Kingdom of the Grail Read online

  The enemy received them with a low and ravenous growl. The trap, that growl said, was sprung. The battle was engaged. And he had numbers far, far more than they could begin to claim.

  Men who had hidden under the shields of the siege-engines burst forth and bolted for the bridge. The gate strained against chains that had grown suddenly rigid. The bridge would not lift. Some great force held it, some vast weight of darkness.

  Already the enemy had a foothold within, in his armies of shadows. Mages fought against them, but they were numerous beyond counting. They gathered together like water flowing through many rivers into a black sea.

  Slaves the enemy’s men might be, but they fought with relentless ferocity. They cared nothing for fear or pain. They had no care for their lives. And those that were not men, that wore human faces but shifted and changed as they fought, wielded weapons of terror as well as of steel.

  Turpin drove his troops against them in waves, three ranks divided, so that some could rest and some could bolster the others. They only had to hold for a while, to drive as far forward as they might, to harry the enemy’s rear and, if it were possible, to seize his camp. Just so was Huon to press past the siege-engines and engage the foremost ranks.

  It was desperate—insane. So was this battle without general or leader to be seen.

  Until—

  At last, where Huon was, came a familiar sound: a whoop, a roar, a battle cry that stopped Turpin’s heart in his breast. “Montjoie! Montjoie!”

  The battle cry of Charles of Francia, in almost his very voice: high, fierce, pitched to carry. Pepin the prince led a horde of mounted Franks against the knights of Caer Sidi.

  Turpin could have howled like a dog. To be there, and not here. To be where he could do something—rise up, wield his rank and name, wake these men of his own nation to the perfidy of what they did.

  But he was a warrior, seasoned in battle. He had orders. His sanity and his salvation bade him follow them. Lead his troops—Roland’s troops. Fight. Drive for the camp, where surely, for he could be nowhere else, the enemy was laired.

  He could fight, even against demons, though blood ran underfoot—truly? Illusion only? No matter. Hack and drive and hack again. Pray the blow, once struck, smote the enemy down; that he did not rise again a winged horror, shrieking, clawing for Turpin’s throat.

  And all the while he fought for his life, as commander he must be aware of everything his people did. Who fought well; who failed. Who fell, and who died.

  Gemma and her sons were close behind him. Kyllan’s spear spitted a taloned thing even as it fell upon him. Cait’s archers behind sent a rain of arrows down on the enemy.

  They were making slow headway. Maybe they were being allowed to do it. The camp, toward which they fought, seemed more and more a trap.

  Huon he could no longer see. He was too far in among the enemy. But still he heard that high voice shrilling the battle-cry of the Frankish king. It was pure mockery, and pure provocation. Turpin’s Franks were snarling at it. It made them reckless. They pushed too hard, fought too heedlessly. Too many of them were going down.

  “Hold!” Turpin roared. “Fall in! Fall together! Fight, you sons of whores! Shut your ears and fight!”

  And then, like a madman, or a man whose madness had driven him sane: “Montjoie! For God and Saint Denis, and the holy land of Francia! Montjoie!”

  CHAPTER 61

  That great voice rolled across the battlefield. Pepin, leading the charge against the faery knights—every damnable one of them as like to Roland as a brother—faltered and nearly lost his head to the sweep of a sword. Only a wild scramble saved him.

  Turpin, too? And Olivier?

  No; Olivier was dead. He knew it in his heart, where his magic was.

  At least one of the three was gone. By tomorrow’s dawn, so would the other two be. That, Ganelon had sworn in the name of his dark master.

  And if Turpin was out there—come on them from some hidden bolthole—then where was Roland? He was not leading this sortie. That commander was a strange one indeed, a tall man crowned with the antlers of a stag. Demons wailed and fled where he passed. Pepin’s Franks were bolder, but they were hard pressed to hold the line against him.

  Not that it mattered. They had opened the castle; that was what the master had wanted.

  The summons when it came was long expected. Back to me, princeling. Now.

  Pepin left the field to his Franks. They fought bravely, laughing as they slew. He drew a mantle of shadows about himself and went where he was summoned.

