by Hiatt, Bill
“No!” I yelled, accelerating myself as I ran in his direction. Magic only works so fast, though, and I knew I could not reach a high enough speed in time to catch him. My only slim hope was that Shar was right, and the chapel only wanted humans, in which case Khalid’s half djinn nature might keep him out.
Khalid took another literal flying leap and landed right in front of the door. Either Shar was wrong, or Khalid’s strange trajectory confused the chapel, or the chapel had no idea what a half djinn was and hesitated a second too long. Regardless, Khalid was able to pop through the door, which slammed shut a second later. My heart pounding so hard that I felt as if it might rip out of my chest, I reached the door an agonizing few seconds after and grabbed the right side handle, but the double doors were frozen in place. Either the chapel was still confused, or it admitted only one at a time—or it had really wanted Khalid all along, which seemed unlikely. Regardless, I should have been paying better attention to him. Whatever else happened now, I had to get him out.
I raised White Hilt and hit the chapel door with all the power I could muster. The first blow barely made any impression, but as I kept hacking away, I could see it getting hotter. However, it was clearly no ordinary material, and it might take a long time to actually melt it or break it.
By this time pretty much everyone except Nurse Florence and Sir Arian had joined us. Shar started striking the door with Zom, trying to break whatever spell held it shut. “Aim for the crack between the two halves of the door,” suggested Stan. “That could be where the locking magic is.” It was hard to imagine that just a few months ago Stan had been a science geek, without a clue that magic even existed. Now he was fast becoming a magic geek as well, with an understanding of its operation more perceptive than perhaps anyone in our group except for me and Nurse Florence.
Sure enough, when Shar pushed his blade between the double doors, there was a loud creaking, followed by a green flash, and then the doors shuddered open. All of us rushed in, knowing that the locking spell might regenerate quickly.
Even with light pouring in from the open doorway, the interior was gloomy at best, and just as I suspected, in moments the door slammed shut behind us, leaving us in almost total darkness. There was a light near the altar, but its sickly radiance did not help much. The emerald glow of Zom helped, as did the fire of White Hilt, but neither seemed to create as much light as it should normally have done. Despite the limited light, I could see someone moving near the altar, but not Khalid. The shadowy form was taller and seemed to be female, but even that much was hard to tell.
“Khalid? Where are you?” Shar asked loudly. It was the only time I could remember hearing a note of panic in his voice.
“I’m here,” Khalid responded, but it sounded as if he were a thousand miles away, and I could not tell from what direction his voice was coming.
“Silence!” commanded the figure near the altar. “Who dares to bring an army into the Chapel Perilous? The test here is for one knight alone. All of you must leave or face a terrible curse.”
“In the name of Gwynn ap Nudd, king of this land, I order you to cease your threats, release the boy Khalid, and let us proceed on our way,” demanded one of the faeries, presumably Sir Arian’s second in command.
The shadowy figure laughed, and the sound echoed in the unnatural darkness. “I recognize not Gwynn ap Nudd nor any other king. I, and I alone, rule here.”
I recalled the name, Chapel Perilous, from Taliesin 1’s memories. Sir Lancelot had once told him of such a place. This Chapel Perilous was not exactly as Lancelot had described it, but then that was fifteen hundred years ago, give or take. The sorceress in charge might be different—or horrendously more experienced and hence potentially considerably more dangerous.
“Name yourself and your purpose, woman!” I shouted in a manner much like the original Taliesin’s, knowing that would work better than my normal teenage manner.
“Who are you to make demands of me?” hissed the stranger.
“I am Taliesin, bard to King Arthur and wielder of White Hilt,” I announced, raising the sword and causing it to flame more brightly. “I am also quite capable of burning this whole place to the ground if need be.”
She laughed again, even more derisively. “By entering the Chapel Perilous, you have come under its spell. The only way to leave is to complete the test. If you somehow succeed in destroying me or the building, all you will do is trap yourself forever, without hope of leaving.”
