Grail Prince

by Nancy McKenzie

  “Is there no guest law in this country?”

  As Galahad spoke, a sudden gust of wind tore across the headland, catching Valvan’s cloak and whipping it around his body. His horse squealed and backed, throwing his head up and showing the whites of his eyes. The foot soldiers stared at Galahad as Valvan struggled to control his mount.

  “You shall have your night’s shelter and your bowl of gruel,” Valvan snapped, “when you tell me what I wish to know. We are too near Pictish lands to trust strangers. Who are you, and why are you here?”

  Snow whirled between them, shedding silence. Sir Brastias slid off his horse, pulled his hood close around his face, and walked quietly forward to gather up the black stallion’s reins. His face shielded by the horse, he approached Galahad.

  “Say nothing to him, my lord. Lift up your shield arm, that his soldiers may see the device.”

  Galahad obeyed. The men in the front line of the phalanx gaped openly. A low murmur went through the ranks like wind through a wheat field. One by one, and then by twos and threes, the soldiers laid their weapons down and sank to their knees.

  Valvan cursed and threatened, gesticulating wildly, but his men paid no attention. They stared at Galahad in dumb and fascinated awe.

  Owaine strode forward. “Honored knight, Spirit King or man of flesh and blood, we welcome you to Dunpeldyr on behalf of our host, who would invite you in himself if he could catch his breath.” He glared at Valvan as the King of Lothian began to protest. “Consider your position, my lord. Use your eyes.”

  “Yes, come in with us,” seconded Talorc, “and the rest of your party, too. That horse needs tending and you all must be frozen from the cold.”

  Galahad nodded silently and gestured to his companions. With Owaine and Talorc at the head of the procession, they walked right past Valvan and his troops into the fortress.

  22

  THE SCABBARD

  Whispers ran like wildfire through Dunpeldyr. Soldiers and courtiers peered around corners to get a glimpse of Galahad. Servants shrank and trembled as he passed by. He and Percival were given rooms in the part of the fortress built from stone—not quarried, square-cut Roman stone, but piled boulders cemented with wattle and supported by beams in the round, uneven style of northern builders more ancient than the Romans. When they were shown into a large, round chamber with a newly lit brazier, their chamberlain quaked so badly he leaned against the doorjamb for support and was glad to be told they needed nothing beyond hot water and fire.

  “Thank God!” Percival exclaimed, extending his hands to warm over the log blaze. “I thought they’d never let us in! I can’t feel my fingers or my toes. However did you fight them all in this bitter cold?”

  “Fighting’s warm work.”

  “Thank you, cousin, for taking it upon yourself to pay the price of entrance. Who does this selfish tyrant think he is?”

  “You owe me nothing. Rouk paid, not I.”

  Percival laid a hand on Galahad’s shoulder. “He’ll recover. Didn’t you hear the stablemaster? It’s not so deep. All it needs is a month or so.”

  Galahad nodded glumly, dropping his bedroll on a plump pallet near the fire. “I will see to it myself. But first, there is business even more important to attend to.”

  “Ah, yes!” Percival rubbed his hands together. “The feast in your honor! I’m as hungry as a bear in springtime. I’d have settled for dinner, or the promised bowl of gruel, but now there’s to be a feast!”

  Galahad scowled. “I don’t mean the feast.” He changed his tunic and leggings for a cleaner pair and buckled on his swordbelt. “Hurry, Percival. We must take Sir Brastias and Lady Elinor to Rydor before the feast begins.”

  With Brastias, Elinor, and Percival behind him, Galahad followed the servant to Rydor’s door. They were shown into an anteroom where a sulky coal fire smoked in the brazier and a pair of spotted hounds lay curled in its circle of warmth. The dogs leaped up as they entered, stiff-legged, showing fangs. Then one of them began to wag its tail; in an instant they were writhing about Elinor in a riot of delight, whining for pardon and pawing eagerly at her cloak. Rydor’s attendant opened the inner door.

  “The Knight of the Shield, my lord. With his companions.”

  Rydor came out at once. He was richly dressed with plenty of gold showing at his shoulder, wrists, and waist, and a magnificent silver torque about his neck.

