~ by Katie Lynn Daniels

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the dead await the King’s return. But the ascendancy of the boy-king Arthur is not enough to drag life back from the void alone. It will take the hopes and dreams and prayers of every half-thing left alive, from the Black Knights who fight for the darkness, to the cyborgs who worship their king, to the androids created as an abomination in the image of humanity.

***

Throughout the course of human history there have always been those who do not wish to be saved. The black knights who opposed Arthur’s ascension had not been defeated—only dispersed. Like worms, in dark places they flourished, and their hatred grew into a flowering plant, waiting for a time of harvest.

Among these worms is Maleagant, whose hatred has festered for two years since his defeat at the hand of the boy-king. By day he schemes and by night he dreams of the moment when he shall exact his revenge. He lives in utter darkness, and is attended upon by automatons of his own making. His face is a mask of bronze and steel and sensors too small to be seen.

Jenny, girl-queen and consort of the king of all the land, has ridden forth into the dead forest, seeking something green. With her rides Sir Kai, Sir Agravaine, and Sir Daedelus. They are watchful, for they know the dangers of this forest. The tree trunks are black things, silent sentinels of the evil that befell the world a century ago, and such witnesses draw evil back to them. They resent the signs of life so evident in the human queen, the consort of the king.

Deep in his tower, Maleagant hears the whispered malcontent of dead things. He hears the whispers of the cyborg-things that attend upon the young human queen. Desire flames in him as an uncontrollable passion, and he recognizes that his moment has come.

The king doesn’t know—he lacks the senses that whisper of things unknown, for he is not bound to the death-metal the way his court is. He doesn’t feel it when his queen is threatened, but the others do. As one they cease speaking, and turn to face the east, the dead forest where the queen has gone to ride.

“What is it?” Arthur asks helplessly. “What is wrong?”

“Maleagant,” they say with one voice.

To another it would be a thing creepy and unwholesome, but Arthur is satisfied with the loyalty of his knights and trusts them utterly, even their strangeness. His only fear is for the queen and the danger she faces that he cannot feel.

“What must we do?” he asks his court.

They ride out, but arrive too late. They find the bodies of Kai, Agravaine, and Daedalus still twitching on the ground. Daedelus will live no more, and they lay his body respectfully to one side. Gawaine kneels at Agravaine’s side and yanks the power cell out of his left arm to replace the fried and blackened one that powers his brother’s heart. Only Sir Kai remained alert after the attacks, and he drags himself to a sitting position to face his lord and king.

“They came too quickly,” he says, his voice strange and whirring. “Meleagant and his clockwork rodents. They came, and we heard them coming, but we could not get away.”

“And the queen?” the king asks, his voice catching on a note of dread.

Kai shakes his head. “She is gone,” he says. “They took her.”

The boy-king does not yet know how to remain strong in front of his knights, and a brittle sob escapes him. As one his cyborgs look away, as unnerved by their lord’s grief as they are in awe of it. Only Lancelot steps forward, his own eyes wet with artificial tears that mimic perfect creation.

“I will bring her back to you,” he swears.

“You do not know where Maleagant’s tower is,” Gawaine says, glancing up from his brother. “None of us do.”

“I will find it,” Lancelot answers, “and I will find her. And I will bring her back to you, hale and whole and living.”

“Brave words for a pretty toy,” sneers sir Ector, “who has felt no loss or seen the Devastation of Worlds.”

“I will find her,” Lancelot repeats, the words caught in him like a record that will not cease its repetition. “I will find her.”

“Go then,” Arthur says. “Find her if you can. Bring her back to me.”

Lancelot turns and walks away, his movements too perfect to be natural, his footsteps too silent to be those of a machine. Arthur and his knights stand and watch him go.

“You will not see him again,” Kai prophesies.

“Enough,” Arthur says, but his voice is gentle. “Let us return to Camelot. We will hope and we will pray, but we will not speculate on this matter. I could not bear it.”

Their king’s word is sacred to them, and as one they obey him.

***

To the east, Lancelot walks. Around him the dead things whisper, but he is not alive so they don’t see him as a threat. He asks them where Maleagant’s tower is, but they do not answer. Such things never answer.

He walks for a day and a night and feels no weariness, for he was created too perfect to ever be human. On the morning of the second day he sees something unusual, something he has never seen before. Something green, and yellow…a slender stem supporting leaves and petals of inimitable beauty. He reaches out but does not dare to touch it. It is a living thing, and not intended for one such as him.

