by Judith Tarr
Lord Huon was alone in the inner room. Roland had expected a chamber like that in which the lord had received the commanders of the muster, but this was more portico than walled chamber. The court beyond was nigh filled with a great shimmering pool. Blossoming trees rimmed it. Fishes danced in it. A small grey cat sat on its edge, eyeing the fish with naked hunger.
Roland’s belly knotted. He had not seen Tarik since he woke that morning. And no wonder, if the puca had been betraying him to the lord of Caer Sidi.
Lord Huon rose from the chair in which he had been sitting and walked out into the court. Roland followed him. He did not acknowledge the puca, who likewise did not acknowledge him, but walked round the opposite side of the pool. There was a bench under an arbor, convenient for watching the fish, and a basket of bread. He tore the bread in pieces and cast it upon the water. The fish leaped and swirled, devouring the offering.
“I do beg your pardon,” the lord said at last, “for keeping you waiting so long.”
“I was in no discomfort, my lord,” Roland said.
Lord Huon looked up from the fish. His eyes, dark like a stag’s but lit with strange green lights, took in all of Roland that there was to see. That was not a great deal, but his face, maybe, was enough.
“It was presumptuous of you,” Lord Huon said, “to rebuild the wards on my wall.”
“They were crooked,” said Roland. “There was a weakness there. An enemy could find it, pierce it—”
“Indeed,” said Lord Huon a little coldly. “I see you make a habit of mending what you consider to be flawed. Would that happen to encompass the governing of my realm?”
“That seems to be very well done,” Roland said.
“I am glad that you think so,” said Lord Huon.
Roland supposed that he should be abashed. He could only think of Gemma, and of what she had said: that he could not even pretend to be other than he was. In the world that he had come from, to which he had died through Sarissa’s contrivance, he had been this lord’s superior in rank.
He was a poor liar and a worse deceiver. And there was Tarik on the pool’s other side, drooling over the lord’s bright fish.
“I am going to use you,” Lord Huon said after a while, “as a weapon in my hand. I care little who or what you are. You are protected of the Grail; that is known to me. What you are, what you are hiding from, matters nothing. Only that you will fight for me, and teach my people how to fight.”
“What would you have done without me?” Roland asked him.
“Another weapon would have come to my hand,” said the lord of Caer Sidi.
“I will not fight for you,” Roland said. “Nor will I swear fealty to you. That is given elsewhere. But for your people I will do all that I can.”
“They said that you had a prince’s arrogance,” Lord Huon said. “I say that you do not. You are as haughty as a king.”
“I am not a king,” Roland said, as he seemed to be saying to everyone he met.
“That may be,” said Lord Huon. “Serve my people and you serve me. I will agree to be content with that.”
Roland inclined his head. It was not a bow, but there was considerable respect in it. “I will serve your people with every art and power that I have. So I swear to you.”
The air rang like a great bell. “Sworn and witnessed,” said the lord of Caer Sidi.
CHAPTER 44
Roland had not intended to swear to anything in Lord Huon’s citadel, where the magic was strong enough to bind his heart and soul. But he had been tricked into it. Now he was bound.
It was a binding he could bear. These outspoken, fractious, headstrong people had worked their way into his heart. They were afraid of nothing in heaven or earth. And though they acknowledged the power of lords and princes, they never groveled to it.
They almost made him forget his grief, if not his anger. Franks they were not, but they were a free, proud people. Nor did they find him startling, even knowing that his blood was not wholly human. In a country in which a bogle could live unquestioned among mortal villagers, and the lord of a domain sometimes wore the face of the Horned King, Merlin’s child was nothing to wonder at.
He went back to the army with Lord Huon’s binding on him, and the rank of captain in the army. He had weapons and armor from the armory of the citadel: a bow of horn, its arrows fletched with shimmering blue feathers; a long knife, for he would take no sword; and a coat of mail, the rings wrought of blued steel.
