking the civilized centers of China, Persia, India e
stodgy Greeks in Athens were falling beneath the barbarians' massive
numbers.
There was really nowhere to flee from Rome, unless one chose to wander
into the wilderness.  It was extremely tiresome, Saladin had decided as
he returned to Rome during its death throes.  Actually, it had proved
to be one of the more interesting periods in his endless life.  Rome in
those final years reminded him of a venerable noblewoman who had taken
leave of her senses in her old age.  There was nothing--no pleasure, no
sensation, no experience--that could not he had for a price.  Saladin
had lain with senators' wives, a Nubian prince .  the of the sacred
vestal virgins on one occasion.  Feasts were held at which common
townspeople, in imitation of the nobles, ate until their bellies were
about to burst, then staggered away to vomit in the street.  The
spectacles at the Colosseum grew ever more shocking and contrived,
mixing depraved sex with gruesome violence whenever possible.  But the
Romans could no longer be shocked.  "Rome has seen it all" became the
city's jaded motto.  For the Romans knew that their time was quickly
passing.  Soon they would all be killed in their beds--and their
civilization with them.  It was the end of the world, and the Romans
accepted it--to their credit, Saladin admitted--without a trace of
sentimentality.  After the city was sacked for the fifth time, and he
had watched his own house go up in flames, Saladin decided to leave the
Eternal City.  It had not been eternal at all, he thought sadly as he
rode northward, away from Rome, with nothing more than a saddlebag
filled with gold, the metal cup, and, out of habit, a small pouch of
medical supplies.  The city had come and gone in what seemed like the
blink of an eye.  He had not intended at first to travel to Britain,
but as he moved steadily northward, an idea began to form in his mind:
If Rome was done for, perhaps its provinces were just beginning to
flourish.  He had heard that the Romans had built cities on the
northern island and had sufficiently tamed the wild Celts to the point
where many of the British landholders had become Roman citizens.
Their sons learned Latin, and they lived in Roman-style villas.  Some
of the wealthier ones were even granted the title of senator.
These reports, he now saw as he looked over the desolation of the
country, had been utterly false.  Whatever gains the Romans made during
their occupation had been lost completely.  Entrusting barbarians with
civilized government was like giving gold to an infant, he thought
angrily.  if they couldn't eat it, it was of no value to them.
Now where?  The thought hung heavily on him.  The climate in this place
was cold, colder than anywhere he had ever lived.  Even though it was
only September, he wrapped his cloak around him for warmth.  He
certainly wouldn't stay in one of the so-called cities; they were
pestilential.  There were farms in the area where he supposed he could
buy a night's lodging, but the prospect of living under the same roof
with not only barbarians, but their livestock as well, was daunting.
He decided to spend the night in the forest.  For although Saladin had
become a creature of civilization, he had not forgotten his childhood
years in the Zagros Mountains with Kanna.  He had no fear of the
wilderness and knew how to live off the land.  That night he killed a
young deer and roasted it over a high fire.
That was the night, too, when he met Nimue.
It must have been the fire that drew her, or the smell of food.
Saladin had cooked the whole deer and sat on its skin while he picked
at a haunch.  He longed, absurdly, for fruit.  Food supplies had been
low in recent times even in Rome, due to the constant invasions, but
there were still peaches or melons to be had, if one knew where to
look.  But here .  . . He sighed.  In this cold place, he would be
lucky to keep from starving.
He would go back to the docks tomorrow, he decided, and every day
thereafter until he could find someone with a boat to ferry him and his
horse across the channel back to Europe.  There, he would live out
whatever time he had to until the world settled into some kind of
order.
He tossed the piece of meat aside, his appetite gone.  Never in more
than thirty centuries had he seen anything like the disaster that was
sweeping the world.  If he had been a superstitious man, he would have
agreed with the Romans that mankind's time had come to an end.  The
statesman Cicero had been right when he warned the nobility against
giving in to the mass of common men, the rabble: Now the barbarians
were taking over the earth.
Saladin leaned back in disgust on the deerskin which was still stinking
of fresh blood.  It was that or the bare ground.  He closed his eyes
and tried not to think.
In the stillness of the forest, the noise made by a broken twig sounded
like a thunderbolt.  He leaped up from his place and drew his dagger at
once.
The animal stopped, silent, but in the light of the fire he could see
its eyes, glassy and shining, surrounded by a cloud of glowing hair.
It made a sound, almost a cry, then sank to the ground.
Cautiously Saladin made his way toward the creature.  It did not move.
It was lying facedown in a patch of dried leaves.  As he reached it, he
prodded it with his toe to roll it over.  He saw with some surprise
that it was a woman.
Or, rather, a girl.  She could not have been more than sixteen, Saladin
thought, staring at her in distaste.  Yet, with her filthy white flesh
and clothing made of animal skins, she reminded him uncannily of the
ancient mountain man Kanna.
When she did not move, he bent over her to see if she were still alive.
Aside from a lot of scabs and bruises, which seemed normal, judging
from her physical appearance, there were no signs of mortal wounds.  He
opened one of her eyelids.  From the look of the eye, she had fainted.
The iris, he saw, was blue.
He had never gotten used to blue-eyed, pale-skinned people, even though
he had known many.  Alexander himself, the greatest warrior in history,
had been fair, and Saladin had half fallen in love with him at one
time, but that was more despite the man's appearance than because of
it.  Even the Greeks, for all their learning and elegance, had seemed
physically repugnant to Saladin.  That was why he so preferred life in
Rome.  For while there were blonds there, too, they were not of the
type he so disliked--pasty and weak-looking, like termites or
bottom-feeding fish.
Like Kanna.  Or this girl.
Her skin was hot.  A fever of some sort, probably brought on by
whatever vermin she carried on her person in such plentiful supply.
She stank.
Saladin was inclined to leave her where she was, but she posed a
problem.  Sick or not, she might attack him during the night.  The
woods were dark.
Cursing softly, he dragged her back to the fire.  She would probably be
dead by morning, anyway.  Until then, he could prevent her from
slitting his throat by keeping an eye on her.
She came to briefly, and tried to bolt.  "Oh, stop," Saladin said
wearily, pinning her arms back.  "I'm not going to hurt you, you putrid
sack of offal."  She tried to resist, but she was very weak.  Her eyes
opened wide.  He could feel her hot, febrile breath and turned his face
away from it.
Firmly but without violence he positioned her in front of the fire.
"You're hungry, I suppose," he said, tearing off a piece of meat from
the cooked carcass of the doe.
She looked at it, but her eyes lost their focus.  Her tongue pulled
loose from the roof of her mouth with an unpleasant sound.  She was
thirsty.
Reluctantly Saladin offered her his cask of water.  He had seen a creek
nearby; he would clean the cask's metal spout in the morning, after
setting it on the fire to burn away the impurities from the creature's
mouth.
She drank from it greedily, spilling water all over herself.  She did
not stop until he took the cask away from her.  Then, with a last
tentative look at the stranger in the wood, she curled up by the fire
and went to sleep.
As the flames softened into embers, Saladin did the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Saladin awoke to find the gift squatting on the ground in front of him,
gnawing on a piece of cold meat.  Her blue eyes, no longer glazed with
fever, stared up at him with a mixture of awe and fear.  "So you're
still alive," he said without much interest.  She smiled at him.
Her teeth were good, despite her feral life.  She tried to speak.
It was tentative, and in a guttural language that sounded to Saladin
like gibberish.  He wondered how long it had been since she had spoken
with another human being.
But that was nonsense, he told himself.  The creature probably had a
protector somewhere nearby, some great hairy male beast of her own kind
who would come looking for her with a club in his hand.
Saladin stretched and rose to untie his horse.  "Get away," he told the
girl.  "Go on now, go."  He pushed her.
She fell onto the earth with a hurt expression on her dirty face.
Saladin ignored her and climbed onto the saddle.
The docks were filled with fishing boats, small craft that could not
carry a horse.  Saladin's horse was a good one, an Arabian stallion
which he himself had brought to Rome from Persia.  Even the strong
animals from Gaul, used by most of the Roman officers, were no match
for the swift-legged piece of living flesh that was Saladin's prized
steed.
The great sculptor Devinius had begged Saladin to allow him to sketch
the horse, but Saladin had refused.  If such a statue were made, the
horse would have been stolen.  The emperor himself would have wanted
it.
To give up the stallion for a boat ride was not a price Saladin wanted
to pay.  "When do you expect a bigger ship to dock here?"  he called to
some fishermen.
They looked up, but did not answer him.  He called again; this time one
of them shouted something in the same ugly-sounding language his forest
girl had used.
Imagine, Saladin thought angrily.  After almost four hundred years of
Roman rule, these barbarians had lost the Latin language in less than
half a century.  How was he supposed to talk to these people?  By the
gods, his horse was more intelligent than the natives here.
He turned away, wanting nothing more than to get away from this place.
The wind was cold today.  Soon winter would come, and with it the
certainty that no ship from any civilized place would make its way to
the northern wasteland where he was stranded.
Saladin had no doubt that a British winter would be unlike anything he
had ever experienced.  There was said to be snow here.  Not just on the
mountaintops, where Roman nobles would send slaves to collect it for
dessert at dinner parties, but everywhere.  And, too, the land was
apparently beset by other barbarians.  Roman officers who had
campaigned in Britain had mentioned a race of light-haired warriors
called Saxons who made infrequent raids on outpost hill forts.  The
legionnaires had regarded them as more of a nuisance than any real
menace.  "Beasts, that's what they were," one old soldier had said
while recounting his experience.  "They don't look like humans, they
don't talk like humans."  He had made a face.  "And, believe me, they
don't smell like humans·" It almost made him laugh.  Even the Visigoths
would find nothing of value to plunder in Britain.  Whoever these
Saxons were, they had to be truly desperate to consider looting this
frozen, barren, impoverished dung heap.
The horse reared up.  Caught daydreaming, Saladin brought the animal
under control at the same time as he reached for his sword.
It was the girl, running out of the woods toward him.  "You again!"
Saladin said with distaste.
She was carrying two dead squirrels by their tails.  She came up to
him, smiling timidly, and offered the two small bodies to him.
He hesitated for a moment, but the girl nodded her head and stretched
out her arms.
Saladin took the squirrels.  It would save him hunting later.  "How
long have you been following me?"  he demanded, then chided himself for
wasting his time talking to her.  In the sunlight, the color of her
hair was extraordinary.  It was curly as well as tangled, and
surrounded her head and shoulders like a gigantic halo.
Why, she might be a Saxon, he thought.  She certainly seemed to fit the
old Roman soldier's description.  But she was no warrior.  Running out
of the woods toward his horse had been the act of a fool.  Any other
man would have killed her on the spot.
He was about to ride on when she touched his ankle.  "Get away from
me!"  he said, jerking his foot back.  She pointed down the road, or
what passed for a road.  "What?"  She pointed again, ran a few steps
back toward the woods, beckoned to him, then darted into the trees and
disappeared.
He listened.  There were horses coming from a distance.  He cantered
back toward them.  Once he got a look at whoever was approaching, he
could outrun them if he had to.
To his surprise, the homemen were soldiers, of a sort.  They wore some
kind of armor, although every man seemed to have outfitted himself in
his own fashion, and they rode with no sense of rank or form.
But they did carry a banner, a rather beautifully embroidered red
dragon on a field of white.  Clearly, Saladin thought, this was an
entourage of one of their chieftains.  Even in this desolate place,
there might be some men of learning who could at least speak enough
Latin to direct Saladin toward a decent place to spend the night.  His
best chance was with these nobles.  "Ave."  he called when the group
was within earshot.  The soldiers surrounded him at once, their weapons
drawn.  With a flourish Saladin bowed to them, although his great
height combined with the size of the stallion he rode set him far above
the Britons on their shaggy little ponies.  "I am a stranger in your
land, and I beg your indulgence in granting me an interview with your
liege lord," he said in his most elegant Latin.
The men murmured among themselves, again in the unpleasant language of
the land.  But their eyes never left his horse.  One of them actually
rode up and touched the animal.
Saladin had the stallion stomp a warning.  The soldiers gasped at this
simple feat of horsemanship.  "I demand to see whoever's in charge!"
Saladin snapped.  He looked down the line of riders.  They all appeared
to be soldiers with the exception of two, at the end of the line, one
very old, the other young.  The younger was common-looking, red-haired
and plainly dressed.
The old man appeared to be a priest of some kind, dressed in a long
shapeless robe with a cloak thrown over his shoulders.  Both rode the
same undistinguished beasts as the soldiers.  Not a litter or carriage
among them.
Exasperated, he turned to go, but the soldiers stopped him with their
swords.  "You really are beginning to annoy me," he said.  "Let me
pass."  The soldiers stayed.  One of them jabbed his sword in the air
toward Saladin.  "I told you buffoons to let me pass!"  he roared as
the stallion reared up majestically.  He drew his own sword, curved and
magnificent, the blade longer than his own arm, and swung it expertly
over his head.
"Now, now," came a quiet voice.  The old man rode forward.
The youth shouted something in the native tongue, and to Saladin's
surprise, the soldiers backed off a few feet.  But the young man
himself did not approach.  "Buffoons we may be," the old man said, "but
we are not in the habit of threatening an army of armed men."  His
Latin was perfect.  "Forgive me," Saladin said.  He accorded the man
the same bow he had given the soldiers.  "I am stranded in a strange
land where I can buy neither food nor shelter and cannot make myself
understood to ask for these necessities.  I forgot myself."  "It is
understandable, under the circumstances," the old man said pleasantly.
"What do you call yourself?."  "I am Saladin, lately of Rome and her
Empire.  I am a physician and a nobleman, whose name is known."  "Not
here," the man said, smiling.  "I'm afraid Rome has had little
influence in Britain for some time."  "That I have seen for myself.  I
wish to return to the Continent--" Or anywhere else, he thought wryly.
"But I am having difficulty securing passage on a boat large enough to
take my horse."  The man stroked his white beard.  "I believe a Roman
ship is due shortly.  They usually come to trade for wool and dogs
before winter.  "Yes, sire," Saladin said patiently.  "In six weeks'
time.  It is too long to sleep in the woods.  I stopped your men to ask
about lodging.
I will pay well."  The old man looked surprised.  "Lodging?  with us?"
The young man said something in the local language, quite casually, it
seemed, and the men all burst out laughing.
Saladin felt a flash of anger.  The impudent pup!  Apparently the
nobles of this odious place felt no need to teach their children any
manners.
The little fool even had the temerity to ride up to join the two men.
Then he surprised Saladin by speaking in flawless Latin.  Your
circumstances are unfortunate, sir.  Please accept our hospitality for
as long as you require."  He inclined his head briefly, then trotted
his horse back into the line, speaking curtly to the men leading the
procession.
It moved forward.  The old man gave Saladin a look of amusement.
"Well, we'd best be going, then," he said.  "Camelot is not far."
"Camelot?"  "The High King's winter quarters."  He pointed toward the
horizon.
Some ten or twelve miles away, Saladin judged, sat what looked to be an
enormous stone castle on a hill.  In his reverie, he had not even
noticed it.
The youth passed by on his horse.  Such an undistinguished-looking
youth, with his shock of red hair and plain clothing.
Saladin turned to the old man.  "Is he the High King?"  he asked.  The
old man nodded.  "And you are regent?"  "Oh, nothing so grand.  !  I am
Merlin.  I'm afraid I don't have a title.
I could be described as an old household retainer, I suppose .
A servant, and riding beside the king!  Saladin was confused.  He did
not know whether to continue speaking to the man or not.  "I daresay
we're not what you're accustomed to.  But you'll get used to us."  He
led his pony forward to join the young king, gesturing to Saladin to
join him.
When all were gone and the dust had settled on the road, the girl
emerged tentatively from the woods.  The carcasses of the two squirrels
had been trampled to pulp.
The stranger had left her without a thought.

,CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

"You looked so young," Saladin said to the sleeping boy.  "Yet it was
clear from the beginning that your knights adored you."  It was that
more than anything else, he supposed, that started the first stirrings
of ambition within himself.
Saladin had never before aspired to power.  Part of it may have been
his youth, despite the fact that he had already lived nearly thirty-two
centuries.  Still, to outward appearances, he had been a
fifteen-year-old boy for most of that time.  Then, in what had seemed
like an instant, he became a twenty-five-year-old man.  Professionally
useful: After his return from Judea, his fortune increased a
thousandfold.  People had sought him out as a physician.
To be truthful, he had been a very good doctor, even though he had
never once used the metal sphere to cure a patient, not even when the
patient was the emperor himself.  It would have been a foolish risk.
Besides, he was not particularly dedicated to keeping people alive.
As someone immune to death, he understood with detachment that death
was part of the natural order of things.
But he was, to say the least, vastly experienced in his profession.
Had he been more dedicated, he might have revolutionized the practices
of medicine and surgery.  As it was, he had discovered a way to
resuscitate a stopped heart---a procedure which brought him so much
renown that he feared he would have to leave Rome.  He was alternately
hailed as a saint and castigated as a sorcerer until finally Emperor
Nero tipped the scales by summoning Saladin to the royal palace to
treat a recurring case of gout.  After that he was well regarded, even
though he was not invited back after the emperor's next attack.
His colleagues subtly chided Saladin for not making more of his
opportunity to curry royal favor.  "There was nothing to be done for
him," he'd answered curtly.  "Not with his eating habits."  Actually,
he had been relieved.  If he had been selected as a personal physician
to the emperor, it would eventually have become difficult to maintain
the secret of his immortality.  He would have remained a
twenty-five-year-old man, while everyone around him, including the
"divine" ruler, aged and died.  No, the secret was too important to
risk for a temporary moment in the sun.  Why should he need power?  He
had life.  Besides, Nero was a repulsive little pervert whose personal
habits offended Saladin.  He was not unhappy when Nero died shortly
afterward and the name of Saladin faded from court circles.
But here, in this strange and barbaric land, things were different.
This was not Rome, where holding power meant forever watching one's
back.
Here the High King lived as a normal man and regarded the kingship as a
job.
Arthur commanded the forces at Camelot with an easy hand.  Where the
Roman emperors had held themselves up as living deities, this king
behaved like a leader among equals.  He was, they said, a great
warrior, going into the thick of battle himself and living no better in
the field than the lowliest of his soldiers.
At the castle, he disdained finery and diversions.  Except for public
ceremonies, he did not even wear a gold circlet around his head to
signify his rank.  Entertainments at Camelot were simple, a harper or a
storyteller.  The food was plain.  The stone castle itself was rough,
though immense.  He had even constructed a round table where he met
with his most favored knights.  Saladin had seen it himself.  The
king's chair was no higher than the rest.
Such a man, Saladin thought, could not command respect for long.
Love, yes.  The men loved him for his very ordinariness, for his
Spartan purity.  He was one of them.  But he was not a king, not of the
sort Saladin had known.  "Do you read Celtic?"  Merlin asked,
interrupting his reverie.
Saladin had been standing at the carved wooden bookcase in a parlor off
the Great Hall.  It was an odd room, furnished only with a low bench
and a rush mat on the floor in addition to the small cabinet.
But it was fairly sunny compared with the other slit-windowed chambers
in the drafty stone keep of the castle, and considerably warmer than
his own small sleeping room on the upper level.
Saladin had taken to spending most of his days there, looking through
the meager collection of writings.  There were copies of Plato's
Republic and Aristotle's Ethics, written in Greek on pages of yellowed
linen, and Emperor Claudius' autobiography in Latin, some writings of
Julius Caesar, and The Orations of Cicero, which Saladin knew so ' well
he had almost memorized it.  There were works in Frankish as well, folk
tales he had found amusing, and several beautifully illuminated works
in a language he could not read.  It was one of these that he was
holding when the mysterious "court retainer" named Merlin had come upon
him.
Saladin nearly jumped.  He had grown unaccustomed to being spoken to in
the castle.  No one, apparently, understood Latin except for Merlin and
the king, and Saladin rarely saw either of them.  As for the others,
they were like a wild bunch of boys, spending their days outdoors
hunting or practicing' the arts of warfare.  Neither activity would
have appealed much to Saladin even if the weather had been warm; as it
was, he thought the knights must have been mad to venture outdoors when
it was not absolutely necessary.  Each day grew colder than the last.
The trees were almost bereft of leaves already, and at night the chill
wind blew mercilessly into the sleeping rooms, freezing Saladin to the
bone.  "Celtic?  He looked down at the beautiful manuscript.  "Is that
what you call your language?"  "No.  We speak English here," the old
man said, "although it may have been Celtic at one time, long ago.
It's an ancient language, older even than Latin."
He recited a poem of some sort, the sounds dolorous and musical.  When
he was finished, he smiled.  "That was beautiful," Saladin said,
immediately embarrassed at paying the compliment.  "It's still spoken
in Ireland, across a sea to the far north.  The place is even wilder
than Britain.  But they love to speak and sing.
The Irish have a tradition of storytelling that's as old as the sea."
"And how do you know it."?"  "I've traveled there," Merlin said.  "In
my youth, I was a hard.  My voice was never as good as some of them,
particularly the Irish, who sing like angels, but I played the harp and
learned the old stories.  I found these books there.  All of them were
written by women."  "Women!"  Saladin was aghast.  "They waste learning
on women?"  Merlin nodded.  "But it's a rare art, in any case.  The
oral tradition is very strong.  The bards themselves are quite
powerful.  They're regarded rather as magicians."  Saladin's eyes
narrowed.  There was something in what the man said that sparked his
curiosity.  "That's how you're treated here," he said.  "Oh, nothing of
the kind."  He laughed self-deprecatingly.  "The king tolerates me
because I had a hand in his education."  "These books are yours,"
Saladin said.  "Yes.  I put them here so that Arthur might read them.
I suppose I could have given them to him outright, but I really
couldn't bear to part with them.  Do you read Greek?"  "Of course."  He
saw Merlin's look of amusement and added, "But education is easily come
by in Rome.  May I ask how you achieved such scholarship?"  Merlin
shrugged.  "If the truth be told, there was probably more of it around
in my day.  The Saxons hadn't burned everything, and the cities weren't
the mess they are now .... But I imagine all old men speak of the past
as if it were a better time than the present.  All it means is that we
liked living better back then, because we were young."  Saladin put the
book back on the shelf.  "You are more right than you know.  The times
were better sixty years ago.  In Rome, a man could walk the streets
without fear for his life.  Now, thanks to the mobs within and the
invaders without the city, there is no safety, no peace."  "Those sound
like bitter thoughts for one so young."  "Young?"  He blinked.  He had
forgotten himself with the old man.
"Yes, of course."  He forced a smile, an expression with which he had
never felt comfortable.  "With experience comes optimism, I'm told.
Perhaps I've yet to attain that."  He had almost slipped, almost
exposed the secret of his life .  . .
for a moment's conversation with a near-stranger!  Nothing like that
had ever happened to him before.  Yet, he thought, there was something
about the old man which seemed to draw him out, as if Merlin could read
his mind .... "Excuse me," Saladin said abruptly, and walked away, not
knowing exactly where he would go.  "Saladin."  The voice was soft.
"I'll teach you English if you like."  It was.  an offer Saladin could
not refuse.  He had five more weeks remaining on this miserable island
before the Roman ship came.  To fill the long days with learning a new
language was enticing.  "I've nothing better to do with my time," he
said.  "After dinner, then."  Saladin left.  But for an hour or more,
he could not world himself of the feeling that he had already said too
much to the old man.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The beginning of the end was, of all things, an act of kindness.
Saladin had been at the castle for several weeks.  October was cold,
and it promised to be a bad winter.  The sea was savage, and already a
few dry flumes of snow had blown through the inner bailey of the
courtyard at Camelot.
Each day for weeks Saladin had ridden to the docks to await the arrival
of the Roman vessel which would take him away from this forlorn island;
each day he returned, frozen and disappointed.  By the first week of
November, he knew in his heart that the ship would not come.
His only consolation in those days were his lessons in the native
language and the attendant company of Merlin.  The two men, he learned,
had much in common.  They were both well traveled, although naturally
Saladin had visited more distant places; both were scholars by
inclination; and, most surprisingly, they were both physicians.
Merlin's knowledge of medicine was not modern.  During the course of
their lessons, the old man had sometimes spoken of the "Old Religion,"
the pagan worship which had dominated Britannia until the Roman
occupation, when the druid priests had been driven off or executed.
The Romans' own polytheism had never taken root here among the ordinary
people, and had been recently replaced by Christianity, whose
missionaries were as strictly against the old ways as the Romans had
been.  Yet still, the Old Religion was practiced in secret.  Shrines
set up long ago to gods so ancient that their names were no longer
remembered were nevertheless tended with care by passersby.  The stone
bowls were filled with clean water, and often small sacrifices of food
were left at the shrines to appease the Old Ones, the mystical deities
who had watched over the land since the beginning of time.  The priests
of this ancient cult, the druids, still performed their rituals in
secret places deep in the woods, as they had for centuries since the
old ways were outlawed.
Merlin was one of these.
Not that he attempted to bring the Old Religion to the court at
Camelot; indeed, he lived among the crosses and other accoutrements of
the new foreign religion with as little notice as he had taken of the
Roman statues during his childhood.  "Christianity," he told Saladin
matter-of-factly, "is the way of the future.  Arthur must maintain a
Christian court, at least nominally, if he's ever to unite all the
warring tribes of the island."  "I should think you'd be offended,"
Saladin said archly.  "Or frightened.  The Christians apparently wish
to eradicate your religion completely."  The old man smiled.  "So did
the Romans.  And for four hundred years, they thought they'd succeeded.
As far as the Christians know, the druids have been gone for
centuries."  "But what about you?  You're here to prove them wrong."
"I am just an eccentric old man favored by a king who is well beloved,"
he said.  "And so they call me not a druid, but a wizard."
He laughed.
"And they attribute my long life to magical immortality."  It was with
the druids that he had learned the arts of medicine.  And truly,
Saladin felt, no mortal man could know more about the properties of
herbs and minerals than Merlin.  The two of them spent long hours in
the parlor by candlelight, their respective unguents and plants spread
about on the floor between them, discussing various ailments and their
cures.  Despite his long life of secrecy, Saladin found himself
enjoying the exchange of medical information.  When he told Merlin of
his technique in treating heart-attack victims, the old man had
listened, fascinated.  "No medicine is used?"  he asked.  "None at
all?"  "Not during the initial attack.  Only physical movements are
required to stimulate the heart to beat again."  Saladin showed him the
movements, strong, almost rough, applied directly to the chest.  "You
must replace the hart's rhythm artificially until it has revived.
Naturally, this does not always succeed.  Your best chance is with a
young man, but even this often fails."  The two men discussed the
procedure for hours.  In the end, they determined that the physical
manipulation, combined with the essence of foxglove, a plant found in
the region containing highly stimulative properties, would be a
worthwhile experiment.  Through Merlin, Saladin learned how to prepare
many new medicines.  He bundled himself up in a fur cloak and the two
walked the fields outside the castle together for long hours, searching
for plants that had not already been killed by the early frosts.
Afterward, Saladin always complained of the cold, but he never passed
up Merlin's invitations.  "Truly, Saladin, I can scarcely believe you
to be only twenty-five years old," Merlin said as they were trudging
through the shallow caves of the area looking for pyrite, which Saladin
claimed could be packed into infected wounds from tooth extraction.
Saladin pulled his cloak higher around his neck.  "Sometimes it feels
more like twenty-five centuries," he said.
Merlin smiled.  He touched the younger man's back lightly, and they
moved on.  "They say the hills are hollow here,'' he said.  "It's
because of all the small caves cut into the land.  Some parts of
Britain are honeycombed with them.  In the old days, when the Romans
were establishing rule here, many people fled the legions by living in
these caves.  Some of my ancestors were among them."  He picked up a
rock, studied it, then cast it away.  "Actually, they're not bad places
to live.  When the court travels north, I often stay in one myself,
near the border of Dumnonia.  It's every bit as comfortable as the
drafty castle where Arthur and the others stay, and there's far less
noise."  "I am acquainted with the merits of cave dwelling," Saladin
said.
Merlin stopped suddenly.  "Why, that's where you learned your medicine,
isn't it?  In a cave."  Saladin stared at him.  Then the old man could
read his mind.  He felt a mixture of panic and anger rise up inside
him.  "No, no, please don't bolt.  It's a small gift, I assure you,"
Merlin stammered.  "The fact is, I'm not sure it's a gift at all.
I don't really read thoughts.  Just a random image now and again.
Sometimes it's nothing more than a feeling.  It confuses me, more than
anything."  Saladin relaxed a little.  "But I would like to ask you .
. ."  His gaze wandered down to the velvet pouch hanging from Saladin's
belt.  Unconsciously, Saladin's fingers wrapped around it.
"I see that quite often when I'm talking with you.  It's a ball of some
kind, a metal ball.  Am I right?"  Saladin was silent for a long
moment.  The old man seemed to be exhibiting nothing more than
curiosity.  "It's a talisman I carry for luck.  A charm," he said
finally.  Merlin frowned.
"May I look at it?"  "No."  He walked ahead.  * * The incident occurred
in one of the small caves.  !  dark there, nor particularly deep, and
the two men walked about without much caution, gathering rocks by feel.
"Do you dislike darkness?"  Merlin asked.
Saladin took a moment to answer.  "No," he said finally.  "I far prefer
it to rooms filled with smoking candles."  "I quite understand," the
old man said.  "Darkness is often solitary.
There's much to be said for being alone .  . ."  He broke off as
Saladin uttered a hoarse cry, and Merlin heard the sound of falling
rock.  "Saladin!"  he called, rushing toward the noise.
There was no doubt about what had occurred.  Even in the hazy darkness,
Merlin could see the cloud of dust that had risen from the rockfall.
He cast about frantically, trying to discern where Saladin might be in
the rubble.
Working as fast as he could, he lifted stones and hurled them aside.
If he could uncover a part of the man, he reasoned, he would be able to
approximate where his head was and possibly save him from suffocation.
"Hold on!"  he shouted, ignoring the pains which had already begun
shooting through his arms and chest.  He regretted his age.  If his
guest--a fellow physician--died because his rescuer was too slow to
help him, Merlin would never forgive himself.
He worked harder, hearing his own breath coming ragged and loud.  At
last he uncovered part of Saladin's shoulder and was quickly able to
clear the area near Saladin's nose and mouth.
He was breathing.  "Thank the gods," he said, gently lifting the stones
from over the prone man's eyes.  Don't panic, now," he said.
"You probably have some broken bones, so I'm going to clear enough of
this away to make you comfortable before I go back for help."  "There's
no need.  I'm unhurt."  Saladin blinked dust out of his eyes.
"Marvelous," Merlin said, although he knew that the man's lack of pain
was probably due to shock, and he would not be surprised if he
uncovered a severed limb beneath the moun.  of stones.  "Can you move?"
"No,".  "No."  "Then don't try."  He patiently continued removing rocks
one by one.
Before long he found the reason for Saladin's immobility: A large flat
boulder had fallen directly onto his midsection.  Merlin groaned
inwardly.  Fractured ribs, certainly; a broken hip, perhaps two;
possible damage to the spine; internal injuries.  If he lived for an
hour, it would be a long time.  "I've got to get this off you," he
said.
"I'll come back in a moment."  With that, he ran out of the cave and
into the woods beyond it.  When he returned, puffing with the exertion,
he carried a long, straight branch, which he worked gently between the
rock and Saladin's abdomen.  "There's going to be some pressure," he
grunted as be formed a small mound of stones beside it.  "I've got to
lever that thing away.  I'll try not to hurt you, but .  . ."  "Get on
with it," Saladin snapped.  Merlin finished constructing his fulcrum,
then rested the center of the branch on top of it.  "Prepare yourself,
Saladin," he said, then pushed down on the end of the branch with all
his might.  Slowly the big rock creaked.  The old man pressed down
harder, his arms trembling with the effort.  If he slipped, he knew, if
his strength failed him for a moment, the rock would come crashing atop
a man who had already suffered any number of injuries.
It would kill him at once.  "It's... moving," Merlin said, squeezing
out the words.  The cords on his neck stood out starkly.  His face,
shaking with strain, felt as if it were about to explode.  Finally the
rock gave.  It tumbled over once, then thudded with a cloud of dust
near the cave entrance.  "I'll get myself out," Saladin said.  "No,
no."  Merlin scrambled over to where he lay..  "It won't take long now
. .
." He began to cough.  It was deep and searing, and each spasm was
worse than the last.  "Move out of the way," Saladin shouted, lifting
his ann.
A shower of stones sprayed out from the spot where the arm had lain.
Merlin rolled aside, unable to stop the racking cough.  His breathing
did not return to normal until all four of Saladin's limbs were in view
and the tall man was able to extricate himself from the rubble.  "You
can walk?"  Merlin wheezed.  It seemed incredible.  "I told you I was
uninjured," Saladin said irritably.  "But I refuse to stay here any
longer."  He walked from the cave as if he had been sitting on a soft
cushion rather than buried within a mountain of rock.  Merlin himself
was far more exhausted than his companion seemed to be.  The physical
ordeal he had been through, combined with the nerve-wracking worry
about Saladin's condition, left him feeling every one of his
seventy-one years.  He sat on the cave floor, his breath as audible as
a donkey's bray.  He tried to stand up, but a tightening in his chest
forced him to sit down again immediately.  He felt light-headed.  For a
moment he bent forward slowly, so as not to aggravate the pain in his
chest--to dispel a fierce ringing that had begun in his ears.  "Are you
coming?"  Saladin called from outside.  "Yes," Merlin answered, but he
knew his voice was too feeble to hear.  "Yes," he repeated, louder.  He
stood up.  His legs were wobbly, but functional.  With a shuffling
gait, they led Merlin out into the light.  "You look ashen," Saladin
said.  "The dirt, most likely," Merlin answered with a weary smile.
Saladin dusted off his long black robe.  "Yes, I'm filthy.  I'll need
someone to wash my garments immediately."  With an air of deep disgust,
he picked a cobweb out of his hair.  "First things first," Merlin said,
walking over to him.  "Let me take a look at you before we head back.
Sometimes injuries don't .  . ."  He Peered closely at the tall man's
face.  He lifted one of Saladin's hands.  "There isn't a scratch on
you," he murmured in amazement.  "Not even on your feet."  "I should
like to go back now," Saladin said.  "My fur cloak is gone, and it's
cold here."  Not waiting for a reply, he strode toward the castle.
Merlin barked out a laugh that turned into a cough.  "But it's
remarkable!  I've never seen such a thing.  Surely, with the amount of
rock that fell, you must have suffered something... something."  His
hand clutched unconsciously at the collar of his robe as he struggled
to keep up with Saladin's long strides.  "There isn't even a mark on
your skin, such as might be left by a tingemail."  He gasped for air.
"Not a bruise .  . .
Saladin .  . . ah ...."  He fell to the ground.
Saladin whirled around, recognizing the choking sound of a man whose
heart was undergoing a monumental seizure.
Merlin was lying on the grass, his arms and legs flailing wildly.
This was no small attack, Saladin knew; those were characterized by a
concerted stillness of the limbs.  Men who feared they were suffering
from heart attack took pains to move nothing and breathe shallowly.
But those in the full throes of pain no longer cared for such
precautions.
The agony overwhelmed them.  That had been Saladin's experience, and he
knew it was what he was witnessing now.
The old man's lips were blue.  His eyes were bulging, and sweat coursed
off his face.  Saladin knelt down beside him and began the treatment at
once, pressing into the bone above the heart with the heels of both
hands in rhythm.
Merlin's wild movements increased.  At one point he cried out, some
sort of incantation in a language Saladin did not understand.  Then the
old man's eyes rolled back in his head and he shuddered and lay still.
Saladin continued the movements, not knowing what else to do.  Every
five beats he rested briefly to take Merlin's pulse.  It was weakening
to nothing.  Had Merlin been a patient in his practice, Saladin knew he
would have given up at this point and informed the family.
For all the rest of his long life, in fact, Saladin could not answer
why he had not done exactly that.  Was it fear of the king and his
barbaric knights, perhaps, who would surely have accused Saladin of
murdering their beloved wizard, whom they believed to be immortal?  Was
that all?
Or was it the sudden, irrational urge to preserve the life of the only
man, in all his life, who had ever called him friend?
Friends were irrelevant to Saladin; people aged and died and passed
into dust.  Their lives were as meaningless to Saladin as those of
ants.  Some of them had tried to understand him.  Some had actively
sought his company for a time.  Some had even possessed qualities worth
knowing--brilliance, wit, beauty--but he had never felt even the
slightest desire to save any of them from death.  Why now, he would
wonder for ages to come, why at this moment, on this empty field, did
he take the metal orb from its pouch and hold it over the still body of
a dying man?
He swallowed.  He should walk away.  Merlin was nothing to him.  He was
old; his time had come.
Perhaps he dropped the sphere.  There were many times in the future
when Saladin was certain that was what had happened: He simply dropped
it.  It fell on the old man's chest.
And the moment when he heard the great rush of air till Merlin's lungs,
he hid the ball away, cursing himself for using it.
Merlin sat up.  He touched his chest with fluttering hands.  "It was
warm," he whispered.  Saladin stood up.  "You used it."  "I
resuscitated you by the method I explained," he answered coldly.
With an effort, the old man pulled himself upright.  "I saw you," he
said quietly.  "You were unconscious."  Merlin examined his hands as if
they were things of wonder.  "It was more than that.  I was dead, or
nearly so.  I heard the voices of a thousand people calling to me."
His face lit up.  "People I had not thought of in fifty years.  My old
nurse, whom I loved.  The shepherd who first led me to the cave in the
north.  A young druid priest, killed by the Romans .  . ."  "You've
suffered a strain," Saladin interrupted.  "These are delusions."  "No."
The bony fingers touched Saladin's robe.  "I saw myself, as if.
from a great height.  I was lying on the ground, and you were bending
over me.  The ball was in your hand.  You touched it to my chest."  He
blinked.  "In that instant, I felt myself rushing back toward earth,
toward the body I had left behind.  And then there was a warmth, a
great warmth emanating from the spot where your magic had begun its
healing."
He let go of the sleeve.  "You know I speak the truth.  Saladin
regarded him for a long moment, his face pale.  "Rubbish,' he said at
last, and walked away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Merlin did not mention the incident again.  The stranger whom the
courtiers at Camelot called the Saracen Knight stayed alone in his room
for several weeks, venturing out of the castle only to inquire futilely
at the frozen docks, where it soon became apparent that no ship would
come until spring to carry him home--wherever that was.  Saladin had
spoken of Rome, but he was no Roman.  From his manner, Merlin imagined
that the tall physician had always been an outsider of one sort or
another, looking at life through a perspective that even one of
Merlin's age could not comprehend.  It was the ball, Merlin knew.
Although Saladin had studiously avoided him since his near-death
experience in the meadow, the old man had been haunted by the memory.
It had been no delusion, as Saladin insisted.  His training with the
druids had taught him to distinguish the fine line between imagination
and the supernatural.  And he had been witness to the supernatural
before.  When the young boy Arthur had pulled out the sword that no
grown knight could budge from the stone, he had known he was witnessing
a miracle.  The stone had lain at the Abbey of Glastonbury since time
out of mind, inscribed with its ancient Celtic message: Whoso pu!leth
this sword from this stone shall be named rightwise king.  No one knew
who had written the inscription, or how the stone had become fused to
the magnificent sword.  Some said that it had been the sword of Macsen,
the great Celt who had been crowned Emperor Maximus of Rome generations
before.  Others claimed that the sword Excalibur had been invested of a
life of its own by the ancient fairy folk in the far distant past.  But
no one knew.
Even the druids, with their ancient memories, could not divine its
mystery.  And yet the boy had taken the sword without effort, and the
knights had bowed down to him on the spot.  Later, after the strange
story of Arthur's magical feat had traveled throughout Britain,
whispers arose that Merlin himself had used his sorcery to loosen the
sword from the stone.  They claimed that Arthur was the wizard's son,
and that Merlin had conjured up powerful spirits to gain the throne of
the High King for the boy.  These stories amused Merlin, since he knew
the limitations of his power.  It was true, yes, that he could
sometimes divine some trace of people's thoughts; it was an ability he
had possessed since childhood.  But it was an incomplete thing, giving
him only images and intuitions.  Even after his training with the
druids, Merlin often thought that his "gift" may have been nothing more
than the ability to observe people closely.  The rest of what the
common folk called "magic" was simply education, which had been in
woefully short supply since the Romans left Britain.
Merlin's family had had strong ties with the Romans, as well as a
history of rule in Britain.  His ancestors had been petty kings since
the time of the Celts.  When the Romans first came to the island,
Merlin's people had been among the first to be "civilized"--that is,
awarded Roman status and offered Roman education for their children.
His father, Ambrosius, had been reared in the Roman manner, even though
the Romans themselves were long gone by his time, and in turn he reared
his own children the same way.
Much of Ambrosius' schooling was lost on his oldest son, Uther, who
nevertheless grew up to become one of the strongest kings in Britain.
Uther had been a truculent and stubborn boy who cared little for books.
He was shrewd, but not much concerned with matters of thought.
Ambrosius' other sons were much the same.  During their lessons they
would sit numbly through their father's lectures, longing to be back
astride their ponies or practicing with the lance.
It was probably his disappointment in his legitimate sons that had
prompted Ambrosius to include Merlin in the lessons.  Merlin was a
bastard and would not normally have been admitted into the household,
but, as his mother had died in childbirth, and Ambrosius' wife was
already a year dead by that time, the old chief saw no reason to let
the infant starve.  Of course, the boy was not permitted to practice
the arts of war; his half-brothers would not have stood for that.  Even
as a child, Uther jealously guarded his right to eventual kingship, and
Ambrosius knew that to dangle Merlin in front of him would be to
sanction the boy's murder.
Besides, Merlin seemed to have no inclination toward battle.  He was a
gentle boy with an extraordinary mind, who showed an affinity for
learning from his youngest years.  This delighted Ambrosius, who would
not have been a king himself if he had not been born to it, and who had
loved Merlin's mother deeply.
She had been a young gift when he met her just after the death of his
wife, and he had never known much about her.  Illya was a creature of
the woods, a healer whom the peasants called a witch, but to whom they
went with all their own ailments as well as with sick animals.  She had
healed Ambrosius, too, with her love, but she had never told him about
her past or her family or why she lived alone in the forest.  When she
revealed that she was with child, Ambrosius had been tempted to marry
her, although he knew it would have been a dangerous decision, frowned
upon by the other kings of Britain.  But things never came to that.
Illya had refused him gently, saying that she had no desire to change
the place or the manner in which she lived.
At the time, Ambrosius had given little thought to his unborn child.
He already had three sons, and his mistress was offering no difficulty.
Indeed, during the last months of her pregnancy, they had frolicked
together like children.  It had been the happiest time of Ambrosius'
life.  And then, overnight, she was gone.
Every time he looked on Merlin's thin, serious face with his sensitive
eyes and tender mouth, he thought of Illya cradling a fawn in her arms
or walking through the fields, her arms overflowing with wildflowers.
Her son, he knew, would never be king; yet still there was something
remarkable about him.
Merlin never told his father about his supernormal abilities, such as
they were, and it nearly broke Ambrosius' heart when Merlin left to see
the world as a hard.  During his travels, the "power" he possessed
grew.
The long years of living by his wits had undoubtedly sharpened his
instincts.  He found that he could communicate with animals to an
uncanny degree, as his mother had, and that he often knew what men were
thinking before they spoke their thoughts aloud .  . . and even if they
spoke different thoughts.  His ability had saved his skin more than
once, but he knew that it was not developed to the point where it could
be of any real use.  If he could only harness this gift, cultivate it,
he knew, he might open whole new worlds to himself.
He joined the druids to do just that.  And they did teach him many
things--the healing arts, for which he had a natural talent, and the
ancient knowledge of the Old Religion.  But his extrasensory power
remained rudimentary.  After many years of study and practice, he was
able to levitate objects to some degree, but Merlin viewed that as
little more than a parlor trick.  And he was able, quite uncannily, to
transform images in his mind into external visions that others could
see.  The druids looked upon this as an extraordinary development, but
to Merlin himself, it was a small achievement.  The visions were a
manifestation of his concentration, he explained, nothing more.  What
he was looking for was something far greater.  "But we are the wizards
and sorcerers the people whisper about," one of the priests had told
him, not without amusement.  "Our small powers are the things they spin
into legends about men with lightning bolts shooting out of their
fingers.  Surely you don't aspire to that sort of thing."  "I don't
know if I aspire to anything," Merlin said miserably.  "I only know
that I'm incomplete.  It's as if .  . .
He wasn't able to finish.  It would have sounded pompous.  But the
truth was, Merlin often felt as if something of awesome energy were
growing inside him.  Like a bear, which at birth is no bigger than the
first joint of a man's finger, the creature within him had grown to
massive proportions and was straining to get out.  And Merlin had spent
half a lifetime trying to find the key to release it.
Sometimes he felt as if it would devour him from inside.  Even after
Merlin had made his way back home and was tolerated, if not exactly
welcomed, at King Uther's court as a physician and occasional
ambassador to other provinces, he felt a dreadful unease, as if
whatever was growing inside him were about to split open his skin and
burst out.
And then, when he saw the boy Arthur--another bastard, Uther's, and
thus Merlin's nephewslift the magic sword from the stone, he realized
at last what he must do.  It suddenly all made sense: He was to use his
small powers to protect the High King of Britain, to grant long life to
the man who would rule as no sovereign had ever ruled before.
Arthur was the king, the man meant to be king, the king now and
forever.
Even before he claimed the sword, Merlin had seen in the boy a spark of
greatness: He had possessed from the beginning a sharp intelligence
combined with the capacity for leadership, and all of it was tempered
with what Merlin could only describe as grace.  Fairness, mercy, purity
of heart, personal austerity, humor .  . . all of these were qualities
which Arthur the boy, and later, Arthur the king evince& He inspired
not awe or fear, but a fanatical loyalty among those who served him.
He was born to rule, and from the moment he came to power, Arthur had
known his mission: He was to unite the world in peace for all time.
Such a king had never lived, before or after.  Oh, there had been
rulers who sought to conquer all the lands they saw, be it for greed or
for adventure, but none had seen beyond the boundaries of their own
kingdoms.
Arthur was different.  His vision was one so grand that it would have
shocked and appalled his contemporaries, or even world leaders well
into the twentieth century and beyond.  Merlin himself had been stunned
when he had first heard of Arthur's plan.  For what he wanted was no
less than a global consensus of law.  "I don't want to destroy the
Saxons," he had confided to Merlin in a moment of reflection shortly
after his coronation.  "I just want to civilize them."  Merlin had
smiled.  "There are those who might view that as an impossibility."
"It's really just a matter of time," Arthur went on.  "Once they learn
how to farm, they'll stop attacking and come as peaceful settlers."
Merlin found it hard to hide his astonishment.  "You want them to
settle here?"  "Why not?  There's plenty of space.  They could bring
part of their own culture here.  We'd be all the richer for it."
"Arthur," Merlin said worriedly, "you've just become king.  I must urge
you most strongly not to bruit these ideas about to the petty
chieftains---" Arthur burst out laughing.  "Can you imagine what they'd
say?  No, I plan to keep my thoughts to myself for the moment."  Merlin
rolled his eyes in relief.  "For the chiefs to support me as High King,
I'll have to give them what they want--battles and victories.  Right
now, that's the only thing the Saxons understand, anyway.  But the time
will come when our nation and theirs will live together, trade, work
together for mutual benefit .  . ."  His eyes sparkled.  "Wouldn't it
be wonderful, Merlin, if we could talk with people from all the lands
that lie beyond Gaul and Rome?"  "Heaven forbid," Merlin said.  "They
may be as bad as the Saxons."  "At first, I suppose, they would.  But
someday they might be allies."
He sighed.  "I wonder if one lifetime will be enough."  The old man
smiled.  "It's never enough," he said gently.  Is that why things never
change?"  Arthur asked.  "Perhaps."  He had left the boy-king then, and
Arthur did not mention his radical thoughts during all the years of his
growing power.  Instead, he proved himself in battle time and again,
gaining the great respect of the petty chieftains and their vassal
knights through his courage on the battlefield.  Merlin had begun to
think that the king had forgotten his childish dream when Arthur
announced, just before leaving for one of the endless battles against
the Saxons, that he had just granted settlers' rights to a band of
Germans who had been beaten by Arthur's knights during an attempted
attack on a northern village.  "Are you mad?"  Merlin stormed.  "They
came to invade your country."  "But they didn't.  And so instead of
slaughtering them and then waiting for their neighbors to attack in a
second wave, I have welcomed them and asked them to help in our defense
against the Saxons."  "You've done what?"  Merlin was aghast.  "You've
got one bunch of barbarians to fight another bunch of barbarians?"
Arthur only smiled.  "Come now, Merlin.  Many of the petty chiefs have
been using German mercenaries for years to help them defend against the
Saxons."  "But they were paid and then sent home.  They weren't invited
to take over our country."  "They're not taking over.  They're settling
here as farmers, subject to our laws."  "Good God, Arthur, they know no
laws.  They're barbarians!"  "That's a meaningless word," Arthur said.
"To the emperor of Rome, we ourselves are barbarians."  "But it's .  .
. it's indecent," Merlin sputtered.  "The whole concept is indecent."
"Why?  See how it works."  He pointed to the door separating his
private apartments from the Great Hall.  "Out there are the kings of
twenty tribes.  Until a few years ago, each of them was sworn by
generations of blood feud to kill the others.  Now they dine together
at my table, working toward a common good."  "But the Germans .  . ."
"Yes!  And, in time, the Saxons, too.  Together we'll build roads, and
coin our own money, and trade in all sorts of goods.  We'll read one
another's books.  We'll develop fair laws that apply to everyone,
everywhere."  "Rome already tried that sort of thing," Merlin said.
"No, it didn't.
Rome tried to make everything Roman.  The laws were Roman laws.  The
language was Latin.  The leaders of government were all Romans.  Every
nation under Rome's influence was a slave state, conquered by Rome and
never allowed to forget it.  I want something different--autonomous
nations working peacefully and in concert with one another.  A free
world, ruled by free men."  Merlin shook his head.  "Your heart is
good, but I'm afraid you're still too young to understand the lure of
power," he said.  "Power is only desirable to those who don't possess
it," Arthur said lightly.  "I don't plan to take anything away from
anybody.  "How could you understand?  You became king by the most
extraordinary circumstance I've ever witnessed.  Most don't.  Most men
come to power through violence or trickery.
And it's the power they want, Arthur.  Oh, they may start out thinking
as you do, wanting to be part of a better world, but in this COnsortium
of kings you're talking about, you can be sure that one king will try
to gobble up another as soon as he's got the chance.  And more than one
will be looking to the High King's throne, to gobble up everything
else, including you.  It's human nature, Arthur."  He was beginning to
feel irritated.  Romantic idealism was tolerable in a young man with
nothing more to do than look after his fields, but it was a dangerous
quality in a king.  If Arthur was so naive as to think that he could
offer Britannia to the Saxons without their seizing power, he was a
fool who would lead his country into oblivion.  "You ought to be with
your men," Merlin said finally.  "I suppose so.  But my idea could
work.  With laws and a good army--" "And an uncorruptible king who
lived a thousand years," Merlin snapped.
Arthur smiled.  "Do you think you could arrange that?  They do say
you're a wizard."  Merlin got up grumpily, bowed to the king he now
thought of as a naive child, and stomped away, leaving Arthur laughing
as he buckled on his chain mail.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Arthur did not live a thousand years, of course; he died young, despite
Merlin's efforts, without ever having fulfilled his mission.
In the centuries to come, Merlin might have forgiven himself for
Arthur's early death, if it had not been for the dream.  It came on the
night of their discussion about the Germans.
Merlin went to bed feeling annoyed, as one would with an adolescent son
who has announced that he will spend his life in some frivolous
pursuit: It would pass in time, but the passage was bound to be
unpleasant.  He did not understand Arthur, really, until the dream.  In
it, he stood at the far end of a long table in the king's Great Hall,
watching the approach of another man.  The visitor was dressed
strangely, in long loose robes, like the garb of an angel, and was
surrounded by light.  At first Merlin took him to be a priest of some
kind, perhaps a druid come bearing a gift for him, for the man held
something in his two hands.  But as he moved nearer, Merlin saw that
the man was not a priest at all, but the one the Christians believed to
have been the living god, Jesus the Christ, and above his outstretched
hand floated something shiny and hard, draped in glittering white
samite.  Merlin was about to speak to the man, to ask him what he was
doing in the court of the king, when he noticed that Arthur was
standing beside him, his eyes fixed on the approaching stranger's.
Arthur's arms raised and the object moved toward him, slowly as a
whisper, down the length of the table.  "Arthur, take it!"  Merlin
shouted.  As he spoke, the glittering cloth unfurled from the object
and it hovered alone in the air, metallic and curved, the circle within
the circle, the symbol of perfection, of eternity, of life without end
.... "Take it!"  But the cup and the man behind it were already
beginning to vanish.  The king reached out, but made no attempt to
grasp the cup.  Before it arrived at the end of the table, it was as
transparent as a insect's wing.  And when it vanished, so did the king,
disappearing into the mists as if he had never existed.  "Arthur!
Arthur!"  The old man awoke in a sweat.  For surely he had just seen
Arthur's death, and the means to prevent it.  Saladin's cup had healed
Merlin's own stopped heart.  It had brought him back from the dead.  It
had protected Saladin from all injury during the rockslide in the cave.
Saladin, the young man with the old eyes and the knowledge of a
thousand lifetimes.  Saladin, who was only twenty-five years old and
yet knew the secrets of the pharaohs.
It feels more like twenty-five centuries, he had said.
But of course, he had meant that literally!  The cup had the power to
heal and protect the human body indefinitely.  Saladin had lived
forever.
But the cup was not meant to be his.  It belonged to Arthur, to the one
man who could not be corrupted by it.  To the forever king, who would
use it to fulfill a great destiny and hold that destiny until the
Creator Himself came back to claim the earth that Arthur had made holy
for him.
The dream frightened him.  While it was still dark outside, Merlin
slipped away from the castle to the forest and walked through the windy
December cold to the secret glen where the druids performed their
ageless rites.  There he stood, clearing his mind of all thought except
for the image of the cup as it had touched his dying breast.  He felt
its warmth again, its perfection.
The Christians talked about the Second Coming, when their god would
return in wrath and glory to condemn the wicked to eternal fire and
lead the godly to paradise.  Merlin did not know where he himself would
stand in such a judgment, as he was not a Christian.  Yet the dream had
been clear: The cup had passed from the Christ to Arthur.  The king was
meant to drink from the cup of immortality.
In the darkness Merlin caused the image of it to project from his mind
into the space before him.  It was an illusion, but with solidity and
dimension.  He examined it.  Could this, then, be the hallowed Grail,
this common-looking object?
It had to be.  And it was meant to stay in Arthur's keeping.  But what
about Saladin?  The man had done Merlin and the others at Camelot no
harm.  If he did not offer the precious cup as a gift to the king,
whose place was it to take it from him?  To steal the cup would be a
lowly act.  Arthur would never even accept the cup under such
circumstances.
The image dissolved before Merlin's eyes.
Them was the dilemma.  To acquire Arthur's immortality, Merlin would
have to cheat another man of it--a man who had saved Merlin's own life.
And yet to let it go .  . .
To let it go would be to see the awful dream become a reality: Arthur
dying, still young, his vision forgotten, the world fallen back into
chaos and savagery.
He left the grove in full daylight feeling tired and even older than
his years.  He would have gone back to bed if it were not for the
commotion at the main gate.  Horses were stamping, their armored riders
covered with blood, as the servants poured out of the castle, wailing
as they carried in a blood-soaked litter.
Merlin's heart quickened in his chest.  He knew that this was more than
the usual check of the wounded and dead after battle.  He ran up to the
litter, barely able to breathe.  "Arthur!"  he whispered.  "He took an
arrow in his back."  This from Launcelot himself, the greatest of
Arthur's warriors, who was said, because of his purity, to have healing
in his hands.  He was sobbing as he helped carry the litter inside.  "I
touched him.  He's breathing, but there's nothing, nothing I can feel .
. ."  He turned his head angrily, his great dark mane stiff with the
blood of his king.  "You must heal him, wizard!"  he demanded, the
words filled with helpless violence.
But Merlin knew he could not.  He had not even known that the king had
been wounded.  Last night's dream had been a premonition of immediate
danger, and he, Merlin, the gmat sorcerer, had not even recognized it.
He was overcome with self-loathing as the knights lay Arthur on the
rough oaken table near the castle's well.  The king's wounds, Merlin
saw, were mortal.  "Shall we take him up to the sollar, sir?"  Gawain
asked politely.  He was a rough man, used to action.  In the stillness
of the silent stone walls, Gawain seemed to want only to do something,
anything, rather than stand by uselessly while his king died.
Merlin shook his head.  The narrow curved stairs leading to Arthur's
private rooms would be too difficult to negotiate.  It would only
hasten his death.
Then he remembered his dream again, and his breath caught.  He could
not save the king, but another could.
As if his thoughts had been spoken aloud, a voice answered them: He is
dying."  Saladin was standing behind him, looking down over Merlin's
shoulder at the blood-covered king.
Launcelot snarled through his tears.  The aging Gawain reached for his
sword in his fury at the Saracen's quiet declaration.
Merlin looked up at the man silently.  Saladin stared back at him.
"Help him," the old man said at last.  His voice was the merest
whisper.
Saladin turned toward the entrance of the room.  Merlin ran after him,
touching his arm.  "I beg this of you."  The tall man took a deep
breath.  "You're talking nonsense," he said.
But the old man followed after him doggedly.  "The cup of Christ," he
pleaded.  "You must use it to save the King."  All of the assembled
knights and servants were watching them now.
Merlin and Saladin had spoken in Latin, so the others could not
understand them, but they would learn about the cup soon enough.
It was bound to come to this, Saladin thought.  In thirty-two hundred
years, he had revealed the secret only once; but once, he knew, was one
time too many.  Now the whole world would hunt him down to possess the
cup.  "How dare you do this to me," Saladin hissed.  He disengaged
Merlin's hand from his sleeve and flung it aside.  "Let him die!"  At
this, Launcelot lunged forward, his blade drawn.  Saladin threw him off
with a strength Merlin had never witnessed before.  The big knight
virtually flew away from him, crashed sprawling on the stone floor
beside the well.  The force of Launcelot's fall caused the well's
handle to spin out of control, sending the big wooden bucket to the
bottom with a splash.  "Do not set your dogs on me again, Merlin,"
Saladin warned.  "I could kill Arthur and a thousand others like him.
Slowly he walked over to the table where the king lay.  He leaned
across the Siege Perilous and touched Arthur almost lovingly.  "Perhaps
I would wish to be king myself," he taunted.  "A king among your
savages.  I could be, as you well know.  I would have a long, long
reign."  With that he took a short, jeweled knife from his belt and
held it above Arthur's throat.  "Far longer than your precious
Arthur's."  The knife came down.  One of the serving women screamed.
Launcelot scrambled to his feet.  The other knights rushed forward.
Only Merlin did not move.  At the moment when he realized that Saladin
meant to vent his anger at Merlin by murdering the king in front of
him, his eyes rolled back in his head.  The movement was almost
involuntary, as was the welling of power he felt rising within him.  It
was the creature, the unseen beast he had carried inside him for so
long, now standing, straining, exploding to life inside Merlin's body.
The power was blinding; the wizard's eyes were suffused with an
unearthly light that he could feel coiling through his viscera like a
great hot snake.
Slowly his hands raised, palms up, as the power focused in them and
crackled out through his fingers.  He did not see the knife drop, as
the others did.  He did not see the look of astonishment on Saladin's
face as the power pushed him backward like a wall, slow and inexorable
in its force, or the light which glowed in the space between the two
men like a flaring sun.  Merlin saw nothing and felt nothing, not even
the remnants of anger toward the tall man who would see his king dead.
The power burned all emotion out of him, burned him pure.  He was no
longer a man, he knew, but a receptacle for this shapeless, invisible
beast that had lain inside him for more than seventy years.  He was the
power, and nothing--the gods help him, not even himself--could stop it.
Saladin resisted, holding his hands up in front of his face, squinting
against the awful glare.  But the light only grew stronger, and the
invisible wall pressed against him, suffocating and relentless.  With a
cry he slid backward, his shoes scraping against the stone flags of the
floor, until he slammed against the side of the well.  His back
snapped.
Everyone heard that.  And then his head lolled back, unconscious.
"He's falling in," someone said, but no one dared to intervene in the
terrible miracle they were witnessing.
A sound came from Saladin as he toppled backward into the well, a low
sigh that reverberated from the damp stones to the water below, so that
all that could be heard by the breathless spectators was an echo,
melancholy as the song of a wild bird.  When Merlin came to himself,
Launcelot was on his knees, making the sign of the cross.  Gawain still
held his hand to the hilt of his sheathed sword, the muscles in his
face working frantically.  How could Merlin explain to them what had
happened?
He himself had no idea.  And yet he knew that it was he who had called
the power forth and directed it at the man who had once saved his life.
In those first weak moments after he emerged from the thrall of the
power, when his human limbs felt as if they would shatter to fragments
and his heart pounded as if it were about to explode, he felt only
fear.
For there would be no rest for his soul now.  He had trespassed beyond
the boundaries of everything mortal.  And yet he would not have acted
otherwise.  Not for the blessings of the gods themselves.  "Bring him
up," he commanded hoarsely.  The servants in the room drew away from
him.  "I said bring him up!"  Gawain leapt to the well, his grizzled
face registering relief at having a task to do.  He began, slowly, to
bring up the big bucket with its heavy load.  Launcelot rose to help
him.
Soon all the knights were clustered around the well, pulling on the
long rope, shouting orders at one another.  Merlin moved back to Arthur
and touched his bloody face.  He was still alive, though he had long
ago passed out of consciousness.  The old man picked up the jeweled
knife that lay beside the king and waited.  "The rope .  . . It's
breaking!
I can feel .  . ."  Three of the men fell backward, the frayed rope
dangling from their hands.  "A dead man in the well," one of them
moaned.  "And the king not half-alive."  One of the maidservants sobbed
hysterically.  The steward came over to shake her.  Merlin waited.
"We'll close it up," Gawain offered gruffly.  "Close it up and dig
another .  . ."  And then Saladin came, as Merlin knew he would,
roaring with the voice of a caged beast as he clawed his way up the
sheer wall and burst out of the opening, arms outstretched, fingers
splayed to kill.  The knights screamed.  "Hold him!"  Merlin shouted,
raising the knife.
They leapt on the tall stranger, the dead man brought back to life by
whatever evil demons he commanded, as Merlin cut the sodden velvet
pouch from Saladin's belt.  At once he saw the superhuman strength
fade.
Kicking and flailing, Saladin had become no more than a man, angry,
terrified, panicked.  And mortal.  "You do not deserve to possess
this," Merlin said, holding the cup.  The silence in the room was
charged.  Then softly, bitterly, Saladin laughed.  "That is what I said
to the man I stole it from."  The old man blanched.  "Don't be a
hypocrite, wizard.
You're as much a thief as I was."  Gawain snaked the dagger to
Saladin's throat.  "No!"  Merlin shouted.  "Let the barbarian kill me
here," Saladin drawled.  "I'd rather not hang, if it's all the same to
you."  Gawain pressed the knife more deeply against his neck.
"Enough!"  Merlin slashed the air in front of him with his hand.  "He
is to remain unharmed, do you understand?"
Gawain looked at the wizard in bewilderment.  "But he tried to kill the
king."  "Give him safe conduct to the open road.  The Green Knight's
expression grew truculent.  "He belongs in the dungeon--" "Do it!"
Merlin ordered.  Another knight, Launcelot, put a restraining hand on
Gawain's arm, then nodded.
Gawain sheathed his knife.  Saladin straightened out his wet clothing.
"A life for a life, eh, Merlin?  Is that what you're offering me?"
"That is correct," the old man said.  "My debt to you is now paid.  I
owe you nothing."  He gestured to the knights.  "Take him.  And do not
return to this hall.  I must be alone with the king."  The knights
pushed Saladin roughly toward the entrance.  "I swear I will take back
what is mine!"  Saladin whispered You're sure to try, Merlin thought
sadly as he watched him go.  He heard the footfalls of the servants die
away as the steward led them out of the hall.  He was alone now with
the still body of the young man whom all called High King of Britain.
But to Merlin he was still Arthur, the young red-haired boy who had
pulled the sword out of the ancient stone, the warrior who had dreamed
of a world order of peace.  Arthur, now and forever.  He took the metal
cup from the pouch.
Even the cold water from the well had become warm in the perfect circle
of its hollow.  This he touched to Arthur's lips.  Then softly, gently,
he wrapped the king's blue hands around the sphere and held them there.
Before his eyes the raw, gaping wounds closed.  The color · returned to
Arthur's ashen face.  And then the eyes opened, blue and eager as a
child's' "What are you doing with me, Merlin?"  he asked, his smile
twinkling.  "I am giving you your legacy," the wizard said.
But his words were so quiet that he doubted if Arthur heard him.  He
slipped the metal cup into the folds of his sleeve.  Even Arthur could
not have this knowledge yet.  Let him celebrate his life first.  Let
him hear the stories of the old sorcerer and his battle against the
evil Saracen knight.  Let him be comfortable with being king before
learning that he must be king forever.  "Call in your knights, my
lord," he said, bowing.  "They will wish to see you."  His ears were
filled with the soft rustle of his gown as he left the king alone in
the vast chamber.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The wind whipped Saladin like an icy lash.  He had not noticed the cold
at first, when the soldiers carried him outside the castle.  He had
been half-drowned then, and besides, he had expected the British
barbarians to kill him in short order.  But they had only dumped him
halfway down the high hill where Camelot stood and then kicked him so
that he rolled unceremoniously to the bottom.  He gathered up his
sodden robes and, looking over his shoulder like a thief at the
taunting soldiers, made a run for the road.  That was when he felt the
wind.  It was December.  He had not ventured out of the castle since
the day he had made the dreadful mistake of saving Merlin's life.  Now,
shivering violently, his clothes stiffening around him, he felt nothing
but regret for his folly.
the cup?  On a wizard, no less, a reader of minds, a man closer to the
king than anyone on earth, whose ambitions for Arthur were clear?  Of
course Merlin would take the cup.  Combined with his own powers (Had he
really created an invisible, moving wall?), the sorcerer might well own
the cup for all eternity.  White flakes began to swirl with the wind.
One of them landed on Saladin's eyelash, where it remained, frozen,
until he brushed it away.  Snow.  He had never seen snow before, except
as an occasional dessert at lavish dinner parties in Rome.  It swept
against his face, melting against his numb flesh, blinding him so that
he could barely make out the road ahead of him.  The road to where?  he
wondered bitterly.  He had no place to go, and no possessions.  The
things he had brought with him from Rome had been left in the castle.
He no longer even had a horse to ride.  The great black stallion was
quartered in the king's stables now.  He cried out in rage.  The sound,
muffled by the snow, died quickly.  Soon he was enveloped in silence
again.  He had not walked a mile when he became certain he would die.
His fingers were too stiff to move.  His belly ached from the cold.
His hair had frozen into hard tufts.  There was no way to make a fire
without flint, and the flint was buried beneath the snow.  He wondered
what would happen to a body left in the snow.  It would become stiff as
wood, most likely.  The cold might preserve it against rot.  How
ironic, he thought, that his body should be kept perfect by the very
thing that killed it.  It would not be long.  He might last until
nightfall.  But the darkness would bring his death.  It was not the
easy death he had imagined, growing old in Rome amidst the company of
his peers.  But then, what did it matter how one died?  He stumbled and
fell.  His face struck the hard surface of the road.  Blood stained the
snow.  He heard a sound, high and pieming.
Had he screamed?  No.  He would have known.  He wasn't so far gone, he
thought shakily, that he no longer recognized his own sounds of
anguish.
But he had heard something.  A wild dog, perhaps.  A winter crow.  As
he picked himself up, he saw something coming toward him through the
snow.
It was a boy, very small and STRANGELY dressed, with a ragged cloak
blowing behind him in the wind.  Saladin stopped in his tracks,
watching.  It was not until the figure was quite close that he realized
it was not a boy at all, but the wild-haired woman he had met in the
forest during his first night in Britain.  A deerskin was wrapped
around her shoulders.  This she removed and gave to Saladin.  He took
it without a word and followed her back the way she had come.  The
journey did not last an hour, but it seemed like an eternity.  After a
while the woman propped herself against Saladin for warmth and wrapped
his long arm around her to keep him from falling.  She was wearing
crude pouchlike shoes made of squirrel skins, he noticed.  Unable to
think or look ahead, he watched her feet move through the snow.  In
time, the feet stopped before a wooden doorway.  Numbly Saladin looked
up.  The woman was smiling, nodding.  Putting her shoulder to the door,
she swung it open and helped Saladin inside.  There were bodies on the
floor, and pools of blood, still red.  It was the last thing Saladin
saw before sinking into unconsciousness.
He did not know how long he had slept, but he suspected it had been
some time since he'd entered the house.  It was broad daylight, and the
snow outside had vanished.  He was in a warm room with high ceilings.
The bed upon which he was lying was exquisitely comfortable, with a
mattress of feathers.  Beyond it was a fireplace with three small
burning logs; in front of the fireplace was a stool with his clothes
draped over it.
He sat up, dizzy, remembering the bodies.  They had been lying on the
floor, hacked to pieces as if by an axe.  The blood had still been
shiny.  But they were gone now.  It must have been a dream of some
kind, a delusion of the cold .... Then he saw the strangest vision of
all.
The urchin who had brought him here walked into the room.  She was
dressed in a toga that trailed on the floor behind her.  Around her
neck was a string of colored porcelain beads.  Aside from the ludicrous
finery, she was the same dirty-faced, wild-haired creature he had met
in the woods.  She still wore the fur bags on her feet.
Not noticing him, she went first to his clothes and shook them out.
"I've nothing to rob," he croaked.
She looked up in delight, tossing his things on the floor and running
up to embrace him."  "Get away," he muttered, slapping her hands.
She did not seem to mind his irritation.  Instead, she beckoned to the
doorway.  When Saladin failed to respond, she tore off his covers.
He was completely naked.  He lunged to cover himself, but she only
giggled.  Bounding off the bed, she picked up his robes and handed them
to him.  "Eat?"  she asked.  She made the motions of eating, but he had
understood the word from his few lessons with Merlin.  "Yes," he
answered tentatively.
The girl's eyes widened.  "You speak," she whispered.
It was useless to explain to someone so primitive that there were other
languages besides her own, so Saladin merely shooed her away and
proceeded to dress himself.
The house was a good one, laid out in Roman style, although the floors
were wood rather than mosaic tile.  In the hallway a chest lay open,
its top splintered.  Fine clothes of Roman cut lay strewn across the
floor, along with broken pieces of jewelry.  Beyond it, in the large
sitting room and in the atrium past that, lay scattered objects: a wax
tablet, some account ledgers, cushions with the stuffing ripped out.
The polished wooden floor was stained with large dark spots.
This is the room I saw, Saladin realized.  The bodies were here.
Just then the girl beckoned to him.  There was the aroma of cooking
food coming from the kitchen.  She led him into the dining room, where
broken dishes and glassware lay all over the floor.  The girl did not
seem to mind the debris; she stepped carefully over it as she brought a
clay pot filled with soup to the inlaid wood table.  Smiling, she set a
bowl in front of him and poured soup into it.  "What is in here?"  he
asked suspiciously.
She shrugged.  "Roots.  Herbs."  She said something else that he could
not understand.  He poked around the pot and found the haunch of a
small animal.  So she had not used the human bodies, at least.  "Where
are the people?"  "Dead.  Saxons.  Today.  I saw them.  Very lucky."
She fondled the necklace she wore.  "Pretty things."  Saladin stared at
her.  Apparently, it had not bothered her in the least to find a house
filled with murdered people.  Worse, she had probably seen the attack.
What sort of life had she led before moving into the woods to live like
a wild animal?
Distractedly, he turned his attention to the soup.  He was hungry, and
it tasted good.  He drank the entire bowl without speaking, then held
it out for the girl to refill.  "What is your name?"  he asked when she
brought it to him.  "Nimue," she said.  "Where is your family?"
"Dead," she answered without much concern.  "Long ago."  "How did you
find me?"  She smiled at him.  "I waited.  I looked for a place to stay
the winter, and I waited for you.  Am I beautiful?"  "Certainly not."
He examined her appearance.  "You're filthy."  She frowned, puzzled.
He had used the Latin word.  Unfamiliar with its English equivalent, he
picked up the hem of the garment she was wearing--a man's toga--and
wiped her face with it.  "Dirt," he said, pointing out the black smear.
She touched her face.  "And your hair... "He made a move to touch it,
then recoiled.  Her head was swarming with lice.
"You're perfectly disgusting," he said, pushing her away.
She fell into the corner of the room, her lips trembling.  Then she
stood up, emitted a loud sob, and fled.
Saladin rolled his eyes.  It was bad enough that he was doomed to die
in this wilderness; but the fact that he would be spending an entire
winter of his precious mortal life with a vermin-covered girl was
almost more than he could bear.
But one had to be philosophical, he reasoned.  He had been fortunate to
find this place at all.  From the looks of things, the freshly killed
inhabitants seemed to have been prosperous.
He took a look around.  There was some food left in the pantry,
although it was obvious that the Saxon raiders had helped themselves to
plenty.
Every room had a fireplace, with piles of dry logs beside each.  There
was furniture, and the clothing, which was quite fine and obviously
imported.  There was even a wine cellar, although its stock had been
completely depleted.
Nimue ran past him, dressed once again in her rags and skins, bolting
out the back entrance off the kitchen.  He followed her with some
amusement.  "Are you running away?"  he asked, but she did not turn
around.
As he walked back inside, he noticed the neat pile of frozen bodies
stacked like logs beside the house.  There was a woman, her throat
cut--the lady of the house, by the looks of her elaborate
hairstyle--and her husband, dressed finely, although his clothes were
covered with blood.  Two others appeared to be household servants.  The
girl must have carried them out here by herself, Saladin thought.  Why,
she was strong as an ox.
He looked out over the brown grass of the fields, and was suddenly
overcome by despair.  There was no hope at all, he knew.  The cup was
in the hands of a king and would never be released.  He went back
inside and sank into the down-feather sofa in the room stained with
blood.
The loss of the cup had been his own mistake.  He should not have
taunted the barbarians with Arthur's death.  He should have killed him
silently, subtly, perhaps under the guise of examining him.  But he had
been too angry at the time to think properly.  The betrayal of Merlin,
who owed Saladin his life, had been a great blow.
The cup made men into beasts.  Even Merlin, the most educated and
compassionate of men, had succumbed finally to its spell.  Merlin had
meant to kill Saladin with his magic, without the slightest
compunction.
To possess the cup, a man would do anything.
Perhaps the one called the Christ had known what he held in his hands
during his last supper, after all.  Perhaps he had known and, because
he was more than human, was able to put it aside.
Saladin knew that he, too, should try to put it aside, or else waste
what little was left of his life in idle dreaming.  The king would
never let the cup go.  Only Merlin could gain.  possession of it, and
Merlin belonged to the king.

