Kingdom of the Grail (51 page)

Sarissa heard that with no pleasure at all, but she lowered the spear—from Pepin's throat to his privates. His hands clapped over them.

Her smile was feral. “What, you don't yearn to emulate your master?”

Pepin gaped.

She laughed. “You didn't know? He's a eunuch, child. He gelded himself long ago, to buy himself a scrap of power. Maybe he thought it was worth the price.”

“Sarissa.”

Roland's voice was recovering. The sound of her name silenced her. But it did not scour the smile from her face. She was even more arrogant than Roland, and even more hateful. But oh, so beautiful.

When Pepin had the Grail, she would belong to him.

His mind was clearing. His magic was there after all, the whole deep realm of it, dark and splendid. The Grail fed it. That was the Grail's purpose: to nourish. Whether it nourished dark or light did not matter to it.

He called that power to him. All that Ganelon had taught him, all that he had studied, labored over, wrought, came together in this one moment, this one working. Before the Grail, before its raw and new-made king, he called on the great Master, the Lord of the Dark, the Prince of the Morning.

The dark came down. Ganelon rode on the wings of it.
Plots within plots, wheels within wheels, intrigue upon intrigue. Pepin was the opener of the way. Through him the master could come to this place, could approach the Grail.

He could not touch it. But he could come near it. And he could smite its fool of a king.

CHAPTER 62

“F
ool and heir of a fool.”

Roland looked up at Ganelon. The roof of the Grail's tower had melted away. Black wings spread across the sky. A vast cold-drake hovered above him, dark beyond darkness. Its eyes were the eyes of the demon-servant Siglorel, last and strongest of the three: chill serpent-eyes that looked down on Roland with utter lack of expression.

The sorcerer rode on its great arching neck. His black robes rippled in a wind that never touched Roland. His face was the face of a dark angel.

He had taken back all that had been reft from him. But he was not above mockery, not yet.

Roland sighed faintly. Traps within traps—and how many more within those?

Roland could not tell where he ended and the Grail began. Parsifal was in him and in the sword at his side. Sarissa's warm presence wrapped them all about. Sometimes he could not tell which of them moved or spoke. They were all bound together. The power that blazed in them—in him—was a great high singing thing.

The power was ready to stand against the sorcerer. Was he?

No doubts.

Something swooped past him. Tarik blurred and stretched and grew—grew impossibly, until a dragon of
light faced the dragon of darkness. The
puca
was smaller, but therefore more agile. He leaped and curvetted and danced in the air. He laughed, altogether without fear.

He plucked Roland from the floor of the hall and winged skyward.

Roland was too wise to struggle. He climbed up the clawed leg, over the great shoulder, onto the curve of the beast's neck. Wind buffeted him. He flattened against the glistening scales.

Shadow loomed over him. A bolt of raw power hissed past him. Tarik danced away from it.

Almost too late, Roland raised wards to protect them. Carbonek lay far below. Battle raged before it and within it. Ganelon's army swarmed like locusts. Roland's few fought valiantly, but they were nigh overwhelmed.

A great blow smote the wards. Tarik dropped under the force of it. His wings beat desperately, struggling to keep him aloft.

“Down,” Roland said. “Back down.”

Tarik ignored him. He had steadied and begun a new ascent.

Spirit of mischief indeed. Roland looked down the long, long way to the castle where he best should be.

Time was when he would have laughed at the distance, spread wings and flown. But he had lived in human shape since he came to himself again. Thought of shifting, of blurring and changing, struck cold in his belly. If he lost himself, this time he would not come back.

Tarik leaped and darted. Ganelon ceased to waste bolts of power. He sent the cold-drake after the
puca
. Tarik was agile but he was light in the air. The wind of the cold-drake's wings caught him and sent him tumbling.

