The Black Chalice (50 page)

It was the same with the willstone. He wavered between treating it as a plaything, and believing it could do anything at all.

“I’m sick to death of preserves, my lord. The stone could make us a bowl of fresh peaches, couldn’t it? No? Why are you so certain? Have you ever tried?”

He wanted peaches fashioned out of air. But when Gottfried told him they could use the stone for something which really mattered — to communicate when Gottfried left for Mainz — his son had simply stared at him. “That’s impossible, my lord.”

So Gottfried showed him, patiently, as he would have showed a child how to read and to count. He walled off a room in the castle of Stavoren, with a heavy lock to which only the two of them had a key. Inside he made a small stone chamber, shaped like a perfect pyramid, with a prie-dieu made of stone, and a place for one candle, and a silver bowl filled to the brim with water. He chipped a small piece of crystal from the bottom of the willstone, and dropped it into the bowl.

“Empty your mind of every thought but me, Theodoric. Bring nothing here; take nothing away. This is where we will meet.”

Slowly, Theodoric learned. He learned to press his thoughts into the sliver of stone, to read Gottfried’s from the water. But he never learned to do it just anywhere, with any simple scrying bowl. He needed the stone chamber, where there were no distractions, and where all the powers of the willstone were mirrored and multiplied. Even there, it exhausted him. Worse, he disliked it, and Gottfried knew why. It meant that his father’s authority was never very far away.

— I’m not going to debate the matter, Theo. Take Armund to Ravensbruck, and marry him to Helga. Take every man you can beg or bully out of Arnulf, and bring the Reinmark to heel. I want every castle Karelian captured taken back, I want every oath made to him unsworn, and I want every whisper of treason in the Reinmark crushed. Do you understand me? I don’t care what you have to burn or who you have to hang; I don’t want to hear so much as a rumor of unrest from there again.

— I can’t storm Schildberge castle, my lord.

— No, but you can lay siege to it properly this time.

— You asked for men, my lord. I sent you all the men I could. I had only boys and cripples left when Karelian attacked.

— Yes, I know….

Gottfried shook his head. As always, Theodoric’s image in the willstone was ill-defined. Fuzzy at the edges, like Theo’s own princely self.

— It isn’t always enough to do blindly what you’re told. You have to think. You have to think about who you are, and who they are. And you never seem to do it. You didn’t do it in the siege, and you didn’t do it at Stavoren.

Least of all at Stavoren, Gottfried thought bitterly. At Stavoren God had placed victory in his grasp, and Theodoric, God forgive him, had not even noticed it. He had noticed nothing except the possibility of amusing himself with Karelian’s witch. It appalled Gottfried every time he thought about it. How could Theodoric so debase his own high manhood, and endanger himself for such an empty, venal satisfaction? She was weakened, thanks be to God, or he might have found himself possessed, or filled with some wasting disease, or made impotent— he who was born to be king, and had yet no sons.

And his carnal folly wasn’t yet the worst of it.

— You had the witch of Helmardin in irons; you might have made an end of her. But no. You left her in her cell unguarded, and she changed herself and got away—

— When we were done with her, my lord, no one thought she needed any guarding. She was too well tamed to swat a fly.

— Obviously.

— God damn it, father, how was I to know? I’ve never dealt with witches before.

— You knew she could shape-shift.

— She was in irons. In a bolted cell. With fifty armed men between her and the bastion gates.

— And what of it? You’re dealing with sorcery, don’t you understand? How could you forget what happened in Lys? I meant to try Karelian fairly and publicly. As it turned out, I had five minutes in which I might have driven a spear through his heart, and I didn’t do it, and he escaped. You knew that. Why in God’s name did you wait? You have to kill them. No trials, no bargains for surrender, nothing; just kill them where they stand!

— I understand, my lord.

— I hope so. This is no ordinary war, my son, and the rules of ordinary warfare won’t serve us now. We have to go beyond them.

