by Judith Tarr
He was being ridden like a horse. Rather oddly, he did not mind. It was like the old days, when Merlin sent small servants, wise beasts or minor spirits of earth or air, to teach him this lesson or that. For an instant he wondered—
Merlin had no such power, not so far from Broceliande. This—spirit? Yes. This spirit in cat-shape was nothing of Merlin’s doing. It was its own master, he suspected, or near enough; and it had something that it wished him to do.
It was purring again. The purr guided him through the waking morning. It led him past the king’s tent and Roland’s own nearby, then through those of the king’s court to the closely guarded enclave in which dwelt the king’s women, his children, and their servants.
Roland did not often go there. The women had their own kingdom. He, who had neither mother nor sister nor wife, had little occasion to enter into their world. Sometimes he went with Olivier to visit Olivier’s sister Aude, who was a nun in the service of the king’s sister, the Abbess Gisela, but he had never gone without an escort. It made him strangely shy.
The cat’s claws had tightened. It wanted him to walk in among those tents. The voices there were higher, but not always softer. Somewhere nearby, a woman was cursing a servant’s laziness in devastating detail.
It was quieter by the queen’s tent: a murmur of voices, low and urgent; a child’s cry, quickly cut off. The cat saw to it that Roland stopped not far from the entrance, which was closed. There was no guard in front of it.
There was darkness here. It was not as deep as it was about Ganelon’s tent, but it was distinct, with the same odd dryness to it, like the rustle of a serpent’s scales.
The cat slipped from Roland’s neck and leaped lightly to the ground. It vanished beneath the flap of the tent.
Roland could not follow. He knew what was inside, what it must be: the enemy reaching for the queen, perhaps to take the child she carried. But what could he do? He could not wield the sword here. He knew nothing of women’s magic.
A woman slipped out of the tent nearly as gracefully as the cat had slipped in. She carried a water jar. There was a satchel slung over her shoulder, heavy for its size, but she bore it easily.
He gaped like a raw boy. He had not realized that she was tall. Her eyes were nearly level with his, her back straight, her steps light but firm. She could dance, he thought out of nowhere at all, as well as she could ride a horse. And . . . heal a queen?
Her face was troubled, those wonderful eyes downcast. It was not going well within.
He must have made a sound. She looked up, startled, and their eyes met. She was not as appalled this time as she had been before. She was not visibly delighted, either. “You have a message?” she asked him.
He blinked. From the king, she must have meant. He shook his head. As ridiculous as it sounded, he said, “The cat—”
“Tarik? Tarik brought you here?”
Indeed: the cat was weaving between them. Its purr was a low rumble. It sprang into Roland’s arms and grinned a fanged cat-grin.
Sarissa glared at the creature. “Yes? And what can he do?”
“Nothing,” Roland said. “I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t mean—”
“Didn’t you?” She was still glaring at the cat. “He cannot,” she said as if it had spoken.
The cat hissed. Its tail lashed.
“This is a women’s thing,” Sarissa said.
“Indeed,” said Roland. He turned on his heel to escape, but the cat’s claws sank into his arm, holding him fast.
“This creature thinks,” said Sarissa, tight and angry, “that you can be of some help here.”
“And why would it think that?”
“God knows,” she said. “What can you do for a woman whose child is sought after by something dark?”
“I know little of women,” Roland said. “But—”
He regretted that word as soon as he had uttered it. Her eyes fixed on him. “But?”
“But surely you can have a priest exorcise the evil.”
“We have had holy women raising walls of prayer about her,” said Sarissa. “This is stronger than they. Stronger than a priest, too.”
“Then what do you think a plain fighting man can do?”
“It’s not what I think,” she said. “It’s what Tarik thinks. He says that you are more than a soldier.”
“I do not want to be,” Roland said in a kind of despair.
The cat’s claws sank deeper. It was, in its way, dragging him toward the tent, toward that nest of whispering women.
