The Black Chalice koa-1

by Steven Savile

  Alymere rolled over onto his back, clutching at his stomach as the cairn came crashing down. The noise, as stone crashed and cannoned off stone, was hideous. It drowned out every other sound, rolling like thunder across the mountain.

  Part of him had hoped that breaking the cross would be enough to vanquish the thing, but it wasn't. The two had to be linked though, surely?

  The thing remained eerily silent as the falling rocks battered it, hammering off its armour and skin without any seeming effect. One huge piece of slate struck its shoulder and shattered; another broke at its feet. The axeman made no move to protect itself. It wasn't created to offer any resistance, Alymere realised. It existed purely to protect the Black Chalice.

  With the destruction of the cross, the key to the cairn, the axeman had failed in its duty as the last defender of the Devil's Grail. If Alymere had guessed right, the cross in the wall had marked the spot where the Chalice itself was buried, like a treasure map. And now, as the Chalice was uncovered in the cairn's collapse, its guardian would be buried in its stead. There was a fearful symmetry to it.

  It didn't offer any defence as the stones smashed off its chest and head. It simply held on to its axe, waiting for Alymere to attack again. It had no understanding of its own, and didn't grasp that the stones were Alymere's last, best weapon against it — a weapon he did not need to wield, at that.

  The axeman was the last ward, the final protection for the Chalice. Anyone looking to steal it must first best himself, not as he was, but the best that he could have been. The axeman was all that Alymere might have become had he not strayed from the road into the Crow Maiden's glade and lain down with her in the snow as it melted around them, their embrace taking them to the kingdom of summer and back. What he saw reflected in the axeman's black eyes was the good he had lost along the way.

  He would never recover it; he knew that. He had accepted it. It didn't matter.

  All that mattered was finding the Chalice. If it truly was the Devil's cup and had similar properties as the legendary Grail, then one sup from it might save his life. Or damn him forever.

  That was the risk he was just going to have to take. He was damned if he didn't, and most assuredly damned if he did.

  Clinging to consciousness, Alymere lay on the damp grass, watching Nectan's cairn collapse, burying the thing even as it revealed the long dead clansman's tomb.

  Forty-Seven

  He crawled through the rubble. It was all he could do to force himself to move. His blood streaked across the stones as he dragged himself forward. He couldn't control his legs; his left foot trailed uselessly behind him, dislodging the broken stones as he crawled toward the unearthed tomb. The rocks shifted beneath his weight, skittering away down the banked ruin that was all that remained of the high wall.

  He could see into the hollow heart of the cairn and, laid bare despite the shadows, the coffin of the great laird.

  Alymere's right foot slipped as he scrambled desperately down the other side. He collapsed onto his back, gasping, every muscle on fire. His entire stomach and chest felt as though it was being ripped open and peeled back on his ribcage.

  In scaling the debris, Alymere's exertions had exposed the guardian's broken and twisted forearm. It lay there lifelessly amid the rest of the rubble.

  Alymere watched it in horror, wildly fearful. His jaw hung open, each new breath a strain. He didn't have the strength to fight on; he barely had the strength left to drag himself to the tomb, and had no idea how he was going to open it. If the Chalice was not inside, he was a dead man, and even if it was the chances were he would never get it open to find out.

  He dug his fingers into the dirt, using every ounce of strength left to him to pull himself forward, his eyes on the stone tomb. His vision swam in and out of focus. His blood trailed slickly across the dirt as he reached up, desperately trying to snag the top of the tomb and claw himself up against it.

  He didn't know what he had expected; perhaps to find the Black Chalice laid on top of the stone tomb, but there was no sign of it.

  Alymere left bloody hand prints on the stone face and a smear of blood across the granite chest, trying to force it from its resting place. He heaved his weight up against its side, weakly, trying to crack it open, but it didn't give so much as an inch. He levered his body around, trying to push his shoulder against the stone lid, but it wasn't moving. Not for him, not for the Devil, not for anything.

  So close, but, as with everything in his life so far, he was destined to fall tantalisingly short.

  He slumped back, content to die.