Roland lost his grip on the
puca
's neck. He clutched at nothingness. He was falling. Above him, the cold-drake roared. He turned over in the air. Tarik had fastened himself to the creature's belly, jaws sunk in its throat. The cold-drake thrashed. Roland could not see Ganelon at all.

It seemed that Roland was hanging in space, suspended on the wind's back. But the earth drew ever closer.

His skin rippled. A stab of terror stopped it. But worse than that fear was the long, long way to the ground.

His arms flexed. Wings beat where they had been. The
hawk's mind closed in upon his own. Man—he was
man
. Armor, helm, shield fell away. But the coin of the Grail swung still against his breast; and Durandal hovered in air beside him. It had a mind, a will of its own, and magic—high magic. To his keen hawk-senses, it had a scent and a taste of Parsifal.

The sword guided him, spiraling down and down. Far above, the dragons battled.
Tarik
, grieved the man's mind within the hawk's body.

No, no grief yet. No despair. The Grail was calling.

He touched the stone floor with a man's feet, and a man's mind. Durandal settled softly into his hand. Sarissa said not a word as she wrapped him in a white robe. It was nothing he could fight an earthly battle in, but it covered him.

The war of dragons raged overhead. From so far they seemed no larger than a raven locked in combat with a sparrow. They tumbled and thrashed. Wings flailed, claws raked. Teeth slashed. The cold-drake's blood was like gouts of icy water. The
puca
bled scarlet streamers of flame.

As diversion it served its purpose, in more ways than one. Roland, standing before the Grail with the wind of the gods blowing the white wool of the robe against his body, felt the power in him with far more clarity than he had before. The hawk's shape had cleansed and focused him. The long descent had given him the time he needed to gather his strength.

Maybe Tarik had meant it to be so. The
puca
had an odd wisdom, and odder ways of showing it.

It was almost peaceful here. The Grail's song went on unwearied. Sarissa stood guard over the shrine. Pepin huddled at her feet, limp, perhaps unconscious.

The blow struck the wards with a sound like lightning splitting an ancient tree. Light flashed, blinding bright.

The wards held, just. Roland's ears were ringing. When he could see more than shadows, he saw Ganelon standing on air beyond the tower, as steady as if he stood on stone.

The battle below, the battle above, went on without them. Roland met Ganelon's dark gaze, and inclined his head slightly.

They had not stood face-to-face before. That was odd, now he thought of it. No doubt it had also saved Roland's
soul. If Ganelon had not underestimated him, he would have been disposed of long ago, long before he had the strength to be a threat.

Roland was strong, but his enemy was ancient and wily. Youth had served him before against the sorcerer; but he would not be so fortunate again. He had set himself full in the enemy's path, the last obstacle he must strike down before he seized the Grail.

Roland lifted Durandal and set her point down before him, hands folded over the hilt. Sarissa moved to stand beside him, spearbutt grounded likewise, braced and on guard.

The enemy smiled a faint cold smile. “So much power,” he said. “So pretty to see.”

“But you can't see it, can you?” Roland said as he looked into those eyes. “You can't see the Grail. For you, we stand on nothingness. You're blinded by the light.”

“I need not see,” Ganelon said, “in order to grasp and hold.”

He flung a bolt of darkness. The wards cracked still more. Roland set his teeth. He had felt that in his own body, as if a fist had struck his shoulder. The next bolt smote him in the belly. At the third, he flung up Durandal. The bright blade turned the bolt aside. It sang like a woman, sweet and deadly.

Ganelon's next bolt flew wide.

The song, thought Roland. Durandal's song caused him pain.

Ganelon stiffened himself against it. He struck, struck, struck again, blows so swift and so potent that Roland could only parry, never strike. There was no time. Bolts that passed him, Sarissa caught and struck aside.

Under cover of that defense, he gathered everything that he had: every scrap of strength, every bit of knowledge, every flicker of power that had ever been in him or in Sarissa or in the Grail-king who had died to give him this magic. He gathered it and held it. Ganelon hammered at him, relentless.

