by Judith Tarr
“All I want to be,” he said tightly, “is a soldier. And—yes—an enchanter. But I am that already. I never wanted to be a king. I never needed to be. To be tempted like this—oh, I could dream of it, if I let myself. But not if I have to buy it with blood.”
“Hypocrite,” she said. “How many men have you killed? Eh? How many lives have you ended? So this one is willing. It offers itself. And you have to think about it first, and not just do it. Does that make it so very different from any other blood you’ve shed?”
“Profoundly different,” he said. “Different past my endurance.”
“That’s nonsense,” she said. “That’s the enemy in you. He’s twisting the way you think. Can’t you feel it?”
He shook his head hard. “I always thought like this.”
“That’s what Mabon over there said just before he tried to gut himself with a smith’s hammer. He had a devil in him. Father Turpin drove it out.”
“I do not have—” He bit his tongue. He did not. But she would never believe him.
He tried to rise. He had come here for peace, and to escape those who would press him to do this thing that none of them could do. Only he. And there was no peace here. No one would give him peace.
Gemma held him fast. Marric, on the other side, was suddenly a leaden weight, binding him there.
“You can’t run away,” the bogle said. “You can’t keep refusing, either. This is what you came to do.”
“I came to fight. Not to murder a king.”
“It’s all one,” said Marric.
Roland shivered convulsively. The dark things were dancing, laughing at him. They were swarming in the hall. More and more and more of them. And this was only the second night. By the third, the dark of the moon, they would even be in the light. And by the fourth—
It could not go on. Nor could he. None of them was strong enough.
Unless—
That was the one thing, the terrible thing, the thing he could not do.
And if he did not do it, horror would eat away at them. Walls of air and stone would crumble.
Battle. They could go forth to battle.
Twenty thousand against—how many? Multitudes. They would die gloriously; but the enemy would have the Grail. And when he had the Grail, the dark would come.
It might come even if he did this thing.
Yes, and if he did not do it, it would certainly come.
He doubled up, retching. He was sick—sick to the soul. And maybe there was a devil in him after all, a small and mean one, that had crept in while he was fighting against the inevitable.
It was not—
Was it not?
Gemma’s hands were on him, stroking his hair out of his cold-sweating face, pressing the knots from his shoulders. She did not speak, nor croon to him, either. She was simply there. And Marric, taking his hands in long strong fingers. And the others—when had they come awake? They were all there. They were all around him, like a wall.
“If I do this,” he said through the tightness in his throat, “you are in it with me. I’ll make you the king’s own.”
“That’s a threat?” Cait asked.
“A promise,” he said.
She shrugged, insouciant as ever. “Well, good. Maybe then Da will stop telling me I’m the most worthless object he ever laid eyes on.”
“Won’t happen,” Kyllan said. “But if you’re here, he’ll tell it to you less often.”
“There, see?” she said. “Now he’s got to do it. Gemma, tell him.”
“You can’t tell me yourself?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not talking to you. Besides, you never listen.”
“I’m listening now.”
“Because we’ve got you cornered.”
“I can’t scare you off at all, can I?” Roland said.
“Not even a little.” Kyllan squatted in front of him, grinning like a bogle. “Don’t tell me you’re sorry we’ve made you do this. You can blame us. Then you won’t feel so guilty.”
Roland gasped, choked, coughed. Too many of them pounded his back. He dropped flat.
They must have thought he was in convulsions. He was laughing. It was utterly, beautifully absurd.
He rolled onto his back. The circle of them bent over him: wide eyes, blessedly familiar faces. They were not in awe of him, nor ever would be, and they knew what he was. That was the most wonderful, the most improbable thing. He would be the Grail-king—he, the half-wild man-child from Brittany, the paladin of Francia, the witling from Greenwood—and they saw nothing remarkable in it.
Someone else was standing beyond them, drawn maybe by Roland’s trouble. Turpin was not awed, either, though he looked odd. That was pain, Roland thought. Turpin had always been the strong one, the one who stood fast when everyone else gave way to fear or pain or sorrow.
He had lost his brothers in arms, too, and his king, and everything that he lived for. He had not run as Roland had. He had held his ground.
“And you, priest of God?” Roland asked him. “Do you condone this?”
“I’ve come to terms with my conscience,” Turpin said.
“Will you absolve me of the sin?”
“I don’t believe it is a sin,” said Turpin.
“But the Church would call it so.”
Turpin crossed himself and bowed his head. “God is the final authority. And I believe,” he said, “that God will not condemn you.”
“Truth?”
“Truth,” said Turpin.
Roland loosed his breath in a long sigh. He was done flailing at them all. It served no purpose. It did nothing to win this war into which his fate—and Sarissa’s will—had cast him.
He would do it. He would take the burden that was laid on him. But not tonight. Tonight he would stay here, among his people. He needed them as much as they needed him. In the morning he would go to the Grail, and to the keepers of the Grail.
CHAPTER 58
The siege-engines had paused at the fall of dark, giving way to the assaults of night-creatures and spirits of the shadows. With the light’s return, the engines woke again.
