Kingdom of the Grail Page 7

  Olivier went down like a felled ox. The earth shook as he struck it. Roland staggered but somehow, by God’s grace, kept his feet.

  The sky was spinning. There was a roaring in his ears: men’s voices, shouts, cries, wild cheering.

  There was no one else on the field. Everyone was gone, every man, except Olivier. Olivier lay like the dead.

  Roland’s heart stopped. Then the broad breast heaved. Olivier gasped, coughed, rolled onto his back. He was alive. White-faced, gagging, but alive.

  Figures moved, drifting toward Roland. He was still in that time outside of time. He could not seem to come out of it. The people who came seemed to swim as if through deep water. He recognized most of them. The king. The emir Al-Arabi. Turpin and the rest of the Companions. But before them all trod one whose name he had never heard, but whose face he knew as he knew his own: a woman in white silk girdled with silver, with a drift of silver veil over her hair, and in her hands the sword.

  After all he had done to win it, he hardly saw it. Her eyes filled the world that was left to him, between the darkness and the narrowing span of light. Beautiful eyes, long, gold-brown, set slightly atilt in a narrow oval face. They were not smiling. They were—angry? Startled? Horrified?

  The light was almost gone. He saw his hands reach up to take the sword, for if he did not, it would fall ignominiously between them. He felt it, cold and hard and somehow clean, as if it had been forged of water and not of steel. He could no longer see it. Only her eyes. Her eyes . . . her face . . .

  Even in the fall of darkness, she was with him. She stood beside him. She guarded him against the night. She and the sword, the wonderful sword, whose name—yes. He heard it on the edge of hearing.

  Durandal. Its name is Durandal.

  And then was night, and rest, and such peace as he was ever given.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Frank dropped like a stone at Sarissa’s feet. She could make no move to catch him. It was the warrior archbishop who did it, the one called Turpin, whom she had seen fighting beside this man, this Roland, in the melee and after. He was wounded, but not badly, and Roland was a lightweight for his strength; Turpin lifted the limp body, sword and armor and all, with no appearance of effort.

  People were murmuring. The shouting and cheering had died. “Is he dead?” someone asked. The word spread.

  Dead—dead—dead.

  “He’s not dead!” cried Charles the king. “He’s alive. Make room now. Make room. Let him breathe!”

  People pressed back, falling over one another. Turpin carried Roland through them. The king followed, and the Companions after, and the emir, and all the rest of them in a long murmuring train.

  Sarissa was caught among them, borne along with them. There was no thought in her. It was all struck out of her in the moment when she came forward with the sword in her hands, and stood in front of the man who had won it, and he lifted his eyes to hers.

  Such eyes. Such a face. Such . . .

  No one had warned her. She did not know if she was angry. Perhaps she was. Someone should have spoken. She should have known. All her visions, her forebodings, her powers and her magics, and she had not foreseen this.

  That was no human man. Oh, he had mortal blood, no doubt of it, but something altogether different had begotten that face, so white, so keenly carved, and those eyes, so like a hawk’s and so little like a man’s. And in those eyes lay more power, more sheer raw magic, than she had ever looked to see in a man of this blunt and forthright nation.

  Did he know? He must. He had the look of a man who was well aware of what he was. And yet the Franks seemed not to see, or to understand. To them he was only Roland, the Count of the Marches of Brittany, the king’s Companion.

  Roland the Breton, who had won the sword.

  They carried him to the king’s own tent, and there laid him down. Servants freed him of his armor. There was blood, though not, she thought, to excess. Red blood, human enough to look at. He was not invulnerable, that one, or perhaps he did not wish to be.

  He had a fine young body. Sarissa knelt beside it. Some of them objected, but the king spoke, stilling them. “This is a healer. She healed the queen; she has great skill. Let her be.”

  Sarissa ran hands over that body, not touching it. Pain was like heat against her palms: bruises, cuts, the stabbing of cracked ribs. Exhaustion was worse, and loss of blood from so many small wounds. And shock—the power of the sword coming upon him when he was so weak, he who of all men must be most open to it.