  Ganelon sat like a spider in the heart of its web. The tent was that one which he had brought from Francia, small on the outside, vaster than worlds within.

  Pepin entered the garden slowly. The supernal light was dim. The paths were closed, all but one, that which looked on the castle of Carbonek. It was a strange vision, a fortress of stone crumbling under the attacks of stones and shadows, but in the center of it, in the citadel—nothing. Where in the outer world the tower reared up to heaven, here it was more than invisible. It was deliberately and potently not there.

  There were cracks in that living absence. Tendrils of darkness crawled toward it. Once Pepin thought he glimpsed a flash of sudden light.

  “Is it done?” Pepin asked. “Did they perform the rite?”

  Ganelon raised a brow at the insolence, but forbore to rebuke it. He sat on a throne in the garden’s center. His robe was woven of shadow. His face was as immobile and as beautiful as if carved in ivory.

  “Well?” said Pepin. “Did they?”

  “It would seem so,” Ganelon said. “The thing within has found new strength. But I am stronger. Prepare yourself now. Strengthen your spirit. The time is nearly come for you to take the Grail.”

  Pepin’s breath shuddered as he drew it in. His hands were cold. He knotted them together to keep them from shaking. He was ready. He was. He had studied, he had honed his magic. He was strong and his power was sure. He knew the way in, and the precise count of the steps from the tower’s foot to its summit, and the shape and the heft of the door that led to the shrine.

  “The king is dead,” Ganelon said. “They will have raised a successor—but he will be new and weak, and not yet accustomed to his power. Now is the time to strike.”

  “And the battle?”

  Ganelon shrugged with regal indifference. “It keeps the mortals occupied. Your battle is elsewhere.”

  “I’m ready,” Pepin said—whether he was or not, because there was nothing else that he could safely say. “This successor—is it—”

  “Very probably it is the Breton,” said Ganelon.

  Pepin’s grin was wide, feral, and altogether unfeigned.

  “You may kill him,” Ganelon said as if it did not matter, “once you reach the shrine. Only be sure you do it thoroughly. These Grail-kings are more dangerous dying than alive and hale.”

  “I will kill him thoroughly,” Pepin promised. Oh, very thoroughly indeed.

  This he must do alone. Ganelon could not approach the Grail as Pepin, mortal and royal, could do. Nor would he lower himself to enter the castle until it was his.

  The path from the garden that had stopped at the chasm only yesterday, now led across that narrow bridge over the abyss and into the great court of the keep. Men and shadows fought there. Men were down, dead or dying, and women too. Many bore the marks of shadow-sickness: faces pale, eyes wide and fixed on emptiness.

  Pepin, mantled again in shadows, smiled as he picked his way through the living and the dead. The outer courts were as nearly won as made no matter. The faery knights, the renegade Franks, would find no refuge when they turned to retreat.

  Carbonek was a maze, Ganelon had taught him, but there was a pattern to it. If one came to a division of passages, one turned sunwise. It could be difficult within walls of stone to know where the sun was, but Pepin had prepared for that. About his neck he wore an iron nail that he taken from a smith’s forge. He had laid a spell on it. Whe
n he stopped or paused in confusion, he lifted it in his palm. It turned, showing him the way.

  Beyond the outer courts, he met no one. Had they emptied the castle, then, to muster that poor excuse for an army?

  Truly it would seem so. Even the women were fighting, dressed in armor, wielding weapons. No one was defending the inner halls or the turns of the maze.

  Like Ganelon’s tent, this castle was far larger within than without. When it was his, he would learn all its wonders. But now he must take as straight a path as he could. He did not pause to marvel at halls of crystal, halls of glittering tiles, halls of marble or porphyry; colonnades, long sweeping staircases, glimpses of gardens even more beautiful than Ganelon’s. He passed them all by, some with great regret, but time was pressing.

  There seemed to be no defenses, no wards or guards. All the ways were empty. His magic met no barrier. It must be true, then. Royal blood gained him passage. Mortality won him welcome.