There were things that Merlin had taught him. Defenses against dark things. Walls of air. Their like had imprisoned the enchanter in the wood; but in lesser strength they could protect a man—or a woman—beset by ill magic.
For an instant Roland’s hands remembered the not-quite-human softness of a demon’s skin, and heard the hiss as the serpent-creature sucked the breath from him. He was as dizzy as he had been then, weak, swaying, heart pounding, gasping for air. Pain brought him back, sharp-clawed and merciless. He was not to escape this. Not unless he wanted to lose a portion of his hide.
He did consider it. But he was not so great a coward after all. Nor did he need to go into the tent for this. He had simply to know what the boundaries were, and sense where the queen was, with the child enfolded in her.
True magic was quiet, a thing of the spirit. It had no need for extravagant displays. He spoke the words softly, without drums or trumpets, magical gestures or sleights of the magician’s art. He raised the walls as Merlin had taught him, secured them with bars of light, and bound them with the chains of the earth. He delved deep in his strength for that, but there was enough. He even kept his feet after, bowed to Sarissa without falling over, and walked away. The cat, for a wonder, let him go.
CHAPTER 9
Sarissa stood flat-footed, taken for once completely aback. When she could begin to think, her first thought was pure white anger. The nerve, the sheer gall of the man, to come here, raise the powers, leave—and hardly a useful word spoken.
And oh, dear forgotten gods, the strength of him, to do it with such ease, as if it were no more complicated than the simplest of fire-spells. There was no gap in the wall he had raised, no weakness. When she went inside the tent, Queen Hildegarde was sleeping peacefully, and once again there was color in her cheeks. Sarissa had not been able to do that, not so easily or so strongly. And she was a healer and more. She was strong herself, strong enough to bring down a mountain or raise a fortress of living light.
“The only way,” she said to Tarik when they could be alone, “the only way he could have done it was by knowing where the darkness came from. That has been hidden from me. But he knows.”
Then, Tarik’s tail-flip said, she should ask the enchanter who it was. Tarik was singularly unaffected by Sarissa’s outrage, or by the cause of it, either.
“Suppose that he is part of it,” Sarissa said. “You’ve seen him. He’s a devil’s get. It’s written in his face. And that power he has—that’s not plain human strength. He’s no mortal man, whatever he may be pretending.”
You should ask, Tarik said, as close to mere words as he ever came.
Sarissa was not about to do that. She should offer thanks, for now truly the queen was safe; but she could not bring herself to do that, either.
Pride was a sin. Yet she could not overcome it, nor truly want to. She could well convince herself that he had warded the queen so easily because the whole was his doing: darkness as well as escape from darkness. Devils thrived on confusion.
Tarik was disgusted. He stalked away with his tail stiffly erect. Just before the corner of a tent would have hidden him, he vanished. A raven spread broad black wings, climbing into the sky.
The Abbess Gisela, who had been born a king’s daughter, heard Mass each morning with the other holy women who attended the queens, and with such of the others as were minded to attend. This morning Sarissa was so minded. She put on a gown like a Frankish woman, and a dark m
antle, and slipped in among the faithful. She knelt and stood and crossed herself with the rest, lifted her voice in the responses, and prayed when prayer was fitting.
She had been recognized. Whispers spread. She was careful not to listen too closely. The Mass had its own power, raised its own citadel of light. For a little while she rested in it.
When it was over, the abbess happened to pass Sarissa making her slow way back to the tents. They walked side by side, with the abbess’ women trailing at some distance. They took the long way about, which gave them ample time for conversation.
Abbess Gisela seemed in no haste to begin it. Sarissa walked in silence. She was aware of the abbess’ eyes on her. Young eyes, and bright; curious. “Were you mocking us?” Gisela asked at last.
“I am not a Muslim,” Sarissa said.
The white-fair brows rose toward the black veil. “Truly? But you let everyone think—”
“People may think as they please,” Sarissa said.
“And so betray themselves?”
