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'Choose to leave, you mean, without being evicted from your body by your death? I suppose so. Though you'd probably die anyway, of psychic shock from the mental amputation.'
The Irishman was not as frightened as he would have been if he didn't know that last night's vision had been -prompted more by the cup of Dark than the imminency of death, Arthur's or his own or both; but this was still far from reassuring news. 'Well, why the hell don't you know any of this?' he demanded angrily. 'You're a sorcerer, aren't you, a wizard, a witch-doctor, a scrutinizer of chicken entrails? Fine! Haul out your crystal ball and take a look! See if I survive all this.'
'You have no idea how much I wish I could,' Aurelianus said, in quiet contrast to Duffy's shouting. 'The fact, though, is that all auguries and portents are blind to our current situation and the coming battle. I don't like it at all - it appalls me to think that Zapolya could have been so near and so well-informed without my having any indication of it; and to realize that he could be anywhere right now with, not impossibly, a force of armed men at his disposal. You can see why we've got to get the King safely inside immediately.'
The wizard shook his head, staring at the old sword.
'For fifteen hundred years all the precognitive arts have been gradually dimming out, like vision as twilight falls; they're all based, you see, on the old Chaldean principles of astrology, which relied on the existence of predictable courses, a predetermined world history. And they did work well for thousands of years. But in the last fifteen centuries the equations of predestination have been increasingly fouled by an element of... .randomness, or something I can only perceive as randomness...' His voice trailed off. His eyes were on the sword, but his gaze had turned inward.>'Sit down,' he said, waving Duffy to the only chair free of piled clothing. Aurelianus lifted from a small box another of his dried snakes, bit the end of the tail off and lit the thing in a candle flame. Soon he was seated on the floor, leaning against a bookcase and puffing smoke contentedly.
'I'll try to start from some sort of beginning,' he said. 'I've mentioned that this brewery is, in a sense, the heart of the West, and the tomb of an ancient king whom your Vikings are not entirely incorrect in calling Balder. Suleiman is the spearhead of the eastern half of the world, which is trying to strike at us now, while we're in a state of discord and weakness.'
'Which is because the Western King isn't well...?' Duffy hazarded.
'Right. Or else he's not well because his kingdom is unsteady. It's the same thing, really. Cure one and you've cured the other. And he'll be strengthened and renewed in six months, come the drawing of the Dark. Suleiman, knowing that, is going to try to destroy this brewery, and take Vienna into the bargain, before then. Before long Ibrahim will make some efforts, I expect, to send supernatural combatants down on us, but the elf-signs and faces on the walls should guard us from that. See that Shrub keeps those markings from being cleaned off.
'Anyway, this is a... dire pass we've come to. The East has flexed her sword-arm against a number of our eastern outposts, and is now limbering up for a lunge directly toward the heart, while the West languishes in defenseless chaos. Observing the seeds of this situation many years ago, our Fisher King made a tremendous request of the gods. God, if you prefer the singular.' He took a long, popping draw on the snake, and puffed out a startling succession of smoke-rings.
Duffy pressed his lips together and shifted in his seat. 'What request?'
'To return, for a while, the greatest leader the West ever had. To loan us one hero from the domains of death long enough to parry this eastern threat. The request was granted.. .and the man was born again, dressed in flesh
once more.'
'Uh,' Duffy said hesitantly, 'who is he?'
'He's remembered by a number of names. The one you'd know best is Arthur. King Arthur.'
'Oh no!' Duffy burst out. 'Wait a moment - are you trying to tell me there's truth in Lothario Mothertongue's babblings? All this round-table-and-Camelot stuff he's always spouting? Listen, if he's King Arthur, the one these fool gods have sent to save us, the Turks will have taken Vienna by the end of next week.'
'There is some truth in his babbling,' Aurelianus said. 'But no, relax, he's not Arthur. He must be a powerfully sensitive clairvoyant, though, to have grasped the situation unaided and come directly to Vienna. It's very sad, really.' He shrugged. 'Many are called, but few are chosen.'
Suddenly Duffy suspected where all this was leading. Well, he thought, let the old bastard say it. 'So who is Arthur?' he asked carelessly. 'You?'
'Good heavens, no.' The old man laughed and took another long pull on the snake, making the head glow nearly white. 'I'm coming to it; let me unravel the story in order. It was my job to find this reincarnated Arthur, for I knew - by certain signs and meteorological phenomena - when he was born, but not where. I began searching the western lands for him about twenty years ago, when he'd have been in his mid-twenties. I found traces, psychic footprints, of him in a number of countries, but the long years passed -'Did you find him?' Duffy asked.
'Well, yes, to omit a lengthy but fascinating tale.'
'And,' said Duffy tiredly, feeling like a participant in some ritual dialogue, 'where is he?'
Aurelianus puffed on the snake and stared curiously at the Irishman. 'Sitting in the chair across from me.'
'You mean me?'
'Yes. Sorry.'
The Irishman started snickering, and it built up to a laughing fit that lasted half a minute, at the end of which time his eyes were wet with tears and he'd begun to twist the straw plug out of a bottle of Spanish red wine. 'This is certainly my week,' he observed, a little hysterically. 'First those northmen decide I'm Sigmund, and now you tell me I'm Arthur.'
'They're two names for the same person. Didn't you ever even wonder about the parallel between Arthur demonstrating his right to the throne by being the only man able to pull the sword from the stone, and Sigmund proving his by being the only one who could pull Odin's sword out of the Branstock Oak?' He nodded. 'Obviously there's another true clairvoyant in Denmark somewhere, who sent Bugge and his men here so unerringly.'
'God help us,' Duffy said, adding with some sarcasm, 'Were they correct also, then, in assuming you're Odin?'
Aurelianus narrowed his eyes mysteriously, then relaxed and grinned. 'Well, no. That was an excess of religious enthusiasm on their part. Helpful, though.'
Duffy felt vaguely nauseated, and blamed it on the snake fumes. He'd got the plug out of the bottle, but now couldn't imagine drinking any of the wine. I don't care if I was Arthur in that lake-dream last night, he thought, I'm Brian Duffy now and I'll not have my identity usurped by some old dead king. He looked at the litter surrounding him in the artificially dimmed room. I'm not a part of this morbid, dusty, sorcerous world, he told himself insistently.
'That, of course,' Aurelianus was saying, 'is why the dwarfs and mountain creatures protected you - they knew who you were, even though you didn't yourself. And that's why Ibrahim tried to prevent your arrival here by sending winged afrits, and, having his lackey Zapolya send conventional assassins, to intercept you. When he failed to kill you he tried to bribe you over to the eastern side. The offer of the sultanate, I believe, was genuine.'
The little black-clad man hopped to his feet, opened a cabinet and groped in its dark interior. 'Here,' he said softly, lifting out a long, straight sword and handing it to the Irishman. Duffy stared at it; it was longer and heavier than the swords he was used to, and the hilt, above a grip long enough for two hands, was a simple crosspiece.