That he would have refused as he had refused a sword, but Lord Huon’s armorer would not let him leave without it. “A captain’s a target,” he said. “Boiled leather’s good enough for a soldier, but if you’re going to set yourself up to be shot at, best you have a good mail-coat to ward your vitals.” He gave Roland a shield, too, a round horseman’s shield painted blue and blazoned with a silver swan. It was not Lord Huon’s livery—his men bore a silver stag—but it fit well to Roland’s hand and arm.
Such a shield needed a horse. Roland was only half a Frank, but that made him all a horseman. He was almost cravenly glad to be informed that he must be mounted; his charge was every raw recruit in the lord’s army, and for that he would need to move swiftly through the ranks.
He returned to the camp astride a sturdy bay gelding, with a groom behind him leading a mule laden with weapons and baggage. He rode like a lord, rather against his will: horse, armor, sumpter mule, and groom. The camp received him with broad grins and a ragged cheer. He had not known how tight his back was until he heard that cheer. He nearly slid from the saddle in the limpness of relief.
Gemma’s son Cieran took horses and groom in hand. He had been horseboy in the inn until Roland came to free him from it. “It’s fate,” he said, grinning. He was fierce in driving off any who might have displaced him.
Gemma had emptied her tent of her belongings. There was only the pallet Roland had been sleeping on, a small bundle of clothing, and Marric sitting with his bony knees drawn up. “You need a squire,” he said. “Kyllan would do. Or Peredur. Or one of the less inept archers.”
“I don’t want a squire,” Roland said.
“Of course you don’t want one,” said Marric. “But someone has to see to your armor and weapons, make sure you’re fed, look after your tent, pitch it when we camp, take it down when we get ready to march—”
Roland flung up a hand. “Enough! You do it, then. You’ll be a better squire-at-arms than any of these children.”
Marric sighed vastly. “So I would. But do I want to?”
“It’s you or no one.”
“Obstinate.” Marric was delighted, Roland could see, though he hid it behind a ferocious scowl. “Very well. I’ll do it. Now get on with you. I’ve things to do if this tent is to be livable in.”
“It already is—”
“Out!” cried Marric. “Out!”
Thus summarily dismissed, Roland had no recourse but to do the chief of his duties, which was to oversee the training of the army. That engrossed him rather perfectly, and kept him preoccupied until well after sundown.
When he stumbled back at last to his tent, he found it transformed. It had a cot and a clothing-chest, a stool and a rug and a rack for his mail-coat. There was bread waiting outside by the fire, still warm from the baking, and a pot bubbling on a tripod over the fire. Marric had even, somehow, procured a jar of moderately acceptable wine.
Kyllan had followed him like a large red dog, and Cait, and one or two of the others. The tent was too small for all of them, but the space in front of it was wide enough. The pot was ample to feed a dozen hungry warriors, and there was a cask of ale to drink when the wine was gone. Marric glowered and grumbled, but he would not have been a bogle if he had done otherwise. He was a good servant and an excellent cook.
While they were eating and drinking, Long Meg wandered in with Gwydion the smith bulking behind her. In a little while Donal had come, and Peredur, and Cieran damp from a washing in the river; but he still, Meg declared, reek
ed of horses.
“That’s a good smell,” Cait shot back, slipping in between Cieran and his brother Kyllan, linking an arm through the arm of each. She grinned ferally at Meg.
Meg yawned and stretched. She was a long elegant creature with ruddy brown braids that, unwound from about her head, fell almost to her knees. Her breasts were round and high, and she was proud of them; she wore her tunics somewhat tight, so that there could be no doubt of the shape beneath.
She claimed the place beside Roland and held it against all comers. Clearly she had none of Gemma’s scruples, nor her prickly pride, either. But Roland would far rather have seen Gemma there.
None of them lingered overlong. Vast yawns claimed them once they had eaten and drunk. Meg would have liked to stay, but Roland bowed as if she had been a lady of rank, smiled, and withdrew into his tent.
It was a pleasant place to be alone in, lit with a lamp that burned sweet-scented oil. His weapons were cleaned and laid away, his mail-coat arranged tidily on its stand. Roland had thought to grieve for his solitude, but once he had it, he found that he was glad of it.
