Kingdom of the Grail (44 page)

“If the enemy takes the Grail,” Roland said, “nothing else will matter. Everything will belong to him, in this kingdom and every other.”

That silenced them all. In the silence he said, “No, we should not make it too simple for him to come to us. You will go, my lord, and my lord of Lyonesse, if you will. Watch the roads against the enemy's coming. Harry him as he comes. Trouble him as much as you may—but not so much that you die of it. Weaken him before he comes to Carbonek.”

Gwyn was too much the prince to break out in a grin of delight, but he was visibly pleased with his charge. Roland had hoped that he might be, he and the young lord of Lyonesse. They had the look of men who would prefer battle to the tedium of a siege. And, much more to the point of this war, each of them commanded a strong force of light horsemen and mounted archers.

It was decided, then, and in a remarkable degree of amity. Roland said even less than usual. He played them all like a harp, and with a fine hand, too. When they parted to attend to their various duties and offices, Marric did not think that many of them guessed how much of their free choice was Roland's doing.

“And you reckon yourself a poor courtier.”

It was not Marric who said that. It was Huon, pausing when most of the others had left. Those two, Marric thought, got on very well together. Maybe because Huon was not quite human either, and because he had known Roland the longest of all the lords.

Roland was still sitting on the stone table, though his companions had left it and were standing about. Huon leaned on the stone, arms folded atop it, regarding Roland with a crooked smile. “You have a gift,” he said.

Roland shrugged, wriggling a little—the hard grey granite must be wearing through his backside. “I did what the king would have wanted.”

“You did it well, too,” Huon said. “You look like him, you know; you have a feel of him.”

“What, the fool whom pity made wise—and none too soon, either?”

“Not quite a fool,” said Huon. “Maybe not yet wise, but closer than you were. May I offer a word of counsel?”

Roland opened his eyes a fraction wider, and waited.

“Don't lose that. Don't go all lordly. The people are your strength.”

“Will lords follow me if I have too common a touch?”

“Lords will follow power wherever they find it. But the people fight best, and strive most strongly, for the ones they love.”

“Any number of lords would say,” Roland said, “that the common folk follow whoever is set over them—blindly loyal, because they can do no other.”

Huon snorted softly. “They may dream, but when they wake, they find another truth. Remember it, son of the Grail. It may save your soul.”

“Have I a soul to save?” But Roland spoke lightly, and not as if he either wanted or needed an answer. He sprang down from the dolmen, stretching till his bones creaked. Shoulder to shoulder, easy with one another, they walked out of the circle.

CHAPTER 53

S
lowly the grey land changed into one both green and empty. The mists endured, and a slow steady rain that began every morning and drizzled damply until the early nightfall. The road stretched away ahead of them, wide, clear, and completely untraveled. Not even a bird broke the monotony of the sky.

Pepin and his hellions, as they proudly had taken to calling themselves, had the vanguard. He ran scouts ahead because a good commander did, but he was a better scout than they: he could feel the land underfoot, and taste the air that blew past his face. It was all quiet, all empty. Nothing at all either met or threatened them.

“The way is wide open,” he said to Ganelon when the army halted. It was perhaps midday. They had come to a wide slow river. The bridge across it was narrow, barely wide enough for the baggage wagons. There was no ambush, not even a troll under the bridge.

Pepin had sent his men on ahead. He sat his horse beside Ganelon, who was riding something more like a horse than not; but claws clicked when it pawed the road, and its scaled tail swung slowly from side to side. Pepin's gelding sweated and trembled but stood its ground. He stroked its neck to soothe it, and went on, “This looks like the gullet of a trap.”

“It is.” Ganelon's face was turned to the grey and
dripping sky. Rain did not touch him; it parted and slid as from a shield of glass.

“You're not afraid,” Pepin said.

The sorcerer laughed, a soft cold sound like water under ice. Day by day and night by night as they passed through this country, he had slipped free of the seeming that he had worn in Francia. The elderly priest of no particular distinction was long gone. This was a being of no age at all, ancient beyond the counting of years. His skin was pale and smooth. His cheeks grew no beard. His hair fell long and straight and pale as silver. His eyes were dark and deep.

