storm-wrung leaf, and as a scream rolled up from deep within he suddenly, inexplicably, struck back and everything burst in an empty bubble of dream … He was trembling, shaken, and alone in the twilight … He realized this was but the beginning of these attacks or experiences or whatever they were …
“So you finally stopped,” a voice suddenly said out of the darkness behind him. He turned, surprised. It was the stolid knight. Too much time had passed, he thought and, incredibly, he hadn’t sensed the young man’s approach. A soft glow of moonlight was replacing the sunset wash.
“Where is your armor?” Parsival asked.
The other shrugged.
“I laid it aside,” he replied.
Parsival smiled.
“So as to creep up on me?” he wondered.
“No. It avails me naught against you. And it wearied me.”
Parsival nodded and started to walk on ahead, thoughtfully.
“I cannot teach you what you wish to learn,” he remarked, following the faint trail. “Yet I might show you all the things I don’t know.”
Why, he asked himself, had he been attacked? What or who would send those powers to harass him? He spoke over his shoulder to the young knight, who was treading at his heels in his faint moonshadow.
“Who was the lord who sent you against me?”
The young man hesitated, then said, “I am bound to keep my honor, sir, as I would now for your sake.”
Parsival frowned, then nodded.
“Keep it, then,” he said at length. “A thing so rare should be treasured.”
In the wan shards of sunlight, Broaditch, Handler, and Valit passed through the grimy, grim gates of London town. The slimy streets were knee-deep in nameless muck. Nearby a mound of rotting fish had been ground under wheel, hoof, and foot. Broaditch was astonished. He’d known a stench or two in his time, and that holy hermit had been a very prince among the lords of stink, but this! God save them! The concentration and monumental excess of this stained collection of huts and houses was beyond natural imagination. Men must swim in the smells like fish in the sea …
He clapped his handkerchief to his nose with a certain futility. Handler’s son was eyeing the wonders about him, Broaditch observed, with what might have been a certain surprising slyness. He wouldn’t have expected that quality, though he’d barely spoken twenty words directly to the boy. He was pondering a massive cart loaded with bound and sacked goods.
“Consider,” he said, thinking aloud, “how many folk must be fed herein … all in one place …”
Broaditch gazed around the city walls, where heads and skulls sat tilted on spikes and bodies rotted in chains. They turned a corner. An old woman was squatting, ragged dress lifted, at the opening of an alleyway … A half-naked, blood-spattered, mud-covered boy was racing, splashing through the filth as three larger versions pounded in his wake, two brandishing staffs, one a dagger, coming on in silence and deadly purpose … Behind them a drunken man was dancing on a cart … The boy and his pursuers vanished into a twisting, narrow lane … People continued about their business: a pair of carriers staggered from their wagon into a building under a load of freshly killed pigs, the heads swaying, dangling … A man was broiling something on a stick over an open fire …
Broaditch and the other two worked their way carefully along the slippery, sunken stones that served as a sidewalk. He glanced into a doorway where a man leaned against a wall in the shadows and a woman knelt before him as if in prayer or confession, except, Broaditch thought, she followed a strange catechism … A boggy steam rose steadily from the streets as the sunlight intensified.
They passed a long row of dried salt fish hung under eaves to dry, when Handler said, “He lives near the river.”
“Ah,” Broaditch responded, “who?”
“My son, Luark, whom I seek.”
“My elder brother,” Valit put in. “His brain is dented.”
“Peace,
“So you finally stopped,” a voice suddenly said out of the darkness behind him. He turned, surprised. It was the stolid knight. Too much time had passed, he thought and, incredibly, he hadn’t sensed the young man’s approach. A soft glow of moonlight was replacing the sunset wash.
“Where is your armor?” Parsival asked.
The other shrugged.
“I laid it aside,” he replied.
Parsival smiled.
“So as to creep up on me?” he wondered.
“No. It avails me naught against you. And it wearied me.”
Parsival nodded and started to walk on ahead, thoughtfully.
“I cannot teach you what you wish to learn,” he remarked, following the faint trail. “Yet I might show you all the things I don’t know.”
Why, he asked himself, had he been attacked? What or who would send those powers to harass him? He spoke over his shoulder to the young knight, who was treading at his heels in his faint moonshadow.
“Who was the lord who sent you against me?”
The young man hesitated, then said, “I am bound to keep my honor, sir, as I would now for your sake.”
Parsival frowned, then nodded.
“Keep it, then,” he said at length. “A thing so rare should be treasured.”
In the wan shards of sunlight, Broaditch, Handler, and Valit passed through the grimy, grim gates of London town. The slimy streets were knee-deep in nameless muck. Nearby a mound of rotting fish had been ground under wheel, hoof, and foot. Broaditch was astonished. He’d known a stench or two in his time, and that holy hermit had been a very prince among the lords of stink, but this! God save them! The concentration and monumental excess of this stained collection of huts and houses was beyond natural imagination. Men must swim in the smells like fish in the sea …
He clapped his handkerchief to his nose with a certain futility. Handler’s son was eyeing the wonders about him, Broaditch observed, with what might have been a certain surprising slyness. He wouldn’t have expected that quality, though he’d barely spoken twenty words directly to the boy. He was pondering a massive cart loaded with bound and sacked goods.
“Consider,” he said, thinking aloud, “how many folk must be fed herein … all in one place …”
Broaditch gazed around the city walls, where heads and skulls sat tilted on spikes and bodies rotted in chains. They turned a corner. An old woman was squatting, ragged dress lifted, at the opening of an alleyway … A half-naked, blood-spattered, mud-covered boy was racing, splashing through the filth as three larger versions pounded in his wake, two brandishing staffs, one a dagger, coming on in silence and deadly purpose … Behind them a drunken man was dancing on a cart … The boy and his pursuers vanished into a twisting, narrow lane … People continued about their business: a pair of carriers staggered from their wagon into a building under a load of freshly killed pigs, the heads swaying, dangling … A man was broiling something on a stick over an open fire …
Broaditch and the other two worked their way carefully along the slippery, sunken stones that served as a sidewalk. He glanced into a doorway where a man leaned against a wall in the shadows and a woman knelt before him as if in prayer or confession, except, Broaditch thought, she followed a strange catechism … A boggy steam rose steadily from the streets as the sunlight intensified.
They passed a long row of dried salt fish hung under eaves to dry, when Handler said, “He lives near the river.”
“Ah,” Broaditch responded, “who?”
“My son, Luark, whom I seek.”
“My elder brother,” Valit put in. “His brain is dented.”
“Peace,
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