Kingdom of the Grail (10 page)

CHAPTER 9

S
arissa stood flat-footed, taken for once completely aback. When she could begin to think, her first thought was pure white anger. The nerve, the sheer gall of the man, to come here, raise the powers, leave—and hardly a useful word spoken.

And oh, dear forgotten gods, the strength of him, to do it with such ease, as if it were no more complicated than the simplest of fire-spells. There was no gap in the wall he had raised, no weakness. When she went inside the tent, Queen Hildegarde was sleeping peacefully, and once again there was color in her cheeks. Sarissa had not been able to do that, not so easily or so strongly. And she was a healer and more. She was strong herself, strong enough to bring down a mountain or raise a fortress of living light.

“The only way,” she said to Tarik when they could be alone, “the
only
way he could have done it was by knowing where the darkness came from. That has been hidden from me. But he knows.”

Then, Tarik's tail-flip said, she should ask the enchanter who it was. Tarik was singularly unaffected by Sarissa's outrage, or by the cause of it, either.

“Suppose that he is part of it,” Sarissa said. “You've seen him. He's a devil's get. It's written in his face. And that power he has—that's not plain human strength. He's no mortal man, whatever he may be pretending.”

You should ask,
Tarik said, as close to mere words as he ever came.

Sarissa was not about to do that. She should offer thanks, for now truly the queen was safe; but she could not bring herself to do that, either.

Pride was a sin. Yet she could not overcome it, nor truly want to. She could well convince herself that he had warded the queen so easily because the whole was his doing: darkness as well as escape from darkness. Devils thrived on confusion.

Tarik was disgusted. He stalked away with his tail stiffly erect. Just before the corner of a tent would have hidden him, he vanished. A raven spread broad black wings, climbing into the sky.

The Abbess Gisela, who had been born a king's daughter, heard Mass each morning with the other holy women who attended the queens, and with such of the others as were minded to attend. This morning Sarissa was so minded. She put on a gown like a Frankish woman, and a dark mantle, and slipped in among the faithful. She knelt and stood and crossed herself with the rest, lifted her voice in the responses, and prayed when prayer was fitting.

She had been recognized. Whispers spread. She was careful not to listen too closely. The Mass had its own power, raised its own citadel of light. For a little while she rested in it.

When it was over, the abbess happened to pass Sarissa making her slow way back to the tents. They walked side by side, with the abbess' women trailing at some distance. They took the long way about, which gave them ample time for conversation.

Abbess Gisela seemed in no haste to begin it. Sarissa walked in silence. She was aware of the abbess' eyes on her. Young eyes, and bright; curious. “Were you mocking us?” Gisela asked at last.

“I am not a Muslim,” Sarissa said.

The white-fair brows rose toward the black veil. “Truly? But you let everyone think—”

“People may think as they please,” Sarissa said.

“And so betray themselves?”

The corner of Sarissa's mouth twitched. Not all Franks, she thought, were innocents, though this one seemed as wide-eyed as the worst of them.

“Tell me what you need of me,” said Gisela.

That was a Frank beyond doubt: direct, to the point, and no graceful dancing about the truth. “Tell me of the man who won the sword,” Sarissa said.

“Ah,” said Gisela. “He's pretty, isn't he? Shy with women, tongue-tied to a terrible degree, and quiet enough among the men, too. But he's the best fighter in Francia.”

“That I know from watching him,” Sarissa said. “I need to know more. Who he is.
Why
he is.”

“And whether you can trust him?”

Sarissa nodded.

Gisela looked as if she might have offered her own opinion as to that, but instead she said, raising her voice slightly, “Sister Aude! Lady, come; walk with us.”

One of the sisters stepped forward from among the rest. She was a tall, robust creature, with a curl of coppery hair escaping from her veil, and milk-white skin richly freckled. Her body was ripe in her habit, full-breasted, deep-hipped. Sarissa would have expected to find her beside some great bear of a man, with half a dozen of his children at her feet, and yet another swelling her belly.

And yet she was consecrated to the Christian God, forbidden man's touch, and all that richness shut away from the world. It was a great sacrifice, Sarissa supposed. She could hope that it was worth the price.

