Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  The herald called the muster that day, just after the sun passed noon, reckoning the count of each clan and kindred, and choosing the levy from among the young and the able and the eager. His eye was quick and his heart cold. He discarded the strong young woman with her baby at her breast, but chose her husband without a flicker of compunction. If a clan’s offerings were too young or too old, he took the penalty in grain or hides or hoarded coin.

  Of Gemma’s household he chose Gemma and three of her five sons, discarding Madoc with his lame leg and Rhodri who was but twelve summers old. That should have been enough, but the swift cold eye had caught the figure that hovered behind them. The witling had come out with the rest of them; nor had anyone thought to chase him back into the stable where he belonged.

  Marric, looking at him, knew a kind of wry relief. His tunic was ancient and filthy. His hair was snarled out of its plait. He must have been cleaning the hayloft: he was covered in dust and cobwebs, his feet spattered with mud and ordure, and a great smudge of soot across his face.

  Marric caught Gemma’s eye. She met his stare stonily. She must, thought Marric, have devoted a good hour to the disguise. He himself could hardly have done better.

  But the herald was well schooled in the arts of doting women, and there was no disguising the breadth of those shoulders. He approached the witling, riding on his tall bay horse, and halted within reach.

  Gemma had schooled the witling well. He did not lift those startling eyes. He stood with them lowered, and seemed to remember, rather too late, to hunch his shoulders and make himself smaller.

  “That one,” said the herald to his squire. “He’s young, his back is straight. Add him to the muster.”

  “My lord,” said Gemma. Her voice was tight with the effort of keeping it civil. “That’s but a poor idiot with barely wits to lace up his own tunic.”

  The herald’s brow rose. “Indeed?” he said. He lifted from his belt the rod of his office. Without warning he tossed it toward the witling.

  The boy caught it in the air, swifter than the eye could see. He stood holding it, still with his eyes fixed on his feet.

  “Give it back,” the herald said.

  The boy’s hand blurred. The herald was barely quick enough to catch the rod as it flew. “Wits enough,” he said, “to wield a spear in the lord’s name. Reckon him with the rest; and see that he comes to the muster.”

  Gemma looked ready to kill someone—whether the herald or the witling, Marric doubted that even she knew. But against the levy there was no recourse. The herald’s squire completed the roll and tally of the village, rolled up the scroll, bound it, and laid it away in his saddlebag. Even as he straightened, the herald was on the road again, spear in hand, riding on with his burden of war.

  “This is the great war,” said Kyllan in the inn that night. The long low room was crowded to bursting. Most of the men and women who had been called to the muster, and a good number of their kin, had come there well before the sun went down, drinking Gemma’s good brown ale and eating every scrap that she could set out for them.

  Kyllan was kept running with platters of bread and meat and mugs of ale, but he was an old hand in the ways of inns. He could carry on whole rounds of conversation as he worked, sometimes three or four at once. Tonight there was only one, and it held them all in the same irresistible grip.

  “The great war,” said Long Meg. “Of course it’s the great war. What else would bring war here at all?”

  A murmur ran round the room, with the hint of a growl beneath. “So he’s come back,” said Donal, whose clan farmed the lands to the east of the village. “He wasn’t dead; he’s risen again.”

  “We knew he didn’t die,” Kyllan said, filling mugs all round and setting a steaming bowl in front of Long Meg. As she dived into herbs and stewed mutton, Kyllan went on with the grand surety of a man too young to have remembered the last war that had rent the kingdom. “He was cast down, but he’s had long years to restore himself. And now, as he swore when he fell, he’s come back. This time we’ll destroy him forever and aye.”

  That met with a rousing cheer. When it had died down, young Rhodri asked, “If there’s a war, and the enemy’s come back, does that mean the king is well again, to lead us against him? Or is there a new king?”

  “There is no new king,” said his brother Madoc repressively.