Only Merlin .  ··

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The next sound he heard was the thundering of a
horse's hoofbeats.
Saladin got up, blinking hard, his hands shaking.  Had the Saxon
invaders returned as he had dozed?  Still groggy but tense with fear,
he grabbed the iron poker from beside the fireplace and edged toward
the door.
The horse outside whinnied.  Saladin inhaled sharply.  He recognized
the sound.  It belonged to his own horse.  Before he could move, the
girl bounded into the room, whooping and gesturing wildly.  "Come!
Come!"  she shouted.  She was even dirtier than before, and smelled of
horse.  ' The stallion was lathered with sweat.  It stomped its forepaw
when it saw him.  The girl gentled him with a touch.  "How .  . . how
did you..."  "I took him from the king's stable," she said proudly.
Saladin touched the horse's glistening flank.  He was unsaddled.
Nimue must have ridden him bareback.  "But the grooms.  The knights .
. ."
"Aggh," she shrieked, wriggling away from him.  "Go to the river.
Don't come back until you're clean."  Nimue gave him a hateful look.
He opened the door and kicked her outside.
She laughed and ran a short distance away.  Then she: .. My horse, he
thought with more joy than he could remember produced a medley of
strange sounds with her mouth.  Th feeling in years.  He could leave
Britain, go back to stallion's ears danced.  He turned and walked
directly to her.  "How on earth did you do that?"  Saladin asked.
Nimue patted the animal on the romp, urging it toward the meadow.  "I
can talk to all the animals," she said.  "To get your horse, I just
opened the door of his stall and called to him.  The grooms were busy.
They never even saw him leave."  "You rode him out of the castle
grounds?"  She shook her head.  "I waited in the woods for him.  I rode
him from there."  "But no one saw you?"  "No," she said, as if it were
a ridiculous question.  "No one ever sees me."  Saladin laughed.  "A
wood sprite, that's what you are."  She smiled at him shyly.  "Do you
love me now?"  Saladin was taken aback.
"Love you?"  He hadn't meant to sound quite so incredulous.  She had
rescued his horse, after all.  And when her face crumpled into a mask
of utter dejection, Saladin felt a twinge of remorse along with his
general irritation.  "Oh, stop that at once," he said when she began to
cry.  "Look.  Go wash your face.  And your hair.  Take the bugs out of
it.
You'll look better, at least.  That is, you'll feel better."  She
stared at him, pouting.  "Don't understand you."  Once again he
realized that he had been speaking a mixture of English and Latin.
"Well, never mind."" He took her by the wrist and led her to the
kitchen, where a big bar of brown soap lay on the bottom of a wooden
tub.  He picked it up and slapped it into her hand.  "Wash yourself
with this," he said, trying to enunciate clearly.  He pulled her hair.
"This, too."  Rome .  bother with Rome?  There were places he'd never
been, islands in the China Sea where the women painted their faces
stark white and the aristocracy spent their leisure hours guessing the
fragrances of exotic blossoms.  Places in India where holy men lay on
beds of nails to clear their minds, and kings with green beards and
robes of billowing silk rode elephants into battle.  His excitement
rose, then sank abruptly, shattering like glass against the inexorable
truth.  He would not have time to see any of those pictures.  When the
cup was stolen, the rest of his life had been stolen from him also.
Merlin!
Only Merlin could give it back .  He looked out at the river.  Nimue
was standing hip-deep in it, scrubbing the tangled mass on her head.
Saladin shivered to think how cold the water must be, but the girl
stood stoically, performing the task he had set for her.  Well, she was
accustomed to hard living, he reasoned.  Even among the barbarians of
this land, she wasn't quite human.  Suddenly his throat went dry.  She
wasn't quite human.  Why, that was marvelous!  He couldn't take his
eyes off her.  From a distance, she appeared to have quite a good
figure.  He stood in the doorway, transfixed, as Nimue rinsed the lye
suds off her hair and dressed once again in the rags she had been
wearing.  A wood sprite," Saladin said aloud.  He had found a way to
get the cup back.  By the time Nimue returned to the villa, Saladin had
assembled everything she needed from the smashed trunks in the hall:
combs, dainty slippers, and a woman's robes, in-eluding a linen
under-tunic, a white silk gown with long sleeves and a round neck, and
a shorter over-tunic of palest green silk.  Nimue looked at the items
arrayed neatly on the bed where Saladin had slept.  Her eyes were
expectant, half-delighted, half-frightened.
"You wish me to wear these?"  she asked.  "Take off your clothes,"
Saladin commanded.  Nimue shrank away.  ``Oh, bother with you, he said,
ripping the filthy rags off her body and tossing them into the fire.
She yelped and tried to retrieve them, but he held her back.  "Here,
put this on for the moment."  He handed her a magnificent cloak the
color of sapphires.  She wrapped it around herself, preening this way
and that.  "Hold still."  He pulled over the small stool by the
fireplace and pushed her onto it.  Then, using an ivory comb, he yanked
at the wasp's nest of hair that seemed to spring out of Nimue's head
like a yellow thicket.  She screamed with each stroke, shutting her
eyes tight against the involuntary tears that ran down her face, but
made no attempt to move from the stool.  "Good girl," he said, as if he
were currying a mare.  In fact, the business of untangling the wretch's
hair was far more troublesome than caring for any animal.  Freed from
its balled-up state, it reached below her waist, and was thick and
heavy besides.  Saladin actually felt himseft working up a sweat as he
tore away the knots and cast them onto the floor.  "There," he said at
last.  He gave a neat center part to the cascade of golden waves, then
stood back to admire his work.  The effect, caused as much by the soap
as the comb, was nothing less than shocking.
The girl's skin was milky white, flushed with rose pink in her cheeks.
It was so flawlessly smooth that Saladin almost lost his revulsion for
pale skin.  Her teeth were small and even---miraculous, considering the
girl's diet and lack of self-regard.  They were surrounded by lovely
soft lips, dark and full and well defined.  And her eyes, catching the
reflection of the cloak, were an astonishing turquoise blue.  "Why, you
really are beautiful," Saladin said in amazement.  She smiled at him,
nearly brimming over with happiness.
"Remarkable!"  "Remarkable!"  Nimue repeated, laughing.  "Now put on
these things."
He stripped the cloak off her and held out the undergarment, noticing
the lithe young body.  It was perfect, strongly muscled, yet too young
to be stringy.  Her breasts were surprisingly full, tipped by small
pink nipples, and below, between her long legs, sprouted a fine golden
down.
He handed her the clothes, one after the other, instructing her on how
to wear each piece.  When she was finished, he took a long golden
string he had found at the bottom of one of the chests and wrapped it
artfully around her waist.  Nimue looked down at herself, plucking at
the fine fabric.  "Jewels," she shouted suddenly, darting out of the
room.
She made no sound as she moved, Saladin noticed.  That was good.  That
would work wonderfully.  When she came back, she was wearing the same
necklace of broken pottery she had been playing with earlier, its red
and yellow clay beads bouncing against her breast.  "No, no," Saladin
said, yanking it off her.  The beads spilled onto the floor.  Nimue
gasped, heartbroken.  "Don't do anything I don't tell you to do," he
said, She lowered her eyes.  "That's better.  I'm going to teach you
some things," he said quietly.  "I want you to pay a great deal of
attention, do you understand'?."  She nodded.  "We'll speak English.
You'll have to teach me what you know of it."  He leaned against the
wall and crossed his arms.  "I have a plan for you."  She nodded again,
waiting.  "Are you afraid of wizards.  Nimue's eyes opened wide.  "Oh,
he won't hurt you.  In fact, I think he'll fall quite in love with
you."  Her forehead creased.  "What about you?"  Saladin smiled.
"Nimue, if you do what I ask of you, I shall love you for all my long,
long life."  She looked up at him, the turquoise eyes welling.  "Now
suppose you tell me about yourself."

