by Linda Howard
Grace put her hand on his face, her fingers tracing the slope of his brow, the high curve of his cheekbone. “I know who you are,” she said numbly, all emotion exhausted except for the uneroded joy of touching him. “I know what you are, Guardian. I came from the year nineteen ninety-seven to find the Treasure, and use it to destroy the man who killed my husband and my brother.”
Chapter 26
NIALL SAT AT THE TABLE, QUIETLY LOOKING AT THE BOOKS Grace had brought. Thinking to convince him she was telling the truth, she had told him where her sack was hidden and he had fetched it, but she realized now he hadn’t required proof. He looked at the books out of curiosity, and for knowledge, not for confirmation.
He rapidly absorbed the changes in the language, saying once, “I knew the rhythm of your speech was odd, even though you spoke English.” Another time: “So there are other lands across the ocean. I have always wondered.”
He wasn’t shocked, he wasn’t disbelieving. He was highly educated; he spoke seven languages, and he dealt daily with the fantastic. But he was unnervingly calm, and it was destroying what little of her nerves were left.
“These papers you translated,” he finally said, turning to face her. “You say I wrote part of them?”
“Yes. You signed your name, and dated them. Thirteen twenty-two.”
“I have not written any papers,” he said.
“But I saw them—”
“Perhaps you are the cause of their existence.”
She digested that, and bit her lip. “You mean they wouldn’t have been written if I hadn’t come back? But I came back because of what you wrote!”
A bitter smile touched his lips. “I have hated God for what He allowed to happen to my brethren,” he said calmly, “but I cannot doubt His existence. How could I, when I guard His power on earth? Who knows what the hand of God does?” He shrugged. “I have ceased trying to understand Him, I only do my duty.”
“You hate God?” Stunned, she could only stare at him.
“How could I not? I did not want to be a Knight; I was forced into the Order. I have a talent for killing,” he said in unflinching acceptance of his skill. “I became the Knights’ best warrior. I learned the secrets we protected—in service of God!—and He allowed his servants to be butchered in defense of those secrets. No Knight betrayed his greater oath, not one talked even with the flames of the stake licking up his legs, devouring his entrails. They suffered and died, and He let it happen. Perhaps He directed it, to destroy those who knew. Only I am left, and fool that I am, I have kept my oath all these years, because my last oath was not to God but to my friends who died for Him.”
His tone was unemotional, his eyes remote. Grace wanted to go to him but somehow she couldn’t, he was too distant.
“Look at me,” he said. “I have thirty-nine years. I should be growing old, but my hair remains black and my teeth stay in my head. I never sicken, and if I am wounded I quickly heal. He has cursed me to guard His damned Treasure even after I should be dead.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re just a healthy man.” She could reassure him on this, for she was all too piercingly aware of his humanity, his mortality. “In my time, people easily live into their seventies and eighties, sometimes even over a hundred. I’m thirty-one.”
His brows lifted and he looked a little surprised. He surveyed her, noting her smooth, clear skin and lack of wrinkles, her shiny hair. “You look a mere girl.”
She didn’t want to think of her looks, with her eyes red and swollen from her emotional storm, her face drawn with fatigue from the long night of nothing less than debauchery. She sat down on the bench, wanting to be close to him even if she didn’t dare touch him.
“Tell me of this Foundation,” he ordered.
She told him what she knew. She had already choked out the details of what had happened to her, how Ford and Bryant had died, and why. He listened, his long fingers drumming on the table.
“I wonder how they discovered the Treasure’s existence,” he murmured at one point.
“An archaeological discovery, probably,” Grace said. She hesitated. “This Power—what exactly is it?”
“It is God’s power,” he said. “With it, all things are possible.”
“But power isn’t something you can leave in a chest and take it out when you need it! God can’t store His power in the basement of a Scottish castle and—”
He shook his head. “Nay, ’tis not that. Though He could, if He wished. The Knights understood that, the fact that mortal man cannot understand God, that we must not say a thing is impossible, because all things are possible to Him, and our understanding too paltry. God is not limited by our imagination or our small minds. The Church makes rules and says they come from God, but they come only from man and his attempt to interpret God.”
