THE KNIGHT OF LIONS
Part 2
By Cretin de Twonk
Yvan dismounted and drew his sword.
"All right, all right," Kay stammered. "I yield. Don't hurt me."
Beneath his helmet Yvan smiled. He sheathed the ringing sword and pulled off his helmet. In the ensuing silence Gawain, the King and Kay stared without uttering a word.
At last, Gawain said, "...Yvan?" as if he thought he was still in disguise.
"It's me," Yvan said. His voice came out as a faint sigh.
"Oh, Yvan," Kay said, horrified by something. He stood and continued to stare, very hard, at Yvan's chest. "What happened?"
"You've had nothing but insults for me and my cousin," Yvan croaked. He cleared his throat, but it didn't help. "Nothing but harsh words for everyone at court, apart from the Queen. Now you must apologise for saying I was a coward. It was slander."
"Yvan -- "
"Say it."
"Yvan. I am sorry. But. You're wounded!" Kay pointed.
Yvan looked down. There was a gaping hole in his breastplate, and through the chest beneath it too, but no blood. The trees behind him could be seen through the gap. He supposed that meant it was clean.
"An old injury," he whispered in dismissal. "I've gotten married."
"Funny," Kay said with a trace of his usual self. "I didn't realise weddings involved having to die first."
"I'm not dead," Yvan said.
"You're not alive either!" Gawain yelped. "We have to stop the Queen from knowing he's here. If she sees..."
"If I see what?" Queen Gwenevere said, sidling up to them, inasmuch as it was possible to sidle whilst wearing a long dress.
"Nothing!" King Arthur said, rushing to embrace her and hide her face against his chest. However, he missed. The Queen took a quick step back and peered over his shoulder at Yvan, who was one of her favourite knights.
"Oh," she blinked. "I take it you avenged your cousin's defeat by the Lord of the Wood, then?"
Yvan folded his arms over the wound. If he had had any blood circulation, he would have blushed. "Um. Yes. His name was Herne." He tried to clear his throat again. "And then I married his wife."
Gwenevere's eyebrows shot up. "Perhaps you'd like to take us to meet her, sir?"
"Well. Er. Um..."
"I think you'd better," the King said, checking his sword still hung from his belt. "If she's the one who did this to you, it's time I had a little chat with her."
Yvan looked with trembling lips from one to the other of them, wondering what he could say to keep them away and also be polite enough to save his head.
At last he whispered, "OK," and turned his horse around. "Stick close by me."
He was of the opinion that only the King and Queen were coming. When King Arthur raised his hands to his mouth and called for everyone to take down the tents, Yvan groaned. Arthur couldn't go anywhere without the entire court complete with horses, firewood, tents, food, and a juggler, even to the bathroom.
"What are you groaning for?" Gawain said. "Does it hurt badly? We can construct a stretcher for you if you need one."
Yvan ignored him.
The expression on Lady Lauden's face when she found the court camping in her valley was "intriguing" as Gawain put it. Yvan found it about as intriguing as the two-headed devil-goat a self-professed witch brought Arthur as a gift several years ago. You couldn't stop staring at it to check it still possessed two heads, but you wouldn't want to go near the horns.
"What are they doing here?" she hissed. "We are supposed to hoodwink humans one at a time, or in threes, but not invite whole crowds of them in! You've not cast any illusions on them or yourself!"
"Why would I?" Yvan said in hoarse defiance. "They're my friends."
"It's lucky for you I'm a clever wife," Lauden said under her breath. "I'll have to inebriate them."
Then she clapped her hands and announced, "Let us have a feast, with dancing and merriment and wine -- lots and lots of wine -- to welcome the human High King and his hooligans -- er, I mean courtiers. Yes."
Two rockgoblins scampered off and brought kegs to the guests. Trees grew from the mud and twisted themselves into strangely elegant chairs, and the King was about to take a much-needed seat when Kay darted forward and stole it.
"Sir Kay!" Yvan said. "What are you trying to do, knock His Majesty over?"
"This is magic," Kay retorted. "It can be harmful. I thought it pertinent to test the chair before the King used it. In case."
The assembled faeries and lords cooed, "Aaaahhh."