“Aude,” said Gisela, “attend this lady, if you please. Tell her such things as she wishes to know.”

Aude bowed as an obedient nun should. Her eyes were alert under the veil. She did not have the look of one wholly given up to submission.

She was skilled, too, in leading without seeming to lead, taking Sarissa away to the courtyard formed by the walls of the queens' tents. It was a lovely greensward, with a little stand of trees, and a canopy under which one could sit and ply one's needle.

This Aude proceeded to do, taking up the work that had lain folded on the bench. She had the air that nuns cultivated, of sublime patience. And yet Sarissa noticed that the garment she was embroidering was a man's tunic, and a
fine one, too, of scarlet silk. She threaded a needle with gold and continued the embroidery of the hem.

Sarissa sat on a bench opposite her, regretting for a moment that her own hands were empty. She had brought no needlework with her from Spain, nor was there any laid out for her as there had been for Aude. It would have been welcome now, to occupy her fingers. She laced them in her lap, tilted her head toward the tunic, and inquired, “For your father?”

“My brother,” Aude said. She shook her head and smiled a little wryly. “Not that I expect him to keep it clean for more than a moment, once he puts it on. But he does need something that's fit to wear at festivals.”

“I don't suppose your brother is the Count Roland.”

Aude laughed. She held up the tunic. It would have covered two of Roland. “Oh, no! My brother is Olivier—his friend, the king's Companion.”

“And do you approve of that friendship?”

Aude's mirth retreated to her eyes and to the corners of her mouth. “I swore vows,” she said, “but if God had not had me first, you can be sure I'd be flinging myself at that lovely creature.”

“The abbess says he's shy of women,” Sarissa said.

“Very shy,” Aude agreed, “but charming, and bold enough once you've persuaded him to trust you. It's quite like taming a wolfcub.”

“Wolfcubs grow into wolves,” Sarissa muttered.

If Aude heard that, she did not acknowledge it. “He was half-wild when he came to court. His mother died when he was born, poor thing. His father fostered him with a seneschal, then died in battle when Roland was still a child. He was brought up all anyhow, and he knew nothing of women at all. Not one thing.”

“But he knew how to fight.”

“Oh, yes,” said Aude in a slow exhalation of breath. “Yes, indeed. And courts, too, and the ways of kings—those he knew.”

“Indeed? A count's seneschal could teach him such a thing?”

“Well,” said Aude, “no.” She stitched at her border for a moment, finishing the curve of a golden vine. “Brittany is . . . strange,” she said at length. “Its people are still pagan,
mostly. The Marcher Counts have never so much ruled it as kept it from being a thorn in the king's side. Nor have they always succeeded in that.”

“Roland is not a Breton?”

“Roland is half a Breton,” said Aude. “His father was a Frank. His mother was of the old people. Very old. There are whispers, stories—one never knows what to make of them.”

“That he has devil's blood?”

Aude crossed herself quickly. “He's not evil! Truly he is not.”

“And yet his forebears were not all human men.”

“Is that why you came?” Aude asked her. “To hunt him down? To see him condemned?”

There was no mirth in this lady now, and no friendship, either. If she had had a sword, Sarissa did not doubt that it would have been in her hand, angled toward Sarissa's heart.

Sarissa spoke carefully, not in fear—she was not afraid of any mortal thing—but to be sure that she was not misunderstood. “I will hunt down evil wherever it is. That I am sworn to. If he has no evil in him, he's safe from me. I only want to know.”

“Because he won your sword?”

“How did you know it was mine?”

“I could see,” said Aude, “when you gave it to him. You weren't happy that he won it, were you? Did you want to keep it?”

“It was meant for the king.”

“So I've heard.” Aude sighed. “Very well. But if you use this knowledge ill, or turn it against him, I will see that you pay for your treachery. So will every one of the king's Companions, and every other Frank in this place who has cause to love the Breton Count.”

Sarissa inclined her head. “Has he no enemies, then?”

