by Judith Tarr
The woman shrank into a snake, a black-and-silver serpent. They fought, they two. The hawk slew the serpent. And when the creature was dead, its throes ended, Roland stood again in man’s form, gazing down at—
Borel. Ganelon’s servant Borel. Pepin could not mistake him. He was not human; but Pepin had realized that some while since of the two who were yet alive. One could see a shimmer of scales on those gaunt cheeks, if the light was just so; and he had never seen even the hint of a beard on either of them.
Roland had killed Borel. Not the lady of the Grail. And if the vision was true, he had done it as only an enchanter could. An enchanter strong enough to destroy Borel and deceive Ganelon—who knew what else he might prove to be?
Pepin danced in Turpin’s tent, a dance of pure savage glee. He had Roland now. He had him.
He would have to tell Ganelon. But when he did it, and how, he would have to think on. This was such knowledge as men would kill for.
Maybe he would tell the king. Or maybe . . .
So many choices. So many delightful decisions. Pepin had never felt so powerful before. A prince held men’s lives in his hands, ruled them, and if their fate so decreed, ended them. But never such a life as this. Never a man he had chosen to hate with a perfect hate.
CHAPTER 18
Sarissa tossed in her bed. When on occasion she dozed, her dreams woke her gasping, her body throbbing.
She had not felt so in long years. Not since—
Memory helped her not at all. Nor did Tarik. He had retreated to a far corner of the bed to escape her thrashing. Now that she was fully awake, he stalked off with clear intent. He was going to find another body to warm him in the night. A fine body, a handsome body. And above all, a quiet one.
Sarissa sprang to her feet. She wrapped a robe about herself, the first that came to hand, and went hunting in Tarik’s wake.
Roland appeared to be asleep. The lamp burned low. His room had a window, which was fastened open. The night wind blew through it, rippling the gauzy draperies about his bed. He was lying on his face, head buried in his arms, black hair tangled on his neck and shoulders. They were wide, those shoulders, and his hips narrow, his legs long and strong, with an elegant turn of ankle. There was not a slack or a superfluous line in him, from head to heel.
Sarissa glided closer, till she was standing over him. His skin was smooth and white as moon on marble. There were scars, old ones and new, though not as many, she would have wagered, as there were on his front.
She made no effort to resist temptation. She lifted the draperies softly and let them fall behind her. Lightly, gently, she traced the furrow of his spine with her finger.
He shivered in pleasure. She felt him wake, like a brush of wind across her skin, a sharpening of awareness in her center.
He rolled onto his back. No garment covered him, no ornament but the coin of the Grail on its chain, gleaming on his breast.
He must think he was dreaming still: there was none of the shyness she had expected. There were indeed more scars on his front than on his back. But she was not counting them.
He opened his eyes and smiled drowsily, as if he had been expecting her—as if he welcomed her. He must not know he was awake. If she forgot all her doubts and her fears, if she saw only what the heart saw, she could smile the truest smile that was in her. He blinked as if dazzled, and laughed in astonishment and—delight?
Her robe was hardly more substantial than the gauze of the curtains, and she was forgetting to wrap it about her. Her hair streamed loose over her shoulders and her breast: half-bared white shoulders, white breasts, smooth white belly and gold-brown curls concealing her sex. That was aching, a sweet and almost unbearable pain.
By the old gods, she wanted this man. He was so full of magic that he brimmed and ran over; and he was as splendid a young thing as she had seen in long years.
He reached to take her hands and draw her down. His eyes were as soft as falcon-eyes could be. She half-knelt, half-sat beside him, her slender fingers wound in his long strong ones. A small part of her observed that she was trapped; that he was stronger than she in body, a trained fighting man, honed to a keen edge. He could seize her, fling her down, have his will of her.
If he had intended to do that, he would have done it already. She bent and brushed his lips with hers. A spark leaped between them, a small but potent shock.
He did not recoil, though his eyes went wide. His hands tightened painfully, then let her go. She caught them before they escaped. “I’m not asleep!” he said, startled.