"What?" Kay sprung out of the chair. "I wasn't being nice, I was being practical. If Arthur were to die here, what would we do, eh? Think of all the paperwork and the wars that would follow."
King Arthur sat down and glanced at his older foster-brother with pursed lips. "Are you going to test the Queen's chair?"
Before he could reply a massive table sprouted in front of them, knocking Kay over backwards. Tame birds flew overhead and dive-bombed the table with all kinds of weird fruit and vegetables. A couple of chickens who never lost the power of flight since the days of Eden landed on the wooden tabletop and arranged themselves to be eaten.
Everywhere, from tree-house to cairn to hole in the ground, red banners were unfurled and voices cheered.
"How nice," Queen Gwenevere said. "Why are all the flags red?"
"They are sheets stained with the Sun's blood," Lunette said, materialising into view by Yvan's left shoulder. "To show that the High King is mightier than the heavens."
"Oh. Lovely," the Queen said, and subsided into silence. All around the table the many knights, ladies and retainers of Arthur were just as quiet, watching with wariness as trolls danced and played rock music for them.
A couple of hairy wizards prised the corks out of the wine-kegs, and a drink like liquid marmalade flowed out into bowls. Once they had taken the first sip the guests relaxed, and nothing seemed so terrifying in its unusualness any more. Dodinas the Barbarian was in his element, dancing with goblins and faerie enchantresses alike, drinking so much he could hardly stand upright. Dyfed of T'in-Tagel would not stop laughing. In fact, as Yvan looked around, he saw everyone was laughing, gasping for breath, eyes watering down their crimson cheeks, limbs weak.
"I think they've had too much," he confided to his new spouse.
"It will ensure they remember nothing of this visit," Lady Lauden replied, corking up the barrels once more.
Meanwhile Sir Gawain was chatting up Lunette.
"I love dark-haired women," he said.
"Who said my hair was dark?" Lunette said anxiously. "I don't have hair. I'm the Moon."
"You are, in my eyes."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I think you are very, very attrac -- hic! -- attrac -- hic! -- good-looking."
"Oh."
Lunette gestured to an out-of-the-way corner, and the pair walked away. Yvan followed.
"You must realise," he heard her whispering, "that I won't be here for much longer."
"Nonsense," Gawain chuckled. The knight was not the type to chuckle, and Yvan found it disturbing. "The Moon never leaves. Because it's the Moon."
"What are you doing, following us?" Lunette demanded when she saw Yvan. She was somehow draped onto Gawain's knee, like a girl sits on the lap of her lover, but Gawain could still be seen through her shadowy figure.
Yvan ignored the question. "What do you mean, you won't be here much longer? Where are you going?"
Lunette sighed. "The truth is...I'm cursed. Or at least, I was. But I used you to lift the curse, Yvan. I'm sorry."
Gawain peered short-sightedly at her. "Here was me thinking faeries weren't complicated." However, he made no move to push her off his knee. How could you push a shadow?
"Cursed how?" Yvan asked.
"Remember what I told you about Love having an affair with me?"
"Mmm?"
"Well, after I broke it off--"
Gawain winced. "Ouch."
"After I ended it, I mean, Love laid a curse on me, being a minor god once more and able to do that sort of petty thing. He cursed me to walk the Earth as a shadow, until I found a mortal virgin and married him to the woods. I think I have fulfilled the conditions, and now I am waiting for the arrival of the termination contract."
"Curses have contracts?" Yvan said.
Gawain said, "He's a virgin?"
Lunette ignored Gawain. "Yes, they have end-of-agreement contracts. Once I sign it, I can cast off this guise and return to my true self in the night sky. Which means, Sir Gawain dear, that I am not a faerie. You've been trying to canoodle with a part of the solar system."
"Fair enough," Gawain said. "I wouldn't have married you, anyway. Me and the ladies -- we never seem to understand each other, you see."
Yvan glared at the pair of them with all the wrath his pale, dead eyes could muster. The Moon-sending used him for her own ends. She hadn't been trying to help him after all. Now he had no human life and no heart left. If there was still an organ throbbing in his chest it would have burst at this revelation. Instead, he turned around and stalked away.
"Yvan!" Gawain called. "Wait! Yvan?"
"That can't be my name any more," he muttered without stopping.
