Swan Knight's Sword Read online

  Swan Knight’s Sword

  Book Three of The Green Knight’s Squire

  A Tale of Moth & Cobweb

  John C. Wright

  Copyright

  Swan Knight's Sword

  John C. Wright

  Castalia House

  Kouvola, Finland

  www.castaliahouse.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by Finnish copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental

  Copyright © 2016 by John C. Wright

  All rights reserved

  Editor: Vox Day

  Cover Art: Minna Erkola

  Version: 001

  SO down the silver streams of Eridan,

  On either side banked with a lily wall,

  Whiter than both rides the triumphant swan,

  And sings his dirge, and prophecies his fall,

  Diving into his watery funeral!

  But Eridan to Cedron must submit

  His flowery shore; nor can he envy it

  If, when Apollo sings, his swans do silent sit

  That Heav’nly voice I more delight to hear

  Then gentle airs to breathe, or swelling waves,

  Against the sounding rocks their bosom’s tear,

  Or whistling reeds that rutty Jordan laves….

  Your songs exceed your matter; this of mine

  The matter which it sings, shall make divine:

  The stars dull puddles gild, in which their beauties shine.

  —Giles Fletcher (1523)

  Contents

  Cover

  Chapter One: The Sunlit World

  Chapter Two: The Crime Spree of Gilbert Mott

  Chapter Three: The Headless Huntsmen

  Chapter Four: The Knight of the Red Steed

  Chapter Five: The House of Hospitality

  Chapter Six: The Doors No Mortals Pass

  Chapter Seven: The Lord of Hautdesert

  Chapter Eight: The Diamond Wine

  Chapter Nine: Arise, Sir Gilberec

  City Beyond Time

  Mutiny in Space

  Castalia House

  New Release Newsletter

  Chapter One: The Sunlit World

  1. The Sunken City

  Gil had only disconnected and dazed memories of the next events, like the scattered surviving pages from a burnt diary.

  One memory was seeing the lights and citadel and cathedral of a walled city of breathtaking beauty, drowned at the bottom of the sea. He was seeing the city from above. Fish and semi-human forms, some in fine clothing, some nude, darted before the windows in which strange yellow or green glows shimmered.

  Between these distant lights and Gil loomed the vast shadow of a human shape, as blue as sapphire, as large as a submarine, more massive than any natural creature could grow on land. If mermaids were half-fish or half-porpoise, this monster was half a whale. The vast shape was speaking to Nerea. “…I cannot offer a nameless knight of Alberec sanctuary in the sunken city of Ys. Our church bells can keep back the elfs of the Night World but not the Cobwebs of the Twilight. Philters and potions I can offer to speed his healing… but…”

  Nerea pleaded with him, but Gil did not hear her words.

  The vast blue sea-giant nodded his great head, and minnows darted out of his hair. “Before the herb charm ends at midnight, I can open a gate of mist to the nearest streambed or river in the human world. But who is this lad? And why do you trust the word of the pooka?”

  2. A Lady’s Favor

  Another memory was of being dragged ashore over an uncomfortable surface of pebbles and concrete. He could feel the slender, small hands of Nerea tugging at his belt and shoulder, trying to move his weight. He could feel Ruff, teeth gripping his baldric, also tugging. His legs were still in the water. Either because of his wounds, or because of the drugs Nerea had given him, Gil could not move his limbs. The girl and the dog were not strong enough to pull him entirely out of the water.

  A tinkling, tingling warm sensation crawled across his scalp. His lungs and stomach ached as he drew in a breath. Gil was shocked to taste air, not seawater, in his lungs. The air seemed somehow too weightless, too frail, to sustain his life.

  Gil pried one eye open. He was in a place he recognized: the culvert behind the gas station across the street from the school. He was a dozen paces from the yard of junked cars where he had fought Jeery Wartworth.

  It was night in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, and the moon was high and cold.

  Nerea said, “Let me put my cap back on him and return him to the water. The charm cannot protect him unless he is submerged.”

  Ruff was in his dog form, but his green Musketeer hat, with its floppy brim and owl-feather plume, was perched on his head. “Oh! Oh! I called in favors to get help. They are coming. Two of them!”

  Nerea said, “I think this is a terrible plan. Why can’t I stay with him?”

  Ruff said sharply, “She won’t let you in the house! She didn’t let me in the house! And we agreed not to take him back to Uffern.”

  “I wish he would wake up! Is he going to die? Does he ever talk about me?”

  Ruff said, “No! Yes! He smells pretty healthy at the moment. He told me he was going to ask you for your favor.”

  “What does he want me to do?”

  “No! No! Not a favor. A favor.”

  “I think your hat is not on right. That sounded like the same thing twice.”

  “Like a lady gives a knight to carry into battle. A scarf or a snotrag or something. An old sock.”

  Just then, the noise of the wolf howling sounded in the near distance.

  “Okay! Okay! Help is coming. That is the first guy. Here, take my hat, so you can understand his speech and mine. It lets you talk like a person.”

