“There is no way to fight this abhorrence,” Zalmyra chuckled, looking down through the arrow-loop. “Or even control it. It will infest the entire fortress, and from here will depredate the surrounding countryside. But it will be worth it.” She turned a venom-green eye on Trelawna. “Just as it was worth it to shed my own brother’s blood to invoke this horror of horrors. The Black Wolf of the North, my dear, has finally met his match.”
Thirty-Six
Beyond the doorway wherein Alaric had disappeared lay a downward stair.
“Alaric!” Lucan shouted, hurrying down into a depthless maze of darkened passages. There was a stench like spoiled meat, and as his eyes attuned to the half-light, ghastly objects emerged on all sides — glistening, gelatinous tentacles snaking forward. Each one was padded along its underside with saucer-shaped suckers, and yet at its tip had sprouted an even more horrible appendage; a curled foetal ball which, even as Lucan watched, would slowly unknot itself, straighten up and assume the proportion of a full-grown man. Lucan could only gape in disbelief as, one by one, these figures strode forward. Despite the pulsing root to which each one was still attached, their crude, half-made features swiftly transformed into recognisable humanity. They were even wearing clothes, in some cases mail, and they bore weapons.
“Bedivere…” he whispered, as the closest stepped into the half-light.
And yet he knew immediately that this was not his brother. Bedivere’s patrician features and chestnut curls were unmistakable, but there was no emotion in that bland visage — no love, no frustration, no annoyance. And that was not the way of Bedivere.
Lucan struck at the apparition with his sword. A gout of black ichor sprayed over him. But the thing did not collapse — it grabbed at his arm with one claw-like hand, and with the other attempted to draw its own weapon. Lucan hacked at it in a desperate fury, closing his eyes as Heaven’s Messenger clove his beloved brother’s skull, severed his shoulder, bit deep into his torso. More black foulness erupted over him, but at last the ghoulish facsimile was down, and Lucan spun around to face more enemies. Two of these, Lancelot and Gawaine — he could scarcely believe he was facing such opponents — had already drawn their swords, and by their glint, these were made of real steel.
Sparks flew as the blades clashed. Neither of the two monsters boasted the skill of the knights they imitated, but their blows were relentless and brutal. It was all Lucan could do to fend them off. He found himself backtracking — only for a faint cry to remind him that Alaric was in the grasp of these devils. He lunged forth in earnest, slicing the throat of the Lancelot facsimile and lopping off its left arm at the elbow. The other he disarmed with a backhand slash, before driving his dagger to the hilt in its chest. Undaunted, it reached for his throat with both hands. He struck them off at the wrists, and cut its legs from under it. And yet, as the monstrosities floundered in gore and filth, they began to reform.
The Bedivere facsimile was already reconstructed, though in horrible, disjointed fashion. As it rose to its feet, it was crooked and mangled — the way a battlefield casualty would really be had he been patched together by a butcher rather than a surgeon. Lucan cut the thing down again, striking its cranium with both hands, splitting it to the breastbone. On all sides, more gleaming tentacles slithered forth, familiar shapes blossoming like grotesque flowers on their tips. Lucan barged his way through them, reaching the top of another stair and descending.
At the bottom, the figure that greeted him stopped him in his tracks.
It was tall and slender, its youthful looks offset by its bald pate and long beard. It wore a loose robe belted at the waist, and carried a knotty staff.
“Merlin…” Lucan breathed. For near-fatal seconds, he was transfixed.
Merlin: the sage, druid and foremost counsellor of Arthur’s court. When Lucan had first arrived at Camelot, it was Merlin who had taken him aside and advised that evil was not to be found in a man’s heart as though implanted like a seed, but in his mind — where he had planted it himself, and from whence, if he had the will, he could draw it again like a weed.
“Merlin, I…”
With a corpse-like rictus, the facsimile raised its heavy staff in both hands — and Lucan glimpsed the pulsating tentacle to the rear of it. So he struck first, Heaven’s Messenger slicing the throat and neck and, with a grating crunch, the spine. Merlin’s head toppled, but the blinded abhorrence struck this way and that until Lucan skewered it through the midriff. As it dropped, quivering, into its own black innards, Lucan stepped over it to chop at the tentacle. It comprised thick scale and sinew, but Lucan cut and cut like a madman, and at last it came apart in glutinous strands. The Merlin horror, already attempting to reconstitute itself, immediately transformed into a puddle of oily slime.
There was another hoarse, and this time agonised, cry — much closer to hand.
Lucan found Alaric on the next level down, still in the grasp of the false Trelawna, though the alluring figure had melted back into something only half human. On his arrival, it sprang upright from where it was crouched over the lad, and Lucan saw that Alaric’s throat was torn open and gouting blood.
With a roar, he charged.
The half-formed horror, its face a lumpen mass, raised both hands, which again were giant talons, and a maw appeared where its mouth should be, broken snags of teeth framed on seething corruption — but Alaric, choking and gasping as his life throbbed out from him, still had the strength to draw his dagger and jam it upward into his captor’s groin. The monster was distracted in time for Heaven’s Messenger to also strike it, shearing the cords between its neck and shoulders, plunging into its festering innards.
It collapsed in a heap, and yet it again attached itself to Alaric, clawing at him, tearing at him. Lucan stepped over it to attack the tentacle. With three heavy blows, it was cloven, and the Trelawna-thing dissolved into a foul, fish-smelling unguent.
“My lord…” Alaric choked, as Lucan tried to aid him. He bled profusely; the ragged hole in his throat had exposed his windpipe.
Lucan cursed as he searched for something with which to staunch the flow. The only thing in reach was Trelawna’s scarf — still knotted around the hilt of Heaven’s Messenger. It was little more now than a rag, thick with gluey filth, though there was sufficient of it to tie around Alaric’s neck. Lucan ripped it loose, using his teeth when his gloved fingers failed him.
“Keep your hand on that,” he said, when he’d fixed it in place.
Alaric mumbled something in response. He’d turned white and his eyelids were fluttering — but he still had the strength to point at something behind Lucan’s back.
Lucan spun around. Turold was standing there, rent and torn as he had been after the baboons had finished with him. He produced a war-axe and raised it on high. Lucan catapulted himself forward, barreling headlong into the figure, knocking it backward over its own muscular tentacle. Lucan smote at this first, laying it open, then turned his sword on Turold, catching him with such a blow that he was severed in two.
Lucan spun back to Alaric, picked him up and threw him over his shoulder.
The journey to the surface was even more terrible than the journey down. Tentacles swarmed after them. From every side, familiar figures offered challenge: Bors, Kay, Lancelot again. Even Wulfstan. Lucan held back, mesmerised by the sight of his old scout, but when the thing shrieked like a bird of prey and jabbed out with a steel-headed lance, he retaliated in kind, driving his blade through the aged, once-trustworthy face, ripping it downward so that the abomination’s entire lower jaw fell off.