Here Be Dragons: Three Adventure Novels

by K. T. Tomb

  Though he had trouble believing that their fierce captives would give up their lives so easily, the thought of how easy it might be, to use their own faith to help slaughter them, had stuck in Richard’s mind. And he had used it, over and over, until the very earth was mixed with blood and offal and heads rolling away, wide-eyed.

  Richard, already troubled by his own crisis of faith, wondered if he would willingly die for his God. Or would even want to die for his God. Desire to die for his God was absent. He was here on this Third Crusade because it was easier than being the King of England in a cozy castle with a bunch of his relatives constantly trying to usurp him, not just his brother John. Richard did not, in all honesty, think he would die for Christ. He had fought too hard to live to stick out his neck in a surrender to a scimitar in the sole pretense that he was doing it for God. Anyway, he didn’t believe in martyrdom of a king. It was a preposterous notion. He was nearly the king of the world. Would anyone willingly give that up?

  How dedicated are the prisoners to their misguided faith? he wondered. More than I am to mine? If they are willing to die for Allah without a sound, does that mean their God is more powerful than mine? Or does it mean that mine does not exist at all?

  Regret spewed up like fire in his belly and burned him from the inside out. He wondered if he would feel like that all over if God threw him into the pit of fire for all eternity.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Richard carried his burden, Saladin, and prayed aloud to find the Grail before it was too late. He was surprised to hear others adding their voice to his, until the cave resounded with the prayers of men in two languages with the one common word: Saladin.

  He prayed to God, he prayed to Mary, he prayed to the saints, and just for good measure, he prayed to the name Allah, much to the shock of everyone present.

  And then he stopped praying, wondering if he had gone too far by praying to Allah. After all, though, that was Saladin’s belief. So, perhaps it was fitting, after all.

  As he walked, Richard was again tormented by memories of that horrific day of the slaughter. His mind went back to the day when the leaders of the Crusade had gathered in Richard’s spacious tent, debating how to transport so large a number of prisoners, and remembering what de Sable had said, Richard had suddenly said: “Kill them all! Let them die, martyred in honor to their Allah.” And then, he had walked out of the tent, his word the law. The others had been stunned, except for de Sable, who had nodded.

  When the executions had immediately begun, Richard had watched each and every one, and he saw the honor each Muslim held. There was always fear, but mostly, there was honor. Richard was sickened and curious, and felt a little like God himself, controlling the fates of these men, his men included. It was a terrifying power and he seized it and rode it and felt the evilness of his triumph over the helpless captives, especially the women and the children. Oh, what had he been thinking?

  Richard became repulsed by his own powerful evil and also by his acquiescence to de Sable’s shocking request that Richard give him Cyprus for the Templars, which he had then promised to him, but only if de Sable could come up with 25,000 pieces of silver. The thousands of Muslims who were killed that day had had their camps and their pockets raided by de Sable and his accomplices. And now, here Richard was, a humbled king before God, and complicit in not just the deaths, but in the robbery of thousands of Muslim men. These days, Richard could barely look at de Sable and would be happy to never see him again after this campaign was over. Master of the Templars or not, there was something not too pure about de Sable and Richard had fallen into the trap that de Sable had laid for him.

  Saladin moaned again and Richard hurried through the tunnel, remembering the way in his dream when they came to forks in the tunnel.

  For now, Saladin’s life hung in the balance and Richard felt like if Saladin died, he would have failed God’s command in the dream. So, hoping for true redemption, Richard toted his sick enemy Saladin behind him, knowing he had done wrong by killing ten thousand Muslims, or was it twenty thousand? He often lost count.

