The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

  He was silent for a moment, and then he shook his head. “You’re not ready.”

  “You agree with my father, then,” I said bitterly.

  “No. It has nothing to do with that.”

  “Then what has it to do with?”

  He seemed to have no answer— at least no answer he would tell me to my face. And I struck out at him then. Anything seemed better than going on as I was. Anything, even his hatred. Even dismissal and disgrace.

  “Do you imagine I will change my mind one day, my lord? If you keep me beside you long enough, and close enough?”

  “Change your mind—?” The words broke off in mid-breath, as if silenced with a club. He went pale. I faltered a little, afraid he would do something terrible. But he only stared at me for a time, and then threw out one hand in a frustrated, empty gesture.

  “God, you can be a fool sometimes,” he said. And turned, and walked back to the camp.

  And I reached — no one saw me but God — I reached towards him with both hands, blind and despairing and without thought, trying to call him back, to wind my fingers finally and forever in the mortal fires of his hair.

  I walked deep into the trees, until I was certain no one could see me, and I slashed a sturdy branch from a birch tree, and took off my leather hauberk, and flogged myself across the shoulders until I could not bear it any more. It did not help at all.

  It was then, I think, when I first decided I would be a monk. I would put an end to this, and live out my life as far from the world and its temptations as I could go. I might have gone that very afternoon— simply climbed on my horse and ridden away, abandoning Karelian and Gottfried alike, and my father too: Think what you please, my lords, farewell….

  Only they were shouting for me, and even I could hear the urgency in their voices. Someone was yelling, “The duke! It’s the duke!” I ran back to the camp with my heart in my throat, and saw them clustered, staring across the valley.

  And oh, it was lovely! It was what I had longed for, night after desolate night, wondering if any of my dreams could yet be real. Wondering if he would ever come, if there would ever be the kingdom he was born to conquer.

  We were far away, an hour’s ride, or more; they were only dust at this distance, dust and high-borne banners and the silver glint of armor in the sun. My shame dissolved, my despair, my longing for the silence of a cloister. There was, after all, another way to master the demons of the world.

  Gottfried was riding to war.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Warrior

  I ride through a dark, dark land by night….

  Ludwig Uhland

  * * *

  Karelian stood with a handful of his men on a high knoll, reduced to silence by the scene in the valley below.

  “He rides with half an army, my lord,” Reinhard said. He frowned, turning towards the count. “And in full armor, too. What can it mean?”

  “Wends or Prussians is what it means,” Otto said grimly.

  The seneschal shook his head. “We would have heard. We would have heard before he did, being closer to the borders. It took him some time to gather so many men, and march them through the Schildberge.”

  Otto did not answer. He had spoken out of malice and old, established prejudices. He knew Reinhard was right.

  “There is war in the empire,” Reinhard went on. “It can be nothing else.”

  He looked at Karelian, who looked only at the ranks of men moving in dark waves across the broad vale of Lys, glinting with armor in the afternoon sun.

  Why wasn’t I warned?

  Leaves crunched softly as Adelaide edged her way to his side.

  “Is it really the duke, my lord?” she asked. Although the sun was behind them, she was shielding her eyes with her hand, trying to see. Her vision had always been poor; probably the fields below held only a vaguely moving blur.

  “Yes. It’s Gottfried.”

  “It’s a splendid sight, lady,” her maid Matilde offered cheerfully. “They have hundreds of banners, and the most magnificent horses.”

  “He came to Ravensbruck once,” Adelaide said. “I thought he was the king.”

  She slid her arm around Karelian’s waist. Perhaps — strange, uncanny creature that she was — perhaps she read his fear then, just from touching him. Or perhaps, being the daughter of Arnulf of Ravensbruck, she knew armies such as this one never marched except to war. She went very quiet, and when he looked at her, there was neither light nor color in her face.

  “You’re leaving,” she said.

  “I may have to.”

  “Don’t.” She spoke softly, without emotion. “Not with them.”