He dropped his clothes on the chest and stood for a moment, kneading muscles that ached somewhat excessively. He had not sat a horse in too long, nor bent a bow, nor wielded a spear. He had grown soft.
He grinned to himself. Soft—indeed. He had done hard labor in Gemma’s inn, but it was not the same as the labor of war. He stretched as high as the tent’s peak would allow, rising to his toes, arching, spreading his arms wide. It turned, one way and another, into the step and turn of a dance, constricted by the tent’s small space.
Tarik was on the cot when he went to lie there, claiming it as a cat could not but do. Roland fit himself around the small furred body. Tarik began to purr.
“Then I’m forgiven?” Roland said.
Tarik would not go as far as that. But he was here. It was absolution of a sort.
Roland dreamed of Sarissa. He saw her perform what must be a rite of the Grail, standing foremost of nine ladies clad in white. He saw her sit vigil by the king’s bed, bent over that gaunt frail body, holding back tears. And he saw her in a room tiled with the colors of the sea. Water shimmered in a pool. She stood on its rim, draped in white. A little dark-haired maid slipped the robe from her shoulders. She stood naked as he too well remembered her, slender but shapely, with her cream-brown skin and her tumble of gold-brown hair.
She slipped smoothly into the pool. The water closed about her, blurring but not concealing her beauty. She swam from end to end of the pool. When she came back, she sat on a ledge beneath the water, while the maid washed her hair. She had let her head fall back. Her breasts arched out of the water.
In his dream he reached to touch her, but his hand had no substance. She did not move or flinch.
When her hair was washed and scented with some sweet herb, she sent the maid away. She sat on the pool’s rim, took up an ivory comb, worked it slowly through the thick wet curls. She frowned as she wielded the comb, her hand moving slower and ever slower, till at last it stopped.
Her face twisted suddenly. For an instant he saw raw pain. Then she had smoothed it again, but her voice was rough as if with tears. “O goddess,” she said. “O gods and spirits. How I miss that maddening man!”
The water flickered in lamplight. The comb clattered to the tiles. She clasped her arms about herself and rocked. “Roland,” she said to the air beyond the light. “Wherever you may be, whatever has become of you, for the gods’ sake, for love of the Grail, will you not come back? If not to me, then to the light that needs you?”
Roland was not even air, not even spirit. He could not answer her.
And yet she seemed to hear something, perhaps some glimmer of his thought. “Well I deserve your anger,” she said, “but I would do it again, if I had to do it over. I could do no other than I did. Are you strong enough to understand? Can you begin to forgive?”
He was not. He could not. Her words heated his temper again, even when she cried in pure pain, “Oh, gods, I love you! My arms are empty without you.”
So they should be, he thought. Let her suffer as she had sown.
“Cold heart,” said a voice in the darkness. “Hot head. That’s an ill match.”
He turned to face the one who stood on this edge of the Otherworld. It was a man more young than old, dark hair, pale skin, keen-drawn face. He wore a monk’s robe, but he was not tonsured. Roland knew him very well, though he had never seen the man in living flesh. “Parsifal,” he said.
“Roland,” said the Grail-king. “Kinsman—and in more than blood, it seems. I was a fool, too. Still am, maybe. Once a fool, always a fool, Merlin used to say to me.”
Roland’s lips twitched in spite of themselves. “The young know nothing of good sense, he also said to me.”
“Not only the young,” said Parsifal wryly. He did not move, but the world changed. They stood atop a high tower of Carbonek, raised far above the world. The stars were near enough almost to touch. The moon cast cold light on their faces.
“Look,” said Parsifal.
Roland barely needed to be told. His eyes had found the horizon with its jagged teeth of mountains. Through those mountains poured a river of darkness. Walls of light had been raised there, but they were broken down. Their shards lay scattered among the peaks.
Well he knew that darkness, the taste of it, the shudder on his skin. A slither of scales, a serpent’s hiss.
“This is nothing I did not know,” he said.
The Grail-king nodded. “Surely. But do you understand? Do you care what becomes of us all?”
