“I’m sorry to have to say it,” Constantine said, “but this is as far as I go.”

  “What?” Bedivere didn’t even look round. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I’ve been giving it a great deal of th-thought, and what I think is that we’ve found our king already. It’s Lancelot.”

  “You must be joking.” Now Bedivere stopped staring at the archway and turned around.

  “I regret to say that I am not.”

  His cheeks were flushed. Constantine obviously disliked making speeches, but he wasn’t backing down from this one.

  “He’s a traitor to the Crown,” Bedivere said. “But even if he weren’t I thought he said no.”

  “I don’t accept his refusal.”

  “Constantine,” Collum said, “I really don’t think Lancelot wants to be king.”

  “The choice is not his to make. I don’t think Arthur wanted it either. But you know, I find that it’s the people who actually want to be king who are the problem.”

  “How are you going to change his mind?”

  “I’m not. Guinevere will do it for me. From here I’ll go to Amesbury and put my case to her. If she is willing to forgive him, I will bring her to H-Hoxmead. I believe that her blessing will be enough to convince Lancelot. Then we’ll all return to Camelot together.”

  “You actually believe him,” Bedivere said, shaking his head in disgust. “You believe that lying shit.”

  “What about the spear?” Nimue said.

  “Well, the thing of it is—” The tall knight rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably. “No one ever came right out and told us to find the Holy Lance, did they? I mean to say, it’s not as though we got a sword in a stone or a Holy Grail. And the stone at least had some instructions on it. We got a glowing button with a stick on it, that’s all. It’s not much to go on, is it?

  “And even if it were, it’s not as though any of us found the Grail the first time round. Dagonet and I came close, but then we had Galahad, and there aren’t any Galahads anymore. I’m afraid Merlin might have been right on that particular score—this is heroes’ work. Not really our department.”

  “Maybe he’s right.” Scipio unconsciously traced a tattooed line on his face. “Even if we do find the damn spear, Queen Morgan and King Saxon will probably be making royal monster-babies in Arthur’s bed by then.”

  “Maybe the lance is Lancelot,” Palomides said thoughtfully. “Wordplay—you see?”

  Collum fingered the medal around his neck. It did feel very ordinary and mundane. Hardly a fitting conduit for the voice of God. And he wanted it to be true, he wanted Lancelot to be the answer. But finding Lancelot hadn’t felt like the end of the quest.

  “All right.” Bedivere started kicking apart the birch fire. “Well, do what you want, Constantine, and good luck to you.”

  “I know what a king is.” Constantine drew himself up, and Collum remembered how steely he’d looked that day at the battle, shouting orders in the press. “I grew up with one for a father, and frankly I don’t much care for him. But I like Lancelot. When he sits on the throne, he’ll feel God’s love again, just like before. He’ll have God, and we’ll have a king. Dagonet, you’ll come, won’t you?”

  But Dagonet shook his head.

  “Not this time.”

  He said it almost inaudibly. A breeze made the magic arch sway, and the edges of the smooth green land shifted with it.

  Bedivere stared up at the crossed branches. Then he walked back over to Constantine and for a heartbeat Collum was sure he was going to hit him, and the thought obviously occurred to Constantine, too, because he shied away, but instead Bedivere put his hands on the tall knight’s shoulders.

  “Go on.” He patted Constantine’s cheek. “Go. God will sort it out one way or the other. We’ll see you at Camelot.”

  He turned away and led his horse through the arch.

  “Thank you, Bedivere!” Constantine called after him. “I do hope you find it. And if God says it’s me, please inform Him that I abdicate!”

  * * *

  • • •

  They spent the afternoon crossing the high heather moorland of Bryneich, picking their way around soggy peat hags, two hundred miles or so from where they’d woken up that morning. They spent that night in an empty stone barn, by a crackling fire of thorny branches. The sunset looked red and sere and wintry. The barn was missing half its roof, and overhead the stars made silver skeletons of men and beasts and gods, who gazed down on them indifferently.

