The Crystal Chalice (Book 1)

by R. J. Grieve

  A terrible fear began to attack me then. What if the chalice flower was only a legend? Even if it were real, what if I simply couldn’t find it? By the time it was getting dark, I had sunk on my knees by the altar in the blackest despair. Yet I could not leave that place empty-handed. I could not return to you,” he lifted his eyes to Elorin, “just to watch you die. Whatever else I might have failed in during the course of my life, I could not fail in this. But I did not know what to do, or where to turn, and in sheer torment I spoke two words aloud: - “Help me!”

  Relisar gasped and gripped his hands tightly together.

  “All at once, as if the words were a talisman, the whole hilltop was instantly flooded with light - a light so strong, so intense, that I was unable to look at it and was forced to close my eyes.” He cast a glance around his audience. “Surely you must have seen it last night? The whole hilltop was ablaze.”

  They all shook their heads. “I stood the entire night looking in the direction of the hill,” said Andarion, “but I saw no light.”

  “Go on, go on,” urged Relisar impatiently.

  “Then - then a voice spoke to me out of the light - at least, I’m not sure whether it actually spoke aloud, or whether the words were merely inside my head. What it said to me, I.......I am not permitted to repeat, not even to Elorin. Suffice it to say, that the owner of that voice knew me better than I knew myself. He knew everything I have ever done, or even thought.”

  “Were you afraid?” whispered Triana.

  “Strangely, no, I was not afraid. I felt a sense of awe, of reverence and an acute sense of my own unworthiness, but I was not afraid. I don’t know how long the conversation lasted, how long I knelt there with my eyes closed, but in the end I think I must have fallen asleep because when I awoke, the sun was just rising from behind the hills, sending long horizontal beams of light between the trunks of the oak trees into the dell. Then I noticed that the light had caught something in its beam, something that sparkled and flashed at the foot of the altar like a diamond. I thought at first that it was a drop of dew, but as I bent closer, I saw what it was - a tiny flower, like a jewel. Light shot from its petals in a myriad of colours, almost dazzling me with their brightness. It seemed almost sacrilege to touch it, but my need was great and I knew also, with utter certainty, that it had been placed there for me. I stretched my hand towards it, but before my fingers could even touch it, it just fell into my palm as if willing to come with me. A tingling sensation, that might have been pleasure or might have been pain, shot up my arm to my shoulder and I stood staring at it for a long time as if in a trance, completely overcome by its beauty. It is a moment that I will never forget.”

  He stopped speaking and there was a moment’s awed silence.

  “I wish I could have seen it,” Triana mourned softly. “Now I will never see one and no one will ever believe me if I tell them this tale.”

  “It is not something that I would repeat to anyone but the four of you,” said Celedorn. “It is too precious an experience to be shared with many.”

  “You are right,” agreed Andarion. “I did not see the chalice flower itself, but I saw the effect it had on Elorin when you touched her with it, and that moment is too rare to be shared with the imperceptive.”

  “Then we are agreed, my children,” declared Relisar, at his most patriarchal. “This matter remains between the five of us.”

  As he spoke, Celedorn arose and walked over to his horse on the pretext of unsaddling it. Relisar knew, with that percipience that was his gift, that the younger man was still emotionally charged with his experiences, trying to conceal his feelings under an impassive front. He also knew, with absolute certainty, that the most important of the events on the Hill of the Seven Crowns had not been told to them.

  He arose and followed Celedorn. When his shadow fell across the horse’s shoulder, Celedorn looked up from loosening the girth.

  “You were in doubt about Elorin’s memory,” Relisar suggested softly.

  “Yes. I knew she would remember who she really was, but it crossed my mind that in recovering her distant memories, her more recent ones might be lost.”

  “Were you told that?”

  “No, for some reason it occurred to me when I was riding back. I wondered if recovering her memory might change her - alter her feelings.”

  There was a moment’s silence as Celedorn continued with his task; then slowly, fearfully, Relisar asked the question that had been in his mind since Celedorn had told his story.

  “What did you have to give in exchange for such a gift?”

  Celedorn swung round, startled by the question. “What makes you think there was a price?”

  “You are fencing with me, my boy.”

  Celedorn stared at him with narrowed eyes. “If ever I called you a fool, Relisar, I take it back.”

  “What did you offer, Celedorn?” the old man persisted, a strange premonition gripping his heart. “What did you give in return?”

  For a moment Relisar thought that he was not going to receive a reply, but finally Celedorn spoke in a low, subdued voice: “Something of unequal value - my life.”

  Relisar started and involuntarily recoiled a pace. “But you couldn’t.....it wasn’t.......I mean, you are still.......” He ground to a halt amidst the debris of unfinished sentences.

  “Payment has been delayed for a little while,” Celedorn explained softly. “I need not add that this is to remain between the two of us. Do you understand?”

  The old man nodded, tears standing in his eyes. “I knew it. I knew you would offer your life in exchange for hers. Somehow I just knew it.”

  “You will not repeat this to anyone,” Celedorn insisted. “Swear it.”

  The old man nodded. “I swear.”

