Kingdom of the Grail (49 page)

They would come together soon. She rose up out of the water, clean to the very bone. She lifted her arms. A robe of white silk fell about her, slipping down over her arms and her face, her shoulders, her breasts and belly, the length of her thighs. Its caress made her think of him—of his hands on her body, his kisses, the warmth of his skin.

Soon.

Was he thinking the same? He too would be clad in white, his hair combed but not plaited, his brow and breast and hands anointed with blessed oils.

The chanting had begun, with the song of the Grail its descant: deep voices of men, high sweet voices of women. It resonated in the stones of the walls. It thrummed underfoot. It carried Sarissa out of the bath, down the long passage, up the stair.

Roland had gone ahead of her. She saw the light of his passing, scented the oils that were on him: myrrh and frankincense, sandalwood and bitter aloes.

Far away she heard the howling of the dark, a crashing like waves, a growling and cracking as if the earth itself groaned beneath the assault. But here was pure music, pure light.

She climbed the stair. The antechamber was empty, the inner door open. Pale light poured out of it.

They were all within: knights of the Grail round the rim, ladies round the altar. The king lay before it, silent and still. He wore the monk's robe that was all he had suffered himself to be covered in through the long siege of his dying; but they had laid over it a cloth of white samite, shot with a shimmer of silver threads. All light in the room seemed to gather there, casting a pale glow on his face. The crown of Montsalvat lay on his breast: a simple circlet of silver, set with white stones.

Roland lay on his face in front of the altar and the king.
His feet were bare. His robe was as plain as Sarissa's, all stainless white. His hair was striking against it: blue-black, like the living night before evil came to taint it.

This part of the rite was his. Sarissa slipped in among the ladies of the Grail, opened her heart and her throat and mingled her voice with theirs. It completed the cleansing; it emptied her utterly, till she was but a reed in the wind of the gods.

CHAPTER 59

H
er voice made the music whole. Roland, lying on the stone, damp and chilled from the cleansing, felt her presence like a waft of warmth.

The chanting drew him to his knees, and then to his feet. Parsifal lay in the stillness of death, but the soul dwelt in the body even yet. It burned brighter, the closer it came to death.

The women's voices faded in the silence. The men's chanting deepened and slowed. The youngest of the brotherhood came forward with Durandal in his hands. He walked as one well accustomed to the stateliness of processional—as well he should, who had been archbishop of Rheims.

Turpin's face was grave, but his eyes smiled. He knelt in front of Roland and held up the sword on his two palms.

Roland bowed and took the sword; but once he had it, he drew Turpin to his feet, embraced him, kissed him on both cheeks. There was great comfort in that solid body, that friendship which needed no words; which simply was.

Turpin withdrew. The chanting swelled. Roland stood alone, sword in hand, before the dying body of the king. A hundred men, nine women, a bogle and a
puca
and spirits innumerable, stood about him. And yet he had never been more solitary than he was now.

Only he could do this. Only he could strike the blow.

Sarissa left the ranks of the enchantresses. She stood near but not beside him. Turpin was beyond her. Others—Huon, Nieve, Morgan, Longinus, Tarik and Marric—poured out what strength and solace they had.

It would never be enough. He alone sufficed for that.

Now,
said Parsifal's spirit, a voice so clear, so strong, and yet so remote that it seemed as inhuman as the voice of the Grail itself.
Now is the time. Strike!

Roland's fingers tightened round the hilt of the sword. It was alive in his hands, eager, thirsting for blood. Royal blood. Blood of sacrifice.

Ego te absolvo.
Turpin's voice, soft, for his ears alone.

With a sound like a sob, lost in the roll of men's voices, Roland lifted Durandal. The sword shimmered in the light of the Grail. He held it high, poised over the still breast, till his arms trembled with the effort.

He let it fall of its own deadly weight. It pierced the thin skin over the brittle bone, and sank deep in the heart.

Glory—glory and lightnings. Joy as keen as the sword, as high and white and singing as the Grail's own light. Power upon power upon power, a great surge and throb like the sea. It roared through him. It rent his flesh asunder and severed his spirit; then it knit them together again, all new, all clean, all splendid.

He had thought he knew what magic was. This was the highest of high magic, power beyond his dreaming. He had never even dared to imagine it.

