Kingdom of the Grail (21 page)

“I killed a bull,” Roland said, “while we were among the infidels.”

“I heard,” Olivier said. “The Spaniards there were hailing you as a sort of god.”

“And here,” said Roland, “they curse me for a demon. I need to know why, and why now. What profit is it to anyone to turn the army against me? I have no more power here than I ever have. I've slain no bull for them to marvel at or excoriate me for.”

“Personal enmity?” Olivier wondered.

Roland nodded slowly. “It must be. But to prove it . . .”

“Let me do the hunting,” Olivier said. “I'm the great ox, the chaser after women. No one will suspect me, or find it odd to see me nosing about. A woman can hide anywhere, after all.”

“No,” said Roland. “It could be dangerous.”

The blue eyes brightened to a distressing degree. “So it could! All the better. As for you, brother, the more ordinary you seem, and the less you stray from your accustomed round, the more likely you'll be to prove the rumors wrong. How perfect a simple soldier can you be?”

“Not very,” Roland said with a twist of the lip. “Olivier, I won't have you—”

“It's settled,” Olivier said. “Now put the sword away. You look as if you're about to conjure the hosts of heaven with it.”

“I should like to,” Roland muttered, but Olivier had the right of it. He sheathed and veiled the sword again, drained another cup of the awful ale, and let himself be put to bed though it was barely sunset. Later, he thought, much later, he would slip away. But not while Olivier was awake and watching him.

CHAPTER 23

S
arissa heard the whispers, saw the dark stares. She felt in her heart the hate the Franks directed toward Roland. It made her deeply and abidingly angry.

Someone here meant him ill. And no matter that the whispers were not far off her own doubts and fears. She loved him in spite of them. These rough barbarians had no right.

He came to her in the night, creeping softly out of the dark, slipping beneath the wall of her tent. He seemed the simple, eager lover, but there was a tautness in him that even she could not smooth away. It marred the harmony. They were awkward; they struggled, more like warriors than lovers, until Sarissa collapsed in a fit of laughter.

Roland withdrew as far as the tent's compass would allow, drawing into a tight knot, turning his back on her. She bit back the last of her mirth and went softly after him. Just within reach, she stopped. She ran her hand down his spine as she had that first night.

This time he refused to turn. But she persisted. She spread hands across his shoulders, and stroked upward, gathering his thick black hair at his nape. It always seemed to need cutting. It was long enough now to plait, which she did, slowly, lingering over each woven strand.

He had shut her out. She tied off the plait between his
shoulderblades with a bit of fringe from the blanket. Softly she said, “I wasn't laughing at you.”

She was astonished when he responded. “I didn't think you were.”

“Then why—” She stopped. Of course she knew why.

“I shouldn't have come here,” he said. “With what's being said of me, let alone the matter of your honor or your reputation—”

“That matters nothing,” she said.

He turned. His face was white and set. “It matters a great deal. I can't ask you to bear the burden of me.”

“I already have,” she said. “There's no changing it.”

He shook his head. “Someone wants my blood, with my name and honor besides. I won't cost you yours as well.”

“Let me judge that,” she said.

“No.” He rose. He found his garments where they lay scattered. He put them on.

She made no effort to stop him. Maybe he thought her vanquished because of it. Well, and let him think so. He had his arrogance, that one.

She let him go, though it tore at her heart to see him so stiff and so very much alone. He needed that, just then. She gave it to him.

When he was gone, she called Tarik. She seldom did that. The
puca
was his own creature; he did not obey orders, though he would serve her of his free will.

He took his time in coming. She had expected that. She used it to wash and dress and plait her hair. Not that he would care, but it settled her mind. It made clear what she must do.

He slipped through the tentflap in a guise he seldom wore, because, he declared, it was anything but elegant. She wondered if this young man-shape had looked so much like Roland before they both met the Breton Count. Maybe it had. They were descended of the same kin and kind, when it came down to it. That too-pale skin, that black-black hair, struck her strangely just now, and those eyes as yellow as a cat's, regarding her with a cat's insouciant stare.

He bowed low, half in reverence, half in mockery. His grace was not human—but it was very like Roland's. “You command, great lady?” he inquired. His voice at least was different: lighter, softer, without the Breton accent.

“I never command you, my friend,” she said, “but I do ask. If you can help—”

His lips drew back from sharp cat-teeth. “Help you hunt?”

She nodded.

He laughed silently. “Always, great lady. I will always hunt for you. What are we hunting? Snakes?”

She held him with her stare, though that was not easy. “You know something. Tell me.”

“I know,” he said, “that snakes hunt
him
.” He said it so, with as much reverence as was in him.

“And who is the snakes' master?” Sarissa asked, forbearing for the nonce to remark on a
puca
's speaking of any man as if he were worthy of respect.

Tarik twitched in his skin, shivering, though his eyes were as bold as ever. “You know,” he said.

“I do not.”

He shrugged. If she wanted to be a fool, his expression said, then let her.

Snakes, she thought. Serpents—the old serpent. But—

“He was cast down!”

“He rose up,” Tarik said.

“Here?”

“Where else would he be? Or you?”

She had been led to this army, this king and his people. And there was darkness among them. She knew that. And Roland was—

“He does not belong to that one,” Tarik said flatly.

“He was bred by that one,” said Sarissa.

“Even the first of them was no loyal servant.” Tarik's grin was full of fangs. “The serpent is here, himself, not his child or his servant. I will hunt him for you.”

“How long have you known?” Sarissa asked him.

“Long,” said Tarik.

She had not asked, too sure that the darkness came from Roland. Maybe the darkness had fostered that. Was not its master the Father of Lies?