  Celedorn’s harsh look softened a little. “One other thing I will tell you.” He hesitated for so long that Relisar felt impelled to prompt him. “What is that?”

  “I......I have been forgiven.”

  Relisar managed a smile. “I never had the slightest doubt that you would be.”

  “You alone have always had faith in me, have you not?”

  “Always.”

  “Perhaps someday I will prove it justified.”

  “My dear boy, you need prove nothing to me. You are every inch your father’s son and I stand in his stead now to tell you that I am proud of you, just as he would tell you if he were here in person.”

  Suddenly Celedorn turned away and leaned his arms across the saddle, his head bowed. In an unsteady voice, he said: “I thought I was going to lose her, Relisar. Only you can guess what sort of hell she rescued me from. I couldn’t live without her now. There is no going back for me.”

  He felt the old Sage’s compassion flood over him like a blessing. “You will not lose her. That I can tell you with absolute certainty. What you have done this day will not be in vain.”

  Celedorn nodded silently, and seeing that he needed to be alone, Relisar left him and returned to the others.

  Late that night, when everyone had gone to sleep and Celedorn alone was left on guard, Elorin arose from her blankets and came and sat beside him by the glowing embers of the fire.

  “Do you think that the blackness will ever return?” she asked. “The night-time makes me uneasy.”

  “Relisar thinks not. By virtue of the fact that it is a spirit, it cannot be killed, but he says he has banished it back to its master.”

  “I did not think Relisar had such power.”

  “I think we have all underestimated him. He often makes a muddle of the little things, but when it really matters, he never fails. You did not see him as I did, standing before that dreadful blackness shining like a star, his whole being radiant with silver light.”

  They both stared into the glowing heart of the fire, watching a white feather of wood-ash fall from the log like a large snowflake.

  “He thinks I do not remember where I was,” said Elorin reflectively.

  Celedorn’
s eyes left the fire and fastened on her intently. “Do you?”

  “Yes, a little. More impressions than memories. I was somewhere where no light had ever penetrated. It had no walls, no boundaries, just the ground on which I stood and an endless darkness all around. Yet it was not empty. The darkness itself had consciousness, a will. I felt a presence all around me, a single being, who watched me and read my thoughts. There was nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide. I was in a prison without walls, without bars - and that is the only kind of prison that one can never escape from. I have never felt so alone and I became so frightened, so terrified that I wanted to die. But after a while, I realised that something lay between me and the Presence. Twice I sensed it reach for me and twice I felt it recoil. I felt its frustration and its hate but gradually the certainty grew upon me that even in such a place, I was protected. Then, all at once, out of the darkness I heard a voice calling to me. “Elorin, Elorin,” it cried, and I knew it was you. It was the same as at the Serpent’s Throat when you called my name so urgently. All during my journey through the Great Forest, before I even knew that you were following me, those words, your voice, rang in my head and when I heard them in that dark place, I knew that you were trying to find me.”

  While she had been speaking, he had returned his gaze to the fire, gazing into its depths, the light reflected in his pupils, but when she stopped, he raised his head again. “Here is a strange thing, while I was searching for the chalice flower on the Hill of the Seven Crowns, I found myself calling out your name, over and over, as I searched. I scarcely knew I was doing it, for it was not the result of conscious thought but from some source deep within me over which I had no control. Again and again I called your name, as if by so doing, it drew you closer to me.”

  Casting a quick glance at the others to make sure they were asleep, he shifted his position on the ground to face her, and placed both hands on her shoulders. “Promise me you will never do such a thing again. Relisar was in no danger, you know, your sacrifice would have been for nothing. Promise me you will never risk your life like that again.”

  “My besetting sin has always been impulsiveness.”

  The ghost of a smile played around his lips. “Impulsiveness is too restrained a word for it. I could call it something else.”

  She tilted her face towards him, mutely inviting him to kiss her. Unable to resist her, he leaned forward and gently did so. When he drew back, their eyes met and a powerful, unspoken thought flashed between them, for he kissed her again with unrestrained desire, catching her tightly against him.

  After a moment’s reckless response, Elorin pushed him away. “The others,” she hissed in an urgent undertone.

  “Oh, the others can go to the devil!”

  She suddenly became roguishly prim. “No, sir, they cannot, so please behave yourself.”

  He chuckled softly. “Mountain brigands are not noted for behaving themselves.”

  “No,” she riposted, “but the Prince has decided that you must become respectable, and I for one, think it is an excellent plan.”

  “I would not dare to argue with His Highness,” he promptly replied, avoiding the more serious issues implicit in the statement - too many issues with no answers.

  “I’ll stay with you until your watch is over,” she said, leaning comfortably against him. “I have no desire to lie by myself in the darkness. I have had enough of darkness - enough for a lifetime.”

  The following morning dawned cool and pearl-grey. The sky was as nacreous as the inside of an oyster and a drifting ground-mist clung mysteriously to the hollows in the grass. It reminded Elorin of that misty autumn day, seemingly so long ago, when she had awoken within the stone circle to find two complete strangers staring at her. She recollected the sudden fear of realising that she remembered nothing, She recalled the sense of not belonging. Yet those two strangers had become so dear to her, their faces now so familiar, that they had become an integral part of her heart.

