The Bright Sword

by Lev Grossman

The low sky was like a tent the pale creamy gray of unwashed linen.

Adventures were quick and exciting when you heard about them, but when you were inside one they happened very, very slowly.

Stories were useful that way, they smoothed over the gaps and sharp edges of the world.

Collum agreed that one absolutely could not have owls running around in knights’ bodies.

He supposed it was traditional for a knight errant like himself to be accosted by mysterious maidens. Though usually in the stories they had longer hair.

He swore a solemn vow that if he survived this he would always, for the rest of his life, if given the choice, go to bed.

You could argue till you were blue in the face, but when it came right down to it nobody really seemed to know exactly what it was that made a man a king. How did you work the alchemy that turned human dross into royal gold? God, blood, armies, faith, luck? Miracles were all well and good, but at the end of the day it was all in the interpretation, wasn’t it?

Bedivere would back King Arthur against any general who ever lived, against Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar put together, but God help Arthur if he ever went to war with himself, because no man could stand against Blaec Artair.

“I might keep bees,” Dinadan said. “Put my armor to good use.”

The Burning Brothers were no longer at their posts. Their duty done, they’d vanished or departed, gone back to wherever such beings came from, leaving behind only four black charred spots in front of the four gates. Bedivere imagined them in retirement, engaged in peaceful civilian pursuits. A vegetable garden. Amateur woodworking. Recorder duets.

She struck Palomides as highly intelligent and dangerously bored, an unstable combination.

They seemed to be under some kind of enchantment. Well, at least they were enjoying themselves.

But there would be no more talk of piskies, no more talk in British at all, we would learn good Roman Latin. Our little world, the world of furs and smoke, the old magic and the old gods, that was gone. Dead and burned.

And He was a piss-poor God at that, who never dared to show Himself. Never owned up to all the trouble He caused. The coward.

He was its prophet, though nobody would’ve listened to him if he’d even bothered to say anything, which he hadn’t—he was a lazy Cassandra.

Galahad—never one to read a warning—stuck his hand right in. The water stopped boiling. “It’s because I’m free from lust,” he explained. Lancelot loses again, Dagonet thought.

It was late February and the cautious new sun shone through dripping branches dipped in ice. Badgers and hedgehogs emerged wobbling from underground along with the very earliest of spring flowers, snowdrops and violets.

“I’m sorry the angel didn’t g-give you what you asked for,” Constantine said. “Fuck him.” “That’s right. Fuck that angel.” He stretched, which made him even longer. “Nice a-ankles, though.”

A hugely fat tabby cat pounced up onto the table and stalked along it stiff-legged, sniffing at the cups of ale. Lancelot swept it onto his lap, where it suffered itself to be stroked by the great du Lac.

“According to Palomides,” the queen said, “it was Julius Caesar who invented books. He was tired of unrolling papyrus all day to read his military reports.” “And then he burned the library of Alexandria.” “Complicated man, Caesar.”

A more reasonable man would take it on the chin, hang up the questing gear with a rueful chuckle, chalk it up to the sad fallible nature of humanity, which could never by its very fallen nature achieve the lofty ideals of etc., etc.

She loved him more than he loved himself. And was that not the point of a marriage, to love a person more than they can love themselves?

It was simply not in his nature to be slaughtered.

Do you know that Uther cried out for him, on his deathbed? ‘Arthur! My Arthur!’ Bit late for that!”

“Oh, and your witch is here too! Love your work, Nimue.”

“I sense fate’s hand in this,” he said. “And it is a principle of mine never to turn down an invitation to travel.”

With a crackling, crushing sound like a boulder rolling through underbrush the giant Ysbaddaden strode past, his head cresting along above the treetops. Collum suppressed the urge to give him a friendly wave.

He looked at Bedivere, but Bedivere just looked back at him, unyielding. No help there. Damn your steely blue eyes.

“It simplified things. Mercy felt like the wisest course.” “It almost makes up for his killing all four of my uncles.”

It did cross my mind that I might find God there, or that God might find me, but somehow we managed to miss each other as usual. Ships in the night. As it were.

“Our love was not simple, but it was real. That’s what no one understands. Our story was not a romance, it was a marriage.”

“Why does it matter what the stories say?” Nimue asked. “Because it is galling!” Guinevere snapped. “That’s why!”

“I always imagined it…I don’t know,” Dinadan said. “Sunnier.” “You must not have been to a lot of enchanted islands,” Guinevere said.

I cannot draw it, but I must take it. A paradox: discuss.

All around him the cod gazed at it in awe.

“And yet.” Ystradel obviously found Lancelot hilarious.

Or maybe God had sent the Grail like the rainbow after the Flood. Sorry about all the mess. Won’t let it happen again.

Collum was feeling a little tired of being shown things. He’d seen plenty for now, thanks.

“Well, I’m not learning Saxon,” Dinadan said. “Or Angle-ish, if that’s even a language.”

We’re all of us refugees from somewhere, we just don’t like to admit it.”