Suddenly, completely unexpectedly, the sorcerer laughed. Behind Roland, the Grail's song changed. It was subtle, perhaps imperceptible, but he was part of it. He felt it in his blood and bone.

Pepin had the Grail. Forgotten, unregarded, he had crawled past the combatants, crept up to the shrine, opened it. The cup was in his hands.

He danced with glee. “Mine!” he sang. “Mine!”

Ganelon's smile was a cold and terrible thing. “Well done,” he said, “oh, well indeed. Give it to me.”

“No,” said Pepin. Roland, turning in the cessation of the barrage, saw the frown on the face so like Charles'. “You can't touch it. You can't even see it.”

“In your hands I can,” Ganelon said. “Bring it here.”

Pepin would not do that, either. “I'll keep it for you,” he said. “How it sings! You didn't tell me of that. It's beautiful.”

“Give it to me,” the sorcerer said. His voice was lower now, darker. More dangerous.

Pepin stood with the Grail in his hands. Light poured over them, down his arms, dripping on the floor. His eyes were rapt.

The sorcerer gathered darkness as Roland had gathered light. He flung it, all of it, not at Roland but at the Frankish prince who held the Grail.

Roland flung himself between the sorcerer and his pupil. The power that was in him, the sword in his hands, rose together. That great blow struck him full on. Darkness visible. Death, dissolution, damnation of body and soul. And a hook, a talon, to grasp and seize the Grail—that lodged in his heart, where the Grail's power was strongest.

He felt the bonds of flesh dissolve. The darkness swallowed his light—as it would swallow the world, once Ganelon had the Grail.

Sarissa cried aloud. He had shielded her, as he had Pepin. They were safe. If they fled, and fled now, beyond the world there might be refuge.

He tried to tell her. He had no throat, no tongue, no voice to speak the words. He was a mist of light fading in a tide of the dark.

The spear rose, blazing in the endless night. Durandal rose with it. Together they struck. Straight for the heart. Straight through the darkness.

Ganelon laughed at them. Without Roland they were feeble, helpless. Roland had been the key. And Roland was gone.

No.

In the beginning was the word. In the word was being. In being was substance. And in substance was strength. Roland the shapeshifter, who knew dissolution with each change of his form, reached for that part of himself which made him whole again. Wolf to stag. Stag to hawk. Hawk—all anew, and always—to man.

Naked, weaponless, but brimming, singing, bursting with power, he turned—not on Ganelon, but on Pepin. Pepin clutched the Grail to his breast. Roland held out his hand. The Grail came to him as it had come before the army of its defenders, as soft, as sweet as a child to its mother. It settled in his lifted hands.

Black winds lashed him. Lightnings smote him. He took no notice of them. He walked through them, past the shards of the wards, into the tumult of the air.

Ganelon hovered in the midst of the whirlwind. Roland entered into that zone of quiet. He held out the Grail. “Take,” he said, “and drink. For this is the cup of the blood, the blood of the covenant, which binds the chains of the world.”

The whirlwind died. The blasts of darkness ceased. They stood face-to-face above the wide and turning world. Roland, who had died and been brought to life by the Grail's power, faced Ganelon, who had so feared death that he sold his soul to the Prince of Darkness, and thus bought his body's immortality.

“Drink,” Roland said again. “Drink of the light, and of salvation. Taste the blood of redemption.”

“Mockery.” Ganelon's voice was thick. “What trap is this?”

“No trap,” Roland said. “Drink.”

“I will not,” said Ganelon. “I will take. I will not drink.”

“You must drink,” said Roland, “for your soul's sake.”

Ganelon hammered him anew with darkness. He raised the Grail against it. The darkness struck with a sound like the rending of worlds. He rocked with the force of it.

It turned. It struck back with the full might of its maker's malice. Ganelon, advancing to take the Grail from Roland's fingers, met it head-on. It smote him down.