  He saw Otto and Reinhard exchanging quick looks— looks he recognized all too well. Think what you like, my friends; but this time I’ll wager her instincts are sounder than yours.

  “Reini,” he said sharply. “A word.”

  He motioned the seneschal to follow him, and moved a distance down the hill. Below, the duke’s men still advanced, less than a mile now from the manor house of Lys. Reinhard chewed thoughtfully on his lip.

  “It’s strange, my lord, that he sent no heralds.”

  “Nor did my border guards,” Karelian added. “And that is stranger still.”

  As for my lady’s silence, that is the strangest of all. Perhaps it was all a dream, and there are no gods, and this is just another war….

  “Reini, I have a task for you. You’re not going to like it much, I fear, but if you ever loved me, or thought me worthy of your service, you will do it. Without much argument, for we don’t have much time.”

  “I’m at your command, my lord.”

  “Take the countess to Schildberge castle, and send someone to fetch the babe, and bring him there, too. You’re castellan from this moment on. You will take command of all defenses, and you will surrender to no one, not to the duke nor to God himself, as long as you have the smallest hope that I’m alive.”

  “My good lord—!”

  “Wait! I’m not finished! I have no right to ask you more, but I will. If I’m killed, try to get Adelaide and her child to some kind of safety. She has no kin now, and no protectors.”

  “If you will forgive me for saying so, my lord, that misfortune is entirely of her own making.”

  “Perhaps. The world will say the same of me. Your word, Reini— will you do it? There is no one else I can trust as much as you.”

  The seneschal met his eye levelly. He was a plain man, plainly made and plainly spoken. But his eyes just then were wet.

  “Then I, more than anyone, should be by your side.”

  “No,” Karelian said. “One man more or less by my side — even the best of men — will not matter much. The fortress may matter desperately.”

  He looked again towards Gottfried’s glittering advance.

  “Gather the men now and go. I’ll take Pauli and Otto with me; you take the others.”

  The seneschal stepped boldly, and yet uncertainly into his path. “Wait! My lord, may I speak freely?”

  “When have you ever done otherwise?”

  “There is something wrong, isn’t there? Something you won’t speak of? You make these plans as if you were riding to your death!”

  “Wars are always dangerous.”

  “We’ve been in many. Even I can see this one looks different.” Reinhard hesitated, and then said outright, harshly:

  “You don’t trust him much, I think. The Golden Duke.”

  Trust him? I trust the devil better, and the paid cutthroats in the gutters of Karn.

  “Reini, I don’t know why he’s come, or where we’re going. I don’t know who he means to fight. That’s reason enough to be uneasy. But there is more. I can’t tell you anything, just now, but there is more.”

  He held out his hand. “I hope we meet again, my friend. But if not, then I thank you, and farewell.”

  Adelaide did not weep. She kissed him without passion, and smiled without meaning it. Her eyes were empty. S
he had dared, for a little while, to trust him, and now he was going away. They all went away or were killed or were left behind, everyone beautiful, everyone who mattered. Rudi was murdered and gone, and all the dark elves were fled. Sigune was alone in Ravensbruck; sick, they said, and maybe dying. And now Karelian was going, too. He tried to lie, to make it seem like a small thing, a three-day raid on an unimportant enemy, but she had seen the duke’s army, and she had felt their power, felt it like a cold fog rising out of the valley. They cared nothing for her lord, or for her, not even the small bit that Arnulf of Ravensbruck had once cared.

  “You will come back to me, my lord?” she whispered. “You’ll come back safe?”

  “Of course I will,” he said.

  He only half believed it, and she did not believe it at all.

  He stood alone and silent after the others were gone. There was no time to make even the smallest sacrifice, to attempt even the simplest divination. Yet he stood nonetheless,impotent as a five-year-old, and entirely aware of it, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. Tyr, or Raven, or the wind or a blade of grass or a bird. Or his own utterly divided judgment, which commanded him in one heartbeat to flee, and in the next to ride smiling into Gottfried’s mailed embrace.