  But one of those whom Marric barely knew, a man from Careol coming through with a wagonload of wool for the weavers in Lord Huon’s city, looked up from his mug of ale to say, “She’s come back, they say—she who went away. She’s brought back a great weapon. And, it’s said, one who was foretold.”

  “The new king?” Rhodri breathed.

  The wool-merchant shrugged. “Who’s to tell? The weapon needs a hand to wield it, after all. And if they’ve called the muster, they’re thinking, surely, that they have strength to face what’s coming.”

  “Or it has come,” someone muttered in the shadows, “and they have no choice but to mount a defense.”

  Marric heard that. No one else seemed to—except, perhaps, the witling in his corner. Marric saw the gleam of eyes there, flicking from face to face, fixing on any who spoke. They held long on the man in shadow. What the boy was thinking, if he thought anything at all, Marric could not tell.

  He slipped through the close press of bodies, settling near the witling. The boy saw him: the yellow eyes brushed him with a swift hint of warmth. Marric smiled at it, though his thoughts were anything but light-hearted. The conversation had splintered into fragments, some speaking of the enemy, some of the old king, some of the new; and the rest chewed over such memories of the last war as their forebears had passed down. None of them spoke of the true face of war: blood, wounds, death. It was all glory and trumpets, grand marches and splendid battles, and of course a quick victory.

  These innocents would die gladly for their king. Yet if he was dying, and if no successor had come, then victory would be neither swift nor certain. Whereas defeat . . .

  Marric sighed. The omen that he had seen in the witling was all the stronger now, a shadow of fear that no light of sun or fire could dispel. A dying king, a kingdom long untested in war, and now a war that none of them could escape. If the champion had come, if there was hope, he would have known it. But no word of such a thing had come to him here on the wood’s edge, far away from princes or palaces.

  The witling had a confidant again, one of the young women, great with child, whose lover had been chosen for the war. As Marric watched, she burst into tears. The witling gathered her in—looking not quite so witless now, holding her and letting her cry herself out. For an instant Marric thought he saw a glimmer of intelligence in those odd eyes. Then they were empty again, and he was rocking the young woman with mindless gentleness.

  CHAPTER 40

  People kept talking to him. He did not know why, except that he never spoke, and they seemed compelled to fill the silence. At first their words made little sense, but as he went on, and they went on, he began to understand more of what they said. Their words built the world.

  When the tall man came with his red pennon, Gemma dragged the witling away and made him filthy. He decided that he would never understand her, after she had labored so long and so vehemently to keep him clean. Then as she rolled him in the hayloft and smeared his feet with mud from the worst of the midden and slapped soot across his face, she commanded him with terrible urgency never, ever to let the tall man see his eyes. “Don’t give him any cause at all to notice you,” she said, “or choose you. Do you understand?”

  But she had not forbidden him to catch the stick that the man threw. The man chose him for that, whatever he was being chosen for. He drew himself tight inside, so that her anger would hurt less when it came.

  To his astonishment, she only looked at him after the man had ridden away, then shook her head and sighed. When she spoke, she sounded tired. “Go get clean,” she said. “Then get to work.”

  He did as
she bade, as he always did. There was much to do in the stable and the yard. When it was done, the sun had set. He went to his corner by the fire. She never asked him to run about with mugs and platters as her sons did, though sometimes she bade him turn the spit. His duty was to sit and be quiet, and let people talk to him.

  They had a great deal to say tonight. Mostly it was those who had not been chosen, weeping for those who had. And sometimes it was the latter, telling him how frightened they were.

  He did not remember what war was. That thought was clear behind his eyes. He should know. He did not remember. All he had was a darkness in his heart, and something that he could not name. It was not fear, nor was it elation. It was a little like both. Glory, he thought, and trumpets. And blood—red tides of blood.

  For the first time it troubled him that he had no words to speak. He would have said—something. Of war, of killing. Of what they all were coming to.

  He had been chosen to fight. So had Gemma, and Kyllan and Cieran and Peredur. And Long Meg and Gwydion the smith and Donal and Macun and . . .