  So much for the tales. This Grail must care nothing after all for purity of heart. Unless it should be that his was pure in its purpose? Maybe it did not matter to the Grail if that purpose was dark or light.

  If it was a trap, it was subtly laid. He was not afraid of it. He had learned magic from an older power by far than the Grail.

  The tower lay at the heart of the maze, the stair ascending steeply into a glimmering darkness. Night had not fallen, his bones knew it, but the slitted windows looked out on stars.

  He had left the mortal world. Had he been in it at all since he stood in Ganelon’s tent?

  He stumbled and fell on the first step, gasping, head whirling. All that had anchored him, all that he had been sure of, was gone. He was cast adrift, borne as if on a strong tide. His mantle of shadows shredded and scattered. He was naked to the cold eye of heaven.

  The stones beneath him beat like a great slow heart. The air thrummed. The Grail—it was calling. The power—the sheer strength of it—

  He was not afraid. He must not be afraid. The Grail would not blast him. He was royal. He was chosen. He was meant for this.

  He pulled himself painfully to his feet and crawled up the stair. There seemed to be no end to it. With each step he retreated farther from the breast of the earth his mother. The air grew chill and thin, as if he ascended a mountaintop. His head ached. His limbs were heavy.

  He pressed on. Terrible this might be, but Ganelon was more terrible still. And he wanted the Grail. Ah, God, how he wanted it.

  That wanting sharpened Pepin’s purpose. If this was truly so great a thing of power, he wanted part of it. Maybe even the whole, if he could win it. Ganelon could not touch it. Pepin could. And if Pepin held it—who knew what he might be able to do?

  As he advanced, he began to hear a sound like singing. Chanting, like sweet voices in a choir. Angels, he thought from the depths of his darkness. He could not understand their words. They sang in none of the tongues Ganelon had taught him, nor in Latin either. Their song was piercingly sweet. It nigh felled him with sudden weeping.

  That too was a trap. He clapped hands to his ears. That muffled the singing somewhat, and let him go on.

  The stair’s end took him by surprise. The door was shut. He set hand to it: it was barred from within.

  That too he had prepared for. He spoke the words Ganelon had taught him. The door resisted. He spoke the words again. And yet again: three times for greatest power.

  The bolt shattered. The door fell inward. He looked in upon—

  Ganelon’s garden. But Ganelon was not in it. She was. She stood like the angel at the gate of Paradise, clad all in white, and in her hand—a spear?

  Not a flaming sword. A heavy, common spear, such as a footsoldier would carry. Its blade was rusted or stained with ancient blood. It had no beauty, no elegance.

  But power—before God, it was throbbing with power.

  Pepin tasted blood. He had bitten through his tongue. This must be—this could not but be—

  That was the meaning of her name. Sarissa—spear. She held the spear that had pierced the side of Christ, that, like the Grail, had drunk the blood of a god. That spear, Ganelon had captured once, and held, and wielded against the heir of the Grail. But Parsifal had won it back. With it he had cast down Ganelon’s power and nigh destroyed him.

  Parsifal was dead. Ganelon did not want the spear, nor had he sent Pepin to seize it. He wanted the great prize, the prize he should have taken at the first.

  The spear barred the way. She wore armor under her white robe: he saw the glint of mail. Her hands were slender but strong. Her face was stern. He could not touch her at all with his magic.

  He had no spells for this. Those that came to him were silly, trivial, useless. To curse an iron blade with rust; to draw blood from a stone. To shatter a pot, or to curdle the milk in it.

  The blade of that spear would never yield to anything so simple as a dark spell. And if he shattered the Grail, he would know the power of Ganelon’s wrath.

  He could think of nothing better than to say, plainly enough, “Let me pass.”

  She stepped aside. She did not resist, nor did she cry outrage. She simply ceased to bar his way.

  He had to pass her if he would go on. His back prickled. He flung up wards, as many and as strong as he might.

  She made no move to strike him. She followed him, but not close enough to touch.

  Again he met a door. This one opened before he could lay hand or spell on it.