In front of King Arthur and Lady Lauden, he made an announcement. "I will go, then, as my Lady told me I must. I shall be gone for a year, to prove myself courageous enough for this woman's love through battles and quests. I feel like I need to beat the crap out of somebody, and it might as well be a stranger or a dragon or something. A man can't fight his own shadow."
"No dragons left in these parts," Kay slurred. "All gone extinct."
"When you leave, dear, take these...guests with you," Lauden half-begged, half-commanded. "We haven't enough room for forty drunk warriors in Faerie, and the Queen's no better either."
Queen Gwenevere was dancing on the table with her dress tucked into her pantaloons, a mug of something strong in one hand and a silly grin on her face.
"My lord?" Yvan asked the King.
King Arthur stirred. "Right you 'orrible lot," he roared. "Form up, pack the tents and walk on. We're leaving."
Gawain persuaded Yvan to accompany him and the rest of King Arthur's band back to the human world.
"Where better than here to find the adventures you want?" the knight from the North Kingdom asked him. "There's people turning up to ask for help in all manner of strange problems, every day. In fact, the King refuses to eat breakfast until he's been told at least six weird things."
So they returned to the castle at Caer and put all the tents away. Kay was grumbling and so was Agravan. During the last ten miles the court was forced to travel on foot. Their horses, down to every last palfrey, were like a starved collection of knobbly twigs when they left Brocelliand, and then they died. Feeding them hadn't helped. The journey finished them off.
All the men had beards as well, when before they were clean-shaven, apart from Arthur whose beard had now grown to a matted hair-scarf to rival Merlyn's. The squires' clothing was too short in the arm and leg, and in some cases the boys' toes had burst out of the ends of their boots.
Everyone could see this, but nobody mentioned it until the King knocked on the drawbridge of the castle and Merlyn let it down.
The wizard stared, twinkling eyes above his white, dirty facial hedgerow.
"Where the devil have you all been? I must have at least fifty-two royal feasts keeping warm in the oven. The rest I had to throw away -- there was no room left, and they were blooming with mould. And what have you all done with your mounts? Why are the squires dressed like village idiots? You look like wild men!"
"We were otherwise detained," the Queen said. She was pale and clutching her head.
Merlyn looked left and right. "Where's..?"
"Here," Arthur groaned, waving the only free hand available. "You're standing on me."
Once the drawbridge was raised off the King, who was pummelled back into shape, they entered and sat down to a hesitant meal. Queen Gwenevere had her "hair of the dog" -- a drink made mostly out of raw eggs. The rest of the court picked at their food and some still felt quite green.
Yvan was not nauseous, but couldn't eat. It was as if the memory of the fruit Lady Lauden gave him still filled his stomach. And anyway, if he tried to eat food it would fall out of the hole in his chest. It wasn't very convenient.
A herald came into the feasting hall, and shouted, "May I present a visitor?"
The King, who had not touched his breakfast yet, said, "Of course. I've heard two unusual things this morning. I need another four before I eat."
The herald called, "Lady Lunette!"
If Yvan had been eating at that moment, he would have choked. He swallowed dryly as the familiar shadow scooted along one wall and came to rest opposite him.
"Have they not signed the termination contract yet?" he spoke in the whisper he was beginning to dislike.
The Moon-shadow ignored him. "I am sent here by the Lady Lauden to greet and thank everyone here for visiting in her name...except for Sir Yvan of Gore, who is a traitor. For failing to return within a year and a day, Sir Yvan is excommunicated from Faerie."
"From where?" King Arthur said, rubbing his head, but by then the shadow of Lunette had vanished.
Yvan's mind was a long, drawn-out roar of shock, confusion and guilt. It was a year and a day since they left the valley of Brocelliand? How was that possible? It took a day to reach the King's headquarters.
Then Yvan thought of the way their horses died, how unkempt the people were on arrival, and it began to make a hideous kind of sense. Of course, time moved faster in the real world than it did where Lady Lauden was. It wasn't fair.
"I've been conned out of my own heart," he muttered.
"Sorry?" Gawain said next to him with his mouth full. "You want another bowl of pheasant tart?" His hangover had worn off.
Yvan ignored the extra helping his friend gave him and stood up. "I'm going out."