  You are a sorcerer, too. So Raven had assured him, in those days by the Maren. All these years you never guessed it. You called it instinct, and your soldier comrades called it luck, and your enemies probably called it the devil’s favor. But you always acted faster than you could think, and judged better than the evidence allowed for. Gottfried honed his gifts, and you did not, but you have them just the same.

  All his gifts — whatever gifts they were — told him something was desperately wrong. Yet what it might be eluded him entirely. Gottfried’s unannounced arrival, in the full panoply of war, could mean absolutely anything: he might be riding against a rebellious vassal or rising in mutiny against the king.

  Or else he has come to cut my throat….

  A real possibility, Karelian thought, and every bit as likely as the others. Why had the duke sent no word of his approach? Haste did not explain it, at least not if he expected his warleader to join him on the march. Karelian would need some time to gather and mobilize his own men; all the more reason, then, to send a messenger ahead.

  But if there was danger, why had Raven not warned him?

  He looked at the sky. It had been easy, on the banks of the Maren, to believe in her power, and in her gods. Now they both seemed very far away, and the world a mere world of men, violent, unpredictable, and irremediably unsafe.

  He wiped his arm across his face. There was no help for it. Whatever the risks, he had to ride down and meet his lord. He could not throw away the alliance Gottfried had offered him, the singular opportunity to be the sword of his grand ambition, and the unexpected dagger in his heart. He had to stay with Gottfried until he had a reason not to, and he had no reason yet. None at all, except the ice in his blood, and the ashes in his throat.

  Do I fear because there is something real to fear? Or only because I am his enemy? Men with secrets always jump at shadows. He cannot know my heart, except by sorcery, and then he would have known it from the first, and never invited me to join him.

  Raven, why don’t you answer me?

  He opened the pouch which hung about his neck. He touched the feather lightly, but he left it there, and took out the small egg-shaped shells. “The red is of wolfsblood,” she had told him; “the green is of thorn; the black is the belly of the world. They say the first of these were made by Gullveig, before the days of men, and used in the great war between the Vanir and the Aesir.”

  He asked what they were for, but she had only smiled and kissed him. “When you need them,” she said, “you will know.”

  He slipped them into the packet at his belt, in easy reach. He glanced once, regretfully, towards Schildberge fortress, and mounted his horse, remembering his own words to Pauli, just a little while ago, on the house of Dorn’s legendary capacity for getting into trouble. And then he laughed softly. What else was there to do but laugh, riding into the teeth of a thousand spears, without so much as armor on his back, with nothing but these trinkets and a sword?

  The army waited in unbroken ranks outside the walls of the manor, mounted, like men who had come to settle something briefly and then ride on. Inside the gates, more knights filled the courtyard with rings of iron shields and iron spears. At their head, towering and utterly magnificent, was the Golden Duke.

  It was clear he had not come as a guest. The house guards would have rushed out to greet him, would have offered to take his horse and escort him into the manor, would have plied him with wine and food and any comfort he might have wished. He had obviously refused all their offers. He had not even dismounted.

  Otto, riding close at Karelian’s side, was a trifle sweaty at the temples.

  “Were you not his lordship’s favorite vassal, and his kinsman, I confess I wouldn’t like the look of this.”

  “I don’t like it in any case,” Karelian said.

  Nonetheless he went on, until he had ridden through the gates and the two lords were a dozen feet apart. Still no word had been offered, and no gesture— not a hint of greeting or a whisper of hostility. The duke waited like a god. A red and quickly falling sun shot flashes of crimson off his helm, and gave his white surcoat a majestic hint of gold.

  Karelian smiled and bowed deeply, but he did not dismount, either.

  “My good lord, welcome!”

  He met Gottfried’s eyes, and then he knew.