  Then they pushed on, to the north, through an empty gate in Hadrian’s Wall and into the land of the Picts.

  The weather changed. The great door of autumn blew open with a bang and through it came cold wind and sudden squalls splashing them with cold rain. Red and yellow leaves went streaming through the air and across fields and down lanes like lost pages from a broken book, plastering themselves on rocks and grass.

  It was true what Palomides said: he didn’t get wet. No rain touched him. It parted like the Red Sea wherever he walked.

  Collum knew this world, the world of the north. The land shed most of its trees and took on that familiar bald, threadbare lumpiness, as if the soil were a rug that was worn too thin to conceal the stony substrate underneath it. Valleys opened on valleys, vast bowls and hollows, huge stepped green promontories striped with skinny white streams. The weather was colder, the cold of the north but also of advancing autumn—the year was rushing past them, as if every night while they slept a week or two slipped away, like they were dreamers in a fairy cave.

  But they were getting closer. When they first set out the Holy Lance had seemed ghostly and abstract, but now it loomed larger and larger in Collum’s mind, more and more real, crowding out everything else. According to Palomides, the North Pole of the earth was a great black lodestone, thirty-three miles in circumference, standing all alone in the middle of a freezing sea. The spear felt like that, a lodestone at the end of the world, drawing them to itself.

  Collum hoped it drew them fast, because everywhere around them were small signs of a great disintegration: burned fields, a dead horse, a stone bridge with a sodden, bloated body trapped against a pier by the current. Ragged, rainswept lines of displaced people straggled along the sides of the roads. Lone houses were boarded up and shut tight, and towns grew rings of hastily constructed walls and barriers. They entered a church once to find it empty, the bell stolen, the priest absconded, stained glass broken, and rain gusting in onto the altar.

  The few people who would speak to them had no news, just confused rumors. That Camelot had been sacked and burned. That Arthur had never existed at all, he was just story spread by Christian propagandists. That there was a cult of Arthur that roved from town to town dressed in white, singing and preaching and beating themselves and urging people to do the same to speed the return of the king, who would arrive flanked by Galahad and Percival. There were rumors, too, of a rival cult that raped and pillaged and burned in an attempt to ruin Britain so comprehensively that Arthur would have no choice, he would be forced to come home and stop them.

  “Wait’ll he hears what he missed,” Dagonet said. Since Constantine left the quest he’d become even quieter and more sullen.

  One night they camped by a stream that was clear as glass, with a bed of rainbow-colored stones. The rain eased off for once. Sometime after midnight Collum rolled over onto his stomach and out of sleep. Something had woken him up, but he’d already forgotten what it was.

  Then it came again: Baroooooooo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-oooo!

  A hunting horn, and not far away. Bedivere sat up, blinking and searching the darkness around him for his hammer. A few glowing embers had survived the rain, and the sky had cleared, revealing a host of stars.

  “The forlonge,” Bedivere said. “The stag has outdistanced the hounds.”

  “Who the hell’s hunting all the way up here?” Dinadan asked irritably. “And in the middle of the night?”

  “Shh!” Nimue held up a hand for silence. Now they could hear the baying and yelping of the pack.

  A single hound shot through the camp at full tilt, pelting right through the campfire, kicking up a spray of sparks. Collum saw it only for a moment. It was a strange sort of dog, with bone-white fur and blood-red ears.

  Nimue stared after it.

  “Shit,” she said under her breath.

  “What in God’s name was that?” Collum said.

  More dogs bayed, all around them now.

  “It looked like a fairy hound. The Cŵn Annwn, Arawn’s pack. But they hunt the Otherworld, not here.”

  “I hate dogs,” Dagonet contributed.

  Now a tiny old woman galloped past them on a black goat. She was naked, her skin smeared with red ochre. She shouted something at them in a language Collum didn’t recognize, then disappeared again into the night.

  “It’s the Wild Hunt,” Bedivere said.