  He was beginning to realize, in fact, that Christians and Muslims might both be right, and also might both be wrong, each in their own ways. Many months ago, when the doubt had first crept in, he had prayed to God to help him renew his faith. And he was doing that also, even as he tried to redeem himself in God’s eyes for the terrible things he had done in the name of the Crusade, or even in the name of convenience, so he wouldn’t have to feed, water, and secure so many prisoners of war. His aiding and abetting of de Sable’s plot to enrich himself and buy Cyprus had been an accidental spoils of the Crusade. It had not been Richard’s intent to pillage the holy countries by killing people and robbing their dead bodies. That was not the purpose of the Crusade. Oh what had he done?

  Richard now knew why God was angry with him. He had acted most dishonorably in war. He was unworthy of the royal crown of Earth, let alone the royal crown of Heaven. If he did not find the Grail and use it to heal Saladin, all would be lost. All!

  A soul, a country, the future of England.

  Richard trudged onward. The cold seemed to not only find its way through any gap in his clothing, but made him think that his clothing had no effect against the chill at all, that nothing but a heavy robe and a blazing fire would do any good. Hot tea seemed but a distant luxury, too.

  What I wouldn’t give for hot tea, Richard thought. Good English tea, not this odd, bitter herb tea of the land under my feet.

  Would you give up finding the Holy Grail? No, he answered his own question. I would very much like to find the Holy Grail.

  And so, he kept on, talking to himself in his head. Gustave, I needed you and you failed me by not being here. This is too hard, this is too hard.

  The bend in the tunnel passageway straightened. Ahead, Richard could see what looked like a wall of snow. This appeared to be at the end of the tunnel, as if the tunnel suddenly stopped.

  He could have sworn they were coming to an exit.

  And now, Richard could see the cause of the white light: the sun did shine through the snow, as de Mandeville had said. Oh, he had been awful to the man. But it wasn’t really snow, was it? It was a combination of ice and snow, and the sunlight that filtered through it was white. He could see now that they were under the glacier. And he did something that he had never done before. He turned for a moment and said, “You were right, de Mandeville. I can see it now. It is just as you said. We are under the glacier.”

  There was no answer and when he turned to see, de Mandeville had tears in his eyes. Richard smiled at him.

  He turned forward again. Try as he might, Richard was unable to turn off his mind from the fact that not only was he reaching the end of the tunnel, but he was reaching the end of his mortal life. Once you reach the end of the tunnel, his mind was trying to convince him, you’re dead, because that’s exactly what Heaven should look like.

  Another sobering thought nearly stopped him in his tracks:

  And what makes you think you’re going to Heaven, with the blood of twenty thousand robbed and murdered souls on your hands?

  Suddenly, Richard knew why Gustave had abandoned him. He knew that God would exact retribution from Richard after he saved Saladin with the Grail. He knew all along what was going to happen. And ran from his role in it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They were still in the tunnel, which had widened considerably at this point. Still a distance from the end of the tunnel and the rock wall, Richard slowed his pace and the others followed suit. All talking ceased, and the last paces along the remainder of the corridor were done in utter silence as Richard believed that he was heading for Saladin’s life, and his own death.

  As Richard drew near to the end of the tunnel, along the wall of snow and ice, the scene before him became clearer and clearer. They were coming upon, from all indications, a rock cavern. His heart began to beat wildly, as if this had to be the end of the quest for the Holy Grail.
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br />   When he and his men reached the end of the tunnel, Richard simply stood there in stark amazement. He was right, it was a huge rock cavern, forming a sort of dome.

  He didn’t think, though, that it was the unusual rock cavern that was causing his and Saladin’s men to crowd around the mouth of the tunnel’s exit, from which brilliant light emanated.

  And then, he saw it...the Holy Grail.

  Without ever having seen it before, or ever having it described to him, or even the faintest inkling as to what it would look like, other than it was wood, Richard the Lionheart was as sure as he could be that he was looking at the Holy Grail. In fact, it looked quite different than he expected it to look. It looked, somehow, even more majestic than he had previously imagined. It was a huge bowl on a three-pronged silver pedestal. The bowl was carved of a beautiful polished wood without a speck of dust on it. The Grail bore carvings of Hebrew writing and grapevines, animals, buildings and people’s faces. The designs carved into the gleaming wood, teak wood, he assumed, were a labor of love and intense reverence. He did not read Hebrew and did not know what the inscriptions meant. But he did know one thing because God said, in his head, just one word in the same booming voice from his dream: Gopherwood.

