The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) by Richard Monaco Page A

breeze was a vague whisper and fingered his long, blond-gray hair. He took a full, lush breath and sat down … then reclined, looking at eye level across the shimmering field.
    I’ll climb the wall , he thought idly. It’ll be simple . He didn’t move. In a little while … First a little rest …
    He lay back and shaded his eyes with his arm. The sun was always so much hotter when you were prone. He let the drowsy warmth sink into his flesh … drifted with the coils of laden breeze …
    No , his mind said, this is a trick too … this … is … is butterfly bread and God’s forgetting … and then with a whooshing of leaves and shaking light the trees were explaining things to him, laying the whole problem out with the help of thin pencils of sunlight, sketching on the sweet grass … he understood he’d fallen through the inner hole in himself guarded by dreams and the sun kept him awake within his sleep, and then she was there in a radiance soft but intense as daylight, and he was absorbed in watching each shifting, gleaming part of her, each slight breath of movement that stained the iridescent atmosphere; her body clothed and bathed in unending, unrepeating color, her face a sweetness beyond expression, and he feared to move his mind at all and perhaps disrupt the ineffable unfolding of that silent womanlight …
    And thought said:
    No … No … You cannot merely watch like this … you’ll be lost …
    He was amazed at how conscious he actually still was. He felt that if he opened his eyes the vision and field would both be there.
    No , no , not just watch!
    Because he sensed he would be absorbed forever in watching, that he’d sink and drift passively away into eternities of silent, soft beauties. He had to do something with this or be lost, drained away … What? … What? … He tried to somehow get closer to her, feel her … wordlessly speak … wavered there, rising and falling over the blank depths of sleep …
    Is this my mother too ? Is this my own heart’s image ? Is this holy ? He felt a golden rush of joy suddenly. Is this flowering from me ? He asked the tree voices. Felt the ecstasy as the sun wrote answers on the field. He couldn’t read it. Strained but couldn’t read … Was trying to wake up now and the tender, feathery being of purest flame was gone and he was thinking as he struggled back:
    Do things do things …
    He sat up sweaty, shocked in the sea of blossoms. Stood up, rubbing his face and eyes. Swayed a little. Then he was wading across the field through the cool, fragrant shade towards the high, white garden wall.
    I’m not fighting everybody’s battles, I’m going to put my life together … I don’t need visions … I’m going to find my child and try to show him something …
    He touched the wall with one hand, absently, as if surprised to find it solid and sun-heated.
    I need a woman too again … I never really loved anyone enough …
    He locked his fingers and toes and began climbing, and on top he looked back at the odd monastery, which seemed deserted from here: empty fields, no smoke from any chimney. It looked totally abandoned.
    He shrugged. More of their tricks, perhaps. Or it meant nothing. He really didn’t care.
    He swung over and dropped a body length into the weedy outer field.
    Let it be , he told himself. Because he was going to live his own way, let them fill the world with visions, portents and all mysterious, vast significances …
    He strode away and didn’t look back again.
    I’m going to put my life together …

 
    XI
     
    The pain in the amnesiac knight’s head was so intense (as if beyond mere feeling) he found he could stare right through it. He blinked at the morning light. The pain leaped a little each time the world shook and then he looked around, saw the trees passing slowly and unevenly through the hazy heat … saw soldiers … women … boys and girls … blinked at the long, rabbitlike mule ears for a moment before realizing he was