He had the beauty of a marble angel, though it was anything but insipid. He laughed at Pepin, and there was no pity in him at all, nor any glimmer of compassion. “I go where I most wish to go. They think to lull me, and so overcome me. Fools and children. I will have their Grail, and their souls, too.”

Pepin suppressed a shiver. Ganelon needed him, he reminded himself, to take and keep the relic. He was safe until that was done. Afterward, he would find a way to make himself indispensable. Even, maybe, claim some of the power for himself. Would he not have earned it, after all?

“We are close now,” Ganelon said through the hum of Pepin's thoughts. “I feel it—Carbonek is near. Are your men suitably prepared?”

“As much as any men can be,” Pepin said.

“See that they are,” said Ganelon.

All the while they spoke, the army crossed the bridge. Mist had risen on the far side, thicker than before. The vanguard had disappeared into it.

Ganelon was unconcerned. Pepin kept a grip on panic, lest he seem a fool.

They crossed last. Pepin's gelding clattered over the stones. The soft click and pad of Ganelon's mount was just audible. There was only greyness in front of them, a dank wall that had swallowed the whole of the army.

It closed about them. Pepin could still sense the earth underfoot, but it was shifting, heaving like the sea.

He could just see Ganelon in the mist, riding calmly, his pale face gleaming like the moon through cloud. Pepin fixed on that light. His horse plodded peacefully onward. It
did not care that the worlds were changing underfoot; that they were entering the realm of the Grail.

Passing through that mist was like being flayed alive and rolled in salt. Pepin clutched the gelding's mane, gasping.

“Ward yourself,” said Ganelon's voice, cold and calm in the mist.

Pepin could not. He was blind with pain. It put to flight his wits; it burned away his newborn magic.

Ganelon spoke the words, swift and almost contemptuous, raising the same protection over his faltering pupil that he had raised over the army. The pain vanished. The earth steadied. The mist melted into clear hard sunlight.

Pepin stared blinking at a lofty wall of mountains. The road wound upward through green hills. Clouds wreathed the peaks, but the sun was bright and fierce.

Ganelon beside him raised a hand, sighting along it. “There,” he said. “Carbonek.”

It needed the sight of an eagle, as yet, but Pepin could just see the gleam atop a summit—lines too straight, too even to be unwrought stone. “They can see us coming,” he said. “I feel it.”

“There are no surprises here,” said Ganelon, “though we may meet an ambush or two, for the game's sake. We all know that this must play itself out.”

“They weren't strong enough to stop you.”

“They let me come.” Ganelon sounded not at all perturbed by that. “Now go. Lead the van. If they begin the war, they will do it here, or close by here. Be vigilant. Bid your men be ready to arms.”

Pepin kicked his gelding into a stiff, protesting trot. It was a long way from the rear to the van, past rank on rank of men and demons, all marching with sightless persistence. Ganelon's will drove them—all but the Franks.

After the mute hordes of slaves both human and otherwise, the rowdy mortal clamor of his own people was a relief. They were delighted to hear that there might be battle ahead. “Ambushes!” they declared. “Skirmishes!”

Some had been into the ale again. Pepin had begun to understand his father's objections to drunkenness. But Charles could not do what Pepin could do, which was to lay a spell on the ale. Any man who drank more than his allotted pint would find himself abruptly and massively ill.

Pepin smiled as he took his place in front. The mist was altogether gone. This was a bitter-bright land, all hard edges and sharp colors. It seemed inescapably sunlit, but he noticed how dark the shadows were. They were deep enough indeed, he thought, to hide an ambush.

He had scouts running ahead, and the vanguard spread a little, but not so far that it could not come together quickly to stand against assault. The rearmost ranks marched just ahead of the army's center.

Not all his scouts were flesh and blood. He sent small winged thoughts, eyes of the mind, through the middle airs. That and the spell on the ale taxed him more than he had expected: he swayed in the saddle, but held on. The Grail—it was working on him, weakening him through the defenses Ganelon had raised for him. His stomach felt strange, as if he had drunk too much ale himself.

He was strong enough. He stiffened his back as much as he could, and let his gelding slow to an amble. The first ranks of the vanguard passed him, protecting him with good Frankish steel. He set his spirit free to follow his eyes in the air.

It was dizzying at first to see so many things, shifting and overlapping. He had not sent out this great a number before. He steadied himself as he had been taught, and put down the thought that he was overtaxing his strength.

