Nightside 11 - A Hard Days Knight

and rents where the blades went in; and the gown moved slowly about her, as though stirred by some unfelt breeze. Even her long, dark hair moved slowly, drifting this way and that, as though she were underwater. She put a hand on Stark’s shoulder, and he shuddered briefly despite himself. Because the dead and the living are not meant to be close.
    “I hear everything you say,” said Julianne, in a calm, far-away voice. “I am never far, my love. Don’t do this for me.”
    “I have to,” said Stark. “I can’t live without you. It hurts too much. I can’t bear this ...”
    “What you are planning would drive us apart forever.”
    “I’m doing this for you! For us!”
    “No. You’re doing it for yourself. To stop your pain. I understand, my love, I do. But you have to let me go. I want you to live, not damn your soul with forbidden actions. Because if you go to Hell, and I to Heaven, how could we ever be together again?”
    She embraced him, pressing her chest against his, resting her head on his shoulder, and he held her back for as long as he could stand it. But in the end he cried out and pushed her away from him, and she faded away and was gone. Jerusalem Stark sat down suddenly on the unmade bed as though all the strength had gone out of him. He bent forward, looking only at the floor, and for a moment I thought he might cry. But he didn’t. When he sat up again his face was as cold as his dead wife’s had been. We all waited, but he had nothing to say.
    “So,” I said to Artur, just to be saying something. “What’s your world like?”
    “Tasty,” he said immediately. “So many little treats, so many pleasures for those of refined tastes. If you’re of the top rank, of course. For everyone else, well, I don’t know what they do. Work, I suppose. I don’t care. They’re there to be used. It’s what they’re for. But ... it can get repetitious. Merlin does so love to play out the same old stories, again and again. That’s why I’m Artur, after Arthur. He even made me take a Queen Guinevere, but she didn’t last long. I killed and ate her, after I found she’d slept with half my knights.”
    “There,” I said to Stark. “That’s Sinister Albion and its King. You still want to give him Excalibur?”
    He stood up abruptly, his armour making loud protesting noises. “You don’t understand. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except getting my Julianne back.”
    “Even after what she said?”
    “She will forgive me. She always did.”
    I turned my attention to Artur. “Sorry, Your Kingship, but this is now officially over. We can’t let you take Excalibur. Apart from anything else, we’re going to need it to defend us from the elves when they come. And besides, you give me the creeps. I’ll see you get safely home, but after that you’re on your own. And don’t argue, or I’ll have Suzie send you there in a series of small boxes.”
    “You should come with me,” said Artur. “You’d fit in really well at Court.”
    “Now you’re just being nasty,” I said. I looked at Stark, standing tall and somehow still tragically noble in his armour. “Give me the sword. The world needs it.”
    “Let all the worlds die,” said Stark. “What do I care for the world if my love is not in it?”
    “Bloody knights,” said Suzie, unexpectedly. “Always said there was something a bit off about all that celibacy and putting their women on pedestals. I always thought it was so they could look up their skirts on the sly. None of you ever know what to do with a real live woman. Stop worshipping her memory and let her go. This is all self-indulgence on your part.”
    “You know nothing of love!” shouted Stark. Excalibur was in his hand. It appeared suddenly, the tip of the long blade only inches from my throat. But the golden sword hardly glowed at all, only a pale golden gleam, far short of what it had been. It could have been any magic sword, and a badly fashioned one at that. Faint wisps of steam curled up from inside Stark’s mailed glove, where Excalibur burned his unworthy flesh, even through the metal. Stark grimaced, but his cold gaze never left me.
    Suzie was shouting at him, yelling at Stark to get that sword out of my face or she’d blow his head off; but he wasn’t listening. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t shoot while I was in danger, but it was clear Stark’s attention was elsewhere. For all his knightly experience, Stark was holding the blade like