He was too small. His body was too frail, his spirit too feeble. He could not hold it. He was not strong enough.

Hands closed over his hands upon Durandal's hilt. Sarissa gasped as the power struck her. Her head snapped back, her body arched like a bow.

They were one. They had been two—separate, sundered. No longer. Two souls far greater together than apart. Two powers, two magics, bound into one high and singing glory.

The magic hummed and sang between them. There was a rhythm to it, a balance. Like walking a knife-edge of stone, or riding a new-broken stallion, or wielding a sword. If they faltered, they would fall. But if they held fast, little by little they would grow steadier, until they sustained the power with ease and grace.

Together. One could not hold it. It must be two—they
two, who had been meant for one another from the beginning of the world.

They had always known it. They had not known that they knew—no, not even she, who had thought herself so wise. Her eyes on him were rueful, and touched with laughter.

He laughed aloud, startling the chant from its rhythm, rippling in sudden silence. She was laughing with him. And Parsifal—great angel of light unfurling from the withered husk, spreading wings as wide as the sky. Angel of laughter, angel of joy. He gave them all the strength that mortal bodies could hold, and gladness too, before heaven took him to itself.

Roland sank to his knees. No one spoke, no one seemed to breathe. Durandal stood upright in an empty bier. Not even dust remained. Only the shroud of white samite, and the crown resting on it, glimmering in the grey light of dawn.

Roland lifted the crown in hands that, for a miracle, held steady. It was cool and not particularly heavy. The stones glowed softly, like the moonstone in Durandal's pommel.

He set it on his head. It was hardly more confining than a fillet. It held his hair out of his eyes, which was useful. It fit well.

He rose, turned. They were all kneeling, all the knights and the ladies. Even Sarissa, but her eyes were lifted as the others' were not, and they were bold. They smiled at him.

He smiled in return. He had never thought to feel such rightness, or such peace. Even knowing what waited beyond the faltering wards—the war, the enemy, the threat of death and darkness—it did not matter. Nothing mattered here but that it was done. He had taken the place that was meant for him. He was the Grail's champion, its guardian and its king.

CHAPTER 60

T
urpin sang high Mass in the shrine of the Grail: Mass of resurrection for the king who was dead, and coronation Mass for the king who lived. And wedding Mass, too, royal marriage, king and queen hand in hand before the altar.

It was deeply familiar, and yet strange, as dreams could be. His concelebrant was the enchantress Nieve, who sang her responses not to God the Father but to the Mother of the world. And when it came time to open the shrine, to consecrate the cup, not his hands brought it forth, but the hands of the king.

Roland lifted the Grail before them all. Roland passed it round so that they all might drink. He too was a priest. He was consecrated above any of them, bound to the Grail more surely and more completely.

He had the look of one who had come into his own. He was higher, brighter, stronger than he had ever been before, but he was still Roland.

In the embrace and kiss of peace, he held Turpin close. “My brother,” he said.

Turpin would have wept if he had had time to waste in it. He had lost enough. He did not think he could have borne to have lost that friendship, too, or that bond of brothers.

The rite ended with the sunrise—too soon, and yet it
seemed a long age since that bloodstained sunset. The brotherhood parted to perform their duties. Turpin's was both weighty and pressing. Yet he paused.

Roland had claimed Durandal from the bier. The nine ladies stood in a circle about him. They were advancing on him with clear intent: each held a garment or a part of his armor.

This was not the armor he had been wearing since he came back to Carbonek. This was royal panoply: shining silver mail, great crimson cloak lined with swansdown, belt and baldric of silver and crimson, high helm in the shape of a swan.

“I can't wear that!” he snapped as the ladies closed in on him. “I need armor I can fight in.”

“This is the king's armor,” said one of the ladies. It was not either Sarissa or the warrior Morgan. They, Turpin noticed, were standing back. Sarissa held a length of linen—undergarments, Turpin guessed. Morgan was unfolding a tunic of padded leather, much more practical than the armor, and much less elaborate, too.

“I do not need parade armor,” Roland said through gritted teeth. “Fetch me battle armor—something other than that—that—” Words failed him, but his glare at the swan-helm was eloquent.