Green hills, stark teeth of mountains. Deep valleys, sudden silver gleam of rivers. There were no cities here, no towns or villages, no signs of habitation until one came to the castle. Beyond the castle—

It was like a wall of air. He could pass just so far, and no farther. If he pressed, the wall only grew stronger.

The kingdom was beyond the wall. He was not allowed to see it. That was very clear. It was as Ganelon had said: they were being permitted to pass.

He drew back before the wall sucked him in and held him like a fly in amber. With an effort of will he focused on the eyes that were closer in, on the clefts and hollows of this tumbled country.

Movement. An eye nearby the army stopped, hovered. Others converged on it. Down in a valley, moving along beside a dry streambed, were figures in green and brown. If they had stood still, he would not have seen them at all.

The part of him that was flesh, the rider on the brown gelding, snapped out orders. A company of the Frankish foot separated from the rest, advancing toward the valley and the enemy. That it was the enemy, Pepin was sure. Nothing lived or moved here but what the Grail permitted.

The skirmish engaged out of sight and sound of the march. Pepin watched it with as much of himself as he could spare. The green men fought fiercely against the onslaught of Pepin's Franks, but they fell back, overwhelmed by greater numbers.

Pepin smiled at the sight. But after a moment, his smile died. His men were deep in the valley, the green men knotted tight, fighting for their lives. And from the hillsides and from the valley's beginning and ending, as if from the ground underfoot, surged an army of men in bright mail. They swept over Pepin's force that had seemed so large only a moment ago. They crushed it utterly.

Then out of the earth rose a Thing. It was like nothing so much as a great blind worm. Its hide was the white of corpses' flesh. Its vast and eyeless head turned, seeking. And opened—clear to its middle, lined with dripping fangs.

The men of the Grail fled in surprisingly good order. But the worm was swifter than they. It swept through them as a scythe sweeps through ripe grain.

Pepin whirled headlong into his cold and shivering body. He was sick—oh, unto death; gagging and retching over the high pommel of his saddle. His men marched on, oblivious to their fellows' destruction.

There was no strength left in Pepin. His spies were all gone, melted into air. He was no more than mortal now.

The magic would come back. That was the great joy and comfort of it. He need only rest in the protection of his men, and cling to the saddle, and wait for the day's march to end. And pray that no further ambush descended on them.

The land had roused; it was alive that had been empty and silent. It was thrumming with warring powers.

The army marched under Ganelon's protection. Though the earth heaved like the sea, the road under their feet held steady. Winds roared, storms gathered, but the sun shone on the army.

Pepin drew strength from Ganelon's strength, if
slowly. He fell back to Ganelon's side again. Ganelon did not speak to him, which suited him perfectly. The sorcerer was deep in myriad workings. Lightnings crackled about him. Vast voices spoke just below the threshold of hearing. The winds called out to him. He answered in tongues that Pepin had not yet learned, ancient and terrible.

This was war as he had never imagined it, unless the priests spoke of war in heaven. The army that marched on the earth, he began to understand, was little more than diversion. The true war, the deep war, raged beneath the earth and among the powers of air.

There were still men to fight. Men held the Grail. And only a man of royal blood, his soul intact, could take that great instrument of power.

When it came down to it, none of it mattered, except to get Pepin into the castle, and to get his hands on the Grail. He wondered if the enemy knew that. They were not fools, he supposed, and they had fought Ganelon before.

Abruptly he asked, “Who was it? Last time, who was your catspaw?”

He was a little surprised when Ganelon answered. “His name was Medraut. He too was a king's son. He too was an ill-made thing.”

“What, a humpback?” Pepin sneered the word.

“His back was straight,” Ganelon said. Clearly he did not care what offense he gave. “His spirit was twisted.”

“And mine's the reverse?”

“Hardly.” The cold voice was already distant, the ancient mind turned again to the great web of power that he had woven through the years.

Pepin was recovered enough to sense the shadow of it. He set aside the pricking of temper, the sharp awareness of insult, for later, when he could exact a price. Carefully, for he was still not particularly strong, he traced the greater strands of the web. Someday he would weave such a thing for himself, to bind the world.

Today he was but a student, and a young one at that. He kept quiet and he studied, and he rode beside the sorcerer to the castle of the Grail.