Grailblazers.

"Bet you ten to one he"s got lost," Turquine was saying. "Never did have a sense of direction, young Snotty. He could get last in a lift."

"Or else something"s happened to him," Galahaut replied. "Not exactly practical, our Boamund. Accident-p.r.o.ne, too. I think we should go and look for him, don"t you?"

Turquine yawned. "Why bother?" he said. "To be honestwith you, I"ve had just about as much as I can take of being ordered about by him, the jumped-up little tyke. Worst thing Mr Magus ever did, making him a prefect. Gave him ideas. He"s never been the same since."

"You know," Pertelope broke in. "I always wondered why he did that. Anyone less suited to being a prefect than Bo you couldn"t imagine."

They had lit a fire, and Lamorak had somehow managed to hit a rabbit with an improvised catapult. They were having a late supper.

"I expect he thought it would be character-forming," Pertelope replied as he turned the spit. "Make something of him, you know. Bring him out of his sh.e.l.l. Didn"t work, mind. Just made him insufferable."

"More insufferable, anyway," Turquine replied. "He always was a pompous little git, even at the best of times. I reckon Mr Magus has got a lot to answer for."

"Someone taking my name in vain?" said a voice from the darkness. At once, the five knights jumped to their feet and looked guilty. Pavlovian reflex.

"h.e.l.lo again, sir," Turquine mumbled. "Just wondering where Boamund"s got to, sir. Have you seen him?"

"He"ll be all right," Simon Magus replied. "Well now, young Turquine, what have we here? Roast rabbit?"

"Yes, sir."

Simon Magus sat down and warmed his hands in front of the fire. "Quite like the old days, really. I remember you were always breaking out of the Dorm in summer, young Turkey, poaching rabbits and having - let"s say, having unofficial barbecues behind the stables. The farmers used to complain quite dreadfully."

Turquine went a deep shade of mauve and said nothing.

"Was I right in thinking," Simon Magus continued as he poked the rabbit with a stick, "that you were discussing why I chose to make young Boamund a prefect at the end of the Third year? Or were my old ears deceiving me?"

There was an awkward silence, which Bedevere broke.

"We were a bit puzzled, sir, yes," he said carefully. "It did seem rather an odd choice, if you don"t mind us saying so. He wasn"t really very good at it, was he?"

"I think the rabbit"s about ready now," Simon Magus replied, and Bedevere noticed that he was staring into the fire, as if he could see something there, in the blue part of the flame. "It was an unconventional choice, certainly, but I had my reasons. In fact, if you"re patient, you can hear them for yourselves in a minute or two. Have you got your famous penknife handy, Turquine? Or is it still confiscated? I can"t remember."

Very slowly, Turquine took an old and extremely worn penknife out of his pocket and handed it over. It wasn"t the first time, either.

"Ah yes," said Simon Magus. "Old Faithful." He began to carve the rabbit.

"Actually, sir," Bedevere said tentatively. "I was meaning to ask you. About this whole quest business, sir . . ."

But before he could finish his sentence there was a rustling in the bushes and Boamund emerged, with Toenail trotting behind him carrying a bundle of wet clothes. Simon Magus got up slowly, put down the rabbit and smiled affectionately. Then he knelt down on one knee and said: "All hail King Boamund the First, rightful King of Albion."

There was a silence you could have built a house on, and then Turquine made a sort of choking noise.

"Oh, for G.o.d"s sake," he said. "He isn"t, is he? Tell me it isn"t true, somebody."

Simon Magus stood up. "It"s all right," he said, "the office is purely honorary. There isn"t a kingdom of Albion anymore."

"G.o.d, I"m relieved to hear you say that," said Turquine. "Just imagine what it"d be like, having that horrible face peering up at your from postage stamps."

Boamund was standing quite still. He looked pale, although perhaps it was just a trick of the light, and he was looking at the old magician. He made no attempt to speak.

"Well now," Simon Magus said, "did you manage all right?"

Boamund nodded. "Yes, thank you," he said. "I managed."

"And do you know where it is?"

"No," Boamund replied. There was a disdainful :noise from Sir Turquine, but Simon Magus held up his hand for silence.

"I don"t know where it is," Boamund went on, "But I do know who does know, if you follow me, sir. That"s right, isn"t it?"

Simon Magus smiled; or at least, the corner of his lip lifted about a quarter of an inch. "Splendid," he said. "Very well done. Come and have some rabbit."

"He"s asleep," Bedevere said quietly. "He was absolutely exhausted."

"I"m not surprised," Simon Magus replied. "Any chance of a cup of tea, by the way? I"m parched."

They went into the kitchen. Unusually it was fairly presentable. Bedevere took down the jar where the tea-bags lived, and sighed.

"Empty," he said. "That"ll be Lamorak. He"s always using the last one and not telling anybody. We have a big shop once a month, you see; we go round the supermarket with a couple of those big trolleys and get everything we need. But we never seem to get enough tea-bags, or enough sugar, come to that. Will coffee do instead?"

"Coffee will be fine," Simon Magus replied. "Where are the others?"

"In the Common Room," Bedevere replied, "playing pontoon. Galahaut cheats."