Ten paces farther on there is another, in vibrant azure that rivals the sky for glory. And there, another. As he follows the trail he begins to run, for he realizes what they are. He is following the flowers that sprang to life under the footprints of the queen.

Only life shall bring forth life

From the death-metal we shall never be free

For only a living thing can coax dead growth to live once more

The dead forest becomes less malignant, lost now in remembrance of what it had once been and could be again. Lancelot’s path becomes more sure and, as he runs, a shadow on the horizon begins to take form. He approaches the tower without fear, for fear is a weakness and he was created without any.

“Sir Maleagant!” he shouts. “Sir Maleagant, I have come for the queen! Stand and face me!”

The only answer is an echoing laugh as the tower itself mocks him.

“Sir Meleagant!” Lancelot repeats, undeterred. “Sir Meleagant, stand and face me!”

There is no answer from the shadow tower, and Lancelot does not shout again.

He stands on the edge between the black forest and the desert sea, and waits. For a night and a day he stands without moving and feels no weariness. At sunset on the third day after Jenny was taken, the shadow tower stirs and something comes forth.

It is Maleagant, fearsome in his black armor, more fearsome still riding on the back of a mechanical beast formed in the likeness of a fire-breathing monster from the days before the world fell. Lancelot was born after the Desolation of Worlds and does not know to be afraid of such beasts. A third time he repeats his challenge.

“Sir Maleagant,” he shouts, and his young voice rings clear across the plain between them. “Stand and face me!”

The craven knight laughs, and his evil beast charges forward. Lancelot is on foot, but he draws his sword and stands unafraid—he is always unafraid. He sidesteps easily the beast’s first charge, and his sword cuts through its limbs of steel and bronze as if they were water. The beast stumbles, then falls. Maleagant flies through the air, but lands on his feet. With a whir of gears and a roar of anger, he turns back to the young knight.

“You,” says Meleagant, his voice thick with hate. “What is that blade you carry?”

“Elumir,” Lancelot answers. “The light that sees all.”

It is his turn to charge forward, and he strikes out against the craven knight with his blade of light and pain, and Meleagant is afraid. He drops his weapons and kneels in the desert sea and places both hands on the black sand in front of him in utter surrender.

“Do not kill me, fair knight,” he begs. “Spare my life and I will take you to the queen.”

Lancelot hesitates. This is all wrong, but he is too young and doesn’t know how to recognize treachery.

“Very well,” he says. “Take me to her.”

They go back to the shadow-tower then, Meleagant leading the way with Lancelot following behind, wary for any traps. Recognizing its master, the tower permits them entrance, but once inside, it closes and enfolds them in utter darkness.

“What is this?” Lancelot demands. “What have you done to me? Where are you, Maleagant?”

There is no answer but the laughter of the tower, for the shadows answer to their master only.

Lancelot struggles to move, but he came into the shadow of his own volition and they are loath to let him go. And then he is afraid.

“Meleagant!” he shouts once more, but the darkness is clouding his mind as it clouds his vision, and binds his thoughts as it binds his limbs, and he fights in vain for freedom and sanity.

***

 Arthur’s court has little love for the android who sits at their king’s right hand, but they sense it when he enters the shadow-tower. As one they cease speaking and look to the east. Arthur shifts uneasily—he sees their concern, but he doesn’t want to know. False hope is a small comfort, but the only one he has.

“What is it?” he asks finally.

“Lancelot has entered the shadow-tower,” says his knights in one voice.

“That’s good then, yes?” Arthur asks, begs them. “You said no one could find it and he did. He found it. He will find Jenny.”

They look at the king, then. Two hundred eyes, and less than half of them human. Such a stare should strike terror into the heart of any other, but Arthur trusts his court in all their strangeness.

“No,” they tell him. “No one who enters the shadow-tower ever escapes it.”

Thus they take the false hope of their king and replace it with grief and despair.

Arthur is a child yet, and the suddenness is too much for him. Whispering apologies, he flees the court, hands pressed over his mouth lest he scream like a child for its mother.

