The Black Chalice

by Marie Jakober

“You want to be a knight of Saint David. And so you may one day. But only the best men in the kingdom will be permitted to carry that banner. They will be men who don’t look back — not ever — at anything which tempted them in the world.

  “You loved him once, this traitor who fouls our altars and plots against our faith. You didn’t know what he was — of course you didn’t know — or perhaps you did, just a little? It doesn’t matter. It’s left tracks on your soul just the same. And you’re the one who must erase them. If you truly want to.”

  “I do want to, my lord.”

  “Then do it. Depending where you find him, and in what circumstances, find a way to put him in my hands. If you don’t….” He paused, and I withered under the power of his eyes.

  “If you don’t, then no matter what you say in words, Pauli, we will know where your heart is.”

  Everything grew suddenly and intensely still. I felt as though the whole world had listened, and taken note. We will know where your heart is. Everyone, lords and princes, the priests in their chapels and the beggars in the streets, my father, and God in heaven too: He’s left tracks on your soul, and every one of us will know….

  “My lord,” I whispered, “I would not have come to Stavoren if my heart were anywhere except with you.”

  “Coming to Stavoren was a single step down a long and difficult road. Did you think it would end there? That all you’d have to do afterwards was smile at me, and hold my cloak, and ride behind me into heaven?”

  I looked at the floor.

  “God gives none of us a gentle path, Paul von Ardiun,” he said then, quietly. “I won’t pretend the task I’ve set you is easy or safe. But the powers of good are stronger than the powers of evil. Remember that. And remember this also: for a Christian nothing matters except the will of God.”

  He did not even smile at me. He shouted for the guard, and I stood numb and desolate, waiting for them to come and drag me away. I don’t know what I had imagined, what I had dared to hope for. But surely he would give me more than this, after so terrible a risk, so terrible a sacrifice? But he was already turning away, already busy with the burdens of the world. I drank my sorrow down like gall, and went where I was taken.

  The escape was, as the duke had promised me, an easy one; and Gottfried’s man was waiting where he said, with simple traveling clothes, a good horse, and a small purse for my needs. It must have been midnight by then, though there were no stars to judge by. I rode some distance towards the west, merely to be rid of him. Then I found a grove of birch trees, and sheltered there, waiting for daylight.

  Or so I told myself, but what I truly waited for was a miracle, for time to unravel or the world to end, for Karelian to come stumbling out of the forest begging for God’s mercy, for Gottfried’s messenger to come riding after me: His lordship has reconsidered, Pauli, and wants you to return.

  Slowly, as the night went on, I grew numb with cold, and all my courage left me. Never in my life had I felt so alone, or so unworthy. I understood now, here in my solitude, where I could hide from everything except myself, I understood perfectly well what I wanted from Gottfried. What I’d wanted from the start, what held me to my perilous course when nothing else could have done so. I wanted his friendship. I wanted him to smile, and welcome me; to raise me to feet, and order wine and fatted calves; to praise me in the sight of everyone, and place me by his side.

  I wanted to be the favorite of the king.

  So was I drawn to Karelian, long ago in Acre. So did I go out of my way to find him and offer him my service. I admired his fine looks and glittering reputation; I wanted to stand in his reflected glory. I ran after him, blindly, only to discover that he was just an adventurer — a false crusader, a false Christian, a false vassal to his lord.

  I turned to Gottfried then, because he was different. But I, God forgive me, I was no different at all. When Gottfried did not flatter me as Karelian once did, when he did not smile and play the worldling and offer me its snares, I was disappointed in him. I judged my lord by the standards of his enemy, and when he did not meet those standards, I was disappointed in him…!

  There was that, staring at me like a snake in a mirror, making me sick with self-loathing. But there was something else, too, something even more unforgivable. I confess it willingly; I have no vanity left. My sins lay strewn across these pages in endless number. Yet of them all, this one was the worst.

  I regretted what I had done.

