800 AD, in a parallel world…
A thumb of stone stuck up higher than a man from the forest floor. Halawa would have thought little of the outcropping had her companion, the old mawlawi Ishraq, thrust his finger at it while whistling for her attention.
“Look at it closely,” he said. “Do you not see the inscriptions?”
Halawa leaned her head toward the monolith and squinted where Ishraq pointed. Through the mossy crust which had grown over the course of centuries, she could indeed make out lines indented in its surface. After she dismounted her stripe-legged horse and approached the stone on foot, she used her scimitar to clear away the moss, exposing the eroded inscriptions underneath.
Some were strings of unintelligible symbols of circles, crescents, and notches, which Halawa guessed represented some ancient language. What she could recognize was the larger illustration chiseled into the rock above the rows of text, with scattered flecks of red paint clinging to it. It was a creature with the wings of a bat, the taloned legs of an eagle, and the sinuous tail and neck of a serpent, with the horned lizard-like head bearing sharp teeth in its gaping jaws. A sphere of amber embedded in the rock winked from where the beast’s eye would be, making Halawa’s dark brown skin creep over her body.
“The Red Dragon of the Brythons,” Halawa said under her breath. “Does this mean we’re nearby?”
“If the old map doesn’t deceive, Amira, then of course,” Ishraq said. “Keep your eyes out while we press on. The barrow could be anywhere around here.”
Halawa remounted her steed, and together they rode northward through the forest, with the leafy undergrowth tugging at their clothes. It was a balmy and humid summer day, so the Amira of Al-Biritania had needed to put on only a brief halter-top and baggy surweil trousers, both woven from various shades of blue cotton, while Ishraq had on a white thobe and turban. A thin and transparent purple veil covered Halawa’s lower face as her sole expression of womanly modesty.
As their horses trotted through the woods, she held one hand over her scimitar’s hilt while scanning the mist and shadows that filled the understory between the elm, oak, and yew trees. Forests like these were infamous for the cover they offered bandits as well as Saxon rebels who clung to the ways of the Crucified One and would pounce on any follower of the Prophet of Prophets (peace be upon him) that crossed their paths. Those of Al-Biritania’s Moorish ruling class like Halawa and Ishraq had to watch out even more than others of the True Faith, for their dark complexions marked them as descended from the conquerors who had come all the way from the southern continent of Ifriqiya to bring the Faith to these lands half a century ago.
And that did not even account for the bears, wolves, and other animals that roamed these forests. Or the ancient djinn said to haunt them like ghosts. Even more than beasts or man, it was the thought of djinn that made Halawa shiver within.
Something cracked under her horse’s hooves. She held onto its reins while the animal reared with a nervous whinny. Beneath where its front hoof had stepped lay a pile of fractured potsherds. At least it could have been worse.
“Ah, very interesting,” Ishraq said. The scholar dismounted and picked up one of the potsherds with his fingers. “See the notched bands running along its surface, looking like rope? This must be part of a pot the ancient Brythons would have made. Imagine, this whole area must have been their settlement once.”
After giving another survey of their surroundings, Halawa struggled to picture any kind of town thriving where this dense forest now grew. She could not see even the eroded traces of stone walls or sculptures lying around. If people had built a settlement here in the distant past, it must have been little more than a village of perishable wattle-and-daub huts like those the local Saxons had built for themselves when the Moors first arrived in Al-Biritania from the south. Nothing that her people, or any civilized people, would find impressive.
A bowstring creaked. Sticking out from the cover of the undergrowth, an arrow’s iron point glinted, with a pair of frosty blue eyes glaring from the shadows behind it.
Halawa ducked on her horse. The arrow whistled through the air overhead, grazing her ponytail of fluffy black hair. Another arrow flew out from the same direction and hit her horse’s hip. The animal threw itself up with a shrill neigh, causing Halawa to fall onto the damp forest floor. Both her horse and Ishraq’s galloped in panic out of sight, leaving them to cower on the ground.
Out from the bushes charged pale-skinned men in leaf-stained green tunics, brandishing short seax swords as they converged on the two Moors. The foremost of them lunged an outstretched hand at Halawa with his eyes smoldering like blue fire with vicious lust or hatred.
She uppercut him with her scimitar, drawing a gash that ran from the brute’s chest to his chin. The other barbarians stood in gaping shock as they watched their mate topple over with blood spurting from his wound. Halawa smirked as she twirled and waved her red-washed blade before them as a warning display.
One of the attackers, a big red-maned fellow, growled in the Saxon language as he swung a long club at her. She stepped back, and the earth beneath her feet rippled upon the weapon’s impact. He swung it again sideways and banged against Halawa’s hip. She fell onto the trunk of an elm tree, with its coarse bark scratching the skin of her back.