Believing God was so powerful, how indeed could he not hate Him? Grace wondered. Niall had long since reached the conclusion that God had deliberately destroyed the Templars, for had He wished to save them they would still be flourishing.
“But why would He want to destroy the Order?” she whispered, and Niall’s black eyes flashed.
“To protect the Church,” he said tiredly. “Flawed as it is, still the good outweighs the bad. The Church gives the framework of civilization, lass. Rules. Limits.”
“How were the Knights a threat to the Church?”
He stood and walked away from her to the window, where he looked out over the wild and beautiful land he ruled. “We knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Everything.”
She waited, and the minutes passed. Without looking at her he said, “Did you note I never called you by name? Your name! Grace-Saint-John. I want you until I think I shall burn alive, but your name eats at me. There is no state of grace, there is only one of ignorance.”
She hadn’t noticed, but now she felt a pang, as if he had rejected her. Perhaps he had; he hadn’t touched her since her confession. “What did you know?” she whispered.
“They found it all in the Temple, in Jerusalem. The Lion Throne, that great barbaric throne on which are carved both Yahweh and Ashara, god and goddess, male and female. They were two, and they were one; the ancient Israelites worshipped them both. Then the priests deliberately destroyed all the altars built to Ashara, and tried to erase knowledge of her. Yahweh became Jehovah, the one God.”
“Yes, I know,” she said. Archaeology had uncovered all that, eliciting a storm of conjecture among the scholars of ancient Jewish history.
“There were other things,” he said. “The Cup. ’Tis a plain thing, and despite the quest for the Holy Grail it gives no powers. The Banner. The army it flies over is never defeated, its firebirds rising again and again from the ashes. It plainly depicts the same lions of the Throne, though legend has it that it isn’t that old, and that only the Knights had it.” He sighed softly. “And there is the Cloth.”
Her mouth went dry. “The Shroud?”
He made an impatient gesture. “So it would be called, but that is false.”
“Then what is it?”
“The cloth in which Jesus was wrapped when he was taken from the cross,” Niall explained.
“Then it is the Shroud. He was entombed in it.”
Niall’s eyes were blacker than she had ever seen them before, looking through her. His mouth had a bitter line. “No, not a shroud, because he lived. He was God’s son in spirit and the cross could not defeat him. The Church built itself around the preposterous tales of the resurrection even though its own writings plainly state he did not die, and afterward the truth could not be told without destroying the Church. So we remained silent to protect the Church, to serve God—and He destroyed us in return.
“His face.” The words were pulled out of him, taut with fury. “We had his face from the Cloth. We revered it, because he was proof of God’s power. Jesus lived! God reached down and saved him, because his duty was fulfilled, and then he left in an explosion of light
and heat. We found the record of it! We know how! But when our duty was fulfilled, He broke us, He destroyed us. And still… still I serve.”
Grace couldn’t speak. Her lips tingled, and she realized she had stopped breathing. The explosion of heat and light… she had felt something like that, when she had come back—
“We knew the how didn’t matter. The method He used did not matter; we trusted Him, worshipped Him. Others wouldn’t understand, though, with their small minds and rigid superstitions. They try to limit God to their own understanding, their own imaginations. They would have turned from the Church. We didn’t.”
The bitterness spewed out of him, his lips drawn back in a snarl. She swallowed her fear, and crossed to the window to stand beside him. She didn’t dare touch him, though, not when his anger was like a force field blasting from him. “But you’re doing it, Niall. Trying to fit His reasons and methods into your own understanding.” She paused, trying to work through her thoughts. She believed in basic goodness and when it came down to it she believed in God, sensed a higher power, a deeper meaning, but she was no theologian. “I think… I don’t believe God causes all things to happen. I think He gives us the freedom to be either good or bad, because if there is no choice then our actions have no worth, and no blame. I think when people do bad things it’s because they have chosen to do so, and we should blame them, not God.”