CHAPTER THIRTY

There was nothing particularly romantic about Nimue's past.  She was
the offspring of a German mercenary hired to protect a farmstead some
twenty miles inland.  Her mother had been a camp follower.  The
mercenaries and their women traveled in packs, setting up camps outside
the estates they were hired to protect, and remained for the length of
their contract, or until their employers' money ran out.
Gold was scarce; only families who had hoarded it since the time of the
Roman occupation could afford to pay the mercenaries, since they rarely
traded their fighting services for food.  Nimue's father, a huge blond
warrior named Horgh, had amassed quite a fortune during his twelve
years in Britain, returning after each engagement to his village on the
Rhine, where he kept a wife and several children.
Nimue was not his only bastard.  In the camps where she grew up,
several of the children bore Horgh's likeness.  Nimue's mother, a
beautiful but feebleminded woman, never seemed to mind it when her man
took a new woman to bed, or even the fact that he hoarded all his money
in a distant country while she and her daughter lived on scraps cast
aside by the soldiers.
The child herself had little to say about the matter.  Her father
rarely spoke to her; at any rate, their languages were different, and
she could not understand him when he did speak.  Her mother was almost
completely silent with other human beings.  Sometimes she took Nimue
into the woods, where she called to the small animals and birds, who
flocked to her and the little girl as if they were beacons in the
darkness.
Nimue learned all her survival skills from her mother: how to read the
weather, how to shelter in the winter, how to kill a wounded animal
painlessly and take its fur.  In fact, it was their practice to flee to
the woods when the Saxons raided their encampments rather than risk
being slaughtered in camp.
It was during one of these precautionary flights that her mother was
killed.  A Saxon bludgeoned her with a metal-studded club while she ran
with her small daughter toward the forest.  Nimue screamed, but the
Saxon who had killed her mother had gone on to the camp rather than
chase a child into the woods.  Later, when everything was quiet and the
house and its outbuildings lay in smoldering ruins, Nimue went back.
The camp was deserted.  Apparently the mercenaries had been warned
about the size of the Saxon raiding party and, to a man, had deserted
before the invaders arrived.  All that was left were the bloodied
bodies of the women and children.  In the main house, too, the owner of
the estate had been killed, along with his family and servants, and the
tenant farmers who had fought the Saxons with them.
Nimue buried her mother, as she had watched the camp women bury fallen
soldiers all her life.  When she was finished, she listened to the song
of birds in the still air.  She no longer knew a single living human
being.
She took what clothing and food she could salvage from the wreckage at
the camp and went into the woods to live.  She had been eleven years
old.
By the time Saladin found her she was nearly twenty, though she looked
younger, and was completely self-sufficient.  This was important to
Saladin.  "He'll come before spring," he told her as he set her behind
him on the big stallion.  She was dressed beautifully, and he did not
want to mar her appearance with a long walk.  "Find food if you have
to, but keep clean."  The girl could find food, of that he had no
doubt.
In fact, it annoyed him somewhat to be losing her hunting skills.  For
the past several weeks, while he taught Nimue the things she would need
to know, she had kept the table well stocked with pheasant and quail
and had even brought down a deer with nothing more than a rope and
knife.
She had proven to be an excellent cook, too, flavoring the wild meat
with herbs she collected from the countryside.  In addition to hunting
and cooking, she also made herself useful by chopping wood and keeping
the house fires lit.  She had even buried the bodies of the former
tenants.  The only task she had not mastered was keeping the house
clean.
Saladin had been appalled that she could walk repeatedly over the piles
of broken pottery in the dining room without bothering to pick any of
it up.  She exhibited the same indifference when it came to matters of
simple hygiene.  On more than one occasion she had served the dinner on
plates still crusted from an earlier meal.  In the end, Saladin had
given up berating her for her squalid ways--she didn't do a good job of
cleaning even when forced to--and had taken on the responsibility
himself.  He was tidy by nature, and cleaning was not a task he
particularly disliked, although it offended him to have to pick up
after a woman.  But, he thought resignedly, it would not be his problem
for long.  One way or another, Nimue was going.  If Saladin was lucky,
his investment in her would have been worth the effort.  "Do you
remember what to say?"  he asked, trying not to seem anxious.  "Yes."
She rode along behind him, breathtakingly beautiful in her shimmering
silk clothing, her golden.  hair streaming behind her.  The hands
resting on Saladin's chest were small, like feathers.  But they were
trembling.  He could feel her whole small body shaking.  "What on earth
is wrong with you now?"  he snapped.  She pressed her forehead to his
back.  "I don't want to leave you."  He made a sound of disgust.
"Don't be a fool."  "I can make you happy."  "Hardly," he said, though
there had been times when, because of the long, cold winter, he might
almost have believed it.  Nimue was quite beautiful; there was no
denying that.  Under Saladin's tutelage she had learned some basic
tenets of civilized behavior, which had rendered her quite agreeable.
She could now eat properly, without covering her face with food, and
had learned to control her facial expressions somewhat, so that she no
longer stared dead-eyed with her jaw slack and open when she had
nothing particular on her mind.  She had learned to smile prettily and
to speak in a low voice.  Saladin had even taught her a few songs from
Egypt, which no one would recognize, to show off her lovely voice.  She
already knew how to walk with such grace that she made no sound and
left no tracks.  Her general competence and basic intelligence were
impressive, and her warm disposition made good company, even for
someone as easily annoyed as Saladin.  All in all, she was becoming a
most desirable woman.
Under different circumstances, Saladin might have been tempted to make
love to her, but that was out of the question.  He had examined her
thoroughly to confirm that she was a virgin.  That, too, was important.
No, she was a gift for someone else.  Someone who would pay a very high
price for her.  He brought the stallion to a halt near the caves where
he and the old wizard had gone to gather rocks.  "Wait in there," he
said.  "But what if he doesn't come?"  "Sing," Saladin said.  "Sing one
of the songs I taught you.  He'll come."  "And then?"  "Let things
happen as they will, Nimue."  He watched her vault off the horse, her
fine things swirling around her like shimmering mist, and felt a twinge
of sadness.  For what he planned was not likely to happen, and he had
grown almost fond of the girl.  "If you are still alone by spring, come
back to me," he added in an impetuous moment.
Nimue beamed.  "Oh, I will!"  He grabbed her by the wrist and squeezed
hard.  "But never mention my name, Nimue.  Our lives will both be
forfeit if you do."  "I swear I'll obey you," she said.
She waited for a moment, perhaps expecting the tall, elegant man from a
far, distant land to kiss her, but he made no move toward her.  "Go
quickly," Saladin said.  He mounted his horse and rode away.
The bells from the small chapel inside the walls at Camelot were
ringing brightly, but they failed to lift Merlin's spirits.  As the
king and his knights prepared themselves for the morning's church
service, the old wizard skulked around his rooms like a shadow of
gloom.  He wouldn't be expected to attend, of course; everyone at
Camelot knew that Merlin followed the Old Religion, and though many of
the knights believed wholeheartedly in Christianity and professed to
spurn the workings of sorcery, they were all grateful to the old man
for using his magic to heal Arthur's terrible wounds.
Merlin himself had rarely given a thought to the Christian chapel or
its bells.  Yet today he thought they would drive him mad with their
cheerful noise.
For weeks now, since the expulsion of the "evil Saracen Knight"--as the
men called Saladin--and the king's miraculous recovery, Merlin had shut
himself up in his rooms like an invalid, not even answering the king's
summons.
Arthur and the others attributed the old man's withdrawal from society
to the sorcery he had used.  It had drained him, they said.  The magic
had caused him to draw too near to death, in order to do battle with
it.
They could think what they liked, for whatever they imagined would be
better than the truth.
The chapel bells made him want to scream.  Slamming the door behind
him, he stalked from his rooms and out of the castle, ignoring the
greetings of those he passed.
It was Christianity, he told himself.  The new religion had taken root
like an unwanted weed.  With its confounded promise of eternal life, it
had taken people away from nature and the natural order.  He would go
back to the grove where the druids used to meet.  He could think there,
away from the ceaseless pealing of the bells.
But the grove brought him no solace.  The spring of Mithras, where the
priests cleansed themselves before their rituals, had dried to a
trickle.  The sounds of the forest, once pleasant and welcome, now
seemed deafening.  They blotted out his thoughts.  They made his soul
boil over in confusion.  There was no place for him anymore, not since
the magic had spilled out of him.  It had changed him forever.
But it was what he'd wanted, wasn't it?  To perform real magic, to give
vent to the power he had stored up for a lifetime?  To cease to be
human?
Merlin folded his arms over his knees and wept.  "Gods forgive me," he
whispered.
For he knew it was not any of the things he sought to blame that had
caused the agitation of his spirit.  It had not been the new religion,
or the disuse of the sacred grove, or even the magic he had somehow
summoned out of himself on that frightening day.  It had been the evil
in his own heart.
He had called forth the magic with his anger and had used the magic to
try to kill a man who had once saved his life.
Oh, it had been for a good cause; no one could doubt that.  The king
could not have been allowed to die, not if there were any possible way
Merlin could prevent it.  And there had been · only one way--to take
the magic cup from the Saracen.  Had the man not tried to kill Arthur
with his own hands?  Would the king not surely be dead now, if not for
Merlin's actions?  Yes, yes .  . . He pounded his head against his
arms.  He had gone over it all a thousand times.
It was all sensible, understandable, all for the good.  And yet he
could find no peace.  The dream still haunted him, the dream in which
the Christ held out the chalice of eternal life.  If He was the
manifestation of the true God, why had He taken the cup away?
And Merlin's own magic still frightened him.  He remembered little
about it.  The power had simply boiled out of him, blinding and numbing
him.
But he remembered the feeling afterward, that terrifying certainty that
he had somehow changed completely, that he would never again find
death, or release, or peace.
Was that the meaning of eternal life?  Had that been the meaning of the
dream-that life, lived beyond its normal span, was a curse far worse
than death?
Yet it could not be.  Saladin was not an unhappy man, particularly.
And he surely did not want to part with the cup that Merlin had stolen
from him.
It has already caused me to steal, Merlin thought.  It nearly caused me
to kill.
What would it do to Arthur?
He heard a sound and looked up.  A lovely sound, like a woman's voice,
singing a strangely beautiful song.  It was distant, faint; when it
disappeared, Merlin thought he must have imagined it.  But it began
again, high, soft, filled with mystery.
Almost unconsciously he stood up in the grass of the grove and walked
toward the music.
Ancient, it was, ancient and perfect, serene yet somehow hopeless.  It
came from the caves.
He walked faster, half-expecting whoever it was to vanish before he
arrived, but the music grew louder as he drew near to the cave.
He stopped short.  It was the same cave where he had taken Saladin.
He was standing almost on the exact spot where his heart had ceased to
beat.  He would have died there, if the stranger had not saved him with
the cup.
A life for a life, he thought.  The debt was paid.  He had the cup.
Now he would have to learn to live with it.
The music stopped for a moment.  Merlin felt himself covered with
perspiration.  He would never be free from his own guilt, he knew.
Even death would not release him.
But the singing came again, and it washed over him like cool balm.
How long had it been, he wondered, since he had heard a woman sing?
Certainly none had ever sung to him.  His mother might have, he
imagined, if she had lived longer.  But in all his long life, he had
never heard a woman's tender voice even speak his name in love.
Slowly he walked into the cave.  Shafts of sunlight streamed in behind
him.  His shadow filled the space momentarily, then he knelt in wonder.
For sitting inside the sun-dappled tunnel, the crystals sparkling like
diamonds around her, was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
She was not shocked by his sudden appearance.  She did not even cut off
the haunting refrain of the melody she was singing, but sang on until
it ended.  The last note hung in the cave like a promise.
He could think of nothing to say.  Her beauty was unearthly.  He
blinked, thinking she might vanish like a thought.  "Who are you?  he
whispered at last.  "I am Nimue," she said.  "Come to me, Merlin.  I
have waited for you."  She held her arms out to him.
The old man hesitated.  If she was not imaginary, she must have been
sent for some ill purpose.
Saladin.  Saladin was using her to get back the cup.  "Why are you
here?"  He tried to make himself sound stern, but could not disguise
the quaver in his voice.
She rose, as gracefully as a plume of smoke.  "If you cannot trust me,
I will wait until you can," she said softly.
She ran to the back of the cave, through the dark tunnel where there
was no light.
Merlin followed her, but he did not find her.  He even went back to the
castle and returned with a candle, but she was gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Merlin looked for the mysterious woman all that day and the next,
feeling like an old fool.  He tried to convince himself that he was
merely conducting an experiment: He wanted to find out how a fully
grown, flesh-and-blood human being could have vanished from the cave
without a trace.  Other men might have stuck on the point that the
individual who called herself Nimue was a human being at all.  She
looked human, certainly, but it was well known among the common folk
that nymphs, wood sprites, and other ethereal creatures could appear
quite human under the right circumstances.  Merlin did not believe in
the lore of the fairy folk.  He was an educated man, and a bona fide
sorcerer, besides.  People did not simply vanish.
In the early afternoon of the third day of his search, he found a back
entrance to the cave.  It was not much bigger than a badger's hole,
situated in an outcropping of rock a few hundred yards from the cave's
main entrance.  It was neatly covered over with a broad flat stone.
So she was human after all, Merlin thought, somewhat annoyed with
himself that the discovery had disappointed him.  He waited near the
opening for an hour or two, then gave up and returned to Camelot.
The castle was in a topsy-turvy state, with preparations under way to
move the court north to the summer residence at Garianonum.  During the
long winter, local food supplies had been nearly depleted, and the
lavatories and sewage moat were full and stinking.  It was time to
vacate the place, so that the permanent staff could clean up and begin
restocking for the following autumn.
In his anguished state of mind of recent weeks, Merlin had forgotten
completely about the move and was quite astonished to see the wagons
already being loaded in preparation for the journey.  "When do we
leave?"  he asked a passing page.
The boy winced.  "The day after tomorrow, sir, he answered, cringing.
Even before the incident with Saladin and the well, most of the castle
residents had been reluctant to speak with the sorcerer for fear he
might turn them into frogs or toss them into a bubbling cauldron of
witch's brew, and now it was worse since the tale had been spread about
how he had cast the evil Saracen Knight down to hell.  "Isn't it rather
early for the summer residence?"  "Yes, sir," the page acknowledged.
"But it's the king's orders."  He ran away without waiting for any more
questions, making the sign to ward off the evil eye behind his back.
Merlin sighed.  It was pointless living here.  In spite of the crowd of
people, the king's court was a lonelier place for him than the deserted
grove of the druids.  And with the noise and the stench it was a far
less pleasant place, besides.  He had remained only because of the
king, but Arthur was now a grown man who no longer depended on Merlin
except for advice in matters of diplomacy, such as it was in a land
that was still woefully lawless.  He was certainly not needed to help
the king plan his war strategies; no one in Britain was a better leader
on the battlefield than Arthur.
And increasingly, during the past few years, the battlefield was where
the king spent his time.  Despite Arthur's plans for a united word, the
Saxons had been attacking more and more frequently, each year with
larger and more organized armies, and the king had no recourse but to
fight them.  There was no diplomacy to speak of, except between Arthur
and the other British chieftains, and they were all too busy warding
off the growing hordes of invaders to argue much with the High King, or
even with one another.  Merlin's only contact with Arthur in the past
five years had been the rare conversations they had during brief
periods of peace.
They were wonderful conversations, though.  Arthur had grown into a
fine man, humorous and wise, though still as straight as an arrow in
his personal discipline.  He always spoke Latin with Merlin, although
with no.  one else, as a gesture of respect.  Together they discussed
philosophy and poetry and passed the time like gentlemen of leisure.
Merlin smiled.  He had not realized before how difficult those quiet
hours must have been for Arthur, the High King of a country now
virtually under siege.  Yet it was part of the man's towering
self-discipline that he would give his precious time to his old mentor
out of remembrance and gratitude.  Merlin had always thought of Arthur
as a son, but he was a grown son now, a son who had exceeded even his
father's wildest expectations.  It was time to go.  It was time to show
Arthur his destiny and then stand aside to let him fulfill it.
Arthur was in the sollar, being helped into his chain mail.  "I must
speak with you," Merlin said.  The king laughed.  Whenever he laughed,
he still looked like a boy, but his red beard, Merlin noticed, showed a
few strands of gray, and fine lines were beginning to appear at the
corners of his eyes.  "It had better be quick, I'm afraid," he said.
"The scouts have spotted a Saxon ship thirty miles to the north.  If we
don't stop them, we're likely to be besieged here in Camelot, with
barely a chicken among the lot of us."  "It is urgent, Your Majesty."
The king's smile left his face.  The old man almost never addressed him
as anything except Arthur.  He dismissed his servants.  "What is it,
Merlin?"  he asked.  "I don't believe I'll be going with the court to
Gariano-num.
There is a small house on the lake I plan to buy.  The owners are
moving north.  They fear the Saxons have struck too often in this part
of the country .  . ."  He realized he was babbling, and silenced
himself abruptly.  "You aren't ill?"  Arthur asked gently.  "No, I'm
fine, Arthur.
It's just that I've had enough of court life.  Garianonum is no more
than two days' ride, should you need me, and When you're here--"

I'll

"Of course.  That won't be a problem.  But I'll miss you.  I suppose
I've taken you for granted.  I always assumed you would be with me
until the end of my days, like my arm or my leg.  Or my brain.  He
grinned, and suddenly all the signs of age were wiped out.  He was a
child again, the frightened, skinny boy standing before the rock with
the great sword Excalibur gleaming in his hands.  He walked over to
Merlin and put both arms around the old man.  How strong he is, Merlin
thought.  How frail I must seem to him.  "There's something else," he
said.  "I had planned to tell you later, when there was more time, but
since I won't be going with you .  . ."  He saw Arthur glance toward
the door.  The king was in a hurry, and would not be able to listen to
an old man's prattle for long.  He took a leather pouch from the folds
of his robe and opened it.
Inside was the metal sphere he had taken from Saladin.  He handed it to
Arthur.  "What's this?"  the king asked, unconsciously opening and
closing his fingers around the object.  "It's what cured you when you
were wounded," Merlin said.  "You were dying, Arthur.  There was no way
to save your life."  "Yes, they said you'd used magic to heal me."  He
laughed again.
"Well, perhaps I shouldn't allow you to leave the court.
It's not every king who can boast a proven wizard among his friends."
"Don't joke, Arthur.  I had nothing to do with it.  Not the healing, at
any rate.  The other "He fluttered his hands in dismissal..
When the king did not answer, Merlin went on irritably, "The cup .  .
.
the thing in your hands.  It heals wounds."  He swallowed.  "It will
make you immortal."  The king stared at the cup.  It was singing its
song through his body.
His eyelids fluttered.  "It's warm," he said softly.  "It carries the
gift of life," Merlin said.  "Eternal life.  Please do not doubt me,
Arthur."  Arthur watched a bruise on his wrist disappear.  "I don't,"
he whispered.  Then, with a deep breath, he tore his eyes away from it
and gave it back to Merlin.  "Use it well," he said.
Merlin was appalled.  "It's yours!"  he shouted.  "I stole it for you!"
"But I don't want it," the king said calmly.  "You don't want it!"
"Good heavens, if you yell any louder, the servants will come in and
beat me with sticks," Arthur said.  "But .  . . but .  . ."  Merlin
shook his head like a dog who'd been drenched.  He forced himself to
quiet down.  "You are the greatest king this land has ever known," he
said softly.  "Your life is important."  "Yes."  The king's eyes
flashed.  "My life is important.  To me.
Because it is short, and precious.  Because each day may be my last.
Because if I don't squeeze every drop of wonder from it that I can, I
will be forever diminished.  That is why I am a good king, Merlin.
That is why my life is worth living.  Do you think I could bear to live
through endless ages of endless days, knowing that there was no urgency
to anything I did?  Why, it would be worse than eternal Hell!"
"Those are personal considerations.  Think of Britain."  "I do think of
Britain, every moment.  Britain needs many things, but what she doesn't
need is some despot kept alive forever by sorcery to rule as he likes
by whatever whim takes him at the moment."  "You wouldn't do that,
Arthur."  "Oh, no?  Not for the first hundred years, perhaps.  Or two
hundred--how long will you give me, anyway?"  Merlin made a dismissive.
gesture.  "One day I would bend, Merlin, as anyone would."  His voice
was very low.  "And I would keep on bending until my soul was as
twisted and corrupt as a dead tree.  No.  I don't want it."  "But your
plans .  . ."  I've begun them.  The Round Table is part of my plan.
No man holds his head higher than any other at that table.  All may
speak and be heard.
No one is punished for his thoughts, only for his actions."  "But that
is a small thing.  A transient thing."  "It is an idea, Merlin.  And
even the smallest idea is never transient.
Sometimes they take years--or centuries--to become reality, but they
never die.  There will be men after me who understand, and they will
keep my idea."  "Who?"  Merlin asked belligerently.  You have no heir."
He hadn't meant to be so blunt.  The subject of the queen's barrenness
was a sore one to almost everyone, exacerbated by rumors of a bastard
son of the king's somewhere in the north.
Arthur was silent.  "I had hoped I wouldn't have to defend myself on
that count with you," he said finally.
Merlin did not know whether the king was referring to his refusal to
discard the queen, or his repeated claim that there was no such son.
In truth, Merlin was inclined to believe Arthur, both on account of the
king's austere personal ways and because at this point, even a bastard
would be more helpful to him than no offspring at all, yet Arthur
continued to deny the charge.  He said that the child's mother--a
distant kinswoman--had had trouble explaining the boy's appearance to
her husband, whom the child did not resemble in the least.  In order to
spare herself, she named the king as the child's real father, since her
husband could hardly put the king's son to death, or the child's
mother, either.  "I'm only thinking of your future, and the future of
Britain," Merlin said.  "If you die before your time, much will be
lost."  Arthur only smiled.  It was not his boyish grin this time, but
a sad smile, full of age and knowledge.
"When I die, it will be my time," he said.
Merlin stood, stunned.  "You really have become a Christian," he said
at last.
Arthur laughed.  "Perhaps.  However, if I'm in any real danger of
dying, I'll probably call on you to remedy the situation."  No, you
won't, Merlin thought.  You wouldn't cheat death, the way I have.
You'll die bravely, and we'll all be the worse for it.  But he said
none of these things.  "My gods and yours be with you on your journey,
he whispered as they left the sollar together, Arlhur helmeted and
ready to do battle.  Behind the metal slit of his visor, Arthur's eyes
shone with joy.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Merlin said his farewell to the king early in the morning.  He did not
wait at the castle for the knights to ride out with Arthur in their
midst, followed by the women and then the wagons and retainers, but
stood watch instead on the outcroppings of rock above the crystal
caves.
Some of the entourage looked away from the sight of the old sorcerer
who seemed, in the sunlight, to be floating above the rocks.  Others
were mesmerized by the sight.  Several of the servants made the sign
against his power.  Arthur felt only sadness.  Merlin was his mentor
and, despite the difference in their ages, the best friend he had ever
known.
To leave him was to say good-bye to the last vestige of his own youth.
But worse than his own sadness was the sadness he felt for the old man.
Merlin, to his knowledge, had never known a woman.  Not that the
subject had ever come up between them; the old man would not have
appreciated Arthur's prying into his personal life.  But the king knew
that his old teacher was a lonely man.  Few dared to become close to a
sorcerer, and now even the druids who had understood some of Merlin's
power were gone.
He was as alone in this world as it was possible for a man to be.
And with his new plaything, he was assured of being alone forever.
Arthur had no doubt that the metal sphere could do what Merlin claimed.
He had felt it himself, its power almost irresistible.  That was why he
had given it back.  He was not a wise man; perhaps that was what made
him a king.  There were times when it was not helpful to see all sides
of a question.  There were times when one needed to see only black and
white, good and evil, survival and death.  Merlin would never see those
distinctions clearly again.  He raised his ann in farewell.
Far away, through the cloud of dust thrown up by the slow-moving
caravan, he saw Merlin's hand lifted in salute.  Then the king turned
and rode on.  The past was done, and time was precious.
The wind blew the last billows of dust away.  Now the rutted road
stretched empty over the far hills.  Merlin stepped off the boulder,
feeling a twinge in his hip.  The cup would take care of that, he
thought with bitter amusement.  He would never suffer an ache or a pain
again.
The king had rejected his gift of eternal life, but he himself would go
on plodding long after his protege's bones had turned to dust.
Arthur had refused.  The old man had never expected that.  What man
would refuse to live forever?  The thought made Merlin angry.  Arthur
had never given much thought to the future, but to spurn this .  . . He
hobbled back toward the castle, working the stiffness out of his
joints.
Then he remembered that the castle was deserted, except for the small
staff that was busy cleaning up the mess from the court's presence all
winter.  They certainly wouldn't appreciate having a sorcerer in their
way.  The cottage by the lake was only a few miles away.  He had .moved
most of his possessions into it the day before.  The few items that
were left were packed into the saddlebags of his horse and mule.
He looked back at the crystal cave.  If he hadn't loaded up the home,
he would just as soon have spent the rest of the morning there.  It was
dark and cool in the cave, and with Arthur gone there wasn't anything
he cared to do at the new house or anywhere else.  His mare whinnied.
"All right," he said.  He would ride to the cottage.  He would unpack
his things.  He would take a look at the small garden behind the house.
And then he would wait to die, he supposed.  He would wait for the next
thousand years to die.  "It's about time."  Merlin looked up, startled
at the voice.  He was even more surprised when he saw Nimue astride his
mule.  "What are you doing here?"' he asked.  "Keeping you company, old
man.  And your health would fare better if you didn't frown so."  "My
health is fine," he said crankily, hoping to disguise the fluttering of
his heart and the trembling of his fingers.  "I don't need company."
"Too bad," the girl said blithely.  "I've chosen to spend the day with
you."  "I thought you weren't planning to reappear until I learned to
trust you."  "Have you?"  she asked.  "No."  She shrugged.  "Suit
yourself."  She threw a leg over the mule.  "Wait," he said.  "That is,
what difference does it make whether I Rust you or not?"  "None at all
to me," she said, sitting more comfortably.  "But I wouldn't want you
to fear for your life every time I talk with you."
"Have you been sent to murder me?"  She shook her head.  "I'd be a fool
to try to kill a wizard.
There's no telling what you'd do in return.  Change me into a worm.
Turn my eyeballs to dust."' She shuddered.  Merlin grunted.  "Well, try
not to forget it," he said, mounting his horse.  She was the strangest
person he had ever met.  Her speech was good, almost cultured, yet she
seemed completely unconcerned with ladylike behavior.
It occurred to him more than once during the short journey that Nimne
just might be the wood nymph he had sworn she wasn't, but he forced the
idea away each time.
Once they reached the cottage, she proved to be quite helpful in
unpacking the mule and taking care of the mounts.  Nimue seemed to have
a natural gift with animals.  When Merlin asked her about it, she said
only that she was accustomed to communicating with them.  He had
carried a few provisions with him in the saddlebags.  These Nimue ate
with the appetite of a soldier.  Later, she disappeared for a half hour
and returned with a sackful of frogs, which she dismembered with ease
as Merlin looked on in distress.  "We can fry these up, if you've got
some grease," she said.  "I don't eat meat," Merlin said.  "What?
Well, no wonder you're such a frail old thing.  These frog legs are
just what you need."  He declined politely, but watched in fascination
as she devoured the entire panful.  "Perfect," she said, licking her
fingers.  Merlin smiled.  "Where do you live, child?"  he asked.  Nimue
looked around.  "What about here?"  He blinked.  "Well, I hardly think
. . ."  "Don't be silly.  I'll cook and clean for you-lalthough I'm not
a very good cleaner--and you can teach me your wizardy things."
"I'm afraid it's not that easy," Merlin said.  "Why not?  People make
things harder than they are.  I'm young and strong--" "And I'm old and
male," Merlin said.  "Yes."  She smiled.  "That should work out fine."
Merlin shook his head and smiled despite himself.  He had no doubt that
she had been sent by someone, but the reasoning was beyond him.
"Why have you come?"  he asked quietly.  She flung her hair and began
to speak, but he held up his hand.  "Now, none of your pat answers, if
you please.  I need to hear the truth."  Something in his manner seemed
to deflate her.  "I can't tell you the whole truth," she said, subdued.
"I promised."  "Ah.  But someone did send you.  Tell me why."  "Don't
you like me?"  "I think you're wonderful."  "Then why are you asking so
many questions?"  Merlin looked into her large blue eyes, saying
nothing.  "I'm supposed to make you fall in love with me," she said
finally.
She smiled uncertainly.  "Have I?"  The old man laughed.  "My dear, I'm
enchanted with you."  The uncertain smile spread into a grin.
``Good.  Then I'll stay."' She sucked on a frog bone.  "Not so fast."
"Well, what else matters?"  "I'd like to know why I'm supposed to come
under your spell."  "My spell?"  She giggled.  "You're the sorcerer."
She extracted the last of the marrow from the bone and set it down.
"I don't know why he had me come.  It wasn't to kill you, though.  I
wouldn't have done that."  "Well, that's something, anyway," Merlin
said wanly.  "And he wouldn't kill you, either."  "Oh?  What makes you
so sure?"  She laughed.  "Who could kill a wizard?"  "I imagine it can
be done," he said dryly.  "How well do you know this man?"  She looked
away.  "Well enough."  Then she added quickly, "I'm a virgin, though.
You can check if you like."  Merlin cleared his throat.
"Unnecessary," he managed.  "But this fellow is your friend?"  "Well,
not a friend, exactly."  Merlin waited.  "He found this pretty dress
for me."  Merlin still waited, unimpressed.
"He taught me to speak.  Well, I could speak, but I got out of the
habit of having conversations.  I didn't know anyone else."  "Anyone .
. . at all?"  Merlin asked.  "No.  Isn't it funny?  After my mother was
killed, I was too afraid of people to let them see me.  But the animals
like me.  They always have."  And the only person she's let into her
life is Saladin, he thought sadly.  He knew perfectly well who Nimue's
unnamed master was.  Saladin was not a man who loved easily.
"Child .
. ."  he began, but Nimue had already sprung to her feet.  "Shall I
exercise your horse?  I ride much better than you do."  She waited
expectantly for his reply, a child yearning to go outside to play.
"Certainly," he said at last.
Saladin was using her, of that he was sure.  But the man's mind was
subtle, honed by ages.  Merlin could not fathom what his embittered
enemy had in mind, except that it somehow involved the girl.  And the
cup, of course.  Arthur's cup.
When she left with the horse, he went outside and buried the cup in the
woods behind the house.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

By April, Nimue and Merlin had become inseparable.  With Arthur now
grown and gone, the wizard's books had become dusty with disuse.  He
brought them out for Nimue.
She learned quickly, eager to study everything, but she was
particularly interested in Merlin's knowledge of plants and animals.
The young woman already knew quite a bit about the local wildlife, but
she asked questions relentlessly about every new bit of information he
offered her.
Nimue took to wearing Then's breeches and an old shirt.  They were far
more practical than silk for tramping in the woods to examine
mushrooms, or for exploring caves.  "This is where you first came to
see me," she said as they walked into the crystal cave.  Merlin broke
off a finger.
length piece of videt quartz.  I had been coming here for some time
before then," he said.  Since she'd first moved into the cottage on the
lake, he had not brought up the subject of Saladin or his intentions.
Whatever they were, Merlin had no fear of them.  He'd had a good long
life and did not fear death, if death were possible for him.  And in
truth, even !hat specter had begun to vanish.  It had been eight weeks;
if Saladin planned to kill him, he surely would have tried by now.  The
man was still a mystery to him.  But whatever Saladin might have hoped
to accomplish by sending the girl to Merlin, it had not worked.  Nimue
was not a seductress by nature, and Merlin certainly had no intention
of turning her into one.  He liked her just as she was, wild and bright
as a poppy.  The two lived like an eccentric father and his equally
eccentric daughter, experimenting with strange new foods and making do
in a house neither of them cared much to clean.  The house was only for
sleeping in, anyway.  During the days, the two of them lived outdoors,
riding and walking, talking, laughing, teaching, learning, gathering
flowers, catching fish, studying insects, reading, and pouring out
their thoughts.  Merlin had not been so happy since Arthur was a boy,
and perhaps, he thought more than once, perhaps he was even happier.
Arthur had delighted him, but Merlin had known the boy's destiny even
before Arthur himself had.  He had never guessed that the lad would
become king in a blinding moment of magic, but he did know that Arthur
would one day rule.  It had made him circumspect in some ways.  Arthar's
education had been geared toward his destiny as king.  Merlin had
taught him philosophy, navigation, Latin, geography, history above all.
There was no need for such care with Nimue.  He taught her everything
she was interested in.  She learned to play the harp, and he taught her
the old ballads he tad sung during his traveling years.  She didn't
care for Latin, so they never studied it.  Instead he recited to her
the long poems in ancient Celtic, and she repeated them, savoring the
strange sounds and pressing for their meaning.  She was ,.petter at
mathematics and geometry, insofar as they related to her own life, but
had no use for abstract applications.  "What do I care how far it is to
the stars?"  she scoffed.  "I'm never going to go there."  She stared
up at the night sky.  "Tell me again about Perseus and Medusarod
Pegasus," she whispered.
And Merlin repeated to her, night afternight, the ancient Greek tales
of heroes and monsters an.  unlucky lovers, shining forever above them.
"Do you think that we become stars when we die?"  she asked.  "We might.
It's as good a theory as any I suppose."  "Where will you be, Merlin?"
"I beg your pardon?"  "When you die.  Tell me where you'd like to be,
and I'll look for you there.  I'll wish on you everynight."
He smiled at her sadly.  "I don't think I'll be a star, Nimue.  I
haven't got enough belief."  "And I'll bet you won't die, either."  The
declaration made him shiver.
"Why would you say that?"  "You're a wizard.  A real one.  I've seen it
for myself.  You can read my thoughts."  "That's hardly a feat, Nimue.
You're the most transparent person on earth."  The round yellow eyes of
an owl glearted eerily from a tree near the lake.  Nimue made owl
sounds.  The bird swooped into the starlight.
"You've scared it away," Merlin said.  A moment later, the owl dropped
a dead mouse onto his lap.  He gasped, then stood up, cursing, binring
the thing off his robe.  Nimue laughed.  "By Mithras, you're twice the
wizard I am," he said, embarrassed.  "No, I'm not.  And when I die, I'm
going to be right there, in the center of that lion."  She pointed up
to a cluster of stars near the west side of the moon.  "What lion?  I
don't see any such thing."  "That's because you have no imagination.
But the lion's there, and I'm going to be the heart of it."  He looked
at Nimue, her skin glowing like a pearl against the light of the full
moon.  Yes, he thought, she ought to be the lion's heart.  A sudden
feeling of sadness came over him.  "You must marry, Nimue," he said
softly.  "You can't go on living this uneventful life with me.  "But I
like you," she said.  "I'll marry you if you want."  Merlin smiled.
'Thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I'm past that sort of thing."
"Don't you like women anymore?"  "Not the way I once did.  Feverishly,
you know.  That's become far too tiring."  "Did you ever love a woman?"
Merlin was glad that she could not see the flush come to his cheeks.
Still, he did not mind talking with her about such things.  Nimue had
had too little experience with people to judge their actions on
anything but the most primitive level of kindness or cruelty.  Like the
forest creature she was, she accepted all things about her fellow
living beings with serene equanimity.
Merlin felt he could tell her anything.  "A few," he answered.  "I
never had a great love, except for the magic.  I wanted the magic so
badly, I could never devote my whole mind to the love of a woman.
Still, there were a few."  "But you got the magic."
"Yes."  "That's something, anyway."  Merlin smiled.  How he had grown
to love her, he thought.  "I'd like to marry," Nimue said after a
silence.
"He won't marry you."  She covered her head with her arms.  "There you
go again, reading my mind."  "Most likely he's forgotten all about
you."  "He hasn't!"  "Nimue, listen."  Gently he drew her arms away.
"The man you're waiting for is no ordinary knight."  "I suppose he is
foreign," she admitted.  "But what of it?  He's nearly as educated as
you are, I'll wager."  "No, that's not the difference.  The difference
is .  . ."  He struggled for the right words, and could not find them.
"He cannot love you, child.  He has lived too long.  It means nothing
to him.
He's very like me, only a thousand times more bitter, more afraid.  A
thousand times older, if you will.  You must believe me, Nimue.  You
will not be happy with him."  She stood up, her eyes blazing.  "How
would you know?  Who have you ever made happy?
Those ladies you ran away from to do magic?"  Merlin could not answer.
She was trembling, her long hair curling darkly against the brightness
of the moon.  "You can't be right," she said.  "You can't be."  "Nimue
. . ."  "Because you're the only two living people I know in the whole
world.
If you don't want me, and if he doesn't want me .  . ."  A sob burst
suddenly out of her, and she ran off into the night.  At first Merlin
meant to let her cry herself out in privacy, but something caught his
attention.  Far away, he could hear the approaching hoofbeats of a
horse.  "Nimue?"  he called uncertainly.  He listened again.  It was
not his horse.  He knew its sound.  Then the horse stopped suddenly,
and a woman screamed.  "Nimue!"  Merlin called, running as fast as he
could toward the dark road.  The horse was riderless.  On the hill
above the road, illuminated by moonlight, were two struggling figures.
"Stop!
Stop it, I say!"  Merlin shouted to no effect.  Nimue was defending
herself valiantly, squirming and kicking, but she was clearly no match
for the man who pinned her to the ground.
Merlin picked up a rock, the only possible weapon at hand, wishing he
was the sorcerer the local folk thought him to be.  It would be far
more satisfying to turn the blackguard into a tree than to smash in his
head.
Nevertheless, he had to do something to help.  He crept nearer, hoping
fervently that Nimue could hold the fellow in position until he got
within hurling distance.  "Don't you dare bash me with that rock," a
man's voice said.  Merlin dropped it instantly.  "Good heavens, it's
Arthur."  Arthur sat up, holding Nimue by her hair.  "I found this
baggage creeping around your property," he said.  Nimue lunged at him
with both fists, but Arthur clapped one of his hands around both of
hers.  "And a fine thief she is, no doubt."  "Arthur, do let go,"
Merlin said, stunned.  The king looked up at him, wide-eyed.  "Do you
know her?"  "Ah .  . . Your Majesty, may I present .  . ."  He tried to
think of an appropriate title for the girl, or even a last name.  He
knew neither.  "Nimue," he said at last.  "Nimue is my .  . . my ward."
Arthur let go of her hair.  He stared at Merlin.  "Nimue, I present
Arthur, High King of Britain."  She stoodup, sniffling, and offered her
hand to the king.
When he took it, she pulled him upright.  "I'm glad you tried to
protect him," she said.  "Hope I didn't hurt you."  Merlin winced, but
Arthur, having regained his wits, roared with laughter.  "Your ward,
you say!"  He clapped the girl on the back.  "I was once Merlin's ward
myself."  "Please come inside," Merlin offered.  "No, really," the king
protested.  "You needn't suppose you've interrupted us in the middle of
some improprietry," Merlin said grouchily.  "You can see the girl's
young enough to he my granddaughter.  What brings you back here,
anyway?"  "I was lost," Arthur lied.  "Now that I know where I am, I
really must be going .... " "Oh, he still," the old man said.  "Now
come inside.
That's the last of this discussion, Arthur.  I mean Your Highness."
He stomped toward the cottage, forgetting that he was walking in front
of the king, and far too annoyed to care.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Merlin's mortification had lessened somewhat by the time he led the
king into the cottage, although he was still dismayed by Arthur's
knowing smile.  "It's not what you think," the old man insisted as he
lit the fire.  Nimue had gone to fetch the king something to eat and
"There's no need to explain, Merlin.  You're old enough to do as you
please."  "Those years are far behind me.  Now I'm so old I can only
think as I please.  And you're not that old yet so keep your thoughts
to yourself" "As you wish," Arthur said genially.  "She's quite pretty,
though."
Merlin harrumphed.  "Does she take good care of you?"  "Damn it, I
don't need anyone to take care of me!  What sort of doddering fool do
you think I've become?"  "You just said you were too old to do anything
except think."  "Yes.  And when I can't manage that any longer, I'll
let you know."
Arthur laughed.  "It's good to see you again, old friend."  Merlin's
face softened.  "Yes.  Yes, Arthur, it's good to see you, too.
The winter's been a cold one."  The king nodded.  "No heir."  Merlin
startled himself.  He hadn't meant to speak the words which had burst
into his mind.  "Forgive me," he muttered.  "It's all right," Arthur
said.  "I could never keep anything from you.  All the same, it's
nothing to worry about."  The old man kept the images that thundered
into his brain in check this time, but still they swirled and swooped,
agitated as wild beasts The thoughts were coming from Arthur, he knew;
they had spent so much time together that Merlin no longer even
considered it mind reading.
Arthur's thoughtstraveled almost instantly to Merlin, With an intensity
so powerful that they all but obliterated the wizard's own thinking No
her.
A barren queen, or a king without good seed.  Either way, it was the end
of the Pendragon dynasty, and possibly the end of all Arthur's plans as
well.  Launcelot .  . . anger .  . . guilt .  .. the petty kings
threatening to revolt .  . . Everything was tossing around in a jumble.
The king's mind was in a terrible sate.  Merlin's head began to throb
with the effort of trying to contain the wild thoughts.
"Arthur," he said.  He was feeling nauseated.  If the king could not
control the embarrassment of his terrible emotion-laden visions, Merlin
would have to leave the house.  He needed distance if he were ever
going to understand what was going on behind the king's noncommittal
eyes.  "Arthur, please stop it."  And then, the one image, crashing
down like a hammer, which obliterated all the others and allowed Merlin
to understand, at last, the roiling cauldron of Arthur's mind.  "Oh,
no" he said.  "The queen."  Arthur: covered his eyes with his hand.
"I've put her aside," he said.  The stench seemed to fill the room.
"I'm sorry," Merlin said at last.  "I had to do it for the tribal
chiefs," Arthur said, his voice heavy with misery.  "Several of them
have threatened to secede unless I appoint one of them my heir.  Of
course, that would be the end of the kingdom.  The factional fighting
would be as bad as it was before .  . . before .  . ."  Before the
miracle of the sword in the stone, Merlin thought.  The act which had
proven Arthur's right to govern beyond a doubt.  "They can't be
blamed," Merlin said gently.
"Most of them didn't see it with their own eyes.  So many legends have
already sprung up about you.  They may think the miracle no more real
than the other stories."  "The Saxons are winning."  Merlin tried to
put his arm around him, but the king stood up to escape his touch.  He
did not wish to be comforted.
His face was haggard, with the blotchy look of many sleepless nights.
"Don't jump to conclusions, Arthur.  The Saxons are barbarians, with
primitive weapons.  They have to cross the channel in crude boats--"
"They're taking over our country!"  the king shouted.  "Oh, we stop a
band here and there, when we see them.  But there are too many of them,
coming in all over the coastline.  They'll outlive me, and the petty
kings know that."  "So the kings are asking for an heir from you."
"Asking!"  He threw back his head and laughed bitterly.  "Some of them
have already vowed to support the so-called bastard prince in the
north.
His name, I gather, is Mordred.  He's twelve years old, for the love of
God!"  Merlin frowned.  "Why would they do that?"  "As a result of some
clever drum-beating on the part of the boy's father---excuse me,
'Guardian is the title he grants himself, since I am supposed to be the
churl's father."  "King Lot of Rheged," Merlin said.  "He always was an
ambitious one."  "Exactly.  If he can attract enough support for the
boy to take over the High Kingship after my death, Lot himself will
effectively rule.
And he'll suck every part of Britain dry for his own gain."  "But
surely the petty kings know that."  "Of course.  But some of them will
profit from an alliance with Lot.
Those are the ones who are going over to him now."
"And the others?"  "The others will remain loyal--so long as I produce
a legitimate heir."  "I see," Merlin said.  He saw more than he wanted
to.  For in the king's thoughts he saw the memory of Queen Guenevere,
white-faced and trembling, as the knights led her away to the nunnery
in which she would be imprisoned for the rest of her life.  "Launcelot
hates me," the king said quietly.  "He was the queen's champion, you
know, and a Christian.
He thinks I've broken my vows to God by bending to the chiefs."  He sat
down again.  "And I have, I suppose."  "It is never easy to rule,"
Merlin said, hearing the hollowness of his own words.  "Launcelot's
last words to me were that he could no longer serve a king he did not
respect.  He left the next day."  Nimue entered and Arthur immediately
changed the subject.  He tried to keep his voice light and
good-humored.  "But we have a new knight, and this one, I think, may
well sit in the Siege Perilous."  "What is his name?"  Merlin asked.
"Galahad.  He is really exceptional, Merlin.  Absolutely the best.
Guards me like a giant dog and won't let me out of his sight.  Much
like Launcelot used to."  He chuckled sourly.
"Of course, now there are rumors that he is Launcelot's son.  God, is
there anyone in this island that someone else is not calling a
bastard?"
Nimue placed a cask of wine and some bread and meat on the table but,
aware of the king's distress, she did not speak and left the cottage
immediately.  Merlin was grateful for the consideration.  "Drink some
of this," Merlin said, handing Arthur a glass.  "It's dandelion wine.
I made it myself last summer."  Arthur smiled.  "It's the Roman in you.
You never cared for mead."  The king drank a sip.  "Where's the girl?"
"She's gone."  "I'm sorry.  I've disrupted things.  She'll be angry."
"No," Merlin said.  "Nimue wished to help.  That was why she left."
"She'll gossip."  Merlin shook his head."  Do you love her?"  Win a
way.
As a father.  The way I love you, Arthur."  The king's lips tightened.
"Yes, I wish I were her age again, too," Merlin said gently.  "Where
did Launcelot go?"  Arthur drank his wine.  "Back to Gaul, I suppose.
He didn't tell me.  The rumors have already started, though.  That he's
gone into the forests to live as a hermit.  That he died of a broken
heart for love of the queen.  The most popular story, as I understand,
is that Launcelot and the queen were lovers.  I'm sure that one was
started by my own supporters.  It gives me a reason for discarding
Guenevere, you see," he said bitterly.  "If she was nfaithful, then I
had a perfect moral right to put her away.  The lie has been so well
received that some clans are calling for me to burn the queen at the
stake."  He tried to laugh but, to Merlin's consternation, began to
weep instead.  "Isn't that the biggest joke of them all?  Guenevere
reviled because I broke my marriage vows to her."
He closed his eyes and sat in silence for a long moment.  "I'm so
tired, Merlin.  So damned tired."  Merlin put his hand on the king's
shoulder.  This time Arthur did not move away.  "I'd like you to stay
the night," the old man said.  "I can't."  He sighed.  "If I did, I
might never go back."  "You'll go back," Merlin said.  "You are the
king."  Arthur took a deep breath.  His eyes were half-closed with
exhaustion.  "I never thought I'd be the sort to sacrifice my soul to
stay in power," he said wearily.
"We have already covered that ground, sire," Merlin said.  "I still
have the cup of the Christ.  You need only speak the Word."
"I have already spoken the word," Arthur said sternly.  "The word
remains no."  Merlin nodded.  "Then never think that you go back to
hold onto your power.  You return because it is your obligation."  "To
whom?  Britain?  Britain will be a Saxon country within fifty years.
Not to God, surely.  Not after what I've done to my wife."  "To
history, perhaps," Merlin said softly.  "To history."  Arthur's lips
curled in a thin mockery of a smile.  "It doesn't matter now, anyway."
He wiped his brow with the back of his hand.  "I've been riding all
day."

"Rest, Arthur.