When the kettle had boiled they sat down on either side of the kitchen table and looked at each other thoughtfully.

"Biscuit?"

"No, thanks," Simon Magus replied. "When you went in and looked, did he still have it with him?"

"Yes," Bedevere replied. "He was holding it, like it was a teddy bear or something." He laughed, but without much humour. "Fancy it being in the garage all the time, in that big cardboard box full of junk. We all thought it was one of those crates of tins without labels that Lamorak"s always buying in the market."

Simon Magus had the grace to look slightly abashed. "It was the best place I could think of," he said. "The one place n.o.body would ever dream of looking. I was right, too," he added.

"It was a bit thick, though, wasn"t it, sir?" Bedevere burst out. "I mean, you"ve made us all look complete chumps, Honestly, here we are, the Grail Knights, and all the time the wretched thing"s in our garage, hidden in an old cardboard box. We"ll be the laughing stock of chivalry if anyone ever fords out."

Simon Magus grinned sheepishly. "You must admit, though," he said, "it was a good hiding place."

"Exactly," Bedevere said. "So why? I mean, why this quest and so on? If you wanted it to stay hidden, why did you make us go and find it? It doesn"t make sense."

Simon Magus stirred his coffee and smiled. "You always were bright, Bedevere," he said. "Unusually bright, but singularly lacking in energy. A pity, really, but there it is. I don"t believe in forcing people to do things if they don"t want to, and I don"t think you ever wanted to be anything but ordinary. Am I right?"

"Absolutely," Bedevere replied. "But that"s rather beside the point, isn"t it? I mean, why hide the Grail so carefully arid then send us out to look for it? And why did you make it take so long?"

"Ah." Simon Magus nodded approvingly. "You"re asking the right questions, as usual. You remember what I taught you about the right question?"

"The right question," Bedevere recited, "is a question that can have only one possible answer. But I don"t see-"

"Then think," Simon Magus replied sharply. "Why did I hide it, why did I make you - or rather, Boamund - find it, and why did it all have to take so long? Come on, you"re nearly there."

Bedevere thought for a long time.

"Well," he said slowly, "you hid it because you didn"t want it found."

"Quite right, yes."

"You sent Boamund to find it because you wanted Boamund to find it."

"Right again."

"And," Bedevere said, lifting his head, "it took so long because it had to be found at the right time. Yes, I think I"m beginning to see daylight."

Simon Magus leant back in his chair and sipped his coffee. "Go on," he said.

"You hid it," Bedevere said, "because you didn"t want the Atlantis people to find it; not, what"s her name . . ."

"Kundry," Simon Magus said. "She"s my niece, actually, but we were never very close."

"You didn"t want her to have it," Bedevere went on, "and you didn"t want old Father Christmas getting hold of it either."

"Quite right," said the magician. "Dreadful people, both of them. I knew them quite well back in the old days, and they were a bit unbalanced even then. Now they"re both quite mad, of course; but immortal, the pair of them, because of the curses they"re both under. It wasn"t just a case of waiting till they went away, you see. On the other hand, it was a holy relic, the holiest true relic that existed, so I couldn"t just destroy it. Somehow or other, it had to be hidden."

"Right," Bedevere said. "So you took the Grail and you hid it where n.o.body would ever find it. And you set up the Order of the Grail Knights deliberately so that we wouldn"t find it, and that way everybody would know for sure that it was lost. Because the one place n.o.body would ever dream of looking would be in the Grail Knights" own garage."

"Very good," Simon Magus said. "Carry on."

"But ..." Bedevere put his head between his hands and thought for a moment. "Right," he said. "And then you took a knight, a particularly dopey but idealistic and upright knight, and you trained him from a boy to be really dopey and really idealistic and upright, so that he"d be the sort of person who you could be certain the Grail would be safe with . . ."

"The Holy Fool," Simon Magus agreed. "Biddable, virtuous, stupid, extremely pompous; the sort of person who would never be afflicted by greed, megalomania or anything like that. The perfect Grail Knight, in fact."

"I should have guessed," Bedevere said, "when I remembered that you and he arrived at the Coll in the same term, and you left the term after he did."

"Perhaps." He smiled. "It would have been very inconvenient if you had, you know."

"Anyway," Bedevere went on, "you trained this knight to be exactly the way you wanted him to be; but that wasn"t enough. To be absolutely safe, you put him to sleep for hundreds and hundreds of years, so that when he woke up, he"d be completely disorientated. He"d have no family, no ties, no place in society or anything like that; but instead, he"d have this really enormous sense of his own destiny, because that"s the only way he could account for what had happened to him." Bedevere paused for a moment. "That was a bit well, ruthless of you, wasn"t it? I mean, not exactly fair on the poor chap. He"s a bit of a duffer, I know, but there are limits."

Simon Magus shrugged. "Boamund was - and is - the perfect knight," he said. "Brave, honest and stupid. Chivalry is what he was born to, and this is the ultimate in knightly adventures. I honestly don"t think he"s been all that hard done by, do you?"