No ordinary rules would serve them now, in this one last rising of the armies of the Lord. Victory would not be easy, and he felt sadness sometimes at the cost of it. It was a cold, triumphal sadness, much like he had felt in Jerusalem, a sadness mixed with awe at the magnificence of a God who would demand so much, who was so absolute, so potent, and so terrible.

He did not know what other men believed of that day; he never asked them. But in his own mind there was no doubt: Jerusalem had been a sacrifice, a blood offering to a God who had given up his son eleven hundred years before, and still saw the human world filled with unbelievers and heretics and adulterers and thieves, with Saracens and pagans and idolaters and Jews, and said Enough! They will not serve me? Kill them!

There was an awesome purity to so much blood, and a special heroism in those who shed it. They did not falter, or try to refuse God even the smallest part of the offering; they accepted the hardness of it, the shock to their own merely human understanding. And they could stand afterwards and look on it, and marvel: It was God’s work, and it was good.

He would remember Jerusalem. Every day, every battle, until it was done, until the kingdom flowered from the farthest edges of the earth to its very heart, one kingdom under God.

Always and everywhere Jerusalem.

THIRTY-NINE

The Rising of the Gods

Difficult indeed it must prove to fight against a
draugar
.

Poetic Edda

* * *

From dawn till darkness Karelian rode without rest. His escort was small, a mere eight men including his squire. They were good men, the same eight he had taken into the heart of Stavoren, but they were not his friends. Pauli was gone, Otto was dead, Reinhard was again commanding the stronghold of Schildberge. Accompanied though he was, he felt as if he rode through Helmardin alone.

The castle of Car-Iduna rose out of the darkness quite unexpectedly. It was not ablaze with lights, as it had been the first time. Only two feeble torches marked its gates. Beyond rose a black and half-ruined tower, a great shadow of stone against the moonlight, brooding with power and stillness and decay.

This is not the right place, surely; I’ve gone astray somehow….
He reined in his horse, his escort pulling up sharply behind him.

“What castle is this, my lord?” his squire whispered.

He did not answer. He let his eyes run across the battlements and into the wood beyond. Nothing was the same. Everything was the same.
Castle of love and revelry, castle of death. It’s like all the priests say, only they never understood the meaning of their own words….

Where was Raven?

He kicked his horse forward, aware of the dismay of his companions. Guards, shadowed against the castle wall, moved forward into the flickering light, and bowed to him.

“Welcome, my lord.”

Their faces were unfamiliar, but then, dear gods, what had he ever looked at here with attention except her?

“I am seeking the castle of Car-Iduna,” he said.

“You have found it, my lord.” The guard made a small gesture with his hand, and the gates began to open— slowly, as if they had not opened for a thousand years.

Somewhere within was a fire; he could see the glow of it, and the occasional leaping of flames over an inner court wall. There seemed to be nothing else here except a vast and crumbling ruin: weeds, and broken stone, and a terrible sense of emptiness which no light, no clamor, no numbers, would ever diminish beyond the moment. The presence of life here was temporary. He wiped icy sweat from his brow as he rode towards the gates, and felt it run in small rivulets down his body.

His captain Harald was tugging at the reins of his horse. He was a young man, rash and brave, but his voice was as unsteady now as the voice of a frightened child.

“My lord, what are you doing? You didn’t tell us we were coming to a place like this!”

“You may wait outside the gates,” the count said. “All of you.”

“Not if you’re going in, my lord!”

“Then precede me or follow me, Harald, but get out of the way.”

It probably took every ounce of will the young man had, but he turned his horse, and led the way.

They trotted into the courtyard— or what had been a courtyard in some time before time, when men still lived here. It was tangled with briars and stones, and pieces of broken and rusting armor. It smelled only of woodland and midnight, but it
felt
of death so strongly that he shivered.

Harald crossed himself several times. “This is like a burying ground, my lord.”

“Aye.”

Servants were hurrying to meet them, friendly enough, smiling in the light of their small torches, taking the horses. Then at last a voice he knew, a hunched body padding quickly out of the shadows.