The king leaned back on the soft straw-filled cushion, his glass still
in his hand.  Merlin took it from him and sniffed at the dregs, then
walked outside.  "Nimue, he said softly.
The girl appeared from behind a tree.  "Why did you drug the king's
drink?  "He needed to sleep.  It's harmless, anyway.  It wouldn't have
affected him if he weren't dead tired."  She turned to look through the
small window at the sleeping man.  "You were probably right to do it,"
Merlin said.  "Nevertheless, don't take liberties with the king."  She
didn't hear him.  She was staring at Arthur.  "Was he always so sad?"
"No," Merlin said.  "He was a happy boy.  Serious, but happy."  He
looked up at the moon.  "I've never seen a happy king."  "Then why did
you let him become king?"  "I had nothing to do with that."  "You could
have stopped him."  The old man thought once again of the boy who had
freed the ancient sword from the stone.  What might his life have been
if the miracle had not occurred?  Would he have been spared this
misery?  "I had no right to keep him from his destiny," Merlin said.
Nimue went inside and loosened the king's shoes, then covered him with
a thin blanket.  "Go to bed, Merlin.  I'll sit with him," she said.
She did, through the night, stoking the fire when it grew low, and
staring at the copper-headed man who slept as if it were his only
escape from the demons that plagued him.
This is the lion, she thought.  When this man died, he would surely
shine through the darkness of night.
She felt her heart melting.  Perhaps it was all men, she thought.
Since she was a child, she had only met three people on earth, and she
loved all three of them.  Were they all so wonderful as these three?
Nimue heard a great sigh escape from her lips.  What a marvelous thing
life was.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

When Arthur awoke, Nimue was there, smiling.  And before his troubles
could crash through the barrier of sleep to hurt him, even before he
could look about his strange surroundings in the moment of
disorientation before realizing that he had fallen asleep in a bed
other than his own, he smiled back at the sheer joy in her.  "Don't
wake Merlin," he said.  In the dim predawn light, the king saddled his
own horse and mounted.  Silently, Nimue gave him a loaf of bread for
his journey.  "Be well," Arthur said.
Nimue nodded.  In another moment he was galloping down the dirt
roadway.
As Nimue watched, a knight came out of the forest and turned down the
road to follow Arthur.  The knight--a young man with an angelic face
had spent the night on his horse, watching Merlin's cabin.
This must have been the Galahad she had heard the king speak briefly of
the night before.  How wonderful to have someone who loved you so much
that he would be on constant guard for your safety.
Or was it wonderful?
She watched until Arthur disappeared into the still-dark western sky.
"Good-bye, my lord," she said softly.  She had met the king of Britain
and would not change places with him for all the gold on earth.
The first rays of sun appeared behind her, making the dew on the grass
shimmer.  Nimue took a deep breath.  This was her favorite time, when a
new day broke over the land.  Beside the cottage, the small lake was
awash in silver.  The wet grass tickled her bare feet as she walked
toward it, then ran.  She clambered up a pile of rocks that served as a
lookout for boats.  Then, with a whoop, she dived into the bracing
water.
She emerged on the far side of the lake, near the caves.  They were
surrounded by wildflowers and tall grass.  A doe and her fawn grazed
near the rocks above them.  In the distance, the high towers of Camelot
rose into the pink morning sky.  It seemed to Nimue like a scene from a
fairy tale.  She wiped her wet hair back from her forehead and breathed
in the fragrance of the clean spring breeze.
As she walked toward the caves, the deer looked up, startled, and
bounded away, their white tails bobbing.  Nimue frowned.  No wild animal
had ever been frightened by her presence before.  Had her life in the
world of men taken away her ability to live among the animals?  Did
they somehow know that she had become one of them, the enemy?
She called to them.  The big doe stopped for a moment and looked back
at her, then turned and leaped into the forest.  "It's afraid of me,
not you," a voice behind her said.  She whirled around, gasping.
"Saladin!"  He smiled at her sadly.  "I thought you might have
forgotten me."  "Forgotten?  Never!"  She wrapped her arms around him,
but he offered no response.  She drew back, embarrassed.  "Have you
been waiting for me?"  "Every day for more than a week."  "I'm sorry.
Time seems to go by so fast."  He smiled, but there was no joy in it.
"Yes," he said.  "I know."  It was an awkward moment.  "Where have you
been?"  Nimue asked finally to ease the tension.
I've traveled," Saladin said.  He looked older, although only two
months had gone by since they had parted company.  "I went back to
Rome.
Everything's dying there.  The fountains are filled with algae and the
bloated carcasses of dogs."  He stared at an indefinable point for some
time, then closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.  "Have you done what I
asked of you?
Nimue frowned, puzzled.  "I've gone to live With Merlin," she said.
"Good."  "He's not in love with me, though."  She laughed "Actually,
he's become like a father to me."  "That's good, too," Saladin said.
His big stallion stepped out of the bushes.  "Call him."  She looked
back at the cottage across the lake.  "I ink he's still asleep.  We
could go there."  "To a wizard's home?  No."  "Oh, it's nothing like
that," Nimue said gaily.  "He's really just an ordinary person--" "Call
him!"  Saladin demanded.  She heard the edge in his voice.
"Stand on the rock.  He can see you from there."  He prodded her toward
the big outcropping of boulders above the caves, then climbed up after
her.  "Merlin?"  she called tentatively.  There was no answer.
"I can go back and bring him to you," she offered.  "I'll swim over--"
But Saladin was not disposed toward more conversation.  He drew a long
dagger from his belt and, swift as an adder striking, slashed across
her face.  "Call him!"  Nimue was too stunned to cry out.  Blood
dripped onto her wet clothes as Saladin yanked her arms behind her.
"Merlin!"  he shouted, and hi, voice echoed across the water.  "Come
see what I have, secerer!"  The old man cane out of the cottage and
froze.  "Bring the cup,' Saladin commanded.  "I am ready to negotiate
with you."  Merlin arrived on horseback within minutes.  His expression
was grim.  "The girl will bleed to death," he said.  "A facial woundis
never as serious as it looks," Saladin answered.  He jamned Nimue's
arms higher on her back.  She winced.  "Why are you doing this to me?"
she asked plaintively.  "It's nothing to to with you," Merlin said.
"Your friend wants something that I possess.  He's using your life to
bargain with."  Nimue tried to lookk behind her at the man who had
first brought her back into the world.  "Is it true?"  she asked.
Saladin said nothing.  "It's true," Merlin said.  "That was why he sent
you to me.  He knew I would love you."  He added softly, "And I do."
From the folds of his robe he took the small metallic sphere.  Saladin
inhaled sharply.
"Surprised that i have it?"  Merlin ,said, holding it up to catch the
sun.  "Why, you even kept it from the king," Saladin said with a smile.
"I offered it to him.  I begged him to take it.  But Arthur wouldn't
have it.  He knew, more than most, what it might do to a man.  But now,
looking at you, I see for myself what sort of monster one's dreans can
make."  He passed his fingers over the ball.  "Release Nimue, and the
cursed thing is yours."  Saladin pushed the girl away, but kept his
dagger trained on her as she sprawled onto the rocks.  "Give it to me!"
he whispered raggedly Merlin threw the cup on the rocks.  "Get away!"
he hissed to Nimue.
The young woman sprang to her feet.  But instead of
scrambling off the rock, she turned and dived for the cup.  "What are
you doing?"  Merlin screeched.  The young woman paid him no attention.
"Your greed has just cost you your life, child," Saladin said calmly as
he raised the dagger over her back.  Merlin ran toward her, screaming,
as Saladin savagely brought the blade down.  It struck rock.
For an instant the two men froze in place, Saladin clutching the
dagger, Merlin with his arms outstretched.  No one was there.  The girl
had disappeared.  It was Merlin who first saw the bit of scrub bush
bobbing over the spot where Nimue had vanished.  The hole, he
remembered.  When Nimue had run away from him inside the crystal cave,
she had escaped through an opening in the rocks above.  This was the
opening.  "What sorcery have you taught her, wizard?"  Saladin demanded
hoarsely.  Merlin smiled.  "Who could teach her anything?"  he said
softly.  "I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth, old man," Saladin
said.  "And after you're gone, I'll kill her.  And your king.  And
everyone else on this island, if need be.  But I will get what I want."
Merlin knew that the man spoke the truth.  "Does life mean so much to
you?"  he asked quietly.  "Don't try your foolish philosophizing with
me, Merlin.  You would do the same to keep the cup.
And the girl, your .  . . succubus, or whatever she is, is gone.  Now
that she has the treasure of life, you'll not see her again."  At that
moment, Nimue burst out of the mouth of the cave like a bird in flight.
With a raucous laugh, she leapt upon Saladin's waiting stallion and
kicked it into a run.  "Catch me if you can, traitor!"  she called out
behind her.  Saladin scrambled off the rocks, his dignity forgotten.
The girl was riding toward the lake, where the shore was covered with
boulders.  Even a good horse--and Saladin's stallion was the
best--would have to slow to a near crawl.  He would have time to catch
up with her.
And when he did, he would savor each moment that it took to kill her.
Merlin, too, saw the danger.  "Nimue!"  he shouted.  "Get off the
rocks!
Head into the woods!"  But to his dismay, she continued on her way
until the stallion was balanced precariously on a mound of stone
rubble.  Then she stopped completely.  "Swim it!"  Merlin called
desperately.  "Swim the horse."  Nimue appeared not to have heard him,
or to notice that Saladin was approaching dangerously close.  The
dagger was still in his hand.  He would not hesitate to kill the
animal, Merlin knew, to get to the girl and the precious object she was
now flaunting.
She held both hands high above her head, palms flat, as if offering the
cup to the sun.  A series of loud, shrill shrieks poured from her lips.
This is some kind of incantation, Merlin realized with wonderment.
One of her animal sounds.  But what was she calling?  There was the
occasional wolf in the forest, but the noises she was making in no way
resembled the howl of a wolf.  Besides, surely she knew that the
presence of a predator would cause the horse to bolt on the slippery
rocks.
Saladin had nearly reached her.  The stallion sensed his rage and
skittered a little, but Nimue held him steady with her legs, all the
while chirping her strange sounds.
And then Merlin saw it: a flock of birds, thick as a cloud, screaming
down from the trees.  They were birds of all varieties, from tiny brown
wrens to brilliant red cardinals.  There were crows and sparrows and
elusive bluebirds that rarely left the dark safety of the forest.
There were scarlet tanagers and wood finches and bluejays, all of them
converging on one point at the side of the lake.
Merlin could only watch in amazement as they came, their wings making a
sound like thunder, their calls melding into one high, piercing,
terrifying scream.
A few pecked at Saladin.  He swatted them away, dropping his dagger,
covering his face.  But most of them flew directly to Nimue.  They
covered her with their soft, moving bodies for a moment, then rose into
the sky above the lake.
Saladin peered over the torn sleeve of his robe.  Her eyes were closed.
Her lips were silent and parted in a gentle smile.  And her hands were
empty.
High above, a flash of light glinted off a metal object in the midst of
the flying birds.  "No!"  Saladin screamed.  "Come back!"' Nimue
laughed.  "Your treasure will be where the wild birds go," she said.
"And where is that, sorceress?"  Saladin spat.  "I didn't ask."  With
that, she reared the stallion up on its hind legs.
It kicked out toward Saladin, who backed away and fell.  "Whatever it
was, I doubt your prize could bring you anything greater than the love
of a true friend," Nimue said.  "You've lost that with me, Saladin.
You will not find such a friend again."  She brought the stallion back
from the shore to where Merlin stood.  "Mount your horse, old man," she
said, "and travel with me.  For I will not leave your side, now or
ever, and will love you well until the end of my days."  Saladin closed
the draperies against the harsh sun.  "Who would have thought the
creature capable of such loyalty?"  he mused aloud.
Nimue had been as good as her word.  She had remained with Merlin until
his death--or what was believed to have been his death--until whatever
call alerted his sorcerer's spirit that Arthur had returned after
almost seventeen centuries.
How had it felt to wake after so long, he wondered.  To live, knowing
that everyone you had known and loved in the past was long dead, their
bones rotted into nothingness?
How had it felt?  But of course, Saladin already knew.  He had outlived
everyone.  Everyone on earth, the great and the small.  The Sumerians,
the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Macedonians, the Romans, even the
invincible Persians whom he himself had led during the twelfth century,
in one of the most stunning reigns on earth--he had outlived them all.
He had been a king and a pauper aad a merchant and an artist and a
physician, and done all manner of work to pass his endless days.  He
had watched history unfold and reform and repeat again and again,
because human beings never learned from their short pasts.  He had met
millions of people, so many that they blurred in his memory, like dots
of color on a spinning pinwheel.  Some of them remained, whole and
intact, in his memory: Kanna and Merlin; the fool of an innkeeper in
Jerusalem; handsome Alexander of Macedon; and Nimue .  . . She might
have been mine, he thought, and the vision of her face stirred in him
an actual physical pain.  In all his years of life, only Nimue had
truly loved him.  Nimue.  The Lady of the Lake.  When Merlin died, she
lay his body inside the crystal cave and had it sealed shut.  The
legends had sprung up instantly, of course: Everything connected with
Arthur managed to reach the realm of myth before long.  The locals, who
had thought the great sorcerer Merlin incapable of such an ordinary act
as dying, claimed that Nimue had stolen the old man's magic and used it
to imprison him.
In her old age, the common folk had come to her to cure their fevers
and poxes, although they never quite forgave her for banishing the
king's royal wizard.  It was only decades after King Arthur's death
that a few of the more imaginative among them began to perceive Nimue's
role in the whole fantastic history: that she had preserved Merlin for
the time of the Great King's return.  For above all the legends, the
belief that Arthur would come back to reign again was the most
persistent and universal.  "The Once and Future King," they called him;
Arthur, the man even death could not destroy.  "And here you are,"
Saladin said, lightly touching the young boy's red hair.  "You really
did come back."  Arthur Blessing had been asleep for hours.  Several
times servants had peered into the room, worried about their master who
sat hour after hour with the unconscious child, but each time Saladin
waved them away impatiently.
The boy who lay before him was a living miracle, just as his other life
ad been filled with miracles, and he wanted to be alone with him.
How odd, he thought.  Only two people in the whole history of
mankind--the Jew named Jesus who had risen from his very grave and this
boy who had somehow been restored to his identical past self had
overcome the finality of death.  And they had both rejected the cup of
immortality.  "Why did you not take it while you had the chance?"
Saladin whispered.
In the end, Arthur had been slain by an inexperienced boy, the puppet
of an ambitious petty tyrant.  His death had been agonizing,
humiliating.
More than half of his supporters had deserted him when he refused to
take another wife.  Of those who remained loyal, only a handful had
been present during the battle in which Mordred's sword inflicted its
mortal wound.  The rest, the best of the Round Table, had gone hunting
for the cup.  The Grail, they called it by then, Christ's holy cup.
Some of the knights claimed to have received instructions to find it
from the ghost of Merlin himself.  Personally, Saladin believed that
Arthur must have told some of the older knights about the miraculous
properties of the sphere after it was irretrievably lost, and the Great
Quest had been, for many of them, a search for personal treasure which
ended in faraway places long before Arthur's death.  Of them all, only
one knight had pursued the Quest wholeheartedly for the full twelve
years of its loss: Galahad, the newest knight, reputed to be the son of
Launcelot and the one that rumor said was allowed to sit in the Siege
Perilous.  At the outset, Saladin had not intended to follow the young
knight.  But wherever he went with his questions, he found that another
had come just before him seeking the same answers.  It seemed, he had
conceded at last, that Galahad's mind worked much like his own.
During the final years they saw one another frequently, though they had
never spoken together.  The first time Galahad heard Saladin's voice
was when the dark Saracen had thanked him for leading him to the cup, a
moment before he sliced into the young knight's neck.  Even then,
Saladin remembered with irritation, the myths had sprung up like weeds.
Upon seeing the Grail, the legends insisted, Galahad's spirit was
lifted to heaven by a host of angels.  Not by angels, but by the blade
of my sword, Saladin thought peevishly.  Why was it that everything
connected with Arthur took on dimensions of grandeur?  Every small fact
associated with his life had become so interwoven with the fabric of
history that it would never be forgotten.  Yet what had Arthur done,
really?  The nation over which he ruled was savage and sparsely
populated.  He had not given it glory, nor improved the sorry lot of
its inhabitants.  In the end, he had not even been able to stem the
tide of the invading Saxons, who eventually overran Britain.  Mordred,
the dubious "heir" to the Pendragon dynasty, was himself killed in the
same battle in which Arthur died--by Arthur's own sword, the legends
said.  The petty kings who had fought so long among themselves were all
wiped out or displaced within a decade or two by the Saxons.  Camelot
itself was taken over as a Saxon stronghold.
Nothing about Arthur, king of the Britons, had endured for long after
his death.  And yet the legends were told again and again.  "He will
come back," they said.  "The king will come again."  "What was your
destiny?"  Saladin whispered.  What was the imperative so overwhelming
that this failed king had not been permitted to pass into obscurity?
Saladin had thought about the magic surrounding Arthur for centuries.
For a time, he had become a king himself.  His reign had been longer,
his feats more glorious than any of Arthur's accomplishments.  And yet
he was not remembered as Arthur was.  He had never been considered
immortal.  And now, Arthur was back.  To try again, to fulfill the
mission interrupted by his death so long ago.  "I wish I didn't have to
kill you," Saladin said.
But he would kill him, of course.  The boy, his aunt, the American .
. . all of them would have to die before the whole world found out
about the cup.  It was a pity.  Saladin stroked the child's forehead.
"You might have made a glorious king," he said.

BOOK THREE

THE KING

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The constabulary in the village of Wilson-on-Hamble had not seen
anything quite so exciting since the tine Davey McGuinness, the local
veterinarian, had gone to old Eamon Carpenter's farm to treat two sick
milk cows and found that they had been poisoned.  "One of them rolled
over and died right in front of Davey," Constable James ("Call me
Jack") Nubbit explained as he escorted Hal and Emily to their car.
Though the boy who had come upon Hal in the meadow had called the
police immediately and reported that a man was bleeding half to death
near Lakeshire Tor, Nubbit had been unable to come until his assistant
arrived back with the village's only police vehicle.  By that time,
Emily and Hal had already found their way to the doctor, who had
stitched and bandaged Hal'shoulder.  They met Nubbit on their way out.
With the constable was the young officer who had questioned the bus
passengers the day before, while Nubbit had gone fishing.  "Hooked a
three-pound speckled trout," he'd told them proutly before launching
into the saga of Mr. Carpenter's dead cow.  Nubbit was a red rubber
ball of a man, with a beet-colored nose, florid round cheeks, and a
bald, sunburned head.  He wore the expression of a lapdog lusting to
have his throat tickled.  His companion stood stolidly behind him as
Nubbit regaled Hal and Emily with the criminal history of
Wilson-on.Hamble.  Hal saw the despair on Emily's face as they parked
the borrowed car at the inn.  The aging police cruiser pulled in beside
them.  "We'll find Arthur," Hal said.  "It's been more than two hours,"
Emily said flatly.  "Ah, the Inn of the Falcon," Constable Nubbit
exclaimed as all four doors slammed at once.  "Good choice.  Katie Sloan
always made a fine apple tart.  Have you met Mrs. Sloan?"  "She lent
me her car," Emily said with a sigh.  "Well, it's just like her.
Salt of the earth, Katie is.  Why, when that cow of auld Carpenter's
died on Davey McGuinnessoh, it was a terrible thing, vomiting something
fierceit was Katie sent her husband, God rest his soul, to go help
clean up the mess.  Had to bury the cow, don't you know.  Can't send a
poisoned cow to the knackerman.  Why, the hole they dug for the beast
must have been---" "Excuse me, Constable," Hal interrupted.  "A child
has been kidnapped, and the perpetrators are armed."  "Yes, right,"
Nubbit said, his face flushing even redder as he' took his notepad from
his uniform jacket, "Blessing.  Arthur, it is."  "Yes, Emily sighed
wearily.  They had already gone over the broad outlines of the
situation with Nubbit but had felt as if they were forcing the
information on a man who had other, grander things on his mind.  "The
lad who called told us you'd been wounded."  "Nothing serious," Hal
said.  "Gunshot?"  "No.  They were carrying swords."  "Swords, you
say?"  "That's right.  Six men on horseback.  Arabs, I think.  They
were dressed in some kind of costumes--balloon pants, turbans, that
sort of thing.  And they used swords."  "No guns," Nubbit said, writing
carefully.  "Well, we can be grateful for that, at least."  "What?
That they didn't have guns?  They had swords, for God's sake!"  "Now,
Mr. Blessing, we realize you've been through a bad patch--" "My name's
Woczniak.  The boy is Miss Blessing's nephew."  "Spelling, please?"  He
poised his pencil over his notepad.  "What are you going to do to
locate Arthur?"  Emily said exaspeeratedlly.
Nubbit came to attention, as if he were taking an oral examination in
school.  "We are proceeding on the assumption that the man who tried to
kill the Blessing boy yesterday on the bus was somehow connected with
today's events."  Hal grunted in sarcastic dismissal.  "Because the man
on the bus was identified as an Arab by several different witnesses, we
have sent his fingerprints and a morgue photograph to Metropolitan
Police headquarters.  They haven't got the material yet--" "Of course
not," Hal grumbled.  Nubbit cleared his throat.  "However, I've spoken
with people in London personally.  Scotland Yard will send the prints
and photograph on to Immigration and to Interpol."  He glanced down at
his notes.  "Also, we've talked with residents of the area."  "About
what?  A man riding on a bus from London?"  Hal could feel his
irritation approaching the breaking point.  "What did you think the
locals would be able to tell you about him?"  "Well, I .  . ."  Nubbit
shook his jowls.
The young officer with him gave Hal a sour look and mumbled to his
superior, "What did I tell you about him?"  "Sir, I assure you we are
doing the best we can," Nubbit said indignantly.  "This may be
difficult for you to understand, but generally these cases are solved
because someone has seen something.
Now, we're going to go back to the residents of the area and ask .  .
."
"We were alone," Hal said loudly.  "It was dawn.  There were no
witnesses."  Nubbit cocked his head and squinted at him.  "You seem
very sure about quite a lot."  Hal raised his fists in front of his
chest.  This moron doesn't believe me, he thought.
He forced himself to open his hands.  Hitting the cop in charge of the
investigation wasn't going to help matters..  Outside, the darkening
clouds of a thunderhead were looming.  Rain was on the way.  "I think
you ought to make castings of the hoofprints of those horses before the
rain comes," he said as calmly as possible.  "Hoofprint castings?  In a
farm meadow?"  "The prints would be fresh."  Hal said, forcing out the
smooth if mechical words.  "Seal off the area.  Then, after you've made
the castings, check with local stables, breeders, saddlers, feed
stores--anyone who might have had contact with these people.  Try
trucking companies for rentals.  Unless the kidnappers rode those
horses through the streets, the animals were brought in some kind of
van, or else kept at a stable.  Make a search of the field where we
were assaulted.  Maybe one of the horsemen dropped something .  . ."
Nubbit held up his hands, smiling.  "Now, now, those are all fine
ideas, si, but you've get to remember we're a small constabulary."
"Then get some help," Hal said coldly.  "Christ knows you need it."
"I've told you that our report has gone to Scotland Yard."  "Are they
sending someone?"  "Well, I'm sure that's up to them," Nubbit said
defiantly.  "But as I've told you, we are prepared to do everything we
can to retrieve the child."  The woman who ran the inn peeked into the
parlor where Hal, Emily, and the two policemen were standing.  "Can I
get anyone a cup of tea?"  she asked.  Nubbit turned toward her with a
warm grin.  "Well, now, Katie Sloan, since you're asking .  . ."
"Nubbit, get out of here," Hal said quietly.  The constable's round
head waipped toward him sharply.  It was nearly glowing in its redness.
"You heard me," Hal said.  "Mr. Wocznik," the innkeeper began.  Hal
ignored her and spoke directly to Constable Nubbit.  "I can't make you
do your job," he said.  "But I'll be damned if I'll let you sit on your
fat ass while a bunch of killers get away with a ten-year-old kid.  Now
get out before I throw you out."  The young constable flexed his
shoulders.  "That goes for you, too, Einsteia," Hal added.  The two
policemen bustled out with great dignity.
Mrs. Sloan watched them leave and then shook her head.  "I've heard
what happened to you out on the Tor," she said.  "I wish we had a
better police force to offer you."  "Me, too," Hal said quietly.  "May
I use your telephone?  It's long distance, but I'll pay for the call.
"Certainly."  She brought a black rotary telephone out of a cupboard
and set it on a small table near one of the sofas.  "Just let me know
if you'd like some tea or a bit of something to eat."  Emily nodded to
her as she left.  "I want to call the United States," Hal spoke into
the phone.  "Washington, D.C. The Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Assistant Director Fred Koehler.  My name is Hal Woczniak."  He spelled
it for the operator, than thanked her and hung up.  Emily was seated on
a hard chair, staring blanldy across the room.  Hal put his hand on her
shoulder and kept it there until she looked up suddenly, as if she were
surprised to see him.  "We'll get him back," he said softly.  She
nodded slightly, the gesture of someone who did not believe what she
had just been told but no longer wanted to talk about it.  Then her
eyes drifted away from him, again looking toward the window.  When the
telephone rang, Hal bolted across the room to answer it.  "Yes?"  "Mr.
Woczniak?  Hold on for your party, please."  A moment later another
voice crackled over the line.  "Hal?  That you?"
"Right, Chief.  I'm calling from somewhere in the south of England."
"What the hell are you doing there?"  "I'll tell you about it sometime.
Right now I need a favor."  There was silence at the OTHER@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ end.

"I'm Sober, Chief," Hal said.

There was another silence.  "Then I'm listening," the Chief said
finally.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Inspector Brian Candy arrived from Scotland Yard with a tweed suit, a
pair of socks that did not match, two assistants, a gray van filled
with equipment, and a businesslike approach to his trade which Hal
found both familiar and comforting.
Candy climbed the three flights of stairs to Hal's room on the top
floor of the inn and arrived without being out of breath.  Quite a
feat, Hal thought, considering the man's size.  Candy was well over six
feet tall and as broad as a bull.  He nearly filled the room with his
girth and quiet energy.  "Constable Nubbit has already filled me in
with most of .  . . what he knows," Candy said graciously.
Hal snorted.  "About this case?  Or was he still going on about auld
Eamon Carpenter's dead cow?"  Candy ducked his head and sneaked a
smile.  "He was kind enough to meet us on the road.  My men have gone
to the meadow to make the castings you suggested."  Hal looked out the
window.  "It's been raining for forty minutes," he said quietly.
Candy tightened his lips.  "Unfortunate," he said.  "Still, they may
find something."  At least he's not lying to me, Hal thought.  "Thank
you for coming," he said.  "No thanks necessary," Candy said.  "When my
superintendent gets rung up by one of his old friends in the FBI and he
tells me to march, I only ask how far.  Now suppose you tell me what's
going on here."  Hal nodded.  He was perched on the windowsill and saw
Candy take not one, but three ballpoint pens from inside his jacket
pocket and lay them on the table in front of him as he opened up a
large spiral-bound notebook and looked up at Hal like a man with all
the time in the world.
As Hal went over the details of the morning ambush, he studied Candy's
broad face.  It was a face he liked instinctively, beefy and hard, with
a bushy mustache and auburn hair that Hal guessed had, in childhood,
earned him the nickname Red.  He gave the impression of earnest
competence, and it was easy for Hal to see him as a member of a
regimental boxing team somewhere; probably a middle-weight in those
days, with a technically correct, plod-ahead style that--so unlike the
flashy antics of American boxers--quietly piled up points and won him a
lot of bouts by decision.
The only thing that belied that impression was Candy's eyes.  They were
dark and quick and darting, the eyes of a casino pit boss watching a
new dealer work.
They were not the eyes of a man Hal wanted to lie to.  Still, he wasn't
about to tell anyone, let alone a police officer, about Camelot
revisited and Merlin the magician disappearing in a puff of smoke while
holding the Holy Grail.  There were some things he had to keep to
himself if he hoped to get any cooperation from the authorities.
So he gave a truthful story, but carefully, not the whole truth.  He
described how he had met both Taliesin and young Arthur Blessing and
his aunt Emily on a bus while on tour.  Very matter-of-factly, he told
how he had disarmed someone who was trying to kill the boy.
Candy looked up sharply and Woczniak knew why.  If there was someone in
custody who had been involved in an earlier attempt against the boy,
the mystery was almost solved already.
Hal shook his head.  "No survivors, I'm afraid," he said.  "The bastard
bit down on a cyanide pill and was dead before the cops could question
him."  Recognition dawned in the inspector's eyes.  "Right you are.  I
read the reports on that this morning.  Didn't realize you were talking
about the same boy.  Some photographs and fingerprints were sent to
headquarters, but they haven't arrived yet."  "Of course not," Hal
said.  'Constable Nerdnick sent them."  "The prints should be
identified tomorrow.  I'll have the results called in to me as soon as
they come in.  We'll be working out of the constabulary.  "Can you keep
the locals out of the way?"  Candy smiled.
"I think so."  He checked over his notes.  "The boy was willed this
property by his mother, you say.  Was she British?"' He was looking at
Emily, but she only stared straight ahead.  She had said nothing since
Candy's arrival.  "Emily?"' Hal prompted gently Her eyes panicked, then
focused on the Scotland Yard detective.  "I'm sorry,'' she said.  Candy
nodded sympathetically and repeated the question.  "No, she was an
American," Emily answered.  "Dilys--that's Dilys Blessing--was included
in her .  . . in Arthur's father's will.  But since she wasn't alive at
the time of the man's death, the property went to Arthur.  That was a
stipulation in the will."  Candy wrote constantly, but never took his
eyes off Emily.
"What was the father's name?"  he asked.  Emily's face worked.
Finally she pulled herself together enough to answer.  "Abbott," she
mid.  "Sir Bradford Welles Abbott.  He was never married to my
sister."' "I see," he said noncommitally.  "I understand you saw
nothing of the episode this morning?  She shook her head numbly.  "I
went to the meadow to see what was taking them so long.  I arrived too
late."  "It's just as well,'' Candy said quietly, then turned back to
Hal.
He's good, Hal thought with admiration.  Candy had sensed that Emily
was walking a thin wire and didn't push her too hard.  In the end, he
would get more out of her that way, Hal knew.  "And the old man who was
with you?"  the inspector asked.  "Taliesin.
Odd name.  Welsh.  Where is he?"  "He took off,'' Hal said.  ``Took
off?."  "The perps left with Arthur, and he chased them," Hal said.
"On foot?"
"Right."  "Might he have been working with the kidnappers?"

"No.  They .

. ."  They cut off his head.  "They wounded him.  He was hurt."
"Badly?"  "No.  I don't think so."  "What was his first name?"  ``I
don't know,'' Hal lied.  The last thing he wanted was for Scotland Yard
to begin a manhunt for the old man.  It would' waste what little time
there was to find Arthur.  "I met him on the bus."  Do you know
anything about him?
Where he worked, where he lived?"  Hal shook his head, and folded his
arms across his chest in an unconscious gesture of defiance.  Candy
looked at Emily, but she was no longer paying any attention to the
inspector or his questions.  "Excuse me," Candy said.  "I need to make
a telephone call."  When he left the room, Hal let out a slow sigh of
relief.  Then he spotted the beer in an old metal bucket beside the
small table where Candy had been sitting.  Anticipating the inspector's
arrival, Mrs. Sloan must have placed it there.  There was even ice in
the bucket.  Slowly Hal walked over to it.  There were three bottles.
He took out two.  He had wanted a drink all day, and especially wanted
one now.  The bottle was cold and sweating.  He could imagine the taste
of it on his cigarette-dried throat.  "Care for a beer?"  he asked
Emily, but she didn't hear him.  He sighed and put back both bottles.
He couldn't risk it, not while Emily was in such bad shape.  What was
it they said about drunks--that one drink was too many and a thousand
weren't enough?  If he had one now, he knew, he would have a thousand.
And when he woke up, stinking and lost, Arthur would be dead and Emily
would be in a nuthouse.  No, he wouldn't have one.  Not yet.  Not just
yet.  Soon he heard Candy's heavy footfalls coming back up the stairs.
"I thought the Yard might have made some headway with the dead man's
prints, but they've got nothing so far," he said.  He added, "They're
still working, though.  if the fellow's ever been arrested and booked
anywhere in Britain or the Continent, we'll know about it."  .  And
what if he hasn't?  Hal thought.  But he already knew the answer to
that.
"Suppose we go on to the kidnappers," Candy suggested.  "You say they
were Arabs?"  "That's my guess.  But it may have just been their
clothes."  "Fairy-tale costumes," Candy said noncommitally.  Hal
nodded.
"Turbans, silk harem pants .  . . Right out of the Arabian Nights."
"Why do you suppose they were dressed so fancifully?"  "I really don't
know," Hal said.  Candy wrote.  "Did any of them speak?
Call out a name, perhaps?"  "The only one who talked was .  . ."
Suddenly he re- called what Taliesin had said.  "There was a name.
Saladin."  "Which one was he?"  "The leader."  "The tall one."  "At
least seven feet," Hal said.  "He had this devil's face and weird eyes,
pitch-black.  His skin was white, but not as if it was supposed to be
white.  It was unwholesome-looking, like a dark-skinned man who'd been
out of the sun for years.  In the states, we called it 'prison pallor."
He had a goatee."  Hal glanced over at Candy and saw that the Scotland
Yard inspector was staring hard at him.  "What is it?"
Hal asked.  "Nothing."  "Don't tell me that.  You recognized him from
my description didn't you?"  tion'qo.  I don't know any Saladin," Candy
said crisply.  "The description did remind me of someone, but it's not
the man you're talking about."  "Why not?"  "He's dead."  A crack of
thunder shook the windows.  "Gracious, it's getting bad."  Everyone
turned to see Mrs. Sloan in the doorway.  She was panting and out of
breath from the long climb up the stairs.
"Sorry to disturb you, but there's a telephone call for Inspector Candy
downstairs."  She snapped at the bodice of her housedress to cool off.
"Terrible muggy, it is."  Candy got up.  "One thing to say for those
boxy motels you Yanks have," he said.  "Telephones in the rooms."  Mrs.
Sloan laughed.  "I expect the exercise is good for you."  Candy smiled
at her roefully and headed down the stairs with her.  Hal and Emily sat
in silence while the rain pelted the windows.  He knew what Candy's
call would be about.  "Call off the search?"  he asked when the
inspector returned.  Candy nodded.  "Too much rain.  But they did get
some castings.  And they picked up a few scraps of fabric.
Looks like silk."  He smiled hopefully, then walked over to the table
and snapped his notebook shut.  "If you think of anything else, give me
a ring."  He replaced the three ballpoint pens in his pocket, nodded,
and lumbered toward the door.  "Inspector?"  Candy paused at the door.
"You said the description I gave you reminded you of someone.  Who?"
"A murderer.
Psychopath.  I had a hand in arresting him."  "What was his name?"
Hal asked.
knew.  The chap wouldn't tell anyone, and he had no identification."
"A homeless guy."  "No, quite the contrary.  He lived like a king.
But he had no bank accounts, no credit cards, no driver's license."
"What about the place where he lived?"  Hal asked, professionally
curious.
"Rented.
He signed the agreement with an X."  Candy chuckled.  "That's how the
press referred to him during the trial: Mr.  X."  "Wait a minute.
Somebody must have known who he was.  Neighbors .  . ."  "Only the
servants.  Dozens of them."
"Well?"  "None of them would talk.  Not a word.  They all served time
for contempt.  Still, none of them cracked."  "He must have paid them
well."  Hal looked at Candy.  The inspector was chewing the inside of
his lip.  "You want to tell me something?"
Candy shrugged.  "What?"  "They were all Arabs, weren't they.  The
inspector stared at him for a moment, 'then nodded.  "I was told you
were very good at your work.
But you're wrong on this.  The man's dead."
"How?"  "Fire.  The sanitarium where Mr. X was serving a life sentence
burned to the ground a month ago.  His body was found."  "Who
identified it?"  Candy smiled and shook his head.  "He's dead, Mr.
Woczniak."  "Hal.  Who came for the body?  The servants?"  "No one
came," Candy said with a sigh.  "The body was seven feet tall.
It was found in Mr. X's cell in Maplebrook's basement.  He was the
only prisoner down there."  "Was there dental I.D.?"  Hal persisted.
Candy frowned.  He was thinking, Hal knew.
The inspector was beginning to doubt.  "There must have been," he said,
but his face was still troubled.  "Can you check?"  The two men stood
face-to-face for a moment.  "I'll check," Candy said finally.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After Inspector Candy left, Hal led Emily downstairs to the small pub.
"A soda will do you good," he said, directing her toward one of the
stools at the empty bar.  They were the only customers in the place,
and Mrs.  Sloan was nowhere in sight.  Emily stared glassily ahead.
The whole business of their flight from Chicago and the repeated
attempts on her own and Arthur's lives had taken their toll on her even
before this latest, most crushing blow.  She had been a nervous wreck
on the bus; now it seemed that whatever sanity she had managed to hang
onto up until that morning had evaporated.  She just sat, staring, like
a porcelain doll made up to look like a schoolmarta.  Hal believed it
would pass.  He had seen people emerge from emotional stupors deeper
than Emily's.  His own had been worse, he realized, but he had come out
of it only so he could crawl into a bottle.  He wanted a drink badly.
Seeing the bottles lined up and sparkling in the now-opened cabinet was
a lot more difficult than he would have thought possible during his
I-can-quit-anytime days.  "Mrs. Sloan!"  he called out at last.  After
another minute, the innkeeper leaned out through the kitchen door.
"Oh, my, and there you are," she exclaimed,-wiping her hands on her
apron.  "I was just making tonight's soup."  "I'm sorry to bother you,
but I wanted to give you back the keys to your car.  Thank you."
"Think nothing of it."  She took them and threw them into a battered
metal cash box just below the liquor bottles.  "Now, what can I get you
to drink?"  She lumbered behind the bar, filling the space like a
battleship in a canal.  "I'll have a .  . ."  Hal stopped, unable to
squeeze the words out of his mouth.  "Maybe just a soft drink," he
managed at last.  "For both of us."  "Right you are."  She went to a
large locker at the end of the bar and brought out a bottle of
grislyqooking orange liquid with a label Hal had never heard of.  "Will
this do?"  "Fine," Hal said.  "Have the police been of any help in
finding the young one?"  "They're looking for him."  "It's truly sorry
I am for you both," Mrs. Sloan said, and the plain, blunt features of
her face showed that she meant it.  "What a world."  "Yeah, Hal said.
Emily started to cry.  She sat stock-still in front of her untouched
drink, her arms dangling at her sides, sobbing quietly.  "Oh, now, I'm
sorry, missus."  The woman held out two cocktail napkins for her.  When
Emily made no move to take them, Mrs. Sloan thrust them under her nose
and commanded, "Blow."  Emily obeyed, and the older woman wiped up her
face.  "But the little lad's going to be fine, you'll see.  Why, didn't
a Scotland Yard inspector come himself?  If anyone can find him, they
can."  Hal marveled at Mrs. Sloan's gentle authority.  I'll bet she's
raised ten kids, he thought.
She took another wad of napkins and forced them into Emily's hand.
"The lady wouldn't be feeling so poorly if you hadn't had to put up
with that fleabrain Nubbit first," she said with a trace of annoyance.
Hal smiled.  "Funny.  The constable seems very fond of you."  "Hah.
Always begging for a free apple tart, that one is.  My sainted husband
had the misfortune to be born cousin to him, but I wouldn't set him out
to track down a missing kitten."  "I don't know," Hal said.  "I hear
he's a great man when it comes to big cases like poisoned cows."  "Oh,
he told you that, did he?  His moment of glory.  His one and only major
crime.  It happened ten years ago and he's still looking for the one
that did the poisoning.  And if you ask him about it, he gets all dark
and official-looking and says, 'The case is still open.  The
investigation is still proceeding."" Her imitation was so good that Hal
laughed out loud.  To his surprise, Emily smiled, too.
Hal took a sip of his drink.  It was ghastly.  And warm.  "Oh, you'd be
wanting ice," Mrs.  Sloan said, gliding back toward the locker.
"No, it's all right.  Mrs. Sloan, have you lived here long?"  "All my
life.  I was born right where Albert Carson's hardware store is, back
when that whole part of the village was nothing but sheep farms."
"Have you ever heard of a psychiatric hospital named Maplebrook?"
"The asylum?  Oh, yes.  We called it the Towers around here.  That was
its name, you know, before it got fancied up.  But it was still the
same place inside."  She shuddered.  "A bad place," "I heard it burned
down."  "Aye.  Never found who did it, neither."  "It was arson?"
"Whatever you want to call it.  But it was no accident, and that's the
truth."  "Who would want to burn down an insane asylum?"  Mrs. Sloan
wiped a glass idly.  "Ghosts, maybe," she said casually.  Hal smiled in
disbelief.  She caught him.  "Oh, you Yanks think you know so much,
coming from your new country.  That's because you haven't seen what we
have.  You haven't seen the castle rise up out of the m heard the
hoofbeats of the ghost horses as they ride."  "The castle?"  Hal felt
his heart skipping.  "You've seen it?"  "As a girl.  We all have one
time or another.  It's been a .while, though.  She smiled.  "It's like
the fairies, they say.
Once you stop believing in them, they won't come to you no more."  I
wouldn't bet on it, Hal thought.  "Is the asylum far from here?"  "Not
more than twenty miles.  There's not much left of the place, though,
and good riddance, I say.  Oops, I hear the soup boiling over."
She turned and fled, with a certain rhinoceroid grace, into the
kitchen.
Hal leaned across the bar and dumped the rest of his orange drink into
the sink.  He walked to the door.  The rain seemed to be lessening and
the skies appeared a little lighter.  "There," Mrs. Sloan said,
flinging open the hinged door with a whack of her mighty hand.
"Leek-and-potato soup.
Will the two of you be staying for supper?"  "I think so.  I'd like to
take us out for a drive enough.  Is there a place around here where I
could rent a car?"  "Oh, Wilson-on-Hamble's too small for that sort of
thing.
How far do you need to go?"  "Not very far," Hal said evasively.
"Just a drive around the countryside."  "Well, use mine, then."  She
took the keys out of the cash box and tossed them over to Hal.  "Just
don't be getting into any more bother with it."  "No, I couldn't .  . .
not without paying you for your trouble, anyway."  She laughed.
"Hells bells, anything you could pay would be more than it's worth.
Fill up the petrol when you bring it back.
That'll be a bargain for both of us."  Hal picked up the keys.  "It's a
deal."  He stood up, then helped Emily off her stool.  She gave him a
puzzled look but didn't ask where they were going.  Hal didn't suppose
she cared, really, as long as she wasn't alone.  "Thank you," he called
to Mrs.  Sloan.
She was wiping the bar clean.  "It's due south.  Turn left out of the
parking lot and follow the signs to Lymington," she said without
looking up.  "I'm sorry?"

"Maplebrook," she said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The small Morris Minor lfigged heavily up a steep hill, seemed to
gather power at the crest(and then went into a long glide down into a
lush verdant valley.  Then, to the left of the spot where the road
leveled out in the glen, Hal saw the remains of Maplebrook Hospital,
several hundred yards back from the roadway.  The damage to the old
building had been extensive, even worse than he had anticipated.  The
roof had fallen in and three of the four outside walls had entirely
collapsed.  The interior of the one partly standing wall was a crazy
quilt of scorch marks, broken-off stairs, and bits of flooring.  No
accidental fire can do this, Hal thought.  He wondered why Inspector
Candy hadn't told him that the sanitarium had been destroyed by arson.
He slowed down at the bottom of the long hill, then pulled into a
paved driveway past a small, discreet sign reading: MAPLEBROOK HOSPITAL
ALL VISITORS AND PERSONNEL MUST SHOW IDENTIFICATION AT FRONT GATE Candy
had mentioned that the fire had occurred only about a month before, but
already the driveway was grown over with the rough weedy grass that
seemed always to thrive in England's damp climate.  The bald tires on
Mrs. Sloan's car skidded a few times on the long, twisting drive up to
the high wrought-iron fence with its abandoned gatehouse.
The gate was open now, flung wide for the fire engines and police and
never closed.  Hal didn't blame them.  It was pretty obvious that there
was nothing left of the place to vandalize.  He drove on until the
driveway was too torn up to negotiate, then stopped the car.  "We're
here," he said.  "What is this place?"  Emily asked slowly.  "Just an
old building I want to snoop around in."  He opened the trunk and took
out a long coil of rope and a high-powered flashlight with a handle
he'd bought in a hardware store on the way.  "What are they for?"
Emily asked.  "Precautions," Hal said.  "Don't worry.  We're in no
danger, believe me."  The driveway's blacktop was split into
craze-lines, with big chunks of asphalt missing.  Hal stooped down and
picked up a piece.  "The pavement exploded," he said.  "This was one
hell of a hot fire."  The pile of rubble surrounding the wall was
massive, though not particularly interesting: pieces of roof slates,
ceiling plaster, stone, chunks of timber beams.  The police had
undoubtedly gone through it all thoroughly for any personal items or
office records.  But Hal was not looking for anything so obvious.
He picked up a three-foot-long piece of charred vood and poked around
in the debris, being careful about where he walked.  There was a
basement here someplace, and the floor hadn't entirely caved in on it.
When the piece of wood sank through the rubble, he began to poke and
kick until a man-sized hole opened up.
Next, he held one end of the wooden post and slammed it onto the ground
as hard as he could.  It stayed in one piece.  "This might do," he
said.  With a block of stone, he hammered it into the ground, then
tied the rope around the post.  "Are you going down there?"  Emily
asked.  "Yup."  "Hal, no--" "Just try to hold it in place for me while
my weight's on it.  Can you do that?"  She looked up at him.  Then,
hesitantly, she nodded.  "Good."  He put his arm around her and gave
her a squeeze.  "You're doing better already, you know that?"  She went
over to the post and braced it with both hands.  "Perfect."
He tossed the rope down the hole.  "I'm going down," he said.  Then he
put the handle of the flashlight between his teeth and lowered himself
through the hole into the basement.  "I'm in," he shouted when his feet
touched bottom.
It was cool here, almost cold.  The air still reeked of smoke.  He was
not able to stand up straight, due to the twisted and burned wooden
beams crisscrossing overhead.  In the beam of the flashlight, he could
see piles of plaster that had fallen in from the upper stories.
What the hell am I doing?  he thought.  One sneeze and five floors'
worth of crud is going to come down on my head.  He looked up, through
the beams and shattered plaster, at the gray sky before going on into
the labyrinthine waste of the basement.
He heard one of the timbers squeak as it rubbed against another.  He
shuddered and crouched low and tried to pick his way toward one of the
interior walls that still remained in the subterranean structure.  The
wind was whistling through the debris that surrounded him, twisted,
jagged, like a cage built by a madman.
He reached the wall.  There was room to move along it.  Timbers were
propped against it, but there seemed to be some small passage possible
if he stayed close to the ground.
His hand hit something metallic on the wall.  When he shone the
flashlight on it, he saw that he had touched an electrical outlet.  The
wall was white plaster, but there were black singe marks around the
outlet.  The plaster crumbled under his hand.  With his fingertips he
dug around the outlet.
The electric wires leading to the socket were burned but otherwise
intact.  Yet he could see that there had been some kind of flash fire
inside the wall by the socket.  He reached his hand far in and felt a
dry crumbly substance, brought it out, and examined it in the
flashlight beam.
It felt like dried putty, but when he touched his tongue to it there
was the distinctive etherish taste of plastic explosive.  He put the
little pea-shaped piece of plastique in his pocket and continued down
the wall.
He had to double up to get under one beam that was pressed against the
wall, and when he struggled to get past it, he could feel the beam
groan and slide an inch lower down.
Get out of here, Hal, a voice inside him commanded.  He pushed it out
of his mind.  There was no way he was leaving now.
There was another electrical outlet some fifty feet beyond.  Again, the
metal fixture itself had blown loose from the wall into which it had
been fastened.  Another explosion.
They've all been packed with plastique, he realized.  Every socket.
That would be enough to bring down a structure as big as Maplebrook.
Someone had sabotaged the place.  Someone with enough time to wire
every wall socket in the building.
A few yards farther the passageway turned at a right angle.  The
ceiling here was a little higher and he could almost walk upright.  But
behind him, timbers creaked as they continued to settle.  He didn't
think that he could go back the way he had come without some beams
working loose and crashing down on him.
And it would only take one to cripple me and pin me here forever, he
thought.
Another timber shifted, closer, by its sound.  Sheepishly, he
remembered his fire-and-arson training at Quantico in which the
instructors had relentlessly driven home the axiom that a building
destroyed by fire never really finished falling down.  For weeks and
even months after the initial blaze, it kept crumbling in on itself.
Only heavy equipment could finally level the thing so that the ruins
stopped shifting by themselves.
As if the building had read his mind, a shower of plaster and cement
poured down from the ceiling less than ten feet behind him.
Immediately afterward, a big timber groaned and then gave way with a
tremendous crash.  Hal dived headfirst into the tunnel and crawled as
an avalanche of debris spilled into the space.

You flunk, Woczniak.

Somewhere overhead, he heard Emily scream, but Hal could not respond.
The cloud of dust created by the falling timber was so thick he could
barely breathe.  He squirmed along the stone floor on his belly,
keeping the beam of the flashlight ahead of him even though his eyes
were tearing and blinded.
While he was crawling, his wounded shoulder bumped against something
hard.  He gasped with the pain, then coughed violently.  He wouldn't be
able to stay down here much longer, he knew.
Then he trained the beam of his flashlight on the object he had crashed
into.  The dust was settling, and he could see the outlines of bars.

Bars.  A cell.