***

Lancelot knows not how long he remains imprisoned in the shadow-tower, unable to move or speak or think. He struggles all that time untiring, for he was built to be perfect and perfection does not tire. He struggles in vain, for as quickly as he pulls his sanity to him it is taken away once more by the shadows. He struggles, but even the shadow wears thin at times and a glint of light leaks through at sunrise. The light offers him a moment of reprieve. It is a small moment, but even a fraction of a second is eternity to an android. In that small space of peace he understands and he knows, and his hand moves to grasp his sword.

Elumir springs to life in the shadows, and the light-that-burns cuts away the darkness that holds Lancelot prisoner. He is free to move and he swings the sword in a wide arc. The shadow screams as it is torn to shreds, and Meleagant hears. He looks up from the queen’s bed, and rouses himself to don his armour. By then it is too late, for the tower is only a tower, and shadow-cursed no longer. Lancelot stands in the door of the chamber, clad in sunlight, and Meleagant cowers on the stone in front of him.

Lancelot kills him without a thought, for he is not human and has no conscience. Meleagant bleeds red and blue and green, and it takes hours for his mechanical parts to realize his human soul is gone and to stop their pointless whirring.

Jenny is crying. She too was held motionless by the shadows; helpless victim of Maleagant’s cruel advances. All her terror rushes back at once and she sobs broken-hearted into her tattered dress. Lancelot stares at her in distress. He is not human, and he has not seen the desolation of worlds. He does not understand grief and he does not understand women. Finally he sheaths his sword and goes to her. He takes her hand as he did that first day in court, but she throws her arms around his neck and sobs into his shoulder.

“I’ve betrayed him,” she chokes out. “I’ve betrayed my lord Arthur.”

“No,” Lancelot says. “No, you have not. How could you? You were taken against your will. No one would hold you to blame.”

“I was looking for something green, something growing,” Jenny says. “I was looking for life to return to this dead world. It was a silly thing to do.”

“Not silly,” Lancelot tells her, remembering how he came to find the shadow-tower. “Not silly at all. It’s real.”

“Real?” she repeats, and her crying lessens.

Unthinking, he brushes the damp hair off of her forehead, the wet tears out of her childish-blue eyes. “I don’t know their names,” he admits to her. “But I can bring you to them. If I show you to them, can you teach me what they are?”

“Yes,” Jenny whispers, and now she isn’t crying at all.

Hand-in-hand they leave the tower, and Lancelot shows her where her footprints gave birth to new life, and he tells her how that life brought him to her. She speaks their names—daisy, violet, cornflower, dandelion.

Night falls, and the queen tires. The dead forest is an unwholesome place to be after dark, but nothing seems to stir in the presence of the flower queen. Lancelot makes a bed for her in the roots of a black tree, and sits close by to watch. He sees as well in the dark as in the day, for poor vision is a weakness and he has none. Fearing nothing, the queen sleeps.

Lancelot watches the rise and fall of her breath, the slight tremble of her lips as they form words spoken only in her dream world. He watches, as motionless as a stone thing, his thoughts sliding away from him like the tide going out at sea. He watches for danger, but he watches for something else too, something that was never programmed into him.

Around the flower queen, green life grows in the night. Ferns circle her head, and ivy entwines around her feet. Grass and moss grows beneath her, cushioning the rocky ground where she sleeps. Lancelot watches, and wonders, but the beauty of the new-grown plants cannot rival the beauty of his queen.

Dawn peeks over the horizon, and new light peeks out on a world transformed. Arthur rises after a sleepless night and walks to his window and knows in ways that his court cannot know that Jenny is alive and will return to him. She whispers in the breeze that sings across new-grown grass, and his heart leaps with joy for the thought of her safe return.

He walks with a step made light with hope to where his court is waiting for him, but their eyes are troubled.

“We cannot feel him,” says Gawaine. “The dead things no longer speak to us.”

“That is because they are dead no longer,” Arthur says, unable to contain his delight. “Open your eyes. Open the windows! It is a new day!”

Arthur and his court pour forth out of the castle, the way water is poured from a pitcher on a morning of delight. Coming to meet them, hand-in-hand across the green, are Lancelot and Jenny. And if he holds her a little too tightly, and she smiles at him a little too often, nobody notices and nobody cares, for on this day no good thing can be taken in excess. Arthur the boy-king runs across the newly grown lawn to embrace his girl-queen, and if Lancelot stands a little too close to their joy, then nobody minds, for he has gone and returned from what seemed not possible.