I doubted that was true, though the sorceress might believe it. More likely it was just a bluff. She was keeping her cool, but the very fact we had all gotten in when the chapel was clearly designed to admit only one at a time must have at least given her pause.
“What is your test?”
“The test is the boy’s, for he entered here first,” replied the sorceress. “The rest of you must wait your turns—outside.”
“Even in this light, our eyes are sharp enough to shoot her down,” whispered a nearby faerie.
“We don’t know where Khalid is,” I whispered back. “You might hit him accidentally.” To her, I responded, “I thought you just said we couldn’t leave now without passing the test.” The thing about some people who minds are still functioning in the Middle Ages is that they often miss that kind of logical flaw. There was a long pause as the sorceress puzzled over the problem.
“You may sit near the back, and if the boy completes the test, it will be offered to each of you in turn.”
“I grow weary of these games,” I announced. Casually, I let White Hilt’s flames eat into the wood of the nearby pew—or at least, that’s what I thought I was doing. The fire made very little impact. I knew I could get the pew to burn eventually, but it was very, very heavily reinforced by magic, so it would not be a fast or easy process, and I might well be exhausted by the time I got to her.
“Shar, perhaps White Hilt is not our best option. Please show our hostess what you can do.” Shar, who had been waiting to do exactly that, struck the pew right next to him with a mighty blow, and it split right down the middle. No matter how much magic reinforcement it had, to Zom it would just be ordinary wood.
“I took you for knights, but I see you are just vandals!” shouted the sorceress. “You do not deserve to be tested; you only deserve to die.” With one wave of her hand, we were surrounded by flames. In fact, there was a floor-to-ceiling wall of them completely encircling us.
Well, at least that was what we were supposed to think. I doubted she could cast such powerful magic so fast, so I assumed the flames were an illusion, despite the fact that I could smell the acrid smoke and feel the heat of the blaze.
“Shar, I think the fire is an illusion!” I yelled.
“I can’t see any fire, so yeah, I’m sure it is,” he responded, slicing through it. Naturally, the illusion split as the blade passed through it, but magic fire would have done the same thing—and the spell was not being dispelled by Zom’s touch; the fire filled in again as soon as the blade was out of it. These signs made it clear the illusion was a strong one. None of us could really risk moving through it except Shar, who would be protected as always by Zom’s anti-magic charm.
“Shar, go get her!” I yelled to him, and he was off. Bizarrely, he appeared to catch fire as he passed through the barrier, and I could smell burning flesh as his blazing form trotted down the aisle. Shuddering, I realized that the flames were getting closer to the rest of us, and I was not eager to see how well this particular sorceress could simulate the sensation of burning flesh, so I tried to sing away the illusory flames. There were moments when they seemed paler and cooler, but then they blazed up again. Quickly I switched strategies and tried to sing all of us into such disbelief that the illusion would not be able to reach us. That approach worked better, and it was only a short time before the fire faded away completely.
By this time Shar had the sorceress cornered behind the altar, but I could tell, even from a distance, that they were at an impasse.
We all ran as quickly in that direction as we could, with no further illusions to bother us.
“Let him go!” demanded Shar, doubtless referring to Khalid. “Let him go, and we will leave peacefully.”
I doubted I could see much better in the magical gloom of the chapel even if I sharpened my eyesight, but when we were upon the sorceress, I thought I could make out Khalid, his back against the wall behind the altar, surrounded by slowly shifting shadows, shaking with sheer terror.
I tried to remember what Lancelot had told the original Taliesin about the Chapel Perilous. All those centuries ago, it had been inhabited by a sorceress named Hellawes, who was, among other things, a master of illusion, very much like our current foe. I wondered if this could possibly be the same woman. Storytellers said she had died soon after Lancelot had escaped her, but no one had really been around to see her death, so who knew what really happened? Either way, the chapel seemed to have been considerably upgraded since Lancelot had visited it. Suppose the original Hellawes had managed to keep herself alive for fifteen hundred years. She could have found many ways to increase her power in that time.
