Kingdom of the Grail (39 page)

CHAPTER 47

S
arissa started awake. Memory of warmth caressed her. She stretched her hand to the one who lay beside her.

There was only cold emptiness and bitter absence.

She had been dreaming of him again, of the sunlit days in Agua Caliente, when no anger lay between them, and the only doubts were hers. She could still remember the shape of him, the salt-sweet taste of his skin, how he loved to trace her breasts and belly with kisses.

A sound escaped her, halfway between laughter and a sob. So brief a time she had had him, in all the years of her life, and those days had swelled to overwhelm the rest.

She had driven him away. Her error, her folly had done it. She had not trusted him, though he proved over and over that he was stronger than his blood.

Only the gods knew where he had gone. People were saying that the enemy had taken and corrupted him. She did not believe it. He had fled by his own will, under his own power. He had vanished from all awareness—save that she would have known, deep in her heart, if he had died.

The enemy was coming. He had breached the outer defenses of the kingdom. He had entered the marches, the grey country between worlds. Men and demons followed him.

“Open the way for him,” Nieve said. “Lure him in. Close behind him and destroy him.”

The nine ladies gathered in a high chamber. It was in another tower than the shrine of the Grail. That one looked eastward to the sunrise. This looked north, to the winds of winter and the cold still light, and the enemy's ancient stronghold beyond the world's end.

Here was a chamber of guard and watchfulness. Its center was a stone table, and on it a globe of crystal.

They stood round the crystal, nine ladies, tall and short, dark and fair, beautiful and simply pleasant to look on. But to the eyes of the spirit they were all much the same: shining with the splendor of their magic, and bound inextricably to the light.

In the crystal was the orb of the mortal world, blue and white, brown and green, hanging like a jewel in the night. At Nieve's words the vision shifted. The world blurred. The night brightened to twilight, a shimmer of mist and magic, somewhat like falling water, and somewhat like the gleam on the face of a pearl.

Darkness crawled across it. It wore the semblance of a serpent. Its scales were the bodies of men and demons. Its eyes were blind orbs, lit with a pallid light like the moon behind clouds. In its head was set a dark jewel.

There was the enemy, commanding his army of slaves both mortal and otherwise.

“He will break through our defenses,” Nieve said in her calm practical voice. “He's too strong for us without the king to anchor our strength. If we let him think he's defeated us before he actually has, he may grow overconfident. Then we may have some hope of driving him back.”

“And,” said dark Inanna, “if he breaks through in a place of his choosing, he'll ravage our country before he comes to Carbonek. We can offer him our weakness in a corner of the empty lands, and bring him direct here.”

None of them took issue with that. They had been together long and long, guarding the Grail. What one thought, another might say, as easy, as unconscious as the drawing of a breath.

Sarissa, who had been apart from them for a year and more, could feel the bonds tugging at her, the weaving closing about her, drawing her into its warp and woof.
She did not want to argue with a plan that was both simple and profoundly sensible. And yet she also did not want to be wholly at one with the rest. She wanted—she knew not what.

Roland.

She thrust that name aside, out of her mind, if never out of her heart. She said, “So let it be done. Let him wander yet a while, and fancy that he tests our defenses. We'll weaken them slowly, open the way to him beyond the field of the standing stones. And when he comes—”

“When he comes,” said Inanna, “we face him.”

“And vanquish him, one hopes,” murmured the usually silent Liu. Her almond eyes were lowered, her ivory face serene.

“We'll do what we can,” Nieve said.

“But without a king strong enough to bolster us, what hope do we have?” Freya demanded. “Truly—what hope is there?”

“More than none,” said Nieve. “The champion may come back. The sword may do what it was wrought to do.”

“Or not.” Freya's white hand parted the air. A thing of forged steel took shape above the table. Durandal's white pommel mirrored the eyes of the serpent within the globe of crystal. With a swift, fierce gesture, she thrust it into the globe.

The crystal did not shatter. The sword's blade sank into it as if it had been soft clay. It pierced the heart of the serpent.

“An omen,” Clodia said. “May it come to pass.”

Freya shook her head, tossing her wheat-fair braids. She turned on her heel and stalked away.

Sarissa stared for a while at the place where she had been. Not so perfect a harmony, then, after all.

The others left one by one. Sarissa, who had thought to escape first, found herself among the last. The sword remained in the crystal. The vision had faded with the breaking of the circle.

Inanna reached to remove the sword. Sarissa stopped her hand. “No. Leave it. We need the reminder.”

Inanna shrugged, sighed. When she was gone, Sarissa was alone.

