The Grail Quest (The Rain Collective Book 8) by J.R. Rain

Author:J.R. Rain [Rain, J.R.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Rain Press
Published: 2020-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-one

I follow Arthur up a flight of roughly hewn stone stairs, and find myself in what had once been a church, except there’s no roof and most of the walls have crumbled.

Arthur pauses a step inside the abbey entrance, glancing around as if searching for something. After a moment, he blurts, “Ah ha!” and strides into a dark corner only to return with, of all things, a common—and quite old—garden rake.

I’d never before regarded a common garden rake as “Ah ha” worthy, but it appears to excite the once and future king. At any rate, he leans the garden tool against a stone wall and does something that should have surprised me, but doesn’t. He lifts his foot and stomps down on the rake, snapping off its metal teeth. Now the rake is nothing more than a long wooden pole with a broken end. Marion moves over to my side and we watch together as Arthur next brings the wooden pole crashing down over his uplifted knee, snapping it into two smaller broken poles.

I whisper to Marion, “Do you have any idea what he’s doing?”

“No clue,” she whispers back.

“Is there a chance he’s completely lost it?”

She frowns at me, the severe look in her eyes somehow reflecting whatever light exists in the cloud-filled late evening sky, which is damn little. Obviously, she doesn’t like me questioning her man.

Holding a shaft in each hand, Arthur turns to us and raises them high. He knocks the poles together once, twice, and by the third time, twin flames appeared, burning furiously with greenish-white flames along the upper quarter. What had once been a common garden rake is now two not-so-common torches. He hands one to me.

“Faery Fire,” he says casually. “Will burn forever, if you so desire.”

“And who wouldn’t?” I say.

He grins and the three of us proceed deeper into the damaged church. The wind pours through the open roof and whips our torches into a frenzy. Shadows skip-jump around us, and something scurries over the floor nearby. In the near distance, comes the distinct sounds of galloping horses.

They’re here.

We push on and soon discover a raised platform made of huge stone blocks.

“The high altar,” says Marion. Her breathing sounds raspier and raspier. Indeed, she is also looking frail, hunched, and standing in a posture far older than her years. My heart breaks seeing her like this.

And that’s when something snaps inside me. Still holding the torch, I grab Arthur by his shoulders and yank him around to face me. “You call yourself a master, and yet you do nothing to help your friend, Marion. She is dying. Her breaths are numbered and yet you snap your fingers and create fire like a Vegas magician. Why don’t you snap your fingers and heal her lungs, goddammit?”

Arthur says nothing, does nothing. He only looks at me patiently, his eyes impossibly wide in the torchlight, his irises seemingly on fire themselves. Marion touches my shoulder lightly behind me, her breathing harder than ever.

“He never called himself a master,” says Marion.

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