  “My lord king.” Galahad bowed low.

  “Sir.” Rydor returned the reverence. He snapped his fingers sharply. “Hawk! Fang! Here!” Obediently, the dogs skulked to his side.

  Galahad drew a deep breath and introduced himself and Percival. “We have come about your sister,” he finished.

  “What?” Rydor cried, paling. “Have you news of her? Does she live? Tell her all is forgiven, if only she lives!”

  “Your sister lives,” Galahad said quietly. “She has been in the protection of a wise man, and a brave one.” He stepped aside and gestured to those behind him. “He will tell you himself.”

  Rydor looked eagerly at the two hooded figures who had not been introduced. Sir Brastias flung back his hood and bowed.

  “Brastias!”

  The smaller figure hesitated, then broke into a run and threw herself into Rydor’s arms, much to the dogs’ delight. They danced and whined around the embracing pair as the King of Rheged wept openly, kissing the girl and hugging her close. “Thank God! Thank God! I was a fool, Elinor! Say you’ll forgive me! You needn’t marry—but don’t leave me anymore!”

  “No, brother, no—it was wrong of me to run off, but I couldn’t help it! I saw only two paths to take, but had I stopped to consider, I would have seen there was a better way. I would never have hurt you, Ry, but you treated me so cruelly!”

  “I did,” he owned. “I know it. But, Elinor, I have suffered dreadfully on account of it. I have thought you dead these many months, and as good as by my hand. Say you will come back to Glannaventa with me when we are finished here, and live peaceably at home again.”

  Elinor pulled away from him and lifted a hand to his face, the hand with Brastias’s golden ring shining on her finger. “Alas, brother, I cannot. For when I left you I took a husband.”

  Rydor grabbed her hand and stiffened. “What? Without my leave?” His face darkened. “Where is he? Brastias, what do you know of this? Who is the lad? Can he be bought off?”

  Elinor clung to her brother’s cloak. “Rydor, Rydor, have you learned nothing? It was a wedding of my choosing! We can never go back to what we were, you and I. But you must accept my husband, or it will be the death of me!”

  “Accept your husband?” Rydor cried. “When you have never asked my leave?”

  “I ask it now!”

  Sir Brastias stepped forward and bent his knee to the ground. “My lord Rydor,” he said firmly. “I am the one she begs you to accept. She ran to me for shelter and for comfort, and I married her.”

  Rydor gaped. “You?”

  With a lift of her chin, Elinor moved to Sir Brastias’s side and took his hand. “Sir Brastias is my husband. We have come to ask your blessing.”

  “Brastias?” Rydor roared. “It’s Brastias you ran to? Why, in God’s name?”

  “Because I love him,” Elinor shot back, coloring brightly. “He’s been a better friend to me than anyone in Glannaventa, including you!”

  Rydor stared from one to the other. The two hounds planted themselves between the couple, panting joyfully. At last the king lifted his shoulders. “Well, well. What’s done is done. You are alive and well, and it could have been much worse. Brastias is an honorable man. I have no quarrel with him. It’s just that . . . my own sister . . . why didn’t you ask my leave?”

  “Would you have granted it?”

  Rydor grunted. For answer, he reached out and grasped Brastias’s arm in the soldier’s embrace. “Welcome, Brastias. It seems we are brothers now.”

  Brastias cleared his throat gruffly. “Indeed, my lord. But there is a small
matter still unsettled. A small matter of three talents of gold.”

  Rydor froze and color washed his face. “So that’s it! You wanted my gold!”

  “No, no, you have it wrong. You owe it to Galahad, not me. I would have stayed in Castle Noir, warm, safe, and silent, but for him. He is the real reason we are here.”

  Rydor turned slowly to Galahad. “Is this true?”

  “It is true I persuaded them to come and ask your blessing.”

  “To get my gold? And you a son of Lancelot?”

  Galahad’s hand slid unthinking to his sword hilt. Rydor blanched at the look in the blue eyes. “Then why did you do it? Why bring her all the way here, in winter? A message would have been good enough.”

  “A message,” Galahad replied evenly, “would have dishonored you. And it would not have been enough. You know full well you’d have sent half your army to Castle Noir to get her back.”