"Fair enough."
All around the table, eyes were lowered when he looked at the people's faces. The courtiers and knights saw and heard what had just happened, but they refused to make eye contact or speak to him, probably out of shame or to avoid causing him extra embarrassment.
He staggered out of the castle into the now moonlit evening, and did not stop walking until he stood bereft in the middle of the tournament field. Ahead lay the tree line of the local forest, which was kept fenced off for the King's hunting, and Yvan stared at it, remembering things he didn't want to remember. He looked at the space on his finger where the magic ring had been, and he glanced down at the hole where his heart should be, and started to laugh. It wasn't a laugh he recognised. Perhaps it was one he reserved for special occasions.
"Um, if you're going to go insane, I'd be very careful, if I were you," Merlyn said by his left shoulder.
"Insane?" Yvan turned to glare at the old wizard and smiled to see he was transforming into a giant, pink rabbit. "Who said anything -- ha ha! -- about going mad? I'm free!" He danced up and down. "Don't you see? Free as the air! I'm a bachelor -- I have no wife! I'm immortal, I can't die -- I have no heart, no life! I don't need to eat, I don't need to drink, I don't need to feel!" By now he was leering at the pink rabbit's face. "I don't have to be human. I don't have to wear clothes!"
With this revelation he stripped off his armour and let it fall with a clang in the grass. His shirt of mail fell next with a heavy rattle, then his shoes, his leggings, his under-shirt, until he stood in front of the pink-rabbit-wizard in nothing but the skin he was born in and a grin half a mile wide.
Merlyn averted his eyes, all sixteen of them, and said in a hollow, echoing voice, "You know, I once fell for a faerie woman. It didn't end particularly well for me either, but that's no excuse to become a lunatic..."
"Shut up, rabbit!" Yvan laughed, his voice harsh and cracked. "You've got learning and books to comfort you. I don't. I shall go and be part of the woods. Lauden would have wanted that of me in Brocelliand, so why not do it here?"
Yvan ran into the darkness between the pines. He heard the wizard mutter, "Rabbit?" and then he was alone in nature and able to go as crazy as he damn well liked.
Part Three of the serial coming up in the next issue.
"All right, all right," Kay stammered. "I yield. Don't hurt me."
Beneath his helmet Yvan smiled. He sheathed the ringing sword and pulled off his helmet. In the ensuing silence Gawain, the King and Kay stared without uttering a word.
At last, Gawain said, "...Yvan?" as if he thought he was still in disguise.
"It's me," Yvan said. His voice came out as a faint sigh.
"Oh, Yvan," Kay said, horrified by something. He stood and continued to stare, very hard, at Yvan's chest. "What happened?"
"You've had nothing but insults for me and my cousin," Yvan croaked. He cleared his throat, but it didn't help. "Nothing but harsh words for everyone at court, apart from the Queen. Now you must apologise for saying I was a coward. It was slander."
"Yvan -- "
"Say it."
"Yvan. I am sorry. But. You're wounded!" Kay pointed.
Yvan looked down. There was a gaping hole in his breastplate, and through the chest beneath it too, but no blood. The trees behind him could be seen through the gap. He supposed that meant it was clean.
"An old injury," he whispered in dismissal. "I've gotten married."
"Funny," Kay said with a trace of his usual self. "I didn't realise weddings involved having to die first."
"I'm not dead," Yvan said.
"You're not alive either!" Gawain yelped. "We have to stop the Queen from knowing he's here. If she sees..."
"If I see what?" Queen Gwenevere said, sidling up to them, inasmuch as it was possible to sidle whilst wearing a long dress.
"Nothing!" King Arthur said, rushing to embrace her and hide her face against his chest. However, he missed. The Queen took a quick step back and peered over his shoulder at Yvan, who was one of her favourite knights.
"Oh," she blinked. "I take it you avenged your cousin's defeat by the Lord of the Wood, then?"
Yvan folded his arms over the wound. If he had had any blood circulation, he would have blushed. "Um. Yes. His name was Herne." He tried to clear his throat again. "And then I married his wife."
Gwenevere's eyebrows shot up. "Perhaps you'd like to take us to meet her, sir?"
"Well. Er. Um..."
