The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  He seemed to smile. After a little he said: ‘There will be. These men – follow Septimus. But they will fight. When I am finished, they will fight among themselves.’

  So he knew there was no hope. Of course he did.

  ‘Septimus will hold them.’

  ‘Septimus will be fighting. Foremost. And Lackmere. Over you.’

  No!

  No. They would not. Enough was enough. When this was over …

  Septimus had sought her hand. Would he not do so again? What would Aun do? And there was the March. Tarceny would be hers if Ulfin were gone. And the Trant manors. Tarceny and Trant: keys to the Kingdom. Someone would want to get them, through her. She saw the long, weary game opening up ahead of her. Something in her heart went cold.

  ‘I had thought to ask clemency for you,’ she said, and wondered why she had even bothered to hold out a hope he must know was useless.

  ‘They will not see me hanged.’

  There was such a flat finality in his voice that for a moment she thought she had misheard.

  ‘I was King,’ he murmured. ‘And a fly in a web. Both at once. Now it is over. It is not Septimus—’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Does Ambrose still have the stones?’

  Her fingers clenched around the pebble in her palm. She said: ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have doomed myself. But I am glad, Phaedra. It is better. And I may look my brothers with a straight eye when I see them.’

  Another silence. Beyond the window the sudden swell of rain. It was deep dark out there now.

  ‘Calyn knew,’ he said. ‘We felled the stone together, but even then he saw further than I. He tried to warn me. And his last act was to send me the white stones that he had carved from the teeth of Capuu by the pool. Not even the love and the rage of the Mother of the World can pass them. Perhaps if Calyn had not … But I had already begun by then. We had spoken. I had been given the bowl. And I had seen you at the poolside. Yes, I had made my bargain.’

  ‘Bargain? What bargain?’

  Behind her the door opened.

  ‘The chaplain, my lady’ said Chawlin.

  Martin had changed into a dull robe, and wore his hood thrown forward about his face. He stepped up silently to settle beside Phaedra.

  ‘What bargain, Ulfin?’

  He was looking up at the ceiling. ‘One I have failed to keep.’

  ‘And the terms?’

  ‘Go – with me.’ His mouth clamped shut.

  ‘Perhaps I can help you,’ she heard herself say, in a calm, dry voice that might almost have belonged to another.

  ‘You wanted power, of course. The Cup gave that to you – the power to see far off, to walk in dreams and to cross the world by moving in the dark places. Many tricks like that. I think you have written them in a book, which may not be far away. It gave you the power to love and be loved by one with whom you chose to drink from it. You bewitched me, Ulfin. Did you think I would never learn what you had stolen from me?’

  Her voice was shaking. Ulfin lay, and Martin sat, like statues as she spoke. Neither made a sign. She drew breath. The price …

  ‘But first of all it was for the life of your father, to avenge the brother to whom you had bound yourself through the water.

  ‘Do you know that in two years in this house I never wondered how you had brought an end to your father? Yet it was there for me to see. Caw dealt quickly with the marks we found on the stair. So quickly I think – perhaps – that such things have been found in this house before. By the hearth in the hall where you broke the floor patterns with black marble, because you could not get the white.’

  Still he did not answer; and the rain beat heavily at the night outside.

  ‘How else, you may say, could a friendless young man come at so armed and cruel a lord? Yet you went further. When Trant had fallen – by your under-craft, although you allowed the world and me to think it was my own faithlessness – you sought the life of the King. And the King died—’

  ‘You lied!’

  She looked at him.

  ‘You said – you had not spoken with him.’

  ‘If I have lied to you, Ulfin, I was not the first to deceive. And I did not lie. I did not speak to him. He spoke to me, by the pool, as he handed me the water that broke at last the bond that you had laid on me. That is the truth. And it is the sort of truth you have been telling me for two years. And what of me? Why did you enspell me – enspell us both – for all those years? Was it for Trant: your foothold in the heart of the Kingdom? Or was it because – because only through me could you pay your price?