  “Is he well? Will he live?”

  Sarissa looked up into a face rather more bruised and battered than Roland’s. The man who had contested with him for the sword, the Companion Olivier, was bending over her, swaying with the effort, but grimly determined. “Tell me! Will he die?”

  “Not at all,” Sarissa said. “He only needs rest and tending.”

  Olivier loosed a great sigh of relief, so great that he nearly toppled. “Look to him!” Sarissa said sharply.

  People obeyed. They carried Olivier off, protesting volubly but too weak to resist.

  Most of the others left with him, which was well. She sent for water, cloths, her box of medicaments: and there they all were, waiting, by the king’s forethought. She bowed low to him before she went to work.

  Charles lingered for a while, but duties called him, and the feast at which Roland should have held the place of honor. But Roland was going nowhere this night, nor was Sarissa.

  Even the servants left. But the archbishop, who had sent them away, stayed beside Roland. “When you finish,” he said, “lady, you may go. I have some arts myself; I can watch over him.”

  “I will stay,” Sarissa said.

  “You need not,” said Turpin.

  He was strangely insistent. She raised her brows. “I think it best that I stay with him,” she said. “He will be well, but he was taken rather strongly. He may need more tending than I’ve yet given him.”

  “I can summon you if there’s need,” Turpin said.

  “I will stay,” she said.

  He looked ready to oust her by force; but she caught his eyes and held them until they looked away.

  They settled for the long watches of the night. It was dim and close in this small space, curtained off from the rest of the king’s tent. Sarissa could have borne it more easily if she had been raised a Saracen indeed, and lived as their women did, confined forever within veils. But she would endure.

  The sword lay at Roland’s side. When the servants had tried to move it, his hand had proved to be locked about the hilt. His fingers had relaxed since, but she did not try to take it away from him. It was singing softly, oh so softly, as a mother croons to her sleeping child.

  There was another song with it, one that she knew well. Her nape prickled. She traced the song to its source, the heap of clothing and armor that had been taken from Roland. Wrapped in the tunic, tucked deep inside it, she found what she had not even known she had lost.

  Her fingers twitched toward the silver coin on its chain. But she hesitated. It had slipped away from her—when? When she had come to this camp?

  These tokens went where they would. It had come to this man, as the sword had; as if she needed any clearer proof that he was what she sought.

  A champion. A great lord and warrior to fight a war that the world knew nothing of.

  And yet, what else he was . . .

  She knelt beside him, sitting on her heels, and contemplated his face. Yes, there was other blood than human there; old blood, wild blood, and little of the light in it, either. Even with the wild golden eyes closed, it was not truly a human face.

  She reached without thought, to brush a stray lock of black hair from his forehead. He was cool to the touch, no sign of fever. His skin was smooth. Her palm fitted itself to the scant curve of his cheek.

  She drew back her hand with a distinct effort of will. “No fever,” she said to the archbishop, as if she could excuse herself so easily. Turpin nodde
d. If he saw through her, he did not show it.

  The sword sang. Its song lulled her into a doze.

  She roused abruptly. Nothing had changed. Turpin sat motionless but open-eyed. The lamp flickered. Roland slept.

  He stirred, murmured. Sarissa’s eyes sharpened.

  He was shimmering like the light of noon in the hills of al-Andalus. His face shifted: fierce curve of falcon’s beak, wolf’s muzzle, stag’s horn-crowned head.

  Turpin set himself between Sarissa and the—man?—in the bed. She met the archbishop’s eyes. “If you breathe even a word of this,” he said, low and fierce, “I’ll wring your neck.”

  She regarded him with an utter lack of apprehension, which took him visibly aback. “Do you all conspire to protect him?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth, shut it again.

  “Tell me what he is,” she said.

  “Why? So that you can destroy him?”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said, as brisk as if he had been one of her own; and that too caught him off guard. Franks, she thought, had not met the likes of her before—even as strong-minded as their women were.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “The Count of the Breton Marches. The king’s paladin.”

  “Surely,” she said, “and what was he when he was in Brittany?”