The ladies looked ready to expostulate with him over what was proper for a king, but Morgan's voice cut across them like the slash of a sword. “Do as he says. He can be pretty later. Today, he needs to be safe.”

The others muttered and scowled, but they bowed to the inevitable. By the time Turpin left, they had his robe off him—to his manifest dismay, but he had no defenders there—and were clothing and arming him in much less extravagant fashion.

Turpin took the stair as fast as he dared. The morning was fleeing. The bombardment had begun yet again. The enemy must have managed to fashion a ram that would extend across the chasm: the deep boom rocked him as he ran, and nearly flung him down the last of the stair.

He hoped that the ram spanned the chasm, and that they had not built a bridge in the night. If that defense was breached, the gate would not hold for long.

Troops were mustering in the great courts before the
gate. They were all men of Caer Sidi or of Carbonek. The Franks, with Roland's recruits, were still below.

They were just finishing as he came down among them, forming ranks, praying if that was their inclination, or standing together in circles of brothers. They all had their orders. They were ready; he could feel the strength of them, the spirit that had withstood the dark, and now would go to battle with it.

They only needed his blessing. He gave it to them from the Grail's own light, from its living presence.

The drums beat, summoning them to the march. Turpin took his place in the van with Lord Huon's green-cloaked guards and Roland's bright-eyed recruits. The Franks took up the rear as they had done in another time, for another king.

They marched through the deep places, down beneath the heart of Carbonek. People of the castle guided them. Mages protected them, casting spells of light and guard.

It seemed that it was true, what Roland and the commanders had hoped: that the tunnels were free of the enemy's shadow-armies. Sleepers in the earth there were none, not beneath Carbonek. Farther out, where they must go, that might not be so; but the Lady Nieve thought that the dragons and blindworms and their kin had drawn away toward the enemy. These passages should be open.

They could only march and pray. For men of the open sky, this was a peculiar horror. They tramped through whispering galleries, down long winding passages, up and into caverns wider than the mages' light would reach. Bats chittered high above them—or things that sounded like bats.

They were inured to creepers in shadows. That much the enemy's assault had done for them. Some tried to sing, but the echoes were too strange; it dizzied them and threatened to send them staggering down side passages. They marched in silence but for the thudding of feet and the hissing of breath.

Those breaths reckoned the passing of time. Without sun or moon to guide them, they could not know otherwise how long they journeyed under the earth. For all any of them knew, their guides were treacherous and would lead
them deeper and deeper into the maze, till they could never be found again.

That was a dark thought, perhaps born of darkness. Turpin thrust it away.

It seemed gradually that the passages, which had been level or descending, began to slant upward. There was almost a sense in the still air of something moving—something alive.

His spine prickled. If there was a creature of the night ahead of them, they would have to fight their way past it. And quickly, for time was pressing.

They met nothing and no one. The air was fresher, with less of the cold scent of earth, and more of the clean sky. They came up—truly up—through a cavern like the great hall of a castle, and down a broad passage, and so out into clouded but still unmistakable daylight.

Then at last they met the guardian, there at the gate of the outer world. It rose up out of the earth, a vast shape of stone, reaching with stony hands, trampling with stony feet. It was blind with the light, but its ears were deathly keen: where it heard breath, it struck.

Lord Huon's knights, dismounted but armed with their long lances, charged against the stone giant, a hundred strong. The great thing thrashed and flailed. The rest of the army ran as fast as it could run, charging out of the cavern and down the fair green valley.

The ground heaved as they ran. The stones melted and flowed, groping like hands. People fell. The earth gaped to swallow them. Stones rose up to crush them.

Turpin halted in desperation, balancing like a sailor on a strong sea. From the heart of him, where the light of the Grail was, he spoke words that came unbidden. “Peace!” he cried. “Be still.”

And the earth was still. The stone giant sank and crumbled into the earth, taking the dead with it. Far too many of Huon's knights had fallen. Those who yet lived formed in ranks again, limping but strong of will. They bowed as they passed Turpin.

He crossed himself and murmured a prayer. The earth was still under his feet. He strode in the army's wake, hand to sword hilt, back prickling. But the valley was quiet behind him.