  Yes. In some ungovernable part of myself, deep and shivering and primal, I was sorry. It did not seem like such a dark life now, serving Karelian in Lys, sleeping under a good roof every night, with a fire in the hearth and no enemies to fear. Now the house was burnt, and the manor a war camp, and Karelian a wounded fugitive, Karelian dying perhaps, alone and in bitter pain. He left a trail of blood into the hills….

  It did no good to remember he had brought it on himself, or to say my treachery was right and just. It did no good at all to think of Gottfried or of Christendom. I had betrayed Karelian — perhaps to his death — and I was sorry.

  I hated myself that night to the point of despair. Everything I had done for Gottfried seemed irrevocably spoiled, made small by the smallness of my motives, made shameful by my unsilenceable, personal regret.

  With sunrise, too exhausted to think any more, I climbed on my horse and began my lonely search. Some days later, unknown to anyone, I began to wear a hair shirt. No matter what it cost me, I was determined to conquer my soul, to make pure my commitment to my lord.

  Thirty-two years have passed now, and I have not done so.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  In the Belly of the World

  I seemed to be lost

  Between the worlds

  While around me

  Burned the fires.

  Poetic Edda

  * * *

  Karelian woke in darkness, a strange darkness, thick and bottomless, yet flickering with light. He moved slightly, and a shadowed face bent close to his own, its black hair hanging long and trimmed with fire.

  “Raven…?”

  The voice which answered was amused, strange, unquestionably male.

  “You’re in a bad way, worldling, if you think I’m a bird.”

  “No… bird….” It was difficult to speak, too impossibly difficult to explain. “Who… are you?”

  “You wouldn’t recognize my real name. As for the others, I’ve had many. Drink this, and be quiet.”

  He lifted Karelian’s head, held a cup to his lips. His hands were long and slender as a woman’s, but powerful as those of an archer. The potion was bitter; for a moment, before Karelian slept again, it flooded him with strength. He remembered the black womb which had embraced him, through which he had heard, sometimes, the crash of men and horses, and the howls of hunting dogs.

  “The duke…?” he whispered.

  “He won’t find you.”

  “You did.”

  The stranger laughed. “I can see in the dark. Sleep now; I’ll fetch us some food.”

  Sleep was already closing, unsteady and unsheltering, a sleep raw with fever and dreams. The man returned. Karelian heard the soft keening of a flute, and he tried to lift himself, to call out: Don’t, in God’s name, don’t! They’ll hear you! But he had no strength at all. Even as he formed the words, they dissolved. The world dissolved. Battle raged around him, battle and battle madness, men scaling walls and screaming, and then the streets of an ancient city, not golden at all, just cobblestone and blood, (we marched a thousand leagues for this?) even the sun was murderous, mirroring hate off everything and everything was crimson, everything was burning, even solid stone. There was no end to the streets, no end to the slaughtered houses, there was a Saracen woman fair as a gazelle, tearing open her dress, Don’t…! her breasts amber like wine, like the soft faces of her children, Please don’t…! amber spattered crimson, color of the western sky, Please don’t kill them, please…! their bodies crumpling, hacked into pieces, the world into pie
ces, the whole world into small bloodied pieces while the churches filled with song….

  “Easy… easy, worldling, easy, it’s just a dream….”

  One lean hand pinned him to his bed, the other brushed across his hair. “Just a dream.”

  Sweet gods, if only it were…!

  The dark man bathed his face, pressed fresh poultices against his wounds, spooned broth between his teeth. Clarity came again, for a small while.

  “I’ve never even seen you before,” Karelian said. “Why are you doing this for me?”

  “I have a certain affection for the blood heirs of Dorn. And a definite distaste for that golden graflein of yours. These mountains are mine; I watch them carefully. When I saw him riding to Lys with so many knights, and in such haste, I grew curious. And it’s well I did, don’t you think? Here, another mouthful, you need strength.”

  “Who are you?”

  “As I said, you wouldn’t recognize my name. But my father was the young Saxon chieftain of Dorn, whom Henry put so cruelly to death. To make him Christian.”

  “Wulfstan?”

  “Aye.”

  “But that was…that was a hundred years ago!”

