Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  He slipped the silver chain about his neck. The coin settled on his breast, warm and oddly heavy. Its weight comforted him. Guarded him—protected him. It was an amulet, he thought. A defense against harm.

  The sword was a defense of another sort, and a great one, too. He wrapped it in the coverlet and carried it in his arms.

  It was still somewhat short of sunrise. Olivier was not in the tent they shared. He had found a woman, no doubt, and well for him. Roland would have welcomed a warm and odorous and thoroughly human embrace himself, just then, but there was no one to give it. The tent was empty even of servants. He slipped his father’s sword from its sheath and laid it gently on his bed. It was only steel; it had no song for him. Still he felt the pull of parting, as if in laying it aside he had made a choice. Had chosen—what?

  He did not know yet. It could be something terrible, something even that would bring about his death. And yet he could not turn away from it. What he had won, he would keep.

  His father’s worn old scabbard did not fit Durandal too badly. It would do until he could have a better one made. He settled the baldric across his breast—allowing himself to wince, here where he was alone, at the tug on his poor abused ribs—and stepped out again into the morning.

  It was an ordeal, that morning, as it always was after a battle. Roland did not set out to be hero or champion. He could not help himself. He endured the flood of adulation with as much grace as he could, drew the sword a thousand times, declined a match or ten against a blade that, its owner swore, was at least as wondrous.

  He had duties, but when he went to perform them, the king’s messenger met him near the royal tent. “Not today,” he said. “The king says rest; heal. Do as you please. Tomorrow is soon enough to be his servant again.”

  Roland was not surprised; he knew Charles too well. But the messenger made him widen his eyes. The king’s eldest son was of age and rank to send servants of his own, not to play the servant before a mere Marcher Count.

  Pepin looked nervous. He was not the calmest of men; he had his father’s perpetual restlessness without, some murmured, the keen wits that gave it direction. It was difficult to remember that Pepin had been born in the same year as Roland. He seemed much younger, a raw boy, awkward and uncertain.

  “Would you like to see the sword?” Roland asked him.

  Pepin nodded jerkily. Roland drew it as he had so often already. The sun caught the blade, dazzling him. Pepin threw up his hand against the flame of it, and shrank back with a half-choked cry.

  Roland sheathed it quickly. “Ah! I’m sorry for that. I didn’t expect—”

  “Didn’t you?” The question was so bitter, the eyes, blinking still and running with tears of pain, so sharp with resentment that Roland stood astonished. Then Pepin shook himself and laughed, a little painfully, and said lightly enough, “Such a weapon! You don’t even need the edge—you can kill with the light glancing off the blade.”

  Maybe Roland had imagined the resentment—no, more than that: hatred. Maybe it had been meant for the sword, and not for himself. He chose to take it so, for comfort’s sake. “I saw you fighting in the melee,” he said. “You fought well.”

  “Our side lost,” said Pepin, but he seemed little enough moved by it. He shrugged. “Ah well. Everyone knows how great a warrior you are. My father most of all. I don’t think anybody was surprised that you won the sword.”

  “I was lucky,” Roland said.

  “God willed it,” said Pepin. “We could all see that. My father, too. He’s not angry at all, that you defeated him.”

  “The king is a magnanimous man,” Roland said.

  “So should we all be,” said Pepin. “Go and rest, my lord. You’ve well earned it.”

  Roland was hardly minded to disobey, or to resent the dismissal, either. In truth he was a little relieved. He had never been able to like Pepin.

  Rather too late, he remembered a thing that had been niggling at him. Pepin in the crowd before the melee, standing close by Ganelon. Standing with the old serpent as . . . pupil to master?

  Oh, no. Surely Charles would not have allowed that.

  And why not? Charles could not know what Ganelon was. No one did. They all thought him a cold man and odd, but a good priest, learned and wise. Why should he not be chosen to teach the king’s son?

  It was too late to catch Pepin, to ask him if it was true—if he was Ganelon’s pupil. The prince was gone.

