Chapter Forty-nine

"Ah, hell," I said.

They came at me fast, converging together. I jumped down from the raised altar, away from Marion. I instinctively knew they weren't coming for her. They were coming for me.

The guy with Excalibur.

And they weren't real knights, I was sure of it. At least not living knights. They were magical enchantments, perhaps akin to holograms, activated somehow by pressing the very stone Arthur had been interested in earlier.

As they came, Excalibur jolted in my hands. Crackling energy sealed the grip to my hand. The sword and I were one.

The four entities were upon me, all heaving their fiery swords at once, leaving behind burning contrails of wispy black smoke.

I had been lucky tonight. Indeed, I had been lucky enough for ten men tonight. But I suspected my luck was about to run out.

But until that happened, I did the only thing I could think of: I raised Excalibur and fought back.

And I fought like I had never fought before.

I fought like a cornered hellcat.

* * *

The four knights were inhuman, I knew that much, and each of their strikes was more powerful than anything I had yet to encounter tonight. More powerful, even, than Merlin's enchanted sword.

They took turns raining devastating blows down upon me, and I did all I could to ward off their hammer strikes. Any other sword, I knew, would have shattered under such a ferocious onslaught, but Excalibur wasn't just any other sword.

It was the sword.

One such blow hurled me back into the church wall. Air exploded from my lungs. Okay, this sucked. I needed to do something, and fast. Excalibur or not, they were going to wear me down.

And as I stood there with my back to the wall and the rain in my face, the four knights turned toward me as one, moving in choreographed unison.

Perfect unison.

Indeed, the enchantments had also attacked in a choreographed pattern, as well. I knew instinctively that I had to exploit the pattern if I hoped to live.

And I hoped to live.

Oh, yeah.

So I pushed off the wall and met them in a pool of inch deep water. They formed a circle around me and attacked viciously, same as before, each blow seemingly harder than the one before it. Sparks showered down. My world was a blur of fiery swords, repartees and grunts. Of course, I was the one doing all the grunting.

Most important, they fell into a pattern. And despite the awesome strength of their combined attack, I began predicting their movements. In particular, I noticed that when one spirit knight lunged at me, the knight opposite would step back.

So when one lunged, I stepped back.

And so on, and we did this until I saw that if I stepped back soon enough, the enchanted knight to my right was briefly exposed.

We did this some more. My strength was weakening. Sweat stung my eyes. Marion gasped behind me. I gasped, too.

And so I gathered my wits, focused my strength, and as the next lunge came, I anticipated it and stepped back into the vacated spot - and drove Excalibur deep into the side of the knight to my right.

It shrieked and threw back its head, and then disappeared in a puff of black smoke.

Sweet Jesus.

The remaining fighters immediately altered their choreographed attack to adjust to the remaining three knights. As they did so, their tempo seemed to increase, too, their strikes raining down upon me like the Hammer of Thor itself.

I staggered, my legs weakening under the onslaught. One particular chop caught me off-guard and drove me to the ground. One of the knights immediately pounced on me, swinging his fiery sword straight for my head. I met it with Excalibur and kicked the knight up and over me. It sprawled across the floor and slid against the stone wall, crashing in a heap.

I scrabbled to my feet, spun away from another strike, and was soon met by all three enchantments in the center of church.

Parrying and stepping, I finally got the hang of their new, ferocious pattern. And when I parried and stepped again, I drove my sword deep into the side of the knight closest to me. Screeching, it, too, disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

And that's when the two remaining knights went berserk.

* * *

They attacked with unholy ferocity. Their strikes were a blur. Furious. Harder than ever, desperate. How Excalibur held up under the onslaught, I don't know. How I held up under the attack, I'll never know.

Blow after blow rained relentlessly down upon me. There was no pattern. Nothing but a relentless beating. I parried one and then the other, moving faster than I thought I could ever move. I found myself in a rhythm, but I was weakening fast. I had to end this, and I had to end this now.

