The Final Quest (The Parsival Saga Book 3) Read Free Page A

things,” Broaditch was saying. “I hate it.”
    She touched his shoulder with her weathered cheek. Squeezed his thick arm.
    “I know,” she repeated, shutting her eyes against the bright pressure of sun. “But there’s nothing to be done. Ah, my gruff love, we’ve had many years, you know … many years …”
    “Can I have some cheese?” Torky asked, plucking at the sack as she set it down.
    “Ali,” her husband was saying, “I have been led around and around … each time I followed fate … each time I came full circle …”
    “And found me again.” She released him and sat down among the warm softness and little violet flowerpoints. She unwrapped the wheel of dry cheese. The children knelt close to her now.
    “Yes,” he murmured, twisting the spear into the ground. The children were both at the cheese. “Yes …”
    “You’re sad, father,” Torky said, chewing, eyes clear, grayish.
    “A little, my son,” his father answered. “Because I let the world mark me.” He almost smiled for a moment. “If you can wake each morn and forget yesterday, you’ll grieve but lightly in your life.” He looked tenderly at them both, Tikla involved with a bite too big for her mouth. “Do you understand?”
    Torky was serious. Stopped chewing. Blinked. Watched his father’s face almost gravely.
    “I think so,” he said.
    “Let each day pass like the dreams of the night,” Broaditch went on, leaning his weight into the spear. “They too seem real enough until you wake.” Alienor was looking at him now.
    “That’s fine advice,” she remarked.
    “Don’t mock me, woman. Well I know my weakness …” He broke off and held his hand out, cautioning them to stillness. He poised, listening to an oncoming swishing of grasses. He peered over the foliage and saw the flapping robe, pale, flat face streaked with blood, the sucking mouth as the man rushed across the dense, sunsoaked field. Broaditch readied his spear, thinking:
    If the others are at his heels, I’ll trip them to hell!
    Then the priestlike man staggered through a wall of bushes, stumbled to one knee and stayed there, puffing, staring at Broaditch with disgust, fury, and fear until he recognized him.
    “You were … with us on … the road …” he gasped and Broaditch nodded.
    “Your life seems a miracle, clerk,” Broaditch said, thoughtfully, aware now there was no pursuit.
    “There were busy with their booty.” the man seemed relatively unshaken by events. He seemed to take no account of his slashed, swollen head or anything else but getting on: his dark eyes seemed to be looking past whoever or whatever happened to be before them and his body made little, impatient movements while still.
    “They were your friends, back there?” Broaditch wondered as Alienor came closer and the children ate and watched.
    “My brothers and sisters,” the man answered, getting up, eyes, Broaditch thought, almost like holes, staring past and slightly over their heads.
    “That was your family there?” Alienor wondered, skeptical.
    “My brothers and sisters in the holy cause.”
    “Ah,” said Broaditch, comprehensively. He shut one eye.
    I’m ready for any measure of madness , he thought. My whole life has prepared me for it .
    “Nothing was said about it on the road,” Alienor put in.
    “It’s not a subject for chatter, woman,” was the reply. A faint tic rippled across his cheek as he spoke. “God’s true people led by a great man. He’s gathering his flock.”
    “Ah,” Broaditch repeated, not quite rolling his eyes.
    “I thought all the great men,” Alienor said, “had, praise Mary, passed from us. They must grow back like wild weeds in a garden.”
    The dark eyes with their invisible pupils flicked at her accompanied by a fluttering twitch. She noticed there were no smile wrinkles at his lips.
    “Our leader is no weed, woman. Say, rather, a rare and precious flower.”
    Both of Broaditch’s eyebrows went up at this