Kingdom of the Grail Read online

  The power was ready to stand against the sorcerer. Was he?

  No doubts.

  Something swooped past him. Tarik blurred and stretched and grew—grew impossibly, until a dragon of light faced the dragon of darkness. The puca was smaller, but therefore more agile. He leaped and curvetted and danced in the air. He laughed, altogether without fear.

  He plucked Roland from the floor of the hall and winged skyward.

  Roland was too wise to struggle. He climbed up the clawed leg, over the great shoulder, onto the curve of the beast’s neck. Wind buffeted him. He flattened against the glistening scales.

  Shadow loomed over him. A bolt of raw power hissed past him. Tarik danced away from it.

  Almost too late, Roland raised wards to protect them. Carbonek lay far below. Battle raged before it and within it. Ganelon’s army swarmed like locusts. Roland’s few fought valiantly, but they were nigh overwhelmed.

  A great blow smote the wards. Tarik dropped under the force of it. His wings beat desperately, struggling to keep him aloft.

  “Down,” Roland said. “Back down.”

  Tarik ignored him. He had steadied and begun a new ascent.

  Spirit of mischief indeed. Roland looked down the long, long way to the castle where he best should be.

  Time was when he would have laughed at the distance, spread wings and flown. But he had lived in human shape since he came to himself again. Thought of shifting, of blurring and changing, struck cold in his belly. If he lost himself, this time he would not come back.

  Tarik leaped and darted. Ganelon ceased to waste bolts of power. He sent the cold-drake after the puca. Tarik was agile but he was light in the air. The wind of the cold-drake’s wings caught him and sent him tumbling.

  Roland lost his grip on the puca’s neck. He clutched at nothingness. He was falling. Above him, the cold-drake roared. He turned over in the air. Tarik had fastened himself to the creature’s belly, jaws sunk in its throat. The cold-drake thrashed. Roland could not see Ganelon at all.

  It seemed that Roland was hanging in space, suspended on the wind’s back. But the earth drew ever closer.

  His skin rippled. A stab of terror stopped it. But worse than that fear was the long, long way to the ground.

  His arms flexed. Wings beat where they had been. The hawk’s mind closed in upon his own. Man—he was man. Armor, helm, shield fell away. But the coin of the Grail swung still against his breast; and Durandal hovered in air beside him. It had a mind, a will of its own, and magic—high magic. To his keen hawk-senses, it had a scent and a taste of Parsifal.

  The sword guided him, spiraling down and down. Far above, the dragons battled. Tarik, grieved the man’s mind within the hawk’s body.

  No, no grief yet. No despair. The Grail was calling.

  He touched the stone floor with a man’s feet, and a man’s mind. Durandal settled softly into his hand. Sarissa said not a word as she wrapped him in a white robe. It was nothing he could fight an earthly battle in, but it covered him.

  The war of dragons raged overhead. From so far they seemed no larger than a raven locked in combat with a sparrow. They tumbled and thrashed. Wings flailed, claws raked. Teeth slashed. The cold-drake’s blood was like gouts of icy water. The puca bled scarlet streamers of flame.

  As diversion it served its purpose, in more ways than one. Roland, standing before the Grail with the wind of the gods blowing the white wool of the robe against his body, felt the power in him with far more clarity than he had before. The hawk’s shape had cleansed and focused him. The long descent had given him the time he needed to gather his strength.

  Maybe Tarik had meant it to be so. The puca had an odd wisdom, and odder ways of showing it.

  It was almost peaceful here. The Grail’s song went on unwearied. Sarissa stood guard over the shrine. Pepin huddled at her feet, limp, perhaps unconscious.

  The blow struck the wards with a sound like lightning splitting an ancient tree. Light flashed, blinding bright.

  The wards held, just. Roland’s ears were ringing. When he could see more than shadows, he saw Ganelon standing on air beyond the tower, as steady as if he stood on stone.

  The battle below, the battle above, went on without them. Roland met Ganelon’s dark gaze, and inclined his head slightly.

