by Judith Tarr
Turpin laughed.
“I’m glad you can laugh at it,” Kyllan said. “It’s the first wave, isn’t it? The first battle. He’s going for our souls.”
Turpin’s nape prickled, though he kept his smile. “We’re not immune,” he said. “Just, maybe, better at fighting it. The world’s a dangerous place outside of Montsalvat.”
“And a dark one,” said Kyllan. “Not that we don’t have our own dangers. But we’ve been sheltered for so long—Father Turpin, do you think we can do it? Can we win this war?”
“I think,” said Turpin, “that you—we—have the Grail. And that you have us. And yourselves.”
“And Count Roland,” Kyllan said, “who belongs to all of us.”
“And Count Roland,” said Turpin.
As if they had invoked him, he was there. The hall was wide, its vaulting high, and he had come in at the far extent of it; but it was as if the sun had come down into the earth. The rumble of discontent faded. Faces, eyes turned toward him.
Turpin felt the light of him, the bright clean presence, with a splendor in it that made him nod suddenly, and almost laugh. Roland had been in the presence of the Grail. He had brought its healing down with him, and poured it out without stinting.
To the eye he was no more or less ordinary than he ever was: a man not small but not particularly tall, slender rather than sturdy, but wide enough in the shoulders. A black-haired man, white-skinned, and young—startlingly so, sometimes. He was plainly dressed as always, with a glint of mail under a leather tunic. From that distance one could not clearly see the oddity, the hawk-yellow eyes in the pale face.
He stood on the stair above them, scanning the hall. Counting faces, Turpin thought. Reckoning mood, judging hearts. Turpin was no enchanter, but he could feel the darkness yearning toward them all, like wings beating against a wall of glass.
“It will get worse,” Roland said, not particularly loudly, but the vaulting carried his voice through the hall. “The enemy will try to destroy us in spirit before his armies slaughter our bodies. Things will come—black dreams, nightmares, terrors from the dark regions of the heart. Whatever you fear most, hate most, he will raise up for you. You must be strong, my people. You must hold fast.”
“And if we can’t?”
Turpin did not recognize the voice, but it spoke for a great number of them.
“You can,” Roland said. “Remember what you fight for—and what fights for you. Remember the Grail.”
“We’ve never seen it,” the man said. It was a Frank, not particularly prostrate with fear, but not greatly endowed with courage, either. “How do we know it’s real?”
“It is more real than anything you ever knew,” Roland said. He lifted his hands. “Look!”
Light blazed out of them, sudden, astonishing. Men fell on their faces. Some gasped; some cried out. A few wept.
Turpin kept his feet. The light was blinding, but he could see. He saw the cup of the Grail, suspended above those strong narrow hands.
It was there. Open, unveiled. Turpin thought perhaps he should be outraged, but all that came to him was wonder.
Roland spoke through the glory of it. “Now do you doubt?”
“No, my lord,” said the Frank. “No. Never again, my lord.”
The light dimmed. Men groaned in protest, but the Grail had taken itself away. Roland stood on the stair, hands at his sides. Turpin wondered if he knew what he had done—what he was. Sometimes Roland just was. It seldom seemed to dawn on him that he was anything out of the ordinary.
Beside Turpin, Kyllan let out his breath in a long sigh. “Glory and splendor,” he said. “Was that—really—”
“Yes,” Turpin said.
“By all the gods,” said Kyllan. “And he just reached, and it was there.”
“Wait till they hear, up in the castle,” Cait said, slipping in between them. “What will they say when they find out he’s been making free with that?”
“Ai,” said Kyllan.
Roland spent most of the morning among his troops. He did not invoke the Grail again, but word of it had spread like fire. It burned away the darkness and lifted the cloud of despair.
By noon the guards on the towers could see the army advancing through the empty lands, out of the mist that veiled the world’s end. It came on like a swarm of locusts. Thousands, tens of thousands, warriors innumerable, human and unhuman.