  There is life still in us, is there not? There is breath still in our lungs. Blood still in our veins. Use it. Use the last of that life, and the rewards will be beyond imagining. Let me fill you, let me lend you my strength to sustain you. We are one. We are Alymere. Now rise!

  Alymere pulled himself up, needing the tomb to support his weight, and took one step away from it on trembling legs. He saw the silver edge of the axeman's double-headed blade through the rubble and stumbled unsteadily towards it.

  He sank to his knees, pulled at the stones burying the axe and threw them aside, dragged it out of the rubble, and hauled himself up once more to lurch back toward the stone tomb. With every step he found a little more strength returning to his limbs, a little more vitality, though whether it was the strength the Devil had promised him, or somehow came from the weapon, he neither knew nor cared. He revelled in the new-found strength surging through his veins.

  Behind him, the stones stirred, but Alymere only had eyes for the tomb.

  Grimacing, he raised the weapon overhead. He felt a brief, wild urge to bring the huge axe smashing down into the centre of the tomb's granite lid, but stopped himself, knowing it was a futile gesture — there was a marked difference between the soft pale rocks of the cross and the flawless granite slab that marked the laird's final resting place. Instead, he worked the edge of the axe's blade between the lid and the base, and used the shaft to lever it free. And as long as he kept his hands on the axe, strength continued to flood into him.

  The grating of stone on stone, as the lid started to slide, masked the sounds of the guardian clawing its way out of its grave.

  With one last colossal heave, the tomb opened far enough for him to see inside. The laird's old bones had been preserved, along with some scraps of decayed leather, but nothing else. There, clasped in the bony fingers, was a silver goblet, yellow-black with tarnish, a single chalcedony stone set in its side. The gem was a bloodstone, flecked with red.

  He reached into the coffin to pry the Chalice from the dead man's grasp.

  He lifted the fingers one at a time with a peculiar reverence, but the bones powdered beneath his touch. As they crumbled, the sudden cacophony of stones shifting and falling behind him caused Alymere to turn; for one panicked moment he thought the entire cairn was coming down on top of him, but then he saw the axeman stubbornly clawing itself out of the rubble.

  Nothing would stop it. Not being buried, not being struck down. It just kept coming. Alymere had visions of the silent warrior chasing him all the way to Camelot.

  Alymere reached for the axe, and then stopped himself. The warrior was a grail guardian. He would never defeat it with axe or sword. The only way to win, he realised, was to claim the grail.

  Even as the massive warrior hauled himself silently out of the rubble, Alymere tore the Black Chalice from the dead man's clutches and lifted it out of the tomb.

  Yes, the Devil whispered in his mind. Yes, yes, yes… This is our destiny… Lift the cup to your lips and drink of me. Finish what you began. Seal yourself to me. Drink… sup of my blood.

  Alymere raised the cup to his lips, but there was only dust and the bitter tang of the tarnished metal on his tongue. There was no blood, no water.

  Press the stone against one of your cuts… Drip your blood into the Chalice… Your blood is our blood… Our blood is my blood… Raise it to your lips and drink… Drink of me. Drink to
me. Drink.

  Behind him, the guardian rose to its feet and kicked its way clear of the rubble. Alymere hesitated.

  Do it. Now. Drink. Seal our pact. Be mine. Forever. And I will be yours.

  He pressed the lip of the tarnished silver cup — as black as its name suggested — against his stomach, collecting blood from the wound, and raised it to his lips.

  Inside his head the Devil howled in triumph.

  And Alymere fell.

  Forty-Eight

  He looked up, blood on his lips, to see the cracks that had already formed in the axeman's armour, the wrinkles in its flesh and the fissures in its eyes.

  In taking that draught, swallowing the tainted blood, Alymere had killed the last spark of goodness in him. His wounds still bled but they no longer weakened him. He had become the Devil's Knight. He ran his tongue around the lip of the Chalice, licking the last of the blood clean, and then lowered the grail.

  He held it idly by his side, a sneer forming on his lips, and watched as the axeman climbed free of the rubble. It didn't matter. Where Alymere was multiplied, the guardian was reduced.