“Now you notice,” she said.
“Lady,” he said, blushing furiously. “Lady, I never meant—”
“I came to you,” she said. “So: you dream of me.”
He did not know where to look. She took his burning face in her hands and held it, meeting his eyes. Words came to her tongue, but she did not speak them. She kissed him again, deeper this time, slow and sweet. At first he resisted, struggling; but she held him fast.
He surrendered all at once, as a wise man should to the inevitable. She drew back softly. He reached for her in protest. She smiled. She traced with her hands the lines of his body, shoulders and breast, belly and flanks, and at last, with wicked delight, the exuberant thing between his legs. He gasped as her fingers closed about it. She soothed him, stroking him, till he calmed in spite of himself.
Lovely, lovely man. If she let her heart think for her, see for her, all doubts vanished. She saw only the light in him, and the Grail’s protection about him, embodied in its token. No ill thing could touch him, within or without.
His hands ran lightly, almost timidly down her back. She purred at the touch. It grew stronger, surer of itself. She half expected him to leap on her then and take her as young men were wont to take women, but instead he began to play her like a harp. He found each note and sounded it, one by one. He made of them a melody, and then a song.
It was as if he could not help himself. She laughed inside herself, half incredulous, half delighted. She could play this music as well as he, match his rhythm, his notes; from melody make harmony. It almost did not matter when, or whether, he entered her. They were bound, body to body, heartbeat to heartbeat, breath to breath. She came to crescendo an instant before him; then he was with her, his song in her ear, a clear, sustained note.
It died away slowly. She lay on her back, remembering how to breathe. He lay on his face. She thought him asleep, until he turned on his side, head on folded arm, and regarded her with a steady golden stare.
She stared back. For the first time she allowed herself to look at him—look her fill, and not turn away. Nor did he retreat or blush or try to hide his face. He was studying her as carefully as she studied him. She wondered what he saw. Not simply the lines of her features, color of hair, eyes, skin, shape of nose, but the rest, the spirit beneath.
She saw light. Sunlight, starlight, moon on water. She saw a hawk in the blue heaven and a stag in the wood. She saw a young warrior in the Frankish king’s army.
He wore that mask with ease and grace. But his face would never be a plain Frankish face, or plain Breton, either. The old god’s blood had marked him too strongly.
Here, set apart from horror, fear, suspicion, she allowed herself to see the beauty. It was god, not demon, who had sired his forebear; that she knew in her heart as she looked at him, though every tale told otherwise. An air-god, a sky-god, a god of wind and sunlight. Roland, she would wager, had that god’s very face. But there was human warmth behind it. Gods were cold strange creatures. This was a man, however great the power that was in him.
She kissed him for the simple pleasure of it. He blinked, surprised, but responded willingly enough. She smiled. “I do think,” she said, “I’ve fallen in love with you.”
“I thought you hated me.”
“Did you now?” She laid her palm against his cheek. It pricked a little: what beard he had, he kept shaven, but for the upper lip. That, in Frankish fashion, he let be. I
t suited him. Her thumb smoothed the soft black hair across his lip and down round the corner of his mouth. His eyes closed.
“I did—almost—hate you,” she said. “But my heart kept getting in the way.”
“It will do that,” he said with a touch of wryness.
“And you? Do I appall you?”
“Not in the slightest,” he said.
“Not even a little?”
“Do you want me to be?”
“No,” she said. And like a fool, like a woman who knew no better: “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” he said. Just that. Just the word.
“I could be your worst enemy,” she said. “I could be sent to destroy you.”
“Yes.”
“And still you think you love me?”
“I know it,” he said.
“Do you say this to every woman you lie with?”
He did not seem offended, though his eyes narrowed a fraction. “No,” he said.
Another man would heap words on words. This one was not so much shy, Sarissa thought, as unable to see the use in idle chatter.
“You hardly know me,” she said to him.
“The heart knows,” he said.