The big clubman lumbered toward her with the other green-clad Saxons following close behind, all sneering like demons from hell. As she struggled against her pain, Halawa launched her foot into the hulking savage’s stomach, kicking him onto two of his fellows behind him. She pounced on the fallen brute, hacked through his club as he held it over his face, and stabbed his brow to the brain. The rest of the gang slashed at her with their seaxes, but she was able to fend them off with parries and slashes of her own until one hammered his sword’s hilt onto her temple. Sparks flew in her vision, and the world turned into a dancing blur around her.
The man who had struck her grabbed the strap of her top and pulled her toward himself. As he squeezed a muscular arm around her torso with the strength of a python’s coils, the cold steel of his seax pressed against the skin of her throat.
The man’s hold on Halawa loosened as he slipped off her and crumpled to the ground, rubbing his hand over a band of reddened skin on the nape of his neck. Behind where he had stood was old Ishraq, who patted the edge of his hand with his fingers.
“It’s called the Eastern hand chop,” the mawlawi said with a cheeky smile. “And you thought I’d be defenseless out here, Amira.”
Together, Halawa and Ishraq fended off what remained of the Saxons, she with her scimitar and he with his bare forelimbs. After a storm of sword strokes, flailing arms, and spilled blood, only one of the attackers remained. Dropping his seax, he sank to his knees with his arms held up while letting out a pathetic whimper.
“Please, milady, have mercy on me,” the Saxon said in accented Moorish. “We meant only to defend our lands. And maybe take a little coin for the needy as well.”
“I don’t know if I believe that,” Halawa said while wiping the blood off her sword. “I swear I saw lechery burning in your eyes.”
“I wouldn’t assume that, Amira,” Ishraq said. “Even if they weren’t necessarily going to kill you, they could have just wanted to take you prisoner for ransom.”
Halawa rolled her eyes. From the stories she had heard, men like these would not hold young women prisoner without taking further advantage of them.
The surrendering Saxon blinked his eyes. “Did I hear the old man call her Amira? As in ‘princess’? Who are you two, anyway?”
“You heard him right,” Halawa replied. “I am Halawa ibnat Omar, the Amira of Al-Biritania. And this is my tutor Ishraq. He is a mawlawi, or scholar, from the Madrasa of Landinya.”
“So, you’re both from the capital down south?” the Saxon said. “What could bring you up here to Sherwood?”
“We both seek the barrow of Artur, fabled King of the Brythons,” Ishraq said. He pulled out from the sash around his thobe a yellowed old parchment map. “This ancient map says it lies somewhere in these woods. Do you know anything about it?”
“I know of Artur, alright. He led the Brythons against us Saxons while we were coming over from the mainland. But there are many barrows all over Al-Biritania, including these woods. I wouldn’t know which among them would be his.”
“Such a shame, then,” Halawa said. She tapped the Saxon man’s blond-stubbled chin with the flat of her sword. “I was thinking that, were you able to lead us to it, we might spare your life. And maybe even pay you more than enough dirhams to compensate for the loss of your men.”
The Saxon smiled. “Methinks that sounds like a fair trade. But why do you seek that old barrow at all?”
“My father, the Sultan of al-Biritania, has fallen ill, and all our medicines have failed,” Halawa said. “What we seek is Artur’s Grail, the one thing we know that can heal him before his time runs out.”
“I’ve heard of that too, but I don’t know if I believe such heathen legends. Still, if it means I can come out with my life and some coin, I’ll lead you to the biggest barrow I know about.” The Saxon rose to his feet. “And maybe help track your horses down before then.”
Halawa slipped her scimitar under the sash girdling her hips. “Then we have our agreement. By the way, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Call me Rothbart of the Merry Men.” The Saxon looked around at all the bodies of his fellows. “And now the last of them, too. Apologies for the rude welcome we gave you.”
“For the time being, apology accepted.”
It had taken many hours to recover the horses, which they found drinking together by a stream to the northeast. Nonetheless, Halawa was grateful that they had found their steeds at all. Were she to come home without her horse, the finest in the royal stable, her father would have become so furious that it would have killed him before she could administer the Grail’s healing power. Besides, walking on foot all the way back to Landinya would take more days than the Sultan had left.
Upon reuniting with her horse, Halawa had pulled out the arrow out of its hip while Ishraq cleaned its wound. She hoped the wound would heal on its own before they came back unless she could use the Grail’s power on it too. Even the slightest nick on such a prize animal could upset her father almost as much as its death.
Daylight had faded into evening when Rothbart led them to the base of a wide, shallow hill which the forest grew over. It did not stand out from other rises in the terrain until they found a rectangular opening framed with stone blocks in its slope. Inscribed into the lintel were faint characters of the same type as the “text” on the monolith Halawa had seen in the woods earlier, along with a similar image of a dragon flecked with faded red paint.
“A shame that nobody alive can read old Brythonic writing,” Rothbart muttered. “It could tell us whose barrow it is.”