This they had let in. They had guided it here, in hope of sparing the rest of the kingdom. And yet now they saw it, not a few began to regret that they had ever done such a thing.
“We could have held the walls of air,” said a lord of Caer Sidi, “until he wearied of assailing them.”
They stood on the walls of stone, protected by the parapet, watching the enemy march and crawl and fly toward them. Turpin looked for Ganelon, but there were too many, and they were too far. He could not see any one face, only the swarming mass of them.
The lords near him were making no effort to speak quietly. He had seen clusters like that too often before, huddled tight, muttering to one another, shooting glances beyond their circle. “We should have kept this army out,” they said. “If we had been consulted—if he had not high-handedly—”
He was standing somewhat apart, arms folded on the parapet, watching his enemy—his personal enemy, even beyond the wars of the Grail—advance on the castle. Turpin doubted very much that he cared what anyone was saying, in earshot or out of it.
“Arrogant,” muttered the lordlings from Caer Sidi. “Blood of the Grail or no, what right or authority has he to command us?”
“The king did give him—” one of them ventured.
The others shouted him down. “The king is dying. Maybe he’s dead—has anyone seen him or spoken to him since we came here? I’ll wager there’s a corpse in that tower he’s said to be lying in, and his women are speaking for him. The chief of them—she chose that one, it’s said. And not for any fitness or even purity of heart. Because he has a handsome face, and knows how to please a woman.”
“He does that,” Sarissa said, sweet as honey. Her smile scattered them in great disorder. She came to stand beside Turpin.
He regarded her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry you heard that,” he said.
She shrugged. “I’ve heard worse.”
“The one out there—he’ll feed any dissension, and turn it into treason if he can.”
“That is his way,” she said. She sounded little enough concerned.
“You’re not afraid for him? Or for yourself?”
“I’m terrified,” she said calmly. “I don’t see the use in indulging it.”
He pondered that; then he nodded. “Wise,” he said.
“Maybe not.” She wrapped her cloak a little closer about her. Though the sun was high, it was veiled in cloud, and the wind was chill.
“Father Turpin,” she said in a different tone, one somewhat sharper. “Will you make a marriage for us?”
Turpin blinked. “Will I—you—you two?”
“Yes.”
“And why isn’t he asking?”
Turpin bit his tongue hard. He did not mean to sound so flat.
She seemed not to mind. “He means to. But with all that’s happening—and with what he did this morning, which he has yet to see the end of—I doubt he’s stopped to think of it.”
“Of course he hasn’t,” Turpin said. “Yes, I’ll do it. How could I not?”
When she smiled as she was doing now, he could almost regret the vows he had taken. Almost. She was not for him, even if he had been free to take her. “You have both our thanks,” she said.
Turpin bent his head to that. “Tell me one thing,” he said. “Will he be king?”
“What do you think?”
“I think he already is, but he doesn’t know it. Nor do yonder idiots.”
“He doesn’t want it,” she said.
“That should make a difference? Did you hear what he did?”
“I could hardly avoid it. The whole castle is humming with it.”
“Are you as angry as the others seem to be?”
“No,” she said. She let her head fall back, turning her face to the boiling sky. A shaft of sunlight broke through and pierced her. For an instant he saw her as she must be beyond the veil of flesh, as a slender pillar of light. Then she was Sarissa again, with her warm brown skin and her imperfectly disciplined brown curls.
“You knew it would happen,” Turpin said in sudden understanding.
“No,” she said again. “But I wasn’t surprised. None of us was—not us nine. Nor the king, either.”
“He can’t help himself, can he? He belongs to it. It uses him as it pleases.”
“He has free will,” she said. “He can refuse.”
“Can he? Does he know he can?”
“He has been told.”
Turpin shook his head. “You trapped him. You’re lucky he’s forgiven you. He loves you. He’d die for you.”
