Kingdom of the Grail

by Judith Tarr

  He abandoned it all—grief, rage, even the bonds of flesh. In falcon’s form, with falcon’s spirit, he hurtled into the sun.

  CHAPTER 36

  “You should have told him,” Turpin said mildly. Sarissa unknotted her fists. Her palms ached and stung where the nails had pierced flesh. Her throat was tight. Still she managed to get the words out. “And have him do what he just did, before we had brought him here?”

  “Olivier would have been a useful ally,” Turpin said. “It’s an ill thing for you that he died.”

  “We can’t bring him back,” she said.

  “Did I ask that?” He shook his head. He looked weary suddenly, worn with his own grief. “I know how close to death I was when I was brought here, and how far I had to come before I walked again in the daylight. Roland came farther still. The third of us had gone over the river. I would that I had gone in his place—for your sake and for Roland’s.”

  “No,” she said. “It was meant to be so. As ill as it seems, as grievous as it is, this is the gods’ will.”

  He raised a brow at her mention of gods, but did not question it, just then. “Suppose you tell me precisely what you need of Roland. Why you had to steal a royal army, and snatch it away by means both magical and secret.”

  She leaned on the parapet. Her eyes looked out across the wide valley of Montsalvat, but they barely saw its green rolling fields or its deep woodlands. Trust came hard. He was an outlander and a Christian; and though the Grail had belonged to his Christ, it was not a Christian thing. But she had failed once in failing to trust. “Come,” she said.

  She led him through the castle. Rather deliberately, she took the long way about. He was no fool: he could well encompass the size and strength of the fortress, and the richness of its appointments. People of rank were few this day; most were out and about, performing duties and preparing for the war. Still there were servants enough, quiet and rather shy in the presence of a stranger, but watching him closely under cover of sweeping or scrubbing or standing guard. Many had never seen an unfamiliar face, still less a Frankish one. There was much chatter in the servants’ quarters, she was sure, and she did not doubt that many of those she saw had no pressing need to be where they were just then.

  She pretended not to see any of them. At length she came round to the long dim hall with its lofty vault. Shafts of sun slanted through the high louvered windows, casting bars of light upon the floor. Artisans out of Byzantium had laid that pavement long ago, a mosaic of wondrous work, glimmering with gold. Gold gleamed on the pillars and in the mosaics of the vault, images of glory and splendor: all the earth spread out on the floor, rising in trunks of trees and golden vines, up to the blue dome of heaven with its myriad stars.

  Turpin’s step faltered. His breath caught. Sarissa, who had known this hall for years out of count, paused to taste of his wonder. It was beautiful indeed. But they had not come to marvel at the great hall of Carbonek. She passed through it with him trailing slowly behind her.

  He stopped again before the dais on which stood the throne. It was rather startling amid such splendor: a simple chair of wood that had gone dark with age. No jewel, no carving adorned it. All its beauty was its simplicity.

  She opened the door behind the dais. The chamber beyond was empty, but its lamps were lit. The passage that led from it was deserted but illuminated, waiting for them to pass. It ended in another door and a stair winding steeply upward.

  There was nothing here for Turpin to stare at, no beauty, no richness, only the bare plain stone. Yet for her there was more awe in this stark unornamented tower than in any work of mortal hands. The great high singing thing before her was reaching, seeking, drawing her to itself.

  She did not enter into its presence, but halted in the antechamber. Even there, its power thrummed in her bones.

  This room had been bare once, a simple space for waiting, or for testing initiates before they came into the presence. Now it was furbished as a monk’s cell, with narrow hard bed and wooden stool.

  Nieve was attending the man on the bed. Sarissa breathed somewhat of a sigh of relief. Of the nine, Nieve was the eldest. Her sweetness and her calm strength had comforted Sarissa often and often; and so it did now, as she looked up smiling. “He sleeps,” she said in her gentle voice, “but he’ll wake soon.”

  Sarissa nodded. She would have loved to rest here, to know a few moments’ peace, but there would be none of that until the war was over.