Bedevere considered. "Maybe not," he said. "Anyway, when you reckoned that the right time had come, you woke Boamund up and guided him unerringly to where the Grail was. Actually," Bedevere added, "I"m a bit puzzled about the three quests. What were they in aid of? Were the actual things, the socks and so forth, necessary? Or was it all sort of incidental?"

"Purely incidental," Simon Magus replied. "Really, the whole point of those exercises was to notify Klaus and Kundry, as loudly and clearly as possible, that the Grail still existed and that someone was looking for it. It"s essential that they know, you see; I"m going to put a stop to all this Atlantis nonsense once and for all, before they do a great deal of harm. You heard about that task force which was sent to deal with them, I suppose, and what happened to it. They"ve been a menace for some time now, and that"s why I acted when I did. Besides, that drafted woman Kundry had found out about that ma.n.u.script from Glas...o...b..ry which told the whole story. That was careless of me, leaving that lying about; but I honestly thought it had been destroyed back in the sixteenth century. Then, when I heard about the Lyonesse Group hiring the back rooms of all those ancient monuments, I realised that she was on the track of the wretched thing and might very well find it if I didn"t act quickly. It was a closerun thing, actually." And he told Bedevere about the fax from Shakespeare"s birthplace.

"I see," Bedevere said. "Anyway, now Boamund"s got the Grail and everything"s going to be fine. It is going to be fine, isn"t it?"

"Oh yes," Simon Magus said, "or at least it should be. Fingers crossed, anyway."

"There"s just one thing," Bedevere said. "What did you need us for? I mean, why did we have to wait around all this time? Couldn"t Boamund have managed on his own?"

They looked at each other.

"No," Bedevere said after a while. "No, I suppose not. He"s a good sort, Bo, but . . ."

"Exactly," said Simon Magus. "Thanks for the coffee."

"I still think," Boamund said, "that he might have waited and said goodbye."

It was cold on the hillside, and Bedevere shivered slightly. "He had to rush," he replied. "An urgent meeting or something like that. But he sent you his very best wishes."

Boamund nodded. "Well," he said, "I"ll see you back ax the house later on. I"ve just got to, er, bury something in that cave up there, and . . ."

Bedevere started to say something; but he didn"t manage it. Instead, he turned and walked briskly away down the hill. Boamund wrinkled his brow, then shrugged and looked down for the dwarf.

"Well," Toenail said, "here we are again. I"ve brought the spade like you said."

Boamund nodded, tucked the black plastic sack that contained the Holy Grail (but only he knew it was that, of course) under his arm and set off uphill as fast as his long legs would carry him.

In the cave, everything was as it had been, not so long ago now, when he had woken up. There were still bits of rusty armour lying about, and a strong smell of must and penetrating oil.

"Clever of you to think of this place, Toenail," he said. The dwarf avoided looking at him and muttered something about. getting the cave tidied up.

"All right, then," Boamund said. "You do that while I just dig a hole."

Ten minutes or so later, Boamund laid aside his spade, wiped his forehead and knelt down. The Grail fitted very nicely in its last resting place. He nodded respectfully at it, and then shovelled back the earth and patted it down.

"Gosh," said Toenail, in a rather strained voice. "I expect you"re hot after all that digging."

"I am, rather," Boamund replied. "I"d give a lot for a nice cool drink of milk right now."

Toenail blushed scarlet and fumbled in his satchel. "Just as well I remembered to bring one, then," he tried to say, but his tongue seemed to get in the way.

"You"re a marvel, Toenail, the way you think of everything," Boamund said, after he"d swallowed a large mouthful of milk. "Don"t know what I"d do without you, really. I know I sometimes forget to say thank you, but . . . Hey, now, there"s no call to start bursting into tears, you know."

"Hay fever," snuffled the dwarf. "Don"t mind me."

"Sorry," Boamund said, and he drank the rest of the milk. "You know something," he said, "all of a sudden I feel terribly, terribly..."

He lay back, and a moment later he was fast asleep. Toenail took the milk bottle from his hands and put it on one side; then he unslung the large canvas bag he"d been carrying over his shoulder. It was as tall as he was and very heavy.

"Fall for it every time, that old milk routine," the dwarf said softly. He opened the sack and gingerly took from it a sword and a golden crown.

"Cheerio, then," said the dwarf. He placed the crown on Boamund"s head and the sword under his hands, and tiptoed quietly out of the cave. Then he stopped, took out the sc.r.a.p of paper which Mr Magus had given him, and read out the words written on it in a loud, self-conscious voice. There was a great flicker ofblue fire, and the cave vanished, as if it had neverbeen.

Toenail stood for a while, not thinking of anything in particular; then he remembered that the rest of the knights would be wanting their tea before they set off. They had a long way to go, too; all the way across the sea to the Isle of Avalon, where there is neither autumn nor winter, where men do not grow old, and where (according to Simon Magus, at any rate) if you wanted a pizza, you had to go and collect it yourself. Turquine could hardly wait.

"They"ll be needing a dwarf," Toenail said to himself. He glanced back once more at the hillside where the mouth of the cave had been, stooped instinctively to pick up an empty crisp packet, and ran swiftly away down the hill.