  They had not stood face-to-face before. That was odd, now he thought of it. No doubt it had also saved Roland’s soul. If Ganelon had not underestimated him, he would have been disposed of long ago, long before he had the strength to be a threat.

  Roland was strong, but his enemy was ancient and wily. Youth had served him before against the sorcerer; but he would not be so fortunate again. He had set himself full in the enemy’s path, the last obstacle he must strike down before he seized the Grail.

  Roland lifted Durandal and set her point down before him, hands folded over the hilt. Sarissa moved to stand beside him, spearbutt grounded likewise, braced and on guard.

  The enemy smiled a faint cold smile. “So much power,” he said. “So pretty to see.”

  “But you can’t see it, can you?” Roland said as he looked into those eyes. “You can’t see the Grail. For you, we stand on nothingness. You’re blinded by the light.”

  “I need not see,” Ganelon said, “in order to grasp and hold.”

  He flung a bolt of darkness. The wards cracked still more. Roland set his teeth. He had felt that in his own body, as if a fist had struck his shoulder. The next bolt smote him in the belly. At the third, he flung up Durandal. The bright blade turned the bolt aside. It sang like a woman, sweet and deadly.

  Ganelon’s next bolt flew wide.

  The song, thought Roland. Durandal’s song caused him pain.

  Ganelon stiffened himself against it. He struck, struck, struck again, blows so swift and so potent that Roland could only parry, never strike. There was no time. Bolts that passed him, Sarissa caught and struck aside.

  Under cover of that defense, he gathered everything that he had: every scrap of strength, every bit of knowledge, every flicker of power that had ever been in him or in Sarissa or in the Grail-king who had died to give him this magic. He gathered it and held it. Ganelon hammered at him, relentless.

  Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, the sorcerer laughed. Behind Roland, the Grail’s song changed. It was subtle, perhaps imperceptible, but he was part of it. He felt it in his blood and bone.

  Pepin had the Grail. Forgotten, unregarded, he had crawled past the combatants, crept up to the shrine, opened it. The cup was in his hands.

  He danced with glee. “Mine!” he sang. “Mine!”

  Ganelon’s smile was a cold and terrible thing. “Well done,” he said, “oh, well indeed. Give it to me.”

  “No,” said Pepin. Roland, turning in the cessation of the barrage, saw the frown on the face so like Charles’. “You can’t touch it. You can’t even see it.”

  “In your hands I can,” Ganelon said. “Bring it here.”

  Pepin would not do that, either. “I’ll keep it for you,” he said. “How it sings! You didn’t tell me of that. It’s beautiful.”

  “Give it to me,” the sorcerer said. His voice was lower now, darker. More dangerous.

  Pepin stood with the Grail in his hands. Light poured over them, down his arms, dripping on the floor. His eyes were rapt.

  The sorcerer gathered darkness as Roland had gathered light. He flung it, all of it, not at Roland but at the Frankish prince who held the Grail.

  Roland flung himself between the sorcerer and his pupil. The power that was in him, the sword in his hands, rose together. That great blow struck him full on. Darkness visible. Death, dissolution, damnation of body and soul. And a hook, a talon, to grasp and seize the Grail—that lodged in his heart, where the Grail’s power was strongest.

  He felt the bonds of flesh dissolve. The darkness swallowed his light—as it would swallow the world, once Ganelon had the Grail.

  Sarissa cried aloud. He had shielded her, as he had Pepin. They wer
e safe. If they fled, and fled now, beyond the world there might be refuge.

  He tried to tell her. He had no throat, no tongue, no voice to speak the words. He was a mist of light fading in a tide of the dark.

  The spear rose, blazing in the endless night. Durandal rose with it. Together they struck. Straight for the heart. Straight through the darkness.

  Ganelon laughed at them. Without Roland they were feeble, helpless. Roland had been the key. And Roland was gone.

  No.

  In the beginning was the word. In the word was being. In being was substance. And in substance was strength. Roland the shapeshifter, who knew dissolution with each change of his form, reached for that part of himself which made him whole again. Wolf to stag. Stag to hawk. Hawk—all anew, and always—to man.