  Nieve withdrew to the inner chamber—fortunate, to take that nourishment, to renew her body and spirit. Sarissa sat in the chair that she had left, and took the hand that lay slack upon the coverlet.

  He had declined even in the day since she had taken her turn on watch. His hand was thinner, his skin more transparent. The bones of his face were stark, his eyes sunk deep. Yet there was no pain that she could see, and neither fear nor sorrow, only a deep peace.

  Turpin’s broad shadow fell across her. Beside the sleeper he seemed heavier and more bearish than ever. And yet, she thought, his eyes were clear and full of compassion. “Is that . . . ?” he asked softly.

  She nodded.

  He sank to one knee, half for comfort, half for awe. “He looks so young,” he said, “even so close to death. He looks—like—”

  “Roland’s foremother was his sister,” she said.

  She watched Turpin understand the meaning of that. “So that’s why—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But has he no sons—grandsons? No heirs?”

  “Only one can be chosen,” she said.

  Turpin tugged at his beard, frowning. She let him ponder at his leisure. He might mourn Olivier’s absence and insist that only Olivier could make Roland see reason, but she could well see why the gods had taken that one of the three, and left this big shambling man with his clear eyes and his swift mind.

  The hand in hers did not move, but it changed slightly. Life had come into it, a little. She met the calm grey eyes of her king, and bowed her head in greeting and respect.

  He smiled at her. “Little one,” he said, his voice the merest thread of a whisper—the old jest, the old endearment. “Why so troubled? He’ll come back.”

  “Are you sure of that?” she asked him.

  He nodded. His hand tightened for a moment on hers. His gaze had shifted to Turpin. Turpin met it without fear. “My lord archbishop,” said the king of the Grail.

  “My lord king,” said Turpin.

  “You are welcome in Montsalvat,” Parsifal said.

  “It is a great honor,” Turpin said, “and a great wonder, to wake from death into this kingdom.”

  Parsifal’s smile was almost wry. “So I said once, when I was young. Do you wish to see the Grail?”

  Turpin blinked as if taken aback. Sarissa, who was accustomed to her king’s directness, was somewhat disconcerted herself.

  “I . . . doubt that I am worthy,” Turpin said after a moment.

  “You may doubt,” said Parsifal. “The Grail cares nothing. Little one?”

  Sarissa kissed his hand, laid it on the coverlet and rose. Turpin seemed astonished when she raised him to his feet. He was trembling. “I truly am not worthy,” he said.

  “Do you fear that it will blast you for your sins?” She drew him forward. He did not want to come, but she saw to it that he could not resist her.

  There was no great gate before them, no fanfare of trumpets. Only the stair and the door, and the white chamber beyond, round like the tower it was built in. There was the altar in its circle of clear light, and the shrine with its four winged guardians. Their eyes glittered as Sarissa entered with Turpin.

  The Grail was singing softly in its shrine. Nieve knelt before it, deep in contemplation. Their presence disturbed her not at all.

  Turpin had fallen to his knees just within the door. The trembling had left him. He looked as he must in battle, stern and still, but with a fierce light in his eyes.

  Sarissa bowed before the shrine. Here a
lways, all trouble left her, all doubts and fears. There was only the light and the singing, and the high white power of the Grail.

  She opened the silver doors. The Grail was wrapped in its cloth that had been a Roman legionary’s cloak: heavy wool well woven, red as blood. She lifted the cup from its wrappings, cradling it in her palms. It was as light as air and as heavy as the world, as it had always been. Sometimes it brimmed with blood, sometimes with light. Today it was full of blood-red wine, the sweet Falernian, wafting its scent through the gleaming air.

  Turpin was rapt before the Grail. She brought the cup to him and set it to his lips. He drank as if in a dream. The Grail’s singing was supernally sweet.

  She did not drink from it herself. All the nourishment it could give, it gave her by its simple presence. She could feel it in her blood, in her flesh and bone. The burden of years slipped away. The weariness of grief, anger, guilt, all shrank and faded. The Grail brought healing; that was its gift and its power.