"I think you'd better," the King said, checking his sword still hung from his belt. "If she's the one who did this to you, it's time I had a little chat with her."
Yvan looked with trembling lips from one to the other of them, wondering what he could say to keep them away and also be polite enough to save his head.
At last he whispered, "OK," and turned his horse around. "Stick close by me."
He was of the opinion that only the King and Queen were coming. When King Arthur raised his hands to his mouth and called for everyone to take down the tents, Yvan groaned. Arthur couldn't go anywhere without the entire court complete with horses, firewood, tents, food, and a juggler, even to the bathroom.
"What are you groaning for?" Gawain said. "Does it hurt badly? We can construct a stretcher for you if you need one."
Yvan ignored him.
The expression on Lady Lauden's face when she found the court camping in her valley was "intriguing" as Gawain put it. Yvan found it about as intriguing as the two-headed devil-goat a self-professed witch brought Arthur as a gift several years ago. You couldn't stop staring at it to check it still possessed two heads, but you wouldn't want to go near the horns.
"What are they doing here?" she hissed. "We are supposed to hoodwink humans one at a time, or in threes, but not invite whole crowds of them in! You've not cast any illusions on them or yourself!"
"Why would I?" Yvan said in hoarse defiance. "They're my friends."
"It's lucky for you I'm a clever wife," Lauden said under her breath. "I'll have to inebriate them."
Then she clapped her hands and announced, "Let us have a feast, with dancing and merriment and wine -- lots and lots of wine -- to welcome the human High King and his hooligans -- er, I mean courtiers. Yes."
Two rockgoblins scampered off and brought kegs to the guests. Trees grew from the mud and twisted themselves into strangely elegant chairs, and the King was about to take a much-needed seat when Kay darted forward and stole it.
"Sir Kay!" Yvan said. "What are you trying to do, knock His Majesty over?"
"This is magic," Kay retorted. "It can be harmful. I thought it pertinent to test the chair before the King used it. In case."
The assembled faeries and lords cooed, "Aaaahhh."
"What?" Kay sprung out of the chair. "I wasn't being nice, I was being practical. If Arthur were to die here, what would we do, eh? Think of all the paperwork and the wars that would follow."
King Arthur sat down and glanced at his older foster-brother with pursed lips. "Are you going to test the Queen's chair?"
Before he could reply a massive table sprouted in front of them, knocking Kay over backwards. Tame birds flew overhead and dive-bombed the table with all kinds of weird fruit and vegetables. A couple of chickens who never lost the power of flight since the days of Eden landed on the wooden tabletop and arranged themselves to be eaten.
Everywhere, from tree-house to cairn to hole in the ground, red banners were unfurled and voices cheered.
"How nice," Queen Gwenevere said. "Why are all the flags red?"
"They are sheets stained with the Sun's blood," Lunette said, materialising into view by Yvan's left shoulder. "To show that the High King is mightier than the heavens."
"Oh. Lovely," the Queen said, and subsided into silence. All around the table the many knights, ladies and retainers of Arthur were just as quiet, watching with wariness as trolls danced and played rock music for them.
A couple of hairy wizards prised the corks out of the wine-kegs, and a drink like liquid marmalade flowed out into bowls. Once they had taken the first sip the guests relaxed, and nothing seemed so terrifying in its unusualness any more. Dodinas the Barbarian was in his element, dancing with goblins and faerie enchantresses alike, drinking so much he could hardly stand upright. Dyfed of T'in-Tagel would not stop laughing. In fact, as Yvan looked around, he saw everyone was laughing, gasping for breath, eyes watering down their crimson cheeks, limbs weak.
"I think they've had too much," he confided to his new spouse.
"It will ensure they remember nothing of this visit," Lady Lauden replied, corking up the barrels once more.
Meanwhile Sir Gawain was chatting up Lunette.
"I love dark-haired women," he said.
"Who said my hair was dark?" Lunette said anxiously. "I don't have hair. I'm the Moon."
"You are, in my eyes."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I think you are very, very attrac -- hic! -- attrac -- hic! -- good-looking."
"Oh."
Lunette gestured to an out-of-the-way corner, and the pair walked away. Yvan followed.
"You must realise," he heard her whispering, "that I won't be here for much longer."