“And I for him.” Her voice was soft, but her eyes were fierce. “I fought it—oh, too long. It nearly destroyed us. But he, with his great heart—he forgave. In his own heart he forgave me.”
“Did you ever doubt he would?”
“I doubted far too much.”
“And now?”
“I’ve taught myself to trust him. The Grail does—utterly. Else it would never have come to him.”
“He didn’t steal it. He called. It came.”
“I know that,” she said. “I felt it answer him.”
“No one tried to stop it?”
“No one could.” She was smiling, though the sky was growing ever darker, and the foremost ranks of the enemy swarmed on the edge of the chasm that warded Carbonek. Her eyes were on Roland.
“Arrogant,” she said, but without censure. “Oh, yes. It was the most arrogant thing anyone has done in Montsalvat, and we have had our share of haughty lords.”
“He is not—”
“That’s the beauty of it,” she said. “He puts on no airs at all. He simply does what he pleases. Sometimes he apologizes. Mostly he doesn’t know that he should.”
“Will he have to apologize for marrying you?”
“Probably,” she said. “But not to me.”
CHAPTER 56
Everyone went up to the walls before that day was over, to see what they all faced. Darkness fell early, in a grey weight of cloud. The enemy’s fires spread as far as the eye could see, myriad ruddy sparks in the starless night. The lord of them all had still not shown himself. The anticipation, the fear, worked on the besiegers as he had no doubt intended. The longer they waited to see, the deeper their dread became.
Roland had been the besieger often before, but not the besieged. The sense of confinement dismayed him more than he would let anyone see. Already some of the troops were fretting, yearning for the sky.
If they were fortunate, this siege would not last long. If not. . .
He was forbearing to think of that, and making his somewhat preoccupied way from one of the garrisons to what he hoped would be a night’s rest, when he was waylaid by a delegation of lords and princes. They trapped him in a hall in which servants had just finished taking down the tables from the daymeal, backed him ever so politely against a wall and, with remarkable bluntness for courtiers, taxed him with what they reckoned his arrogance.
“The Grail is the greatest relic of Christendom,” said one elegant creature. “It is kept hidden for its great rarity and its great power. If it were shown abroad, at will, without discrimination—”
“Has it been taken out of the castle?” Roland asked civilly. But he had interrupted the spate of words, and that was not civil at all.
These princes of the Grail were suitably offended, but suitably nonplussed as well. They could hardly rebuke him for insolence; he was set above them.
The one who seemed deputed to speak for them found his tongue quickly enough. “If it were shown to those who are not pure of heart, who have never sworn themselves to it, who were brought here to fight as levies, as conscripts, then what mystery would remain in it? What power would be left to it?”
Roland looked at them. These were the knights of legend, the sacred brotherhood, men who had been brought to this place to serve and defend the Grail. They disliked greatly to bow their heads to him, creature of muddy earth that he was, with his hawk’s eyes and his half-barbarian ways.
He spoke softly, and as politely as he could. He said, “Nothing can diminish the Grail. Not even darkness and silence and the prison of a shrine.”
“The Grail is never diminished,” said the one who spoke for them. “But its power in the world, its strength, its capacity to drive back the evil—that must be protected.”
“It is protected,” Roland said. In spite of himself, his voice had gained an edge. “I do as the Grail bids me. If it chooses to reveal itself through me, what right have I to refuse it?”
He had not silenced them, nor had he expected to. “You came here,” said one of those who had not spoken before. He was younger, maybe; it was difficult to tell, among these ageless people. He was angrier, certainly, or more able to show it. “You came here as one roused from the dead, and took the sword, and took the Grail. And yet what do you know of us—of any of us? You are an outlander. This is not your country.”
“Nor was it Parsifal’s,” said Roland, “when he first came here. What was it you called him then? Parsifal the Outlander—Parsifal the Stranger. Did you resist him as strongly as you resist me?”