Without thinking or forethought, as neither was possible, I dropped to my back and rolled. A sword crashed behind me, reverberating through the stones. I kept rolling as another crashed next to me.

I hit the wall and sprang to my feet.

Like demon cats, the two knights pounced. I saw the smallest of an opening and lunged forward -

And drove my sword deep into the stomach of the knight to the left. He threw back his head and let out an agonized cry, then disappeared in a puff of curling black smoke.

The last knight stopped dead in its tracks, facing me.

Oh, crap.

I was drained. I had nothing left. I stood before the last knight, keenly aware that I might very well die in the next few moments. After all, I could only imagine the hellish fury that awaited me from this one remaining knight.

And then the glowing entity did something I would be eternally grateful for. It lowered its sword and kneeled to one knee.

I was too exhausted to breathe a sigh of relief.

From that position, it disappeared, leaving behind a black, churning mist...and a hole in the center of the floor. A hole that revealed a narrow staircase that led down to depths unknown.

Chapter Fifty

The rain had stopped, and in the far distance, through the missing roof, the sky was brightening.

Morning. It had been a long, long night.

Marion and I stood next to the hole in the floor, staring down, each holding a Godfire torch. Her hand was looped inside my arm, leaning on me physically and emotionally.

The faint moon shone down from above, through a break in the clouds. A small wind found its way into the open church, lifting Marion's long hair from her shoulders.

The stairs led down into impenetrable blackness. I could only imagine what awaited us below.

"Do we have to go?" I asked again.

"It's the only way to the Grail," said Marion.

"And what's so great about the Holy Grail?" I asked.

She didn't answer at first. I continued staring down into the pit. I thought I could just make out a very faint glow coming from its black depths, but that could have just been my imagination.

"They say the Cup of Christ gives eternal life," she said. "And eternal healing."

And I caught her meaning. Her sick lungs. I tore my gaze from the floor. "If there's one thing I've learned tonight," I said, "it's that the Holy Grail is not the only path to healing."

"It's the only way I believe," she said with such conviction that I let the conversation drop.

We were silent some more. I wondered how the town of Glastonbury was getting along the morning after an honest to God dragon attack. I wondered how the attack would be explained away, if at all. I also wondered what happened to Merlin, and if he would be back. Somehow, I knew we had not seen the last of him.

I was quiet. I thought back to the many battles tonight. The many battles I had no business winning. I should have been dead a hundred times over.

"I'm just a writer from Seattle," I said. "A writer who had some strange dreams, a writer who might now be in the middle of the strangest dream of all."

"You are many things, James. And you have been many people. But always, always you have remained one soul."

"Arthur kept calling me his old friend."

"Indeed," she said.

"Merlin asked Arthur if I remembered who I was."

"So he did," she said.

"I'm just a writer," I said.

"You are many things, James. Many, many things."

I lived in the real world. Real people with real problems. In my world, people didn't bury their friends with their own two hands. People didn't fly with dragons. And they certainly didn't fight magical knights.

"What's happening to me?" I said. "Am I going crazy?"

"No," she said. "You are simply remembering."

"Remembering what?" I asked.

"That remains to be seen, James."

I stared down into the dark hole, at stone steps that curved away into blackness. I could not imagine a more uninviting flight of stairs.

I sighed deeply. "I guess we should get on with it, then?"

"Yes," she said, looking at me with big, round eyes, and then adding, "My knight."

With Excalibur sheathed unceremoniously in my belt loop, I took her hand and squeezed it. She squeezed back, and a thrill ran through me all over again.

I took a deep breath and stepped down into the pit, holding my torch out before me. I took another breath and took another step, and Marion followed right behind me. The steps seemed carved from solid rock. Who carved it and why, I did not know.

When we were a dozen or so steps down, I looked up and watched with some degree of panic as the opening in the floor above shimmered briefly and then solidified into solid rock.

Torches in hand, our footfalls echoing loudly, I led the way down into the darkness. To where, I did not know.

But I was about to find out.