“Every man has enemies,” Aude said. “Count Roland has fewer than most. He is loved here. Remember that.”

“I will remember,” said Sarissa.

Then at last Aude seemed satisfied, or close enough. She nodded; she stitched at her embroidery. She said in a soft slow voice, “He never speaks of this. But some things people can know, and one is an old story. It's said that in
Brittany, in the forest of Broceliande, is a hidden fastness, a prison built strong and high. In it one lies bound. He has been confined so for years out of count, and will be bound till the moon dies. He does not die, they say, because his blood is not human. He is the child without a father, the forgotten enchanter. He is the hunting hawk of the gods.

“His guardians are also his children. They are a line of enchantresses, it's said, witches of great power. The old gods' blood is in them, devils' blood, but their magic is white and their power of the light. Roland is their child. Or so,” said Aude, “it is said.”

Sarissa sat still. Very, very still. She had been thinking slantwise, slipping round this truth. She did not want it to be so. That he should be a child of
that
one. That ancient evil, that enemy of all she was sworn to.

It did make a great deal clear. Even why the sword had chosen him. There was great power in him—for the light as well as the dark. But the dark was there, coiled in him. It had created him, at great remove: it had sired his forefather.

“I thank you,” she said. Her voice sounded far away in her own ears.

“Mind you,” said Aude as she stitched at her brother's tunic, “these are all tales and rumors. They may be nothing more than that. And if he is a devil's get, it's marked little but his face. He's a good man. I'd trust my life to him.”

“And your soul?”

Aude never hesitated. “And my soul,” she said.

CHAPTER 10

“I
t is here.”

Pepin regarded Ganelon in astonishment. Passion was altogether alien to that cold quiet man, but something very like it was in his voice as he paced the confines of his tent. The two monks who were his servants had effaced themselves by the walls. The third had gone out a day or two before and not come back.

Ganelon stopped in the tent's center, spun on his heel, and hissed at them all. “It is
here!
And not a one of you was aware of it.”

“What, my lord?”

That was not wise at all, but Pepin was still somewhat less than adept at curbing his tongue.

Ganelon turned on him in a blaze of white-faced fury. For an instant Pepin saw his death in those black eyes. But Ganelon eased abruptly, with a faint twist of the lips that dismissed Pepin as any sort of threat. It would have been galling if Pepin had been able to feel anything but shock. “Blood of the Grail,” he said, as if that answered Pepin's question.

Pepin stared blankly at him.

Ganelon had already forgotten him. “There is blood of the Grail in this place. It raised a great warding in the queens' camp. And Borel is gone. Gone utterly. Do you understand?”

The two monks bowed to the floor. “Borel is dead,” said one. He had a soft voice, almost too soft to hear, full of the hiss of breath.

“And why is Borel dead? What killed him?”

“Blood of the Grail,” said the hissing voice. There was no emotion in it at all.

“Did you know? Did you shrink from telling me?”

“Lord,” said the monk. “Lord and master. He went to be certain, before he sought you out. It was hidden so well, warded so strongly—it could have been nothing. A memory; a dream.”

“Dreams do not destroy your kind,” Ganelon said. “Great power destroys them. Power great enough to stand against us. Power of the Grail.” He knelt beside his prostrate servants. His voice dropped to a hiss, colder and far more deeply disturbing than theirs. “If it knows—if it has discovered what we are doing—”

“We are warded, master,” said the monk. “And we know now that it is here. We can—”

“We can do nothing,” Ganelon said, “until we know its face.”

“Master,” said the second monk, even more softly than the first, “the sword that the Saracen gave—is it a mortal sword?”

Ganelon's back stiffened. “You know it is not.”

“The one who presented it—did you see her?”

“I saw a woman of the Saracens,” said Ganelon.

“Her name,” said the monk, “is Sarissa.”

Ganelon sat on his heels as if he had been struck a blow. He stayed so for a long moment. Then he said, “Ah, so. It has been too long—too long in the dark, too long in forgetfulness. I've forgotten all I knew. To have failed to perceive that one of
that
kind was here, and that one of them all—to take her for no more than she seemed to be—indeed I have grown blind.”