Mr. X had been a prisoner on this floor.  The only prisoner.  Still
keeping low, he hurried down the corridor, sweeping the light across
each charred and empty cell, until he came upon one with its door open.
There he stopped.  The cot in this cell had a sheet on it and a neatly
folded blanket, burned black at one edge, at its foot.  He was here.
Hal studied the bare cell carefully with the flashlight.  There were no
pictures on the wall, no photos or letters, no cigarette butts, nothing
to indicate that a human being had occupied this space.  He checked the
plumbing behind the toilet.  Nothing had been taped there.
He shook his head.  He had never seen a cell so clean, so utterly
devoid of the personality of its occupant.  Then he saw .  it.  On the
floor near the bed a series of dark stains.  He knelt over them with
the flashlight.  They looked like drops of blood, dried black with
time.  On his knees he followed them to the door and beyond, into the
corridor.
Hal sighed.  So the man had died in here and had been carried out .  .
.
No, wait a minute.  Inspector Candy hadn't said anything about Mr. X
dying of wounds.  He had gone down in the fire, along.  with the rest
of the inmates.  From asphyxiation, most likely, judging from the
relatively untouched condition of the basement cell.
Hal's mind worked frantically.  In a panic, Mr. X might have banged
his head against the bars .  . . But there was only one trail of blood
drops, and it led outside the cell.  He followed them back inside.
There were stains next to the bed, but not on the sheet.  Then he
picked up the hard pillow and turned it over.  There was a large, stiff
smear of blood almost coating one side.
It was puzzling.  The trail was clear, from the corridor to the cell
floor to the pillow.  Yet Mr. X had not died of wounds.  He followed
the droplets of blood again.  From the corridor into the cell .  . .
Suddenly he whirled.  Of course, he thought.  Mr. X hadn't been
carried from the cell to the corridor.  It had been the other way
around.  The bloodstains are leading from the outside in.  He knelt
down to examine them again.  There was a faint smear still visible
through some of the dried blood droplets, and the smear extended in the
direction of the cell.
Someone had dragged a bleeding man into the cell, waited for him to
die, then turned the pillow over to conceal the blobd.
But why hadn't they cleaned up the blood on the floor?  Or replaced the
pillow?
The answer came to him in a rolling wave: Because they knew the fire
was coming.
And whoever had died in this cell, it wasn't Mr.  X.
Hal strode to the bed and tore open the pillow.  Balls of hardened foam
spilled out.  Then he stripped the sheet off the bed.  He opened the
rolled blanket and then lifted the thin mattress.
There was a book underneath it, resting on top of the flimsy springs.
Hal picked it up and fanned through the pages.  No loose paper.  From
the card in the front pocket, it looked like a · library book.  It was
written in a language he could not read.  He stuck it in the waistband
of his trousers and continued searching the room, but there was little
else in the cell that could conceal anything.  He wished he'd brought a
knife to slit open the mattress but had to settle for a check of the
seams.  They appeared to be intact, and there were no hard lumps
inside.
Just as he was finishing up, another rumble sounded from down the
corridor.  Hal looked over to see the dust rising from another section
of fallen ceiling.  After the heavy rain, the weight of the crumbled
plaster, now soaked with water, was too much for the frail,
fire-dammaged structure to support.  Before long it would all come down,
and if Hal wasn't lucky, he was going to go down with it.
He left the cell and followed the corridor around another bend, only to
find that it ended in what seemed to be an impenetrable barrier of
rubble, twisted wood, plaster, lath-work, and sharp shards of roof
slate.  His way was blocked, but to his left, the rubble sloped up at a
forty-five-degree grade.  He could not see any sky at the end of the
ramp, but if he got there he might be able to push his way out through
the debris.
He dug into broken strips of plaster and slate and began to scramble up
the incline.  He seemed to slide back as far and as fast as he moved
forward, and around him he could hear the creaking of boards and beams,
sounding almost angry for having been disturbed.
Trying to swallow his panic, he climbed harder, digging his feet into
the shifting debris to push himself upward.  He could feel his fingers
bleeding as he forced them into the loose rubble.  But he was moving
forward.  Moving upward.
And then he was at the top of the grade and could move no more.
Something solid had closed the escape route.  He twisted his body
around so that he was jammed into the small area in a sitting position,
supported by his back and his legs, then reached over his head and
tried to work the obstruction loose.
It was a large section of plastered wall, and it was too heavy to move.
He was trapped again.
He paused and took a deep breath.
Not so damned fast.  He looked around and found a yard-long chunk of
wood, possibly a broken two-by-four from a wall stud.
He held it with both hands and then began hammering upward on the
plaster itself.  First it creaked, sending choking powder down into his
upturned face.  He spat it out, squinted hard, and kept hammering at
the plaster above his head.
Suddenly the wooden post broke through.  The gray light of the cloudy
sky dazzled Hal's sore eyes, which had adapted to the dark.  "Emily!"
he shouted.
"Hal?"  "I'm over here."  Before he could tell her to stay out of the
way, her hands had reached through the hole and were clawing at the
loose stones from the top.  "Watch it.  You'll fall through."  "I'm not
as stupid as you are, damn it!"  she shouted.  Hal grinned.
Her shock at Arthur's disappearance was giving way to anger.  Good.
People could live with anger.  When they were good and mad at the
world, they didn't shrivel up and die like worms in the sun.  She was
going to make it now, he knew.  "Well, clear the area for a second,
anyway, so I can loosen some more of this trap," he shouted up to her.
He hammered at the white sheet of the fallen wall until he chipped away
another chunk.  "All clear," he shouted, and Emily's hands once again
appeared, bleeding but working frantically above him as he pulled the
loose plaster down.  "Once more," he said.
Another voice answered him.  "Hold on, Yank.  Move clear if you can."
"Candy?"  The big Englishman responded with a grunt as he hoisted a
huge piece of sheetrock and threw it like a giant discus onto the
grass.  Hal shielded his head with his arms while debris poured down on
him.  When it stopped, there was a hole big enough for him to drag his
body through.
Emily threw her arms around him.  "Thank God you're all right," she
said.
Hal smiled.  "I was just thinking the same thing about you."  "And I
was thinking what a horse's arse you are," Candy said, slapping the
dust from his suit.

CHAPTER FORTY

Emily laughed.  It was the first time Hal had ever heard her laugh.
It sounded beautiful,
The inspector was laughing too.  "You look like.  Frosty the Snowman,"
he said.  "When did you get here?"  Hal panted, trying to catch his
breath.  "I arrived just in time to see you buried alive.  Sorry I
couldn't be of more help, but you didn't tell me you were going
spelunking.  I went back to the inn, but you'd gone.  Fortunately, the
perceptive Mrs. Sloan guessed your destination."  Hal saw that the
door of Candy's Ford was wide open.  The inspector had probably come at
a dead run.  Hal might have felt some semblance of gratitude toward the
man if he weren't so annoyed with him.  "Why didn't you tell me the
place had been sabotaged?"  he said accusingly.  He took the piece of
plastique out of his pocket and slapped it into Candy's hand.  "What
difference would that have made?"  "We might have known from the
beginning who we were dealing with.
This building was destroyed from inside.  By an inmate.  Your Mr. X
never died in that pounds :e."  He told Candy about the bloodstains in
the cell.  "Someone carried a seven-foot-tall man into that cell and
killed him there.  What I can't understand is, why didn't anyone notice
that the corpse had been shot or stabbed?"  "He wasn't," the inspector
said.  "He died of asphyxiation.
According to the report, the body showed all the right signs."  "Then
how did the blood get all over the pillow?"  Candy looked at the
ground.  "His teeth were broken."  "His teeth?"  Candy nodded.  "After
I left you, I called headquarters for a check on the body's morgue
report.  Seems all the fellow's teeth had been broken."  "To prevent an
identification."  The inspector sighed.  "I doubt if much effort had
been made in that case, anyway," he said.  "There was only one inmate
in the basement, and he was seven feet tall.  A seven-foot-tall body
was recovered from the inmate's locked cell.  That was probably enough,
under the circumstances."  "No one noticed the blood leading into the
cell?"  Candy shook his head.  "The place was filled with smoke when
the bodies were retrieved."  "And no one from Scotland Yard thought to
go into the basement since the fire?"  Hal asked angrily.  "We're not a
national police force," Candy said evenly.  "We only come into most
cases when we are requested to.  Apparently the local investigators on
this case saw no need."  · He had been careful, Hal noticed, to
indicate that he himself had not been involved with that investigation.
"Well, they should have seen the need," Hal said.
Candy looked ashamed, as if any lapse of judgment on the part of
British people anywhere reflected poorly on his own reputation.  "I
found this under his mattress," Hal said, handing Candy the book.
The inspector leafed through it, frowning in bewilderment.  "It's from
the library in Bournemouth.  That's the nearest big city.  But what the
blazes is the language?"  "Urdu," Emily said.
Both men turned to her at once.  They had nearly forgotten she was
there.  "I beg your pardon?  Candy said.  "Urdu," Emily repeated.
"It's a dialect of Hindi, with an essentially identical grammar,
although it's written from right to left in the Perso-Arabic script,
whereas of course Hindi is written from left to right, in the
Devanagari style--" "Excuse me, Miss Blessing," Candy interrupted.
"Can you read this?"  "I think so," Emily said.  "It was one of the
languages I studied in graduate school."  She squinted at the title.
"Social Movements of the Punjab During the Late Nineteenth Century.
That's a rough translation."  Both men looked at each other.  "It'll
do," Candy said, handing the book to her.  "All right," Hal said.  "Now
that we're officially involved in this investigation, I'd like to see a
picture of Mr. X. Do you have one?"  "We could arrange to get one.  As
to your being a part of the investigation .  . ."  "Would you rather
deal with Constable Nubbit?  Come on.  I'm a civilian here, but you
know I'm trained.  I can help.  And I'm going to be involved with you
or without you.  Wouldn't it make more sense for us to work together?"
Candy thought about it for a moment.  "I suppose you make a case," he
said finally.
"Good."  "As long as you remember who's in charge around here."
"You're the boss, Inspector."  Emily closed the book and looked up at
both of them.  "Just find Arthur," she said quietly.
Arthur awoke with the setting sun splashing into his eyes.  A tall man
as thin and angular as a spider was standing at the window, looking
out.
The boy leaped up from the sofa, blinking wildly.  The tall man turned,
smiled, then turned back to the window.  "English sunsets are lovely,"
he said.  "Who are you?"  Arthur demanded.  "An old friend," Saladin
said, touching the lace edge of the draperies.  "No doubt you don't
remember me."  Arthur ran for the door, but it was locked.
"Why'd you bring me here?
Where's Hal?  Did you kill him too, the way you killed Mr.  Taliesin?"
"Taliesin?  Is that what the old fox is calling himself these days?"
He laughed.
It occurred to Arthur that this madman who had grabbed him on horseback
must have confused him with someone else.  "Look.  My name's Arthur
Blessing.  I'm from Chicago .  . '."  "Yes, yes," Saladin said.
"I know exactly who you are.  Do you have to use the toilet?  If you
do, it's over there."  He pointed to a corner of the large, elegantly
appointed room.  "If not, please calm yourself.  I assure you there is
no way for you to leave this room."  Arthur sat down.  Suddenly his
head seemed to be crammed painfully full of memoriesthe horsemen in the
meadow, the shining sword that sliced through the old man's head, the
bolt of lightning that washed everything in its dazzling light and
seemed to sweep Taliesin away with it .  . .
And before that, the other memories, the nightmare memories of the man
in the bus and the others who had followed Arthur and Emily from
Illinois.  · 'All for the cup.  Emily had wanted him to give it up, but
he'd insisted on keeping it.  And now the old man was dead, and Hal and
Emily, too, for all he knew.  "I don't have it," he said quietly.
"Don't mumble, Arthur."  Arthur scowled at the remark, but spoke up
clearly: "The cup.  The metal ball.  I don't have it."  "Yes, I'm aware
of that.  The man you refer to as Taliesin took it."  "He's dead,"
Arthur said angrily.  "You guys killed him."  Saladin only smiled.
"One doesn't kill a wizard, boy.
Especially not that one.  He'll be back."

"A wizard?  Mr.  Taliesin?"

"Cornflower," Saladin said.  "What?"  "The color of your eyes.  I'd
almost forgotten.  They're cornflower blue."  He sighed.  "It's been so
long."  "You're crazy," Arthur said.
Saladin sat down in a straight-backed chair opposite him.  "I suppose
it must seem that way.  But you'll understand.  We have some time."
"Some time before what?"  he asked with as bad an attitude as he could
muster.
The tall man shrugged.  "I'd prefer not to talk about that just now,
Arthur.  Tell me, when did you meet this Mr. Taliesin?"  Arthur looked
at him sideways.  He didn't want to give the impression that he was
willing to be friendly to the man who had kidnapped him.  "Long ago?"
Saladin prodded.  "Yesterday," Arthur said sullenly.  "On the bus."
"Ah.  And did he remind you of anyone else?"

"No.  Well--" Arthur waffled.

"Who?"  Saladin leaned forward in his chair.  "Just Mr.  Goldberg.
Sometimes."  The tall man sank back into a slouch.  "He used to live in
my building back in Riverside.  He didn't really look like Mr.
Taliesin, and he didn't talk like him either.  But once in a while Mr.
Taliesin reminded me of him.  I don't know why.  Mr. Goldberg was
Jewish.  I think he was born in Germany ...."  "I'm not interested in
Mr. Goldberg," Saladin said acidly.  "Was there nothing at all
familiar about the old fool?  Nothing that .  . .
called to you?"  Arthur frowned.  "Why should he call to me?  I just
met him."  "Fascinating," Saladin said.  "You're a completely new
person.  Yet you look exactly the same."  "The same as what?"  "The
same as you were, you little twit!  You don't have any idea who you
were, do you?"  Arthur struggled to understand for a moment, then gave
up.  "Nuts," he muttered.
Outside, the sun settled into a warm red line on the horizon, nearly
flat except for the rise of one hill on which a partial wall stood
among piles of rock.  Arthur's heart beat faster.
The castle.  So the horsemen hadn't taken him far.  If he could escape,
he could walk to the castle, and from there he could find his way back
to the inn.
The tall man went to the door and spoke to someone outside, in the
hallway.
He's got the room under guard, Arthur thought.  Escaping might not be
so easy.  "Are you hungry?"  Saladin asked.  "No," Arthur lied.  He was
ravenous.
Saladin laughed.  "Perhaps you could force yourself."  "I wouldn't bet
on it."  In another few minutes a servant appeared with a tray.  Arthur
was startled to see the man's eyes.  They were the same as the tall
man's.
And then all the memories came into focus: All the men had had the same
eyes.  All the men who had chased him and Emily, who had tried to kill
them so often.  "What do you want from me?"
he asked quietly.  "From you?  Nothing."  He had the servant uncover
the tray.  On it were a steak, a heap of french-fried potatoes, sliced
tomatoes, a few stalks of green asparagus, a hard roll, a glass of
milk, and an enormous piece of chocolate cake.  "Please," Saladin said,
gesturing toward the plate.  "I want to know why you've got me here."
"For the cup, of course.  It belongs to me, and I intend to get it
back."  "I told you, I don't have it.  It disappeared with Mr.
Taliesin."  "And it will reappear with him when he comes to trade it
for you."  "What makes you so sure he's not dead?"  Arthur asked.
"That would be difficult to explain just now.  But take my word for it.
He's alive.
Do eat, Arthur.  Keep up your strength."  Arthur smelled the aroma of
the steaming steak.  "I don't want it," he said.
Saladin smiled.  "You always were stubborn.  Very well."  He rose and
knocked on the door.  Immediately the same servant appeared to remove
the tray.  Arthur felt like weeping to see it go, but he kept his face
impassive.  "What if he doesn't come?"  the .boy asked.  "I only met
him yesterday .  . ."  "And he may have figured out what the cup can
do?"  Saladin finished for him.

Reluctantly, Arthur nodded.

"Do you really know what it can do, Arthur?"  "It can heal wounds."
"And therefore .  . ."  He gestured for Arthur to continue.  Therefore
what?  "Whoever owns it won't ever get hurt."
"Or?"  "Or what?  I don't know what you're getting at."  "Don't you?
Don't you really?"  The boy only stared, puzzled.  "Come, Arthur."
Saladin led him to a small table inlaid with an
onyx-and-mother-of-pearl chessboard on which sat two armies of playing
pieces, one silver and one deep gold.  "Do you play?"  Arthur was
silent for a moment.  Then he pulled out a chair and sat down.  "I
thought you might," Saladin said.  He took the seat opposite the boy,
on the gold side of the board.  "What happens if you don't get the cup
back?"  Arthur asked.  He pushed a pawn forward.
Saladin countered his move.  "I'll kill you," he said pleasantly.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Hal dropped Emily off at the inn, where she could concentrate on the
translation of the book, then followed Inspector Candy back to the
constable's office.  The team from Scotland Yard had set up its own
headquarters, using both the office and a big unmarked van parked
behind the station.  In deference to Constable Nubbit, Candy's two
assistants tried to do most of their work from the mobile unit.  Their
names were Higgins and Chastain.  Higgins was a young, scholarly type
with shaggy hair, an aristocratic jaw, and big, unspeakably filthy
glasses.  Hal wondered how he could see anything through those nearly
opaque lenses.
Chastain, on the other hand, was clean as a new kewpie doll.  Well past
the retirement age for regulation gumshoe detectives, he obviously held
on to his job by being the best on-the-scene analyst on the force.
He had the abstracted air of someone who'd had very little to do with
the everyday world for a long, long time.  Neither seemed to Hal much
like policemen.  They hardly batted an eye when Candy announced that
Mr. Woczniak, formerly of the FBI and the principal witness in the
Blessing kidnapping case, would be working closely with them.  Most
cops Hal knew would have bristled and complained immediately that an
outsider was going to mess with their work, but these two seemed beyond
that.  Looking at their equipment, Hal could guess why.  Most of the
materials they worked with were too exotic for Hal to name, let
alone-discuss.  These two were like creatures from another planet,
content to observe the inanimate evidence of the sweating, suffering,
dying species called human beings from the confines of their tiny
technological cell.
They made Hal wonder at the changes in police work since he'd first
entered the Bureau's training camp.  But then, he thought, why not?
The personnel in every other business was just as specialized these
days.
True, Higgins and Chastain didn't look as if they could hit the broad
side of a barn with a stack of tommy guns between them, but the
machines and chemicals and fine tools they used with such casual
mastery would be far beyond the ken of most field investigators,
including himself and probably Brian Candy.  While the inspector spoke
on the phone with Metropolitan headquarters, Higgins handed Hal a heavy
white object that looked like a postmodernist sculpture.  "Before the
rain got to be too heavy, we were able to pull plaster hoofprints on
two of the horses that were in that field," he said.  His voice was so
soft that Hal had to strain to hear him.  He was probably keeping his
voice down so as not to disturb his superior's telephone conversation,
Hal knew; yet it seemed so natural for Higgins, as if he had spent his
life in the rarified atmosphere of a mobile laboratory and rarely had
to raise his voice to a normal speaking level.  Hal turned it over and
was able to make out the imprint of a horseshoe.  Chastain, the older
technician, did not even bother to speak.  He just held another plaster
casting in front of him with a look of quiet triumph on his face.  Hal
smiled wanly.  "Do these tell you much?"  he asked finally, figuring
that since his ignorance of their esoteric work was bound to come out
sooner or later, there was no point in delaying the truth.  "Oh, yes,"
Chastain said, smiling avuncularly.  He did not seem inclined to
continue.  Fortunately, Higgins took up the slack.  "We know that the
print you're holding is from a very large horse, for one thing," he
said in the near whisper that came so naturally to him.  "Large but
delicate, judging from the shallowness of the imprint and the spread of
the hoof.  Bred for sand.
An Arabian, most likely.  And the horse wasn't shod locally."  "How can
you tell that?"  Hal asked.  "From the heads of the nails," Higgins
breathed.  "We checked with the stables and the blacksmiths around
here.  It is common in this area to use rounded nails, you see.  But if
you look carefully, you'll find that the nail heads on that horseshoe
are triangular."  He raised an eyebrow in a significant manner.
Chastain did, too.  The same eyebrow.  Hal took that to mean that both
casts evinced the same anomaly.  "And they came from different horses,
I guess," Hal said.  The older assistant frowned deeply and nodded.
"Nearly two millimeters' difference 'in size," Higgins explained,
"along with variations in weight distribution."  "Different riders,"
Chastain enlarged.  "Ah.  So if they weren't shod here, then where?"
"We have that on the wire," Higgins said.  "If anybody in any
department in Great Britain knows any blacksmith who shoes with that
kind of nail, we'll have it."  Hal nodded.  He hated to ask the
obvious, but someone had to.  "What if they weren't shod in Great
Britain?"  Higgins only stared at him through a large thumbprint.
Chastain shrugged.  "Right," Hal said.  "I don't suppose anybody saw
the horses coming through town?"  Chastain took the cast from Hal as he
shook his head.  "No," Higgins said.  "But we found tire tracks on the
other side of the woods, near the first evidence of equine activity.
The tracks belong to a truck with a probable weight of twelve thousand
kilograms or more."  "Big enough for six horses," Hal said.
Chastain lowered his eyelids and nodded.  "But no imprints,
unfortunately," Higgins continued.  "We can conjecture about the weight
of the vehicle because .  . . well, because of a number of factors.
But the rain washed away much of the imprint before we could cast it.
We have photographs, however.  They're developing now."  As if on cue,
Chastain opened a small door resembling the entrance to the lavatory on
an airplane, and emerged a moment later with a still-wet photograph of
a tire track.
It was a large wheel, Hal could see that much, with a long scar running
diagonally along it.  "I couldn't quite recognize the make of tire,"
Higgins apologized.  "Michelin," Chastain said, deftly relieving Hal of
the photograph.  "Okay.  It's a start.  Has anyone sold any large
amounts of hay or horse pills or whatever?"  Both men blinked.
"Horse pills?"  Higgins asked blankly.  "Well, they've got to eat,
don't they?"  "Quite," Higgins said.  "No, nothing of that nature."
"Horses eat grass in summer," Chastain suggested.  It had been his
longest sentence so far.
Inspector Candy saved Hal from further embarrassment by hanging up the
phone.  "Sorry, Hal," he said.  "There's no match for the prints of the
dead man on the bus.  We've even checked with Interpol and Israeli
intelligence, in case the bloke was a terrorist of some kind, but
everyone's come up blank."  Hal sighed.  "Then the guy had no history."
"And we never turned up the body of the old man, either."
"Who?"  "Taliesin.  You said he was wounded when he ran into the woods
after the horsemen."

"Oh Yeah, Hal said.

"So he might still be alive."  Oh, yes, Hal thought.  Maybe not in any
form that Frick and Frack could identify, but the old troublemaker is
definitely alive somewhere.
The question was where.  The castle was gone.  Just where did
disembodied spirits go when the places they haunted vanished into the
air?  "Care for some tea?"  Candy asked.
Chastain smiled.  Higgins had already lost interest in their visitor,
and was looking through a microscope at a thread from a piece of muddy
cloth.  "No.  No, thanks," Hal said.  "You seem to have done everything
possible."  It was hard not to sound disappointed.
The scientists, after all, had done an excellent job given what they'd
had to work with.  It had just been too damned little.  "The Maplebrook
files will be here in a couple of hours," Candy said, understanding
Hal's despair.  "Maybe you'd like to come back then."  Hal nodded.
"All right.  I'll see how far Emily's come with the translation of that
book.  Thank you all for your information and time."  Candy nodded.
Chastain didn't hear him.  He was huddled beside Higgins.
Through a wordless mixture of grunts, facial gestures, and written
notes, they were marveling over the treasure beneath the microscope.
Hal left the van and drove Mrs. Sloan's Morris back to the inn.  He
walked through the door just in time to hear Emily screaming.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

"Lord, what's wrong?"  Mrs. Sloan leapt up from her stool behind the
bar when the shrill scream filled the inn.  "She just went up not one
minute ago."  "Call Inspector Candy," Hal said as he ran up the stairs.
Emily was huddled in the far corner of the bed.  Her face was wreathed
in terror.  "Someone was here," she said, her voice quavering.
Hal went to the open window.  Careful not to touch the sill or frame,
he leaned out and looked outside.  It was night now, and he could see
only the lower slate roof of the old inn building.  The peak of that
roof was just three feet below the window of Emily's room.  But there
was no sign of anybody on the roof.  Whoever it was had probably slid
down the steeply angled slate and then dropped the short ten feet to
the ground below.  'He listened carefully.  In the distance, he heard
the faraway drone of a motorcycle which gradually died away.  "I went
downstairs to have some tea with Mrs. Sloan.  When I got back, he was
in the room.  He threw me onto the bed.  I thought he was going to kill
me, but he just turned and jumped out the window."  "What'd he look
like?"  "A lot like the man on the bus.  They could have been
brothers."  On the small writing desk where Candy had taken his notes,
the library book lay facedown.  Beside it was a postcard.  Hal picked
it up by its edges.  It was a faded color photograph of an amusement
park dominated by a Ferris wheel filled with people wearing dated
clothes from the sixties.  In the foreground, a man with sideburns and
a woman waring a french twist pushed a baby in a stroller toward a
carousel.
Every day's a holiday at Heatherwood.  read the caption at the bottom
in red script.  On the back, someone had written a message with a black
fountain pen: The boy is safe.  Wait for my communication.  When it
comes, bring the cup.  "What is it?"  Emily said, walking up to the
desk.  "Don't touch it.  There may be prints.  It's the ransom note.
They'll trade Arthur for the cup."  Emily's shoulders slumped.  "Where
is it, Hal?  Arthur always kept it with him.  If he doesn't have it .
. . We've got to go back to the castle and look."  "It's not there,"
Hal said.
Her face colored.  "How can you be so sure?"  Because I know where it
is, he thought.  It's in some other goddamned dimension with a
vaporized sorcerer.
But he couldn't tell her that.  "I'll go tomorrow and look again," he
said.
Emily was silent for a long moment.  "They'll go through with the
trade, won't they?"  she asked.  "I mean, they did send the note.  If
we can get the cup to them .  . ."  Hal knew what she was getting at,
but had no answer for her.  "Sure, they'll trade," he said.  "They
don't have any reason to keep Arthur."  She chewed her lip and nodded.
She wanted to believe that as much as Hal did.  "I just wish .  . ."
She grimaced to keep herself from crying.  "I wish I'd been better to
him."
"Emily--" "I always treated Arthur as if he were interrupting my life,"
she whispered.  "But I wouldn't have had any life if it weren't for
him.
He was the only human warmth I ever knew, and I pushed him away, again
and again .  . ."  "Don't do this to yourself," Hal said, taking her
hand.  "The kid's tough.  You've helped make him tough.  He's going to
come through this."  Candy knocked on the door, then strode in.
"What's the trouble?"  he asked.  Hal pointed at the postcard.  "Emily
had a visitor.  He left that."  Candy picked it up carefully and read
it.  "Did he say anything?"  "No," Emily said.  "He came through the
window.  I walked in on him."  "Did he try to harm you?"  "He.  knocked
me onto the bed, but I think that was just to get me out of the way."
"She says he looked just like the dead man from yesterday," Hal said.
Candy nodded, reading the note through again.  "What's this cup?"  Hal
shrugged.  "It's.  something Arthur brought with him from the States.
A lucky piece."  He described the hollow sphere.  "From what he told
me, it's made of some kind of weird metal."  "Weird?  In what way?"
Emily looked up.  "We don't know," she answered.
"I did some laboratory tests on it.  It wasn't anything I'd.  ever seen
before."  "Would it be valuable?"  Candy asked.  "If it were truly a
new element, then yes, of course.  It would have immense scientific
value.
But I haven't run nearly enough tests to make a claim like that."
"Apparently someone thinks it's valuable enough to take the boy for
it."
Candy stared at them both, blowing air out of his nose like a bull.
"Why didn't you tell me about this before?"  Neither answered.  "Well,
where is it?"  "It disappeared," Hal said truthfully.  "Where did it
disappear?  In the meadow?"  Hal nodded.  "Arthur might have dropped
it."  "He might," Candy said.  "It's unlikely that Higgins and Chastain
would have missed such a thing during their search."  He stepped back
and fixed Hal and Emily with a terrible look.  "Unless you've got the
thing, and you're holding it back."
"No!"  Emily screeched.  "I wouldn't sell Arthur's life for a piece of
metal!"  Candy's eyes left hers and settled like death on Hal's.  "How
about you, Yank?  How many pieces of silver would you need?"  Hal
clenched his jaw.
The inspector knew he was lying about something, but Hal could no more
tell him what had happened than he could tell Emily.  Or anyone else.
He barely believed it himself, and he had seen the bowl and the old man
vanish with his own eyes.  "I don't have it," he said.  The inspector
nodded perfunctorily.  Whatever good relationship they might have had,
Hal knew, was now destroyed.  Candy would not trust him any longer.
"Any idea why he chose this card?"  He held up the photo of the
amusement park.  Hat shook his head.  "It looks old.  It might have
just been lying around."  Candy grunted in agreement.  He started to
leave, then turned around and faced Emily.  "How far have you gotten on
the book?"  "I've skimmed almost halfway through.  It seems to be a
treatise on the final days of English rule in the Punjab before it
became Pakistan.
Pretty dry material, really."  "You find out anything about the book?"
Hal asked.  Candy shrugged.
"It is from Bournemouth."  "Who was jt checked out to?"  "Actually, to
the librarian himself," Candy said.  "And who is he?
Did you talk to him?"  "I think you can leave that sort of thing to us,
Mr. Woczniak."  "Give me the name, all right?"  The inspector sighed
at Hal's mixture of bullying and pleading.  Finally he opened his
notebook.  "Laghouat."
"What?"  "His name is Hamid Laghouat."  He snapped the notebook shut
and held up one hand.  "I know, he sounds like an Arab.  We're looking
for him now."  "Looking?  He's gone?"  "That's right.  A few days
before the fire."  "Where'd he go?"  "Left without a trace," Candy
said.  He let himself out.  "Come on," Hal said, taking Emily's ann.
"Where are we going?"  " Downstairs, for dinner.  There's no point in
worrying on an empty stomach" He picked up the book and they made their
way into the pub.
Mrs. Sloan flung her arms around Emily.  "There, I'm glad to see
you've come to no harm," she said.  "I'll have a gate put over that
window tomorrow."  "No need for that," Hal said.  "Whoever it was just
wanted us to know they could get in.  If there had been a gate, they'd
have found another way."  "Would you like another room, then, miss?"
Emily shook her head.
"Thank you.  I'll be fine."  "All right.  Would you be wanting some
soup?"  "Soup and anything else you've got," Hal said.  Mrs. Sloan
laughed.
"Right you are."  They sat down at a small table.  Hal immediately
started leafing through the book page by page, moving it to one side
when Mrs.  Sloan brought their meal.  "What are you looking for?"
Emily asked.  "I don't know.
But the guy might have left something.  This was hidden under the
mattress."  Emily rubbed her face with her hands.  "If you're right, if
Arthur's in the hands of an escaped mental patient .  . ."  "If I'm
right, then we've got someone to look for," he told Emily levelly.  "It
means we can catch him."  "But no one knows his name."  "Only
'Saladin'.  That's what Taliesin called him."  "Do you think they knew
each other?"  "Yes," Hal said.  "I don't know how, but the old man
definitely recognized him.  He was afraid of him."  Emily shook her
head.  "That poor man," she said.  "Whatever possessed him to run into
the woods after six men on horseback?"  Hal didn't answer, and they
both ate in silence.  "I don't think Saladin's his real name," Emily
said suddenly.  "Why not?  "Well, you said he was seven feet tall."
"So?"  "So the Saladin of history was seven feet tall.  I think Mr. X
is either just copying King Saladin, or has some serious delusions."
"Who's King Saladin?"  Emily drank her water delicately.  "In the
twelfth century, a Kurd named Saladin conquered Egypt for the Syrians,
then put himself on the Egyptian throne and turned against them.  He
was a great ruler, from all accounts, but he had no loyalties.  A man
without a country."  "Sort of a free-lance pharaoh," Hal said.  "Right.
There was no one else like him in history."  "I guess he'd stand out in
a crowd."  "Actually, his height wasn't so unusual back then.  The
Persian nobility were all very tall.  Darius, who fought Alexander the
Great, was seven feet tall, too."  "What else do you know about
Saladin?"  Hal asked.  "How did he die?"
Mrs. Sloan brought their soup, along with a basketful of hard rolls,
and, incongruously, two oranges.  "Hope this makes you feel a bit
better," she said.  "I'm sure it will."  Hal bit into one of the rolls.
He hadn't realized just how hungry he was.  He had to force himself not
to swallow it whole.  "Natural causes, I think," Emily said with her
mouth full.  "What?"  Hal's mind had turned entirely toward his
digestive activities.  "I think Saladin died of natural causes.  I can
look it up tomorrow if I can find a library or a good encyclopedia."
Hal nodded and opened the book again, but he couldn't bring himself to
stop eating.  When he took another bite of his roll, the pages of the
book flipped closed, and he found himself staring at the pocket on the
inside front cover.
Suddenly he dropped the roll and opened the book again.  "Look at
this."  He turned the book around so that she could read the pocket.
"The date.
The date the book was checked OUt."  "June the first," Emily read.
"Right.  But that was after the asylum burned down."  Emily looked at
him in confusion.  Hal turned his hands palm-up as if looking for an
answer in them.  "Why would this librarian, Laghouat or whatever his
name was, put a wrong date on the book?"  He looked at it again,
mumbling to himself.  "June the first.  June one.  Six-one.  Six-one.
Page sixty-one."  She opened the book.  Page 61 was covered with marks.
"They're just pencil dots," Emily said.  "They're marks.  And they're
deliberate.  What are the words under the dots?"  Emily rummaged in her
handbag for a piece of paper and a pen.  "I wish I had an Urdu
dictionary," she said.
"Well, frankly, I don't think we're going to find one in this pub.
Just do the best you can."  She began to write, occasionally gazing off
into space as a translation eluded her.  Finally she put down the pen.
"I might be mistaken," she said.  "It doesn't make a lot of sense."
"What's it say?"  She pushed the piece of paper across the table toward
Hal.  "It says, 'All is in place."" The cop's instinct in Hal came
boiling to the surface.  The inmate had devised a plan for his escape
which had involved destroying the building that held him and everyone
inside it.  This message was the equivalent of an all-systems-go
signal.
"What's this on the bottom?"  He squinted to read her crabbed
handwriting.  "That's the part that doesn't make sense.  It looks like,
'Bless your name.""

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Saladin was winning the chess game.  The boy had been a much more
resourceful opponent than he had expected, but gradually, through the
accretion of a number of tiny advantages, Saladin had gained a winning
position and would soon finish Arthur off.  He looked away from the
board as one of his men entered the sitting room and stood quietly
inside the door, waiting.  "Yes?"  Saladin said irritably.  "Have you
delivered the message?"  The servant bowed.  ."Very well."  Saladin
nodded in dismissal.  "What message?"  Arthur asked.  "That does not
concern you."  He glanced down at the chessboard.  "You should concede.
The game is over."  "It's not over yet," Arthur said.  He was thirsty,
but he would not give his captor the advantage of knowing it.
Saladin sighed.  "I find nothing so tiresome as a mechanical endgame."
"I won't concede."  Arthur hunched closer over the board so that
Saladin could see only the red hair on the top of his head.  Then he
moved, sacrificing a bishop.  "That was stupid of you," Saladin said,
quickly taking the piece.
Arthur said nothing.  His next move was another sacrifice, then
an'other.  Saladin rolled his eyes.  It was the mindless play of a
tired and willful child.  Without thinking, he captured each piece as
it was offered until Arthur was left with only a queen and a king
against ten of Saladin's pieces.
Suddenly Arthur moved his queen near Saladin's king and called,
"Check."  The response was simple.  All Saladin had to do was to
capture the queen with his own queen to render Arthur's king
defenseless.
Naturally, if he did not capture Arthur's queen, if he simply moved his
king away, Arthur would play queen-takes-queen with a chance of
winning.
Saladin squinted at the board, studying it.  Obviously the boy,
confused and hungry, had missed the fact that Saladin could just take
his queen.
He moved his queen sideways, snapping Arthur's queen off the board with
passionless contempt.
Then Arthur leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his
chest.  "Stalemate," he said.
Saladin's eyes flashed back to the board.
It was true.  Arthur's king was safe on the square he now occupied.
But if he moved to any other square, he would be placing his king in
jeopardy.  That made the position a draw.  Neither player could win.
"Stalemate," Saladin whispered incredulously.  With a ten-year-old!
It was not possible.  He scanned the board, looking for a way out.
There was none.  "Incredible," he said.  "Next time I won't settle for
a draw," the boy announced grandly.
Saladin looked over to Arthur in angry disbelief.  The insolence of the
pup!  Nobody had spoken to him in such a manner in centuries.  But
Arthur met his eyes calmly, every inch the king he had once been, long
ago in another life that the boy himself could not remember.  "You like
to win," Saladin said.
Arthur said nothing.  His young blue eyes held only amusement.
Saladin caught the look.  The boy clearly loved the sweet taste of
victory.  Even the constrictions of his current situation could not
frighten him away from it.  And why not?  He was a warrior, with the
blood of battle running in his veins.
Such a boy is worthy of you, Saladin remarked to himself.  As a man, he
might have been magnificent.
He stood up.  "It is late, and I have business to attend to," he said.
"My servants will make up a bed for you here."  "I'm not sleepy."
"Ah, yes.  That's understandable."  He clapped twice, and the door
opened.  Saladin left for a moment, then returned with two large men
who walked directly to Arthur and held him down.  "Get away from me!"
the boy shouted.  He kicked and squirmed, but Saladin paid no attention
to him as he filled a syringe with clear liquid.  "No!"
Arthur howled.
He bit one of the men who held him.  "There's no need for such
theatrics," Saladin said, easing the needle into Arthur's arm.  "It's
just something to make you sleep.  You've had it before."  "I'll kill
you!"  Arthur shouted.  "I swear I'll kill you!"  He croaked out
something else, but his lips were feeling blubbery and his limbs felt
as if they were sinking through the floor.  "That's good, Arthur,"
Saladin said smoothly.  "I dislike a spiritless child.  You have
possibilities."  They were the last words Arthur heard before he was
enveloped in darkness again.
Upstairs at the inn, Hal made sure all of the windows in Emily's room
were locked tight.  "Don't let anyone in unless I'm with them," he
said.
Emily was standing in the middle of the room, reading through page 61
of the book for the tenth time.  "'Bless your name,'" she mused.
"I've gone over it again and again, and I don't think the translation's
wrong.
But why would someone write that?"  Hal shook his head.  "We'll leave
that to Candy and his assistants.  It might be a code."  "You mean the
Urdu words themselves might be a code for another message?"  "Could be.
Or the English translation of them.  Or the French translation, or
Italian, or Swahili .  . . We'd be wasting our time trying to figure it
out.  Let Candy have someone feed it into the computer at Scotland
Yard."  "All right."  She set down the book.  "Think you'll be able to
get some sleep?"  Hal asked.  "Yes, but .  . . Don't leave yet, Hal."
She turned away and sat on the edge of the bed.  "What's the matter?"
She shrugged tiredly and took off her glasses.  "I just don't want to
be alone yet."
She looked up at him apologetically.  "That is, if you don't mind."
Hal smiled.  "I don't mind."  "I've been thinking about the cup."  As
she spoke, she pulled some pins out of her hair and shook it loose.
To Hal's astonishment, it hung nearly to her waist.  Why, she's
gorgeous, he thought.  He had never met a woman who worked at making
herself terrible-looking before.  And yet, for some reason, that was
what Emily did every day of her life.  "You look like a different
person," he said.  "What?  Oh."  She blushed.  "I'm just tired, I
guess."  It was a strange comment, almost an apology.  Hal guessed that
she wasn't terribly familiar with receiving compliments.  "What about
the cup?"
Hal prompted.
She sighed.  "We left Chicago because some men came to get it.  Arthur
wasn't home at the time, but I was.  They shot me and left me for dead.
When Arthur came back, he accidentally touched me with the cup, and .
.

."

"And you healed without a mark.  She blinked.  "That's right."
"Arthur showed me what it can do."  Emily leaned forward on the bed.
"But that's not all it can do."  She pushed her hair away from her
face.  "Everything's happened so fast since the day we started running,
I haven't had time to think.  But when we started talking about the man
named Saladin tonight, it sparked something in the back of my mind
about the cup."  She grimaced.  "Go ahead."  "It's going to sound
crazy," she said, "but if it can reconstruct damaged tissues heal
wounds--then it can also prevent bacteria or other foreign matter from
destroying normal cells.  In other words, it can prevent disease.
Doesn't that stand to reason?"  Hal nodded, realizing a moment before
she spoke what she was going to say.  "So if the cup can heal wounds
and prevent disease, whoever holds it will never be in anything other
than a perfect physical state.  He'll never age."  "Or die," Hal added
quietly.  Emily bit her lip.  "Is it conceivable?"
Hal didn't answer.  "The results of the lab tests I ran on it were
unlike anything I'd ever seen.  It cleaved in a curve.  It showed no
magnetic response.  It's different from everything else on earth."
Slowly, her expression changed from excitement to grim fear.  "Oh,
God," she said.  "No one knows about it.  No one except for those men
and us."
Her eyes welled with tears.  "They aren't going to let Arthur go," she
said softly.  "We'll find him," Hal said.  "Inspector Candy is close.
His assistants have plenty--" "Don't lie to me, Hal.
The police don't have any idea where Arthur is.  And it wouldn't matter
if they did.  Don't you see?  To keep something as important as that
cup a secret, they're going to have to kill Arthur.  They're going to
kill all of us, and Arthur will be first."  She was sobbing now,
holding on to Hal for her life, but he had nothing to give her.  She
was right, of course.  He had known from the moment of Arthur's capture
that the boy would never.  be released willingly.
Suddenly the image of the red-haired boy fled to the chair in the attic
room of the house in Queens came into his mind.  The red-haired boy,
already dead, while the laughter of the maniac who had killed him still
rang in Hal's ears.
Hal started to shake.  Another child's death .  . . another failure .
. .
You were the best, kid.
Hal stifled the scream that threatened to escape from him and held
Emily, feeling as helpless as she did, wishing above all things that he
had died in the hospital so that he would not have to face what lay
ahead.
And then Emily's lips were on his, feverish and violent, her tears hot
against his skin.  "Don't think," she said in a ragged voice.  "I don't
want to think anymore."  She pulled him on top of her on the bed."
"Make love to me, Hal.  Please."  Her fingers fumbled awkwardly with
his clothes.  Emily was not an experienced seductress, Hal knew.  But
he also knew that somehow she needed him now, needed to have his body
on hers and inside hers, as if that temporary union would make her
entire shattered w°world whole again for a moment.  And he needed that,
too.
He opened her blouse and kissed her breasts.  She arched backward, her
white throat exposed, her lovely dark hair spilling wildly over the
pillow.
He lost himself in her.  He filled her with his flesh and touched her
with his passion, and for that stolen time there was no fear, no guilt,
no worry, no death.  There was nothing but the raw sensation of
pleasure and the release of something small but bright.  Something
almost like hope.
When it was over, Hal lay gasping, covered with sweat.  Emily moved her
hand to touch him, then retracted it and turned on her side, away from
him.  "I'm sorry," she said.  "Why?"  "Because we should have loved
each other first."  Hal smiled.  "It doesn't always happen that way,"
he said.
Her eyes glistened with tears.  "We might have.  At least I might
have."  "There's time."  She shook her head, and the tears sheeted down
her face.  "No, there isn't.  It's too late for us.  Too late for
everything."  She turned away.  Hal leaned over her and kissed her
cheek.
It didn't take long to get old, he thought.
Saladin sat in the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the lack
of light.  He had worked before like this, when he painted the tomb of
the Pharaoh Ikhnaton.  He had been little more than a child then, led
blindfolded through the labyrinth of the pyramid with the other
artists, then forced to remain inside the tomb with only candles for
light and bread for food until the work was.  done.
How proud he had been to have been chosen!  Ikhnaton himself had seen
his work and selected him.  Saladin had not known that his reward for
painting the tomb would be death.
It had not happened quickly.  First, the artists were given gold and
other gifts for their work.  Then, one by one, they disappeared into
the desert, where the pharaoh's men buried them in the sand.  "It is
the price of too much knowledge," one of the soldiers had told him
sadly.  And they had lowered him into - the dry, shifting earth with
his charm, the dun-colored cup, to protect him in the afterlife.  "Too
much knowledge," he repeated quietly now.  Arthur, too,.had too much
knowledge, and would die for it.  The thought made Saladin morose.
In four thousand years, he had seen only one human being return and he
would have to kill that one.
He lit a match, and for an instant the large black rock beside him came
into view, along with an array of paints and brushes at his feet.
No, not just one.  Three people had come back, although Merlin hardly
counted as a human being, then or now.  A spirit who could vanish at
will did not, in Saladin's opinion, constitute any sort of real man.
Only Arthur and the other one were real.
Saladin had recognized him, of course.  Stumbling around the meadow,
trying to fight six armed men on horseback with his bare hands, the
fool had announced who he was before Saladin ever saw his face.
And it was the same face, to be sure, albeit with a few more years on
it.  The knight who had so bravely--and stupidly--led Saladin to the
cup had come again to champion his king.
Saladin had almost laughed aloud.  Why him, of all people?  He had been
a failure in that life, as he doubtless was in this.  Launcelot would
have been a far better protector.  He had been a better fighter, a
better thinker, a better man all around.  And yet Arthur--for Saladin
felt sure that it had somehow been the king's Own decision had chosen
Galahad as his champion.
The match burned his fingers.  He dropped it, cursing, and its light
went out.
But then, Launcelot left him, Saladin thought.  Galahad would have
followed Arthur into the fires of hell.  Such had been the extent of
the man's idiocy.
For you, my king.
Those had been the last words formed in Galahad's mind, and Saladin had
heard them.
The knight had not spoken; the words were no more than a thought.  But
Saladin had read many of Galahad's thoughts by then.
It had been an inadvertent gift from Merlin, the ability to enter
another man's mind.  Of course, Saladin could not read everyone's
thoughts, as Merlin could.  The sorcerer's gift had been with him from
birth.  Saladin had practiced for years to develop his limited
extrasensory faculties.
It had begun with Galahad.  During the twelve years that Saladin
followed the young knight in search of the cup, he had made Galahad the
focus of his thoughts.  He had studied him, concentrated on him,
pictured him in his mind when Galahad was not in sight, devoured him
with his eyes when he came into view.  He had discovered early that the
two of them thought alike, but Saladin had made it his ambition to
divine the man's actual thoughts as they occurred.
It was a worthless activity, perhaps.  Saladin had often thought as
much when, after years of trying, he could receive no mental messages
whatever from the distant knight, who rarely spoke and always traveled
alone.  But twelve years pass slowly when one has neither home nor
acquaintances.  There were no books to read on his journey and few
adventures to bring the pleasure of life to the surface.  There was
only the Quest, and the realization that each day he was growing older,
and the enigmatic presence of the young knight who had vowed to spend
the rest of his life searching for the Grail to bring to his king.
That was a lie, Saladin had decided after the first few years.  No one
would search so long for a treasure in order to turn it over to someone
else.  Once he was certain that Galahad's motive was greed, Saladin
felt more comfortable about him.  He warmed to him, in a way.  And when
he felt the first thought--a desire for water in a drought-stricken
land--Saladin had nearly shouted in triumph.
There had been other times, although never as complete as that first
powerful image of thirst: bits of thoughts, parts of pictures, the face
of an old woman, a stained-glass window showing Christ on the cross.
Until Galahad found the cup.  For you, my king.
Good God, he'd been serious, Saladin had thought with contempt.  He
hadn't wanted it for himself, after all.  Why, the whole journey' s
been a waste for the poor sod.
And when he'd swung his sword to meet Galahad's neck, the knight's
.eyes had not even registered fear.  They had shown only disappointment
in his own failure.
So he's brought you back with him, Saladin thought as he lit another
match.  He touched it to the thick candle he'd brought with him.  The
flame burned steadily, without a flicker.  Saladin gazed at it.  I can
find you now.  I've had sixteen centuries to practice.
He brought the man's face into focus in his mind.  The brown hair, the
wide jaw, the beautiful features marred in this life by a scar and the
ravages of too many misspent years.  For this Galahad, too, had been on
a quest of sorts, but without the advantage of knowing what it was he
sought.  More than likely, Saladin mused, the fool did not even realize
that he had finally found it.  Saladin's mind ranged, searching,
calling.
Hal.  His name is Hal.  He is a policeman.  He wants to be drunk.  He
is in the arms of a woman.  He is afraid.  There was a boy with red
hair .  . . You're the best, kid.  Saladin smiled.  By the light of the
candle, he mixed some colors on a palette.  Then, turning to the black
rock, he began to paint.
Hal tiptoed out of Emily's room and drove the Morris to the site of the
castle ruins.  The weather had cleared completely, and the moon shone
bright as a lantern over the ancient stones.  "Merlin," Hal called.
His voice echoed off the mossy walls.  "Merlin, come here!"
he shouted.
Nothing.  "How am I supposed to help him?  I don't know where he is,
for God's sake!  I haven't got the cup to trade.  I don't even have a
gun!"  A bat swooped overhead.  Nearby, a chorus of crickets began to
sing all at once.  "Damn it, he'll die, can't you see that?"  His voice
cracked.  "They'll kill him, and I don't know how to stop them!"  He
sank down to the ground and sobbed.  And all.  around him, there was no
answer except the silence of the night.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

"The only fingerprints on the windows were yours," Inspector Candy
said.
He stood in front of the door of the police van, squinting into the
early morning sun.  He did not invite Hal inside.  "Then the guy must
have been wearing gloves," Hal said.  Candy shrugged noncommitally.
"How'd you get my prints?"  "We coated the plaster cast of the horse's
hoofprint you were holding."
Hal sighed.  So he was a suspect, too.
Still, it was what he himself would have done in the same situation.
"Good police work," he said.  Candy nodded.  "Now, if you'll excuse us,
Mr. Wocz-niak..."  "Look.  I know you're pissed because we didn't
mention the cup.  But that doesn't really change anything about the
case.  The kid's still missing."  "We have cooperated fully with you,"
Candy said, his broad face reddening.  "We didn't have to do that.  It
was a courtesy extended to a fellow professional.  We expected your
full cooperation in return."  "All right, all right.  I'll level with
you.  I didn't mention the cup because I didn't think you'd believe me,
and I knew you wouldn't allow me to help with the investigation if you
thought I was a nutcase."
Candy softened somewhat.  "Well, the business about a new metal does
sound a bit farfetched."  Not as farfetched as the whole truth, Hal
thought.
"Besides, we didn't even know if it was a new metal or not.  Miss
Blessing only conducted a few tests on it.  She made the assumption
that it was valuable after people started trying to kill her and the
boy."  "Why didn't they go to the authorities then?"  "What could the
cops have done?"  He answered himself.  "Waited for the next attack,
that's all.  They were afraid.  They ran."  "Then these men have been
pursuing the Blessing woman and the boy since before the incident on
the bus?"  "Long before, from what they've told me.  Look, I'm sorry I
didn't fill you in on the whole story before, but I only got it
secondhand myself.
Emily--Miss Blessing--isn't as wigged out as she was yesterday.
She'll talk to you now.  She's found some sort of code in the book from
the sanitarium.  "Is she at the inn?"  Hal nodded, then extended his
hand.  "No hard feelings?"  Candy shook it.  "I suppose not," he said
grudgingly.  "Good.  Now I'd like to see the file on Mr. X. Did it
come?"  Candy smiled.  "It came."  He opened the door.  "Please let Mr.
Woczniak see the new file from headquarters," he instructed his
assistants.  Then he gestured for Hal to enter the van.  "Be my guest,"
he said.
Higgins and Chastain were already absorbed in their work in the
air-conditioned, windowless van.  Like moles who never see the sun, Hal
thought.  Wordlessly, Chastain handed him the thick file and pointed to
a small table where he could read it out of their way.  The first item
in the file was a pencil sketch of Mr. X at his trial.  "That's him,"
Hal said aloud.  His voice sounded incredibly loud in the silent
enclosure.  "He's the guy I saw in the meadow.  The leader of the
horsemen."
Higgins came over, his eyes nearly invisible behind his smudged
glasses.  "Are you certain?"  he whispered.  "Perhaps you'd better see
a photograph.
There's one in here."  He leafed through the papers in the file and
extracted a glossy picture from near the back.  It was a mug shot,
showing the defendant from the front and both sides.  Higgins placed it
on top of the pile.  "Is this the same man?"  Hal gasped.  It was the
same man, all right, but the detail of the photograph brought out
something that he had not seen in either the pencil sketch or the face
of the man in the meadow.  "What is it?"  Higgins prompted nervously.
Even Chasmin had turned around to look.  "It's the eyes.  The .  . .
eyes .... He had broken out in a sweat.  The eyes were laughing, just
as they had been laughing when the sword had come singing out of the
air.  Thank you, the Saracen Knight had said.  The silver chalice had
tumbled off the altar of the abbey, and the tall stranger had caught it
while blood poured over the shiny expanse of Hal's armor.  For you, my
king.  And he had not even felt the pain of the sword, for the agony of
his failure was greater.  I knew that you, of all the High King's
lackeys, would find it.
And the dark knight's eyes shone with laughter.  Like two evil lights
in the darkness, they followed Hal into the spinning void, triumphant
and mocking.  My king .  . . 'My king .  . . Higgins was holding a
glass of water to his lips.  Chastain had picked up the file, afraid
that Hal might damage it with the perspiration that poured off his
face.  "Perhaps you'd like to get some air," Higgins suggested.
Clearly, neither of them wanted a sick man in their domain.  Chastain
was already holding a sheet of filter paper to his mouth and nose,
defending himself against microbes.  "I'm all right," Hal said.  He
drank the water.  "Give me the file."  Reluctantly, Chastain handed it
back to him.  The two men stood side by side, watching their visitor.
"Don't you two have something to do?"  Hal snapped.
With an unspoken dialogue of wiggling eyebrows, flaring ostrils, and
lip twitches, the two analysts went back to their work.
Hal, still shaking, forced his mind away from the image of the man in
the photograph and read the file on the unnamed man who had created
works of art out of the bodies of people he'd murdered.  When he
finished, he closed the file and ran his hand over his sweat-slick
face.
There was only one thought in his mind then:

Oh, Christ, he's got Arthur.