“Yes,” Roland said. “I even know that if he has the victory, and gains the Grail, the world will fall. A thousand years of darkness. A thousand years of pain.”
“Yet you refuse the task that is given you.”
“Did I say that?” said Roland.
“You fled from us.”
“I fled from her.” Roland gripped the parapet. The stone was cold, but not as cold as his heart. “To ride, to shoot, to abhor the Lie—so it was said of the old Persians. But it could as well be said of the Franks. She lied; because of the lie, those I loved died.”
“But your king lives. Your friend the archbishop, he lives. Ten thousand Franks—”
“Olivier is dead!”
Parsifal let that echo away into silence. Then he said, “Grieve. Mourn. Get it over. But never lay the blame on her. She did not wish his death. The enemy wanted you dead, and cared little who died with you.”
“Then it’s my fault? I’m to blame?”
“There is no blame,” said Parsifal. “There is only what is.”
Roland sank down on the paving. It was very real under his knees, hard stone, bruising-hard. Old scars stretched and pulled. Bruises twinged. He was as wholly in his body as he was in the waking world. But Parsifal could not be here in the flesh: his body was dying. This was a vigorous man, hale and strong, standing over him, dark against the stars.
“I think I am too young for this,” Roland said.
“You are as old as you need to be,” said the Grail-king.
“I can’t be—I’m not strong enough.”
“What, you admit it? Then you’re not young at all!”
Roland snapped erect. Parsifal was laughing at him. “Kinsman,” he said, “blood of my blood, we are none of us strong enough. Not alone. But together . . .”
“With her?”
“With whomever the gods have given us.”
Roland scowled. But his temper had died to ashes. Parsifal had cooled it, and deliberately so. Roland could not fan the flames again. “Clever,” he said. “Clever and cruel.”
“I do what I must,” the Grail-king said.
“Don’t we all?” Roland pulled himself to his feet.
“Kinsman,” Parsifal said, “for whatever cause, for whomever you please, come to us. Come quickly. If you choose then to refuse what’s been laid on you . . . so be it. But come.”
“I come,” Roland said wearily. “It seems I have no choice in the matter.”
“Does any of us?”
“I don’t know,” Roland said. “Oh, God, to be free and innocent again.”
“Were you ever either?”
“Long ago,” said Roland. “Long and long. Before—”
“Before Merlin.”
“Before I knew what magic was.” Roland raked his hair out of his face. Parsifal was looking somewhat frayed himself. He was thin about the edges, flickering like an image in clear water. “I will come,” Roland said to him. “I give you my word.”
CHAPTER 45
The Breton Count was dead. He had died in the slaughter of Roncesvalles. His body lay in the earth at the head of the pass, where the king had ordered a shrine to be raised and Masses sung for all those who had died.
He must have died in great pain. Pepin had seen the body when it was brought in, and it was terribly, unrecognizably hacked and mutilated. But there was no mistaking the armor, or the shards of the great aurochs’ horn that had been found on its breast. Charles wept long and grievously over Roland, and over the rest of the Companions who were laid down beside him, all slain as he had been, recognizable only by their trappings.
They had not found the sword. Durandal was lost—looted, stolen, like the gold of Spain. Robbers had been stripping the body of armor when the Franks came on it. The thieves were dead, but Durandal was gone.
It was a grim march home to Francia. Men who had cursed the Breton witch in life were hailing him a hero now that he was dead. Already there were songs of him: his prowess in war, his magical sword, his great horn that had nigh brought down the mountains. It had brought the king back too late to save his rearguard.
Pepin was in an ill mood himself. He had been cheated of Roland’s blood and kept far away from his death. There was no joy in it, no satisfaction. Only a faceless thing on a bier, and a sour taste in his mouth.
Ganelon was closer to the king’s counsels than ever. That his grand plan had failed, his gate of power broken and ten thousand men lost to him, seemed to trouble him little. Roland was dead, and that was well. The rest he could accomplish by other means than an ambush and a hellgate. They were neither as simple nor as easy, but they were certain enough.