The corner of Sarissa’s mouth twitched. Not all Franks, she thought, were innocents, though this one seemed as wide-eyed as the worst of them.
“Tell me what you need of me,” said Gisela.
That was a Frank beyond doubt: direct, to the point, and no graceful dancing about the truth. “Tell me of the man who won the sword,” Sarissa said.
“Ah,” said Gisela. “He’s pretty, isn’t he? Shy with women, tongue-tied to a terrible degree, and quiet enough among the men, too. But he’s the best fighter in Francia.”
“That I know from watching him,” Sarissa said. “I need to know more. Who he is. Why he is.”
“And whether you can trust him?”
Sarissa nodded.
Gisela looked as if she might have offered her own opinion as to that, but instead she said, raising her voice slightly, “Sister Aude! Lady, come; walk with us.”
One of the sisters stepped forward from among the rest. She was a tall, robust creature, with a curl of coppery hair escaping from her veil, and milk-white skin richly freckled. Her body was ripe in her habit, full-breasted, deep-hipped. Sarissa would have expected to find her beside some great bear of a man, with half a dozen of his children at her feet, and yet another swelling her belly.
And yet she was consecrated to the Christian God, forbidden man’s touch, and all that richness shut away from the world. It was a great sacrifice, Sarissa supposed. She could hope that it was worth the price.
“Aude,” said Gisela, “attend this lady, if you please. Tell her such things as she wishes to know.”
Aude bowed as an obedient nun should. Her eyes were alert under the veil. She did not have the look of one wholly given up to submission.
She was skilled, too, in leading without seeming to lead, taking Sarissa away to the courtyard formed by the walls of the queens’ tents. It was a lovely greensward, with a little stand of trees, and a canopy under which one could sit and ply one’s needle.
This Aude proceeded to do, taking up the work that had lain folded on the bench. She had the air that nuns cultivated, of sublime patience. And yet Sarissa noticed that the garment she was embroidering was a man’s tunic, and a fine one, too, of scarlet silk. She threaded a needle with gold and continued the embroidery of the hem.
Sarissa sat on a bench opposite her, regretting for a moment that her own hands were empty. She had brought no needlework with her from Spain, nor was there any laid out for her as there had been for Aude. It would have been welcome now, to occupy her fingers. She laced them in her lap, tilted her head toward the tunic, and inquired, “For your father?”
“My brother,” Aude said. She shook her head and smiled a little wryly. “Not that I expect him to keep it clean for more than a moment, once he puts it on. But he does need something that’s fit to wear at festivals.”
“I don’t suppose your brother is the Count Roland.”
Aude laughed. She held up the tunic. It would have covered two of Roland. “Oh, no! My brother is Olivier—his friend, the king’s Companion.”
“And do you approve of that friendship?”
Aude’s mirth retreated to her eyes and to the corners of her mouth. “I swore vows,” she said, “but if God had not had me first, you can be sure I’d be flinging myself at that lovely creature.”
“The abbess says he’s shy of women,” Sarissa said.
“Very shy,” Aude agreed, “but charming, and bold enough once you’ve persuaded him to trust you. It’s quite like taming a wolfcub.”
“Wolfcubs grow into wolves,” Sarissa muttered.
If Aude heard that, she did not acknowledge it. “He was half-wild when he came to court. His mother died when he was born, poor thing. His father fostered him with a seneschal, then died in battle when Roland was still a child. He was brought up all anyhow, and he knew nothing of women at all. Not one thing.”
“But he knew how to fight.”
“Oh, yes,” said Aude in a slow exhalation of breath. “Yes, indeed. And courts, too, and the ways of kings—those he knew.”
“Indeed? A count’s seneschal could teach him such a thing?”
“Well,” said Aude, “no.” She stitched at her border for a moment, finishing the curve of a golden vine. “Brittany is . . . strange,” she said at length. “Its people are still pagan, mostly. The Marcher Counts have never so much ruled it as kept it from being a thorn in the king’s side. Nor have they always succeeded in that.”
