“You’re the boss at Tintagel International,” I said. “And you’ve been trying very hard to kill me.”
He nodded slowly. “Which has proved more difficult than I anticipated.”
“You had your chance in the Town Car.”
“I’ve decided to let you live a little while longer.”
“Not that I’m ungrateful or anything, but why?”
He smiled. There was something familiar about that smile, though I couldn’t put a finger on it. And his name. Garmot. Why did that seem familiar too? Gar-mot. GAR-mot.Gar-MOT. What was it?
“A selfish desire on my part,” he answered. “I wanted to meet you—and naturally I wanted you to meet me.”
He walked around to the other side of the table and sat down.
“And that brings us back to my original question, Alfred Kropp. Do you know who I am?”
Garmot. G-A-R-M-O-T.
“I told you what I know,” I said.
His dark eyes glittered in the weak light streaming through the high windows. He nodded to someone behind me and Vosch appeared carrying a black case about the size of a bowling bag. He set it on the table between me and Garmot and melted back into the shadows.
“What’s in that bag?” I asked.
Garmot didn’t answer. Instead he asked very slowly and deliberately, “Who ... am ... I?”
Garmot. Gar-mo. Gar-gar-mot-mot. Mot-mot-gar-gar. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.
He stood up and now in his right hand he held a black sword. I had seen a sword just like it before. In fact, I owned one just like it. Tightly cuffed, my hands twisted uselessly behind my back as he came toward me, and all I could think was How did he get my sword?
“Perhaps some context would help,” he said.
“That’d be great,” I gasped. “Anything helpful would help.”
“For we are not so different, you and I. We are both— how shall I say it?—reluctant players in a game not of our choosing. A mere two years ago we were living quite normal lives. You here in America and I in France. Both normal students in normal towns going about our normal lives. Until our normal lives were ripped away, yes?”
He leaned against the table, dropping the sword point between his spread legs and spinning it. Light raced up and down its length and sparked off the dragon’s head embossed on the hilt.
Garmot. Gar-Gar. Gra-Gra. Mot-Mot. Mar-Mar. Mart? Marty . . . Marty-Gra . . . ?
“Like you, I resisted,” he said. “I refused to play. I wanted a normal life. And until someone very close to me was murdered, I thought—I had every reason to believe—I would have that life. As did you, I am sure.”
“I still want that,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
“Irrelevant,” Jourdain Garmot said. “We have no choice now but to see the game to its bitter end. Bitter for you, of course, since you will not survive this day. But bitter for me, as well, for killing you will not mend my broken heart or return my beloved friend to me.”
He leaned the sword against the table and picked up the black satchel.
“You have lost many close to you,” he said. “Your father. Your uncle. The knight called Bennacio. But none so close as he who was lost to me. He was my mentor, my constant companion, my best friend. When news came of his death, I wept like a young child. He was all I had in the world, and though he was taken from me, I keep him with me, always. Would you like to meet him, the one who was so cruelly stolen from me?”
I wasn’t looking at him. I was looking at the hilt of the black sword. It wasn’t my sword; my sword didn’t have the dragon emblem, but it was a knight’s sword. All the Knights of the Sacred Order carried the black sword.
Dragon. Garmot.
He unsnapped the first clasp.
“I cannot bear for us to be parted, you see ...”
My thoughts started to spin in a panicky whirl.
Gar-Ger, Gera-gar, Gra-mot, Gram-ot, Gra-gri-mot-motger-grot, gram-to, mar-gro, mar-gor, mar-got, mog-art . . .
Mogart . . . !
“It’s a ...” I whispered. “It’s a—I don’t know what it’s called, but I think it’s like ana-something—Garmot for Mogart ...”
“The word you are looking for is ‘anagram,’ ” Jordain said.
He flipped open the second clasp. “And as you say in America ... speak of the devil.”
Then Jourdain Garmot reached into the bag and pulled out a human head. It was the head of the man I killed in Merlin’s Cave. It was Mogart’s head.
“Say hello to my father, Alfred Kropp.”
05:03:48:21
“I didn’t have a choice,” I choked out. My stomach rolled and I looked away from Mogart’s mummified head. The skin had turned a deli mustard yellowish brown, tightening against the shape of the skull beneath. The lips had pulled back, revealing the teeth and giving the illusion of a snarl. The eyes had long since rotted away, leaving two empty black-filled holes. “He was going to kill me—he did kill me ...”
He ignored me. “ ‘The last knight.’ I understand the one called Bennacio tried to take that title for himself, but in reality my father was the last knight—the last to fall as a result of your treachery.”
“My treachery? I don’t think you know the whole story. Nothing against your dad, but he turned on the other knights—”
“Enough.”
“He betrayed them—”
“I said enough!”
He dropped the head back into the satchel, thank God, and slung it onto the table. He pressed the tip of the black sword against my throat. That’s it, I thought. I’m dead. If you’re nutty enough to carry around your father’s mummified head, there’s not much that will keep you from chopping off the head of the guy who killed him.
“The knights are no more, thanks to you,” he cried. “The Sword has departed, thanks to you! My father is dead, again thanks to you! His blood and the blood of all the knights cry to heaven for justice!”
His cheeks were flushed and he was breathing so heavily I could see his nostrils flaring. He nodded to someone behind me.
It was Vosch. He yanked me up and kicked away the chair.
I had a pretty good idea what was going to happen next, and my mouth went dry.
“The knights are departed, their time on earth brought to an end by you, Alfred Kropp,” Jourdain said. “And so, like the knights of old, after I assumed my father’s place, I embarked upon a—what is the word?—a quest. A quest, yes! To finish what was begun. To complete the circle. The last knightly quest ... for the Thirteenth Skull.”