  Rydor shrugged, but Elinor came forward and took his hand. “The truth, Ry. You know you would have.”

  “All right,” Rydor growled. “A promise is a promise. But you must follow me back to Rheged, my lord. I don’t travel with three talents of gold.”

  Galahad bowed. “I don’t want your gold, Rydor of Rheged. I want your pledge, instead.”

  “What pledge is that?”

  “A pledge against the future. You owe me a battle. Swear now that you will come when I call, to wherever I need you, without hesitation and without fail.”

  Rydor laughed. “You may call me to battle anytime you wish! I shall not balk at that. And I will certainly exchange such a promise for three talents of gold. You have my word upon it.”

  They grasped hands to seal the bargain. “And will you,” Galahad continued, “help me extract such a promise from the other kings at this evening’s feast? For I defeated them all, except Valvan, and for the moment I am master of his men. They owe me a battle, all of them.”

  Rydor considered the proposition carefully. “It might be done, at that,” he said at last, slinging an arm around Elinor and Brastias. “Come, we shall all go in together. I will show him I support you, and I wager Talorc will, as well. Kastor is Brastias’s kinsmen and my neighbor; we will persuade him without much trouble. As for Owaine, he is so delighted a threat to Valvan has suddenly appeared on his own doorstep, I wager he will do whatever you bid him, and with pleasure.”

  Galahad smiled. “Good. For I’ve no doubt there will come a time when Britain will need the support of all the men of the north.”

  The winter proved a hard one. For week upon week bitter winds blew cold from the north and wet from the east. Blizzard upon blizzard battered the barren land, freezing rivers and blanketing the woodlands in snow the height of a horse. Damp blew off the cold sea into every corner of Dunpeldyr. Within doors tempers flared as personalities, penned within the stronghold in forced inaction, chafed against one another in constant meeting. Although Galahad had procured the promises he sought, most of the northern lords avoided his company. Owaine did little but drink, wrestle, and dice. Kastor spent his time in drink and fornication, tolerating Valvan but openly contemptuous of Rheged. Rydor put this down to wounded pride. Upon learning of Elinor’s marriage to Sir Brastias, Kastor had openly sneered, “Well, well, how like her to choose the goat over the ram. An ill-brought-up girl, if I ever met one. It’s your doing, Rydor. You always indulged her. Now you’ve reaped what you’ve sown. I wish her joy of her bed, much fruit may it bring her.”

  Rydor colored but held on to his temper. “It is not an ignoble choice. He is a prince of Strathclyde and could have worn your crown had it suited him. He’s a good man and a wise one, a veteran of many battles.”

  “Who has given up war,” Kastor added. “For books.”

  In public conference with the other lords, at dinner, at sword practice, at hunting when the weather allowed, at gaming when it did not, the tension between all the men was kept alive and sharp by Valvan’s bitter contempt for them all and his relentless insistence that they accept him as High King of the North. Valvan sought to prove his fitness for this honor by pointing out their own unfitness in great detail. Such insults, however subtly or pointedly made, could not be avenged by open attack, for the undeniable fact remained that all of them were prisoners in Dunpeldyr while winter storms raged across the north, and Valvan’s men outnumbered their own by ten to one.

  Galahad might have stilled Lothian’s tongue, for the aura around him still shone bright in the eyes of Valvan’s men, but he spent as little time as possible in the company of the northern kings. For the first month he practically lived in the stables, tending Farouk. The dagger wound was shallow, but it festered, and Galahad nursed the stallion back to health with hot compresses, soaks, and constant walking. Even when the horse was healed, he clung to the stables as to a refuge, and often fell to talking to the grooms and stableboys about the Emperor Maximus. None of them had heard the legends. Their general ignorance led Galahad to conclude that Maximus might well have never traveled this far north, and that neither his treasure nor the third token was likely to be found in Lothian.