“She may not know of us,” the second monk said. “The Frankish king is a great beacon in the night of this world, a great center of prophecy. Might not the Grail have come seeking him, too, master? As we did?”

“It would be astonishing if it had not,” said Ganelon.

His servants rose, bowed deeply, slipped away.

“Will they kill the woman?” Pepin asked.

Ganelon was silent for so long that Pepin reckoned himself ignored once more. Then he said, “What purpose would that serve?”

“She's an enemy. She killed Borel.”

“If she killed Borel,” said Ganelon, “then she will pay. There are worse punishments than death.”

Pepin wanted to ask what they were, but another question struck him with more urgency. “What is blood of the Grail?”

“Much too high a thing for your understanding,” Ganelon answered.

“Teach me, then,” said Pepin.

“No,” Ganelon said.

Ganelon would say no more, not for pleading, not for threats. He went back to his endless ink and parchment. Pepin went off to sulk.

Too high for him, was it? Too lofty for him to understand? He could see well enough that Ganelon was angry, and maybe even a little afraid. Whatever this Grail was, it must be very powerful and very terrible to incite Ganelon's enmity. It had killed Borel, which could not be an easy thing to accomplish. Pepin knew already that Ganelon's monks were something other than men.

Pepin went hunting the Grail's servant. On his way he paused where some of the young men were at practice with swords. That practice had a purpose to it now, to prepare for war in Spain; they were even more exuberant than usual, leaping and whirling and making a great deal of noise.

Roland was with them. He had the sword. The beautiful sword that made Pepin's heart ache when he looked at it.

She
had brought it to Francia. That, he understood. Had this Grail made it, then? Or laid a magic on it? It shimmered as Roland wielded it, and sang a high sweet song.

Roland was as beautiful as the sword, dancing in the sun, bareheaded and dressed in a leather tunic, with his black hair flying as he spun. His back was straight, his steps light. As Pepin paused, Roland paused also, blade hovering, poised to fall and cleave a lesser blade in two. His face was rapt.

It was not the straight back or the breathless grace or
even the sword that woke Pepin to a pure and perfect hate. It was that face as it stared through him, the yellow eyes clear and focused and yet utterly remote, the mouth smiling ever so faintly. The world belonged to Roland, and well he knew it. Whatever he touched turned to gold.

Pepin, whose father was a king, struggled for every gift that was given him. Roland stretched out his hand and took whatever he pleased. Roland the Breton, the witch's child. Before he came to court, Pepin told himself, people had noticed Pepin; had cared what he thought of them. Then Roland came, and everyone ran after him, fell in love with him, hung on his every word.

Part of Pepin knew perfectly well that he was being unreasonable. But there was no denying that Roland had been a favorite from the moment he walked into the king's presence, with his quick wits and his wild beauty. No one ever loved Pepin at first glance. Pity was more likely, or ill-suppressed revulsion.

Pepin was hunting another quarry now. But he would have Roland, too. When he had mastered magic, he would teach that young upstart the meaning of pain. He would twist that so-straight back and mar that handsome face. He would take away all its arts of war and the dance, and the sword, too. He would have them all. And Roland would be left with nothing.

Pepin went on in dark satisfaction, though somewhat weakened by the knowledge that he had, as yet, scarcely even seen magic, let alone wrought it.

She had been among the women, but had left, one of the queen's maids said, on some errand of her own. Pepin paid the maid with a silver ring—a high price, but she would not speak to him for less—and when he tried to snatch a kiss, she slipped lithely away. “For that you pay gold,” she said.

Pepin would not give her the pleasure of seeing him angry. He smiled, which made her stare, and sauntered off with every appearance of ease. She too, he thought. When he was a great mage, she would pay, too. They would all pay, every human creature who had ever mocked or slighted or pitied him. “Better honest scorn,” he said to the air, “than pity.”

He went hunting where the maid directed him, into the
wood that stretched upward along the mountain's slopes. He regretted somewhat that he had not paused to commandeer a horse, but the woman had been on foot, he had been assured. Surely he could catch a lone unmounted woman, even if she were something that had Ganelon alarmed. Ganelon was old, and he was slow. Pepin was young and strong and quick enough on his feet, however crooked his back might be.