  “Can’t be,” said Nimue, but without much conviction.

  The horn sounded again, closer, and three more of the spectral hounds tore through the camp, whipping between the bewildered knights in a flurry of long legs, followed at a trot by something that looked like a horse but with black-and-white stripes like a tiger.

  “What do we do?” Dinadan had one boot on. “Do we fight?”

  “Don’t touch them,” Nimue said quickly. “Don’t engage. We shouldn’t’ve looked at it, but too late now.”

  The boundaries are getting weak, Collum thought. Fairyland is spilling into our world, just like Morgan said.

  A bizarre procession emerged from the woods, hounds and beasts and fairies, male and female and otherwise, clothed and naked, hooting and shouting and leaping. They rode cows and pigs and ostriches and a giant bounding hare as big as a bear. One or two came walking upside down on their hands. A few of the fairy hunters rode piggyback on cursed men and women, naked and weeping. The hunters lashed them on with whips. Where is King Arthur? Collum thought. He would turn them back. Rebuild the boundaries. What more did he need than this? Would it help if he flagellated himself?

  BAROOOOOOO-DOO-DOO!!!

  Now the horn blower himself burst into the clearing, a brown-bearded satyr astride a giant black rooster with a livid red flapping comb.

  BAROOOOOOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOOOOOOOO!!!! TROU-ROU-ROU-ROOOOOOO!!!!!

  It was so loud Collum had to cover his ears.

  “All right! We hear you!”

  Right behind the satyr came a centaur—except not quite. Her lower parts weren’t a horse’s body, they were those of a mighty deer. From the waist up she was Morgan le Fay herself.

  “Hello, Britain!” Her face glowed with triumph. “I’m back!”

  A proud pair of antlers sprouted from her hair like an imperial headdress.

  “Gods, can you believe it’s Samhain already? Taranis spins his great wheel faster and faster. And I’m so pleased to see all of you—even you, Collum! Even though we had a fight! But look at you blushing. Does all this embarrass you?”

  Morgan was magnificently naked from the waist up. The cold didn’t seem to touch her.

  “Oh, and your witch is here too! Love your work, Nimue.”

  “Thanks,” Nimue said dryly.

  “The Merlin bit especially. Couldn’t stand that man.”

  “You’re too old a soul to mistake me for a fellow traveler, Morgan.”

  “Oh, but we could be, Nimue! Perhaps you mistake yourself. But tell me: Whither the knights of the Round Table on this fine autumn night?”

  “We’re—”

  “Not you, Collum, I need a grown-up.”

  “It’s none of your business where we’re going,” Bedivere said.

  Above them a fairy rowed a boat vigorously through the air. The Green Knight saluted them from his gnarled horse of roots and flint.

  “I was going to pretend I didn’t know,” Morgan said, “just to spare your feelings, but you’ve forced my hand, damn your steely blue eyes, Bedivere. What do you want with Longinus’s spear?”

  “We hope to secure God’s blessing for a king.”

  “You would hope that. Well, you’ll probably find it, knowing you.”

  “Does that worry you?” Nimue said.

  “Should it?”

  “If God sees fit to put someone on the throne of Britain, it won’t be you.”

  “I should hope not! But you know, Nimue, I find that if there’s one thing you can count on in this world, it’s your God doing fuck-all, especially when you need Him most. I mean, look at me! The Wild Hunt is running free in the north, and what does God do about that?”

  “You think this is the Britain people want?” Dinadan said. “Freaks and fairies?”

  Morgan raised an eyebrow at him.

  “People want the old ways back, the British ways, and that is what I will give them. The world is finally broken enough that we can put it back together the way it should be.”

  “And what about God’s ways?” Bedivere said.

  “I’ll never understand it.” Morgan shook her head. “A man with your, shall we say, proclivities, fighting for a God who would send you to Hell just for being what He made you. There are other ways to live, man! I put it to you, to all of you: What can you say about a God who judges your worth by how infrequently you touch yourself?” She drew a finger suggestively along one elegant antler. “What can you say about a government that falls apart just because the queen got a poke on the side? You will find my Britain a wilder place but a much freer, much stronger one.”