  It healed her as it healed Turpin; as it had healed Roland, who had been near death. As it had lost power to heal Parsifal.

  “I refuse it,” he said.

  She had laid the Grail back in its shrine, and left Turpin kneeling there near Nieve, lost as she was in holy trance. Parsifal was awake still, drifting half in a dream, but rousing to Sarissa’s presence.

  “It’s time for me to go,” he said. “The Grail would hold me to this life for a thousand years; but I was born and raised a mortal man. I was never meant to live the life of a god.”

  “Is it a curse?” she asked, not precisely of him. “Amfortas also denied the Grail—though his cause was guilt and great shame, for the sin that he committed, and his betrayal of the oath that he had sworn. Are all the Grail-kings doomed to turn their backs on the power they serve?”

  “There is a doom on us,” said Parsifal, “but so is there on all kings. With great power comes a great price.”

  “That I know,” said Sarissa who was the chief of the ladies of the Grail. And who was older than this man, too, though perhaps not wiser. If she had been wise, she would not have lost Roland.

  “Nothing is ever lost,” Parsifal said. He read her as easily as Roland had. Perhaps it was a gift of that blood. “When the archbishop comes out, gather your courage. Tell him the truth. It will armor him when the champion comes back—when we all face the consequences of your choice.”

  Sarissa bore the rebuke in silence, as she should. “Shall I tell him everything, then? All of it?”

  “All,” said the Grail-king.

  “And if he rises up in revolt?”

  “Then that is God’s will,” said Parsifal. “Little one, you cannot make choices for all the gods. Sometimes they’re bound to make their own.”

  That was difficult. Sarissa was not certain she believed in it. But he was wiser than she. He always had been, even when he was a simple fool. She stooped and kissed his brow, pressed his hand to her heart, and left him to guard what strength he had.

  CHAPTER 37

  Roland flew high and far. He little cared where he went, save that it be away from fear, away from anger: clear into the blue heaven, with all his will and spirit gathered into a single bright spark, the mind of a hawk.

  As a hawk he hunted and flew. As a hawk he slept when the night came, and took wing when the sun rose again, with the memory of humanity shrinking smaller, the longer he wore those swift wings.

  This was rich land, green land, teeming with prey. Other falcons flew in it, and eagles in the jagged heights, and things that his hawk-spirit did not know, winged with darkness or flame; and some wore the bodies of furred beasts but flew as the eagle did, and others were scaled like serpents, trailing a scent of fire.

  The hawk flew well away from those. He was fierce and he brooked no rival, but he had a little prudence. They hunted greater prey than his, nor troubled his hunting while he forbore to trouble theirs.

  Once a vast dark thing swooped over him, shutting out the sky. It passed without taking notice of him, but he was far too wary after that to linger in the air. Night was falling, true night unmarred by alien wings. He sheltered as he could in a wood of tall dark trees, deep in among the branches. Their scent was strong with resin, clear and pungent. Their needles whispered in the wind.

  He had flown far and wide of men’s places. Those were not so common here by the dark wood, but there were small huddles of houses scattered along the wood’s edges. None dared settle within, though a few pressed up against the shadow of the trees.

  Some deep spark of memory stirred at that—remembrance of a place that was not this one, but had been very like, once, long ago. Fair green country, windy moors, rings of stones heavy with old power; and in the heart of it the wood.

  Wisdom would have taken him away. There were gentler lands within sight and scent of these, better hunting, sweeter quarry, but the niggle of memory kept him close to the wood and the villages. One village in particular fascinated him, though what there was about it, he could not have told. There was a warren of rabbits nearby, and a flock of doves, but any village might have offered as much. The people mattered nothing to him. They watched him—he caught the gleam of eyes in flat pale faces—but none threatened him with stone or dart.

  This was a larger village than some. It stood on a road that ran along the wood’s edge, then wound away into the misty green country. There was a deep clear spring on its eastern edge, and a mother tree to which the women came with gifts of wool and bread and bits of honeycomb, and which the children garlanded with flowers.