  He waited for the thing to claw its way free, then strode across the hard packed earth to meet it. He pressed his hand against the wound in his belly, and then reached out, placing his hand in the centre of the guardian's chest, leaving a bloody hand print, and in an alien voice said, "You have done well, guardian. The grail is returned to its rightful owner. Rest now; you have earned your eternity." They were the first words the Devil's Knight had uttered, and came purely from the voice of his master. Alymere was nowhere to be heard in them.

  And the cracks in the leather around Alymere's bloody hand print widened and burrowed into the guardian's flesh, weeping dust instead of blood.

  The axeman's eyes cracked and shattered like fine glass beneath a crude hammer blow. The axeman's body convulsed, wracked by spasms as the taint of Alymere's blood burned through its skin and hollowed out its innards.

  "Go," Alymere commanded, and as the breath behind the word touched the guardian its shell simply crumbled, as though the years it had stood watch over the Devil's cup caught up with it all at once. Within moments, all that remained of the guardian was dust, settling over the scattered stones.

  Alymere shucked off his pack, loosening the strings, and took out a small cloth, which he used to wrap the Chalice before stowing it alongside the book, and shouldered the pack again.

  The huge double-headed axe was still wedged under the lid of the tomb. Unlike its wielder, it hadn't crumbled to dust. Alymere tested the edge — it was still wickedly sharp — took it and walked out of the tomb.

  He walked three times around the ruined cairn, stepping from night back into day, and the world he had left behind.

  He did not see the old witch, the streak-feathered crow perched on her shoulder, or the beautiful maiden hiding high in the crags. They watched him go silently. They had each witnessed him drinking from the tainted cup, and knew too well what it meant: he was lost to them; their hero had fallen. Unable to help herself, Blodyweth cried out his name, hoping against hope that he would hear and come back to her, but as Alymere left the Annwn, all he heard was the raucous caw of the crow, and it grated on his nerves.

  Forty-Nine

  His return to Camelot was not the hero's homecoming he had always imagined. His arrival was as unremarked as his first had been, long months before. Not even Bors was there to greet him.

  Alymere had been a child the first time he'd set foot in the great castle. He was a man now. As he walked beneath the portico, his journey was complete.

  Pennons snapped in the wind. The lists had been decorated with all manner of devices, displaying the arms of every Knight of Albion. Brightly coloured tents were being assembled by sweating men. The sound of steel striking steel rang out from the smithy. Men with axes hewed branches from trees, that were in turn stripped and shaped into lances. To Alymere's left, people bustled around the carts and stalls, while to his right maids wound ribbons around the Maypole for the summer feast. The scraw-scritch-scraw of a prentice honing tools and arms provided a grating, atonal accompaniment to the rest.

  Children laced garlands of flowers and laid them around the foot of the Maypole. Girls laughed and giggled at boys playing the fool. The air smelled of cinnamon and sweet mince, mulled wine spices and freshly baked bread. Camelot was filled wall to wall with life. No-one looked at him. Why should they? He had undergone a transformation since he had left Camelot with Lowick — he couldn't call the dead man uncle or father, as he was neither — and now he was unrecognisable, even to himself. He was a stranger in their midst. Their lives would go on without him after he made the short walk through their number and climbed the stairs to the castle door. He might just as well have been a ghost… Alymere stopped himself from finishing the thought.

  He saw a familiar face as he crossed the outer bailey. The maid Bors had flirted with during that first visit to Camelot — the one who had brought his father's tabard to them in the armoury.

  He struggled to recall her name. Caroline? Claire? Katherine?

  Was that what Bors had called the maid? Katherine? He found his lips shaping her name, as though to call it.

  As though she sensed his scrutiny, the woman looked up from the well where she was labouring to draw a pail of drinking water up. She was pretty, in a sensuous rather than sweet way, and every bit as dangerous as Bors had warned. He watched the way her body moved beneath the skirts, appreciating it.

  Alymere saw recognition pass fleetingly across her eyes, but they clouded and quickly something else replaced it. Shock? Revulsion?

  No. It was worse than either of those, he realised. It was pity.