  “A child,” said Turpin. “A count’s son.”

  “And an enchanter?”

  Turpin’s lips set. He was not going to trust her, his face said.

  She almost smiled. Calmly she drew light from the air, shaped it into a globe, and balanced it in the palm of her hand. “Now tell me the truth,” she said.

  Turpin was not nearly as convinced by the light as she had hoped. “What if you mean him ill? What if you came to break him? That sword of yours—it ensorceled us all. It struck him down when he touched it.”

  “It was meant for a champion,” she said.

  “He is!”

  “And more,” said Sarissa, rocked somewhat by the force of his insistence. “Tell me now. I have to know.”

  “Why?”

  “To heal him,” she said.

  Turpin was not going to answer. He was a stubborn man, and fierce in his friend’s defense.

  Before Sarissa could speak again, another voice brought them both about. It was faint, but clear enough. “First tell me who you are.”

  Roland was sitting up, paler even than his wont, and his eyes less like a human man’s than ever.

  Sarissa’s wits had scattered to the winds. She scrambled them back together. “My name is Sarissa,” she said. “I come from Spain.”

  “My name is Roland,” he said, a mocking echo. “I come from Brittany. I won your sword. It is yours, isn’t it? Not the emir’s. Why? What is it for?”

  “For a champion,” she answered.

  “Yours?”

  “Not . . . exactly mine,” she said.

  His finger ran down the blade, slowly, a gesture so simple and yet so oddly potent that she stood transfixed. “You didn’t expect me,” he said. “What did you expect?”

  “Your king,” she said. “He was supposed to—”

  “Then you should have simply given it to him. It would have been a splendid gift.”

  She shook her head. “It couldn’t be given. Not from hand to hand. It had to be won.”

  The black brows went up. “Truly? And you thought we’d let him win.”

  “That is usually the case, with kings.”

  “Not here.”

  “That,” she said, “I’ve come to understand.”

  “You need a champion for Spain,” he said. “My king will do that, with or without a sword. Unless you ask me to—”

  “The sword has chosen,” Sarissa said. “It chose you. I have to trust its wisdom.”

  She must have sounded doubtful. His mouth quirked. “You didn’t expect a Breton witch. Are you horrified?”

  “Startled,” she said. “All the foreseeings, the foretellings—we saw your king. We never saw you. Except . . .” Her voice trailed off. “Always he had a falcon by him. A golden falcon. Sometimes it perched on his fist. More often it crouched behind him, wings mantling, curved about his head and shoulders—protecting him. Guarding him. That was you, it must have been. But we never—”

  “He calls me his defender,” Roland said, “and his champion. In battle, you see, we fight side by side. And I am very fast. Blows don’t strike him. Arrows don’t fall.”

  “Because you stop them.” She nodded. “Yes. Yes, I understand. But we need a king.”

  “You have a king. You also have the king’s champion.” He smiled. Dear God in heaven, such a smile. “A yellow-eyed witch from Brittany. I promise I’ll devour no children, nor sup on virgins’ blood. Plain bread and bad wine will do for me, as for any soldier.”

  “Are you a Christian?”

  The question was so abrupt and her voice so harsh that those golden eyes went wide. And yet he laughed, as if at a grand jest. “Why, lady! I am even baptized—and I didn’t fly shrieking at the water’s touch.”

  “No,” she murmured. “No, you would not.” She shook herself. She turned to Turpin and said, “Now he will be well. Stay with him if you will; see that he sleeps. He’ll not need me again before morning.”

  She was gone before either of them could speak—trying not to run, but succeeding poorly. Her tent was a refuge, as small as it was, and dark, and wrapped in the familiar scents of herbs and spices, sweet grass and smoke and a faint undertone of cat.

  Tarik was there, curled in cat-form atop her coverlet. He opened a lambent green eye at her coming, and uttered a sound halfway between a growl and a purr.

  “You knew,” she accused him.

  His tail flicked slightly: a shrug. He was not accountable for human follies, that shrug said. If Adam’s children saw plainly what was to come, and insisted on interpreting it all awry, then that was their misfortune.