  All those names. And he had none. That troubled him, too. He had not been so troubled before. It was as if the word of war had waked him from a long deep sleep. He stumbled, confused; he had no words; but he was beginning, a little, to rouse from his stupor.

  In the night after that long and grueling day, Gemma wanted him with fierce urgency. He would have been gladder simply to sleep, but she was determined to eat him alive. He pleased her as best he could, which seemed to be enough. Mercifully, once she had had her fill of him, she fell headlong into sleep.

  He lay awake. Things were stirring inside him. They made him think of an egg in the nest readying to hatch: rocking, swaying, as the fledgling inside struggled to break free.

  Did the fledgling try to stop itself? To stay within the egg? Did it yearn for the darkness and the dim quiet, and the awareness of nothing beyond its shell?

  He had no more power to stop or even slow this than the fledgling did. He could only let it happen, and hope—or pray, if he knew how—that the world he entered into was one he could live in.

  In three days they marched out of the village that was all he could remember. It seemed perfectly natural that Gemma led them. It also seemed natural to him to walk last. They marched in a column, with the mules in the middle, carrying the gear that the men and women could not carry. Everyone had a coat of boiled leather and a helmet of iron or, sometimes, age-darkened steel, and a pair of spears. Most had knives. One or two had swords, brought out from long keeping and worn proudly by children who had never lifted such a blade even in mock battle.

  He had the spears, and a knife that Kyllan had slipped him when Gemma was not looking. Kyllan had a sword—another guest’s leavings, it would appear, though that guest must have come and gone long before Gemma’s grandfather was born. He did not know how he knew, but the sword was old, very old. It was short and thick and rather heavy, without grace or elegance. It looked like what it was: a tool for killing men.

  Kyllan strutted with it, marching close behind his mother. The witling did not strut. He kept his head up, so that he would not shame Gemma or anyone else, but he was closer to the tears of those left behind than to the laughter and song of those who went to the war. They did not know, he thought. Truly they did not know.

  When they had passed the last house of the village, with children and dogs running after, a stocky figure on a brown pony fell in beside him. Marric was dressed for riding, and laden saddlebags were slung across his pony’s back. More to the point, he had a sword at his side. It was very like the one that Kyllan carried, short and broad-bladed. He did not strut because he had it. He looked as if he had worn it before, and drawn it and used it, and had hoped not to have to again.

  The witling was not surprised. Marric had been remarkably silent in past days. Coming to decisions, the witling had thought. Choosing himself as the others had been chosen.

  They were all glad to see him. No one tried to send him back. He was not someone who could be sent, the witling thought.

  The witling was glad, too. Gladder than he had thought he might be. The brown man had found him first, and had borne him company since. He would have been sorry to leave the brown man behind.

  Marching was tedious. At least, as Gemma observed, it did not rain. The road wound on and on. Villages strung along it like beads on a string. Columns of the chosen had marched from those, too, so that the road bristled with spears. They were all going toward Lord Huon’s city, which was called Caer Sidi.

  As he marched, it seemed to the witling that he could see worlds beneath this world, like visions through clear water. The country through which he passed was mortal enough to the body’s senses, woods and fields and villages, lakes and little rivers. The dark line of the wood slipped away and vanished behind. There was a sense of familiarity about these lands, as if he had walked in them, or lands like them, before.

  Yet beneath them, sometimes, he saw other things. Sharp stones and windy heights. A stretch of wind-tossed sea. Mountains marching on the edges of the world, high and stark, crowned with snow.

  They were both true. Both were part of this country, though he did not know how, nor precisely why he could see them. The others did not seem to, except maybe the brown man. Their eyes were mortal eyes. They saw what mortals could see.

  Which meant that he . . .

  That was not a thought he knew how to face, though he suspected the brown man could. When he was seeing in that other way, the creature on the pony was not a man at all. Nor was the pony exactly a pony, either.