Exasperating man. Stubborn, headstrong—“Arrogant,” she said.
“It’s arrogance to speak the truth?”
“Is that what you were taught? I’d have thought you’d be more subtle.”
“More treacherous?”
Her cheeks flushed. “More like a courtier.”
Roland smiled thinly. “I never had that gift, lady.”
“Or the desire to cultivate it?”
He shrugged. His hair slid over his shoulder. Her hand followed it, altogether of its own accord. The muscles were tight under the smooth skin. She stroked the tension from them. He sighed and lay on his face, much as he had been when she first came there. Slowly, thoroughly, she worked the tautness out of him. Her own body eased as she did it, sitting astride him, digging into the knotted muscles, kneading them till they loosened and flowed.
He turned on his back. He was ready for her again, taking her so swiftly that she gasped. She arched and let her head fall back, giving herself up to it. Never, she thought with what little wits were left to her. Never, with any man, had she been so utterly, so perfectly, so completely overcome. She had always ruled in this dance. Always. Men did not rule her. No man—ever—
“It’s not a battle,” he whispered in her ear. “No victor, no vanquished. Only—always—delight.”
And love, she thought but had no breath to say. For us, at the least, love.
CHAPTER 19
She fell asleep in Roland’s arms, folded close against him. Her hair trailed across his breast. He smoothed the brown-gold curls, stroking them away from her face. She slept as deep and limp as a child—startling in a woman so very self-possessed and so very determined that the world should go as she would have it.
He had coveted her beauty and lusted after her body. He had never expected her to come to him so, still less to give herself to him. Nor had he ever looked to fall in love with her. The surprise with which she confessed to it herself—he had felt the same. Surprise and dismay, and a white, mad joy.
“Beware the love of a woman,” Merlin had told him. “It can snare you, destroy you. But ah,” the old man had sighed, and his eyes had gone mellow gold with memory, “what sweet entrapment! For all that it cost me, I would never wish it undone.”
Roland had heard without understanding. He had only known that love was perilous; that it could turn to poison. “I’ll never succumb,” he had declared. “I’m forewarned. No woman will bind me.”
He had been angry then, because Merlin laughed at him. “Never say never,” the old man said.
Now Roland understood. It had come on so fast, was so complete. No warning could have prepared him. No songs, no learned treatises made it clear how very swift it was. A touch, a glance—he was lost.
It was the magic in her. Power called to power. Coupling with mortal women—the body found it pleasant; sometimes mind would meet mind and find kinship. But she was enchantress to his enchanter. When their bodies met, their souls met likewise, and the fire of magic in them mingled.
This, Merlin had found in Nimue. Even if this lady turned traitor, too, Roland did not care. It would come when it would come. For this while at least, he would have joy, and a spirit that for once in the world was like his.
She was gone when he woke. His arms were empty, his bed cold. He rose slowly, creaking a bit, gusting laughter at the myriad small pains and half-pleasurable aches. His rod stiffened as he washed in the basin by the bed. The touch of the cloth made him gasp. His spirit sought refuge in hawk-shape, in the fierce small mind and deep-folded sex.
He shook free of that temptation, forcing himself back to man-shape. His rod spent itself so suddenly, so strongly, that he sank to his knees.
At least there was no servant to witness his ignominy. He cleaned himself, made such order as he could of scattered wits and pride, and dressed not in the flowing robes of a Saracen but in Frankish shirt and drawers, tunic, hose, and boots. Each garment was armor of a sort, protection against his body’s rebellion.
If Olivier had been there, he would have known at once what Roland had been doing in the night. Turpin was not one to notice such things, or to betray that he noticed; and the men kept their own counsel. Roland could play the guard in peace.
The emir Musa was gracefully determined not to come to the point of the embassy. This day he entertained his guests with a more formal version of the dancing of the bull. A great press of people gathered in the theater that the Romans had built, to watch a succession of battles between bulls and men. It was high art, Roland gathered, and a matter of great seriousness, with much laying of wagers.