"Nonsense," Gawain chuckled. The knight was not the type to chuckle, and Yvan found it disturbing. "The Moon never leaves. Because it's the Moon."
"What are you doing, following us?" Lunette demanded when she saw Yvan. She was somehow draped onto Gawain's knee, like a girl sits on the lap of her lover, but Gawain could still be seen through her shadowy figure.
Yvan ignored the question. "What do you mean, you won't be here much longer? Where are you going?"
Lunette sighed. "The truth is...I'm cursed. Or at least, I was. But I used you to lift the curse, Yvan. I'm sorry."
Gawain peered short-sightedly at her. "Here was me thinking faeries weren't complicated." However, he made no move to push her off his knee. How could you push a shadow?
"Cursed how?" Yvan asked.
"Remember what I told you about Love having an affair with me?"
"Mmm?"
"Well, after I broke it off--"
Gawain winced. "Ouch."
"After I ended it, I mean, Love laid a curse on me, being a minor god once more and able to do that sort of petty thing. He cursed me to walk the Earth as a shadow, until I found a mortal virgin and married him to the woods. I think I have fulfilled the conditions, and now I am waiting for the arrival of the termination contract."
"Curses have contracts?" Yvan said.
Gawain said, "He's a virgin?"
Lunette ignored Gawain. "Yes, they have end-of-agreement contracts. Once I sign it, I can cast off this guise and return to my true self in the night sky. Which means, Sir Gawain dear, that I am not a faerie. You've been trying to canoodle with a part of the solar system."
"Fair enough," Gawain said. "I wouldn't have married you, anyway. Me and the ladies -- we never seem to understand each other, you see."
Yvan glared at the pair of them with all the wrath his pale, dead eyes could muster. The Moon-sending used him for her own ends. She hadn't been trying to help him after all. Now he had no human life and no heart left. If there was still an organ throbbing in his chest it would have burst at this revelation. Instead, he turned around and stalked away.
"Yvan!" Gawain called. "Wait! Yvan?"
"That can't be my name any more," he muttered without stopping.
In front of King Arthur and Lady Lauden, he made an announcement. "I will go, then, as my Lady told me I must. I shall be gone for a year, to prove myself courageous enough for this woman's love through battles and quests. I feel like I need to beat the crap out of somebody, and it might as well be a stranger or a dragon or something. A man can't fight his own shadow."
"No dragons left in these parts," Kay slurred. "All gone extinct."
"When you leave, dear, take these...guests with you," Lauden half-begged, half-commanded. "We haven't enough room for forty drunk warriors in Faerie, and the Queen's no better either."
Queen Gwenevere was dancing on the table with her dress tucked into her pantaloons, a mug of something strong in one hand and a silly grin on her face.
"My lord?" Yvan asked the King.
King Arthur stirred. "Right you 'orrible lot," he roared. "Form up, pack the tents and walk on. We're leaving."
Gawain persuaded Yvan to accompany him and the rest of King Arthur's band back to the human world.
"Where better than here to find the adventures you want?" the knight from the North Kingdom asked him. "There's people turning up to ask for help in all manner of strange problems, every day. In fact, the King refuses to eat breakfast until he's been told at least six weird things."
So they returned to the castle at Caer and put all the tents away. Kay was grumbling and so was Agravan. During the last ten miles the court was forced to travel on foot. Their horses, down to every last palfrey, were like a starved collection of knobbly twigs when they left Brocelliand, and then they died. Feeding them hadn't helped. The journey finished them off.
All the men had beards as well, when before they were clean-shaven, apart from Arthur whose beard had now grown to a matted hair-scarf to rival Merlyn's. The squires' clothing was too short in the arm and leg, and in some cases the boys' toes had burst out of the ends of their boots.
Everyone could see this, but nobody mentioned it until the King knocked on the drawbridge of the castle and Merlyn let it down.
The wizard stared, twinkling eyes above his white, dirty facial hedgerow.
"Where the devil have you all been? I must have at least fifty-two royal feasts keeping warm in the oven. The rest I had to throw away -- there was no room left, and they were blooming with mould. And what have you all done with your mounts? Why are the squires dressed like village idiots? You look like wild men!"
