in the faint circle of light. 'I have it. I've brought the sword to you-' Suddenly I fell silent as I perceived the occupant of the bed, his shoulders and head raised slightly on a bank of pillows. A grey, necrotic pallor had crept across the old king's sunken cheeks. Shallow, pain-filled breathing lifted the thin chest below the blankets. Two filmy eyes moved slowly upward to my own face.
'Arthur,' I said mournfully. The truth was obvious. I had come too late. The old king was dying, beyond the help of Excalibur or any other power.
'Your king is checked,' said Merdenne, lifting his hand from the piece he had just moved. 'And mate? Yes, I believe so.'
'Are you sure of that?' said Ambrose. He made no move toward the chessboard. 'Are you sure there's nothing about which you may have been deceived?'
Something in the other's confident tone caused Merdenne's brow to crease in puzzlement. His eyes returned to the board, studying it…
'Hocker,' said the figure in the bed in an achingly frail voice. 'Come closer.'
I stepped up to his shoulder, and stood gazing into his ravished visage.
'You have the sword? The sword Excalibur?'
'Yes,' I said, lifting the bundle and showing it to him: 'I'm sorry- '
'No, no,' His voice cracked with impatience. 'Unwrap it – quickly.'
I did as he asked. The blade glinted in the candlelight as it lay across my palms.
'Read the inscription,' he commanded.
Sick at heart, I turned the blade to my eyes. For a moment I didn't see it, as my mind was filled with a vision of the Morlocks, unchecked, ravaging the green English countryside. All was lost, down to the last little spark of hope that had remained alight in my heart.
'Read it,' came the quavering voice again.
I shook off the doleful vision and focused upon the blade in my hands. The ancient runic letters danced in the dim light, then froze as my eye caught hold of them. They seemed to leap from the blade, and the world swam dizzily about me.
Take the sword…
Some time later – years, centuries, compressed into seconds – I looked from the blade into the old man's eyes. 'Yes,' he said solemnly. 'Now you know the truth. It is in fact only General Morsmere you see dying here. You are Arthur. Excalibur is your sword to use.'
I knew he spoke the truth. The runic inscription on the blade of Excalibur was the key that unlocked my true identity. For one lifetime I had been Edwin Hocker; for many lifetimes before I had been Arthur. King of Britain, Saviour of Christendom. My sword lay in my hand. The deed to which I had been called from the world beyond this one lay far below my feet.
'Why did you and Ambrose deceive me, old man?' I said, my voice now great and terrible.
General Morsmere's withered face looked up at me without fear. 'The sword was stolen by Merdenne and diminished in its power before you ever had a chance to see it. Yet you were the only one who could be called upon to find all the swords and merge them back together into one. Ambrose enlisted me in his plot to masquerade as King Arthur, and thus throw Merdenne off your trail. As I was already dying of consumption, Merdenne was easily persuaded that his reduplication of the sword by using the Time Machine had a weakening effect on Arthur himself. But as you see, you have succeeded in your quest; Excalibur is a key to power, not the power itself.'
'But couldn't Ambrose have simply told me I was Arthur? Why deceive me as well?'
'Would you have believed him?' said the old man, smiling faintly. 'No, for Edwin Hocker was a rationalist and a sceptic. It took a great deal to convince him that there was a King Arthur reborn, let alone, that he himself was England's resurrected hero.'
'Yes,' I said, gripping the sword tight in my hand. 'But now I know.'
'Yes,' breathed the old man. The effort of explanation had exhausted him. Only a little time was left before his death. 'Go now and vanquish the invader, as in the past you have done. You are one, and they are many. But most will flee before your coming, as your power is great. Go.' He collapsed back against the pillows.
I left that place, leaving behind one old man dying and another bewildered, and retraced my way to the sewers' entrance. There I descended, sword in hand, into the most secret bowels of the Earth.
• • • •
And then there was much shedding of blood in the darkness below the surface. Only those who know not killing would sing of such. It is an old tale, that of metal against flesh, to such a one as I. The armies of the Morlocks were advancing upwards when I met them. The old man's prophecy was correct – most fled at the sight of my grim visage and ran shrieking back into the safety they thought they would find in the depths. They knew that to cross Excalibur meant their deaths.
A few, braver or more desperate, stood their ground. I fought past them, heedless of the shots they managed to aim in those close quarters, and at last stepped over their fallen bodies as I continued downward to the root of the evil cancer at the Earth's heart.
And finally came a time when none, of the Morlocks stood before me. I stood in the chamber of the Time Machine, having made my way through all the remembered passageways and across the bridge the Morlocks had erected over the underground sea. The gleaming apparatus stood in the dim light, a mute witness to Man's ingenuity in creating havoc with the Universe. I raised Excalibur and struck deep with it into the shining metal and crystal.
The one blow was enough. Silently the cosmos flowed back together, knitting up the wound the infernal device had created. The dim light vanished and I knew that all the scattered Morlocks, dead and alive, were gone, returned to their rightful place in Time. All was as it should be now. The just order of the Universe was restored. My task was finished.
Suddenly a wave of weakness engulfed me, and I tottered and nearly fell. I pressed my hand to my side and found a warm wetness pulsing out of my many wounds. On my will alone had I reached this place. My life's blood was even now ebbing from me. I sat down with my back to the chamber's wall. My arms and legs felt heavy and immobile.
Then Ambrose came to me in that place. The destruction of the Time Machine had liberated him from the trap where he had bound Merdenne. I knew it was him, the old friend and guide that in other times I had called Merlin, even though I could see nothing in the darkness.
'Well done, Arthur,' he said, but why was he whispering?
My own voice sounded far away. 'I don't feel very much like Arthur now,' I said plaintively. 'I feel more like Edwin Hocker again.'
'He was a good man,' said Ambrose. 'A pity he has to die with you. Arthur will return, I and even Merdenne will return countless times, but Hocker's life is over.'
'I don't feel bad about that,' I said. Somehow the darkness about me was growing even darker. 'But I do feel sorry for poor Tafe. I don't quite see why she had to die.'
'You've forgotten. She came from a time that is yet in the future. She has yet to be born and has a whole life to live in a world free from the Morlocks.'
'Yes. Of course. I'm not thinking too well now.' Where were my hands? I couldn't feel Excalibur in them. 'She… she'll be the same person, though, won't she?'
'She will,' said Ambrose. 'But in a brighter time.'
'And a holy terror, I wager, to anyone who crosses her. I'm glad Hocker got to know her. He was really quite lonely a lot of the time.' Something moved inside me that made me gasp, but the pain soon passed away. 'I'm very tired now. Perhaps you'd better go.'
'Yes. And I'll take the sword with me.'
I could hardly hear him, or myself. 'What will you do with it?'