Durandal gleamed in the cold light. Sarissa brushed its
pommel with her finger. She had a sudden, vivid vision of Roland's face. His eyes were on something she could not see. She doubted very much that he was thinking of her.

Alive, she thought. Alive and well. Though where, or what he did there, she was not able to discover.

Turpin was down in the camp among the Franks, as he had been since Roland fled. He had come out of the Grail's shrine with a great stillness on him. He had bowed low to the king, and left the castle without a word.

But in camp among his people, he was as he had always been. He had told them the truth of their presence here, and they had accepted it, because it was he who said it. They had elected him their commander—Franks might do such things, if they were minded.

Sarissa had spent rather more time among these men than might have been reckoned necessary. Many of them she had known since she came to Paderborn. They were at ease with the thought of her, even knowing what she was.

In past days the levies had begun to come in. They camped farther down the long field, toward the green expanse of the valley, on either side of the king's white road. The Franks regarded them with interest—accustomed to fighting in armies with strangers, some of whom might have been enemies only the season before. Though these were stranger than most that they might have fought with. Not all were human, and not all wore human faces.

Sarissa stood with Turpin on a rise above the road, watching another lord of the kingdom bring in his army. This was the Prince of Poictesme, with a great force of mortal archers, and a rallying of wildfolk hopping and slithering and flapping behind them.

“That's nigh all of them, yes?” said Turpin. “Only one or two yet to come.”

Sarissa nodded. “Only the lords of the farthest domains: Herne, Gwyn, Huon. Herne is close; he'll reach us before the sun sets. Of the others we're less certain, but they'll come soon.”

“And then, the enemy will come.”

She looked into those quiet grey eyes. They had not been so calm before he saw the Grail. Nor had they seen so far
or so clearly. “Then the enemy comes,” she said, “and the war we've all been waiting for.”

“I'm ready,” he said. He stood easily, feet apart, hand on swordhilt, as warriors learned to stand; but the monk's robe and the tonsure told another truth.

The army of Poictesme camped in its allotted place down the valley. Sarissa saw it settled and its prince sent to the castle to speak with Morgan of the nine, who commanded the armies in the king's incapacity. She went back to the Franks, ate and drank and slept among them. She did not dream of Roland that night. Instead she dreamed of rain, and of rivers running to the sea.

She woke to a cool and misty morning, and a silver sun, and word running through the camps: Herne and Gwyn had come in together. Only Huon was yet to come. And the enemy had found the weakness that the nine had left for him, and pierced it. She felt in her own skin the pain of that violation.

It was necessary. The road would bring him past empty lands and villages long deserted, burned and trampled in the last of his wars. No living place would suffer from his presence. No innocent creature would fall prey to his malice.

She was needed in the castle. But she stayed among the armies. Morgan was a greater general than she, and Nieve far more accomplished in preparing for a siege. Whatever they needed of her, they could provide for themselves.

She was running away—not as suddenly or completely as Roland had, but close enough. She did not care. She could make herself useful here: gathering the commanders, telling them all that was fit for them to know; rallying the troops. They needed her, she told herself, more than the castle did. They needed to see a great one of the Grail walking among them, giving them hope.

CHAPTER 48

L
ord Huon was late to the muster. It was a long march, and the end of it much beset with storms of rain and sleet. The walls between the worlds had broken. Roland could feel the shards of them grinding in his spirit. The enemy was marching through the Grail's kingdom.

They could travel only as fast as men could walk, and as the earth would let them. Roland struggled to remember a soldier's patience. There was time to teach his pack of raw recruits a little of what they should know; to give them some defenses in the battles that would come.

The closer they came to Carbonek, the more difficult it was to go on. The road buckled and surged under their feet. Winds lashed them. Lightnings battled overhead.

These children of agelong peace were strong of heart, bright and sturdy of spirit, but this was a hard road, with fear upon it and terror at the end of it. Messengers sent ahead brought back word from Carbonek: the enemy was far from it still, on another road than this; and the army had gathered. They were the last.

That, Roland could credit. But that the enemy was far away, he was not so sure of. Sometimes the amulet on his breast would burn like fire. At other times, in the nights particularly, he would wake with a start, and shudder, as if something foul had passed through the tent.

“There's old darkness in the earth,” Marric said by the
fire on a night without stars, a day or two out from Carbonek. “That great thing in the castle, it washes this country with light. But long before it came here, other things walked and burrowed and flew. Those that weren't destroyed, that were only sleeping, will be waking now.”