He found the marks of her feet soon enough, slender and light, moving without haste but without tarrying, either. She had an assignation, he thought. They would not be the first lovers to tryst in those woods. It was safe enough: no bandits dared raid so close to the king's tent-city, and the more dangerous beasts had been hunted out long since. There had even been an aurochs, whose kind some had thought vanished from the world. Roland had slain it, of course. Who else would have dared?

Gnawing on the seeds of his bitterness, almost reveling in them, Pepin wound among the tree-boles. The way was steep for a while, but then it leveled. Birds were singing. Once something small darted through the undergrowth. A fox perhaps. Pepin paused at a stream to slake his thirst, and to regret that he had not brought somewhat with him to eat. The day was warm and growing warmer. The trail went on and on. Sometimes he thought he glimpsed her, but she flitted out of sight again.

He knew he had been tricked when he realized that he had seen the same cluster of five beeches before, their slender boles like the splayed fingers of a hand. The trail led on, the light tread of narrow delicate feet in the leaves of years, but he stopped.

The sun was distinctly lower than it had been the last time he looked. He had no weapon but the knife at his belt, no food, nothing at all useful for either finding his way home again or camping for the night in the forest. If he had thought to bring a bow, or a loaf of bread . . .

The clouds came with evening. The rain began at nightfall. Pepin found shelter in a thicket of trees, dug like a rabbit in the leafmold and nursed his misery until morning.

He was not cold. Oh, not at all. His anger warmed him wonderfully.

The worst of it, the very worst, was that it was Roland who found him. He emerged blinking and shivering in a grey morning. The rain had stopped but the clouds hung low. His tracks were all washed away. He could only go downward off the mountain, and follow the rain-swollen streams as they leaped and tumbled toward the lowland.

Roland and Olivier came on him when the clouds had begun to break. They carried hunting-bows, and Olivier had a brace of hounds on lead. Roland had his great horn slung on a baldric, flaunting it as he always did, splendid prize and rich royal gift that it was. They strode together with the ease of long companionship, and Olivier was chattering of somewhat or other—a woman, probably; that was all Olivier ever thought of.

Pepin wavered between two base impulses: to fling himself at their feet, weeping with relief, or to hide from them till they were past. The hounds settled it for him. They sprang baying toward him. One slipped its lead and bolted, bowling Pepin over. The other dragged Olivier through the thicket till he stumbled over Pepin's body.

When the tangle had sorted itself out, Pepin was on his feet and Olivier was fussing over him like a great ungainly girl. Roland had caught and leashed the hound. He stood back with his air of lordly arrogance, letting Olivier play the fool.

At long last Olivier's tongue stopped rattling on for a breath's span. In the interval, Roland said, “You look as if you were out all night. Were you lost?”

No doubt he meant to sound properly concerned. To Pepin he only sounded disdainful.

Pepin lifted his chin as a prince might, and said haughtily, “Take me back to Paderborn.”

Roland bowed. Insolent, thought Pepin.

It was a bare hour's walk back to Paderborn, down off the mountain and along a stream that led to the river. Pepin dismissed his escort in sight of the tent-city. “Go back to your hunt,” he said. He did not thank them. Gratitude would have been a lie. They began laughing, he was sure, as soon as he was out of earshot. Pepin the child, Pepin the fool, lost in the woods almost in sight of his father's city.

He would not tell Ganelon of this. Ganelon had the Grail and the Grail's blood, and the woman who had
brought the sword. Roland was Pepin's enemy. He belonged to Pepin. When the time came to destroy him, Pepin would do it. And no one else.

He slunk home in humiliation, but it appeared that no one had even noticed he was gone. That for once he was glad of. And when he came to Ganelon, presenting himself as he did each day, for the first time there was something in the tent that had not been there before.

It was a silver basin, very plain. There was nothing in it but clean pure water. When Pepin slipped through the tentflap, Ganelon said without greeting, “Sit here.”