"We were otherwise detained," the Queen said. She was pale and clutching her head.
Merlyn looked left and right. "Where's..?"
"Here," Arthur groaned, waving the only free hand available. "You're standing on me."
Once the drawbridge was raised off the King, who was pummelled back into shape, they entered and sat down to a hesitant meal. Queen Gwenevere had her "hair of the dog" -- a drink made mostly out of raw eggs. The rest of the court picked at their food and some still felt quite green.
Yvan was not nauseous, but couldn't eat. It was as if the memory of the fruit Lady Lauden gave him still filled his stomach. And anyway, if he tried to eat food it would fall out of the hole in his chest. It wasn't very convenient.
A herald came into the feasting hall, and shouted, "May I present a visitor?"
The King, who had not touched his breakfast yet, said, "Of course. I've heard two unusual things this morning. I need another four before I eat."
The herald called, "Lady Lunette!"
If Yvan had been eating at that moment, he would have choked. He swallowed dryly as the familiar shadow scooted along one wall and came to rest opposite him.
"Have they not signed the termination contract yet?" he spoke in the whisper he was beginning to dislike.
The Moon-shadow ignored him. "I am sent here by the Lady Lauden to greet and thank everyone here for visiting in her name...except for Sir Yvan of Gore, who is a traitor. For failing to return within a year and a day, Sir Yvan is excommunicated from Faerie."
"From where?" King Arthur said, rubbing his head, but by then the shadow of Lunette had vanished.
Yvan's mind was a long, drawn-out roar of shock, confusion and guilt. It was a year and a day since they left the valley of Brocelliand? How was that possible? It took a day to reach the King's headquarters.
Then Yvan thought of the way their horses died, how unkempt the people were on arrival, and it began to make a hideous kind of sense. Of course, time moved faster in the real world than it did where Lady Lauden was. It wasn't fair.
"I've been conned out of my own heart," he muttered.
"Sorry?" Gawain said next to him with his mouth full. "You want another bowl of pheasant tart?" His hangover had worn off.
Yvan ignored the extra helping his friend gave him and stood up. "I'm going out."
"Fair enough."
All around the table, eyes were lowered when he looked at the people's faces. The courtiers and knights saw and heard what had just happened, but they refused to make eye contact or speak to him, probably out of shame or to avoid causing him extra embarrassment.
He staggered out of the castle into the now moonlit evening, and did not stop walking until he stood bereft in the middle of the tournament field. Ahead lay the tree line of the local forest, which was kept fenced off for the King's hunting, and Yvan stared at it, remembering things he didn't want to remember. He looked at the space on his finger where the magic ring had been, and he glanced down at the hole where his heart should be, and started to laugh. It wasn't a laugh he recognised. Perhaps it was one he reserved for special occasions.
"Um, if you're going to go insane, I'd be very careful, if I were you," Merlyn said by his left shoulder.
"Insane?" Yvan turned to glare at the old wizard and smiled to see he was transforming into a giant, pink rabbit. "Who said anything -- ha ha! -- about going mad? I'm free!" He danced up and down. "Don't you see? Free as the air! I'm a bachelor -- I have no wife! I'm immortal, I can't die -- I have no heart, no life! I don't need to eat, I don't need to drink, I don't need to feel!" By now he was leering at the pink rabbit's face. "I don't have to be human. I don't have to wear clothes!"
With this revelation he stripped off his armour and let it fall with a clang in the grass. His shirt of mail fell next with a heavy rattle, then his shoes, his leggings, his under-shirt, until he stood in front of the pink-rabbit-wizard in nothing but the skin he was born in and a grin half a mile wide.
Merlyn averted his eyes, all sixteen of them, and said in a hollow, echoing voice, "You know, I once fell for a faerie woman. It didn't end particularly well for me either, but that's no excuse to become a lunatic..."
"Shut up, rabbit!" Yvan laughed, his voice harsh and cracked. "You've got learning and books to comfort you. I don't. I shall go and be part of the woods. Lauden would have wanted that of me in Brocelliand, so why not do it here?"
Yvan ran into the darkness between the pines. He heard the wizard mutter, "Rabbit?" and then he was alone in nature and able to go as crazy as he damn well liked.
Part Three of the serial coming up in the next issue.