“My lord of Lys!” Marius the steward smiled, bowing almost to his feet. “Welcome to Car-Iduna, my lord. We hoped against hope you would arrive tonight.”

“I came as fast as I could. Where is my lady?”

“She is waiting for you. Come.”

Steps lay before them, and a wide stone door which Karelian remembered, which opened into the castle proper. Inside was the great staircase leading to the feast hall and the sacred chamber of the Black Chalice. But instead of entering, Marius limped back the way he apparently had come, alongside the inner bastion, towards the place of fire.

A second gate opened for them, narrow and high, through which a single mounted knight could pass if he ducked his head. They went inside, and there the fluid yet overwhelming presence of sorcery struck him with a physical shock. And with it, the realization that whatever they had begun here, they waited on him for its completion.

In the heart of the courtyard was an immense, hollowed-out stone with a fire leaping wildly in it. Some two or three dozen people gathered around it; many were in chain mail, magnificently armed; others in sweeping capes. Gold flashed everywhere, on arm bands and belts and jeweled torques; on the wrists of a young woman who approached him with a splendid goblet in her hands.

“Welcome, Karelian of Lys.” She curtsied gracefully, and offered him the cup. Her breasts were almost bare, her hair as fair as moonlight. She was, he supposed, quite beautiful, but he could not see her face. Nor could he see anyone else’s. The entire company was masked, and every mask was the same: the hollow-eyed, death-boned face of Hel, keeper of the realms of the dead.

He took the cup and thanked her, but he did not immediately drink. He bent, seizing the arm of Marius in an iron grip.

“What of my men?” he demanded.

“They will drink, and they will sleep, and they will remember nothing. She will hurt no one who belongs to you, my lord; surely you know that?”

“Where is she?”

“Coming,” Marius said softly.

Somewhere within the castle, a drumbeat began; then, a few moments later, a shawm, howling as wolves howled, or the dead who could find no resting place.

“Don’t approach her,” Marius said. “Don’t speak unless she commands you. And for your life’s sake, my lord, don’t break the circle.”

The music soared louder, as though a door had opened; torchlight leapt into the sky. The procession came slowly, great hollow drumbeats tolling every step, shuddering into the midnight forest and echoing back. He looked for Marius, but the dwarf had already gone. A moment later Karelian saw a small hunched figure take its place in the circle, masked like all the others.

He drained the wine for courage, knowing there would be potions in it, and not caring. He had knelt, some sixteen months before — or sixteen lifetimes — on the banks of the Maren, in a circle of seven stones, and chosen his lady and his gods. Neither had yet betrayed him.

The procession moved closer. The musicians separated, curving around the circle, and he saw her. She was all in black, and pallid as a dream. And she was hurt— so hurt he caught his breath in anguish, and stared at her, unbelieving.

There were black marks on both sides of her face, and a long jagged cut on her cheek, which had probably been made by a boot. Her wrists were torn. The black silk which crept high to her throat hid the rest, but only until he thought about it.

He had not imagined she could be so wounded. The veela who found him in the woods of Stavoren said only she’d been shot with an arrow. He feared worse; he knew what was possible in wars; he had been through enough of them. And he knew the meaning of Theodoric’s gesture. But he had tried desperately not to think about it. She was the Lady of the Mountain. She was queen and witch and veela, she was inviolable, she was
his…!

Don’t approach her. And for your life’s sake, don’t break the circle!

Except for Marius’s command he would have swept men and fire and gods themselves aside to go to her. But even as he steeled himself, and held his place, he understood why he must do so. He understood why there had been no greeting from her, no kisses, not even a whisper of time to shelter or to talk. He could not even tell her how he had sent the army off with Reinhard, and slipped into the castle of Stavoren with a handful of men disguised as peasants, hoping to rescue her when her captors brought her out to burn. And how he had laughed when the soldiers came back empty-handed, and all damnation broke loose in the duke’s splendid fortress, and it was himself who might have ended up a prisoner then, because he could not stop laughing….

