He got his pipe lighted and strolled off, jingling a bit. The scene was utterly peaceful: meadow, flowers, trees, water, Papillon and the unicorn cropping, the liquid notes of a thrush. Except for the smart of his burns, he could easily have sat down, blotted up sunshine, and considered Alianora. But no. He wrenched his mind away. He had some heavier thinking to do.
Let’s admit it, he was a crucial figure, or at least an important one, in this Carolingian world. In view of everything that had happened, it must be more than coincidence that Papillon, preternaturally strong and intelligent, should have been waiting exactly where he appeared, with clothes and arms that exactly fitted his own outsize frame. Then there was the excitement he had caused in Faerie, and the curious fact that despite his ignorance they had not been able to kill him… Well, there had been a Charlemagne in both worlds. Maybe he himself was also, somehow, doubled. But then who was he? And why, and how?
He lost sight of the camp as he wandered on, trying to fit what he had learned into a pattern. This business of Chaos versus Law, for example, turned out to be more than religious dogma. It was a practical fact of existence, here. He was reminded of the second law of thermodynamics, the tendency of the physical universe toward disorder and level entropy. Perhaps here, that tendency found a more… animistic… expression. Or, wait a minute, didn’t it in his own world too? What had he been fighting when he fought the Nazis but a resurgence of archaic horrors that civilized men had once believed were safely dead?
In this universe the wild folk of the Middle World might be trying to break down a corresponding painfully established order: to restore some primeval state where anything could happen. Decent humanity would, on the other hand, always want to strengthen and extend Law, safety, predictability. Therefore Christianity, Judaism, even Mohammedanism frowned on witchcraft, that was more allied to Chaos than to orderly physical nature. Though to be sure, science had its perversions, while magic had its laws. A definite ritual was needed in either case, whether you built an airplane or a flying carpet. Gerd had mentioned something about the impersonal character of the supernatural. Yes, that was why Roland had tried to break Durindal, in his last hour at Roncesvalles: so the miraculous sword would not fall into paynim hands…
The symmetry was suggestive. In Holger’s home world, physical forces were strong and well understood, mental-magical forces weak and unmanageable. In this universe the opposite held true. Both worlds were, in some obscure way, one; the endless struggle between Law and Chaos had reached a simultaneous climax in them. As for the force which made them so parallel, the ultimate oneness itself, he supposed he would have to break down and call it God. But he lacked a theological bent of mind. He’d rather stick to what he had directly observed, and to immediate practical problems. Such as his own reason for being here.
But that continued to elude him. He remembered a life in the other world, from childhood to a certain moment on the beach near Kronborg. Somehow he had had another life too, but he didn’t know where or when. Those memories had been stolen. No, rather, they had been forced back into his subconscious, and only under unusual stimuli did they return.
A thought drifted through him. Cortana. Where had he heard that name? Oh, yes, the nickel had mentioned it. Cortana was a sword. It had been full of magic, but now lay buried away from sight of man. Once I held Cortana when brands were flashing on a stricken field.
He walked around a clump of trees. Morgan le Fay stood waiting.
At first he couldn’t move. His heart hammered; a curious darkness passed over him, and the darkness was beautiful. She came forward, tinged by the gold light that filtered down through green leaves. Her dress was like snow, her lips a coral curve, her hair shining as a starlit deep lake. All he could see to begin with were the colors. Her tone flowed into him.