As long as the march and the battle had seemed, the day had not yet passed noon. Nor were they so very far from Carbonek. As they went they heard the hollow boom of the ram, and the clatter and crash of the engines hurling their missiles. Something odd, that Turpin had not realized before, struck him then. Armies were noisy things unless they were trying to march in silence. They made a great deal of noise in sieges, what with men speaking to one another, commanders calling orders, crews on the engines cheering their missiles on their way.

Ganelon's army made no sound. His soldiers were quick on their feet and deft with their engines, but they did not speak or laugh, still less urge one another on or taunt the enemy within the walls.

“They're slaves,” Gemma said when Turpin spoke his thought aloud. She and her sons and the chiefs of Roland's recruits had managed to speed their march till they were level with Turpin. He was, by then, wishing rather devoutly for a horse. There had been no way to bring any through those deep passages. He was a footsoldier, then, and not a happy one.

But Ganelon's troops must be less happy still. “We remember the story from before,” Kyllan said. “He makes pacts with demons and minor princes of hell, and they serve him. And he makes men his slaves.”

“Then,” said Turpin, “there may be hope for them—and for us. If they can be freed—if they can be persuaded to turn, and fight with us—”

“Can we even do that?” the boy asked.

“We might,” said Turpin, “if we move fast enough. And if we can spare a mage or two.”

“It might not take a mage,” Gemma said. “You can't see yourself. You're like a lamp in a dark room. Most of the men out there, they're Franks, yes? Or people who know the Franks. I'll wager they know you.”

Turpin stumbled with the shock of sudden hope. But he could do nothing now. His orders were clear. To take this force of veterans and recruits, Franks and people of Montsalvat. To fall on the enemy from behind, while a sortie rode out from the castle in front of them. To fight as
best he could, as they all could, so that Roland could do what he had been brought here to do.

It was a mad, a hopeless charge, but then what could be sweeter? He had taken it because he had died once already, and he had seen the Grail. He could give up his life without either fear or hesitation.

He pressed forward, not too fast for they all must hoard their strength, but not too slowly either. The closer they came, the more they risked discovery. The mages had tightened the wards over them, but those would not hold within reach of the enemy's own wards.

They only needed to buy a little time. They had come to the place that the guides had told them of: a long ridge that overlooked the army's camp. The ranks spread along it, keeping low, but few of them could forbear to peer over the summit. The enemy swarmed below. The engines hammered walls and gate.

High on the walls, bright helmets gleamed. Shadows crawled beneath them. Those were stronger, clearer now than they had been before. They had shape and substance: teeth, claws, weapons that looked solid enough to cleave flesh and bone.

On the topmost tower, a mirror flashed once, twice, thrice.

That was the signal. Turpin nodded to the troops on either side of him. He snatched the spear that Kyllan was carrying, which had a pennon on it, blue and silver for the king of the Grail. Turpin raised it high, so that they all could see, then swept it fiercely down.

With a cry like nothing earthly, the king's own army broke the crest of the hill and charged down upon the rear of the enemy's camp. In the same instant a horn rang, echoing in the keep. The great gate rose with sorcerous swiftness. The bridge came crashing down. Huon led the sortie from the castle, mounted on his tall white stallion, leaping through the gate, charging across the chasm. His lords and princes followed him, and the swift ranks of his foot.

The enemy received them with a low and ravenous growl. The trap, that growl said, was sprung. The battle was engaged. And he had numbers far, far more than they could begin to claim.

Men who had hidden under the shields of the
siege-engines burst forth and bolted for the bridge. The gate strained against chains that had grown suddenly rigid. The bridge would not lift. Some great force held it, some vast weight of darkness.

Already the enemy had a foothold within, in his armies of shadows. Mages fought against them, but they were numerous beyond counting. They gathered together like water flowing through many rivers into a black sea.

Slaves the enemy's men might be, but they fought with relentless ferocity. They cared nothing for fear or pain. They had no care for their lives. And those that were not men, that wore human faces but shifted and changed as they fought, wielded weapons of terror as well as of steel.

Turpin drove his troops against them in waves, three ranks divided, so that some could rest and some could bolster the others. They only had to hold for a while, to drive as far forward as they might, to harry the enemy's rear and, if it were possible, to seize his camp. Just so was Huon to press past the siege-engines and engage the foremost ranks.