  ‘How could you live with me, Ulfin? How could you have wed me, and looked me in the eye, knowing that the price you would pay would be the life of our son?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘For a father, the life of a son, he said. For a king, the life of a king – Ambrose Umbriel, the King who would be. That was what you would rather have left me to die than say. And that is why I have done what I have done!’

  ‘I – did not know him! Phaedra!’ He jerked up onto one elbow. His face writhed with pain. She saw the open neck of his shirt, and a little black key on a chain against his pale skin. She saw him gather himself.

  ‘What you say is true—’

  ‘True!’ She laughed shrilly. ‘I never thought to hear you say that. “Speak the truth to one another.” What a curse that was! “Keep your promises” – including the promise you had made to him. What was the other? “Let your lives be a mirror to one another.” We have both led our fathers to their deaths. You made a bargain to be King, and offered your child. I made a bargain with the King, to save your child. And my price was you. Dear Angels!’

  ‘Phaedra – think what you will. But do not think that I gave a child I knew for power, or wed you for any other cause than yourself. When I first made my bargain – I did not know what the price would be. He only said he would tell me when the time was right. I was young, grieving, hating everything. I would have given anything I had or thought I ever would have to be avenged on my father. After that – I used – what he had given me. There was never a word of price. If I thought at all it was only to assume he was showing me favour as the last of his own father's line. And he showed me you, by the poolside. Do you remember? You were close to willing yourself to death when I spoke with you.

  ‘Yet had I known then what the price would be I would never have asked to wed you. Believe this. It was only when I spoke with him after the taking of Trant that I understood what he intended. And by then I was committed to war with the King – a war I could not win without his help.

  ‘So I returned, when I could, to you. I was going to take Ambrose then. Yet when I saw him – when I heard the name you gave him – when I knew how I loved you – I could not give him up …’

  It was Orcrim and Caw who had forestalled him, pointing to an imaginary likeness with the brother whom he had loved. They had guessed, these men he would now have her kill. They had saved her son while she was blind to the danger. She drew breath to speak. But it was pointless now.

  ‘So I refused the Prince Under the Sky. I gave Ambrose the stones I had kept for my own protection. I surrounded myself with armed men – he and his can take hurt from iron, Phaedra. I would not use the power he offered, although my men paid dearly for it. And I went into the mountains, where you found me, to tell him he could not have what he wanted, and to make another bargain.’

  ‘You found you needed him more than he did you.’

  ‘If I was to prevent – this – yes.’

  ‘You trusted a maid and a wet nurse with secrets you would not trust to me.’

  ‘They understood what you would not.’

  ‘You mean they did not ask the questions I would have done! And you left us there. You went to use the power you knew could only be paid for in one way. You had him free you from the love you had cast on both of us, so that you could bring yourself to pay it. This was Ambrose's life!’

 
‘There is another interpretation.’

  She stopped. He had crowned himself on his return from the mountains. Why then? For a king, the life of a king. He had made himself a king indeed, whereas Ambrose …

  ‘You mean you would have offered yourself …?’

  ‘Not if I could – help it. I hoped time would find me a third chance. But if nothing else …’

  He had demanded Ambrose of her. Yet he had also warned her to keep Ambrose from him. If he had truly been caught in this web as a youth … If he had twice put himself at risk for his child's sake … For the first time since she had stepped through the door, Phaedra felt her conviction waver. The bitter clarity that had driven her speech was blurring. And as the wrong she perceived in him diminished, the things she had done seemed darker.

  He must have seen her uncertainty, and known that his words had counted. He looked at the priest, as if to see whether Martin had understood too.

  He froze.

  Then, like a snake, his hand shot out and clutched the corner of the priest's hood. The sudden movement made him cry with pain. The hood fell.

  It was not Martin's face beneath.

  A small head, almost hairless, which wore a thin circlet of gold. Yellow-grey skin that stretched tightly over the skull. Eyes were set in deep sockets like pools in dark rock. The grey priest looked impassively down at the man before him.