  “I know how talking caps work! The principle with mermaid caps is the same. You are transmogrified more perfectly into the target world. Why am I doing this?”

  “Because I am sneaky and smart. I think we were followed, and I think you need to go! And try to look like a human! Wolves don’t like attacking humans.”

  Nerea said, “I look human!”

  “Try to look more human!”

  Gil heard the noise of an animal paws coming down the slope. He could see the silhouette of a large wolf against the moonlight.

  Then, he heard the voice of the Krasny Volk Odinokyy, the Lone Red Wolf. “He looks as bad as you said. Are you sure he will live?”

  3. Red Wolf

  Gil felt a dreamlike sensation. It robbed him of any desire to speak. He was content to listen.

  The voice of Krasny Volk was near at hand. “Hey, Ruff. Still living off scraps and serving Man. Why not join us in the wild, be your own boss, and eat the sheep, not herd them?”

  Ruff said, “Why not come into the campfire circle and be warm and loved?”

  “I got enough love for myself to keep me warm. Who is the babe?”

  “I am one who understands your speech,” said Nerea.

  “Ah, meaning no disrespect. Are you his mate?”

  “His cousin! I am of the Moth family!”

  The wolf said, “The Moth family has done me good turns in the past. What needs to be done? He is too big for me to carry.”

  Ruff said, “No! No! I called someone else for that. I want you to run interference.”

  “What is that?” There was a
suspicious note in the wolf’s voice.

  Ruff said, “Find men without heads, if any are in or around the town, and rip out their throats.”

  “If they have no heads, gnawing on their throat stump won’t do much. You mean the Dullahans?”

  Ruff said, “Can you handle it?”

  The wolf laughed. “Ever since Gil Moth gave me that hair, I have been able to go into places and eat things my kind are not supposed to eat, and I have done many dark deeds. I am mighty among my kind and not lonely any more. Got a wife and pups, and I am a respected member of the community, and folks are afraid of me. So I owe him, and, yes, I can set a perimeter, scour the woods and fields, and kill any Night Folk hunting for him.”

  “Good!” said Ruff.

  “Give me a scrap of his clothing, something with his scent on it, and we can set up false trails and deadfalls and tricks like wolves from the Old World used to do, back when Vseslav the Werewolf Prince ruled Kiev, and the wolves ruled all the snowy forests east of the Urals! Those days will come again!”

  The wolf threw back its head and howled. Gil heard the answering howl. “Movement to your east. Large and dangerous. Incoming!”

  Kransy growled. “Smells bad, folks. My pack says someone is already on the trail.”

  Nerea said, “Help me push him back in the water!”

  But Ruff said, “Wait! I know that smell.”

  Kransy said, “So do I, and I am not going to be here when he comes. Brr! We’ll be in front and behind, and on the left and right, hunting and killing. No damned elf is going to fool us and find the Swanmay’s house. Always glad to help out a pal.” And he threw back his head again and howled. “Come brothers! Come! We hunt! We kill!”

  Krasny padded off.

  A few moments later, Gil heard the noise of some large, stealthy animal moving upslope. The padded footfalls of the large beast grew closer. Gil smelled a familiar musk.

  The voice of Bruno the bear sounded in his ear. “I came when I heard, wolf. I did not know we knew anyone in common. He is good at playing dead. No, wait. He breathed. No one would be fooled by that.”

  4. Brown Bear

  Nerea said, “He is not dead. I gave him a pharmacon to sedate him and slow the blood loss.”

  The bear grunted. “Well, you may have saved his life. Lend me a hand. Haul him up. Lash him down.”

  Gil felt himself being moved rather roughly, with Nerea’s hands to one side of him and Ruff’s teeth to the other. He was half-hauled, and half-rolled, onto the back of the prone bear, who then gingerly stood up. Nerea’s hands were needed to unbuckle his belts and baldric, and tie him onto the bear’s bowed back so that he would not fall.

  Then, Nerea said, “Are you sure I cannot come with you? What if he wants to say something when he wakes?”

  Ruff said, “Nope! Nope! Ygraine is super paranoid. If I lead someone she does not know to her house, she will never feed me scraps again. Sorry. It is not my call, you see? I like you! But it is not my secret to give away.”

  “The bear will see the house!”

  Bruno said, “Ygraine and I met long ago, and there is a bond between us hard as iron. Whether she knows me or not, I will do nothing against her. If the dog does not forbid you, I will. She must approach you in her time and way.”

  “Well… Since you are the bear Gil trusts to knock him silly, I must trust you, too. Let me return the hat to the pooka. But… first… give him this when he wakes, from me.”

  Gil heard a rustling noise and a tiny metallic chime, but his eyelids were not willing to open. He did not see what she passed to Ruff.

  There was a splash of water as Nerea submerged.

  Between the rough handling of tying him to the bears back and the rushing, loping sensation of racing down the road under the moonlight, pain drove Gil’s awareness far away, to some dark place where he knew nothing and remembered nothing.

  But he thought before he swooned that he heard wolves crying out in the trees beyond the highway. We hunt! We kill! Always glad to help out a pal!