“If it has the red dragon on it, odds are it’s Artur’s,” Ishraq said. “We’re beyond doubt in the right part of the woods for it.”
Blocking the entrance was a big circle of stone inscribed with the image of a broad-shouldered swordsman wearing a gold-painted circlet. Swirling lines on the figure’s body, some of which still had traces of blue paint sticking onto them, suggested the war paint the ancient Brythons would stripe themselves with. The sword too retained some paint, a streak of silver running down the blade which reflected the light of the ascendant moon.
If that did not depict the legendary Artur of the Brythons himself, wielding his enchanted sword Caledfelch, then Halawa could not imagine it representing anyone else.
Rothbart unslung his bow, the same bow he had used to ambush the Moors, and wedged it alongside the stone circle. It budged only a little bit when he pushed on his bow like a lever, so Halawa offered him a longer stick from the forest floor. Together, upon replacing the bow with the bigger stick, the three of them pushed until they had pried the blockage open. From inside emanated golden light like that from the sun, light so bright that Halawa had to shield her eyes.
“At least we won’t need to make torches,” Rothbart said.
They followed the light into a vast hollow within the earth. A knee-high circular wooden table covered much of the space within it, with twelve decayed skeletons sitting cross-legged around it. Eleven of the twelve skeletons clutched rusted swords by the hilts in their bony fingers, holding them up with the blade pointed to the ceiling. The one remaining skeleton, the one cloaked with tattered red tartan which sat on the side of the table opposite the barrow’s entrance, held a sword that showed no rust at all. Instead, its steel blade and bejeweled gold hilt glinted as if forged anew.
It was on the center of the table that the Grail of Artur sat, giving off the golden light that illuminated the barrow.
Gazing upon the glowing chalice, Halawa felt guilt chew on her heart. It did not seem right to defile such an enchanted burial, even if the Brythons who had erected the barrow had fallen under the Saxon sword long before her own Moors had conquered them in turn. It would be worse than one of the heathen Danes breaking into a Moorish mosque in search of plunder. Still, if the Grail could give off such radiance, it had to have had the power to heal Halawa’s ailing father. That was what mattered to her most.
She stepped onto the great table, walked across it to the Grail, and picked it up. The chalice’s neck burned hot to the touch at first, like a cup of hot Maghrebi tea, but the sensation faded the longer she held it up. Somehow, it had been too easy to obtain this hallowed artifact once you found out where it was hidden. It made Halawa wonder why it had remained hidden for as many centuries as it did.
The ground trembled, with dust and chunks of soil showering down from the ceiling. From outside, the horses’ terrified whinnying rang, followed by a screeching roar so loud that not even the thick walls of earth could muffle it. Halawa, Ishraq, and Rothbart scurried out of the barrow to where they had tethered the horses. In the animals’ place stood flaming skeletons that disintegrated into ashes.
High above circled the same dragon Halawa had seen in the ancient inscriptions, except this one was real. It blew back the treetops with every beat of its leathery wings, which held up a crimson-scaled body as massive as an elephant. It craned its neck down to face the trio with gleaming amber eyes set in its horned triangular head. Parting jaws lined with bladelike teeth, it roared while spewing down a shaft of fire.
Halawa backflipped, escaping the torrent of flame by less than one pace. The dragon’s wings fanned the smoke rising from the crater as it spiraled closer to the forest floor, lowering its head with an inhale. Hurrying to lean behind the nearest oak tree, Rothbart shot an arrow at the dragon’s breast. It bounced off the scaly hide with no more than a soft clink.
The massive airborne reptile banked toward the Saxon and spewed another torrent of fire. He dove to the ground and scrambled to the next tree while the flames blasted apart the oak he had hidden behind. Landing on its feet with an earth-shaking impact, the dragon batted the second tree aside with its serpentine tail, and it landed right on top of Rothbart. Halawa could hear his scream cut off by the crack of bone.
Yipping the Moorish battle cry, she slashed at the monster’s flank with her scimitar. The blade slid over the scarlet scales as if they were less penetrable than chainmail, not even drawing the faintest streaks into them. Halawa struck a second time with no more effect. After letting out a rhythmic snarl almost like a laugh, the beast lunged and snapped its jaws at her. She stabbed at its snout, but her sword merely bounced off the plate-like scales covering it with not even a dent.
“Mortal weapons won’t hurt it!” Ishraq shouted. “Try—”
The dragon swung its head and blew fire onto the mawlawi, reducing him to charred bones and ash in no time. Seeing the man who had tutored her from childhood thus destroyed shocked Halawa to the point of freezing her. Without knowing what he had meant to suggest, the fire-breathing creature would destroy her next, and her father the Sultan would perish without the Grail and without the heir to his throne. All Al-Biritania would suffer for that.