  ‘Once again you twist the truth, son of Talifer,’ he said. ‘You shrank from giving me the boy. Yet you supposed that if, despite you, I should come past your pebbles and take him, you should be both debtless and blameless, and that fault should lie with the three witless women you left to guard him.

  ‘I will have my price. There is no third chance. There is no second chance. If a man would cheat me I take my price twice over. Your life is forfeit to me, son of your father and self-made King. Yet you shall not so save your son. The boy cannot stay within the ring for ever. One day I shall have him too, and then our bargain will be fulfilled.

  ‘Except for this,’ he went on, turning to Phaedra. ‘I make one offer only to you. Twenty years of life, for either your husband or your son. The other to be mine at once, or as soon as a message may reach across the lake. Choose quickly’

  Phaedra could not answer. How had he come here? Where was Martin? But Martin's voice was sounding beyond the door, talking with Chawlin; puzzled, but unworried: ten feet from where she stood eye to eye with the grey priest.

  ‘You think against me, daughter of farmers? You cannot. Your life is mine three times. I sent the priest-fool to find you among the rocks. I sent the boy-fool to stand for you at the swords. And most of all because I woke the girl-fool who lay starving her body for a love that had already betrayed her. You are mine. You cannot deny it.

  ‘Choose. Twenty years is a good life. Many a child born tomorrow will die sooner. Or fifty years for the man, and maybe you will get more children yet.’

  Could he deliver Ulfin from execution? Would he? But she could not offer her child's life. He must know that. He must know, and Ulfin must know, what choice she would make. If he had spared her, it was to be his tool. They were waiting for her to speak. The world was his eyes, like black pits, willing her towards the edge.

  And a little white stone that she clutched in her hand.

  He had spared her to bring Ulfin defeat. He had spared her for this moment. He wanted Ulfin to hear her condemn him. And still she would have bargained with the grey priest.

  ‘I refuse.’

  ‘You may not refuse. I will have one or other, or both. Choose.’

  Nothing was real but the little stone that had been sent to her by her son.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Twenty-five years!’

  Suddenly she laughed. She could not guess what purpose moved the priest. But he had shown weakness, and although she was still afraid she knew that she both must and could resist. And Ulfin was struggling to raise himself, his eye fixed on the apparition, the lamp shadows sweeping across his face; rising behind him like a black, twisted angel on the wall.

  ‘Old man! Creeping, scheming dotard! What do your bargains and promises mean but the corruption of those that treat with you? Have you done nothing in three hundred years but bring ruin on each of your brothers' houses? Because they left you no land but that you could not hold. Envious, joyless, cheated! Hear me. I will pay your price – our price – with my body. But then be you gone, for my house is debtless to you.’

  ‘You are mine, and your house will be mine, and only then will I be done with you.’

  But Ulfin answered, Ulfin and more than Ulfin, for there was a light behind his eye and a power within his words that came from far beyond the man.

  ‘Hear these words, Paigan Wulframson. Listen well. Least of your father's sons. By the last of your father's sons—’

  ‘Enough!’ The priest spread his arms. The room was filling with shapes and shadows. There was a sudden, strong smell as if of dank stone. Strange mutters and cries swelled around them. Ulfin's voice rose above them, pained and cracking, yet suddenly with the weight of trembling stars.

  ‘By the last of your father's sons shall you be brought down!’

  And then they were on him.

  Shapes with low, hooded faces rose around the bed. Floorboards broke. She saw Ulfin's head forced back, his leg kicking. Something with eyes and a beak billowed in front of her, buffeting her sideways like a blast of wind. She fell. She heard Ulfin scream.

  ‘Chawlin!’ she cried. ‘Chawlin!’

  The room was crowded. The door erupted inwards. Chawlin was there, sword in hand. Martin was at his shoulder. She saw Chawlin seize a shadowy limb, saw the creature turn and crow in the face of its challenger. Chawlin recoiled with a cry.

  Martin was yelling the names of the Angels. Phaedra scrambled on her hands and knees, and struck with her fist that held the pebble against a leg of stone. It jerked away, dragging her with it over the broken floor. The sword whipped and sang above her head. There was a clatter and a shriek. Feet were running in the corridor. Men were in the antechamber. Everyone was shouting or shrieking.

