Black Spire (5)
The Sword of Stars, Excalibur.
What the one-armed knight lifted while kneeling on one knee was unmistakably Excalibur. Yet it was somehow different from the Excalibur Najin knew.
It did not shine.
The holy sword that ought to scatter starlight no force could veil did not shine. Look closely and cracks ran along Excalibur’s blade; the constellations set into the sword were all damaged as well.
The Excalibur that could never erode had eroded.
Merlin’s eyes wavered as she gazed at the broken holy sword. She bit her lip hard, and her hand trembled without taking the Excalibur Bedivere offered.
“Where.”
Merlin barely managed to open her mouth.
“Where did you bring it from?”
“I retrieved it from the Abyss at the heart of Kamran.”
“Arthur is—”
“His Majesty was not there.”
“······.”
“Before departing for Kamran, His Majesty gave me one final command. That when all was finished, I was to return Excalibur.”
He was telling her he had carried out the last duty laid upon him. Yet Bedivere could not bring himself to raise his head and meet Merlin’s eyes. He was certain the expression on his face was one no knight should ever wear.
“His Majesty has passed.”
“······.”
“Nowhere in the Abyss was there any sign of the King. Siegfried, who had pursued the King, laughed hollowly and told me: your King is dead.”
Bedivere’s voice was trembling as well.
Everyone must have expected it, yet driving the final nail into the coffin of the King’s death fell to him. The knight who had remained loyal to Arthur until the very end clenched his teeth.
“Siegfried said he would remain in Kamran.”
He spoke on.
“The Witch of Kamran is sealed, and Kamran itself stands frozen by the King’s power. His Majesty traded everything to hold Kamran in place.”
Merlin said nothing. Both she and Bedivere kept their heads bowed, so their gazes never met. Their expressions, too, could not be read.
“Kamran cannot invade the Outer Land. The Outer Land cannot devour the Continent either. And this—”
“Enough.”
“This is······.”
“Don’t say another word, Bedivere. Stop there.”
“It is the promise His Majesty made to the Round Table when the journey began. His Majesty kept that promise.”
Merlin ground her teeth with a sharp crack.
Silencing the kneeling knight before her would have been easy for Merlin. Easy—yet she could not raise her arm.
What lay before her was the holy sword that had lost its light.
The holy sword that had seemed destined to shine forever had gone dark. The comrades she had believed would stand at her side for eternity had died, had killed, had become traitors. The King she, the guide, ought to have led had charged ahead of his own will and put a period at the end of the story.
Everyone had reached the destination and left Merlin behind.
Only she remained.
“This is the King’s final message.”
“······.”
“Guard the seal of Kamran. Maintain the seal until the next master of Excalibur reaches that place.”
“Is that all?”
“······.”
“No apology? No ‘I had no choice’? Not even······.”
Merlin, muttering, gave a weak laugh.
“Right. That was the kind of person Arthur was. Never made excuses. Never asked to be understood. That was how it always was.”
Merlin’s expression crumbled.
“The story is over.”
Merlin, who had been clinging to the edge of the cliff, fell.
2.
Bedivere could no longer stand in Merlin’s way. Merlin, Excalibur in hand, set off somewhere. Only Najin followed behind her. Merlin’s back looked as if it might collapse at any moment.
“I didn’t want it to end.”
Merlin’s voice drifted through the rising wind.
“I hate putting a conclusion on a story. I want interesting stories to keep going. I often thought how nice it would be if their journey never ended.”
She was not speaking in the hope that anyone would hear.
They were words closer to a monologue, a soliloquy.
“Is that why? I can never finish a novel. I always close the book when only a few pages remain. The moment it looks as though the story is about to end, I simply can’t read any further.”
She laughed.
“Still, if an ending has to come no matter what—”
Smiling, she went on.
“I hoped it would be one everyone could greet with a smile. If it were that perfect an ending, maybe I could accept it and put down the period myself. That’s how I lived. And Arthur promised me.”
That she would gift Merlin that kind of ending.
That she would take her beyond this Continent, leap across the Outer Land, break through even Kamran, and deliver her to Avalon, the ideal land that lay beyond.
“That she would take me to the place I had searched for so long, a place I couldn’t even picture in my dreams. Arthur promised me that. She said that while telling me to live a little longer. After dragging me along like that······.”
Merlin looked up at the sky with hollow eyes.
Arthur was dead, yet Arthur’s star remained in the heavens.
“So you’re going first. On your own terms.”
In her hand she held the Excalibur Arthur had left behind. Clutching the lightless Excalibur, Merlin walked and walked.
“You leave first, and then you make sure I can’t follow.”
Guard the seal of Kamran.
Turning those words over in her mind, Merlin let out a hollow laugh.
“I don’t even know why I should keep living, and you tell me to live longer. You say I still have work left to do. Wait for the next? What is that supposed to mean?”
Before she knew it, Merlin’s steps had stopped.
It was a forest. Between the trees that soared high into the sky lay a clear blue lake. Najin knew this lake as well. It was the place where he had first met Merlin.
“Wait? For a next that may never come? Wait, and start the journey all over again from the beginning? The Round Table is already smashed to pieces. The knights you trusted so much betrayed you.”
And yet, Merlin murmured.
“And yet you still talk about the next. After throwing away everyone closest to you just to protect people whose faces you don’t even know······ even after all that, you insist on talking about the next.”
If she threw Excalibur into the lake, Arthur’s story would end there. Knowing that, Merlin laughed. She had finally realized that the role of placing the period on Arthur’s story belonged to her.