  “What have you done with Arthur?” Bedivere asked.

  “What?”

  For the first time Morgan dropped her smile.

  “I know you have him. What have you done with him?”

  “I saved him.” She drew herself up. “From your God.”

  “When is he coming back?”

  “I wouldn’t dwell on that, Bedivere. In my experience people don’t come back. And if they do they’re not the same.”

  BAROOOOOOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOO-DOOOOOOOO!!!!

  The satyr on the rooster waved Morgan on impatiently, then plunged ahead into the darkness of the birchwood.

  “Look, I can’t stay or I’m going to lose the pack,” Morgan said. “Who’s coming with me?”

  Nobody answered.

  “My friends, a visit from the Wild Hunt is not a social call.” In her half-deer form Morgan towered over all of them. “The rules are as old as the standing stones, and quite clear, but it’s been some time so allow me to remind you that the Wild Hunt doesn’t hunt animals. Our quarry is souls. Now that you’ve seen us, one of you must join us.

  “Any volunteers? No?”

  Overhead a fairy in a diaphanous gown drifted by, dangling from a swarm of wasps by a fistful of gossamer leashes.

  “You’ll have to kill us all.” Bedivere drew his sword.

  “Nonsense.”

  “She’s right,” Nimue said. “The Wild Hunt is Old Magic. There’s no denying it.”

  “There. You see?”

  Collum took a deep breath and—

  “Not you, Collum!” Morgan laughed musically. “Good God! Get back in line. And no, my sweet, sweet Dinadan, you have other debts to pay. You won’t get off that easily.”

  Palomides stepped forward. He looked in no way afraid.

  “I sense fate’s hand in this,” he said. “And it is a principle of mine never to turn down an invitation to travel.”

  Collum wasn’t sure what to do. He had a wild urge to throw his arms around Palomides and try to drag him back, but something told him this fight was already lost. Morgan smiled at him, then whistled loudly.

  “Your chariot awaits.”

  With a burbling, baying sound the strangest animal Collum had ever seen came trotting out of the woods. It had the powerful haunches of a lion but its legs ended in deer’s hooves. Its front parts had leopard spots, and its head and neck were those of a snake, brilliant black banded with hot pink.

  Palomides put out a hand and patted her neck admiringly, as if he’d been made a gift of the finest destrier in the land. Glatisant dipped her great reptile head, and he leapt lightly astride her with the air of a much younger man.

  The beast shook herself and tasted the air with her forked tongue. Palomides turned to the knights.

  “My friends, I am not from Sarras.” Palomides smiled, a little sadly. “There is no such place. My real name is Uthman, and I am a prince of Baghdad. I will see you again before the end.”

  He clucked at the beast and they set off at a rapid prancing trot, his seat perfect as ever. Collum had the strange feeling that it was only then, just as he was leaving, that he was seeing Palomides for the first time.

  “This fight was destined ever since this island was made,” Morgan said, when he was gone. “It has always been coming. The reckoning is very near now, friends, very near.”

  She reared up on her hind legs, pawed the air with her hooves, and bounded off into the velvet night.

  A reckoning. That sounded good to Collum. It was long past time that God and Fairy had it out and settled things once and for all. Probably that’s why God had let Morgan in—probably He’d wanted the barriers to weaken, so He could lure her back to Britain for a final showdown. Then all would be set right, all would be answered for, all would be healed. No more messes like this one. No one is mightier than God. When He turns up.

  With a crackling, crushing sound like a boulder rolling through underbrush the giant Ysbaddaden strode past, his head cresting along above the treetops. Collum suppressed the urge to give him a friendly wave. Then quiet descended on the clearing. The cold brook chattered in the chilly darkness. Collum kicked a few stray embers back into the firepit.