  They had the sword. Two, three clawlike hands clutched the blade, black against the bright metal. Chawlin was pulling at the hilt. Past the gibbering, crowding things Phaedra saw across the room the face of the grey priest watching her. Then he turned into the wall and was gone.

  The room was empty.

  ‘Dear Michael!’ said Chawlin, and leaned against the wall.

  The chamber stank. The floorboards were scarred and splintered. The bed was broken. Ulfin lay huddled in a mess of blood beside it. Phaedra crawled over to him, and stopped when she saw the wounds. The chest, the arms, the legs, the face were all gouged with bloody tracks. Martin was at his shoulders, turning him. She bent over the wreck of the man.

  Even now he was not quite dead. His good eye flickered at her. The mouth moved.

  ‘Raise – the King's stone. Hillmen – help. Raise …’ He tried to cough, and could not.

  ‘Ulfin?’ she whispered. There was no answer.

  Someone was kneeling at her side. It was Septimus. She looked at him, and realized that the room around her was crowded with his followers.

  ‘These are the same wounds my father bore,’ he said. ‘And my brother.’

  ‘And, I guess, the old lord of Tarceny’ someone added. ‘Justice has a hard face. Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Septimus.

  After a while the prince rose to his feet. ‘Madam,’ he said. ‘There is much here that may be guessed at. And much, no doubt, that will never be known. But if you know any of the causes of what has passed here, you have a duty to reveal them to me.’

  ‘I do,’ she said. Gingerly she eased the cord that held the little black key from around Ulfin's bloody neck, and rose to her feet. She was thinking how his heart had beaten against the key to his secrets, as hers had beaten against the ring he had given her. His heart was still now. Hers too.

  She looked around
her. Aun was there, and Tancrem, Chawlin, Septimus and a half-dozen others, watching her as if she were about to grow horns and a tail.

  ‘If you will follow me.’

  She led them to the War Room. The black chest was on the table, locked. The wood gleamed in the lamplight, writhing with shadows and the carved creatures upon it. She saw Chawlin peer closely at them and look away. She tried the key, and it clicked in the lock.

  The chest was no longer empty. Within lay a stone bowl, with a stem and a base like a large cup. Beside it on the cloth lay a book. Septimus lifted the bowl out and looked at it curiously. There was something like a snake carved around the rim.

  ‘Rude workmanship,’ said someone.

  ‘It was cut by the hand of a prince,’ she said.

  ‘Did he show you the purpose of these things?’

  ‘No. The Cup I have seen only in my dreams. He would gather water in it, in which to see far off, and so defeat his enemies.’ Aun was nodding. ‘He could cross great distances swiftly, and pass doors that were locked. It helped him in this. And – there were other uses.’ She remembered the taste of the water in her dreams, warm, and sweet as the faintest honey. ‘The book I have never seen before, although I guessed it must exist. I do not know if there is now any witchcraft in them. I believe it came through them, from beyond.’ She used the word witchcraft for the sake of her listeners. It had a strange feel on her tongue.

  Septimus lifted the book and turned a few pages. She could tell at once that neither he nor any of those craning over his shoulder could read well.

  ‘It would be best to destroy them,’ someone said.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Septimus. ‘There may be something that can be learned from them about this evil that has threatened us. But we shall not treat them lightly. The Cup shall remain here, secret and guarded. And Lord Lackmere, you shall take the book into the south. Keep it in your home, and let none approach it without my permission.’

  Aun hesitated for a second, as the book was put into his hands. He looked at Phaedra and then at Septimus, who was already returning his attention to the Cup. Phaedra could see, written on his face, his dislike of the mission he had been given. It was not just the book. He did not want to go into the south, to return to his family and live at home. And from Septimus's bearing she guessed that the prince knew it, and was nevertheless sending him away. If Septimus had not said what he planned for Trant or Tarceny it was clear they would not include Aun.