“Why did He not stop Philip? Why did He not strike Clement dead? He could have, but instead He let them act.”
“He let them choose, and they’ll be judged by their actions.”
“Then I’ll meet them in hell.”
“Oh, Niall.” She did touch him now, leaning her head against his arm. She felt overwhelmed with tenderness for him, and admiration. “You won’t go to hell. How could you? Even with all your pain and anger you’ve kept your oath, and served God. Don’t you think your service is more valuable to Him than the service of those who have never suffered, never been tested?”
He turned on her, gripping her arms so tightly he hurt her. “I would have preferred not to have served Him at all!” he ground out.
“But you did anyway.”
“Aye, and my entire bedamned life is tied to this castle, to His cursed Treasure I am sworn to protect! Do ye not think I would have preferred to live a normal life, with a wife, and bairns?” His Scots accent was back, and thick with his anger. “I could not! The burden, and the danger, have been too great. And now—”
“Now?” she prompted, when he broke off.
He gave her a bitter smile. “Why, now He’s sent Grace to me, but only as a means to lead me to another battle I must fight for Him.”
She blinked, startled. “I didn’t come back for that. If I could find the Treasure I was going to use it myself; if not, I knew I would have to ask for your help, but I only need your knowledge.”
“Ah, no, lass,” he said gently. “Ye need me. I’m the Guardian, and no other may use the Power.”
“How does it work?” Grace asked nervously, clinging to his hand as he led her into the hidden passage. The castle slept around them. They had spent the day arguing, sometimes heatedly, over the course they would take. Huwe was dead and that threat ended, so Niall felt he could relax his defenses somewhat, and now was the perfect time for him to go. Remembering the violence of the procedure, Grace couldn’t look forward to going through it again. “How do you get the electricity?”
“Electricity?” He repeated the word slowly, feeling his way along the syllables. “What is that?”
“A form of energy. Power.”
“Power.” He laughed, the sound humorless. “We use God’s Power. The procedure is a means of returning.”
He walked with confidence, as if he had no need for the candle he held. Grace was less certain. She felt surrounded by the nothingness of space, of emptiness, as if the reality of Creag Dhu was already dissolving around her. Her heart pounded wildly, the pressure high in her throat. She swallowed to contain the panic, the unreasonable fear. She had been there before, and with less trepidation.
But still, now she knew. She felt the breeze, and the subtle throb of the very air against her skin. Niall led her down, down, to the deeper darkness beneath the stairs. He left the candle outside and walked into the darkness, his arm hard around her now to keep her with him.
It lay in the blacker depths, hidden from view but pulsing with that silent energy. The air should have felt dead, empty. It didn’t. Though cold and dark, the chamber felt fresh, vibrant with the secrets it concealed. Treasures. Things. And yet the real treasure lay not in what they were, but what they represented.
“We have drunk the water and eaten the salt,” Niall said in a low voice. “Take us.”
The flash was blinding, the force like a giant blow that knocked her flat. She lay senseless for a time, deafened and blind, not even thinking. When the fog began to clear, she groaned and tried to roll over.
“Let me help you, my love,” a voice crooned, and she was lifted to her feet, held upright by strong arms. Grace’s head lolled back on her neck. She fought for control, won it. She opened her eyes, and stared up into Parrish’s smiling face.
“Imagine my surprise when the workers found you lying in the rubble,” he said conversationally. “I sent them all away, except for a few trusted men. I believe you’ve met Conrad, and perhaps you remember Paglione, too.”
Dazed, Grace found herself staring into the cold, emotionless eyes of the man she had shot in the McDonald’s parking lot. He didn’t so much as blink. The other man, Paglione, looked familiar, but she couldn’t quite place which assailant he had been.
