Chapter Forty-seven
We found a shovel in the storage shed behind the open-roofed abbey, and spent the next few hours digging a shallow grave beside the same little sapling I had seen the fairies singing and dancing around earlier.
Marion stood in the rain by my side the whole time. She seemed incapable of doing anything more than just standing there, weeping. When I was finished, she snapped out of her funk and together we carefully positioned Arthur within the shallow grave. With me using the shovel and Marion her hands, we buried our friend, the one-time King of Britain.
"Goodbye, old boy," I whispered.
In that moment, I had a flashing vision of Arthur riding off on a white stallion, down a leaf-strewn forest path bathed in golden light, a path that led straight into the golden sun.
I sucked in some air, and the vision faded away.
Marion and I stepped back under the branches of a nearby oak tree. And as the rain pummeled the freshly turned soil, and as a thick fog rolled in over the grounds, four small bodies appeared at the crest of the grassy slope, skipping and dancing and holding hands.
Marion gasped when she saw the wee folk.
Somehow, I expected them.
They skipped down the slope and stopped at Arthur's grave. There, they formed a small circle around the dark soil and bowed their heads deeply. Then, after a long moment, they danced again, encircling the grave, holding hands. When their small, angelic voices reached us, Marion wept hard and rested her head on my shoulder. Shortly, a fog moved in over the grounds, enveloping the little folk, and when it dissipated a few minutes later, they were gone, too, along with their tiny, haunting voices.
Left behind in their place was another tree sapling, this one planted squarely in the center of Arthur's grave.
A tiny oak tree.
Chapter Forty-eight
We were back in the open air chapel.
"We must go on, you know," said Marion, her voice flat, emotionless. She looked like she had lost a son.
"Yeah," I said. "The Underworld, or something. Got to tell you, Marion, I'm not looking forward to that."
"It's not as bad as you think, James," she said, standing over the very stone Arthur had indicated earlier. We were each holding a Godfire torch.
"Oh?" I said. "You know something I don't?"
"I've been dreaming of it," she said.
I was holding Excalibur in my right hand. Amazingly, the grip seemed custom-made for my hand, a perfect fit. I didn't recall it fitting this well earlier today inside the tent.
"Fine. Then how do we enter the Underworld?" I asked. And hearing the strange words issuing from my mouth nearly sent me into hysterics. I was doing all I could to remain calm and salvage what sanity I had left.
"That was not revealed to me in my dreams," she said. "Sorry."
"Of course not," I said. "That would have been too easy, right? Hey, let's blow off this whole Underworld thing and go get something to eat. I'm hungry. Is there a Denny's in Glastonbury?"
"I'm not very hungry, James," she said, cutting me off.
"Neither am I," I admitted, exhaling. "Well, Arthur said something about the greatest swordsman in the history of the world knowing a way in."
"Indeed he did."
"Any idea who he's talking about?"
"Some," she said, pursing her perfect lips. "Many consider Sir Lancelot the greatest swordsman in the history of the world."
Like I said, I didn't know much about Arthurian legends, but I certainly knew that one. Sir Lancelot of the Lake. The greatest knight. Ever.
"Well, maybe he'll come out of the woods naked, too," I said.
"Maybe," she said, and might have grinned.
To take some of the weight off my exhausted legs, I rested the tip of the sword on the wide, flat stone, the same stone Arthur had indicated earlier. And the moment the sword tip touched the stone, the chapel came alive.
Literally.
Four glowing knights appeared in the four corners of the abbey hall, all dressed in full medieval armor. All wielding swords of fire, which they raised high.
And charged me.