The Bright Sword

by Lev Grossman

Despair. The peace of lost hope. Something had been carelessly mislaid, that could never be found again.

We cannot know what would have happened.

The dead land would not live again. Instead one man would grab a gold hat from another and put it on his head, that was all. The old dream was gone, and the paths forward were winding and indistinct, lost in thickets of darkness and confusion.

They were all just parts in the blind mechanical engine of the world. Even God was, in the end. And then at the end of time, when the engine ran down, it would all mean something, or nothing, and they would all find out, or they wouldn’t. Nothing he could do would change anything.

Britannia was so cold and distant and insular and northerly as to be almost mythological, a miserably damp demi-realm confabulated out of gray stone and wet leaves and coarse grass. A different sun hung over Britain, a worn, debased tin version of the great golden coin that stared unblinking down at Rome.

hot blood in the cold water.

“For all the days you’ve stood on your wall, you still don’t understand what it means. The wall is death. An empire that builds its walls in stone has stopped growing. And an empire that is not growing is dying.”

“One day you will see that it is a mistake to love an empire, or a throne, or a crown, because those things cannot love. They can only die.”

once you’ve seen an empire fall you can never look at another one quite the same way again. All you can see is ruin.

When you were inside them adventures happened slowly, but the aftermath of a failed adventure was even slower. On the journey out they’d walked in a dream, pulled on by the quest, driven by their divine purpose, but now they just trudged.

Let the gods play whatever games they wanted, or no games at all. Their playthings were tired out.

in a way he died for a purpose. Though it didn’t matter much in the end.”

Maybe not everything meant something;

Even a king can’t make a man believe something. Or stop believing it either.

when people want to believe something even the king can’t stop them.

The quest was over, they were back home safe, and it was all for nothing, but everything had worked out anyway, more or less. In the end they’d made no contribution whatsoever. They could’ve stayed home for all the difference it made. Though who knows, maybe things would’ve gone differently if they hadn’t. We cannot know what would have happened.

It was looking very much like the end. But really hadn’t that been true for a while now? He’d done everything possible to keep from admitting it, but this fight was already well and truly over.

They were like sleepy children who begged for the story to keep going, but there was no more story.

Such was the magic of death. Everything he must do, he must do now or never at all. Everything he must say.

People love stories, I love them, but stories are like gods, they care little for the human beings in their care. They don’t care if they’re true or not.

I suppose it’s a sort of inside-out Garden of Eden: all apple trees, and nothing forbidden. Though you do get a little tired of apples after a while.”

“The Romans steal everything and then take all the credit.”

Maybe it wasn’t good but surely it wasn’t evil. Maybe it was some third thing entirely.

Maybe terrible things would happen in the future, maybe it was empty, a waste land. But there could be seeds buried there, too, deep down below the dry dust, where hidden springs still flowed. It was deep winter, but there was still hope for renewal.

“Maybe I don’t have to know. I can be a good person without God, or fairy either. I guess I’ll just believe in myself for a while.”

there are less conspicuous modes of travel than a flying caravel,”

By what means, he wondered stupidly, does dark water so suddenly become white?

It was a new age, and he would have to write the story himself now or all the worst people would do it for him.

without God always sticking his oar in, upstaging them with His showy marvels, the priests of Britain had finally taken their rightful place as the center of attention. God’s absence was the best thing that ever happened to them!

“Lots of people do forbidden things,”

Whence this sudden bout of melancholy?

Death by misadventure. Happens more often than you’d think.”

All this merriment was a mere distraction, the hectic flush of a dying land.

nothing meant anything, and everything was only what it was and nothing more.

He felt either very wise or very foolish, but he kept going.

How had he forgotten so much? He used to remember everything.

It was quite a large cup, but then Jesus would no doubt have needed a stiff drink. Unless it was the cup that caught the blood that flowed from His side on the cross, after Saint Longinus stuck Him, as the other story had it. Or they might’ve been the same cup, though hopefully someone washed it in between.

There was something deeply comforting about being near the Grail but not feeling like you had to actually go and get it. It’s all right, he was fine where he was. Divine perfection is over there, and I, imperfect and fallible being that I am, am over here.

He’d spent an awful lot of time dwelling on the past, old hurts, old sins, but it was all in vain. There was no undoing them, no matter how much good he did, how many quests his knights completed, how fervently he prayed to anyone or no one.

The past was a cursed wound.

It was the future that required attention.

How do you live in a waste land? Is there really any such thing? You look for the buried seeds and deep springs. You watch the animals, the lizards and the foxes, and see how they do it. You wait.

Another day, another pretender to the throne who needs killing.

“You can do this. You don’t know it yet, but you can.

The world had shrunk to this thin, scrappy stretch of sand.

The world had tried to teach him to hate himself, but he’d seen through the lie and understood who he was.

He was waking from his dream of wrath.

Time was always stealing away bits of your future and replacing them with memories, and then the memories faded.

For a while he threw stones in the stagnant brown moat, choked with masses of duckweed. He imagined being a fish under there, forcing his way through the soupy sun-warm water. Did they know that the world they lived in was a circle? Or did they believe they swam on and on forever, in an eternal green darkness, world without end?

I love you, little brother. I hate you, but I love you too.”