“I can’t do that.”
The moment she murmured those words, a faint light seeped from the already cracked Excalibur. It was a light so thin it seemed ready to scatter at any second.
“······.”
That light settled in Merlin’s eyes.
As if telling her to look at something.
As if saying there was still something she needed to see.
“······Ah.”
Ah, Merlin groaned.
Because she understood what the starlight was saying. The starlight had settled in her eyes—the eyes of Merlin that could look upon the future.
Originally, Merlin possessed eyes that could see the future.
She had been called the Mage of the Lake precisely because she peered into the future through the surface of the lake. Yet after meeting Arthur she had never once looked ahead. The futures she saw had been worthless.
Excalibur was a thing that escaped prophecy.
Unbound by anything, Excalibur rewrote the future. That was why the futures Merlin saw while traveling with Arthur had held no meaning. But now, in this moment after Arthur’s death, the futures she saw regained their meaning.
The starlight was pointing that fact out to her.
As if the sword’s master, Arthur, were saying so.
“······.”
Merlin laughed.
Well, I don’t know what value that future might hold, but—
“If that’s what you wanted.”
For a brief instant, starlight settled in Merlin’s eyes.
A blue star shone in her emptied pupils.
Merlin looked down at the surface of the lake. Ordinarily her eyes could only see the near future, yet she wished, even if it meant abandoning foresight forever, to look just once more at the time she desired.
And so the prophet peered into the future one last time.
What she beheld was a far distant future.
And—
for Najin, the present.
3.
There had been one question.
All the while climbing the tower, Najin had been unable to erase a single doubt: why did only the same dream keep repeating?
The floor that showed the most intense memory.
The floor that showed the most painful memory.
The floor that showed the saddest memory.
Every single one of them had shown the same dream. The dream continued without end. Whether the memory was sorrowful, hollow, or filled with rage—no matter the “theme” of the floor—Najin kept dreaming only one dream.
Even so, until he began climbing the tower’s final floor, Najin had more or less accepted it. Whether sad, intense, or painful, those memories did not necessarily have to be different ones.
But now, as he climbed the last floor—
Najin could no longer understand it at all.
The floor that shows the happiest memory.
Even on that floor, why the same dream? The Merlin before his eyes looked anything but happy.
Did an error occur in the tower?
Was Merlin’s memory simply too heavy for the tower to bear, so that an error arose while trying to recreate it? That was what Najin had thought.
“······.”
But—
“······Ah?”
No.
“This is—”
Najin looked at Merlin. Merlin was looking at Najin, yet she was not looking at him.
“You—what the hell are you? What are you?”
“Najin.”
“What?”
“You asked what I am. Najin. That’s my name.”
What she was looking at was Najin’s reflection on the lake—the future that would unfold a thousand years from now. Reflected on the surface was the first meeting between Najin and Merlin.
“That looks like mine. You can’t just take it like that.”
“Wow.”
The Merlin reflected in the lake grabbed the back of her neck.
“What the hell is this kid?”
The Merlin inside the lake let out a disbelieving laugh and scolded Najin. Do you think you can handle it? That future isn’t one you can bear. Just as she had once done for Arthur in the past, she showed Najin the future as well.
The countless hardships Najin would have to overcome.
The endless adversities and trials.
The future foretold for the one who drew Excalibur.
And after looking upon them all, Najin finally managed to open his mouth.
“I have to go higher than King Arthur.”
Najin said.
“No matter what stands in my way, I’ll go. Because I have to hang my own star in the highest place.”
Because that was the promise he had made.
“So I can’t give this back.”
At that answer the Merlin inside the lake laughed in disbelief. The Merlin gazing at the lake could not laugh. Her eyes were shaking.
“You’ll have to prove those words, you arrogant little brat.”
And so the future reflected in the lake flowed swiftly onward.
The confident boy charged ahead without thinking. Sometimes he was reckless. The guide who watched from the side and heaved endless sighs eventually stopped trying to hold him back; instead she shoved him forward and laughed brightly, “That’s more like it!”
The boy and the guide pressed on.
On the Continent they subjugated a demon knight, rescued a girl seized by a noble house, dueled a pursuing knight-captain, danced at a ball, faced a black mage, the rangers of the Techel Mountains······.
Forward, then forward again.
The boy who fought bravely against the same red and white dragons Arthur had faced earned a star. The boy who had gained a star set out for the Outer Land. He met the Helm Knight, the Silent Knight, countless knights and the eroded dead, and continued his journey. At the boy’s side, as always, walked the guide.
The guide—the Merlin of the future reflected in the lake—was laughing with pure joy. Vividly, as if she were truly alive. Merlin stared blankly at that sight.
And then—
“Are you really going to climb the tower?”
They reached the Black Spire.
“You’re really not going to despise me?”
“I told you, that won’t happen.”
What the lake reflected was no longer the future. From Najin’s perspective it was not the past either. What the lake showed was the present. Upon the surface appeared Merlin gazing into the lake, and Najin standing behind her.
Only then did Merlin turn around.
With trembling eyes she looked at Najin.
“You.”
She asked in a shaking voice.
“You—what the hell are you?”
The answer Najin had to give to that question was already decided.
He seized empty air. Drawn forth from the void was the Sword of Stars—the Excalibur that scattered a brilliance more radiant than anything else. Instead of a hundred words, Najin acted once. That single act answered everything.
“Najin.”
Holding Excalibur, Najin spoke.
“Najin. That’s my name.”