  Roland could not go to Charles now. He had nothing, no proof, only the certainty in the bones of his magic, from the moment he looked on that pale wise face, that this seeming priest was the ancient sorcerer, the enemy of the Grail.

  Tonight he would do what he could. Today, by the king’s command, was his own. There were already people coming toward him, smiling, calling to him, besetting him with their mingling of envy and admiration. He turned aside from the path he had been taking toward the king’s tent, slipped down a line of tents and dived into the arm of the wood that touched on the end of it.

  He had not done such a thing in—years? Indeed. Since the first year he was in the king’s court, when for loneliness and sheer homesickness he had run away more than once. Then Olivier befriended him, pressing at him until he was friend and brother in spite of himself, and Turpin made three of them, and between those two he found himself among the king’s Companions. Then there was no running away. He was one of them, brother among brothers, and that other part of him was put aside.

  She had brought it back—Sarissa, with her wonder of a sword. The sword rested like a familiar hand across his back. The amulet lay warm and strangely heavy on his breast. It was hers, he knew as enchanters know. It had come from her. Its warmth was the warmth of her presence.

  He ran light as a young wolf through the thicket of trees. Somewhat within, out of sight of the tent-city, one of the myriad springs bubbled from a rock and ran down in a bright rill. The magic of wood and water danced in his blood.

  He left his garments by the rill, hidden under a stone, and the sword buried beneath them. Even as his being shifted and changed, became air and winged swiftness, he remembered the amulet. It swung against his breast, brushing the soft hawk’s feathers. He made a sound in his throat, a hawk-sound, that might almost have been laughter. He leaped into the blue heaven.

  Freedom was beautiful, glorious. But the man’s spirit ruled the hawk’s. It brought him back well before the sun set. He was replete with the succulent flesh of a rabbit, and weary, but pleasurably so, with flying high and far. The return to human shape was a bit more of a shock than it usually was: bruises, cuts, cracked ribs, all reminded him forcibly of the battle he had won.

  He dressed with care, moving stiffly, but never regretting his long hours’ flight. His head was clear, his heart light. He knew what he would do. He would speak to Charles of Ganelon, and tell him the truth; all of it, however difficult, however dangerous. He would trust the king, whom after all he had sworn to serve.

  As he laced up his tunic, a flicker of movement caught his eye. He paused. The wood was still. His ears sharpened. Was there a faint, the very faintest hint of indrawn breath?

  He moved again with careful casualness, to finish dressing, to sling the sword on its baldric. Someone was watching. Had that person seen him—had he, or she, seen the change?

  He bent to dip a handful of cold springwater. The watcher moved—toward him, not away. He gathered himself. Very carefully his hand crept toward the knife at his belt.

  Leaves rustled. A supple body slipped between a pair of tree-boles.

  He gaped like a fool. For an instant he thought it was she; Sarissa. But this was a taller, slighter shape, and darker, more evidently Saracen. She carried a jar, as if she had come to fetch water; but this spring was a long way from the Saracens’ camp.

  She smiled at him, long lids lowered over great dark eyes, dark lashes brushing the cream-smooth cheeks. Oh, she was beautiful, this infidel woman, lissome and light, swaying like a young tree in the
wind. There was gold on her brows and her fingers, and clashing rings of it on her slender wrists and her delicate ankles.

  This one must be a Saracen’s prized possession—perhaps the emir’s himself. Every fear Roland had had when he first saw Sarissa, he well should have now. Yet they were alone, and she had all too clearly come seeking diversion. And he had not lain with a woman in longer than he liked to remember.

  The hawk’s mind was still foremost, the man’s not yet returned to full strength. A hawk took what he pleased, when it pleased him. When the falcon came into her season, he was ready; he mated.

  This woman wanted him. Her smile was full of desire. She ran the tip of her tongue over her red lips and swayed toward him. She let slip the mantle that covered her.