“I will not let him go…and you will not try to free him either,” she added, her voice a hoarse whisper that nonetheless carried all the way to the back of the chapel. “You cannot break the spell faster than I can use it to kill him. And if I die, he dies.”
“What is it you want?” I asked loudly. Her attention shifted from Shar to me, and I could see her clearly for the first time, despite the darkness.
At first I thought her eyes were green, but then I realized that was merely the reflection of Zom’s emerald glow. Their real color was hard to determine, but they were clearly dark and about as soulless as eyes can get. Her features were beautiful but deathly pale and not quite real, as if I were looking at a masterfully carved statue rather than a person. Her hair was the black of raven’s wings, as was her dress, and both made excellent camouflage in the murky interior of the chapel.
“What do I want?” she replied disdainfully. “What I require is that each of you face my test. Do that, and you may go in peace. Unfortunately, since you have all somehow forced your way into this place where only one should come at a time, we will have a group test.”
I could tell the faeries wanted to fill her full of arrows now that they had a clean shot, but I couldn’t allow that any more than I could allow Shar to take her head off. Khalid was trapped in some way, and I couldn’t take the chance that her death might somehow cause that trap to kill him. Sure, she could have been bluffing; as I thought about the nature of magic, I figured she probably was…but I couldn’t be sure.
“The boy was here first, so the boy will decide the fate of all of you.”
I was not liking the sound of that.
“If we are all to be judged together, then we should be able to pick which one of us will be tested,” I pointed out. “What is the test?”
Hellawes, if that was who she was, considered a minute. “Perhaps you are right. The boy is possibly not who I would want the most, anyway. I think I would prefer you.” The tone was vaguely disquieting and more than a little sexual. Great! What was it that made me so attractive to homicidal spell casters?
Somewhere behind me, I heard Gordy mutter something about sexual endurance tests and then snicker. “Not the time!” replied Dan, relatively harshly. Well, at least I wasn’t imagining the tone.
“Tal, you can’t accept a challenge like that without knowing what it is!” protested Carlos.
“No, you can’t,” agreed Shar. “Whatever it is, I’ll do it.” Thinking about it rationally, Shar, who was immune to magic as long as he held Zom and stronger than I was, would be more likely to pass whatever the test was, but my male ego growled just a little at how easily Shar reached that conclusion. After all, the test could relate to spell casting or singing, and then I would be a better choice.
“I have decided,” announced Hellawes. “I will test Taliesin, or the boy will die.” Everyone else protested, creating a considerable amount of noise. I took a step forward.
I’d like to say I was so prepared because of how heroic I was, but at this moment, I wasn’t feeling that heroic. I just knew I couldn’t have the death of a little kid on my conscience, even one like Khalid that I hadn’t known for that long.
I felt restraining hands on my arms—both Stan and Dan had stepped forward, and I could feel Carlos and Gordy moving in my direction. Only Shar, keeping his blade trained on Hellawes and one eye on Khalid, stayed where he was.
“I am troubled by your lack of faith,” I announced, loudly enough for all of them to hear. “Why are you all so certain the test will result in my death?”
“Because there is strong magic here, and you are not familiar with it,” replied one of the faeries. Gee, and I thought I was asking a rhetorical question!
“What is the test?” I asked, taking another step forward.
“All you have to do is kiss me.”
At that point I remembered what else Lancelot had told me about Hellawes: that she had wanted his love but knew that she could never win it, so instead she tried to trick him into kissing her. Her kiss was deadly, and she had planned to love his corpse. Well, now at least I had a good idea of where all the dead knights came from. Apparently over the past few centuries, Hellawes had mastered reanimating dead bodies. Too bad she didn’t know how to do that when Lancelot was around. However, in his day, the test was whether or not the knight would kiss her. Now the test addressed the more obvious question of whether or not the knight could survive that kiss. Not really surprising, considering Hellawes could have spent fifteen centuries thinking about how to close the loopholes.
