The Black Chalice (37 page)

“You are the best of lads, my friend. The very best. Come, there’s no need… I’m all right now.”

Why did I weep then, like a stupid boy? Why did I let him wrap me in his arms, even for a moment? I was cold and frightened and raw with loneliness, with all those weeks of wandering and dread. And I forgot. That is all I can say in my defense: I forgot. He was Gottfried’s enemy, and mine. He was a sorcerer, a thousand times more perilous than death. And I forgot.

“Sit, lad, come sit, and tell me everything. Has Reinhard kept my fortress safe?”

“Yes, the last I’ve heard. Duke Gottfried has given the county to his second son, to young Armund, and he has the castle under siege. But Reini swears he won’t surrender. It’ll take a year to starve him out.”

“Longer,” Karelian said. “It’s well provisioned; I saw to that. And what of my lady, and the babe? Are they safe?”

“They’re with Reinhard in the castle. It was your priest, Father Thomas, who fetched the child there, and he is with them.”

“Good. One card, at least, the duke can’t play against me.”

“Otto is dead, my lord,” I said.

His only reaction was a troubled frown. He had lost weight, I saw, and he was so weary. Yet there was a hardness in him I had never seen before, even in the war camps of the Holy Land.

Did he know?

I swallowed, and tried not to think about it. I made myself ask the questions I had to ask, the questions anyone in my place would ask if he were innocent.

“My lord, I don’t understand what happened— why Gottfried turned against you so. You were his most favored vassal. Why would he accuse you of such dreadful things? It makes no sense at all.”

He did not answer me for a time. The fire burned poorly, and he played with it, wondering, I suppose, how much he should confide in me.

“Gottfried himself is guilty of all the things he accused me of. He is a sorcerer, although he would deny it, and claim his power comes from God. But he is a sorcerer nonetheless.”

I stared at him, astonished. Gottfried a sorcerer? Yes, but of course; he would have to say it. Perhaps he would even believe it.

“He plotted mutiny against our common lord, the emperor Ehrenfried,” Karelian went on. “Now that Ehrenfried is dead, I am sure he’ll try to block Konrad’s succession, and take the crown for himself. And if you want to know how I know, it’s quite simple. He told me. He invited me to join him, to be his ally and his warleader, first against the king, and then against whomever he chose to conquer next.”

“God in heaven…!” I whispered. “But if he asked you to join him, then why—?”

“Why did he withdraw the invitation?” Karelian said dryly. “I’m not sure. But obviously he discovered I’m against him, though I pretended not to be. His powers of sorcery are exceptional, more than we ever guessed.”

“But….” I threw out my hands. “I can hardly believe it. The duke always seemed so… so Christian.”

“What of it? The history of the Church is full of magic. Dying men rise cured from their beds. Dead trees fill with flowers. Stones talk. Sound bridges collapse for no reason, and broken ones mend. People walk through fire without so much as a blister. The list could go on forever—”

“But those were miracles! Are you trying to say the holy saints were nothing more than sorcerers?”

“Nothing more?” He smiled faintly. “To be good at sorcery is a considerable achievement, Paul. But yes, those who worked miracles were magicians. That’s what magic is: doing what seems impossible, by using powers other people don’t have, or never learn to use.”

“But there are only two powers beyond the common world, my lord: those of God, and those of Satan—!”

He laughed. “There are a million powers, and everyone uses them who can. Power is, Pauli. That’s all. It just is. It exists, and the Church didn’t stop it from existing. All the Church did was lay claim to everything which served its own advancement, and pour guilt and damnation on the rest. If a priest heals a wounded man to prove God’s power to the heathen, he’s likely to be canonized. If a witch does the same because she loves him, she’s likely to be burnt. And it has nothing to do with God or Satan. It has to do with who runs things in the world.”

“You can’t believe that, my lord.”

He looked at me, and then at the fire, and then at me again. “Tell me something,” he said. “We’ve crossed words on things like this before. You know I’ve left the Church. I left it in Jerusalem, and I’ll never go back. Have you never considered… serving another lord? One more suited to your heart and conscience?”

It felt like the most dangerous moment of my life.