  “Aye. As men count them. Stop asking questions. You’ll learn many things, when I’m ready to tell them to you.”

  He placed the bowl of broth aside, and picked up his flute.

  “Will no one hear you?” Karelian protested.

  “Aye. Old roots and deep-buried stones and sleeping volcanoes. Maybe the odd ghost.”

  And he played then, exquisitely. He played to make the mountains bend close to listen, and the stars turn away to weep. From the coils of his delirium Karelian heard rain patter softly against leaves, and run in rivulets across the rocks; he felt the clean scent of it against his burning throat.

  “Thirsty….”

  But there was no water, there was only desert, Gottfried with a thousand knights in armor, shimmering, riding towards him, a circle of polished steel and white silk, white painted shields, everything white, scarred with black crosses. Crusaders unto death.

  Gottfried smiled. I have your witch, he said.

  The desert shimmered and dissolved, melted into the towers of Stavoren which shimmered and dissolved, waffeled, as ships did against the sunset, the night before they sank….

  * * *

  “You are bred of generations of sorcery, Karelian Brandeis. The princes of Dorn were the high priests and priestesses of old, the keepers of the sacred groves and fires. Some are secret witches now in the days of conquest, and some are as ignorant of their gifts as you have been of yours.”

  “That’s what she said, too.”

  “She?”

  “Raven. The Lady of the Mountain.”

  “Ah. So that’s the bird you talk to in your sleep. A bird with many names, I see, rather like myself.”

  “Do you serve her, too?”

  “I serve no one, worldling. You are born of the clan of Alanas my mother— for this I shelter you. For this I will teach you how to be a sorcerer.”

  There was no measure of time in the depths of the world. When Karelian looked again across the wilds of the Schildberge, all the leaves were gone, all the summer birds were gone; patches of snow lay scattered about the forest, and the wind was sharp as slivered ice. But in Wulfstan’s lair there was only sleep and waking, both confused, both utterly devoid of boundaries.

  “Where is there a fire,” the elf questioned, “without the brand it burns? Where is there a dancer without the dance?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Precisely. So there is no maker without the made, no life without the living. All power rests upon exchange. You cannot take from the world, not ever; you can only trade.”

  “Tell that to the pirates and the princes— aye, and to the popes as well.”

  “They know it better than I do. They have traded everything for a lie.”

  The elf’s voice was soft as running water, and mostly comprehensible. The images were different. They were warnings and memories and maybe just phantoms born of fever and pain, drawn in an unending stream from the was and the never-was, the might-be and the cannot-be and the must never-be. He saw Gottfried crowned king. He saw Gottfried lying dead on the streets of Jerusalem. He saw wars, but the armies changed; they became other armies even as they rode, and the walled cities melted into each other with lunatic ease. And everywhere, everywhere, he saw crosses. Crosses painted and made of wood, crosses forged of gold, crosses sewn on banners, crosses held in upraised screaming hands, crosses appearing suddenly on grey stone walls, in the shapes of trees and clouds, in the meeting of roads and rivers, on public gibbets where dead men hung in rows.

  He never saw Raven.

  “Why is she hidden from me, hunter elf? Can your powers not tell you? Why did she send me no warning?”

  “I can read the signs which are sent to me. Those which are sent to you, you must learn to read for yourself. She is strange, and dangerous, and anyone who thinks different is a fool. But she gave you the wyrdshells, and those aren’t gifts she would give lightly. She gave you the potions which are healing you. Your wound was mortal, didn’t you know?”

  “Mortal…?”

  “Aye. To any ordinary physician. And certainly to an elf. We’re seldom wounded or sick, so we don’t learn much about healing. I could have done very little for you without her gifts. So it may be she’s abandoned you, worldling, but I wouldn’t break my heart about it yet. Not just yet.”

  Not just yet…. The long, slender fingers lingered on his hair, and darkness came again.