Candy was just leaving the inn when Hal got back.  He was carrying the
book Emily had translated.  "Well?"  he asked.  "He's the same man,"
Hal said.  "I think he engineered the fire at Maplebrook."  Candy
looked abashed.  "I've put in a request for exhumation of the body
found in his cell."  "He was a plant."  Candy nodded.  "What do we do
now?"  "Give the cup to the kidnappers."  "I told you, we haven't got
the cup."  "Then find it," Candy said acidly.  "Or something like it.
That's all we can do at this point.  We'll make an arrest at the time
of the trade."  "You and who else?  Constable Nubbit?  Or are you
counting on Tweedledum and Tweedledee to wrestle that maniac to the
ground?"  "I'm calling for reinforcements.  We'll have plenty of men on
hand."  Hal thought for a moment.  "He'll expect that," he said.
"Perhaps.
But it's still our best possibility."  Hal tried to fight off the
feeling of despair that was beginning to envelop him.  Anyone who could
carry off an operation the size of the Maplebrook explosion could get
around a handful of cops, he knew.  It wasn't hard to kill a
ten-year-old boy.  "We'll try to find them before it comes to that,"
Candy said.  "Yeah.  Okay."  Hal turned away from the inspector and
stumbled into the inn.  There had to be something he could do, some
place he could look .
. .
"Hal."  It was Emily.  She was dressed in a yellow sundress.  Her long
hair was pulled back in a ribbon.  She wore lipstick.  Despite his
agitation, Hal smiled at the change.  "How'd you make out with the
inspector?"  he asked.  "I didn't tell him my theory about the ball
making you live forever."  "But I believe it more than ever.  I went to
the little town library this morning."  "Alone?"  Hal asked.  "Look,
I've told you--" "We're running out of time, Hal.  I can't keep myself
locked up in that room so I'll be safe while Arthur's life is in
danger."  "All right,'; Hal conceded.  "So what'd you find?"  "A
history of Saladin."  "The king who wanted to be pharaoh."  "Right.
You know, that's strange in itself," she said, her eyes wandering in
thought.  "For a Persian to become a pharaoh, as if ancient Egypt were
somehow familiar to him .  . ."  "What are you getting at?"  Hal asked,
a little irritably.  He didn't want to spend the day in idle
conversation, even with Emily.  "I'm getting at how he died," she said.
"Or rather, how he was supposed to have died.  It was all very
mysterious."  "How's that?  I thought you said he died of natural
causes."  "He did.  At the age of fifty-five."  "Seems kind of young,"
Hal said.  "Which natural causes?"  She shrugged.  "That's the
mysterious part.
There didn't seem to be any symptoms to his illness.  What's even
stranger is that everyone at his deathbed said he looked thirty years
younger, at that.  Now, most people who are dying look a lot older than
they are.  But Saladin appeared to be in the bloom of health when he
was carried to his crypt."  They sat in silence for a while.  "What are
you saying?"  Hal asked at last.  "That you don't think he died?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying.  A man who never ages is going to
create suspicion sooner or later.  I think that after three decades of
rule, Saladin just looked too young for his age.  So rather than let
the secret of the cup be known, he decided to stage his own death."
"He gave up the throne .  . . just like that?"  "Why not?  If I'm right
about the cup, he had something of much greater value."  Hal considered
it.  "I'm glad you decided not to tell Candy," he said.  "He wouldn't
understand.  But it makes everything fall into place.  'Bless your
name."  Get it?  It's the way someone would address a king."  Hal had
to admit that she made sense, even though the concept of eternal life
through the powers of a metal ball didn't.  Still, very little of what
had happened in the past two weeks had made much sense.
Taliesin's appearance and disappearance, the apparition of the castle
in the meadow, his own inexplicable sojourns into the memories of
another man .  . . None of it could be filed away in a drawer at
Scotland Yard.  But one thing was real: Arthur was being held captive
by a known murderer, and Hal had to get him back.  "Brought you two a
pot of tea," Mrs.  Sloan said, placing two cups in front of them.
"Thank you," Hal said.
"And thanks for the use of your Car."  "Oh, that's no problem," the
woman said.  "You might want to go see the fair, if you've got the
time.  It's just opening today, down at the grounds near the old
amusement park."  "No, I don't think--" Emily began.  "What did you
say?"  Hal interrupted.  "About the fair?"  "The amusement park."
"Well, it's not much anymore," Mrs. Sloan said.  "Been abandoned since
1971, when the owner run off somewheres with the butcher's daughter,
and her only fourteen."  She clucked disapprovingly.  "The village sold
off the fides and things to pay for taxes, but no one ever did get
around to clearing off the site.
An eyesore, that's what it is.  But it turns out the place is smack in
the middle between Dorset and Somerset counties, and neither one is
willing to go to the trouble to clean it up.  He had no kin, don't you
know.  The counties has been arguing about it for years."  "Was it
named Heatherwood?"  "Heatherwood, that's right.  I used to take my
boys there when they was lads."  "Where is it?"  She told him.  "But
don't expect to find much," she cautioned.  He stood up.  "Sorry about
the tea, Mrs. Sloan.  Let's go."  "Hal!"  Emily called, trying to keep
pace with Hal as he bolted for the 'door.  The motor in the Morris was
already running when she caught up with him.  "What was that about?"
He pulled out of the driveway.
"The ransom note.  It was written on an old postcard from an amusement
park."  "Oh, my God.  Do you think that's where they've got Arthur?"
Hal didn't answer, but he knew as soon as he saw the place that Arthur
wasn't there.  The grounds were accessible by three major roads, for
one thing.
For another, the fairgrounds were only a few hundred yards away.
There was no way to hide either horses or people in the scannered,
tumbledown buildings that remained.  They got out and walked toward the
wreckage.
The ground was deeply pinned where the rides had been pulled out like
bad teeth.  There was still a partial track of a kid's roller coaster
rusting in the sun and the plywood silhouette of a clown rising above
what used to be a funhouse.  "You can tell we're not in America," Hal
said.  "Why's that?"  "Because this place closed over twenty years ago,
and it's still standing.  Back home, the vandals would have eaten every
board by now."  "All I can tell is that you're from New York," Emily
said, but Hal didn't hear her.  He was looking up at the clown sign.
At its base, in faded letters above the entrance to the funhouse, were
the words:

SPOOK-O-RAMA

JOURNEY INTO DARKNESS It was sinister-looking.  Them was something
about the combination of clowns and evil that had always given Hal the
shivers.  It affected everyone the same way, he supposed; that was why
so many horror movies had clowns in them.
Saladin is taking the boy to a place of darkness.  A place fearful to
you.  A place you will remember.
The old man's words came back to him with a jolt.  A place fearful to
him?  Perhaps.  But he had no memory of this amusement park.
Unless it was the memory of the picture on the postcard.
Could that have been the reference?  "I'm going in," Hal said.  "This
place doesn't look much more sturdy than the sanitarium," Emily said
apprehensively.  "You're not coming.  Wait in the car."  "What if the
roof falls in on you this time?"  "Then drive to the fairgrounds."
"For help?"  "No.  Buy yourself a cotton candy."  He kissed the end of
her nose.
He walked her back to the car, took his flashlight from the glove
compartment, and gave her neck a squeeze.  "Hal?"  Emily was blushing.
"I'm glad things aren't too awkward between us .  . . because of last
night," she said.
He touched her hair.  He wanted to tell her how happy he had felt to
see her face in the morning, how long Since he'd felt comfortable in
the presence of a woman he remembered how she had cried out in misery
after their moment of love.  It was too late for her, she had said.
Too late for them.
And so perhaps it was.  "I'm glad it happened," he said softly.  He
could smell the clean scent of her hair.  "You're very beautiful."  She
looked at the ground.  "I'll be back in a minute," he said.  As he
turned to enter the funhouse, he could still smell her.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

A place of darkness, Hal thought.  Well, the Spook-O-Rama certainly
qualified as that.  Despite the deterioration of the building, no light
at all got through.
Or air, it seemed.  It was as hot as an oven inside.  Hal reached up
and banged on the low arched ceiling with his flashlight.  The
tunnel-like structure reverberated with a hollow, metallic din.
Corrugated aluminum.  No wonder it was so hot.  During the years of the
park's operation, the funhouse had probably been reasonably well
ventilated, with fans blowing through ductwork, but the fans had no
doubt been sold off when the place closed down.
He poked through a thick mass of cobwebs and picked up the edge of a
cardboard skeleton painted Day-Glo green.  It had been attached to a
retractable spring by wire, but the wire had long since rusted away.
Now the skeleton lay flat, in pieces, its bloodshot eyeballs furry with
dust.
His feet touched something soft.  The old walking-over-the-dead-body
sensation, he remembered with a feeling of youthful nostalgia.  At this
point, if the electricity were turned on, a lever beneath the row of
foam corpses would trigger a deafening noise and the sudden appearance
of several garishly illuminated tombstones.  This was where the girl
you were with worked herself up to an almost authentic-sounding scream.
It was the signal that you were allowed to put your arm around her, as
long as you didn't grab her tits.
There was definitely no tit-grabbing in the funhouse.  That had to wait
for the Tunnel of Love, although he had never actually seen an
amusement called the Tunnel of Love.  They were given names like
Sinbad's Journey or Dream Ship, but they served the purpose: You rode
on a conveyor belt covered with plastic and two inches of water, and
got out with an erection that could knock over a telephone pole.  At
the third "corpse," there was a wild chores of chattering squeals that
made Hal jump.  When he jerked the flashlight beam down toward the
ground, he saw a nest of rats scurrying in all directions from the
comfort of the foam stuffing.
A fat one scampered over his feet.  He recoiled in distaste, and
considered turning back.  Arthur wasn't here.  Anyone who had come
earlier would have frightened off the rats.  He looked back briefly.
Then outside, from ahead, not behind, he heard the sputter of a
motorcycle, which told him that he had gone more than halfway through
the Spook-O-Rama.  He decided to head for the exit.  He hopped over the
rat-infested cushion and walked quickly, scanning both sides of the
twisting tunnel with the light.  Nothing, he thought.  He tried to
remind himself that the picture on the postcard had been a dim lead at
best from the beginning.  The rotten part of it was, it was the only
lead.  And it had led nowhere.  How much time did he have left?  How
much did Arthur have?  Was the boy's life being measured out in days
now, or hours?  Or minutes?  Or was he already dead?  He was walking so
quickly that he almost missed it.  A painting on the wall, bright
colors and the sort of realism one didn't usually find in funhouses.
It was more like a portrait a family would hang in their living room,
the portrait of a kid with red hair .... The round circle of light
stopped dead on the boy's face.  It was Arthur's, unmistakably,
perfectly captured, down to the pale blue eyes and the scattering of
freckles over the nose.  The painting itself was exquisite, museum
quality, but there was something terribly unsettling about it.  The
eyes, Hal decided.
Something was wrong with the eyes.  They had no animation in them, no
life, almost as if the subject were .  . . Hal sucked in his breath.
The boy in the painting was seated in a wooden ladder-back chair.
Only the top corner of the chair was visible.  Hal had seen that.
What he hadn't noticed until now were the ropes that seemed to grow out
of the bottom of the painting.
The kid was tied to the chair.  (A ladder-back, had it been a wooden
chair up there in that attic room oh Jeff oh no oh God .  . .) He knew
it had been.  And the background of the painting, those lovely
unobtrusive gray curls, were smoke, because the place was on fire,
Jesus Jesus, and Arthur's eyes were funny-looking because they were
dead, just like Jeff arown's .... Unconsciously, Hal had backed away
from the painting until he hit the far wall.  He gasped, dropping the
flashlight.
No, no, leave me alone, oh help me, no And then he heard the gunshot
outside, and his fear exploded.  Emily was in the car.  Hal started
running toward the exit with the instinct of a policeman.

Two more shots had fired by the time Hal got out of the funhouse.

Between them, he could hear Emily's terrified shrieks.  She's still
alive.  It was the only thought that registered in Hal's mind as he
barreled through the dark tunnel.  When he finally emerged, the gunman
was cimling the car on his motomycle, firing randomly through the
windshield.  He saw Hal, took one shot at his feet, then sped away.
Hal memorized the license number of the motorcycle as he ran toward
Emily.
She was crouched on the floor of the Morris, her hands covering her
face, screaming wildly.  "Emily, he's gone.  Emily!"  He grabbed her by
her shoulders and shook her.  "It's Hal.  Listen to me, Emily!"
Gradually her screaming subsided, and Hal was able to pry her hands
away from her face.  "He was trying to kill me," she rasped hoarsely.
Hal looked at the starred windshield.  Four shots had been fired at
nearly point-blank range, and not one of them had struck her.  "No, he
wasn't," Hal said.  "That was just a scare tactic."  "Well, it worked,"
she said as she unfolded herself out of the car.
From the fairgrounds, several people were running toward the source of
the gunshots.  "Get back in," Hal said, "or we'll be stuck here for
hours dealing with Constable Nubbit.  I want to get to Candy with
this."  He started the engine.  The car ran gerfectly well, despite the
apparent damage.  He pressed on the network of fine white lines which
was now the windshield, and it gave way.  They drove back to the
village amid a sea of pebble-sized bits of glass, and went straight to
the Scotland Yard van.  "Damn it all, I knew it was a mistake letting
you in on things," the inspector said.  "You could have both been
killed."  "He wasn't trying to kill anyone," Hal explained.  He told
the story of his discovery in the Spook-O-Rama.  "You're sure it was a
painting of Arthur?"  "Absolutely sure."  "And he was dead, you say."
Candy spoke quietly, so that Emily could not hear him.  Hal tightened
his lips.  "If it's the same man I arrested four years ago, he's an
artist as well as a killer," Candy said.  "We've got to accept the
possibility that--" "He wasn't drawing Arthur," Hal blurted.  "I
thought you said---" "The face was Arthur's.  The rest of it was .  .
." What?  A memory of mine?  A nightmare I've been having for the past
year?
"What is it?"  Hal took a deep breath.  "The chair, the ropes, the fire
. . .
That happened before, in another case I handled.  The last case."  He
spoke in a monotone about the abduction and murder of Jeff Brown.  "So
you think Arthur's kidnappers know something about you," Candy said,
trying not to let his voice betray the pity he felt for the ex-FBI man.
"Could be."  "Is it possible we've been hunting the wrong fox?"  Candy
asked.
"Perhaps this Brown boy's kidnapper is involved?"  "No," Hal said.
"He's dead.  Blew himself up with a grenade."  "An associate of his,
perhaps?"  Hal shrugged.  A mind reader.  A man who's lived forever,
who has the power to do anything on earth he likes.
"I'll see if I can find anything," Candy said.  "There isn't time.
Saladin's going to come for the cup soon.  And I haven't got it."
"That won't matter," Candy said.  Hal knew .what he meant.  If the
kidnappers weren't stopped before the trade, Arthur would be killed,
cup or no cup.  "What about your reinforcements?"  Hal asked.
"Headquarters thinks it's better to work with the local authorities on
this."  Hal groaned in disbelief and dismay.  "Are you kidding me?
You're going to leave this operation to the likes of Constable Nubbit?"
"They haven't left the country with the boy," Candy explained.  "They
haven't even left Dorset County, as far as we know.
The locals know the area better than a team from London, and we can get
more of them on short notice."  He patted Hal's shoulder.  "Don't
worry.  I'll he in charge, and you'll be with me.  The bobbies will
only be present as a show of manpower."  "When are they coming?"  "I'll
send the signal when you get the final ransom note.  They're prepared.
We'll have fifty uniformed men around the site within twenty minutes."
Hal sighed.  "All right," he said begrudgingly.  "Take the lady back to
the inn," Candy said.  "And tell her to stay there.  The kidnappers may
be trying to contact her."  Hal nodded.  "How soon will you have a make
on the driver of the motorcycle?"  "We've got it," Higgins whispered,
pulling a sheet of paper out of the FAX machine.  "When you gave it to
us, I took the liberty of feeding it into the computer at headquarters
immediately.  It just came in.  The fellow's name is Hafiz Chagla."
"The name mean anything to you?"  Chastain shrugged elaborately.
"It's just a name," he said.  "But I also asked the computer to
cross-reference the name with any known personal data.  That's coming
through now."  Hal and Candy waited as Higgins took the second sheet
out of the machine.  "Address, 22 Abelard Street, Wilson-on-Hamble," he
read.
Occupation, electrician .... "He looked at Chastain before continuing.

"Maplebrook Hospital, Lyming-ton."

"I'll check out the address," Hal said.  "You most certainly will not.
If you'd like to help, you can do it in the municipal building."  "Do
what?"  "Find out who owns the building at 22 Abeiard Street."  For the
first time in two days, Hal felt some semblance of relief.
Candy knew what he was doing.  "On my way, Chief," Hal said.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Wilson-on-Hamble, as it turned out, had no municipal building.  In
fact, the tax collector, village clerk, and building inspector were all
the same person--a seventy-year-old woman named Matilda Grimes who had
lived in Wilson-on-Hamble all her life and ran the village's very
modest affairs from a table in her parlor.
When Hal found her, she was busy cooking some kind of gruel in her
kitchen.  She invited Hal to stay for lunch, but he declined, saying
his business was urgent.  "Urgent, you say?  Then you'd better go fetch
the books yourself.  I can't let the rennet burn."  She led the way
into the short hallway between two bedrooms, both of which were adorned
with dolls wearing voluminous crocheted dresses, and pulled down a
rickety ladder from the ceiling.  "They'd be up there, marked by year,"
she said.
Hal thanked her and climbed up into the attic.  They were all up there,
deeds, tax records, every transaction recorded in the village since the
early 1850s.  He brought down as many as he could carry and prepared
for a long.  session with the books, but Miss Grimes knew the place he
was looking for.  "Abelard Street?  Oh, my, yes.  That place has been
turned over a dozen times in the past ten years.  And never at any
profit, from what I hear.
It just passes from one to another."  She poured the custard into
little bowls and set them carefully inside a tiny cube of a
refrigerator.  "Has it gone to anyone you know?"  She shook her head
emphatically.  "Foreigners, all of them.  England's a mecca for them,
you know," she added in a conspiratorial whisper.
"It's mostly London, of course, but they get in everywhere."
"Who?"  "Why, the Eastern fellows," she said primly.  "Arabs?"  She
nodded, her lips pursed.  "Now, I'm sure they're fine individuals, even
if they are black.  We don't have the sort of racial problems here that
you do in America."  "No, I'm sure you don't," Hal said, trying to be
agreeable, even though he had difficulty adjusting to the idea of Arabs
as black people.  "But one does have to wonder about a place like
Wilsonon-Hamble being sold over to foreign interests."  "Who owns the
house, Miss Grimes?"  She put on a pair of glasses with outlandishly
jutting rims and leafed expertly through the pages of one of the books.
Hal almost laughed aloud.  If a rock star wore those glasses, they
would be the height of radical fashion.  "Here we are.  Mustafa Ariz."
"Ariz?"  Hal asked, disappointed.  "Not Chagla?"  "Chagla?  Oh, no."
"But I understand that a man named Hafiz Chagla lives there."  "He
might," Matilda said.  "It's an apartment building."  "Oh," Hal said.
"This Ariz person just bought it six months ago ."  "Who from?"  She
flipped the page.  "Vinod Abad," she said flatly.
"See what I mean?"  "I don't know.  Who owned it before that?"  She
thumbed the page.  "Oh, it lasted four years under this owner.
Must have fallen in love with the place."  "What was his name?"
Matilda squinted at the page.  "Laghouat," she pronounced with
difficulty.  "My, that's a strange one, even for them."

"La Goo?"

"Hamid Laghouat.  I'm giving it the French pronunciation.  There."
She pointed it out in the registry.  "Hamid Laghouat," Hal repeated,
trying to remember why the name struck a chord.  "Christ.  The
librarian," he said suddenly.  Hamid Laghouat was the name of the man
who had checked out the Urdu book for the sanitarium.  "I do not much
care for profanity, Mr " "Woczniak," Hal said.  "Sorry."  "Woczniak?
What kind of name is that?"  "I don't know.  My parents changed it.
Do you have an address for this Laghouat?"  She looked at him sourly,
then bent over the page.  "A postal box in London."  "That figures,"
Hal said.  "What other property does he own around here?"  "Well, I'd
have to look in another book for that."  It was clear from her tone of
voice that Miss Grimes did not wish to do that.  "Please," Hal said,
trying hard to be ingratiating.  "It's very important.  Police
business."  The old woman sniffed disdainfully but rummaged through the
pile of books until she found what he wanted.  "You're going to have to
put all these back, you know."  "I understand," Hal said.  "Well,
here's some property under that name.
It adjoins the old amusement park."  Hal closed his eyes.  He had
struck gold.  "Are there any buildings on it?"  "Yes, a residence .  .
. Oh, I know the one."  She looked up from the book.  "An
eighteenth-century manor house.
It was a lovely estate back when I was a girl.  A couple from London
owned it.  Members of the nobility."  She nodded approvingly.  "They
used it as a summer residence."  "Does anybody live there now?"  "Oh,
my, I would doubt that very much.  The Londoners stopped coming back in
the forties, during the war.  It's been empty since then."  She found
her place in the registry.  "You see?  It belonged to the same owner
for forty-six years before this Laghouat fellow bought it.  He's a
librarian, you said?"  "He was.  In Bournemouth.  I think he's gone
now."  "Odd.  I never heard the name before.  It would seem that anyone
with enough money to buy all this property wouldn't be completely
unknown in this area.  But then, I don't know everyone."  "But nearly
everyone," Hal guessed.  "Most, I imagine," she answered truthfully.
"And what would he be doing working as a librarian?"  "I doubt if he's
the real owner."  "Well, he's the legal owner," Miss Grimes said
pedantically.  "If your name's on the paper, the property's yours."
And if old Hamid makes a move without Saladin's approval, he turns into
a statue with an axe in it, Hal thought.  "So the place is abandoned?"
"Probably.  You see, it's a very unusual piece of property because it
has no road access.  It was built back in the days when everyone went
about in carriages.  But when the house stood vacant for a long time,
the road--well, a driveway-is what you'd call it, but it's very long,
nearly a mile---it just grew over.  Now you can't even see it.  Or the
house itself, for all the weeds."  She moved her glasses down onto the
end of her nose.  "If someone's living there, they don't take very good
care of the grounds."  "Can you show me on the map where the road used
to be that led to the house?"  She drew an imaginary line with her
finger.  "It was right here, right behind the amusement park, through
these woods," she said.  "Of course, the house was here long before the
park.
The land Heatherwood was built on used to belong to the estate."
"Thank you, Miss Grimes," Hal said, getting up "I'll put the books back
now."  "See that you make a decent job of it," she said, padding back
into the kitchen.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Arthur awakened late.  The big Victorian room was already warm and
close with the summer heat.  His eyes were crusted with matter, and his
tongue felt too big for his mouth, the way it sometimes got when he was
younger and had to take medicine for an ear infection.  It had to be
the drugs, he thought, stumbling toward the lavatory.  The giant had
injected him twice in one day.  He ran the cold water in the sink over
hii head, then drank deeply from his cupped hands.  It diminished his
thirst somewhat, but the cotton-tongue feeling remained.  When he was
finished, he stood still, blinking, trying to steady himself.  His
stomach rumbled.  It had been more than a day since he'd eaten
anything.  He remembered the big piece of chocolate cake the tall man
had offered him, and his own stupidity in refusing it.  A piece of cake
wouldn't have hurt anything, he thought tearily, then realized that the
drugs had thrown his emotions into a tailspin.  Sometimes, after taking
the Seconal Emily gave him when he couldn't sleep, he would wake up on
the verge of tears.  This was the same thing, he reminded himself.
Nothing to cry about.  Nothing.
Yet it was hard to stop himself.  He was alone in this place with a man
who had every intention of murdering him unless he got his hands on the
cup.  And the cup was gone.  He had seen it vanish with his own eyes.
Arthur felt his tears welling up.  Why hadn't he left it in the
apartment when he and Emily ran away from Chicago?  They could have
given it to the Katzenbaum Institute.  They could have gone to the TV
stations with the story.  They could have let everyone know.  If they
had, Arthur wouldn't be here now.
But who would have the cup?
He dried his tears.  Sooner or later, someone would use it.  There
would be a dying baby somewhere, or the president of some country who'd
been shot, or a thousand earthquake victims.  The cup would be a
miracle.  For a while.  And then one country or another would claim it
as its own.  Or someone would steal it, and sell it to the highest
bidder.
Or keep it, and become something like the king of the world with it.
The thought staggered him.  What would happen if a person never got
hurt, never got sick, never had a bruise or a skinned knee?
Do you really know what it can do, Arthur?  The tall man had asked him
that.  It healed wounds.  You never got sick.  You .  . . what?  You
lived forever?
He felt dizzy.  He took another drink of water, then went back into the
room where he'd spent the night.
A tray of food was waiting for him: hotcakes with syrup, a bowl of
fresh fruit, and a glass of milk.  Arthur devoured it like a starving
wolf.  "I'm glad to see you're eating," a deep voice behind him said.
Arthur ran his tongue over his upper lip to wipe off his milk mustache.
"Did you poison it?"  he asked.
The tall man laughed.  "No.  Did you sleep well?"  Who are you really?"
Arthur demanded.  "I've told you.  An old friend."  "You're no friend
of mine.  What's your name?"
"Saladin."  "I've never heard of you."  "Then you're uneducated, as
well as rude."  Arthur looked down at the empty tray.  "Thank you for
breakfast," he said.  "That's better.  Now come with me.  I'd like to
show you something."  He took Arthur down several flights of stairs,
past a bedroom wing, a corridor leading to a huge parlor, through a
vast kitchen with three sinks, and down another flight into a large
room paneled with fragrant cedar.  The walls were covered with shelves
and display cases, and within them was a bewildering array of
artifacts, jewelry, clothing, and weapons.
Arthur looked around, astonished.  "What is this place?  A museum?"
"Of sorts," Saladin said.  "I rather think of it as a trophy room.  I
haven't seen it myself for some time.  I don't usually live here, but
this is the safest of my homes for these things."  Everything was in
perfect condition, the cases spotlessly clean.
There were paintings, sculptures, even suits of armor in plain view,
without ropes or other devices to keep away the curious.
The boy could not resist.  He rushed forward to look at a case which
held four broadswords, propped up on easel-type displays.  At eye level
was a sword of polished steel with a bronze hilt carved into the
likeness of a snake.  "Where did you get this?"  he asked.  "How like
you to choose the swords first."  He opened the glass of the case.
"That belonged to a Macedonian warrior-king.  His name was Alexander."
Arthur looked at him sideways.  "Alexander the Great?"  he asked
skeptically.
Saladin nodded.  "He was little more than a boy, really.  He played the
harp in secret, fearing that his men would jest about him.  And he had
a face as beautiful as a woman's."  "Are you kidding me?"  Arthur
asked, knowing that he was, but still compelled by the casual ring of
truth in the man's voice.  "No," Saladin said softly.  "I supplied
horses to his army during his march across India.  In the evenings we
would often share a skin of wine, and speak of the wonders of the East.
He was charmingly naive.
The first time he met an Indian sultan, he nearly screamed with
laughter.  They dyed their beards green, you know, and rode elephants.
Alexander found it all hilarious.  I had to intercede for him to stop
the sultan from attacking his troops."  Arthur listened, fascinated.
Then he frowned.  "You're making fun of me," he said.
Saladin smiled mildly and shook his head.  "Alexander the Great lived
three hundred years before time."  "Before Christ, you mean."  "That's
right.  You couldn't have been there."  The tall man sighed.  "But I
was.  And I was old then, older than the stones of the earth."  He
opened the case and took out the sword.  "He gave me rubies for my
horses," he said.  "The man had no love of riches.
It was the adventure he craved.  And so when I left, I took his sword.
It was part of his soul."  Almost unconsciously, Arthur reached out and
touched the shining blade.  "I was going to kill him, but he was
asleep.  He was beautiful when he slept, and I had a weakness for him."
Arthur had heard about men with that particular weakness.  He stepped
back from the sword.  Saladin didn't seem to notice.  "He died young,
as I knew he would.  I could have protected him with the cup, but he
wouldn't have me.  And now his bones are ashes on the wind."  He
stroked the long blade of the sword lovingly, then put it back inside
the case.  "The cup," Arthur said, finally understanding.  "It keeps
you alive."  "Of course.  Have you seen this?"  He picked up a
shield-like object' decorated with a geometrically stylized bird in
pure gold with two emeralds for eyes.  "The breastplate of Ramses the
Great.  And here, the knife Brutus used to slay Julius Caesar.  Ah."
He strode over a few paces to a small table covered with a velvet
cloth.  On it was a tall golden crown with three peaks in the front.
"The crown of Charlemagne."  He placed it on Arthur's head.  "It's a
simple piece of work, but it suits you.  You never cared much for
finery."  The boy took it off and beheld it with wonder.  It was heavy,
almost barbaric.  And a man had worn it, a king.  "What did you say
about me?"  Saladin watched him for a moment, the child with the big
crown in his hands, and smiled.  "Nothing," he said.  He took the crown
away and picked up a small curved knife.  "This was my own," he said,
flipping it into the air and catching it by its bandaged handle.  "It
was a cobbler's tool."  The gauze strips, grown fragile with age, fell
away when he caught it.  Saladin looked at the pieces in his hand.
"There, you can still see the blood."  Despite his confusion and the
indisputable creepiness of the man, Arthur leaned forward to see.  The
inside of the bandages were brittle with a dried black substance that
cracked at his touch.  "Why is there blood on it?"  Arthur asked,
poking at it.  "I used it to kill someone with.  Quite a few, really.
All women."  Arthur pulled back his hand with a jerk.
The tall man held the half-moon blade up to the light.  "That must have
belonged to the first one," he mused.  "There was so much blood.
I always wrapped the handle after that first time."  "How .  . . how
many people have you killed?"  Saladin laughed.  "Oh, my, I'm sure I
couldn't remember."  He looked at the blackened tool with amusement.
"She was one of the few women, though.  Odd, how long it takes one to
overcome the taboos of one's upbringing.  My family believed that
killing women was unworthy of a man.  That would mean nothing these
days, of course, particularly in your country.  Women are murdered all
the time for a pocketful of change.  But my generation viewed it as an
inexplicable wickedness.  That was why I had to do it, I suppose."
"Who was she?"  He shrugged dismissively.  "A shopgirl, or a tart.
That didn't matter.
Later, of course, the newspapers made a big to-do about the girls all
being prostitutes, but that was nonsense.  It wasn't my intention to
kill them for their profession.  They were simply the available ones.
In those days, ladies didn't venture out on Whitechapel streets alone
in the evening."  "You're talking about .  . ."  Arthur swallowed.
"Jack the Ripper."  "Ghastly name, that."  He winced.  "The newspapers,
again.  If it weren't for them, Victorian London would have been a
marvelous place.
So proper and hidden.  Murder was so very shocking then."  He sighed.
"I've always done my best killing in England.  It means something here.
In Hong Kong or New York .  . . well, one might as well litter, or spit
on the sidewalk.  There's so little difference between crimes.
But here in England, the taking of a life is still regarded as .  . .
well, odious."  While he spoke, Arthur had backed away almost to the
stairs.  "Don't worry, child.  I'm not going to kill you here.  And you
certainly won't be able to escape up the stairs."  "You're really
crazy," Arthur whispered.  "No."  He set down the curved knife.  "A
little bored at times, perhaps, but not crazy.  You see,' a life as
long as mine can be rather dull.  It becomes a habit, like cigarette
smoking, only much harder to break.  One tends to resort to foolishness
now and again, to the cheap thrill."  He walked around the room,
touching various objects, occasionally picking one up and setting it
down again.  "Sometimes I think I've lived too long."
Suddenly he looked over at Arthur.  "Earlier you swore to kill me.
Would you?  If you had the chance, would you, say, cut my throat?"
The boy met his eyes, then lowered them.  "I don't know," he said.
Saladin's eyes grew bright.  "Why not try, Arthur?  You may develop a
taste for it."  He strolled over to the boy.  "Death is compelling.  It
gives one the ultimate power over another.  Have you ever killed?"
"No."  "But you will.  It's part of your fabric."  Arthur didn't know
what he was talking about, but he kept silent.  "Kill your enemies.
It's the first principle of every ruler on earth.  Humiliate them,
degrade them, make an example of them for others who might dare to
doubt your power."  "I'd like to go now," Arthur said.  "You're afraid
because you agree with what I say.  Sacrifice the small life for the
important one, the defeated for the conqueror, the weak for the strong.
Every great king in history has understood this idea.
Every great civilization has evolved from it."  "Might makes right,"
Arthur said.  "Simplistic, but a start.  I said you were a clever boy.
Your life may become one of the important ones, after all."  "And
you're dumber about me than you are about chess," Arthur said angrily.
"Who decides whose life is important and whose isn't?"
Saladin shrugged.  "Fate, will, circumstance .  . . Who can say what
goes into the creation of a great man?"  "Like you," Arthur said
caustically.  "My life certainly qualifies as something out of the
ordinary," Saladin said modestly.  "But I have never considered myself
a great man.  I lived as a king for a time.  I ruled well.  But it grew
tiresome.  I was never Alexander."  Lightly he touched the boy's hair.
"I was never you."  He spoke softly.  "Do you still not remember,
Arthur."?"  From behind a tall cherrywood case he brought a painting.
It was the full-length portrait of a man with reddish gold hair on
which rested a thin circlet of gold.
He was simply dressed in black, but in his right hand was a sword of
such magnificence that it seemed to leap out of the painting into the
real world.  "Do you recognize it?"  "It looks like me," the boy said.
"It is Arthur of England."  The boy stood transfixed in front of the
painting for a full five minutes, unmoving, breathing shallowly.  "I
painted it from memory the day I heard of his death.  I used glass
instead of canvas, so that it would last forever.  The glass is what
brings the sword to life."  "You're lying," Arthur said, his eyes still
on the painting.  "You know I'm not.  Do you truly feel nothing?  Not
even the wound that killed you because you refused to accept the cup?"
Arthur made a small sound.  He did feel it, the sharp, piercing pain
that began in his side and burned up through his body to his heart.  He
held his side.  His feet wobbled.  "You were a fool," Saladin said
softly.  ``Or perhaps only young, like Alexander.  Merlin wanted you to
have it.  He wanted it so badly that he came back from the grave to see
that you kept it this time.  He has it now."  "Oh .  . ."  The boy fell
on the floor, drawing his legs up.  "I do not wish to pass another
millennium alone, Arthur.
You have a great destiny before you.  I shall see that you fulfill it.
Together we can live forever.  You will rule, and there will have been
no king like you in all the days of the earth.  His voice was
compelling, almost seductive.  "Merlin has hidden it from you," he
said.
"Don't you understand?  He knows you belong with me, and he would
rather see you die than give up his authority over you."  "to .  . '."
He knows he is too weak to rule himself.  He will use you to come to
power, then take it from you.  That is what he did to me."
Slowly Saladin licked the perspiration from his lip as he watched the
child writhe in pain on the floor.  "But you can control him.  Listen
to me!"  He touched Arthur's chest with one finger, and the boy cried
out in agony.  "You can make Merlin bring the cup to you."  Arthur's
eyes widened.  "how?"  "Call to him.  He must answer to his king."
Saladin bent down low near the boy and whispered.  "Call him with your
mind, Arthur.  Call the wizard.  He will come with the cup."  Arthur
struggled to sit up.
"Call him.  It is your time.  Your world."  "What sort of world .  . .
will it be?"  the boy moaned.
Saladin's mouth curved in a faint smile of triumph.  "Whatever sort you
decide to make it.  With me, with the cup, your power will be
boundless.
Do you understand me, Arthur?  Boundless."  Arthur closed his eyes.
For a moment, he thought he was dying.  Again.  Yes, he understood.
He had come back.  He had been given a second chance to right his own
wrongs.
But he was dying now, while still a child.  He tried to hang on to
consciousness, but the darkness was overwhelming.  He spun downward,
down into a place so deep that there were no memories.  And in that
darkness he began to see the first vague, filtered images of a man
walking down the length of a long stone hall.  His face was filled with
comfort and compassion and a light that radiated from it like the
warmth of the sun, and his arms were outstretched, as if reaching for
the object that floated in the air in front of him.  It was a chalice,
made of silver and gold, a great treasure, surely, and nearby was a
voice, Merlin's voice, oh, friend!  Merlin's voice shouting, "Take it,
Arthur!
Take it!"  And Arthur reached for the great cup, but as he did the
light faded from the face of the stranger.  Christ's face, dying
without the light, Christ's body, fading, fading into darkness.  But
the chalice was still there, without the light of Jesus on it, floating
closer, closer .  . . Take it .... He came to a moment after he had
lost consciousness.
Whatever he had seen made no sense to him, none at all, but he
remembered the fading, lightless face of Christ.  And when he saw
Saladin, waiting expectantly with his predator's eyes, he knew he was
looking into the face of the devil.  He drew himself up to a standing
position and squared his narrow shoulders, trying to will the ancient
pain away.  "You're not part of the plan for me," he said.  The dark
eyes flashed.  Saladin stood up.  He walked to the far side of the
room, his jaw clenching.  Finally he turned to face Arthur.  "You've
just forfeited your life," he rasped.  A ffisson of fear tippled down
Arthur's spine.  His death would come soon, he knew.  And Saladin would
see to it that it was not a painless death.  "Goodbye, Saladin," he
said quietly.
He walked toward the stairs, aching with every step, but he kept his
back as straight as that of the king in the painting, the king he had
once been.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

It was some time before Hal got back to the inn.  After his discovery
at Matilda Grimes', he went to find Inspector Candy to tell him about
the mansion near the amusement park, but Candy was not in the police
van.
Higgins and Chastain had no idea where their superior had gone and were
frankly surprised that anyone would expect them to know.  "What if the
kidnappers want to trade soon?"  Hal had asked querulously.
"Without Candy, who've we got to go after those maniacs--you?"

"Now, Mr.  Woczniak," Higgins whispered.