“You’ve always been good to me, my lord….” I faltered. And the words placed themselves in my throat, without conscious thought or judgment, the words I knew I had to say, the words I knew he would believe because he wanted to believe them. Everyone did. It was every man’s eternal, irremediable weakness. Mine as well….

“And I… I could never love any other lord as much, no matter how good he was. I would always wish I were still by your side.”

Yes, I did say it. I said all of it, and even as I spoke I knew it was true. Which was also why he would believe it. He was the one who made it so.

He watched me for a moment. I could not read his eyes, only the dance of firelight on his face, playing over every sharp and well remembered line.

“And besides,” he said at last, with a faint smile, “if you argue with me long enough, and well enough, I might come to see the folly of my ways.”

“That too, my lord,” I agreed, and smiled in return. For the moment, I knew I was safe.

He slept peacefully against the small shelter of the cliff, comforted perhaps by my presence, by my unexpected and exaggerated gift of loyalty. And you might well ask why I did not kill him then, why I did not simply take my dagger and drive it into his heart.

I could not do it, and you may judge it as you wish. I was only a boy, and he was a man who had lived through every kind of violence, who probably knew every kind of trick. The knight was perilous enough to deal with. The sorcerer… no, dear God, it was quite beyond me. Who could say what he might observe even in his sleep? Or what evil things hovered there beside him, unseen, ready to wake him at the smallest danger?

I could not kill him, not like this. But if I did not, then I had to get the cross back. Every passing hour increased my danger. We were too close to Helmardin now, too close to
her
. She would find it in a moment. She would sense its power like a burned hand sensed a flame. And once either of them knew, and had me in their power…. I could not bear to think of it, and yet I had no courage to act against him. Worse, I didn’t even want to.

I huddled against the wind, wrapped in my cloak. For the first time in my life, I felt bitter against Gottfried. Why had he sent me here? Didn’t he know how terrible it would be? Didn’t he know that the darker Karelian’s image became for me, the more I was held in its power? Everything about him now possessed a sordid fascination, not least the fact that he belonged to
them
. I did not will it so, and I could not control it. All the time we sat by the fire and talked of Lys and politics and saints, my loins were hot and throbbing. With a part of my consciousness I listened to his questions and responded, and with another part I remembered his body against my own, the harsh smell of sweat and bracken, the rush of blood which sickened me and took my breath away. I’d been all but overcome by the impulse to continue, to begin again. Even now — oh yes, now more than ever as he slept beside me, as I wondered what I should do, and how I might hope to save myself — even now I wanted to thrust myself against him like a rutting dog.

I say wanted, but it is the wrong word, for I didn’t want to. There was no real desire in it, nor any thought of pleasure. No conscious will. Only a driven impulse, crude and feverish, as a man might feel towards a harlot in the street. I could not make it stop, and finally I used my hands— one of the gravest sins I could commit, save for the one I dreaded more. Then I wept, thinking of Gottfried, and of how he would despise me if he knew. How everyone would despise me, and believe of me things which were not true. I never had a carnal nature, never, not like other youths my age, not like my brother, who was always in difficulty, always in the confessional begging God’s forgiveness. I avoided the snares of wanton girls. In truth, I found it easy to avoid them, most times. And when I first entered Karelian’s service, when I was with him in the Holy Land, those other thoughts had never crossed my mind.

Not until we passed through Helmardin. Not until he met
her
, and began to change….

I wrapped my arms around my knees, shivering from the cold. It was then, in that black wilderness, in that black night, when I first began to perceive how immense, how encompassing was the power of sorcery. To conjure up a demon, or cause a storm, or make a woman barren— these were small things, the kinds of witchery everyone understood.

There was another kind, one which crept into the most secret places of our souls, in silence and with no warning at all, coaxing to life sins which we in our ordinary human frailty would have rejected, if not out of goodness then out of shame, still refusing to lower ourselves to
that
.

It was all their work, this sickness in my blood, this terrible attraction which made him ever more beautiful as he fell. It was they who filled my mind with foul images, with offers of permission, with the possibility of limitless unrestraint.
You can have anything. Do anything. Can you even imagine what is possible with me? Come here, and I will show you.