  He let his gaze flicker briefly to the stern-faced men at Gottfried’s side. The duke’s standard-bearer and three of his escort wore the insignia of the Knights of Saint David, God’s new soldiers, sworn to obedience, chastity, and the service of the Church. Holy men in arms. All four were thin-faced and young, with wintry eyes which seemed to hunger for religious death.

  And I rode right into their hands….

  He could not entirely believe it. He had come here of his own choosing. An hour ago he had been free, and out of reach. By sheerest chance Gottfried had arrived to find him gone, and he, out of his own blind folly and defiance, had thrown that gift of chance away.

  “Was the hunting good, kinsman?” Gottfried asked.

  “It was exceptional, my lord.”

  “And your fair lady Adelaide? Why did she not come to greet me? I’ve heard so much about her; I was quite looking forward to it.”

  So. First the knives, my godly lord, and then the axe….

  “We saw your host, my lord. It seemed obvious there is war at hand, so I sent her to my fortress. Where she will be safe.”

  “The fortress is no longer yours, Karelian; nor is the county of Lys. You will accompany me to Stavoren to stand trial. Herald, read out the charges, so when the citizens of Lys see their lord carried off in irons, they will know the reason why.”

  A man moved forward from Gottfried’s ranks and stood beside his lord. He unrolled a parchment, but he spoke as though he knew every word by heart.

  “Karelian Brandeis, heretofore count of Lys, you stand accused before all of Christendom as an apostate, a sorcerer, and a traitor against your lawful lord. You are from this moment placed under arrest, and hereafter shall be brought before the ducal court at Stavoren for judgment. You will now yield up your weapons, and accompany us, or you will be taken hence by force.”

  “You have no grounds for this!” Karelian cried savagely. “I’ve done nothing against you!”

  “You offered sacrifice to pagan gods, and bound yourself to the witch of Car-Iduna. You promised her my death.”

  Karelian laughed. “Is that all? Who told you this drivel, my lord, and how much did you pay him? Pay him a bit more, he’ll tell you I have a horse that flies, and a candlestick that farts, and a dog that says the Credo backwards!”

  The young standard-bearer lunged forward, gripping the pole of the banner with both hands and driving it savagely into Karelian’s mid
section. He buckled over the horse’s neck, vomiting, and the wood clubbed a second time against the side of his face.

  “Enough,” Gottfried said. “He will be treated like a nobleman until he has been tried. After that….”

  Karelian straightened, slowly and painfully. The white-clad knight leaned close again, spotting the thong around his neck.

  “Ha! And what sacred relic is this, I wonder?” He reached, as the count was still reeling, and slashed it free.

  And the power of Car-Iduna exploded out of the forests of Helmardin, out of the wild-running Maren, out of the sky and the wind and the trees. A thousand searchings, circling and crying, hit against a sudden emptiness and shot through it, like lightning through a crack of sky, and found him. The impact was almost physical, too brief to identify, but he knew it for sorcery, some kind of sorcery, Raven’s creatures, Raven herself, perhaps, reaching out to him with a driven, single-minded power. It only lasted for a moment, before the crack was closed again. But the moment was enough for him to know, and knowing was enough to make him fight.

  The young knight of Saint David tore open the pouch, and pulled out the raven’s feather, holding it up triumphantly:

  “Look, my lord! Where we bear a cross, he bears the token of Odin!”

  Karelian laughed — for whatever else they were, they were a pack of fools — and then he flung the red shell down among them. It smashed into fragments, and out of every scattering fragment leapt a wolf. One after another they leapt, already ravening, wolves of some other, darker world, black and lean, wild with a thousand years of hunger. They leapt for the throats of horses, for the flailing arms of knights with swords and crossbows. Men and animals screamed, colliding and falling in their panic. Karelian drove at the white knight’s rearing horse, and in a single motion swept away his shield and slammed it into the face of another who came at him. A black mass leapt past him. The young knight screamed as a wolf sprang upon his thigh, its jaws closing through ring mail as if it were parchment. Karelian snatched pouch and feather from his hand, drew his sword, and wheeled his mount towards the gates.