  She was naked beneath it, her skin white and rich as cream. Even as slender as she was, her breasts were round and full. Her belly was a sweet curve. Her sex was plucked smooth—so that was true, that traveler’s tale. It was white and round, the nether lips just visible, as red as her mouth.

  She danced for him, serpent-supple, gliding over the forest mould. Long rays of sun illumined her, casting bars of light and shadow across that face and that wonder of a body.

  His own body was burning, his manly parts in outright pain. There was no thought in his head but to take what she so freely, so irresistibly offered. A very distant flicker of sanity cried to him to run, but even as he thought of it, she had him in her arms. She smelled of spices, and of something darker, closer to earth. Her lips fastened on his. Her body wound itself about him.

  On his breast over his heart, warmth mounted to heat, and heat to the agony of fire. He reached to tear at the amulet, to cast it away, but his hands were caught, trapped in hers. He could not breathe: she had kissed the breath from him. He was drowning. He was—

  Somehow, impossibly, he found strength to thrust her away. But she only wound the tighter, the harder he fought. She did not laugh as a woman might when she had a man in her clutches. The only sound she made was a hiss.

  His sight was going dark. He was dying. He was calm, unafraid. She was killing him, crushing the breath from him, sapping his warmth, draining the life from his body. She did it deliberately, coldly, as a snake will take its prey.

  No.

  It was not even a word. It was pure will. Her arms held him fast, her legs wound about him, her body pinning him to earth.

  But she could not hold a falcon. He was too small, too swift. The falcon saw no woman at all but a snake, a supple black-and-silver thing coiled tight round empty space. He soared up and up amid the branches of the trees. The sky was free above him.

  He turned his back on it. He clapped wings to sides and plummeted, beak and talons wide. The full weight and force of him caught the serpent where it lay, just behind the flat wicked head.

  It thrashed in agony, battering tree-boles, spraying water from the stream. He clung for his life, gnawing, clawing, grinding down through scales and hide to the supple joinings of the spine. To rend, to tear, to break—to kill.

  The serpent’s throes flung him bruisingly against the ground. He beat with wings, struggling to catch air, to rise before the creature crushed him. It was heavy, so heavy, far too heavy to be an earthly serpent. The weight in it was magic: old and cold, black and deep.

  He was light and fire. He was Merlin’s child, the master’s pupil. He was the champion of the sword. He rose up with all his strength, lifting the serpent with him, high and high. When he had reached the summit of heaven, he cast his burden down. He flung it headlong, crashing through branches, striking the earth with crushing force; he flung himself after it, dropping like a stone. He cared not at all if his own body was broken. Only that the enemy was destroyed.

  It lay unmoving on the tumbled ground. Black blood seeped out of it. Its back was broken. Its eyes were flat, empty of life.

  He tore at it with his sharp hooked beak. Its blood tasted of grave-spices and of old tombs. He gagged on it in revulsion so fierce that it shook him out of hawk-shape into bruised and naked humanity.

  No woman lay there, nor serpent either, but a creature who was somewhat of both. Roland knew that long pale face, that colorless hair, that shaved circle of tonsure. Of the monk’s robe he saw nothing. The naked body was hairless, sexless, not a woman’s nor yet a man’s. Faintly on its sides he caught the glimmer of scales.

  With a deep shudder he recoiled. Ganelon’s servant was dead. His—its neck was broken. But that alone had not killed it. On its smooth and nippleless chest was a raw red wound. It was as if a coal had burned through flesh and bone to the living heart.

  The amulet was hot against Roland’s skin—not hot enough to burn, not quite, but very close. He clasped it with a hand that could not stop trembling. Its song was as clear as he had ever heard it, a high sweet singing like the music that drove the spheres of heaven. White magic, high magic. It had protected him; saved him.

  Even high magic could not save him from the truth. Ganelon knew, if not yet what Roland was, then certainly that he was a danger. And he had killed one of Ganelon’s servants. He would pay for that, and dearly.