  She had been standing looking over the veiled plain in the direction of the Hill of the Seven Crowns, which arose in the distance, phantom-like, from the mist, when Relisar came and stood beside her.

  “A year to the very day, my dear. So much has happened during that time that it is hard to realise that it is only a year. I awoke this morning feeling that there was something special about today and a little bit of mental calculation informed me that you and I first met precisely one year ago today.”

  “I was thinking of that only just now. It must be the autumnal mist which reminded me of it. I want you to know that I have no regrets about what you did, Relisar. If your spell had not gone wrong that day, then I would never have met Celedorn, or indeed any of you. I have lived more during this last year than during the rest of my life put together and I have no regrets.”

  “I am glad to hear you say that, but of course, you are assuming that the spell did go wrong, and lately - well, lately I have begun to think that there was nothing wrong with it at all.”

  “It scarcely matters. Through you, I have found everything I want in life.”

  He saw that she was looking across the camp to where a tall, dark figure was loading packs onto the horses. “I am so proud of him,” she murmured, with such a look of adoration in her eyes that Relisar turned away to hide his emotion.

  “He must not pay the price,” he groaned inwardly to himself. “He shall not pay the price.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The Home-coming

  The Prince suddenly stood up in his stirrups and let out an exclamation of surprise. “There it is! Look! To the left of the trees! The Harnor!”

  They all followed the direction of his pointing finger and saw the metallic gleam of the sun on the distant water.

  “I believe you are right,” said Celedorn, screwing up his eyes against the strong light. “We have come to it more quickly than I thought. I would have guessed that we still had another day’s journey to make but I have miscalculated, the river can be no more than a couple of miles distant. What concerns me a little is that we have come so close to the river and yet have seen nothing of the Turog. Last spring these woods were crawling with them as they mustered their army to attack Eskendria. Now we have not encountered a single one.”

  “Perhaps we are too far east,” suggested Relisar.

  “You forget that I know the region across the river well. Opposite here lies the Barony of Westrin - my old hunting grounds,” Celedorn replied, indicating the Westrin Mountains, already snow-tipped, floating dreamily above the clouds in the distance.

  “Then there is only one conclusion to be drawn,” said the Prince grimly. “They must have crossed the border into Eskendria. The invasion must have already begun.”

  “Did you really expect anything else?”

  “No, I just hoped beyond hope, that they might have been delayed.”

  “That still does not entirely explain their absence. I would have expected some detachments to have been left in the woods to secure their supplies.”

  “Unless,” said the Prince, reading his thoughts and feeling a cold chill crawl up his spine. “Unless the war is already over and Eskendria has fallen.”

  Triana, moved with sympathy for him, said: “It’s foolish to speculate. We will only know for sure what has happened once we cross the Harnor.”

  By noon, the river was close enough for them to see its broad, steel surface flashing the sun back into the sky. It rolled towards the coast with smooth, unbroken power, forcing its way towards the narrow confines of the Serpent’s Throat and its sudden escape into the open sea.

  So, too, as they approached, did the Westrin Mountains grow in height and majesty.

  Noting how Celedorn’s eyes were constantly drawn to them, Elorin remarked: “I never thought that I might someday look upon them as home.”

  Triana drew her horse level with them. “I have not seen them before. They are so beautiful, so mysterious the way the peaks seem to float above the clouds. But surely the
y are a cold, inhospitable place to live? How is it that Westrin is one of the greatest baronies when its land is so rugged and mountainous?”

  Celedorn turned from contemplating his birthright to answer the question. “In the days when my father ruled Westrin, before it fell into chaos and ruin, the land in the sheltered valleys provided rich farmland. Also, the mountains provide other resources - mighty forests of timber and silver mines located on the slopes facing Serendar. I remember visiting them as a boy and being impressed by the deep galleries driven into the rock. They are deserted now, for the brigands robbed the miners of their silver just as quickly as it could be mined from the ground. When I returned ten years ago, the mines had already been abandoned. However, the silver is still there and all it needs is the rule of law to be restored for the mines to be opened again.”

  Triana raised her brows delicately. “All that is needed to restore the rule of law, is for a strong Lord of Westrin to be in control again.”

  He shrugged dismissively, unwilling to get involved in that particular issue.

  “How is it that Ravenshold has no town around it like other castles?” Elorin asked, mainly to distract Triana away from matters that clearly Celedorn did not wish to discuss.

  “Ravenshold has always been a strong defensive position, designed to protect the border against Turog incursions. The town it protects lies in the foothills of the mountains, well back from the Harnor out of harm’s way,” he informed her. “I know that you see it as a grim and even frightening place, Elorin, but it was not always so. Its defensive function meant it was always a little austere on the outside, I grant you, but within its walls, it once was a comfortable home. I remember how one of the inner courtyards, now just an area of flattened earth used for exercising horses, used to be my mother’s rose garden. As a child, many times I walked amongst the roses on a summer’s day.” His face had softened with the recollection but it also grew a little sad.