No laughter now, no chance to tell her anything, or to hold her even for a moment. Her pain and her dark fury were part of her strength now, part of the power she would use to forge their magic and their revenge. She looked at him.
So fiercely as I love you, so fiercely do I hate the son of Gottfried….
She was already entranced, drunk on sorcery and passion. Maybe some of it leapt across the circle into his own heart. Maybe some of it came from the potions in his wine… some of this soft coiling hatred which was knotting his stomach and setting fire to his blood. It came from many things, even from this place which was and was not Car-Iduna, which was at once so sheltering and so fell.

But mostly it came from knowing— knowing now for sure. Theodoric had raped her. He had used her and given her to his men to use, to violate and torture and tear apart— she who was so lovely and so magical it seemed a butterfly should not light on her sleeve without permission.

For the first time since Jerusalem, he was glad he had been trained to kill.

She moved into the circle of light. Behind her, in their silver gowns and silver helms, came the Nine, bearing the Chalice, and placing it on an altar beside the burning stone. They too, took their places, and the circle closed. Raven was inside of it. She alone, besides himself, was unmasked.

“May the gods keep safe the world, and may the world keep safe the gods.”

“So let it be.”

The drum began to beat more quickly. She paid homage to the Grail, to the four corners of the world, to Karelian.

“Lord of Lys, be welcome in the circle of Car-Iduna, and be one with our power.”

“So let it be.”

She knelt, with her head bent forward. Her black hair and her black gown seemed a single darkness.

“The empire dies, the empire returns.”

They began to chant. They called on the old gods one by one, called on them with such despair and passion that even the weariest, the most abandoned of gods must have heard and paid them heed. They called on Gullveig, the thrice-slain sorceress of the Vanir; they called on Hel. Sometimes he understood, sometimes everything was a rising and falling wail lost in the crying of pipes and the hammering of drums, pounding faster and faster, out of the night and out of time….

“Out of the shadows—”

“Come forth!”

“Out of the time of forgetting—”

“Come forth!”

“You are unshriven—”

“Come forth!”

“You are still unforgiven—”

“Come forth!”

Raven was on her feet, a leaping brand held high in her fist, her head flung back, her voice a scream of power and defiance and driven need.

“Come forth! By the gods we command you! Come forth!”

Hoofbeats clattered softly across the courtyard behind him. For a moment he did not really hear them, and for yet another moment he thought in the world’s terms, wondering what riders could have found the castle of Car-Iduna, and how they could have entered, and then he spun about as any worldly soldier would have done, his hand closing quickly on his sword.

They were filing through the narrow gate into the inner court, one by one, in full armor and on splendid mounts. The crest on their shields was familiar, and yet unfamiliar, as was the style of their helmets and the trappings of their horses. He looked at their faces, and his blood turned to ice.

He had never been afraid of Raven, never really. Oh, there had been moments of uncertainty. There were tales of nightmare and legend which had flickered across his mind, with a degree of genuine dismay and a greater degree of conscious irony:
Yes, and what really does happen to a man who binds himself to a witch— other than in bed, where everything that happens is what other men dream of?
There had been a few moments of uneasiness, and yes, one awful moment in the forest, when she had changed herself into a hunting cat, but it had been so brief, so playful.

Nothing was brief now, or playful. The chanting went on and the mounted knights came and gathered as to a liege lord’s bell. And he knew from whence they came. Their faces were empty, hollowed out like the masks of actors, lit palely as with marsh lights. They were dead. She had raised the walls of Car-Iduna over some ancient butchering-ground, still scattered with broken armor and with ghosts, and she had called forth the dead.

To ride with him to Ravensbruck.

He was drunk with the sorcery of the night, and with his own deep hunger for revenge. Otherwise he truly might have faltered then; he might have given in to dread and despair and told himself this was not possible, this was not Raven or Car-Iduna, this was not anything he wanted to be part of….

The chanting stopped. The dead men waited, looking past him as though he were not there, looking past everyone to the witch of Helmardin.

She called out names, and six of them moved forward. He did not know the names, but he recognized their marks of rank. They were all highborn men, captains in the emperor’s service, leaders of the war band.