Tarik shrank into his most favored form, the small grey cat. Before she could call him back, he was gone, vanished into the night.

He knew where the serpent was. And he had not told her.

“Great goddess,” she whispered. Tarik was going to
hunt the old enemy himself. His powers were not inconsiderable, but he was a very minor demon. He was never a match for the corrupter of kings.

She spun in frustration, a whirling, stamping dance. He had warded himself from her. The fool. He could not die as men died, but he could be destroyed. If the old enemy had restored even a portion of his strength, he could crush the
puca
beneath his foot.

The world she had envisioned even this morning was proved to be a false image. Roland—the more his own people condemned him, the more certain she was that her doubts were folly. Now she faced a truth she was not ready after all to face.

She had come to the Franks in search of a champion. The war in which Roland was to fight was coming as surely as the moon swelled from new to full and shrank to new again. But in her arrogance she had reckoned that the enemy himself would be mustering forces far away, in his stronghold at the edge of the world. She had never stopped to think that he might be doing so here. In Spain. Full in the center of this army that the Franks had mustered to conquer the infidel.

This
army. The infidels had seen the size and strength of it and regretted that they had ever begged the Frankish king to aid them against the rebels. It was a very great army—and it was founded on deception. Its men believed that they had come on crusade. But its king knew that he had been summoned as an ally of the infidel. What better weapon for the Father of Lies to take and wield?

She paced, fretting. A great part of her twitched to go out, to join the hunt. But Tarik was a better hunter than she, and far less obtrusive in the night. Come morning she would go after him, but not now.

She mustered her wits, which were far more scattered than they should be. The enemy's influence? Or Roland, shattering the calm of her spirit, laying her open to confusion?

Was there a difference?

No doubts. Not now. She stood still and for a long moment simply breathed. Slowly her heart ceased its hammering. Her thoughts stilled and focused. She found her center again, and the light of magic in it.

It was well aware of the darkness in the camp, as it had been from the beginning. But where that darkness was, or what it was, it knew no better now than it ever had. It could not touch the source or come near it. It could only circle and snarl.

And yet that circle had a center. If she could come to it in the body, she would know. She was sure of that. She would recognize the enemy.

Would she? He had been stripped of everything about him that might be tempting to mortals: beauty, splendor, even the music of his voice. He would seem the most ordinary of men. A lesser lord, perhaps a priest—he had played the part of priests before. Those could come nearer kings than most, and were nearly always trusted.

She slept a little, by main force of will. Her body had need of rest, and it passed the remainder of the night. In the dawn she was up. Tarik had not come back, nor had she expected it.

She dressed for riding, for comfort and to escape the notice that a woman, dressed as a woman, would attract in this camp of war. She walked out calmly.

There was an altar near the king's tent, set under a canopy so that the priests and the king and the highest lords were sheltered from the sun, but the lesser folk could see and hear if they chose. Sarissa held back among them, watching and listening as Turpin celebrated the rite. His acolytes this morning were monks and priests of notable rank, some of them warriors of God as he was, others attached to the king's chancery. The king himself knelt in front of the altar, his silver-fair hair and broad shoulders unmistakable.

Roland's battle-brother was there, the great golden ox whose wits were keener than anyone knew. Olivier was close by the king, guarding him without making a show of it. Sarissa had felt his eyes on her like the touch of both fire and ice: warmth of his recognition, cool reckoning of the danger she might pose to the king.

Beyond him, all but hidden in his shadow, she saw Roland. Her heart stopped, then began to beat very hard. Of course he had come to Mass on this, the first day after his return. He would have been a fool to stay away.
Rumors of witchcraft and worse must falter in the face of his calm and faithful presence at the Mass.

Roland did not seem aware of her. He divided his attention between the rite and the king. Nothing else, that she could see, touched upon him. Which was well, she supposed. Her wiser self was glad. The rest was like to weep.

She steadied her mind once more, and made herself face the matter at hand. Between those two, Charles was as safe as he could be. She sensed no darkness in him. He had not been corrupted.

And yet . . .

It was close. Her awareness of it made it seem stronger. She searched the faces of the priests under the canopy. Plain human faces, bearded or shaven clean, pale clerks or ruddy warrior priests. None of them bore the marks of the dark angel. Nor did any cry out to her that he was the ancient enemy.

She slipped away before the Mass was done, tracking the darkness by the shudder in her skin. The trail, to her surprise and dismay, led to Turpin's tent.

It was deserted. Turpin was still at Mass. His servants and his acolytes were attending him. No one else lingered there, not even a guard to protect its contents.

There was little enough to protect. Turpin's armor on its stand; his weapons on their rack. A bed and a chest, a table and a lamp.

She paused on the threshold. Her nostrils twitched. Something here was awry. To the eye it was serene. She scented no fear, caught no stink of death. But her nape prickled.

Something ill had walked here. She tracked it by the flutter in her middle. From entrance to chest, and in the chest a silver chalice. Turpin had been celebrating the Mass with another, more ornate and less purely beautiful. This one he clearly cherished. It was old and full of sanctity. She who had held the Grail in her hands knew this for an earthly image of it, as every chalice was; but this one more than most.

A tarnish of shadow lay on it. She gazed down into it, seeking visions in the silver. They were blurred and scattered, but as she sharpened her eyes, they came clear.

She saw Roland in a wood that she recognized as Saxon.
She saw the attack on him that began as seduction. She knew the face of the creature once it was dead. Yes—yes, that was the old enemy's servant. And Roland had killed it.

The face of the one who had called up the image, she could just barely see. It seemed to be—not Turpin's. She was glad of that, but not so glad of what it seemed to be. The king's?

It was very like his, but younger. The face of a young man, hardly more than a boy. Shadow lay heavy on him.