  It came and went, and finally it came less often, less terribly. Then, for long quiet hours they talked— or rather the elf stranger talked, arms clasped around his knees, the fire shimmering on a face still beautiful with youth. But his eyes were not youthful. The dark of the northern winter was in them, and the cunning of the hunter, and the power of a man who had dared to bargain with a god.

  And he spoke of the god he had bargained with, of Tyr the hunter, Tyr who nurtured the wolf cub and bound fast the destroying wolf, Tyr who was god of the Althing and so the god of counsel and of justice, Tyr the paradox, mighty and already fading, shrugged aside by the arrogant Odin, condemned entirely by the jealous, all-demanding Christ.

  There were many gods, the elf reminded him, for many and differing realities. But Tyr was the god they needed now. For he was also the ancient god of battle. Not Odin who provoked strife to fill his drinking halls with slaughtered warriors. Not Jehovah who demanded endless wars of conquest, and would go on demanding them until the whole world knelt at his feet. Tyr turned away from both of them, and from the men who served them. He went back to the forests and the mists, back to dreams: This is not what living is, or what I am, or even what war is. Farewell. I will return when you are wise enough to want me.

  “Play the paradox, worldling, if you want to win. The world is round, and the straightest journey is the one which comes back soonest to the place where it began. Therein lies the fatal weakness of the pyramid: it is bound by the circle, and it doesn’t know it.

  “The veelas taught me many things, but of them all, this was the most valuable: they taught me to look for connections. Magic doesn’t lie in objects, however sacred; nor in spells, however powerful; nor in sorcerers themselves, however gifted. The holiest amulet, lost in the desert with no one to wield it, is only a piece of wood or glass or stone. The greatest spell, babbled by witless mimic, is just a branch rattling in the wind. There are some who’ll tell you otherwise, but it isn’t true. Where there are no connections, there is no magic. Magic is rooted in the bonds between things, and the sorcerer’s gift is to see where those bonds lie— where the world touches, and where it doesn’t; where things hold together, and where they don’t. Even the gods are held in those bonds. That is how they are summoned, and that is why they answer —because they, like all things, are part of other things, and they must.

  “Learn to listen, worldling, and to loo
k.”

  Listen to the rain and the snap of fire, to the whispering of leaves, to the whispering of blood. Not as ordinary sounds — all men do that — but as the voices of another kind of being. Listen until you can hear the chanting in the shimmer of a star….

  Days passed, and nights; Karelian did not count them. Twice, the elf gave him potions, and after he drank them the world was unimaginably altered— or perhaps he was, he could not have said for certain which. The walls of the cave were filled with images like those of dreams. Dead men came out of the earth wielding swords. A bishop laden with robes stumbled onto a battlefield, and two knights rode to combat across his body. A great, glittering procession passed through the streets of a city, but as it approached him its colors turned all to black; it carried a bier, and on the bier was a grey-haired king. The procession stopped; armed men approached the bier, and took the dead king’s crown and tossed it from one to the other like schoolboys playing with an apple… until it fell, and began to roll across the city, across the fields, across the whole of Germany, and everything it touched turned to fire.

  “Can’t you help me get to Helmardin? Before that villain Gottfried undoes us all?”

  “I rarely leave my mountains,” the elf said. “Besides….” He paused, and smiled faintly. “You have many things to learn, and you can’t learn them all in a day. Gottfried isn’t a deity yet. He isn’t even a king—”

  “When he is, it will be too late.”

  “It’s been too late for a couple of thousand years. We can’t undo it all. You’re a warrior, Karelian. You know there’s such a thing as an army too big to fight.”

  “So we should sit by our fire and let Gottfried devour the world?”

  “No. We sit by our fire until you can fight him with something a bit more lethal than your voice. Then you can make your own way west. You won’t, in any case, be alone for long.”

  Karelian looked sharply at him, but the elf’s face did not change, nor did his voice.

  “Don’t misunderstand me,” he went on. “I fear Gottfried as much as you do. More, perhaps, because I’ve lived longer, and I know more. That is precisely why I’m telling you to be patient. To hone every skill you have, and build every possible alliance. Because believe me, worldling, you’re going to need them.”