  And then, Richard began to understand all about Mount Ararat.

  In a trembling voice Richard said, “God just told me that the Holy Grail is made from gopherwood cut from Noah’s Ark. That is why the Grail is here on Mount Ararat. The Ark is here, too, somewhere. And something else is here, too.” He paused, taking a breath. “Oh, He is speaking to my heart. Everything in this world is about threes. It is not just our Trinity, for Christians. It is wondrous and true, that everything about God, about Allah, about Yahweh—yes, the Jews are in this, too—is connected. As we are connected by human flesh and blood—Christians, Muslims, Jews—the Grail is connected to the Ark and they, too, are connected to a third great divine mystery. Mount Ararat has three divine objects and God…Allah…Yahweh…wishes us to keep them close to our hearts.”

  Stunned, no one dared to speak a word. They only gazed at its brilliance for it glowed in the white light—beams of light even seemed to be emanating from the lip of the cup. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind what they saw. This was it, all that they had sought.

  The Holy Grail rested to the left of the rock cavern. As far as Richard could guess, they were standing at the side of the mountain, and there was another opening into the mountain, but to them, it was an exit. Richard looked around him. Yes, indeed, there was no more mountain, no more tunnel.

  The King looked behind him. His men, as well as Saladin’s, were smiling, positively beaming. Saladin himself had not yet budged, and Richard thought the man looked as dead as a man could look and still be alive. He would have told anyone at that moment that there was no hope for the man; he was either dead or would be dead in the next moment. He had seen enough of death to know when a man’s time was coming, or, as he looked again at Saladin’s glazed eyes...when his time had come.

  There was a chill to the air, but that was all. The cavern certainly looked colder than it was.

  More white light came from above, for the sun shone through a small opening in the rock. Beneath him, loose gravel crunched, and soon, all of his men were in the cavern, their mouths gaping at the sight before them.

  Richard continued forward and his men plodded slowly and carefully across the domed cavern.

  There was a feel of eternal silence within the cavern, a silence that not even their clopping feet could break. No one spoke. When one of them coughed, the sound echoed within the rock walls, reverberating around them like the Devil’s own laughter.

  Richard’s arms were finally tiring from carrying Saladin on the litter, but there were only maybe two dozen more paces before they reached the Holy Grail, and he was not going to stop and rest now. Burly Andre, his valet, on the other end of the litter, kept pace with him as they hurried toward the prize.

  His eyes were transfixed by the Grail, but few thoughts floated through his mind. Mostly, he was just trying to comprehend the beauty of the artifact. And the fact that it truly existed. And that a dream had brought them all here…

  Whether the Holy Grail had any power remained to be seen, but he believed it did. For the light that emanated from it grew brighter, as if beckoning him closer to its splendor.

  He heard whispering from behind him. Richard tore his gaze off the Holy Grail to see what the whispering was about. Saladin’s left arm had fallen from the stretch of hide; the hand was opening and closing, slowly, methodically. An amazing feat for someone so close to death.

  Welcome back, my friend, my enemy.

  Richard and the other litter bearer had set the old warrior down. The Holy Grail was situated above them, stuck within the rock perhaps ten feet above them. Andre stared in amazement, his mute mouth open.

  Richard knew that he was gazing at the Holy Grail the moment he laid eyes on it. A tingle trickled down his spine. Richard heard one of his men saying to another: “It is beautiful.”

  The sun was beginning to lose its intensity. He sat down, his back against a rock wall, and gazed up at the Holy Grail above. He was tired, so tired. Some of his men had climbed the rock wall and were hanging from the rock wall like insects and touching the Holy Grail and then climbing down. As if it was a game.