  Naked, weaponless, but brimming, singing, bursting with power, he turned—not on Ganelon, but on Pepin. Pepin clutched the Grail to his breast. Roland held out his hand. The Grail came to him as it had come before the army of its defenders, as soft, as sweet as a child to its mother. It settled in his lifted hands.

  Black winds lashed him. Lightnings smote him. He took no notice of them. He walked through them, past the shards of the wards, into the tumult of the air.

  Ganelon hovered in the midst of the whirlwind. Roland entered into that zone of quiet. He held out the Grail. “Take,” he said, “and drink. For this is the cup of the blood, the blood of the covenant, which binds the chains of the world.”

  The whirlwind died. The blasts of darkness ceased. They stood face-to-face above the wide and turning world. Roland, who had died and been brought to life by the Grail’s power, faced Ganelon, who had so feared death that he sold his soul to the Prince of Darkness, and thus bought his body’s immortality.

  “Drink,” Roland said again. “Drink of the light, and of salvation. Taste the blood of redemption.”

  “Mockery.” Ganelon’s voice was thick. “What trap is this?”

  “No trap,” Roland said. “Drink.”

  “I will not,” said Ganelon. “I will take. I will not drink.”

  “You must drink,” said Roland, “for your soul’s sake.”

  Ganelon hammered him anew with darkness. He raised the Grail against it. The darkness struck with a sound like the rending of worlds. He rocked with the force of it.

  It turned. It struck back with the full might of its maker’s malice. Ganelon, advancing to take the Grail from Roland’s fingers, met it head-on. It smote him down.

  CHAPTER 63

  Ganelon fell through the sudden stillness of the air. Roland fell with him. The power in its turning had emptied him. He would spread no wings now. That was gone. He reeled down, clutching the Grail to his breast.

  Somewhat before he had expected, he struck solidity. Struck, and lived. Warmth surged under him. Tarik in dragon-shape skimmed perilously close to the earth, above the heads of men locked in battle, not quite brushing the tips of spears. With a fierce beat of wings, he climbed upward.

  He had something in his claws. A rag, a tatter of darkness. Ganelon’s body.

  Roland was scarcely more alive than that, but he was conscious. The Grail was a hard, almost painful shape between his breast and the puca’s neck. He pressed his face to those beaded scales with their faint scent of fire, and clung blindly.

  Tarik brought him home—if home was the castle of Carbonek and the tower of the Grail. The roof was restored, if indeed it had ever been gone. The puca settled there, eased him to the stones, then lay for a long while, wings and limbs splayed. He was covered in wounds, bleeding, battered, torn; but he was alive. The Grail had already begun to heal him.

  Roland found that he could stand, though he reeled dizzily. He was still clutching the Grail.

  Ganelon lay between the puca’s forefeet. He looked like a broken stick, and yet he breathed.

  Roland dropped beside him, catching his breath at the pain of bruised knees. The dark eyes opened. There was no yielding in them at all. No light; no spark of redemption.

  Because he was what he was—because he was the champion of the Grail—Roland could do no other than what he did. He held out the cup once more. “Drink,” he said yet again, “and be healed.”

  “Fool,” said the sorcerer, hardly more than a breath of sound.

  Roland held the cup to his lips.

  He turned his face away. “No healing,” he whispered. “Power. Only power. If I cannot have that, I will have nothing.”

  “You will have damnation,” Roland said.

  Ganelon’s eyes glittered. “Yes,” he breathed. “Yes.”

  “You want it? When you could have the light and the glory of heaven?”

  “Light.” The sorcerer spat. “Weakness. Folly. In dark is the glory. In damnation is the splendor. I choose that. I—choose—”

  He reached up, hands clawed. They caught the plait of Roland’s hair as it fell over his shoulder. They dragged him down. His breath hissed in Roland’s face. It was cold, like old stone, and rank, like the breath of tombs. “I—choose—the dark.”

  It opened beneath them, darker than night, colder than the deepest of winter, and no end to it ever. His grip tightened on Roland’s hair. He dragged them both to the edge of the abyss. They would both fall—they, and the Grail, and all the world’s light.