Roland had paused for a cup of heated wine and a loaf of Marric's bread. He shivered in the cool of the night. “I feel them,” he said. “They're moving through the earth.”

“Are they?” Marric seemed surprised, though he covered it with close attention to his stewpot. “So,” he said as if to himself. “It's in your bones.”

Roland might have asked him what he meant, but Cait had come into the firelight. Her face was taut with worry. “Bran is sick,” she said.

It was not Cait's way to fret over trifles. Roland followed her to her own campfire. He was aware of Marric treading softly behind, but he did not look back. He was equally aware of the rumbling in the earth. Something had roused very close, almost beneath them. He had an instant's awareness of jeweled claws and great gleaming teeth.

Then he was bending over a young man from a village near Caer Sidi. He was a pale and withered thing, lying shivering on a pile of cloaks. His eyes were sunk in his skull.

And yet Roland had seen him only yesterday, practicing with throwing-spears and throwing farther than anyone. He had won a wager with Cieran, a cask of Gemma's ale. He had been a big ruddy creature, strong and proud of it.

“When?” Roland asked Cait, though others were babbling, vying to tell him everything.

Cait knew how to measure her words. “It started this morning,” she said. “We thought it was the ale. The rest of them got better. He didn't. When the sun went down, so did he—just all at once, as if something sucked the juice out of him.”

“Something did!” said a thin wiry boy with a nose almost as sharp as the bogle's. “I saw it. I did! It was like a bat. It fastened on his neck. I scared it away—I yelled, I think. Nobody heard me. I thought it was a dream. That was last night, when it was still dark, and the sun hadn't come yet. It must have come back when the sun went down again.”

“Nursery tales,” Cait sneered.

“No,” said Marric. “It's real.”

They all stared at him, a ring of white scared faces.

“Is he going to die?” a voice asked, faint and frightened, from the back of the crowd.

“Not if I can help it,” Roland said grimly. “Cait, send someone to Lord Huon, he needs to know. Marric, put up wards. See if there's anyone who can help you. I'll do what I can, once I'm done here.”

“I can do it,” Marric said. “Kyllan will help. You look after the boy.”

Roland nodded once, then forgot him. Bran was wandering in a black dream, muttering words that made no sense. Darkness was nested in him, feeding on his spirit.

Roland was a warrior, not a healer, but Merlin had taught him much; and somehow, just then, he knew what he should do. He ran hands down the gaunt and shivering body. As he did it, he called the light to him: light of fire, light of stars and moon. Light within, too, through the burning glass of the amulet. What it drew from, he did not know, nor at the moment did he care.

It was as if the moon had come down to fill his hands. He poured it out over the dying man.

Behind him, someone's breath caught. He sat on his heels, rather surprised himself.

What the dark thing had taken, the light restored, slowly at first, then more swiftly. It was like rain on withered grass. The flesh returned to the bones. Awareness returned to the eyes, as Bran opened them, squinting at Roland. His voice was faint, but grew stronger with use. “Sir! Did I fall down? I don't remember—”

“You drank enough ale to drown an ox,” Roland said, cuffing him very lightly. “Here, Cait has a posset for you. Drink it and sleep. You should be well enough by the time you wake.”

Bran was amenable to that gentle bullying. While they were all intent on him, Roland left them. He passed through Marric's wards as they rose, a tightening on the surface of the skin, a shiver beneath it. He could almost see the shimmer of the wall the bogle had built about the camp.

Lord Huon was sitting by Marric's fire, all alone, dressed plainly and squatting as easily as one of the villagers. He had found a bowl and was eating a helping of stew from
the pot. “It's good,” he said as Roland squatted beside him and filled another bowl. “What's in it? Rabbit?”

“Mule, I think,” Roland said.

Huon choked only slightly, and went on eating. In the dark and firelight, the horns on his brow were almost clear: antlers in velvet, just short of their full growth. His eyes were as large and dark as a stag's. Roland wondered if he would put on the full semblance, come the season, and go rutting after hinds in the wood.

It was not a worthy thought. He put it down and sat on it. Not without a blush, either—for he had run with the deer one autumn, and nearly been killed, too, when he challenged the king of stags. Merlin had sewn him together when he came crawling back, and carefully said nothing of young things' folly.

“The man who was ill,” Huon said in the silence. “He'll recover?”

Roland nodded.

“And the wards are up,” said Huon. “You took command well, there.”

Roland glanced at him. “Did I overstep myself?”

“I don't think you can,” Huon said.

“My lord,” Roland said. “If I've given offense—”

“No,” Huon said. “Tomorrow, late in the day, we'll come to Carbonek. If we're allowed to pass.”