A chilly wind stirred her hair, and she turned her face into it. A sea wind, blowing over where Creag Dhu had once stood. All that remained now were a few ruined stone walls, and the rubble that had been unearthed by the workers. Where was Niall? Had they already found him? Had he survived the journey?
“Looking for the gold yourself, were you?” Parrish asked. He pinched her breast, cruelly twisting the tender flesh. Grace bit off a scream, though tears started to her eyes. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of making her cry out.
“There isn’t any gold,” she blurted.
He stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. “What?”
“The Treasure isn’t gold. It’s artifacts. There isn’t any gold!”
“You’re lying,” he said violently, and slapped her. The force of the blow would have knocked her down if he hadn’t been holding her arm. He drew back his arm again, and this time his fist was doubled.
“Aye, there’s gold.”
The softly burred words made them spin, Parrish dragging Grace about, wrenching her arm. She bit her lip, and tasted blood where Parrish’s blow had cut her. Niall stood relaxed, the wind lifting his hair, ruffling the ends of his plaid. A faint smile was on his lips, and he leaned negligently on the claymore which he had driven into the ground. He looked wild and barbaric and wonderful, a splendid savage who possessed a sophistication of manner and experience most modern men would never come close to achieving.
“Who are you?” Parrish asked. “Not that it matters.” Conrad and Paglione had already spread out, one going wide on each side of Niall, and both of them had guns in their hands.
“Niall of Scotland. And I fear it does matter, for the gold is mine.”
Parrish’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve already found it, haven’t you?”
Niall looked amused. “It was never lost.” He glanced at Grace, and his glance lingered on her bloody mouth, hardened.
“Well, you are a complication,” Parrish admitted. “But I don’t think you’ve spent it all, or you wouldn’t be dressed like a bag lady. Maybe you don’t have it at all.”
“But I do.” Niall reached into his shirt, the movement prompting both Conrad and Paglione to lift their weapons. Niall’s eyebrows rose, and he smiled as if they were no more than presumptuous children. “Easy, lads.” He drew out his hand and slowly opened it, palm upward. A cr
ude golden coin lay there, gleaming bright in the sun.
Parrish smiled, too, his handsome face creasing in a benevolent expression that made Grace want to vomit. “Where is the rest of it?”
“It isna here. I moved it long ago, against such a day as this.”
“A pity.” Parrish shrugged. “You’ll tell me; Conrad will see to that. But you won’t like his methods, and unfortunately you look like the stubborn type.” He jerked his head at Conrad, and Paglione anticipated the order, moving toward Niall.
Something wild flared in Grace’s eyes. She had watched two men she loved die; she couldn’t watch another. A low, animal sound tore out of her throat and she jerked to the left so that she half faced Parrish, and drove the palm of her hand hard against his nose. Cartilage crunched, and blood poured out of both his nostrils. He staggered back, his grip on her loosening, and Grace tore free. Paglione whirled on her, the pistol rising in his hand.
Calmly Conrad tightened the slack in the trigger and fired. Grace screamed, surging forward, only to be jerked back as Parrish recovered and grabbed her again.
Paglione hung there in surprise, not even blinking. The small round hole in his forehead was neat, bluish around the edges. He dropped bonelessly to the ground and didn’t even twitch.
Parrish gaped in disbelief. “Are you fucking crazy?” he screamed at Conrad, his voice high and cracking.
“No,” Conrad said, and turned to face Niall. Slowly his simian head bowed. “I serve you, Guardian,” he said.
Niall acknowledged him with a single nod.
Parrish pulled out a pistol and pressed the barrel to Grace’s temple. He began backing away, stumbling over the raw dirt and tumbled rocks, dragging her with him. “I’ll kill her,” he said viciously, the words thickened by the blood streaming from his broken nose. “I’ll fucking kill her.”
Niall pulled the tip of the claymore out of the ground and rested the blade on his shoulder, his hand draped negligently over the hilt. “No,” he said. “You will not.” He looked at Grace and smiled, a smile so sweet and strangely radiant that her heart stopped in her chest. “Grace… move.”