Blood and Dreams: Lost Years II Read Online Free PDF Page B

spinning and smashing everything in reach … I glimpsed Howtlande bobbing stealthily through the lush greenery where two or three of the priests seemed to be getting away.
    I backed into the sweet bushes. Not my fight. I felt sorry for the priests, but it was too late to help. Too many people had followed too many others for one toy dragon to discourage.
    I thought about softness and scent and red hair. Where was she? Maybe Howtlande knew. I headed for where I’d seen him last. Glanced back and saw dear little Gobble pointing me out. His dwarves (he’d clearly planned best of the lot) were actually bouncing, popping in and out of the deep washes of flower and brush, like deadly stinkbugs, avoiding most strokes, stabbing and slashing at knees and shins.
    Gobble was suddenly trapped between two furious knights and I saw him resort to snake tactics again, vanishing in the foamy gold — then his sword lashed up from the dense bush right into one man’s eye-slit. The deadly steel beetles were suddenly chopping the fronds all around me. A sword flicked a wavy trace across my torso. I slapped a stroke back, and hit stems. I wasn’t dressed for this. I ducked and ran through a hedge of roses. I wasn’t dressed for that either. By the other side I was netted with rips and crisscrossed blood. There was a little space and the first three dwarves coming after me regretted it. They couldn’t duck and pop: I hit them so hard I saw stars from the impacts. That was that. For a few breaths, anyway.
    A few yards later I blundered across a crushed wake wide enough to be either the dragon’s or Howtlande’s. Then I saw him, face down. Butterflies flitted about his head. His helmet was missing and a bloody lump had closed one eye. Life went on here in the garden. I could hear bees. I moved cautiously, straining to see into the shifting light and shade … The fighting gradually drifted and thinned into a meaningless drone . . .. I was tired and really hungry now … found it hard to concentrate on anything … wanted to sit, inhale the rich air, stretch out … This garden was like a world in itself: human absurdity and natural beauty all mixed with blood and dreams…
    Behind me Howtlande strained and struggled to one knee, holding his hurt head and sucking wind.
    “Ah God …” he whispered. “Ah …” I waited. “… a foul blow … treacherous …” He finally noticed me. “Parsival … Parsival … she means to have it all herself … the foul bitch …”
    “All the great nothing for herself?”
    “When I saw that dread machine,” he gently fingertipped his wound, “of fell magic …” shook his round head, “rending over those sweet fields …”
    “The dread machine is overthrown,” I told him, running my thumbnail along my lower lip. “Gobble’s midgets won the day.”
    The eyes went wide. “He has the Grail?” he hissed. “Does he? The worm, the —”
    “Maybe. I don’t know.”
    The eyes went small and hard again. His senses, such as they were, had returned. He tried to gesture me into his insanity again. “But can’t you remember where it’s hid?” he pleaded, jowls joggling.
    “Ask the druids.”
    “What?”
    “They were inside the dread machine.”
    “Druids,” he muttered, patting his wound again.
    “Exactly what went on while I was unconscious and chained?” I laid the flat of the blade along his bruised and puffy cheek. “Hmm?” The late sunlight beaded and broke along the steel.
    “There may still be time, sir, for the two of us to get our share.” He was afraid but more impatient than anything. “Where are the —”
    “What did you do to me?” I asked quietly, holding the edge still. He was sweating. With reason.
    “They questioned you, hoping to learn —”
    “What else?” My eyes were cold and bleak, I’m sure. That’s how I felt. I could hear bees humming in the syrupy air where flowers swayed and leaves rattled.
    “Well … It was a rite …”
    “More like a wrong.