  This was the chamber of the Grail. He had no doubt of that. Ganelon had had no knowledge to give him, nothing but that it was a high tower, an altar, and a shrine.

  So indeed it was. There was no ornament in that room, except the shrine itself. There was no richness apart from that. The only light was the light of heaven. It was too simple. It was almost ugly.

  Roland stood in front of the shrine. He wore mail, of good quality but plain. The sword Durandal was at his side. He had a round horseman’s shield slung on his back, and a plain helmet.

  The helmet was circled with a crown—silver, set with white stones. He was as arrogant as ever. He looked down his long curved nose at Pepin. His yellow eyes were as sharp as a hawk’s, and as empty of human warmth. If there was any expression in them, that expression was pity. Not even scorn, not even contempt. He pitied Pepin.

  Pepin went a little mad, maybe. When he came to himself, he was sprawled on the floor, and there was a scent of brimstone about him. He felt oddly empty, like a ballista that had hurled its missile.

  Roland was neither dead nor wounded. As far as Pepin’s dazzled eyes could see, he was not touched at all. He stooped over Pepin.

  Pepin surged up. His hands clamped on that cursed throat. They were strong hands, big hands, for though his back was twisted, he was not a small man. Bigger than this one, for a surety. And he hated him with a perfect hate.

  They toppled before the altar, grappling without either elegance or grace. Roland made no move to smite Pepin, only to free himself. But Pepin would never let go. No, never, until this hated creature was dead.

  A force like a whirlwind swept him up and flung him reeling away. He rolled and tumbled and struck a wall with force enough to strike the breath from his lungs.

  He lay wheezing. Sarissa stood between him and his quarry. The point of the spear hovered above his throat.

  Roland rose behind her. His own throat was blackening already. His voice was hoarse. “No, beloved. Don’t kill him.”

  Sarissa heard that with no pleasure at all, but she lowered the spear—from Pepin’s throat to his privates. His hands clapped over them.

  Her smile was feral. “What, you don’t yearn to emulate your master?”

  Pepin gaped.

  She laughed. “You didn’t know? He’s a eunuch, child. He gelded himself long ago, to buy himself a scrap of power. Maybe he thought it was worth the price.”

  “Sarissa.”

  Roland’s voice was recovering. The sound of her name silenced her. But it did not scour t
he smile from her face. She was even more arrogant than Roland, and even more hateful. But oh, so beautiful.

  When Pepin had the Grail, she would belong to him.

  His mind was clearing. His magic was there after all, the whole deep realm of it, dark and splendid. The Grail fed it. That was the Grail’s purpose: to nourish. Whether it nourished dark or light did not matter to it.

  He called that power to him. All that Ganelon had taught him, all that he had studied, labored over, wrought, came together in this one moment, this one working. Before the Grail, before its raw and new-made king, he called on the great Master, the Lord of the Dark, the Prince of the Morning.

  The dark came down. Ganelon rode on the wings of it. Plots within plots, wheels within wheels, intrigue upon intrigue. Pepin was the opener of the way. Through him the master could come to this place, could approach the Grail.

  He could not touch it. But he could come near it. And he could smite its fool of a king.

  CHAPTER 62

  “Fool and heir of a fool.”

  Roland looked up at Ganelon. The roof of the Grail’s tower had melted away. Black wings spread across the sky. A vast cold-drake hovered above him, dark beyond darkness. Its eyes were the eyes of the demon-servant Siglorel, last and strongest of the three: chill serpent-eyes that looked down on Roland with utter lack of expression.

  The sorcerer rode on its great arching neck. His black robes rippled in a wind that never touched Roland. His face was the face of a dark angel.

  He had taken back all that had been reft from him. But he was not above mockery, not yet.

  Roland sighed faintly. Traps within traps—and how many more within those?

  Roland could not tell where he ended and the Grail began. Parsifal was in him and in the sword at his side. Sarissa’s warm presence wrapped them all about. Sometimes he could not tell which of them moved or spoke. They were all bound together. The power that blazed in them—in him—was a great high singing thing.