  Percival spent long days in sword practice, often staggering back to his chamber, exhausted, bruised, and bloodied from repeated blows with blunted weapons, to bathe in a tub of snowmelt and fall into delicious sleep. He grew slowly tougher, hardier, more skilled. He found in Garfalon the perfect companion to help him sharpen his fighting skills, and Garfalon found the king’s son eager to learn all he could about everything from fighting to hunting to woodlore to dressing wounds. Through Percival, Galahad learned of Garfalon’s longing to rejoin Rheged’s forces. Galahad spoke to the king on his behalf, and Rydor willingly granted his request. Garfalon was so ecstatic at the news he threw himself to the floor and kissed Galahad’s boots, much to the boy’s dismay and Percival’s amusement.

  At night, in their bedrolls around the peat fire, they talked of the day’s events, where they might go, come spring, and what the third token might be. This was Percival’s favorite subject.

  “You’ve found two of them, for certain,” he would begin. “The shield was forged in a smithy’s fire, and it’s crossed, and you found it in shadow. And the cup, although it doesn’t look like much now, it must have been used for feasting, and the wine it held made the emperor merry. And you found it in darkness.”

  “Darkness bright,” Galahad corrected. “I had a candle.”

  “Yes. So that’s two of them. I wonder what the third could be? I can’t imagine what could be both empty and used for fighting, can you? And if you’re going to find it in daylight we might have to wait for spring. I’ve never seen such a gloomy place as Dunpeldyr in all my life!”

  “Which”—Galahad smiled—“covers so many years.”

  They spoke of where they should go when spring made the roads passable.

  “We’ll put ourselves in the flow of events,” Galahad decided. “As the smith advised. That’s what we’ve done so far, and every place we’ve been has led us somewhere else.”

  “And at each place we’ve found a token. At this rate we’ll find the third token and receive the sign of success before the summer solstice!”

  Galahad shuddered. “I almost hope not.”

  “Why not, for heaven’s sake? You’d be halfway to your goal.”

  “You forget what follows the finding of the tokens.”

  Percival propped himself up on one elbow and grinned. “Ah, yes. Kneeling before women.” In the low light of the fire he could just make out Galahad’s dark head, the liquid glimmer of open eyes gazing at the ceiling. “I wish I could do it for you. I think women are wonderful. All of them. They’re not without courage or sense. Look at Marrah; look at Lady Elinor. Brave, courageous in loneliness, loving and kind. They’re the equal of men, most of them, although we don’t give them credit for it.”

  The glimmering eyes turned toward him. Even in the dark Percival could see their blue blaze. “What utter nonsense, Percival. You’re deluded by their char
m, which is just what they intend. Marrah brave? It was her scream that drew her father from the river when the bandits attacked. Had she been brave, she’d have sacrificed herself in silence and so saved his life.”

  “But then those ruffians would still be a living menace and you wouldn’t have found the shield.”

  Galahad shrugged. “As for Lady Elinor—she has borne much discomfort, that is true. But she ought to have obeyed her brother’s wishes. Instead, she’s put him and his soldiers through months of distress and she’s completely disrupted Sir Brastias’s life.”

  “I don’t hear him complaining about it. Would you really have married that girl to Kastor? Ugh! She’s better off with Sir Brastias, and he with her.”

  “My point is, women have the power to manipulate men. They glory in that power. The more highborn and beautiful they are, the more deftly they control us. Even the strongest men are no more than puppets to them. Look what Guinevere did to Arthur. He was never able to put her away, a courageous man like that! They’re all capable of the grossest deception. Lying’s as easy as breathing to them. You will never get anything straight out of a woman. I promise you this, Percival: I will never succumb to the power of women. They may lie and weave their intrigues all about me, but it will avail them nothing.”

  “Never is a long time, cousin. Someday you, too, will be moved by love.”

  “No. When we desire them, we give them power over us. I will not allow that to happen.”

  Percival laughed merrily. “Easy to say when you’ve not yet met the woman who’ll drive you mad, but you will. And I can hardly wait to see the day!”

  Galahad shivered. He remembered the day in Brittany when he had felt the first stirrings of desire, had tasted madness. “Then you will wait forever.”

  Winter blustered into spring with no diminution of cold or violent wind. But the day of the equinox broke clear and still without a tremor of moving air. To ears so long accustomed to the roaring of the wind, the sudden silence was deafening. By midmorning a mild breeze from the southwest started icicles dripping from the eaves and cheering echoed across the snow-swept ridge of rock.