His thoughts, not mine. His power… or really hers, the power of what she made him into. A power which could undo me utterly, until my body slavered like a dog after something I never wanted, until my body no longer belonged to me at all. Everything Karelian touched became entangled in sorcery, captivated by the promise of his dazzling corruption.
Come here, and I will show you
….

It crept back through the silence even as I prayed. Teasing me, whispering in the corners of my mind, telling me Gottfried was less than he was, telling me I should not go back.

I could stay, and serve him again, serve him better than before. I could go missing from the world. Who would know, and in the end who would care? It would be so easy, easy as finding a fire in the darkness, a fire already in reach of my hand.

Paul stood up dizzily, wiped one arm across his face. It was all sorcery— those words carved on parchment as if on stone, lying scattered on the monastery floor. The words, and the memory, too. Both of them were lies, fashioned in his brain and in his loins by the malice of his enemies.

He had thrown the parchments across the room. Long ago, when it first began, he tried burning them. He knew better now. Fire only made the words brighter, seared them more permanently into the deepest places of his mind.

God, why do you compel me to suffer this? Pain I can bear, and hunger, and every kind of hardship. I have even learned to endure your abandonment of me, for I know I’m unworthy of your favor. But why this, after all these years? Why do you allow them to befoul my memory with sins I never wanted to commit? I loved him purely; I cared only for his soul, and for mine, and for the good of the Reinmark and of Christendom—

Soft laughter lapped across the room, like water against pebbles. Even before he looked up, he knew the voice, the silken malevolence, the half-clothed body leaning serpentine against his rough-hewn desk. He was no longer much surprised when she came, or even much frightened. Nor did he try to make her leave; he knew it was beyond his strength.

“Really, Paul,” she said. “You do lie marvelously well. But if your Christian God is as omniscient as you say, surely he will know?”

“There is nothing to know,” the monk said. “I am the lowest of sinners, but I was never that kind of man. It was all your doing— yours, and the evil ones you serve.”

“Mine?” She smiled. “You fell in love with Karelian in Acre, before either of you knew I existed. And please, stifle your protests; they grow boring. Especially since I never had the slightest objection. He was mine from the moment he rode into Helmardin. What pleasures he might have taken with you, or with his countess— they were just strawberries in the grass. Those who find them smile, and eat, and go their way.”

He stared at her. Did she really think her jealousy, or the lack of it, mattered to him in the least?

“Do you care about anything,” he asked coldly, “except your lusts?”

“Never,” she said. “And my lusts, as you have already decided, are many and insatiable.”

She bent, and with her own ringed hand picked up the scattered pages of his manuscript.

“You’re getting too old for temper tantrums, Brother Paul. Finish your book.”

“Suppose I choose not to?” he said.

“You might. When hailstones choose not to fall, and dead men choose not to decay.” She handed him the quill. “I’m not inclined to offer you even the smallest kindness, Paul of Ardiun, but for my own purposes I will. Finish the story, to the last drop of blood and the last cry of triumph, and you will be free to die.”

“My death is in God’s hands.”

“No, little fool,” she said softly. “It’s in mine. The Reinmark is not very Christian, remember? You keep saying so yourself. Veelas haunt the riverbanks, and elves stalk wild in the mountains. The people go to your Masses, maybe, but all week long they pay reverence to Odin and Freya and Thor; Tyr’s altars are laden with game. Your God is as proud as any other, Pauli; he knows where he’s not wanted. You can pray until your monk’s heart breaks; it won’t matter. He is far away from here, and he’ll never come to set you free.” She paused, and added darkly: “I am the only one who can.”

Many times in his life he thought he had reached the bottom of human despair, and nothing more terrible was left to befall him, short of damnation itself. Yet this was a new and utterly overwhelming terror.

“Why are you surprised?” she went on. “You’ve seen the powers of Car-Iduna. You know within the Grail of Life is the death of every living thing. It comes to all, even to your priests who imagine they’ll recover from it.
When
it comes, depends on fate — and, if they choose to involve themselves, on the gods. Iduna has given me the apple of your life — at great cost, I will admit; she doesn’t give any of them lightly. But it’s mine now. You will live, and endure my power over you, until I give you leave to go.”