  5. The Evergreen

  Gil’s next memory might have been from later that same night, or it might have been from a day or two later. He woke. Before he was aware of anything, he knew his sword was not with him. Somehow, he could tell Ruff was not with him either.

  He pried open his eyes. He was on the couch. It was his house. He was home. His head was on a pillow on the side nearest to the old-fashioned standing radio. His feet were toward the door. The moonlight was slanting through the window to his left. To his right, starlight shined in the kitchen window.

  An enormous pine tree had grown up through the broken floorboards of the short hall leading to his old room. The roof in that place was broken as well, and the fragrant pine branches were growing throughout the roof beams and stucco of the ceiling, as if embracing the whole apartment in protective wooden hands.

  Gil was sure this was a dream, but only at first because the tree did not disappear or change.

  He could see stars through the pine-needle-filled gap between the edges of the hole in the roof and the thick pine trunk. He wondered what had happened to the deserted garage downstairs. Was the concrete floor down there broken up into chunks by the knotted pine roots?

  Two pine branches moved even though there was no wind to move them, and a beam of moonlight fell down and lit on his mother. She was kneeling next to the couch, and her hands were clasped together above his heart. Her eyes were lowered. Her hair was unbound and fell like a silver waterfall across her shoulders and arms to the floor. Some locks of the hairs were over his arms and chest, a warm blanket.

  He looked up. Hanging on a branch in the middle of the kitchen was a long robe made in two parts of white swan feathers. The robe glinted with tiny sparks just at the tips of every feather, and the moonlight shimmered and shined on the threads about the neck and hood, as if these were woven of tiny streams of running water. The cloak pin was a circle divided into four quadrants.

  “Mother, I am awake,” he said. “Is that your swan robe? I found it for you as a child. They said you left me and flew back to Heaven. They said you left me to die.”

  “Who said?” Her voice was soft and serene.

  “Your sons.”

  She said, “From which parent did they receive their love of truth, and from which their love of pride? And which of the cities or gardens of those blessed lands above the clouds would receive a mother who abandoned her infant child? And to what world would I flee if I had any hope to meet your father again, when he came to deliver you his patrimony?”

  “Please…” his voice sounded weak in his own ears. “No riddles. You promised. No more riddles.”

  She said, “By certain signs in the Heavens I knew you had fallen. I unpacked my celestial robe from the mothballs in a cedar box where I had written runes of power on the lid. I donned it and flew across the face of the world, swifter than eagles, seeking my lost son, and my tears fell into the upper clouds.”

  “Sorry. So sorry, Mother… I didn’t mean to…”

  “Hush. I have fasted and prayed as I have never before. Deeply I read in the sacred word, in the Psalms of David and the Wisdom of Solomon. Many things were shown me. My faith erenow was a weak and girlish thing. I see now, only now, what kind of woman Heaven intends me to be. The sculptor strikes a hard blow! I am so imprudent, so presumptuous! Who is wiser: the fool who thinks himself wise or the wise who knows himself a fool?”

  “Mom! Please… no riddles…”

  “My prayers were answered, but not through any merit of mine.” Ygraine blinked and drew in a breath, as if to swallow a sob. “The Virgin is a second mother to you, a heavenly mother. And you disobey her as you do me. One of the seven swords that pierces her sacred heart is her sorrow when her son was lost in Jerusalem, a boy younger than you. A willful child, he went to the temple, seeking his patrimony just as you did yours. She knows what my heart knows; her pain is mine.”

  “What are you saying, Mother? I don’t
understand. Did you… see a vision?”

  “I saw my son fall. Saint Christopher brought you back to me. You were unwise to break your oath to him. Deep waters claimed you, but the love and loyalty of friends brought you to the light again. Be thankful you lost only your father’s sword and your name’s honor, and not your life.”

  Gil had more questions, but the hot sensation of tears stung his eyes, and his mother kissed him on the brow and said to him, “Slumber and sleep! Let the mermaid’s potions and panaceas do their work.”

  6. The Hair of Phanes

  When next he woke, his head was clear. He was tucked into a blanket on the couch. To his surprise, the tree from his dream was real. The great pine had broken through floor and ceiling and spread its branches across the roof. The dropped pine needles on rug and floorboards formed a fragrant carpet.

  He sat up, smelling woodsmoke. The left and right basins of the kitchen sink had been made into an impromptu fireplace, and the open kitchen window was the only chimney. Firewood and smoking coals were piled under the spigots. The wings of the celestial robe would wave gently in the same breeze that carried the smoke out the window. It took Gil a moment to realize that the breeze came from the robe. The feathers were producing the mild wind. It smelled of mountain air, of ozone, and of the clean atmosphere after a lightning storm.

  His mother was in the kitchen, stirring a kettle that hung from the sink spigots over the fire. She was dressed in her beige work-uniform with her nametag, printed with the wrong name, at her breast pocket, her luxurious hair tied up, pinned, and hidden in a dun scarf.

  Gil said, “Mom, the Bigfoot knows you are alive. I accidentally told him I was your son.”

  She smiled sadly. “Perhaps you should not have done that.”