I looked at her with eyes alert for magic, and sure enough, I could see an ice-blue glow on her lips: the cold of death.
“Only a kiss?” I asked. “No special conditions? No other stipulations?”
“No,” said Hellawes. “Just kiss me, and be done.”
“Do I have your word that you will not attempt to change the rules now that you have announced them?”
“You do,” she replied, not realizing where I was going.
“TRUST ME!” I broadcasted to everyone in the room, hoping no one would get in my way. I stepped forward until I stood near the altar, with Hellawes on one side of me and Shar on the other.
“Shar, let’s trade swords for good luck!” I said. At that moment, everyone realized what I was doing—including Hellawes, judging by her expression. Unfortunately, she had already committed herself and could not forbid me the use of Zom now. Supernatural beings are funny that way, but it is one of the few predictable things about them. Someone like Morgan, with a little more exposure to the real world, might be willing to break an oath unsupported by a tynged, but Hellawes probably was not, especially considering the power of the chapel was no doubt somehow connected to the test, and if she broke her word, she would probably find herself at our mercy anyway.
I took Zom from Shar, handed him White Hilt, and advanced on Hellawes, who stood her ground. Either she was brave, or she had not thought she would ever face someone immune to magic and had not developed an escape plan. In a minute it would not matter.
“Surely you would not offer me a kiss with your sword drawn?” she protested.
“Why, of course not, my lady,” I replied with mock courtesy, sheathing Zom but being careful to keep my hand on its hilt. As long as I maintained contact, it would still protect me.
I was standing in front of Hellawes now, and the deathly cold blue light seemed to be dancing on her lips. I bent over and kissed her.
I’ve had a couple of kisses that felt pretty powerful, but none of them produced the fireworks this grim lip lock evoked. When our lips met, there was a blue-green flash, after which the blue glow enveloped Hellawes, who screamed like the damned, fell over backward, and more or less dissolved. For a moment there was a skeleton, still smoldering bluely, and then nothing. Apparently Hellawes’s deadly lips had to kill some
one with each kiss, and since they could not kill me, the power turned back on her.
Khalid came bounding up to me, now free of whatever spell had held him, and gave me a big hug, then bounded over to Shar and did the same. I heard several audible sighs of relief in the background.
“Imagine what would have happened if he had given her tongue!” joked Gordy.
“What is wrong with you today?” asked Dan. “You must have been between girlfriends a little too long.”
“And no wonder,” Gordy said with another snicker. “It seems our friend Tal goes through girls rather fast; at this rate there won’t be any left for us.”
“You wouldn’t want the kind we just met,” I said, grinning, “unless you are really fixated on older women.” The guys and I had a hearty laugh over that. The faeries just looked perplexed, as they often did when faced with human humor.
The interior of the chapel was lightening up a bit. The light on the altar had winked out when Hellawes died, but I noticed some exterior light coming from stained-glass windows that had not been visible before, though they didn’t add too much actual illumination; the windows portrayed various scenes of hellfire and blood, and most of the light coming through was a dull red. However, we did not have to put up with such sanguinary lighting for long, both because cracks were appearing in the ceiling and because chunks of stained glass were falling out of the windows. Perhaps the chapel had been so altered by the Hellawes’s magic over the years that it could not survive without her.
“Let’s get those doors open!” I suggested loudly, visions of the roof caving in on us filling my mind. However, before anyone could reach them, they were already sagging open, so we hastily took advantage of our luck and then watched the disintegration of Chapel Perilous from a safe distance away. Not more than five minutes after we were out, the roof did cave in, and shortly thereafter, the last vestiges of the walls collapsed, raising great clouds of dust that the faeries advised us not to breathe in, just in case. Another five minutes, and no trace remained of the building that had blocked the entire road a short time ago.