Sarissa came down from the Grail’s tower to the outer wall. She was beyond exhaustion. The night’s battle had worn her to the bone. They had kept the Grail safe against the enemy’s servants, but the castle was infested with them. As each hour passed, more of them slipped through the wards; and those that were inside bred and multiplied.
No one in the keep had died of shadow-sickness, yet. But people were falling ill.
She called to one of the guards on the wall. “Go to Lord Huon,” she said. “Tell him to raid the treasury. The hoard of silver coins, coins of the Grail—bid him gather them, and summon his smiths and jewelers. Let them pierce them for amulets, and let his mages lay a warding on them. Give them to everyone who lacks his own defenses.”
The guard bowed and ran.
She leaned against the parapet. If she had only thought of it sooner. If anyone had.
It was not, please the gods, too late.
She shivered inside her skin. Roland had come up to the wall, climbing from below. He was in armor; he had Durandal at his side. His helmet rested in the crook of his arm. His face was strikingly, almost alarmingly calm.
He stood beside her. “That was well thought of,” he said, “to fashion amulets. I should have thought of it myself.”
“I should have thought of it days ago.” She kept her voice easy, her manner casual. As if nothing at all had happened. As if yesterday had never been.
“I’ll help with the spellcasting,” he said, “when they’re ready. Maybe this talisman of mine will add to their strength.”
“It well might,” she said.
They were not looking at each other. Her eyes were on the enemy below. His, when she glanced sidelong, were the same. His profile was clean-carved, clear against the grey sky. He was as unaware of his beauty as ever. If he thought of it at all, it was as a nuisance.
She swal
lowed a sigh. So difficult a man. So reluctant a champion. And if he would not be king . . .
The siege-engines ground to a halt. The hordes about them stirred and shifted. They were drawing back—opening a path, a road through their camp to the castle. Figures rode along it. A banner unfurled: white for truce, golden pennons for an embassy.
Roland’s breath hissed. His hand had caught hers—meeting it as it came to his. They clasped hard, almost to pain.
There were guards, servants, men in silks and lordly panoply. But the one who led them, who wore a prince’s crown on his thick fair hair, was unmistakable. The face of a young Charles of Francia. Long limbs, broad shoulders. And the deformity that marred the whole: the twisted back, the hump that dwarfed and bent it.
Pepin the prince sat a sturdy brown cob at the edge of the chasm, peering up at the gate and the tower. It must have cost him pain: his face was tight.
He had gained dignity since Sarissa saw him last—and more than that. She could see the power in him. He was brimming with it, as Roland had been when she first met him. But Roland had been full of light. This prince was filled with darkness.
“I knew,” Roland whispered. “I knew this would come of it. I told the king. And he—would—not—”
Sarissa pressed his hand to her lips. That seemed to calm him a little. His shoulders shook, but he stood still.
Pepin had been speaking while she engrossed herself in Roland. The words were of little enough moment: insolence and defiance, as she would have expected. “I come on behalf of the great one, the mighty one, the lord of air and darkness, who rules from the ends of the world. He bids you surrender that instrument which you keep, which he has claimed since the days of the Temple in Jerusalem. Only give it up, and he will let you live; he will set you free to do as you will.”
“And not as he wills?” Roland asked.
Pepin started like a deer. He had not, it seemed, paid close attention to the faces along the wall, and certainly not to that one among the many. They were, just then, all men of Caer Sidi: dark-haired, hawk-faced, pale-skinned men in bright armor. Very like Roland, indeed, except for the eyes. And the voice, clear and imperious, with its Breton accent.
Pepin peered upward. His expression was blank with shock. “You—my God! You’re not dead.”
“It would seem not,” said Roland. He had mastered his own astonishment. “Tell me—is your father here?”
He was holding his breath, Sarissa noticed.
Pepin could not have seen. His lip curled. “Not likely,” he said. “He’s home in Francia.”
Roland’s knees buckled. He steadied them before Sarissa could catch him or Pepin see. Relief, thought Sarissa, deep and almost strong enough to fell him. Charles was no part of this. It was only Pepin.
If he told the truth.
She would have scented the lie. Pepin might be a fool and a darkmage, but he was not a liar.
“Now tell me,” Pepin called across the chasm. “Why are you here? How are you alive?”
“I am the champion of the Grail,” Roland answered him. “I live by the Grail’s grace.”
Pepin blinked hard. “You are not—”
“Truth,” Roland said. “My blood is blood of the Grail. Its king is my kin. Ask your master. He knows.”
“I am not a servant!” Pepin cried.
Roland did not counter that.
“Surrender!” shrilled Pepin. “Surrender now. If you refuse—if you delay—worse than death will fall on you.”
“We would rather die than see the Grail in that man’s hands,” Roland said.
“Death will be gentle beside what he does to you.”
“Better us than the world,” Roland said.
“The world will go down after you,” said Pepin.
“Then we have no choice but to destroy him.” Roland leaned over the parapet. “Tell your master,” he said, “that we defy him. That we will never surrender. That the Grail remains inviolate, nor shall his hand ever touch it.”