  Richard had done it. In his mind, he had done all that God had commanded him seemingly so long ago in the dream. I have redeemed myself in the eyes of God, he thought. Now my soul can be at peace.

  But who is right? Fighting a holy war, we both think we are right.

  And then a great cheer erupted. Richard turned his head. The men on the wall jumped down from their contact with the Holy Grail. Saladin’s men were embracing each other. The Templars were laughing. One did a little jig.

  Andre motioned for Richard to climb on his shoulders and gave him a leg up. Richard climbed the rest of the wall and removed the Holy Grail from the niche and climbed down Andre’s strong shoulders.

  “I have it,” he said softly to his valet, who smiled.

  Saladin sat up. He was even smiling at Richard. Richard smiled back. “You will have your turn,” he whispered to Andre. Tears came to the man’s eyes.

  Of course, Christians and Muslims could both be right, thought Richard. And he knew, from the deepest part of his heart and soul and mind, he knew that this was the message that God above was trying to give him:

  Peace. There must be peace between you.

  “Saladin,” Richard said, “you must drink from the cup first and I will offer it to you from my own hands.”

  “What is in it?” Saladin said, his voice a bare whisper.

  “I have a feeling that what is in the cup will be different for each man,” Richard said.

  “You believe in it, don’t you?” Saladin asked.

  “Yes. That’s why we’re here. All of us.”

  Richard looked inside of the Grail.

  “What do you see in the cup of the Messiah?” asked Saladin.

  “Nothing,” Richard said, puzzled.

  “We are here, so we must believe that there is more than the eye can see,” Saladin said. “I want to drink from it.”

  Richard held the cup to Saladin’s lips and tipped it. He heard swallowing sounds and Saladin’s hands rose to cover his own and he drank for a long, long time. When he drank no more, Saladin took the cup from his hands and offered it to him.

  Again, Richard looked in the cup and there was nothing in it. But he had faith and raised it to his lips.

  Richard drank, too, and it was the sweetest wine he had ever tasted. He could see nothing in the cup, but he could taste it and feel the coolness of it sliding down his throat. When he was finished drinking, he put his hands over the cup and took it from Saladin, who was losing his pale complexion and looking healthier already.

  And so, now Richard felt healthier, stronger, too. But more than that, he felt…redemption. Was it even possible that redemption
could be an invisible drink? That to drink from the Holy Grail would bring forgiveness of his horrific sins? He felt humbled and loved and amazed. But he did not speak of it.

  “We must all drink from the cup like this,” Richard said to the other men. “With each man offering a drink from the Grail to his enemy, one holds the cup, the other drinks. And then each will serve the other. Enemy to enemy, we serve the love from the Holy Grail and heal the hearts of war. Each man will feel what he is meant to feel.” Richard’s voice choked up and he could not speak for a time.

  And so, they all did as Richard commanded. One of Saladin’s men refused his turn. And so, at the very last were Andre and de Mandeville serving each other sips from the empty Grail that filled each man’s throat and heart with something different, whatever the Lord chose for them to reap.

  After Andre the mute, the man with his tongue cut out, finished drinking, he brought the Grail back to Richard, opened his mouth and clearly said, “Thank you, Majesty, for bringing a humble servant on this journey to prove the way, the truth, and the light.”

  Richard was shocked and tears came to his eyes as his valet’s tongue and speech were restored.

  They stayed in there for hours, praying on their knees, each man in his own way with God. Finally, the light lessened and it was time to go down Mount Ararat.

  * * *

  Richard cautioned against anyone removing the Grail from where he had replaced it. Further, Richard ordered all his men and Saladin’s men: “Never speak of this quest to another living soul, not even among yourselves, or fear the wrath of Him, which you all know now is real.” Saladin was in agreement and reinforced the order with a penalty of death for anyone who spoke of it again.