None of them would meet his eyes. He looked from face to face, seeing men of great power and valor, ancient in wisdom and steeped in the light of the Grail—but they were, after all, men.
They were afraid, he thought, not only of the enemy who might conquer them all, but of the stranger who had come to command them. They neither knew nor trusted him.
And maybe there was more to their resistance than that. Maybe they were jealous. They had served the Grail long and faithfully, but none of them had been chosen to lead this war. Durandal had come to a foreign hand. The Lady of the Grail had passed them by, and chosen a man whom none of them knew.
He spoke to them gently, but there was no disguising the steel beneath. “Whoever I am, wherever I was born, this land seems to have made me a part of it. Be sure of this, my lords. I serve the Grail. Maybe I didn’t choose to, maybe it chose me, but now that it’s done, I won’t undo it. You will accept this, my lords. Or,” he said, softly implacable, “you may go.”
They stared at him in disbelief.
“You may go,” he said again. “You may leave. We cannot have dissension here.”
“But where will we go?” the youngest demanded. “How will we live?”
Roland did not answer that.
For those whose armor was words, silence was a devastating weapon. These lords of the Grail fidgeted and fretted and shifted from foot to foot.
“You have no power to send us away,” the youngest said. “This is our place. We were chosen for it. We are sworn to it. You cannot cast us out. And,” he said fiercely, “we will not go!”
“Then stand behind me,” Roland said. “Accept what the Grail does through me. We have enemies enough without. There will be no contention here.”
They did not like it. But they were men of reason, it seemed, after all. They bowed sullenly, but bow they did.
Roland was sure he had not heard the end of it. For the moment he would take what he was given, and see that word was sent to all the brotherhood and court of the Grail, that if any objected to the charge that was given him, that one had until the morning to depart from Carbonek.
The night was endless. Roland snatched a little sleep, but the bed was too soft and the wards of the castle too sorely taxed by the enemy’s assaults. Even with the full count of the nine raising the shields from the shrine of the Grail, ill things walked in the shadows. Fear crawled through the stones. Dread thrummed in the air.
And th
is was only the first night. He walked among the people, those struggling to sleep and those standing uneasy watch, giving them such comfort as he could.
There were others doing the same. Turpin led the priests and monks and those who were Christians in the chanting of psalms. Their voices echoed in the vaults, long and slow. Where that sound was, the darkness was less.
Roland went up to the walls again. Tarik had found him among the Franks and climbed up to his shoulder. The puca would never have admitted to fear, but the cat-body was shivering in small convulsions. He stroked it as he stood in the blind dark. Most of the enemy’s fires had burned low. It was nearly dawn, he thought, if indeed dawn would ever come.
He felt rather than saw someone come up behind him. Tarik hissed. Gemma said, “Hush, you. It’s only me.”
Her voice was soft, but it was its wonted self: a little rough, a little sweet, with a brisk, practical clip to it. It would take a great deal more than the Grail’s ancient enemy to crush her spirit.
She leaned on the parapet near him. He could see her in the faint light of the guard’s cresset. It had been a while, he reflected, since she chose to be anywhere that he was, unless duty required it.
That pain was old, but still sharp. Knowing how wise she had been, knowing that he could not take her back, not ever again, made it no easier to bear. There were too many memories.
She spoke at last, as if to herself. “We can’t go on like this for long. Waiting him out won’t be the answer—it will have to be battle.”
“Yes,” he said, since she could not have seen his nod in the gloom.
“Maybe you can catch him off balance,” she said.
“Maybe.”
She laughed, more wry than mirthful. “Listen to me, telling you what to do. It’s this creeping dark—it turns us all into babbling fools. Except you. You, it makes more silent than ever.”
“I don’t have anything to say,” he said.
“You can say more without a word than most people can with a thousand.” She moved closer to him, but never close enough to touch. “I came up here to tell you to sleep. You can’t carry on day and night like this, and expect to have anything left to fight the enemy with.”