  “We should have seen that one,” she said. “We should have known.”

  Maybe that one was warded, Tarik observed, sitting up, yawning, licking a soft grey paw. Maybe he was protected, so that even strong magic—especially strong magic—could not touch him.

  “Maybe he is a demon’s child,” she said sharply.

  Tarik, who was a minor demon himself, saw nothing objectionable in that. He hissed at her, showed her a splendid armament of claws, and stalked off into the night.

  She sank down shivering, wrapping her arms about herself. Very carefully, very clearly, though she was all alone, she said, “The sword shaped itself of water and earth, air and fire, at my will and the will of my people who sent me, to choose and consecrate a champion. All foreseeings, all foretellings, led us to believe that that champion was Charles of the Franks. And if it is not, if it is this one who is not truly a man, how can we trust him? How can we know that he will do what is required of him? What if he turns against us? What if—what if he betrays us?”

  The night returned no answer. Her heart was running wild in spite of her, remembering a fine young body and a fine white smile. All the worse for sense or sanity that he should be beautiful. Charles was pleasing to look at, imposing and kingly, but he did not turn her knees to water, or bring her close to forgetting all wisdom or caution.

  And for that she almost hated this champion whom the sword had chosen, this Roland from Brittany. She could almost, even, hate the sword; and that was patently absurd. The sword was the greatest hope her people had—the sword, and the one whom it chose to wield it.

  CHAPTER 7

  Roland dreamed, there in the night, lying in the king’s tent. He was a boy again, barely a man, just come from Brittany to the king’s court. He knew, or so he thought, as much as a young lord needed to know. Above all he knew that if he was to be safe among the common run of humankind, he must conceal his magic. But no one had told him that he would be lonely—he who had been alone and happy all his life—or that he would be so desperately homesick for Merlin’s prison
in Broceliande.

  In his dream Merlin came to him, walking free in the world, and said, “Sword and spear, cup and coin. Remember.”

  Roland tried to ask him what he meant, but Merlin was sinking away beneath deep water. Roland drifted inexorably toward a glare of light that, when he came to it, proved to be the flicker of a lamp.

  She was there, bending over him: the lady of the white stallion, the lady of the sword. She was even more beautiful than he remembered. He was dizzy with her beauty, giddy as if with wine. It made him say things that in his right mind he never would have said. And then he mocked her. He laughed, and she left him, as well she might. He must have given mortal offense.

  He tried to follow, but Turpin barred his way. “Not tonight,” he said in his deep growl of a voice. “Tonight you sleep.”

  “I’ve slept enough,” Roland said.

  “You’ll sleep more,” said Turpin, tipping him neatly and all too easily into the bed he had just now abandoned. He snarled, he fought, but Turpin was too strong for him. He had no choice but to yield.

  He did sleep. He dreamed again, too, dim confused dreams that he remembered in snatches. Merlin in his wood, Charles on his throne. Jagged mountains towering against a bitter-blue sky. A fortress on a crag; a king dying in a bare stone chamber. Sword and spear, coin and cup—cup full of blood that overflowed and lapped the edges of the world. A shadow rose above it, darkness visible, stretching wings as wide as the sky.

  She stood beneath that vast and starless blackness, a slender figure faintly limned in light. The sword lay at her feet. The spear, thrust in earth, burned like a flame in the dark. The coin hung on a chain about her neck, a wheel of silver fire. And in her hands she lifted the cup, the cup of bright blood.

  Sarissa. He woke with her name on his lips, sweet as honey, rich as blood. She was gone still. Turpin slept upright in a chair, snoring to wake the dead.

  He shook himself free of the rags of the dream, and rose softly lest he wake his friend. He was naked, wobble-legged, but apart from the pain in his ribs, he was as well as ever. His knees steadied soon enough. He found his own clothes, clean and only a little damp, folded at the bed’s foot. The silver token was tucked inside the tunic. It sang faintly as it lay in his palm. Coin, he thought, and cup. Yes—and spear. They meant—something. And there was the sword where it had lain beside him nightlong.