“Roland is not a Breton?”
“Roland is half a Breton,” said Aude. “His father was a Frank. His mother was of the old people. Very old. There are whispers, stories—one never knows what to make of them.”
“That he has devil’s blood?”
Aude crossed herself quickly. “He’s not evil! Truly he is not.”
“And yet his forebears were not all human men.”
“Is that why you came?” Aude asked her. “To hunt him down? To see him condemned?”
There was no mirth in this lady now, and no friendship, either. If she had had a sword, Sarissa did not doubt that it would have been in her hand, angled toward Sarissa’s heart.
Sarissa spoke carefully, not in fear—she was not afraid of any mortal thing—but to be sure that she was not misunderstood. “I will hunt down evil wherever it is. That I am sworn to. If he has no evil in him, he’s safe from me. I only want to know.”
“Because he won your sword?”
“How did you know it was mine?”
“I could see,” said Aude, “when you gave it to him. You weren’t happy that he won it, were you? Did you want to keep it?”
“It was meant for the king.”
“So I’ve heard.” Aude sighed. “Very well. But if you use this knowledge ill, or turn it against him, I will see that you pay for your treachery. So will every one of the king’s Companions, and every other Frank in this place who has cause to love the Breton Count.”
Sarissa inclined her head. “Has he no enemies, then?”
“Every man has enemies,” Aude said. “Count Roland has fewer than most. He is loved here. Remember that.”
“I will remember,” said Sarissa.
Then at last Aude seemed satisfied, or close enough. She nodded; she stitched at her embroidery. She said in a soft slow voice, “He never speaks of this. But some things people can know, and one is an old story. It’s said that in Brittany, in the forest of Broceliande, is a hidden fastness, a prison built strong and high. In it one lies bound. He has been confined so for years out of count, and will be bound till the moon dies. He does not die, they say, because his blood is not human. He is the child without a father, the forgotten enchanter. He is the hunting hawk of the gods.
“His guardians are also his children. They are a line of enchantresses, it’s said, witches of great power. The old gods’ blood is in them, devils’ blood, but their magic is white and their power of the light. Roland is their child. Or so,” said Aude, “it is said.”
; Sarissa sat still. Very, very still. She had been thinking slantwise, slipping round this truth. She did not want it to be so. That he should be a child of that one. That ancient evil, that enemy of all she was sworn to.
It did make a great deal clear. Even why the sword had chosen him. There was great power in him—for the light as well as the dark. But the dark was there, coiled in him. It had created him, at great remove: it had sired his forefather.
“I thank you,” she said. Her voice sounded far away in her own ears.
“Mind you,” said Aude as she stitched at her brother’s tunic, “these are all tales and rumors. They may be nothing more than that. And if he is a devil’s get, it’s marked little but his face. He’s a good man. I’d trust my life to him.”
“And your soul?”
Aude never hesitated. “And my soul,” she said.
CHAPTER 10
“It is here.”
Pepin regarded Ganelon in astonishment. Passion was altogether alien to that cold quiet man, but something very like it was in his voice as he paced the confines of his tent. The two monks who were his servants had effaced themselves by the walls. The third had gone out a day or two before and not come back.
Ganelon stopped in the tent’s center, spun on his heel, and hissed at them all. “It is here! And not a one of you was aware of it.”
“What, my lord?”
That was not wise at all, but Pepin was still somewhat less than adept at curbing his tongue.
Ganelon turned on him in a blaze of white-faced fury. For an instant Pepin saw his death in those black eyes. But Ganelon eased abruptly, with a faint twist of the lips that dismissed Pepin as any sort of threat. It would have been galling if Pepin had been able to feel anything but shock. “Blood of the Grail,” he said, as if that answered Pepin’s question.
Pepin stared blankly at him.
Ganelon had already forgotten him. “There is blood of the Grail in this place. It raised a great warding in the queens’ camp. And Borel is gone. Gone utterly. Do you understand?”