"There are six of them.  Do you guys at least know how to shoot?"
Chastain only smiled.  "We don't use guns," Higgins said.  "Oh, great.
That's just great."  "Please don't worry excessively, sir.  Inspector
Candy will be back soon, I'm sure."  "What about those reinforcements
he was talking about?  Has he called them?"  "He will.  When they're
needed."  Higgins was edging back into the van, as if he were afraid of
exposure to sunlight and unprocessed air.
Hal let him go.  If it came to a confrontation with Saladin and his
men, he knew, these two would be about as helpful as bunions.  He
cleared some more broken glass off the front seat of the Morris and
drove back to the inn.
Mrs.  Sloan was sweeping the front steps when he pulled up in the car.
He had prepared a profuse apology, but she cut him off.  "Now, none of
that, lad," she said, not missing a stroke with her broom.  "I'm just
thankful that the young woman wasn't hurt.  She told me all about it
and gave me a check to cover the breakage, besides."  ``Thank you," Hal
said.  "Emily's all right, then?"  "Oh, she's fine.  Women are like
that.  When they're the one getting pounded, it don't matter a fig.
It's when their babies are in trouble, and them with nothing to do but
fret over it, that they fall to pieces."  Indeed, Emily showed no signs
of the lassitude that had overcome her when Arthur was first abducted.
She jumped up from her chair inside the pub, her eyes wide, clutching
an envelope in her hands.  "This came about an hour after I got back,"
she said.  "It came with the afternoon mail.  The postman didn't know
how it got in his bag."  The envelope was of high-quality rag, the
paper probably handmade.
There was no postage on it.  On the front was written the name "Emily
Blessing" in the flowing script Hal recognized from the postcard.
Inside, the sheet of paper contained only one word: Midnight.  "The
trade's tonight," Hal said.  "But where?  They didn't say anything
about where."  They don't want us to know that yet.  Wait here for a
second.  I've got to let Candy in on this."  He dashed to the telephone
and dialed the number of the mobile phone in the police van.  Higgins
answered, warily, as if he distrusted telephones and their use.  "No,
Inspector Candy hasn't returned yet," he said in his barely audible
voice.  "Doesn't he at least call to tell you where he is?".Hal shouted
into the mouthpiece.
There was a pause in which Higgins deliberated the question thoroughly.
"Usually," he said.  "Well, we've got the second note from the
kidnappers.  The trade's going to be at midnight tonight.  I don't know
where yet."  "I'll give the inspector the message," Higgins said.
"It's nearly five o'clock already."  "Yes," Higgins agreed.
Hal sighed.  "If Candy doesn't get back to me in an hour, I'm going to
make the arrangements myself to bring in the extra cops."  "Oh, that
would be quite impossible, Mr. Woczniak.  You see--" "An hour."  He
hung up.
He nearly collided with the stately Mrs. Sloan as he made his way back
into the pub.  She was just coming in the front door, mopping her
forehead with the edge of her apron.  "It's going to be another hot
night," she said.  Then, seeing his face, she added, "Things not going
so well, eh?"  "May I go into your kitchen with you?"  Hal asked with
as much courtesy as he could muster.  "I suppose.  Long as you don't
cook.  The cat's one thing, but I don't like people fiddling with my
pots and pans, most particularly men."  "I need a bowl," Hal said.
"What size?"  "Small."  He indicated the dimensions with his hands.
"As big as a cup, but without a handle.  Could you lend me one?"  She
sat the broom in a corner.  "Well, let's see what I've got."  "We're
not going to fool them with a fake," Emily said.  "No, but we can't go
empty-handed, either.  Maybe it'll get us through the door."  In the
small, sweltering kitchen, Mrs. Sloan opened a cabinet above the iron
stove and pulled down dozens of bowls, all well used and in varying
degrees of disintegration.  "This is about right," Hal said, picking up
a small metal measuring cup.
It had a rounded bottom and a beaten metal handle.  He looked up
imploringly.
Mrs. Sloan gave him an exasperated look, then snatched the cup out of
his hands and beat it against the stove until the handle fell off.
"That's what you'd be wanting, I suppose," "You're terrific," Hal said.
"But I want it back, handle or no."  "Yes, ma'am.  Have you got some
wrapping paper and a roll of tape?"  She grabbed some newspapers from a
pile in the corner of the kitchen and slapped them into his hands.
Then she pointed the way back to the parlor.  "In the desk where the
phone is," she said.  "Thanks.  Thanks a lot."  Mrs. Sloan grunted in
response.
Upstairs in Emily's room he wrapped the bowl in the newspaper and then
sealed it with tape.  "Hal .  . ."  He held up the round,
mysterious-looking object.  "Think we can get past the first rank with
this?"  "Hal, I don't think you should go."
"What?"  "The note was addressed to me.  If they see you, they might
And if they catch you with this phony cup, they'll kill you, he
thought.
We'll talk about it later.  It may not come to a trade, if I can get
hold of the Invisible Man from Scotland Yard."  "Inspector Candy?  Is
he missing?"  .  "The last time I saw him, he was going to check out a
house on Abelard Street.  That was hours ago."  "Should we go have a
look at the place?  Maybe he's in some sort of trouble."  Hal nodded.
"I'll go.  You'd better stay here.  Another message will be coming
before long."  Wearily, he got back in the Morris and drove to the
village.
When Inspector Candy parked his car near the Spook-O-Rama tunnel, the
first thing he noticed were the long strips of motorcycle tracks
leading to and from the woods.  It was the first time since the
beginning of this investigation that he'd felt any real optimism.
The house on Abelard Street had been a waste of time, the same as every
other lead he'd followed.  The place was empty, tenantless, and locked
up tight.  Some neighbors remembered a young, dark-haired man with a
motorcycle, but he had apparently been gone for more than a month, and
the house had remained empty since then.
Following a hunch, he'd driven to the old amusement-park grounds where
the Blessing woman had been terrorized.  The ground was still damp from
yesterday's downpour, and Candy had hoped for just such a tire mark as
he found.  But the length and clarity of the tracks were even more than
he'd hoped for.
After a quick look through the funhouse, he followed the tracks on
foot.
They led through the woods toward a high rolling meadow almost a
thousand meters away.  At the crest of the hill, he found himself
looking down into a verdant valley at the center of which, another mile
away, was a ramshackle, old, stone manor house.  The house looked as if
it had been built in stages because it spread over four different
levels, following the natural contours of the land.  A large willow
tree sat in front in the middle of a stone-walled goldfish pond, empty
now except for piles of rotting leaves.  There were no lights on, and
no cars parked near the main entrance.
Still, it had to be the place, Candy thought.  There were no other
buildings nearby, except for a large barn.  Candy moved closer.  He
found some fresh horse droppings and heard the neighing of horses from
the barn.
He had them.  Even if none of the kidnappers were present, he would at
least be able to get the boy.  He hoped that was the case.  One against
six were bad odds.  When he called in the reinforcement officers, they
could take care of the men.  The only thing that mannered now was the
child.
He went around behind the barn and waited for someone to come out of
the house.  No one did.  Either he hadn't been spotted in the tall
unkempt grass, or no one was home.  Good.  There was a chance.  The
house would probably be locked, but he could find a way in.
He just hoped the boy was still alive.
Candy stepped cautiously onto the gravel.  He was nearly at the house
when he heard the barn doors swing open and saw two men on Arabian
stallions ride out, screaming a high, keening wail.  They charged at
him, drawing long curved swords as their horses raced toward him.
"Police!"  he shouted, reaching for his identification.
The men did not stop.  Candy felt himself break into a sweat as the
animals pounded closer.  He could see their flaring nostrils and the
eyes of the black-clothed horsemen as they swung their curious weapons
in the air above their heads, preparing to strike.
At the last moment, Candy's nerve failed him.  He dived to the ground
and rolled just as the horse's hooves came down on the spot where he
had been standing.  While the horsemen reined in the animals to come at
him again, Candy saw in an upstairs window of the house the face of a
tall thin man with jet black hair and a beard and recognized him as the
maniac he had arrested four years before and sent to Maplebrook.  "You
son of a bitch," he whispered, and the man answered with a slight
inclination of his head.  His eyes were smiling.
Candy ran, but there was no place to run.  He had only gone a few steps
when the horsemen were on him.  The first blow cut deeply into his
throat.  Candy felt the searing pain of it, felt his head thrown wildly
back.  He was even able to see the unbelievable gush of blood shoot out
of his neck before the second sword smashed against the side of his
head, breaking the thin bone over his right temple.
He crumpled to the ground, dead before his body touched the gravel.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The pain in Arthur's side abated with time.  He had been brought back
from the basement to the upstairs sitting room where he had spent the
night; the tall man himself had ordered the boy out of his sight after
Arthur's rejection of him.  There he waited, wondering about the
strange phenomenon that he'd witnessed.  He had been someone else, had
actually lived as another person once, long ago, and for a time--for
the briefest time, during the nonsensical half-dream that had come upon
him in his imagined pain--he had remembered that faraway life.  I was
Arthur of England, he thought.  He knew that if it had happened to
anyone else, he would have found the story laughable.  Everyone wanted
to be a king, right?  Even girls.  But his recollection had not been
that of a king; only of a man on the verge of death.  He remembered
only the pain and the delirious vision of a vanishing Christ as he felt
the life ebb out of his body.  Now he was no longer a king, or even a
man.  He was just a scared ten-year-old boy.  He wrapped his arms
around his knees to ward off the fear, but the fear only grew.  You
could have said yes to him, a voice inside him said.  You could have
told him you'd side with him.  He would have made you a king, or at
least somebody important-- No.  No, he could never have agreed.  After
seeing the face in the vision, it was all too clear what Saladin was.
It was better to die.  He just wished he wasn't so afraid.  "Help me,"
he whispered.  Saladin had told him to call on the wizard.  That was
Merlin in the stories.  "Merlin .  . ."  He felt foolish.  The story
had seemed real in the eerie setting of the basement filled with
treasures, but now .  . . "Merlin," he tried again.  There was no
answer.  He lay his head against his knees.  Now I lay me down to
sleep, he thought.  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.  If I should die .
. . Suddenly the frayed cord of a lamp caught his eye.
Holding his breath, he went around the room and turned on all the
lamps, then watched them.  They flickered.  Old wiring.  The house had
been built before the advent of electricity; the wiring had probably
been put in later.  He could picture the beautiful Victorian mansion
then, illuminated by the modern miracle of electric lights.  He doubted
that it had been replaced since then.  All of the fixtures in the place
seemed so old, as if whoever owned the house had not wanted to change
them.  A short in one of the circuits might be enough to knock out most
of the electricity in the house.  Arthur went quickly into the bathroom
to look for a razor blade, but there was nothing in the medicine
cabinet except for an old glass bottle of moldy aspirin.  Working
quickly, muffling the noise with a towel, he rapped the aspirin bottle
against the cabinet sink until it broke.  Then he took a shard of the
broken glass back into the parlor.  He unplugged one of the old lamps
and cut off its cord, then sliced it lengthwise to separate the two
wires inside and shaved the insulation from them with small, careful
strokes.  When he was done, there was an inch and a half of bright,
bare copper showing at the end of each wire.  With one eye on the door,
Arthur folded back the ends of the wires to double them up and make
them thicker, then jammed them into the slots of a wall socket.  He
dropped the other end of the cord, the end with the plug on it, behind
the small covered table where the lamp sat.  The plug was live now, and
touching it would give anyone a nasty shock.  Later, when the time was
right, he would push the plug into yet another socket.  If he was
correct, the twisted surge of power created would short out the whole
circuit.  Maybe the whole building.  He hoped so.  It was his last
chance.  He heard someone at the door and ran across the room back to
the sofa.  He hid the piece of glass under a cushion.  One of Saladin's
men looked in on him silently, then withdrew at once.  Arthur closed
his eyes and waited.
It was 6:55.  More than two hours had passed since Hal spoke with
Candy's assistant, and Candy still had not arrived back at the police
van.  Hal tracked the inspector as far as the empty house on Abelard
Street.  Several of the people who lived on the street told Hal that
they had spoken with the Scotland Yard man earlier, but none of them
knew where Candy might have been heading next.  Where had the bastard
gone?  In the Bureau, the head of an investigation would be suspended
for taking off without letting anyone know where he was going.  But
then, Hal thought more kindly, Candy was probably used to working
alone.
Higgins and Chastain would hardly be the inspector's idea of great
backup.  And who else did he have?  Constable Nubbit?  Hal finally
resigned himself to the knowledge that, in Candy's place, he would have
done the same.  There was one more thing he could do without Candy's
assistance.  He took out a crude map he had drawn after speaking with
Matilda Grimes.  It showed the location of the old house behind the
amusement-park grounds.  It was right.  From where the house stood, if
the map was accurate, it was close enough to the remains of the castle
for an easy attack through the woods.  He drove to the spot where
Higgins and Chastain had found the horses' hoofprints, then walked
through the two-mile stretch of trees and brush.  Beyond it was a
rolling meadow shaped like an enormous bowl surrounding the house.  The
amusement park would be to the west, he reasoned, behind another
fortification of trees.
There were no people in sight at the house, but two large horses grazed
in the meadow.  Hal tried to remember if they were the same horses
involved in the attack on the castle grounds, but he knew too little
about horses to tell one from another.  He waited nearly a half hour on
his belly for someone to come out of the house.  No one did, and he was
not about to approach the place alone and unarmed.  Finally he retraced
his steps back to the car and drove to the inn.  "I think I know where
the kidnappers are," he pleaded with Higgins on the telephone.  "With
ten or fifteen men from Scotland Yard or the SAS, we could storm the
place before the trade."  Higgins nearly choked.  "The Special Air
Service?
Surely you're not serious, Mr. Woczniak."  "Damn it, these men are
dangerous."  "I assure you, Inspector Candy has things well in hand."
"Candy's missing!"  Hal shouted into the telephone.  "For all we know,
he's in trouble.  He might even be in the house with Arthur."  "That
hardly seems likely," Higgins said dryly.  Hal knew he was grasping at
straws and tried to sound more reasonable.  "Okay, maybe," he said.
"But wherever he is, we can't wait for him any longer.
Scotland Yard could helicopter some men down here--" "The inspector
never intended to call in men from Metropolitan," Higgins corrected
him.  "Officers from local constabularies will be used.  That is, if
the inspector deems it necessary to bring in any outside help.  As it
stands, however, that hardly seems to be the case."  "What?"  Hal
couldn't believe his ears.  "This house you claim to have located.
Have you been there yourself?."  "Yes.  There were horses outside."
"What sort of horses?"  I don't know, for God's sake.  Big horses.
?
Higgins sighed.  "Big horses," he repeated.  "Did you see any of the
men you encountered in the meadow by the hill fort?"  Hal was stuck.
"No," he said finally.  "They must have all been in the house."  "Mr.
Woczniak, do be reasonable.  Other people besides kidnappers live in
this area.  They own horses.  Big horses."  Hal had reached the
bursting point.  Look," he said.  "We need cops with weapons to get
Arthur out of that place.  If you don't give me the cops, at least give
me a gun, and I'll go in myself."  "That would be highly imprudent."
"I want a gun," Hal insisted.  "We don't use guns, Mr.  Woczniak.
I've told you that.  And if we did, we would hardly issue them to irate
civilians."  "What about Candy?  Aren't you even worried about him?"
"No, I am not, Higgins said.  His patience was evidently strained,
since he was speaking almost loud enough to be heard in normal
conversation.
"The inspector has no doubt come across a more viable lead than yours,
and is pursuing it.  "Right.  Or maybe he's dead," Hal said.  "Mr.
Woczniak .  . ."  "Go scratch your ass."  Hal slammed down the phone.
He dialed Scotland Yard next.  After a quarter hour of being shunted
from one disembodied voice to another, he was again told, gently but
firmly, to stay out of Inspector Candy's business.
His panic rising, he tried a long-distance call to the FBI in
Washington.  The chief had brought Scotland Yard into the investigation
in the first place; the chief would be able to kick them into action
now.
The chief was aboard an airplane enroute to California.  Hal hung up in
despair.  There was only one other man who might possibly be able to
bring in enough police officers to storm the kidnappers' hideout.
"Constable Nubbit, I'm asking you to consider the possibility that
something may have happened to Inspector Candy," Hal said as humbly as
he could.
Nubbit chuckled.  "You're an odd one.  Droll.  Very droll, I must say."
"May I ask what makes my request for additional policemen so very
humorous?"  Hal asked, feeling the air grow hot inside his nostrils.
Nubbit leaned forward earnestly.  "Sir, Scotland Yard's already denied
that request.  I can't go over their heads."  "That's not Scotland Yard
in that van outside," Hal said.  "They're two scientists who wouldn't
know how to stop a pack of kidnappers if they had a howitzer."
"Officers Higgins and Chastain are detectives in the Metropolitan
Police," the constable said archly.  "And damn nice chaps, I might
add."  "What about Candy?"  Hal shouted, unable to control himself any
longer.
No one seemed to be interested in the fact that the primary officer in
the case had been missing for hours.  "Never got to know him as well as
the others," Nubbit confessed.
"Seemed all right.  Socks didn't match.  One gets to notice little
things like that in this line of work, you know."  "Jesus!"  He felt
like strangling the man.  "What I'm saying is that Candy might not be
in a position to call out the extra police officers we're going to
need."  "Oh, I wouldn't jump to any conclusions, Mr. ah .  . . What
was your name again?"  Hal closed his eyes.  "Woczniak."  "Bugger to
pronounce, that."  "If the inspector weren't in trouble, he'd have
called."  "Oh, no, no, no.  Not necessarily."  "It's after nine
o'clock!  The kidnappers want me to meet them at midnight.  Constable
Nubbit, what I'm saying is that with Candy or without him, we're going
to have to pull some officers together, or those men are going to kill
the boy.  Can you get the word out to the other villages and towns in
the area?"  "Oh, my, no."  He shook his head briskly.  "I'm just a P.C.
Wouldn't do to have me going over the head of Scotland Yard."  "But
I've explained .  . ."  Hal cut himself off.  It was no use.
He'd gone full circle with the man.  Nubbit's brain simply could not
tolerate any deviation from the standard routine, for any reason.
"Thank you," Hal said wearily, and stood up.  "Glad to be of help,"
Nubbit called as Hal left the station.
Emily had heard no word from the kidnappers.  "What's taking them so
long?"  she asked.  "I don't know," Hal said, stretching out in an
overstuffed chair in her room.  He felt tired to his bones.  Tired,
disgusted, and hopeless.  "I've talked to everyone I could, even.  that
thick headed imbecile at the police station.  If I could only--" At
that moment, the glass in the window shattered and something sailed
into the room, landing with a wet thud in the middle of the rug.  Hal
jumped to his feet and ran immediately to the window.  A motorcycle was
zooming away down the street.  He didn't need to check the license
plate to know that it was the same man who had shot out the windshield
in the Morris.
"Don't touch it," he said.  Together they stared at the strange
package.
It was vaguely spherical.  The heavy brown paper had been wrapped
around it hastily.  "It's .  . . it's bloody," Emily said, her face
white.
One side of the package was stained red.  The stain was growing, oozing
down onto the rug.  "You'd better get out of here," Hal said, but Emily
stood frozen where she was.  "Open it," she whispered.  He knelt down
beside it, tore off a strip of tape, then looked up at Emily.
She nodded.  "It might be .  . . something that belongs to Arthur," Hal
said, trying to prepare her for the shock.  "Open it."  Her voice was
harsh and raspy.  "Goddamnit, open it, or I will."  With a deep breath,
Hal pulled aside the soggy brown paper.  It was Inspector Candy's head.
"Oh, Christ," Hal said.  Whether from shock or relief, Emily fainted.
Her head hit the floor with a bang.  Quickly Hal started to rewrap the
grisly thing, but then he noticed that someone had written on the
inside of the paper.
Come alone to the gristmill on Pembroke Lane, five miles south.  No
more police, please, or you'll find the boy's head in the next package.
You must know by now that I am quite serious.
It was signed with a large, florid S.

CHAPTER FIFTY

Hal doused Emily's face with a cold washcloth.  Then, when she started
to come around, before she was fully conscious, he made her swallow one
of Arthur's Seconal tablets.  If she were awake, he knew, she would
insist on meeting Saladin herself, and he was not about to permit that.
He set her on the bed with her head resting on the pillow.  Then he
went into his own room to find the sheet of ingenious instructions
Arthur had written to assure Emily a safe life in the event of his own
death.  Hal attached his own note to Arthur's.
Emily, Don't wait for anyone to find us.  Just follow these
instructions, and you'll be safe.  It's what Arthur wanted most for
you.
Me, too.  Hal He wanted to say more.  He wanted to say that he missed
her lready, that for a moment it had seemed as if he'd finally found
some purpose in his life.  That there might be such a thing as
happiness, somewhere, and that maybe, just maybe, they could find it
together, the three of them.
But he knew Emily had been right.  It was too late for all of that.  A
few words would change nothing.
He looked at his watch.  Ten-thirty.  He would walk to the rendezvous.
There would be no point in using a car to get away in any case.
Saladin's message said five miles south.  South of what?  Of town?  Of
the castle?
No, he realized.  Saladin had been talking about the inn.  He knew
exactly where Hal was.  He had known about Candy, and he probably knew
that, without the inspector, Hal would not be able to muster enough
manpower to fight.
Hal would die, of course.  Saladin would never let him live with his
knowledge.  And Arthur would die, too, if he wasn't dead already.
After tonight, only Emily would have a chance of getting out alive.
It was rotten, rotten for the kid, but what had anyone expected with
Hal Woczniak on the job?  He had failed again.  All he could hope for
was to take a few of the bastards down with him.
But that was something, at least.  Something he would do for Brian
Candy.  And for Arthur.
He knocked on Mrs. Sloan's door, awakening her.  "Lord, son, what's
wrong now?"  "I'm sorry to disturb you, but I've got another favor to
ask of you.
The last one, I promise."  She ran her fingers through her hair.
"Well, out with it, unless you plan to keep me up all night talking."
He gave her three hundred in pound notes.  It was all the money he had.
"I'd like you to take half of this, and give the rest to Emily in three
hours.  She's asleep, but I want you to wake her up.  Give her plenty
of coffee, and then drive her to the nearest train station and get her
aboard a train for London.  There's a note in an envelope addressed to
her on the bureau.  Please put it in her pocketbook.
She'll be groggy, so she may not remember to take it."  "Good heavens,
lad--" "I can't explain any more.  But if anyone comes looking for her,
just tell them that she disappeared one night.  That's for your own
safety, Mrs. Sloan."  The woman looked flustered, then nodded.  "All
right.  I 'know you wouldn't be running out unless it was a weighty
thing."  "Thank you."  He turned to leave.  "I'm sorry for all you're
going through, both of you."  "Yeah," Hal said.
Back in his own room, he picked up the measuring cup wrapped in
newspapers, then walked downstairs.  He took a long knife from one of
the drawers in the kitchen and slipped it in the back of his belt.
The time had come to do battle once more with the Saracen Knight,
though he knew the outcome would be the same as it had been a hundred
lifetimes ago.
The way to Pembroke Lane passed by the ruins of the castle.  Arthur's
castle, Hal thought.  Camelot, where the knights of the Round Table had
gathered to serve the greatest king in history.
He walked off the road and climbed the silent, dark hills for the last
time.  The rocks remained, moss-covered and immovable, in the places
where they had fallen centuries ago.  In his mind, he could see it all
as it had been in the first glorious years: the grand sweep of the
outer bailey, with its turrets and high walls; the courtyard where the
servants tended the animals and the gardens and the knights practiced
at war; the inner fortifications beyond the moat, now no more than a
shallow ditch; and the magnificent keep, so tall that it seemed to
touch the very stars, so strong that no enemy force could ever
penetrate it.
So they had thought back then, when they were the new order of the
world.
It was all gone now.  All but Arthur himself, come back to rule a
kingdom that no longer existed, with a protector whose shortcomings had
doomed them both to death.  "God, why did you choose me?"  he
whispered.  "Beg pardon, sir?"  chirped a young voice.
Hal whirled around.  Perched on the low wall behind him was the same
young boy who had come to the meadow on the morning that Arthur was
taken.  "I .  . . I didn't see you," Hal said.  "I come to hear the
horses," the boy said.  Hal looked at him uncomprehendingly.  "It's St.
John's Eve, sir.  The knights ride tonight.  If you listen, you'll hear
them coming from this very place, looking for their king till light of
day."  Slowly, Hal looked around him at the ruin.  "The ghost riders,"
he said quietly.  "I've heard of them."  "Oh, they're real, all right.
I come here every year.  The hooves pound like thunder, they do."  The
boy looked up at the starry sky.
"Only they don't ever find the king.  I 'spect Arthur must be dead by
now."  Hal swallowed.  "Look, kid, you'd better get home," he said
gruffly.  "The cops are looking for some armed criminals around here.
This is no place for you."  "But the knights of the Round Table .  .
."
"Go on, get out of here."  He pushed the boy toward the road, then
followed him out of the castle ruins.  The boy ran a short distance to
keep from falling, then turned back to look at' Hal.  "Go home, I said!"
Hal called.  The boy moved into the darkness, and Hal walked on toward
Pembroke Lane.
He arrived at the mill by 11:20.  Not much remained of the operation
except for the skeletal remains of a waterwheel and some fallen boards.
There was no place to hide here, but that didn't matter: Hal was
through hiding.  Before long, he heard the sound of hoofbeats.  A horse
was coming near.  No, more than one horse.  In the moonlight he could
see their shining flanks.  Mounted on one was a rider dressed in black
robes, holding the reins of the other animal.  He stopped some distance
away and gestured for Hal to approach him.  "I can't ride," Hal said as
the man in black tossed down the reins.
The man did not answer.  The riderless horse moved toward Hal,
nickering.  Awkwardly clutching the wrapped cup from Mrs. Sloan's
cupboard, Hal clambered up onto the saddle and picked up the reins.
"All right," he said resignedly.  "Where to?"  The horseman turned and
rode away at a slow trot.  Hal's horse followed him.  They turned off
the roadway and into the woods for a short time, then burst through
into a large open field, where the mounts picked up speed.  Hal hung on
desperately until they crested a rise in the field.  Below, bathed in
moonlight, was the old stone mansion he had seen earlier.  One upstairs
room was lit.  The rest of the house was dark.  I knew it was the
place, Hal thought with disgust.  Everything about its location had
been right.
Yet no one had believed him enough to send out even a small contingent
of men to rescue Arthur.  Now it was too late for that.  Too late.
Arthur saw him coming.  He had heard a sound in the meadow and had run
to the window, as he had run a hundred times since nightfall.  The
window itself had been sealed shut.  He had tried more than once to
break the glass, but it was of the double-thik, insulated variety and
besides, the only thing between the window and the ground thirty feet
below was a narrow slate gable.  Except for the man who had come to
seal the window, he'd had no visitors since Saladin's tour of the
basement room with him that morning.  No visits, no meals, not even the
dreaded injections.  It was as if Arthur had suddenly ceased to exist
for the men in the old stone house.  He was relieved.  Without the
drugs, he could at least stay awake.  That was something he knew he had
to do.
Saladin had given him the option to live, and he had refused it.
Whatever was planned would happen tonight, and Arthur knew he had to be
alert.  His life depended on that.  As he reached the window the
hoofbeats became clear.
When he saw the two riders, his heart quickened.  One of them was Hal.
He knew it even before the moon illuminated Hal's sandy hair and light
skin.  He had known it all along, he supposed.  Hal would come.  When
he needed a champion, Hal would come.  Quickly he dashed from the
window to check the wires from the lamp.  A short circuit wasn't much,
but it might buy Hal a minute or two.  Then he went back to the window
to watch the men dismount.  There was no one else around.  No police.
From his vantage point, he would have spotted any activity in the woods
during the day.  There had been nothing.  Hal was alone, and probably a
captive, at that.  But he had come.  "Hal!  I'm here, Hal!"
he shouted, pounding on the heavy glass.  Hal looked up for a moment
before the other man shoved him roughly through the open door.  A few
moments later, the big man who had stood outside his door since he was
first brought to the house came into his room carrying a coil of rope.
Arthur tried to duck him, but the man caught him easily and stuck a wad
of cotton cloth into his mouth.  At almost the same time, he shoved
Arthur into a ladder-backed wooden chair, then tied him securely around
the chest and ankles.  After an inspection of his work, the man left.
Arthur looked at the frayed cord of the lamp.  Without his help, Hal
would not even have a minute.
Hal almost wept with relief when he saw Arthur's face.  If the kid
wasn't dead, there was a chance.  Never mind that he was outnumbered
and had no weapons.  Never mind that he had no cup to trade with
Saladin or that the police had no interest in helping him.  Arthur was
alive, and Hal would fight with every ounce of strength in his body to
keep him alive.  When his silent companion pushed him to the floor of
the darkened room, Hal rolled and pulled the knife out of his belt.
Then, springing to his feet, he lunged at the man.
The knife struck flesh, then bone, then an inner softness.  He heard a
gasp as the man struggled.  Then the lights came on, and in that
single, blinding instant, a swarm of bodies seemed to cover him.  When
he could see once again, the bloodied knife was on the floor next to
the dead man.  The newspaper-wrapped cup had slid under the table.  And
he was lying facedown, pinned to a carpet by three men in black.  He
could hardly breathe.  One of the assailants had his knee on Hal's
neck.  With the right move--and Hal was certain the man knew how to
execute it--the small bones would crack like peanut shells.  "Let him
go," a deep voice boomed.  At once the three obeyed.  The man who had
spoken stood in the center of the room, his arms folded in front of
him.  He, too, was dressed in black.  His tremendous height gave him
the appearance of some gigantic bird of prey at rest, its wings folded,
its talons sheathed.  He had only to glance sideways at the cup for one
of the men to scurry over to pick it up.  But Saladin was in no hurry
to see it.  He looked instead at Hal, his eyes bright with amusement.
"You kill well," he said, the admiration in his voice genuine.  "Most
men would have thought twice about killing the messenger in a trade."
"This is no trade, and you know it," Hal said.  "Now there's one less
of you."  Saladin shrugged slightly in acquiescence, then held his hand
out for the cup.  The other man placed it, still wrapped, in his hand.
The tall man's face clouded.  "What is this lie?"  he growled.  He
threw it to the ground.  "You didn't think I'd bring the real cup with
me, did you?"  Hal laughed.
"With all these goons hanging around waiting to slice me into bacon?"
He tried desperately to sound convincing.  "Look, the kid doesn't mean
anything to me.  I never met him until the day before yesterday.  But
there's no reason to kill him.  Let him go back to his aunt, and I'll
take you to the cup.  You and me alone.  Gentlemen's agreement.  Okay?"
Saladin stared at him for a moment.  Then his eyes softened.  He
smiled.  "You do not have the cup," he said softly.  "Sure I do.  Why
would I offer--" "Because you know I will kill you.  And you would be
willing to give your life for the boy."  He shook his head.  "You have
not changed."  "Hey, I don't know what you're talking about.  I'm
giving you a chance to get back the thing you want most."  Saladin
strode across the room.  "Kill him," he said as he walked out the door.
There had to be something he could do.  The lamp was not far away, and
though his hands were tied, his fingers were free.  Without a tool,
short-circuiting the wires would mean a bad shock, maybe a fatal one.
But there was no time to find a tool.
Hesitantly Arthur began to rock on the wooden chair until he wobbled
precariously.  At the last second, he tried to catch himself on the
tips of his toes, but he knew as soon as he began the attempt that it
wasn't going to work.  He fell forward, managing to turn enough before
he hit so that his shoulder, and not his face, struck the floor.
For a moment he lay there, perspiring with effort and pain.  Then,
slowly, he began to inch his way toward the lamp cord.
Faster, he thought, grunting as he wormed his way across the room on
his side, dragging the heavy weight of the chair.  If Hal was trying to
fight his way out, there was no time to lose.  He pushed himself
harder, ignoring the throbbing pain in his shoulder.
Finally he reached the lamp cord.  It took another few minutes to
maneuver himself into a position where he could manipulate the wires
with his hands behind his back.
This is crazy, he told himself.  You're going to get yourself killed.
Carefully, because he knew the plug end was live, he picked up the wire
and reached backward toward the socket.
But what if it didn't help?  What if the sudden darkness were to hurt
Hal rather than help him?  After all, he wasn't expecting it.  What if
Hal had already found his way to the stairs and was on his way to this
room?  He would never find it in the dark.  Arthur would never get out.
Then I might as well get electrocuted now, he thought.  He steeled
himself and jammed the plug into the socket.  A flash of blue flame
spat from the metal plug.  The force of the electrical jolt knocked
Arthur forward like an invisible fist, flinging him across the room,
the chair on his back like a turtle's shell.  The chair twirled on one
leg for an instant before coming to rest crookedly against the arm of
the sofa.
Oh, God, I'm still alive, he thought, watching the muscles in his knee
twitch.  He didn't have enough strength left to wiggle the chair
completely upright, so it stayed as it was, balanced on one leg.
He could hear shouting from the room three floors below.  "Ham-ruer,"
he said weakly.  Arthur bent his head and smiled.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

If Hal had believed in miracles, he surely would have attributed the
sudden darkness in the room to an act of God.  All three of Saladin's
men had been coming toward him when the lights inexplicably went out.
Hal reacted instantly by dropping to the floor and moving quietly in a
low crouch toward the door.  In the darkness, he could make out dim
shapes searching the place where he had been, while the men cursed in a
language he did not understand.
He put his hand around the doorknob and swung it open hard, so that it
crashed against the backstop.  Immediately, with an accompaniment of
guttural shouts, they spilled out into the night.  One, two, three
black shapes.
But there had been six of them in the meadow, he thought briefly.  He
was sure of that.  Saladin and five others.  He had just killed one.
That left four.
Yet he had seen only three men in the house besides Saladin.  Where was
the fourth?
He dismissed the thought.  The man might be dead, for all he knew.
Candy might have killed him in the fight that had cost the inspector
his life.
Or he may not have remembered correctly.  It was not something to worry
about.
Satisfied, he closed the door behind them and locked it, then turned
toward what he remembered as being a stairway.
He had gone up a half dozen of the steps when a hand clamped around his
ankle.  The fourth man.
Hal hit the steps hard, cracking his head on the stone.  By instinct he
rolled over onto his back as the man dived onto him.
In the dark, Hal could make out only the faintest outline of a figure,
but the outline was large and thick.  The man raised an arm above his
head and slammed it down against Hal's face.  Hal felt a shuddering
shock run through him from the impact.  And then it struck again.
The cup.  His face was being smashed by the steel cup that Saladin had
discarded.  Waves of red light washed across Hal's vision.  He reached
behind him for the knife, then realized that it was somewhere on the
floor beneath the stairs.  He had no weapon at all now.
The cup crashed down onto Hal's forehead again.  Struggling to keep
from passing out, Hal jerked his own arms upward and slammed both fists
beneath the man's jaw.
The blow landed hard.  With a sharp cry the shadowy figure above him
reeled backward.  Hal jabbed an elbow into his throat.  The burly man
fell back down the steps.
Hal did not have to follow him.  He knew from the sound the man's head
made as it hit the landing that he was dead.
Hal leaned against the wall for a moment, wiping the blood out of his
eyes with his sleeve.  Then he turned to crawl up the stairs.
He collapsed before he made it to the landing.  "The door has been
bolted from inside," one of the men said.  "He did not leave."  Saladin
studied the house.  "No, he wouldn't, I suppose."  After a long
silence, the man asked, "Shall we go in after him?"  Saladin shook his
head.  "No, I believe there is a better way to stop him."  He pointed
to the barn.  "Bring the kerosene."  The man looked at him in
disbelief, but Saladin did not see the expression on his face.  He was
thinking of the treasure room in the basement, with its five thousand
years of memories carefully preserved.
What good were they to him now, without the cup?  In the end, a life
that spanned millennia was just as useless as anyone else's.
He spat, but the bitterness in his mouth remained.  "Burn it down," he
said.
Hal was awakened by his own coughing.  The awful remembered taste of
smoke was in his throat and hanging thick in the air.  Through the
landing window, he saw the flames licking up the side of the house.
He bolted down the stairs, tripping over the body of the fourth man,
scrambling over the first he had killed, running toward the door,
running .  . . running to safety.
Wait a.second, Jeff, just hold on now, I'm coming .  . . He slammed
into the door, sobbing.
No, it's not happening, not again, please God no The draperies were on
fire.  The edges of the wool carpet were smoldering, sending off plumes
of black smoke.
Hal closed his eyes.  Arthur was dead.  He had to be.  It was the way
it was, the way of his nightmare, the way it had to be.  He would be
tied to the chair, his blue eyes glazed over, his little life gone.
Oh, yes.
It had come to this.  And Saladin had known it all along.  He had told
him as much in the painting he had left for Hal in the funhouse.  A
special death, for a special fool.
Hal closed his eyes.  "You stinking bastard," he said.
Then, his eyes washed fresh from his own tears of fear, he turned back
and hurled himself up the stairway.
Arthur's panic hit him in waves.  All of his senses seemed to be going
haywire at once.  His eyes stung from the smoke that poured in from the
ventilating duct in black billows.  The heat in the closed room caused
him to break out in a drenching sweat.  He could feel his own heart
beating harder and louder.  His ears rang with an eerie, high whine.
But mostly the panic was in his throat.  Whenever he tried to swallow,
he gagged.  The smoke was filling his nostrils and lungs, but when his
body tried to expel it with a cough, the wad of fabric in his mouth
worked its way farther down his windpipe.
Soon he could breathe only by staying as quiet as possible, immobile,
with his neck stretched up into the densest part of the smoke.  But
still he coughed, and with each cough, the gag went deeper and deeper.
He could feel his eyes bulging, the veins in his neck and temples about
to burst.  More than anything he longed to get the hateful balled-up
rag out of his mouth.  He pushed against it with his tongue until his
jaw ached, but he could not dislodge it.  And with every effort, he
choked.
The choking was the most frightening thing.  After a while, the
constant gagging caused his stomach to churn.  If he vomited, he knew,
he would die.  So he tried to ignore the extreme signals his body was
sending, tried to sit quietly, breathing the black air, but his body
would not be fooled.  This was fire, he was suffocating, and every cell
of his organism knew it.  Foul, vinegarish fluid shot up from his
stomach into his nostrils, filling them.  He screamed.  The sound was
only a tinny muffled whisper.  Afterwards, he tried to fill his lungs
again, but could not.
There was no air now, none at all.  Arthur felt his body stiffen and
jerk.  He tried to fight, but there was nothing he could do.  The waves
of panic crested, then began to subside, quickly, smoothly, rolling
waves.  An easy ride.

Easy.  Yes.

He didn't bother to close his eyes.  The smoke didn't hurt them
anymore.
His head fell back and he floated.  Water, maybe.  Easy ride.
If he stayed high, there was the smoke.  It got into the lungs and cut
off the oxygen and stopped the heart.
If he stayed low, there were the flames which tore at a man's flesh,
piercing it like knifepoints.
Hal chose the flames.
He dropped to all fours on the landing before the last flight of stairs
and scurried, like a crab, up the stairway.  He could see only inches
in front of him as he stumbled up the steps.
He had almost reached the top when the explosion occurred.
At fast, he heard only the sound of glass breaking.  The heat had
caused the windows to blow out, one by one, like popcorn on a grand
scale.  Then there was a squealing, splintering crack and a boom like
thunder as something came flying out of the darkness at him.  He slid
back down nearly the full flight of stairs on his belly as the object
settled with a deafening crash.
It was so large that it filled the entire stairwell.  By feel, he
determined that it was a door, two inches thick, and solid.  It had
probably blown out of one of the top-floor rooms, hit the far wall,
then caromed onto the stairs on the rebound.  The first bounce had
slowed its speed and power;, otherwise he could not have moved in time
to avoid it.
Hal climbed on top of it and moved cautiously, feeling splinters
jabbing into the palms of his hands and his knees.  When he reached the
top, he turned to his right and touched the wall.  It was sizzling hot.
He recoiled at first, then forced himself to move along it, feeling for
an opening.
He found it.  Inside, because of the breeze between the broken window
and the open doorway, the flames were even worse than those in the
hallway, but the air was clearer.  Clear enough to see the boy tied to
a ladder-back chair, his head thrown back, his eyes open, his body
motionless.
Hal moaned.
You're the best, kid.  The best there is.
He froze where he stood.  Slowly, as he watched, mindless and
terrified, the boy's face contorted and elongated into an ugly mask.
His limbs grew scales and claws.  A tail formed, its razor-pointed end
swishing lazily.  The long snout spewed foul-smelling smoke.  Its dark,
mocking eyes danced with laughter.  "Come get me, Hal," it said.  "I've
been waiting for you so long.  So .  . . long .  . ."  And then it
laughed, the hideous, hollow laughter of a hundred sweat-soaked nights.
Come on, Hal, you were the best the very best kid you always come too
late and it's too late now because that's what you' re best at THE VERY
BEST.
With a scream, Hal rushed toward the creature and embraced it, pulling
out the swollen gag, tearing off the ropes, putting his mouth on it as
he ran with it in his arms toward the open window.
He kicked out the spiky shards of glass left in the frame and eased the
still body onto the gable awning, dragging the rope behind him.
Though they were outdoors, Hal could barely see for the smoke that
streamed past them from the room.
There was no heartbeat.  Hal pressed down on the scaly chest five
times, then delivered a puff of breath into the monster's mouth.  Five
more times.  Another breath.  "Breathe, Arthur," he begged.  Oh God,
please let him live.

Five more times.

For you, my king.
A gust of wind blew the column of black smoke pouring from the window
away from them.  With it flew the dragon scales, the claws, the pointed
tail.  They disappeared into the shimmering hot night like fine
droplets of water.
The creature was gone.  Hal pressed his face against Arthur's chest.
He could hear a heartbeat.
For you .  . .
He sprawled the child out on the roof, flinging one arm across the
small body to hold him in lace, hanging on to the glass-splintered
window frame with !is other hand, giving the breath in his own lungs to
Arthur again and again.  "Please breathe," he whispered.  Another puff.
Again.
Once more.
And then the blue lips colored.  A thin crease grew on Arthur's
forehead, then deepened.  He coughed, croupy, harsh.  He gasped.

"Arthur.  Arthur, it's Hal.  Come bark."