Musa’s captain of guards grinned at him and offered by signs to lay a handful of silver on one of the mounted fighters. Roland smiled and shook his head. The man persisted. The bull was enormous and strong; his heart was as black as his hide. Roland should wager; he would win much silver.
“But,” said Roland in Arabic, “my bones tell me the man is quick and he is skilled, and the bull is too big to be agile. I’ll keep my silver, sir, if you don’t mind.”
The man gaped as if the bull himself had opened his mouth and addressed him in the language of the Prophet. Roland smiled sweetly. It was not his way to startle people so, not if he could help it; but today his mood was odd and wild. Sarissa had not come out for the bullfighting. He had not seen her at all since he fell asleep with her in his arms.
Well, he thought. Men loved and left women often enough. Why should not a woman leave a man, for once?
If he had been younger he would have wanted to weep, and then to hit something. He was a man now. Having astonished an emir’s guardsman with the gift of tongues, he accepted a different wager, on how quickly the fighter would defeat the bull.
While he did that, the emir was explaining the rite of battle to Turpin. “The corrida is a ritual, a ceremony of honor. The bull is the worthy enemy, the honored foe. The man fights him by strict laws of combat. The bull can win—and often does. The man who enters this place knows that it could be his life spilled on the sand, and not that of the bull.”
“I’ve heard tell,” Turpin said, “that this is a very old spectacle. It goes back to Rome, yes?”
“Before Rome,” said Musa. “Long before it. It was a rite of pagan gods once, before it became a test of manly courage and fighting skill.”
“Horsemanship, too,” said Turpin. “I know nothing of fighting bulls, but riding I know, a little; I’m a Frank, after all. And that, I say, is a truly fine horseman.”
“Oh, yes,” said Musa. “Diego is one of the great riders of this part of Spain. It’s a privilege that he agreed to fight here, and on his marvelous Diamante, too. Diamante is fully as famous as his master.”
“And no wonder,” Turpin said as the black horse leaped and curvetted on the san
d. The reins were on his neck. His rider was fully occupied with the wielding of spear and sword.
The man slew the bull, who had indeed proved too slow for the man and his marvel of a horse. He was given the ears and the tail—great honors, those; but after he had bowed to the emir, he paused. His eye sought and found another face. He called out, “My lord! Is it true what I heard? Is there one here who slew the bull in the old way, the holy way? Who rode the bull, and poured his blood on the sand?”
Roland did his best to be inconspicuous, but it seemed that everyone knew him and what he had done. Men stared, fingers pointed. Hands drew him out from behind Turpin.
Diego the slayer of bulls looked him up and down, a long, raking stare. Roland hoped that he was not too unprepossessing an object.
“I bow to you, sir Frank,” Diego said. “Had you slain a bull before?”
“Not of that kind, sir Spaniard,” said Roland. “I slew an aurochs once.”
“Did you indeed?” said Diego. “I see that you are a great champion of the Franks. Please, of your courtesy, accept the honor of the bull.”
Roland had been braced for a challenge. Instead he found himself presented with the ears and tail of the bull, still warm, still dripping blood: grisly trophies, but great in honor. The people’s roar deafened him. He acknowledged it as he had been trained to do, and endured until it was done—until a new bull and a new fighter freed him from the weight of so many eyes.
“Memories here are long,” said Musa. “The way in which you slew the bull—when Rome ruled here, that was a great rite of the soldiers’ cult.”
Roland nodded. “The cult of Mithras. Yes.”
“So,” said Musa, eyes glinting. “You are an educated man. Then you know what you did.”
“It was the best way to kill the bull,” said Roland.
“Indeed,” said Musa.
Roland sat in the emir’s receiving-room and endured that stare as he had endured it a thousandfold in the theater. He was aware of the curtain at Musa’s back that seemed to cover a wall, but the sound of soft breathing came from behind it. There was someone there. A woman: he caught the scent of perfume, rich and sweet.