  He took to roosting in the tree’s branches, resting there at night and pausing between hunts in the day. From there he could see the thatched roofs of the village, and the road, and the inn that stood beside it. People came to tarry in the inn for a night or an evening, and drink strong yeasty ale and eat fresh-baked bread and chatter as human people chattered.

  He had been human once. He had no particular desire to wear that shape again, awkward earthbound thing with its voice like a dog’s barking. Far sweeter to be a falcon, swiftest of things that flew, with fierce talons and beak that could rend the life out of tender prey.

  Dawn came one morning in a grey gust of rain, but the sun put to flight the clouds and wet. He shook the last of the damp from his wings and spread them to begin his morning hunt. But even with the sharp gnawing of hunger in his middle, he paused. The sun was bright. The clouds were blowing away to the east. Droplets of wet sparkled on leaf and stone. There was no darkness in this world, no shadow, though the wood loomed close.

  And yet within him something had been stirring since he saw the dark thing beyond the wood. In this bright morning, in the clear light of the sun, that something stirred and thrashed and woke.

  Memory. Fear. Anger, and a gust of sorrow. A rabbit, young and foolish, hopped from its burrow full beneath him and began to nibble on a bit of weed by the pool. His hawk-senses leaped to the alert, but he did not stoop to the kill. On the feathers of his breast, a thing moved, familiar though long unheeded. It was warm, like a spark of the sun. It drew him inexorably to earth.

  The rabbit fled in terror. He had no talons to catch and hold it. The air was cold on skin bare of feathers. Arms sprawled on leafmold, fingers scrabbling, forgetful of their purpose. No wings, no claws. No sweet taste of blood. He lay in the fallen leaves and wept, though what tears were, or what they were for, he did not clearly remember.

  Marric had been watching the hawk since it took up residence in the Lady’s tree. That it chose to rest there, and hunted so close to it, spoke to him of things that he had half forgotten: tales told, visions, dreams in the night. None of them came clear enough to grasp, but he was patient. The gods moved in their own time. When they were ready, they would reveal their purpose.

  He had nearly forsaken patience on the day when, glancing sidewise at the bird as he passed by the tree and the spring, he had seen something odd: something hanging at the feathered breast, a gleam of metal where one hardly
expected to find it. Further inspection, with care lest the hawk take flight, discovered a silver chain about the neck, and a disk of silver suspended from it. Marric could never come close enough to see what was written on the disk, if anything was; but that it was a thing of power, he could well see.

  On the morning after a night of rain, in clear damp sunlight, he woke to a sharp awareness of something different. The village was quiet. No one else had paid much heed to the hawk. That was Marric’s duty, to fret over matters beyond the round of daily things. The rest of them were content to live as they had for time out of mind, tending their houses, herding their flocks, looking after the visitors who came to Gemma’s inn by the Woodsedge road.

  But when he passed the last of the houses and approached the Lady’s tree, he saw a cluster of children standing wide-eyed and silent, staring at something under the tree. That something was larger than a hawk—much larger. It had white skin and very black hair, long and tangled, and it clutched at the tree’s roots and wept.

  Marric stepped through the ring of children and touched the trembling shoulder. The stranger whipped about, nearly sweeping Marric from his feet. But Marric was rooted in earth, and even in utter startlement he was not to be overset. He stared into a face that had nothing human in it at all, though the shape of it was more human than not. The eyes that blazed on him were as yellow as a hawk’s, and wild, and quite empty of reason. On the creature’s breast swung the silver talisman. It caught the sun and flamed, all but blinding him.

  “Well,” said Marric, without fear though not without surprise. “Well and well. So She called you here. She has an odd humor, does our Lady.”

  The man who had been a hawk did not answer. But he did not strike, either, and Marric took that as an omen. “Off with you, children,” he said to the audience, who had drawn back in respect for a manifest madman, but in no more fear than Marric had. “Fetch Gemma and her boys. Tell them the Lady’s brought us a gift and a charge, and we’ll need the fowling net, and maybe the roc’s cage, too.”