The boy's eyes opened.  "Hal," he said, sounding strangled.  He coughed
again, then smiled.  Hal smiled back.  You're the bes .  .
The mocking voice was faint, traveling away.
kid...
Disappearing, like the dragon-creature, like all his ghosts.  Besssss
The thinnest whisper, dispersing, kaving him forever.  Gone.  "What say
we get out of here?"  he asked softly.
Arthur rubbed the soot from his eyes.  "I'm ready when you are."  Hal
looked at him for a moment, then pulled him close and hugged him.
He did not try to check the tears that fell into the boy's hair, salty,
sooty tears of love and gratitude.  "C'mon," he said.  He looped the
rope below Arthur's armpits, braced himself in the window frame, and
slowly lowered the boy.  When Arthur was safely on the ground, Hal tied
the rope around the window frame and shinnied down himself.
On the other side of the building, Saladin stood near the front
entrance, his eyes fixed on the flaming specter of the house.  "My
lord, the fire is nearing the barn.  The horses .  . ."  "Let them
burn."  Scream.  He needed to hear them with his own ears.
This man, this nobody, and an arrogant child had taken his life from
him.  A life so carefully crafted, woven like a fine tapestry over
millennia, gone in an instant.  He would grow old now.  He would feel
sickness, and pain.  And one night, his bones complaining, he would lie
down and never rise.  For that, he would] hear their screams as they
died.  "Sire, please.  The two are surely dead from the smoke .  . ."
Saladin silenced him with an angry sweep of his hand.  He was probably
right.  They were already dead.  But why did it have to end this way?
Two had come back through the ages to join him.  Only two, on the
endless, lonely journey through time.  And he had killed them both.
Was killing all there was left, the last twisted, tortured avenue in
the maze of his singular life?  He had never loved.  He had never ached
with passion or remorse.
He had never known the kindness of a friend, except for one afternoon
long ago, when an old man had shown him medicinal rocks.  That had
been k. is great mistake.  He should never have befriended the wizard.
If h had not, in a moment of self-indulgent abandon, given away the
secret of the cup by saving Merlin's worthless life, he himself would
not be dying now.  But in the end, te thought sadly, an afternoon's
friendship was perhaps the only real pleasure he'd ever experienced.
One afternoon, out of forty-five centuries.  He closed his eyes.  He
was getting soft.
Thoughts of death did that to a man.  They made one sentimental and
ridiculous.  They gave one regrets.  I did not want to kill you,
Arthur.
I wanted a new life, a new order.  A great man to lead the world.  A
king.
A companion.  A friend.  I wanted Camelot.  "Scream, damn you!"
Saladin's voice rang out above the din of the fire.
"Scream!"  "Sire!"  Saladin whirled on the man who had dared to
interrupt his thoughts again, ready to strike him down.  But the man
only pointed to the far hills, toward the barn.  Its doors were open.
And on the hillside, beyond the leaping flames, were two riders on
horseback, heading into the woods.  Saladin clenched his teeth.  "Bring
the horses," he said.
Hal leaned low over the mount, trying to keep pace with Arthur's
headlong gallop.  "Where'd you .  . ."  He winced as the horn of the
saddle jabbed into his chest.  "... learn to ride .  . . like that?"
he shouted.  Arthur laughed.  "I never rode before!"
"What?"  "I've never been on a horse!"  "Could have fooled me," Hal
muttered.  The boy was a natural.  He rode as if he'd spent his whole
life on horseback.  Like an ancient king, he thought.  He looked back
over his shoulder, back at the burning house down in the hollow.  Three
men were riding out of the barn.  They were leading a fourth horse,
Saladin's stallion, while its owner waited, his silhouette black
against the orange flames.  "They're coming after us," Hal said.  "Yes.
They would."  "Maybe we ought to head into town.  There are two cops,
and--" Arthur shook his head.  "They won't help."  "Right .  . . Well
then, where are we going?"  The boy turned his smudged, blistered face
to him.  It was not a child's face any longer.
The pale eyes were measured and determined, the mouth set.  "We're
going home," he said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Arthur reined in his horse just short of the wall surrounding castle
ruins and dismounted.  "I don't know if this is a good idea," Hal said,
looking around at the featureless meadow.  "They're going to spot us
here."  "I'm through hiding," Arthur said.  "We're going to fight
them."  "Here?  Are you kidding?"  Hal spoke so loudly that his horse
shied.
He grabbed wildly on to the animal's mane to keep from falling off.
"There's no cover.  We don't even have weapons, for pete's sake."
"Merlin!"  Arthur called.  "What?"  "Saladin said the wizard would come
if I called him."  He tried again.
"Merlin!"  Silence.  "Merlin!  Mr. Taliesin!"  Faintly, they heard the
sound of distant hoofbeats approaching.  "Forget it, kid.  I tried
that, too.  Wherever the old man is, .  he can't hear you."  Hal
thought he could feel his heart breaking.  "There's no magic.  We're
alone here."  "But he said .  . ."  They both turned toward the sound
of hoofbeats.
Four horsemen emerged from the woods and were galloping across the open
meadow toward them.  Raised overhead, their scimitars gleamed in the
moonlight.  "Then we'll fight them alone," Arthur said quietly.
Hal watched the horsemen come.  Four of them, armed and
battle-seasoned, against a bare-handed man and a boy.  "We'll lose,' he
said.  "Maybe.  But we'll fight, all the same."  The boy's eyes seemed
to be made of steel.  Hal considered picking him up bodily and throwing
him on one of the horses, but he knew that would do no good.  Saladin
and his men would catch up with them before long, and kill them like
insects.
Arthur was right.  Better to fight and die.  "No harm in trying," Hal
said, trying to sound less pessimistic than he felt.  He dismounted and
slapped both animals away.  Being on horseback would be no advantage to
someone who couldn't ride.  He eyed a big pile of boulders at the
bottom of a hill.  "Looks like that'll be our best bet," he said,
pointing to it.  "Pick up all the rocks you can.  We may get lucky and
hit one of those jerks between the eyes."  In the dark.  Right.
And maybe we'll stab one through the heart with a hickory stick while
we're at it.  They scrambled for rocks as the horsemen came on.  "Wait
until they get close."  "This is the rock that fell over," Arthur said.
"The fake rock with the writing on it."  He peered over the side to
touch the long crack that ran up its length.  "Get down."  Hal shoved
him roughly behind the boulder, then stood up and threw a heavy stone
the size of a. baseball as the horsemen thundered toward them.  It hit
one of the attackers in the shoulder just as he was about to close in
for the kill.  The force of the blow threw him backward, twisting, so
that the blade swung down wildly.  It missed Hal but struck the
man-made boulder in front of Arthur so hard that the sword broke off at
the hilt.
As the horseman rode past, Hal watched the shiny blade fly into the air
and then land almost at his feet.  "Mother of God, will you look at
that," he said, picking it up.  It was a piece of luck beyond
imagining.
He studied the broken steel crescent for a moment, then positioned it
in his hand like a boomerang and let fly.  It hit another of the
horsemen square in the chest.  With a high scream, the man tumbled off
his horse.
Hal let out a vhoop.
He watched Saladin's men turn back and gather around their leader,
apparently discussing what strategy should be taken.  There was no hurry
about the situation.  It was understood that they would cut down the
brazen American.  But they had not expected him to fight so boldly.
The men grumbled, ignoring their fallen comrade who groaned and gasped
on the ground beside the skittish hooves of their horses, the blood
pulsing from the wound in his chest, "Come on, you creeps!"  Hal yelled
gleefully.  He turned to Arthur.  "Three to two.  The odds are getting
better all the time."  "Hal, look at this," Arthur said.  He had pulled
a large chunk of mortar off the man-made rock.  "The guy's sword broke
it off.  There's something inside."  Imbedded in the crumbling mortar
was a cylinder nearly ten inches long, metallic from the looks of it,
and studded with polished stones that looked black in the moonlight."
"What the hell is that?"  Hal asked.
Arthur only grunted in reply.  He was pulling at the other side, trying
to break off the remaining piece of mortar that held it in place.
"Help me, Hal.  There's a crack in back.  We can break it off."
Hal reached over and gave it a quick yank, thinking that the mortar
would make a good weapon.  It was big, but light enough to throw
accurately.  When it didn't give, he elbowed Arthur aside and braced
the rock against his knees, pulling down with both hands.  "Forget it.
There isn't time for--" Just then the piece cracked off with a small
cloud of dust.  Hal hefted the chunk and crouched down as the homemen
began their second run.  This time they split up and came at Hal and
the boy from three different directions.  "Hal, it's .  . ."  "Get
down!"  He threw the piece of mortar at the tall leader riding between
the two others, but Saladin was too good a horseman.  At the last
instant before the rock would have struck, he veered his mount away.
The mortar sailed past him, and he continued his charge.
He was so close that Hal saw the man's ugly smile before he felt the
blade.  The first blow sliced Hal diagonally, from the right side of
his chest up through his neck.
Hal gasped, his eyes momentarily transfixed by the wound.  The gush of
his own blood was an amazing sight.  It spurted from Hal's body like
water from a sprinkler, pulsating with each heartbeat.  Before he could
even react to it, Saladin had reared his stallion, wheeled him around
in a circle, and cut Hal again, this time a long vertical slice down
the side of his right arm.
Saladin brought his horse to a stop.  He looked down at Hal.  His
eyebrows arched; the black eyes registered something like mirth.  Then
he struck again.  The third blow ran from shoulder to shoulder.
He wants me to bleed to death, Hal realized.  Saladin had had every
opportunity to make one deep, killing strike, but he had chosen instead
to tease Hal, to make him dance with pain.
Far off, somewhere beyond the shock that was overtaking him, he heard
Arthur scream.
Arthur!  Somehow, he had to save Arthur.
Hal forced himself to stay lucid a moment longer, long enough to see
the giant curved blade of Saladin's scimitar strike at him for the
fourth time.  He waited until it was close, very close.  Then he leaped
up and grasped the blade with both hands.
The pain coursed through him like a jolt of electricity.  The blade was
buried deep in his palms.  Saladin tried to jerk it free, but Hal held
fast.
You're not getting this until you saw my goddamned hands off, he
thought.  Then, screaming with the pain, he wrested the blade out of
Saladin's grip and lunged toward the towering horseman.
The point of the sword dug into the tall man's leg, piercing it so
deeply that the tip punctured the flesh of the horse beneath him.
The animal reared.  Saladin kicked it into a gallop, retreating down
the meadow.  And following them, the tip of the naked steel blade
growing out of his bleeding hands, ran Hal, staggering like a beheaded
chicken, screaming incoherently.  "Hal!"  Arthur called, terrified.
But he knew Hal couldn't hear him now.  Saladin had not fled.  He had
enticed Hal out onto the open field, away from the stones which had
offered what little protection there was.  Now he and his two remaining
men were circling Hal, egging him to run after them, laughing at his
uncontrolled dying gestures.  In the moonlight, Arthur could see the
drunken tracks of Hal's movements by the black streaks of his blood on
the silvery grass.
Tears ran down the boy's cheeks.  Unconsciously he squeezed the object
in his hand.  Then, with a gasp, he saw it.  The cylinder in the rock
was made of gold.  Blinking away his tears, he could make out the
intricate carvings on either end of fine, roped bands.  It was the hilt
of a sword.
A magnificent sword made of gold and jewels and magic.  A king's sword.
"I'm coming, Hal," he said softly.  Holding his breath, he reached into
the fissure of the rock and grasped the golden hilt with both hands.
He felt its power, a wild, singing energy that leaped from the metal
into his body.  It felt almost like the cup, strong and unearthly,
pouring its magic into him; but this was infinitely more mighty than
the cup.  It was Excalibur, Arthur knew, free at last in the hands of
its rightful master.  With a cry that began in the deepest part of his
soul, he lifted the sword from the stone.  And, as if relieved to be
giving up its ancient treasure, the rock cleaved away in two halves.
Slowly the boy raised the gleaming silver blade.
Hal stood, wavering, in the midst of the three homemen.  Saladin's two
henchmen watched as their master reached into a scabbard fastened to
his saddle and drew out a long, double-bladed dagger.  A knife for
skinning game.  His horse took another measured step forward toward
Hal.  It was all over now, Hal knew.
He had no strength left to fight with.  He had lost again; now he would
be peeled like some small animal before finally being left to find his
shameful sanctuary in death.  "Come on, finish it," he gasped through
his blood-filled mouth.  But Saladin did not approach.  He seemed to be
frozen atop his mount, looking past Hal down the meadow, to the stones
where Arthur was.  He turned the stallion away from the dying man and
faced the boy across the field.  The other men, confused, reined in
their horses as well.  Seeing a faint chance, Hal tried a last blind
charge toward the horsemen, but it was useless.  Before he reached
them, he stumbled and fell.  When he hit the ground, the scimitar's
blade jarred loose from his hands.  His thumbs hung down from his
fingers like two strips of meat.  His head bounced against the
dew-covered grass.  He rolled onto his side, staring hazily back toward
the pile of stones and the boy he had failed to save from death.  And
then he saw it, too: Arthur standing tall, holding in his hand the
great sword of ages.  He forgot Saladin and his horsemen, still as
statues on the meadow.  He forgot the blood that was spouting from his
own neck, and the useless objects that had once been his hands, and the
pain that burned through his body like a living thing.  He forgot that
he was about to die.  "My king," he whispered.  For a moment the field
was utterly silent.  Not a whisper of breeze, not the chirping of a
single insect.  It was the silence of time turning backward.  And then,
ringing across the rolling hills came Arthur's command, rough with
tears and pain and loss: "To arms!  Your king calls you to arms!"  The
sound lingered in the air, echoing, echoing .  . . Then, faintly, it
was joined by another sound, the surging thunder of hoofbeats as,
before them all, a great castle of stone began to materialize out of
the air.
Camelot was being reborn.
It seemed to be made of mist at first, the walls and turrets, the
vaulting keep that reached to the stars.  But as the men in the meadow
watched, they saw that it was a solid thing, as real as their own
flesh.
Banners flew from the ramparts.  Trumpets sounded the call to arms.
From behind the high wall, the sound of hoofbeats grew louder until,
with a piercing squeal of metal against metal, the great drawbridge
descended and the knights poured out, hundreds of them, dressed in
shining chain mail, led by eleven fierce men riding horses in full
battle armor bearing the red dragon of their king, once and forever,
Arthur of England.  "'Attaboy, kid," Hal'said.  And then his head was
so heavy that he had to let it drop.  The wet grass felt cool and
welcome.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

Saladin's two remaining lackeys fled, screaming, as the castle of
Camelot rose out of the predawn mist, spewing forth an army of
battle-ready warriors like a river of silver.  The river flowed after
them into the woods--all but the first eleven, the king's guard.  These
stopped .where the tall Saracen waited astride his stallion, and
surrounded him.
Saladin folded his arms and stared at each of the knights in turn.
"Ghosts," he spat.
Laughing, a big, dark-haired knight knocked him off his horse with the
side of his sword.  Another, a grizzled old veteran, looped a rope
around him and dragged him toward Arthur, who had run to kneel beside
Hal.  Within minutes, the others returned with the mangled bodies of
Salalin's men.  Then together, they all dismounted and fell on one knee
to pay homage to the boy-king.
They filled half the meadow, the kneeling knights in armor.  Hal
propped himself up on one elbow to behold the sight.  "They came," he
whispered.  "They came for you."  Arthur bent over him, sobbing.
"Don't die, Hal.  Please don't die."  "Might have to."  He smiled
weakly.  "Hey, it's all right.  I did what I could.  Now it's up to
you."  "No!  Hal, no, don't leave me!  Hal .  . ."  His voice was so
far away.  Hal wanted to answer him, comfort him, somehow.  He wanted
to tell Arthur that he would be just fine without him, as fine as a man
had ever been.  But then, the boy would find that out for himself one
day.
Hal did not regret dying.  Like the lost knights, he too had waited a
thousand years to find his king.  Now he had found him.  There would be
no more demons hiding in his nightmares, no more fear.  It was a good
end, better than he had ever expected.
He closed his eyes and sank back, drifting.  The Saracen Knight once
again lifted the chalice from his hands.  Once again the sword sang
through the air, his blood flowed, he fell dying.
Oh, yes.  The past was immutable and eternal.  A man could not change a
moment of it; all that was in his power was to forgive himself.
For you, my king.
And for me.
And Galahad, the loyal knight who had journeyed so far, smiled and made
his peace with death.
In the village of Wilson-on-Hamble, many were already awake.  Some had
stayed up the whole night; others had set their clocks to arise just
before dawn.  It was St. John's Eve, and all waited to hear the sounds
of King Arthur's ghost knights scouring the countryside looking for
their fallen sovereign.
There were many among them who called it a hallucination or just a
natural phenomenon, some curious auditory trick of nature's.  But just
the same, they expected to hear the riders again, as they did every
year.  They were not disappointed.  This time the hoofbeats seemed
louder, more numerous than at any time they could remember.  The
town--every street and alley and walking path in it--resounded with the
hollow beats.  Every field and meadow and forest copse echoed with the
roar of the ghostly cavalry.  Then, surprisingly, as quickly as the
sound had come, it faded.  The villagers closed their eyes and went
back to sleep, perhaps to dream of days when there were knights and
wardor-kings and a world of justice and peace was struggling to be
born.
But that .world, each knew, existed only in dreams.
Yet in a rolling, rock-strewn meadow, separated from the town by a few
miles and sixteen centuries, one knight found that death refused to
attend him.  The deep, still calm that had been falling upon Hal like
snow stopped suddenly, replaced by a warm buzzing feeling.  Warm .  . .
hot, burning hot Oh Jesus, am I in Hell?  jumpy, fiery, red-embered
hot.
He did not will it, but he felt his eyes opening.  Kneeling beside him
was Merlin, dressed in his blue wizard's robes.  In his hands he held
the cup.  He pressed it against Hal's cheek.  Hal felt the blood that
had filled his mouth to choking start to dry up.  He felt a line of
healing fire tracing over the wounds that Saladin's blade had made.
Slowly he raised his hands to his eyes.  The cuts that had almost
severed his thumbs were gone.  His fingers had healed completely, as if
the wounds had never been inflicted.  There was only the memory of
pain, and that was dispelled by the sight of Arthur's face, smudged and
weary, smiling radiantly down at him.
He sat up and grinned at Merlin.  "Took you long enough," he said.  "I
told you," the wizard answered, bugging out his eyes in annoyance.  "I
couldn't get out until the king himself called me."  "Arthur called you
plenty of times."  "Not as the king."  He looked at the boy.  "First,
you had to believe."
The old man breathed deeply.  He looked back at the castle with pride.
"You've brought it all back, Arthur.  You and your brave, rock-headed
friend."  Arthur threw his arms around Hal, who laughed and then
extricated himself from the boy's grip.  "All right, that's enough
small talk," he said.  "See to your men."  He gestured toward the field
of kneeling knights.  "And Dracula here."  Saladin looked up at them
from his position as a captive on the ground.  His eyes were murderous.
"Go haunt a house," Hal said.  "He's wounded.  Take care of him,"
Arthur commanded the knights who were nearest to the prisoner.  The big
dark-haired knight tore off part of his tunic, but when he approached,
Saladin spat at him.  The knight drew back, reaching for his sword.
"No, Lanncelot," Arthur said, holding out his arm.
Launcelot, Hal thought.  The boy had actually spoken to him.  For the
first time, Hal fully realized that these were not ghosts, not the
frozen, dappled images he had seen in the dream castle where Merlin had
outlined the task before him, but real men, as alive as he was.  Not
five feet away from him stood the great Launcelot himself, sweating and
breathing hard, his face flushed with fury at a sullen prisoner.
Without thinking, Hal reached out to touch the knight; then he caught
himself, and withdrew his hand.  Lanncelot caught the movement, and the
angry features of his own face softened into a smile.  "Rise, Saladin,"
Arthur said.  The tall man lurched to his feet, his hands bound behind
him, his black leg-wrappings wet with the blood from his wound.  "'Kill
your enemies,'" the boy said softly.  "Do you remember when you told me
why?  'Humiliate them.  Degrade them.  Make an example of them for
others .  . ."" Saladin's black gaze wavered for a moment, then settled
back levelly to meet Arthur's.  "I remember," he said.  "You asked me
if I wanted to kill you.  I couldn't answer you then.
Now I can."  The dark eyes blinked lazily.  "Your life has been a
curse, Saladin.  I figured that out during the time I spent alone in
that room.  I was lonely and scared all the time, but I knew there were
places where I wouldn't be lonely or scared, places where people loved
me and wanted me around.  All I had to do was get to them.  But there
aren't any places like that for you, are there?"  His forehead
furrowed.  "In the whole world, in all the time you've lived, there
hasn't been anyplace where you belonged."  Saladin's mouth turned down
bitterly.  "You are a child.  Those matters are of no importance to
me."  Arthur nodded.  "That's the trouble, I think.  Nothing is
important to you.  You haven't had any reason to live for a long, long
time."  He turned to Launcelot.  "Untie him."  As the big knight
loosened the ropes around Saladin's wrists, Arthur walked slowly over
to Merlin and took the cup in his own hands.  "I'm going to give you a
gift," he said quietly.
Saladin's voice trembled with incredulity.  "The cup."  Merlin audibly
sucked in his breath.  "Arthur, don't be rash--" He reached for the cup
himself, but Arthur cut him off with a gesture.  "No, not this," he
said.  "Although I was tempted.  Another hundred centuries of a life
like yours would be punishment enough for anyone.
But I don't want to punish you."  Launcelot and Gawain looked at one
another indignantly.  "That's right," Arthur said, frowning, directing
his remarks to his own men.
"If you were given the chance to live forever, there isn't one of you
who wouldn't turn out as twisted as he is."  He turned back to Saladin.
"My gift to you is a life without the cup.
A real life, as painful and precious as everyone else's."  His eyes
bore into those of his erieroy's.  "Accept that life, Saladin.  Learn
what it means to be alive."  Saladin sneered.  "And so, out of the
kindness of your heart, you'll keep the cup yourself," he said.  "Your
generosity is touching."  Arthur didn't answer.  "You won't hide it
from me forever, you know."  The boy smiled.  "You aren't going to live
forever," he said.
The tall man turned his back on him.  Slowly, as if he were walking in
a procession, he made his way through the assembled knights, who
cleared a path for him.
Hal sighed with relief.  Saladin was still Saladin, and Hal sincerely
hoped he would never see him again, but the boy--the king, in his
wisdom--had been right about one thing; Now, at least, Saladin wasn't
going to live forever.  And Arthur was.
Then, as sudden as the bite of an adder, Saladin whirled around in his
tracks near the rugged old knight named Gawain and clubbed him on the
side of his head with both hands.  Gawain tried to fight him off, but
Saladin wrenched away the man's sword in the space of a heartbeat.
"Arthur!  Look out!"  Hal shouted.
Smoothly, without an instant's hesitation, Saladin swung the sword
overhead and brought it sighing down toward Arthur.
Hal dived on top of the boy, knocking him out of the way of the blow.
The metal cup rolled out of Arthur's hand.  Saladin snatched at it, but
Hal shot out his leg to trip the tall man.
Saladin fell, and Hal jumped on top of him.  They struggled, rolling
atop one another as the king's knights stood by watching helplessly,
unable to strike at one without injuring the other.
Finally Saladin threw Hal off.  Immediately the king's men surrounded
him, their weapons drown.
Saladin held up his bare hand.  "Give him a sword," he commanded, his
eyes fixed on Hal.  "If I must die, I wish to die honorably.  I
challenge the king's champion to single combat."  The knights murmured
among themselves.  Single combat.  Despite his wickedness, the Saracen
had offered an honorable settlement.  One man against another.  It was
acceptable.
Some of the men nodded in agreement.  Even Gawain, whose sword was in
Saladin's hand, reluctantly withdrew from the circle surrounding the
tall, foreign knight.  "Don't allow it, Arthur," Merlin warned.
"Saladin attacked you openly, after you granted him his freedom.  Have
your men execute the black-hearted devil now."  Arthur looked,
frightened, toward Hal.  The Round Table knights had all moved away
from Saladin, leaving room for the two men to engage in battle alone.
Merlin's voice was shrill.  "Your friend does not know how to handle a
sword!"  he shouted.  "If you permit him to fight that monster, you
might as well kill him yourself!"  Hal, too, saw the knights.  They
were watching Arthur as well, but the expressions on their faces were
quite different from Merlin's.  They were looking to their king to
uphold their honor.  For eleven knights in armor to attack a single
man, regardless of the circumstances, would be a mockery of justice.
And justice was what Arthur had stood for, back in the days when
injustice was the rule of law.
That, Hal understood at last, was what had kept the legend of the once
and future king alive.  Not charisma, not victory, but justice had been
the shining light that Arthur brought to the darkness of the world.
"Give me a sword," Hal said.
Quickly Launcelot passed over his great broadsword.  It was heavy,
heavier than Hal had ever imagined.  He tried to swing it with one
hand, the way he had seen actors in movies handle them.  It wobbled
wildly.
Saladin smiled.
The knights exchanged glances.
Merlin pleaded once more.  "Arthur, he can't--" "Stay out of this!"
Hal snapped.  He spoke to the wizard, but he shot a furious look at
Arthur, too, and the boy responded with silence.  Hal tried to steady
the sword.
At last Launcelot broke away from the rest of the knights and stood
behind Hal.  Gently, the big man placed Hal's right hand near the base
of the hilt, and his left hand near the pommel.
Hal felt humiliated.  Merlin's words burned in his ears.  Hal knew less
than nothing about fighting with such a weapon.  He would be
slaughtered in minutes by a man of Saladin's skill.
Saladin had planned it that way, of course.  He wanted Hal's death to
be a joke, as most of his life had been.  Whatever happened to Saladin
afterward, he would have this one final triumph to savor.
Without exchanging a word, Launcelot seemed to feel Hal's anguish.  He
placed his hand on Hal's shoulder, and when Hal looked into the clear
blue eyes filled with compassion, he understood that his death would
not be a joke to this man.
He raised the big sword with both hands.  It was a signal.  Launcelot
stepped back, leaving Hal alone in the clearing with his executioner.
Then slowly, lowering his head in a mocking salute, Saladin advanced.
The first parries were deliberate and slow.  Saladin meant to show a
duel, not a murder.  As in the games of chess he had once played with
the doctor in the sanitarium, he allowed his opponent to feel that he
might have a chance of winning.  It drew out the endgame.  It made the
play more interesting.
Once, twice: lazy strokes.  The American responded in a comical frenzy,
crashing the huge sword in front of him as if it were a bludgeon.
Hal's eyes were wild and panic-stricken, his muscles quivering with
tension.
At this rate, he would be exhausted in no time at all.
Saladin would make a game of this one, tease him, make him dance.  The
knights would not interfere.  Single combat was a cornerstone of their
quaint code.  And later, after the American was dead, when Saladin once
again held the boy at the point of his sword, they would trade the cup
for the king's life, then permit Saladin to go free.  That, too, was
what the chivalrous fools considered to be noble behavior.  Yes, Hal.
Try to fight me.
Don't want to make it a joke, I owe that much to Atthur.  My life for
the King's honor .  . . Arthur, for you .  . .
Saladin half-closed his eyes, breathing deeply.  He was listening to
the man's pathetic mind now.
The American knew he was going to die.
Oh, yes, Hal.  Yes, you will.
He could almost smell the coward's blood.
He moved in closer, the sword moving effortlessly, swinging like a
pendulum, higher, higher.
Careful, Hal.  You'll lose your head.
He could wait no longer.  He thrust viciously.  The sword whistled near
Hal's throat.  Hal stumbled backward.  The sword swooped again.
Hal staggered back wildly, watching the blade in the long arms slash
closer to his neck, trying not to think about the possibility of dying
at Saladin's hands.  The tall man was planning to cut his head off,
that was clear.  And though Hal tried not to think, an image stuck in
his mind: Without a head, even the cup couldn't save him.
He panicked.
That's right, Mr. Woczniak.  But what difference would it make,
really?
Hal swallowed.
You've always been a loser, Hal.  You couldn't fight me sixteen hundred
years ago, and you can't now.  All you can do is die.  It's all you've
ever been good for.  Saladin's eyes widened, smiling.  Hmmm?
"Don't listen to him!"  Merlin shouted from somewhere far away.  "I can
hear his thoughts, too, and they're full of lies!  Hal!  Hal .  .
." Come to me, Hal.  I'll make it quick.  You know you're going to die.
You've known it all along, haven't you?  The boy doesn't need you
anymore.  He's got the wizard.  No one needs you.  It's time, Hal.
Come.
Hal's back struck something hard.  A tree.  His legs were trembling; he
felt a pressing need to urinate.
Saladin's sword came close, so close that Hal could eel its wake in the
hollow of his throat.  He uttered a small cry; the weapon in his hands
fell to the ground.  Instinctively he raised his arms to cover his
face.  "Hal !"  It was Arthur's voice, ringing through the meadow like
a clarion bell.
Through his splayed fingers Hal saw the boy twist out of Merlin's grip
and run toward him, the jeweled sword in his small hands.
Saladin turned slightly toward the child, a smile playing on his lips.
His hostage was practically throwing himself at him.  Yes, he thought,
this was all going to work out perfectly.  "No, Arthur!"  Hal shouted.
"Get away, damn it!  Get away now !"  The boy stopped in his tracks,
but the sword didn't.  Bending over nearly double with the effort, he
heaved the golden cross overhead.
Perhaps it was the wind.  The sword should have fallen to the ground
within a few yards.  It should not have sailed on through the air,
windmilling end over end like a gleaming silver star.  It should not
have fallen directly over Hal, who had resigned himself to death once
again, as he had those long ages ago.
Yet it did, and Hal was so filled with wonder at the sight of it that
he questioned nothing.  He lifted his hands heavenward, as he knew he
must, and received into them the living metal of Excalibur.
Saladin attacked him at once.  The move was subtle and lethal, aimed at
Hal's heart.  Hal watched it come, but he did not struggle to master
the sword he held.  Not this sword.  It sang to him, and with his body
he listened to its ancient song, giving himself to it.
Excalibur danced to its own music.  Filled with grace and power, it
pushed back the tall Saracen like a block of wood, then struck the
sword held by the long arms, again, again, shooting off sparks of
brilliant light in the half- morning.  You're nothing.  You're still
nothing, even with the wizard's sorcery.  Saladin's words insinuated
themselves into Hal's mind.  I can outlast the magic, Hal.  I can
outlast you all.
Suddenly the sword in Hal's hands felt heavier.  Its blade grew duller.
He fought on, but his shoulders ached with each empty swing of the
ungainly object.  It was never yours, you see.  You may have tricked it
for a moment, but Excalibur belongs to a king, not to a worthless
drunk.
Sweat poured off Hal's face.  The muscles in his forearms twitched with
fatigue.  Finally, panting, he lowered the great sword.  That's better.
The magic was never meant for you.  Saladin swooped in for the killing
stroke.  "Go to hell," Hal said, and brought the great sword up to meet
Saladin's with such cold force that the tall man's back arched, his
arms flung away from him.  "Read my mind.  now, dirtbag."  He struck
Saladin's belly, crosswise.  His eyes bulging with surprise, the dark
man buckled suddenly forward, his arms reflexively trying to seal the
gaping wound.
"The cup .  . ."  Saladin whispered.
Blood poured out of his mouth.  The second stroke sliced through
Saladin's neck.  The severed head fell.  Its eyes were still open.
Thank you.  Hal didn't know if the voice was Saladin's or his own.
A great roaring shout went up from the knights.  Wearily Hal retrieved
Launcelot's fallen sword and returned it to the big knight.  Then he
brought Excalibur to Arthur and held it out to him.  "Is he really
dead?"  the boy asked, amazed by what he had just seen.  Hal nodded.
"It's all over," he said.  A few steps away lay the metal cup,
forgotten since the start of the combat.  Hal picked it up and held it
out to Arthur.  "He won't be coming after this again."  Arthur took it
in one hand while he held the sword with the other.  He hefted the
small cup, feeling its warm mystery.  Then, with a sigh, he offered it
to Merlin.
"I want you to get world of this," he said.
The wizard blinked.  "I will put it in a safe place, naturally .  . ."
"No.  I don't want it hidden.  I want it to be lost.  No one--not me or
you or anyone--must find it."  Merlin gaped at him.  "Surely you can't
. . ."  "I don't want it!"  The boy's voice camed over the heads of the
now-silent knights.  "It's brought nothing but misery to anyone who's
ever known about it."  "But the dream," Merlin said, his face pained.
"Long ago, I had a vision in which you were offered the cup by the
Christ himself .  . ."  "No," Arthur said.  "I had the same dream.
It wasn't a gift.  It was a choice.  And I've made it."  Merlin pleaded
silently with Hal to intervene.  "It .  . . it saved my life," Hal
said.  "Yes.  And now you've got a second chance.  We both have.
Let's take it, Hal, for as long as we've got.  But no longer.  I'm not
going to end up like him."
He gestured to Saladin's beheaded body.  "And you aren't going to,
either."  His young face was drawn, but his eyes were smiling.  "We're
not ready for the cup," he said softly.  "None of us."  He fondled it
lovingly, like a wild animal he had befriended and was about to set
free.  "Maybe in a thousand years, people will know how to handle
something so wonderful.  But not now."  There was a long silence.
Merlin bent his head.  Finally Hal cleared his throat and snatched the
cup out of the boy's hand.  He tossed it to Merlin like a baseball.
"You heard him," he said.  "Get world of it."  Merlin sighed.  Once again
he had offered the king a treasure beyond price.  And once again he had
refused it.  He looked up to the lightening sky.  A choice, he had
said.
Between a short life and an everlasting one.  What sort of choice was
that?  Who in his right mind would choose not to live forever?  The
moon was a fading crescent.  The long night was over at last.  Near its
inner curve, to the west, was a cluster of faint stars.  The lion,
Merlin thought.  By Mithras, it had been more than a thousand years
since that night, when Nimue had decided that the Greek version of
eternity was the RaRe one.  He smiled, remembering.  The haphazard
aggregation of stars in no way resembled a lion, then or now.  That's
because you have no imagination, she had said.  The !ion's there, and
I'm going to be the heart of it.  Nimue.  She, too, had chosen not to
keep the cup.  The wizard's old eyes misted with tears.  What happened
to a soul after it died?  Was it reborn, like Arthur's, in the
identical body it had occupied in another life?  Or like Hal's,
shifting restlessly from generation to generation, searching for
something it could not name?  Or did it simply vanish somewhere into
the vast sea of time?  Nimue, my only love, will I never find you
again?  Through his wavering vision, the stars near the moon twinkled.
And one, he saw, in the center, the lion's heart, shone brighter than
the rest.  He made a sound, halfway between a laugh and a cry.
"Merlin?"  Arthur asked.  The old man waved him down.  "It's nothing,
boy."  He sniffed.  Then he laughed truly.  "I think I know what to
do."  Some distance away, he climbed up on a tall boulder.  Then, deep
in his throat, he began the call.  It welled up out of him, a
whistling, shrieking noise like the cry of eagles.  He held up the cup,
stretching his arms toward the vanishing stars, calling, calling until
the metal sphere seemed to glow.  The trees rustled.  Below them, the
knights looked around in anticipation and fear.  Some of them crossed
themselves.  The wizard was at work again.  And then the birds
appeared.
From every corner of the sky they came, the great predators alongside
tiny, thin-beaked avians.  They came until the sky was black with them
and their shadow blocked out even the light of the waning stars.  They
screamed and sang; the beating of their wings flattened the meadow
grass.  They came to Merlin for the cup, and when he gave it up to
them, they soared away and dispersed.  The men in the field looked up
in silence.  The birds were gone.  The sun would rise soon and the day
would be warm and long and sweet.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

When Merlin came down from the boulder, the knights gave him a wide
berth.  "Yes, yes, I know," he muttered irascibly.  "You think I'm
going to turn you all into fish."  Arthur was smiling.  "Thank you, old
friend," he said.  The wizard granted.  Hal was the first to break the
silence.  "What happens now?"  he asked.  "I mean, as far as I know,
England already has a monarch.  I don't think she'd appreciate being
usurped by a ten-year-old kid from Chicago."  "Arthur isn't going to
usurp anyone," Merlin said With annoyance.
"So?
What's he going to do, then?"  "Dash it all, I don't know!  I told you
in the castle that he would find his own way in the world.  All I can
do is to keep him safe from harm until he's ready to begin whatever it
is he's going to do."  "Keep him safe?"  Hal set his hands on his hips.
"That was your idea of keeping him safe?"  Merlin's face reddened.
"Cheeky!"  he sputtered.  "From the beginning, I knew you'd be .  . ."
He took a deep breath to calm himself.  "Perhaps you're right," he said
blandly.  "Things do go wrong sometimes.  But you needn't worry any
longer.  Arthur will remain in the castle to await the millennium."
"What?"  Hal and the boy shouted at the same time.  "Well, of course.
It's the only way .  . ."  He shook his head emphatically.  "... the
only way, now that the cup is gone, to ensure the King's safety."
"Wait a minute," Arthur said.  "Are you going to make me disintegrate
or something?"  "Oh, it won't be like that," the old man said gently.
"You'll be able to see yourself and all the others.  It will be
Camelot, just the way it was."  He inclined his head toward the
knights.  Launcelot nodded.
Arthur regarded the great sword in his hands.  "Back to Camelot," he
said with a faint smile.  "Exactly.  You'll be able to do all the
things you'd like.  The only difference will be that other
people--current people, that is---won't be able to see you until you're
ready.  It's not strange at all, really.
Hal's been inside.  You know what I mean, don't you, Hal?"  ".Well, I
wouldn't say it wasn't strange," Hal said.  The knights were all
watching him.
Things happened to kids, even ordinary kids.  Car accidents.  Muggers.
Crazies.  He had quit the FBI because he couldn't stand some of the
things that happened to kids.  "None of those things must happen to
Arthur," Merlin said quietly.
Hal looked up, startled.  "No," he said.  He saw Arthur's confused
face.  "What I mean is, it might have seemed strange to me because,
hey, after all, I'm not King Arthur," he said with false heartiness.
"You know, I think it'll be a blast.  Do you know what most kids would
give to spend a few years with the knights of the Round Table at
Camelot?"  Arthur looked up sadly.  "But what about you, Hal?  Would
you come, too?"  "Me?"  He looked around at the knights standing before
the great crenellated walls of Camelot.  He had been there, with his
heroes, seated among them in a place of moondust and magic.  He had
done what he had been asked to do.  He had kept the faith of a slum kid
with two broken legs and a head filled with dreams and had seen those
dreams come true.  For a time--a brief, awesome, magnificent time--he
had felt the pure fire of Galahad's restless soul.
But Galahad's job was finished now; it was time for Hal Woczniak to
come back.  Another night at Benny's, another car to fix for the Greek
pimp, another morning when he'd wake up next to a woman he didn't
remember meeting.  Hal's life.  "Naah," he said, shaking his head.  "I
don't belong there."  His eyes met Merlin's.  The old man understood.
The future belonged to Arthur now.
There was no place at Camelot for an ex-FBI agent whose life was behind
him.
Hal smiled.  "Go ahead, kid.  You aunt's on her way to London by now.
She thinks we're both dead.  I left her your instructions about what to
do.  But I'll find her.  I'll tell her you're all right."  Arthur shook
his head.  "You won't find her," he said.  "That's the point of the
plan.  No one will find her."  "There's got to be some way .  . ."
"I don't think so.  I worked it out carefully ."  There was a silence.
"I'm sorry," Hal said finally.  "I thought .  .
."
"You were right, Hal.  I didn't think we'd come through this, either."
He sighed.  "Anyway, I suppose it's better that she doesn't know about
this.  No one should know."  "But she loves you," Hal said.
And I love her.  "I know," Arthur answered slowly.  "Maybe that's why
it's best to leave her alone."  Hal looked out over the meadow.  The
boy had said it all.  Emily had her work.  She would hurt for a while,
hurt badly, but in time she would be able to go on with her life.  In
his own time, too, Arthur would go back to her himself.  And neither
one of them had any further need of Hal Woczniak.  "All right," Hal
said quietly.  He shrugged and held out his hand.  "Well, I guess this
is good-bye."  Arthur's eyes welled.  His lips were squeezed tightly
between his teeth.  "Go on.  I can't hang around here forever."
"Kneel, Hal," the boy said.  "What?"  "Kneel."  He stood stiffly, the
sword held upright in front of him.  "Now, this is going too--"
Launcelot came over and rested his big hand on Hal's shoulder.  His
eyes were kind but firm as he guided Hal gently down onto one knee.
"Okay, I get your drift," Hal said.  Feeling foolish, he lowered his
head.
Arthur stepped up to him solemnly.  Then, touching Hal first on one
shoulder and then the other with the heavy sword, he spoke: "Be
valiant, knight, and true; for you are the most loyal of men, and
beloved of your king."  He stepped back.  "Arise, Sir Hal."  But Hal
could not get up.  Not just then.  The touch of the sword left him
rooted, his thoughts swirling around him, centuries of memories.
He had come looking for his king in a thousand different lifetimes.
In all of them he had failed; all but this last.
The king had come home.  Galahad, indeed, had done well.  "Your
Majesty," he whispered.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Merlin stopped them near the boulder where Arthur had found the sword.
"You can't go any farther," he told Hal.  "Of course, if you'd like to
reconsider the offer to come with us .  . ."  Hal smiled.  "No, thanks.
I'll take my chances out here."  The old man nodded.  "I think that's
best," he said.  "Well?  What say we get this show on the road?"
Arthur put his arms around his waist.  "I'll miss you," he said.
"I'll miss you, too."  He mussed the boy's hair, then pushed him away.
"Go on, now.  Be a good king, or whatever it is you're going to be this
time around.  Scoot."  Hal folded his arms in front of him and watched
Arthur lurch away, holding on to Merlin's robes with one hand like a
small child, while the other clung fast to the enormous sword.
Behind them, the army of knights waited on their mounts, eager to bring
their king back to his castle at last.
Then, at the last moment before they reached the drawbridge, Arthur
turned and ran back.  "What is it?"  Hal asked.  "What's wrong?"  "I
can't go, Hal."  "What are you talking about?  You'll be fine in there.
It's where you belong--" "No, it's not!"  His face was flushed.
"Don't you see?  I might have belonged there sixteen hundred years ago,
but I'm not that King Arthur anymore.  I'm ten years old, Hal.
Whatever I'm going to do with my life, I've got to become a man first."
"So?  You'll get older in the castle."  "What am I going to learn
there?  Everything in.  that place has been dead for a thousand years."
"It's the safest place for you."  "But I don't want to be safe!  I want
to be alive!"  They stared at one another.  "Arthur .  . ."  "I'm
coming with you," the boy said.  "You're .  . ."  Hal backed away.
"Oh, no, you're not."  "I won't be any trouble, I promise.  I'm good
with my hands, and I learn fast.  I'll do whatever you say.  Just take
me with you.  Teach me what you know."  "Teach you what?  I don't know
anything!  Jesus, you want to grow up like me?"  "Yes, Hal," Arthur
said.  "Just like you."  "i'm a bum."  Slowly Arthur shook his head.
"No, Hal.  You're the best.  The best there ever was."  He walked back
to the cracked boulder and held the sword above it.  "No!"  Merlin
cried, running toward them.  "Don't put it back!  Don't .  .

."

Arthur slid the sword back into the stone.
Immediately the castle began to fade.  A low mist fell over it all, the
towers and battlements, the courtyards, the moat.  It surrounded the
stunned knights, who looked at one another in bewilderment as they,
too, grew as insubstantial as whispers.  Horses whinnied, their manes
becoming transparent, like spiderwebs.
Only one man did not flinch.  Launcelot, mounted like an immovable rock
on his steed, kept his eyes steadily on Hal as the mist enveloped him.
His face showed no fear.  Instead, it seemed to Hal, there was
something like pride in the big knight's eyes.  While the others around
him vanished, Launcelot made his right hand into a fist and brought it
over his heart in a silent pledge.
Hal frowned at first.  Then he understood.  The knight was asking for
Hal's own promise to guard his king until Camelot rose again.
Slowly he lifted his fist to his heart.
The big knight nodded once, then faded away to nothing.  "I wish you
hadn't done that," Merlin said.
The meadow was as it had been before, a rain of blackened, moss-covered
stones surrounded by dewy grass.
Only one thing was missing.  Hal squinted into the distance.
"Saladin's body," he said.  "It's gone."  "Of course it's gone.  You
killed him when the castle was here.  That was centuries ago, in what
you call real time.  His bones have mined to ashes by now."  Hal's face
drained of color.  "You mean we were actually .  . .
actually..."

"Back at Camelot.  Yes.  The King called it all back."  He eyed Arthur
balefully.  "And then he sent it all away."  Hal looked out over the
empty field.  "And the cup .  . . Where did it go?"  "Only the wild
birds know that," Merlin said.  He sighed.  "Still, we may find it
again."  Arthur glanced at him sharply.  "At the next millennium,
perhaps," the old man added with a smile.
Hal looked Merlin up and down.  "Hey, how come you're still here?"  "I
didn't will myself back.  I can't be in two places at once, you know.
As long as you two are going to be bumbling around the planet,
somebody's got to keep an eye on you."  "Oh, no," Hal said.  "I didn't
sign on for this.  I'll look after Arthur until I can find his aunt,
but I'm not taking on a grouchy old man on top of that."  "Who are you
calling grouchy?"  Merlin snapped.  He reached into a deep pocket of
his robe.  "Here.  You'll need this."  He pulled out a wad of
hundred-pound notes and handed them to Hal as if they were a fistful of
worms.  "Filthy stuff, money.  Makes your skin stink.  And you can't
buy anything you really need with it."  He brushed off his hands.
"Where'd you get this?"  Hal asked suspiciously.
The old man closed his eyes in exasperation.  "I'm a wizard, remember?
Go ahead and take it.  You can exchange it for airplane rides and
such."  "What about you?"  "I've got to bury that boulder before some
archaeolobaby gets hold of it.  Go on, though.  I'll catch up with you
later."  "Later when?  Where?
I don't even know where we're going."  "But I will," Merlin said slyly.
"I don't like it.  Not one bit."  "Actually, this may prove to be fun,"
the old man said, ignoring Hal.
"I haven't been on a good adventure for the better part of two
millennia."
You're not coming," Hal said stolidly.  "We'll see."  He shooed them
away with a fluttering motion of his hands.  Muttering, Hal turned and
walked out of the meadow, the boy running behind him.  "I suppose we're
going to walk to the train station in Wilson-on-Hamble," he grumbled.
"Ten miles."  "I don't mind," Arthur said cheerfully.  "I do.  Well,
the old haunt was right about one thing.
Money never buys what you really need."  "Like a friend," Arthur said.
"I was thinking more of a taxi.  My feet are killing me."  They stepped
over the narrow blacktop road.
"Did I say taxi?  This place is so isolated, we'll be lucky to find a
gum wrapper here."  Just then a pair of headlights crested the hill in
front of them and skidded to a stop.  "Say, guy'nor," the driver
shouted.  "Seem to have got myself bollixed up.  Would you know the way
to Wilson-on-Hamble?"  Hal looked up at the bubble on top of the black
car.  "You're a taxi?"  he asked.  "Right you are.  Off duty, but I'll
give you a lift if you need one."  Arthur climbed into the backseat.
As Hal was getting in beside him, he looked back up the hill, toward
the castle ruins.  The old man was standing there.  He raised his arm
and waved.
Hal smiled and shook his head.  "Thanks, you old turkey," he said.  He
held up his hand in a silent salute.
Merlin took a last walk among the ancient stones.  Things hadn't turned
out half-badly after all, he thought.  Oh, the boy was willful and
headstrong, and didn't know what was good for him, but he'd expected
that.  No one had ever been able to make up Arthur's mind for him back
in the early days.  It was only when he became a politician that he'd
lost himself.  Maybe that wouldn't happen this time.  Not if the
redoubtable Mr. Woczniak had anything to say about it.  He sat down on
a rock and sighed.  Yes, all in all, it had been a fine night.
He was startled by the sudden appearance of a small grimy face from
behind a rock.  "Who the devil are you?"  "Tom Rogers, sir," the boy
said shakily.  "I live down the village, sir."  "Then what are you
doing here?"  "Come to hear the horsemen.  You know, St.  John's Eve."
"Ah.  And did you?"  The boy blinked.  "Why, they was all here, in the
flesh," he said.  "And you was in the thick of them."  He waited for a
response from the old man.
When there was none, he went on, as if trying to jog Merlin's memory:
"Killings, there was, and some bloke half-bleeding to death, hacked to
pieces, and he come right back to life without a mark on him .  . ."
He was talking so fast that he had to wipe the saliva from his mouth
with his ragged sleeve.  "And then the castle come up real as you
please---I seen that before, mind you, but never like this, with the
drawbridge down and all the knights charging out, why there must have
been near a million of them, all in armor .  . ."  He cocked his head.
"You seen it, right?"  Merlin laughed.  "I'm sure I don't know what
you're talking about, lad."  "But you was there.  You was .  . ."  He
turned away, brushing at his eyes.  "It's you old ones never remember,"
he said despairingly.
Merlin sat quietly for a moment.  "Then why don't you make us
remember?"  he said at last.  "What's that mean?"  the boy asked
belligerently.  "Why, write it down.  Write all about the knights and
the castle and the, ah, marvelous wizard.  Write about the young boy
who pulled the sword from the stone and began a new world.  Start from
the beginning, pay attention as you grow up, and write it down.  Write
it all, Tom."  The boy stood, dumbfounded.  "Write?  Me?"  "Why not?
It's a respectable trade.  Nothing like being a hard, of course.  Now
that was a glorious profession.  But I'll tell you about that another
time."  "Will you be here when the castle comes back again?"  "I
wouldn't be surprised if I were."  The boy stepped back, watching him.
Slowly a broad grin grew across his face.  "He was a jolly marvelous
wizard," he said.  "Quite.  You see, you've got a way with words
already."  The old man stood up.  "Now run along, boy, and practice.
The king will need a chronicler."  "What's that, sir?"  "Look it up."
He gave him a shove.  The boy ran off laughing.  His laughter filled
the growing day.  Then gradually it was replaced by the sound of
horses' hooves, phantom horses carrying their riders on their endless
search for their king.  They came like thunder, galloping across the
meadow, filling all the places time had emptied.  They rode as they
always did on St. John's Eve, and when they had passed, the world was
still again except for the boy's faraway laughter.
Write it all, Tom, Merlin thought.  It will make a good story.  A jolly
marvelous story.