“He will have it,” Pepin said. “None of you can stop him.”
“We can and will,” said Roland. Gently then he said, “Hooved brother, take him to his master. Keep him as safe as you may. For whatever he is or may try to be, he is my king’s son.”
The cob turned. Pepin sawed at the reins, but Roland’s magic broke them. Reinless, bridleless, the brown gelding carried him away.
Roland did not watch them go. He turned his back on them. Erect but seeming blind, he made his way from the wall to the tower.
In the dimness of the tower, he stopped as if all strength had left him. He leaned against the wall, forehead pressed to the stones. His breath shuddered as he drew it in.
Sarissa pressed her body to his, arms around his middle. He did not tense or pull away.
“I will do it,” he said. “I will do—what you all ask.”
She caught herself before her arms closed strangling-tight. She made herself ask calmly, “Because of Pepin?”
“I had decided before that,” he said.
“But now you’re certain?”
“Now I know there is nothing else I can do. That’s my king’s son. Am I to see him damned by his own foolishness?”
“It is his own,” she said. “Even your Christ couldn’t save the whole world. Only what was willing to be saved.”
“He tried,” Roland said fiercely. “Can I do less?”
“My love,” she said. She could not decide whether to laugh or weep.
Maybe he did not hear her. “It must be tonight, yes?”
“Yes,” she said. Her voice had steadied.
He turned in her arms. His face was pale and set. “He’ll know—the enemy. There is no way we can hide such a working from him.”
“We won’t even try,” she said.
“Will he be expecting it?”
She frowned. “He well may. The dying king, the sword, the champion—he’s an older mage than any of us. And he tried to have you killed. He may have thought he succeeded. But the prince will tell him the truth of that.”
“Then if we act,” he said, “it will have to be at once, before he can strike at us—at me. One great blow, for victory or defeat.”
She nodded.
“We’ll do it,” he said. “Is there time to prepare?”
“Barely,” she said.
“Then we’d best get about it.”
Indeed, they should. But she held him for a moment, drinking in his warmth and the solid presence of him. He kissed her with surprising heat—but briefly. They drew apart with tearing reluctance.
“Still angry?” she asked.
His brows drew together in a quick rush of temper. “No!”
“Good,” she said. “Because king’s blood rouses the power, but I am the seal and the binding.”
He drew a sharp breath. He had known that, surely he had; but, it seemed, it needed to be spoken. He bloomed into a smile, so sudden and so brilliant and so breathtakingly rare that she could only stand and stare.
His step was light as he went away. She was glad that he could be so glad. What he had to do was a bitter thing, and a terrible one. If he could laugh at the outset of it, then that was a good omen.
The bombardment of the walls went on undiminished as the day passed. But worse than that was the assault of the spirit. Great waves of darkness crashed against the wards, crashed and crashed again.
The enemy knew now whom he faced. Sarissa could well suspect that he knew what they would try to do tonight of all nights, in the moon’s dark, when the old rites were strongest. Parsifal had opposed him before without the full power of the Grail. There had been no great marriage then, for none was granted him by the gods’ will. And he had not performed the great sacrifice. He came to save a king’s soul, and to heal his body. The war of the Grail had come upon him in the aftermath.
Roland had come for the war. If the enemy could be destroyed, then Roland was the one meant to destroy him. And if not—who knew who would remem
ber any of them, after a thousand years of darkness?
She had waited so long, labored so relentlessly, to come to this day and night. All her life had been bent for this one thing.
And yet she felt as if it had taken her by surprise. Surely it was not time yet. Surely the next new moon, or the one after that, would be soon enough. Could they not hold off the siege? Were they not strong enough for that?
They were not. The mortal troops had drawn inward toward the citadel and to the center of the halls beneath it. The outer reaches and the curtain wall were crawling with shadows.
Some of Huon’s mages would have ventured out to try to drive back the horrors, but Roland forbade it. “We’ll only waste your strength,” he said. He set them instead to warding the castle’s heart.
That was no safe charge. One was down already, not dead but near to it. The enemy had bent all his terrible will on halting what Roland had set in train.
Servants carried the fallen mage up to the Grail’s tower. The rest closed ranks as they could, cast their spells and chanted their chants and raised the powers. Their throats were raw and their power stretched perilously thin, but they held their ground.
Once again, grey day wore toward a starless night. On the edge of dark, the western horizon caught fire. It looked like a river of blood.
All of Huon’s mages joined forces about the citadel. The dark battered it and them. Black wings swooped overhead. Teeth, claws, raked at them.
It was quiet within, but for the song of the Grail, sweet and undaunted. The brotherhood of the Grail gathered with the nine ladies in the hall of the shrine. All but Sarissa, who had gone down to the ladies’ pool for the cleansing of water and air, earth and fire. No mortal hands assisted her. Spirits of the elements granted her their blessing.
She was aware in her skin that Roland, in the knights’ bath, underwent the same. He had faithful servants to wait on him: the bogle for earth, the puca for air. The gestures were the same, the blessings, the caress of wind, the brief searing of fire. The doubled cleansing bound them, though in body they were separated.