Roland raised his brows.

Huon raised his own. “Don't tell me you don't feel it.”

“The thing beneath us?”

“Yes. I'm holding it as best I can, but this many men and wildfolk, this close to the Grail—if we pass it, it well may rise up in back of us.”

Huon might not understand why Roland laughed, but Roland found the irony rather wonderful. “Give me the rearguard. I'll hold it if it rises.”

Huon regarded him for a long moment: weighing, measuring. Roland sat quiet under the scrutiny. He had been judged before. He would pass, or he would not. He ate his bowl of stew and drank a cup of ale.

At last Huon said, “Do it, then. Take the bogle with you. My mages will go, and a company of my own guard.”

Roland inclined his head. That was generous. “May I choose the rest of the rearguard?”

“As you will,” Huon said.

Roland bowed where he sat, and rose. “I'd best get to it, then. Your mages, your guardsmen—”

“They will obey you,” said Huon.

Roland bowed again, a little more deeply, then went where he needed to go.

It was a rather motley company that gathered in the rear come morning: a hundred lordly men of Caer Sidi in silver armor with long green cloaks, mounted on grey horses; seven mages on white mules; and Roland's recruits, his villagers in leather and old iron, with their spears and bows. The former rearguard, seasoned troops from Huon's own lands, regarded them in some disdain, but they kept their chins up and their eyes forward.

Roland might have regretted his choice, seeing how raw these children were, but his heart had chosen for him. If it had chosen badly, he would pay whatever price was laid on him.

They broke camp and rode out just as the sun was rising over mountains that—surely they had not been there before?

If they had, he would not have seen them: they had marched for days in clouds and rain. The sky was clear blue this morning, the peaks distinct, the highest crowned with snow. On one of those foremost was the castle of the Grail. It was barely to be seen, veiled in wards, growing up out of the grey stone, but he knew it. He felt it. It sang to him, sweet beyond bearing, calling him back to it.

He could not let it distract him. The thing beneath the earth was stirring more strongly with the sun's coming. He could feel the quiver underfoot before he mounted. The usually placid gelding skittered and snorted. Roland calmed him with a word and a hand on his neck. “Go on,” he said to the rearguard. “March and ride.”

They found the order he had given them: recruits first, then guardsmen, and mages scattered among the lot of them, sustaining wards and keeping watch. He brought up the rear, with Marric on his brown pony ambling alongside.

Roland saw Bran marching with the rest of his kin. He glanced at Marric.

“He doesn't remember a thing,” Marric said. “We had a
terrible time convincing him he'd been sick for a day—he kept insisting we must be playing a trick on him because he drank more than his share of the ale.”

“Did he?” Roland asked.

“He drank enough,” said Marric. “No one else was taken ill in the night. The wards held.”

“Good,” Roland said. “It will get worse, you know, when the enemy comes to Carbonek.”

“Then we'll have to keep the wards up. They'll have thought of that in the castle, I'm sure. The people there—they remember the last war. They're not children as these are.”

“All of them?” Roland asked after a moment. “They all remember?”

“Most,” said Marric.

“And . . . the enchantresses? They, too?”

“All nine,” Marric said. He slanted a glance at Roland under the tilt of his brows. “The Grail sustains life far beyond mortal span, and these ladies are its guardians and keepers. They've served it since it came to Montsalvat.”

Roland had known that. And yet it was strange, to think of Sarissa as older than Merlin, older than the Grail-king. She seemed so young. She
was
young.

And why should that matter? She had lied to him. She had mistrusted him. He should not care that she had been alive since before the Temple fell in Jerusalem. Or that he, beside her, was less than an infant—he was an insect, the child of a day, born at sunrise and dead of age before the night fell.

The thing below was older far, and it was awake, swimming through earth and stone as if it were water. He thought of a great pike in a northern lake, a spear of bone and gleaming scales, hurtling toward its prey.

The sound of marching feet drew it. The wards barely turned it aside. It had been asleep a long, long time. It was hungry, famished near to death. It smelled their blood, hot and sweet, and the salt tang of their flesh.

“We'll be bait,” Roland said to Marric, but loud enough for the rearmost ranks to hear. “Let the bulk of the army draw somewhat ahead. We'll move slowly, but make a great deal of noise. Bring out the drums. Play the trumpets. Sing, shout, laugh.”

“That's mad,” Kyllan said. But he was grinning. He ran to one of the pack-mules and tugged open its pack, pulling out drums and pipes and a single, surprising small harp. Gwydion the smith took that.