  He would have paid with his life if he had not killed first. He gathered his garments, his weapons, everything that could betray him. He blurred and scattered the human footprints that he had left, and laid a wolf’s trail far into the wood. Then he buried the body, digging the grave deep beneath the roots of an oak. The tree shuddered at the presence of so ill a thing, but it was old and it was strong. It would render the flesh into earth and the bones into stone, and dissipate the darkness within them.

  Ganelon would miss his servant soon, if he had not already. But Roland prayed that it would be long before he discovered what had become of the creature.

  CHAPTER 8

  The hour before sunset found Roland at the king’s table, seated in a place of honor at Charles’ right hand. He was scrubbed clean of black earth and serpent’s blood, and dizzy with the simple pleasure of living and breathing and walking free under the sky. Even when he caught sight of Ganelon far down among the priests, his heart barely stopped. He was safe, for the moment. And when this feast was over, he would speak to Charles. He would warn the king.

  He took his determination with him well into the night. The feast went late. Charles drank little, nor did he encourage his men to drink themselves into a fine Frankish stupor, but he was caught up in a disputation between a pair of priestly philosophers. Charles loved such contests, though his Companions tended to find them stupefying. Roland, who had no earthly interest in the precise order and ranking of the angels, nodded off where he sat.

  When he woke with a start, it was deep night. Charles was gone—to bed, no doubt, and wisely, too. There were no few snoring bodies amid the remnants of the feast. Roland had drunk little, but he had eaten less. His head ached abominably; his stomach snarled at him.

  There was still half a loaf of good white bread near his hand, and a bit of roast duck. He ate what he could, a few grimly determined bites of each, and drank from the cup he had been mostly ignoring. The wine was well watered. It steadied him well enough.

  As he sat sipping the last of it, gathering will to rise and seek his proper bed, a small sleek shape wove among the snoring bodies. His belly knotted, then eased as he saw what it was.

  A grey cat leaped into his lap, curled there with the utter insouciance of its kind, and began to knead his thigh, purring raucously. Its claws were wickedly sharp.

  He had seen this cat among the Saracen tents, the night he went there as bodyguard to the king. It was fey as all cats are, but still, he thought in the clarity of very late night, this one was more fey than most.

  Its purring rose to a crescendo. He plucked it from his stinging knee, tucked it under his arm, and went out into the night.

  It was almost dawn. He could smell the morning. The cat was quiet under his arm, purring still, tail flicking gently in rhythm with his stride. It had about it an air of considerable satisfaction.
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  Roland could refuse to let a cat rule him so, but he sensed no evil in it, though he searched wide and deep, and by every way he knew. This was no serpent come to slay him. But neither was it a simple mortal cat.

  Its purring soothed him. The part of him that twitched to run to the king, wake him, warn him, subsided somewhat. His steps slowed. His senses opened as they had seldom done since he was a boy in the wood of Broceliande. The tent-city was beginning to wake. Men were yawning, stirring, rousing out of dreams. Monks and priests were up and praying, some in the slow roll of chanting, others in a shimmering silence.

  The darkness was like a canker, small as yet but already deep. It had Pepin, held him fast. It stretched—yes: toward the queen and the child within her. It did not touch Charles. He was too well guarded.

  Roland paused in an aisle of tents. If he slipped down this way, then turned to the right, he would come to Ganelon’s tent. Durandal was close by his hand. One swift blow and he would end it.

  Oh, surely, he thought with grim irony, it would be as easy as that. Ganelon had lived for thousands of years. Others must have thought the same, and tried it, too; and he was alive and they, Roland could be sure, were long dead.

  Ganelon did not seem to be guarding himself, or concealing what he was from one who could see. That was not innocence, not at all, nor carelessness either. Roland had used that same sleight in battle. It drew the enemy in, lulled him into complacence, and closed him in a deadly trap.

  It was very hard to turn away from that path, even knowing that he would surely fail. Yet as the grey light grew about him, he took the opposite way. The cat slipped free of his arm, climbed to his shoulder, and draped itself about his neck. Its claws, he could not help but observe, were perilously close to his throat.