If mortal weapons could not wound the beast, what could? Immortal weapons? Wait, Halawa might know an example of that.
She raced back to the barrow, holding the luminous Grail like a torch, while the dragon stormed close behind on its eagle-like legs. After passing through the entrance, she jumped and slid over the circular table to where Artur’s remains sat and pried his skeletal fingers apart while hearing the reptile’s yawning exhale from outside. What little cartilage held the finger bones together snapped, releasing Caledfelch for Halawa to claim for herself.
Another blast of flames poured into the barrow. Halawa rolled aside while the thick fiery shaft hit poor Artur, turning what was left of the once proud King of the Brythons into black soot. The smoke flooding the barrow’s hollow interior made her eyes bleed tears as she ran through it on her way out, brushing it away with Caledfelch’s unblemished blade as if she were hacking through forest undergrowth.
Outside, the dragon reared its head with another inhalation. Its gullet glowed orange with building firelight at the back of its open maw. Stretching her arm muscles as she drew the heavy Brythonic sword behind her, Halawa hurled it into the giant red reptile’s breast. The blade of Caledfelch sank to the hilt’s crossguard through the once invincible hide, letting out an explosion of golden light that swept over the dragon’s body. Much as its fire had turned men and horses to ash, the creature in turn shattered into glittering red dust that collected into a pile on the earth, with Artur’s fabled sword resting on top.
Behind rose a wisp of white mist which expanded into the transparent figure of a robed man with blue lines swirling over the wizened pale skin of his white-bearded face. “Congratulations on passing my test, Halawa ibnat Omar,” the ghostly image croaked with an unfamiliar accent.
“Who are you?” Halawa asked. “Are you some kind of djinn?”
“You can consider me that, if you prefer,” the apparition replied. “I am Myrddin, Arch Druid of the Brythons under King Artur. It was I who created that dragon to guard my king’s resting place and the Grail within. Through your courage and your cunning, you have bested what generations before you could not. Combine that with your noble motives for obtaining the Grail, and you have shown yourself worthy of it.”
“Is it true what they say about the Grail? Does it indeed possess the power to heal?”
“Indeed, but you must know that you can only use it once. Afterward you must return it to its barrow, and no sooner than the next generation’s passing can anyone else find and use it—after passing the same test you have.”
The sparkling red dust that had been the dragon vanished as dissipating vapor while the sword Caledfelch floated up by itself and flew back into the barrow. Halawa looked back to find it resting again in King Artur’s grip, the skeleton and its tartan cape having reassembled without any sign of charring.
“You know how you will use the Grail, Amira of Al-Biritania,” Myrddin’s spirit said. “May you use it well, and all the gods watch over you and those you love.”
As he faded into the night, Halawa knelt with her eyes closed. Even if Myrddin and all his people had lived as heathens ignorant of the One Goddess Almighty, they could not all deserve damnation. No more than any other unbelievers before the Prophet of Prophets, at least.
And may the Goddess continue to watch over you in Paradise, she thought. Now came the time for her first two uses of the Grail.
She walked down to where Ishraq had once stood and knelt over his ashes, praying for him to enjoy a safe journey to Paradise as well. The departure of her childhood tutor had torn out a huge chunk of her life, making her world feel much emptier than before. Never would Halawa or her family forget him. Without his education and wisdom, she would never have known about the Grail at all.
She heard a groan from the direction where Rothbart lay. He had not died under the fallen tree like she had thought, but was instead struggling to push it off himself, with dark blood staining his tunic over his chest. Halawa rushed toward him and hauled the tree off his body with what remained of her strength.
“Thank you so much, milady,” the Saxon said as she helped him back to his feet. He held his hand over his tunic’s bloodstains and winced. “I must’ve had a few ribs broken there.”
“I thought worse had happened,” Halawa told him. “Thank the Goddess you’re still alive.”
“A shame your mawlawi didn’t make it too. I saw that dragon roast him to nothing. Did you get the Grail?”
Halawa held it up to him. “I can only use it once, though.”
“Then save it for your father. He matters to you much more than I do, and I’ve been through much worse scrapes anyway.”
Rothbart gave Halawa a smile. She had to admit, he was not that unattractive for one of the Saxons. Maybe, after they had gotten to know one another over the journey home, she would consider him for her future husband, the man who would rule beside her once she inherited the Sultanate.
“Then we’ll have a healer look after you when we reach the next village south,” Halawa said. “And get us new horses too. I do wish I hadn’t lost my father’s favorite mare though.”
“Just don’t tell him until after you’ve restored his full health,” Rothbart said. “What matters, in the end, is that you recovered the Grail for him.” As they walked away from the barrow of King Artur and his retinue of warriors, the Amira of al-Biritania took one final look at it. The opening in its slope had sealed itself once more, the image of the bygone king with his sword still watching from the stone seal’s surface.