  He drew himself straighter, defiantly, and strode towards her.

  She couldn't take her eyes off him. There was no lust in her gaze this time, though. Of course, she hadn't seen him like this before. She had only seen the pretty boy he had been, not the burned man he had become.

  He stopped two steps before her. Alymere hawked and spat into the dirt at his feet.

  "Not so pretty now, eh?" he said, by way of greeting.

  Katherine looked away. "Beauty belongs on the inside as much as it does on the outside, my lord," she mumbled, eyes downcast.

  He barked out an abrasive laugh. "Then perhaps this," he touched his cheek, "is my ugliness clawing its way out. Or maybe if you kiss me I shall transform into a handsome prince?"

  She had no answer for that: no coy smile, no batted eyelashes, no flirtatious offer to make a man of him.

  "I thought not."

  He left her at the well.

  A young girl ran up to him, a chain of daisies in her hands and a summer flower tucked behind her ear. He turned, snarling, but was stopped by her pretty little face, so full of happiness and excitement. He reached out to take the daisy chain and looked down at them, the perfect little flowers on his scarred palm, and as he did, the little girl caught sight of his face. Her breath caught in her throat, but she did not scream or run away from him. She seemed oddly fascinated by him. There was something uncannily familiar about the child, although he had never seen her before.

  The daisy chain slipped through his fingers. Alymere stooped quickly, picking the flowers up from the dirt before they were ruined, and slipped the chain over his head. He smiled his thanks, earning an uncertain smile before he kissed the centre of her forehead and sent her back to play with the others. Rather than being frightened, she seemed delighted. He listened to her as she skipped away, singing the refrain of a madrigal he vaguely recognised. He caught the words "Kingdom of Summer," before she was too far away for him to hear the rest of her song.

  He looked down at his left arm where Blodyweth's favour was tied around his bicep, and for just a moment, perhaps, the lost Alymere might have reached up from the darkness where the Devil had cast him, but then the moment was gone.

  He rolled his shoulders and stretched before continuing the short walk across the baile
y to the keep's doors.

  No-one got in his way.

  The two guards standing sentry over the main doors didn't block his entry into the castle itself. They looked at him from head to toe before lowering their pikes and stepping aside to let him through. They offered no hint of recognition.

  He nodded to them.

  He was back. It wasn't the allotted two years and a day, but with both Lowick and Roth dead, there was no-one left to see to his training. And besides, he was more of a man now than they had ever been, he thought bitterly.

  His footsteps echoed hollowly through the passageways of the place.

  He heard the strains of music — a piper — filling the distance. It was a pleasant enough tune, if made rather funerary in the echoing halls. The castle had not changed. He knew where he was going without knowing where he was headed; he paused at the stairway that led up to the aviary where he had first met the king, turned and set off in the direction of the great hall.

  The huge double doors groaned heavily on their iron hinges as he opened them. He hesitated a moment on the threshold, as though unsure he could enter the heart of Albion, but then he smiled without warmth and strode into the hall. He felt himself growing in stature with every step as he marched down the aisle toward the Round Table.

  He was no longer a child. He was Alymere, Killer of Kings.

  There was nothing left of the young man he had been.

  We are not here begging for approval, nor are we hoping for freedom from old ills done to loved ones. This is our right, our destiny. We are here to claim our destiny. And if the fool king dares refuse us, we shall take it. There was no doubt in the voice of the Devil. It filled him. It thrilled him.

  He commanded the chamber in a way that Sir Bors never could.

  This time he was not awed by the kite shields hanging on the walls. He didn't care that the devices belonged to Sir Dodinal le Savage and the brothers Sir Balan and Sir Balin, Sir Helian le Blanc, Sir Clariance, Sir Plenorius, Sir Sadok, Sir Agravaine of Orkney and Sir Ywain of Gore or any of the other brother knights. His own device would sit amongst them soon enough, once they took down Lowick's leaping stag. He only had eyes for a single seat at the table, the Siege Perilous.12 His face twisted from a smile into something approaching a sneer as he walked towards it, determined to break whatever bond the sorcerer, Merlin, had set upon it and claim it for himself.