  The longer he went on, the more he found he could see. Most of the people on the march were human folk, and most of those in the villages, too. But some were other than human, though wearing human guise in the main; the rest walked on four feet or flew as birds. Those he saw with a constriction of the heart, and a yearning down to the bone. That yearning had become a tingle, an awareness that if he bent his will just so, he could spread wings and soar up among them.

  Yet in that path was deadly danger. He had lost his self once, nor gained it back except in fragments. If he ventured it again, nameless and scattered of wit as he was, he might never find his human form at all.

  What he saw, he began to understand, was magic. It lay on this whole land like a glimmer of mist. It was in the ground they walked on, the air they breathed. It let them walk now on living earth, now in worlds shaped of magic, from mortal sun to one that shone for everlasting.

  And all the while he learned to see with more than eyes, he marched in the company from the village of Greenwood, under Gemma’s command. Rumors of the war ran with them. When they camped in fields or under the eves of woods, other companies camped beside them, and more of those, the nearer they came to Caer Sidi.

  Of all the tales he heard, one thing seemed to be true: that the war was not in Lord Huon’s city. It was far away on the edges of the kingdom, where they would go once all their companies had mustered into an army.

  The name of Caer Sidi struck him strangely, as if it were a dark thing or sad; but the city was a wonder of white walls and gleaming towers, set on a promontory of stone above a deep swift river. The muster did not ascend to the city; the camp spread along the river’s bank, a long swath of tents and fires that could look up to the city on its crag.

  Some of the younger folk were audibly disgruntled. “Walls of silver,” they muttered. “Streets of gold. And will we ever see either of them?”

  “We could go up,” Kyllan said.

  “Not likely,” said Long Meg, who always saw the dark side of things. “They won’t let us set our dirty feet on those golden pavements.”

  “Why not?” Kyllan demanded. “We have as much right to walk there as any other. It’s only that we can’t stay there. There are too many of us.”

  That was eminently reasonable—too reasonable for Long Meg, who stalked off to nurse her grievances in peace.

  The witling thought of following
her, for surely she needed someone to listen; but Gemma caught his arm. “We’re going up,” she said. “They’ve summoned the commanders.”

  He hung back, but her grip was too strong to resist. He was not a commander. He was not even possessed of all his wits.

  She wanted to keep him under her eye. That was it, of course. No one else was coming, though there were objections. It was odd that none of them spoke of him, not even with scowls or glances. He was part of Gemma, he supposed. They would expect him to go where she went.

  Walls of silver and streets of gold. White walls and pale golden paving stones, and a green scent of gardens even in the city’s heart. It was clean, that city, and full of light and singing, though laughter was muted now, overwhelmed by the rumble of war. He walked through it wide-eyed, flinching somewhat when walls closed in, but keeping his head up even when he wanted to crouch and hide.

  Far more of these people wore masks of flesh over bright fires of magic. The city itself was shimmering with it. Magic bound the stones, held up the walls.

  It was strongest of all in the center, high up in the white citadel. They passed beneath a gate warded by stone dragons, into a courtyard full of light. A bored personage met them there, mortal but weary as if with long ages of existence, and led them through a maze of passages.

  The witling walked without fear. He had no memory of such places, but his body knew them. After a little while he saw in surprise that Gemma was drawn tight upon herself. Even the coppery brilliance of her hair had dimmed. Her hand gripped his still, but she was not doing it to give him her strength. She had none.

  He tried a smile. It was stiff, but warmed with use. He brushed her hair lightly with his hand. For a moment she leaned into his touch; then she stiffened against him.

  He did not press her. He had given her what he could. She stood straighter, walked more steadily. She looked more like herself again.

  The hall to which they were taken was smaller than he had been expecting—and what would he know, to expect anything at all? It was a receiving-room, he thought. A place for lesser audiences. It was full of people like Gemma: nearly all of them mortal, sturdy and solid, people of earth and stone. Few of them had any splendor to boast of. Their garments were plain, their weapons without pretension.