  Victory in the jaws of defeat. Black triumph at the end of things. Ganelon exulted. He would have the Grail, and the Grail-king too, and a thousand years of night.

  Roland could not even shape his refusal. There was no strength in him, no magic. Only desperation. He flung himself back, wrenching, twisting, rolling up against Tarik’s bloodstained side.

  Ganelon teetered for an endless moment on the darkness’ edge. He would hold—he would escape. And Roland would die, because he had nothing left with which to stand against the sorcerer.

  The tower swayed. The darkness heaved. Ganelon fell.

  He fell forever and ever. No sound escaped him, no scream, no cry of horror. He embraced the darkness. The darkness took him.

  Silence. Even the Grail had gone still. The maw of the abyss had closed. Roland stood naked on a windy tower, under a sky swept clean of clouds. The sun was still high. It barely warmed him.

  And yet he was warm to the bone. A great dark thing had gone out of the world.

  On the field below, the battle had fallen into confusion. Demons and spirits of the night, freed of the bonds that had held them, had turned on the mortals about them. Those mortal slaves, slaves no longer, fought for their lives against their own allies.

  The army of Montsalvat found itself somewhat less overmatched than it had been only moments before. Within the walls and the keep, the shadow-army had melted away. There were no living enemies there. The castle was clean. Only one hostile presence remained, and that was Pepin, held prisoner in the chamber of the Grail.

  All this Roland knew in one sweep of eye and mind. The Grail had begun again to sing. The higher, the clearer its song, the stronger he was.

  Tarik stirred, lifted his fanged dragon-head, folded his shining wings. His wounds were all but healed. He yawned vastly. A curl of smoke drifted heavenward.

  Roland armored himself in light, for lack of more earthly expedients. It lay on him like the sheerest of silk, but strong as steel. He found Durandal between Tarik’s feet, where Ganelon had lain not so long ago. She slid joyfully into the scabbard that Roland fashioned of air and sunlight.

  “Dear friend,” Roland said to the puca. “Will you carry me once more?”

  “Once and always,” Tarik said in a voice like a great organ.

  Roland mounted his neck. There were scars, but they were fading fast. He stroked the deepest of them. “The snake?” he asked.

  “Gone,” Tarik said in enormous satisfaction. His jaws clashed. He spread his wings, ran for the tower’s edge, dropped with throat-catching speed. The wind caught him and carried him up and up, soaring in a long sweep over the field of the battle.

  The fighting slowed a
nd stopped. Men stared open-mouthed. Demons paused in their feasting. Durandal swept the head from one, pierced the throat of the next. The third yowled and fled, and its kinsfolk and companions with it.

  Tarik hovered above the field. Men cowered and scattered beneath. Roland could see himself in their eyes: great dragon of light, and warrior armored in light, holding up the shining splendor of the Grail.

  “Peace,” he bade them all, soft yet clear. “Be still.”

  They were still. His own people, the Franks, his villagers, gazed up at him in wonder and in clear delight. He smiled at them. His smile warmed most on Turpin, and on the children from Greenwood. They were together, and alive, though Kyllan was limping and Turpin’s helmet was lost, his face streaked with blood.

  “Gather the armies,” he said to them. “See to the wounded and the dead. Offer clemency to any who will surrender. If any refuses—do as you judge best.”

  Turpin nodded for them all. “As you will,” he said, “my lord king.”

  Roland’s head shook at that; his hand rose to brush away the title. But Turpin was smiling as he said it, a smile that widened to a grin. They were all grinning. He had won—they had won. The war was ended. The enemy was dead.

  CHAPTER 64

  Roland put aside his splendor, retrieved his old plain clothes and Durandal’s worn scabbard, and set to work among the vanquished and the wounded. Tarik, likewise restored to his everyday seeming, came and went in cat-shape. He was useful for soothing the frightened and calming the enraged.

  It was a long labor. Roland left command to the commanders, to Turpin and Huon and Morgan and the rest. His place was to heal what he could heal, and to bring comfort where he might. He did it quietly, without pretension. Few of those he tended knew who he was, nor did he trouble to tell them. It did not matter.