Kingdom of the Grail (38 page)

“Even in a twisted body?”

“The Church will take no maimed or misshapen man for a priest,” said Ganelon. “My Master is less fastidious. Royal blood is royal blood. He little cares for the shape of the vessel that bears it.”

Pepin laughed harshly. “Then I've well chosen my way, haven't I? Will you make me a king? Will you do that, master sorcerer?”

“If you prove yourself well in this war,” said Ganelon, “I may consider it.”

“Or I may do it without you,” Pepin said.

“You may,” said Ganelon without expression. “Gather your garments and your horse. Make ready to ride.”

Pepin did not take orders well, but for once he was too eager to care. He did as he was bidden, was mounted and ready before either of the others had left the pool. There
was nothing to keep them there, surely. Only armies marching and mountains looming toward the sky.

“Come,” said Ganelon as Pepin began to lose patience. “Ride.”

Pepin did not ask which path to take away from the pool. All were the same, he thought. All led to the same place, to the mountains and the armies. He chose one at random, turned his horse's head toward it. Ganelon followed him without a word.

CHAPTER 46

T
he sorcerer's army gathered on the far side of the mountains, beyond the wall of the world. It stretched far and far away across the bare hills, beneath the jagged crags. Men and beasts, demons and spirits of earth and air, met in companies but did not mingle.

The spirits were bound with chains of air. The demons had sworn mighty oaths to the sorcerer, and so been enslaved. The men lay under a spell.

The Franks thought they were still on the march, still traveling toward their own country. They were awake and aware, but the land they saw did not seem to be the land that met Pepin's eyes. They knew him perfectly well; they bowed to him as the king's son, and some of those who had trailed in his following were minded to do so again. But Ganelon forbade. “No princes' follies here,” he said. “No mortal stupidity. This is war, not a royal hunting party.”

Pepin snarled and pondered defiance. His blood warded him to a degree. Ganelon needed him too badly to damage him unduly.

But he was far from his father's protection, and he wanted this too much to cast it away. High magic, great sorcery—it was coming to him at last. There could be no working without him. Perhaps there could be no victory.

All that Ganelon had not seen fit to teach Pepin, he
taught him now: arts, castings, spells and dark workings. Pepin's head reeled with all that he had to remember.

And yet he could do it. He was good at it. The more he was asked to do, the more he could do. He had a gift.

Ganelon did not like to admit it, but he could hardly deny it. “It seems you have magic after all,” he said, “and not only for the blood that is in you.”

Pepin hugged the knowledge to himself. He was a sorcerer. He could raise demons, command spirits. He could bring down the lightning. When he chanted spells, the powers answered.

When the time came, he would need no sorcerer's help to make himself King of the Franks. He had as much power as he needed, and the skill was coming swiftly, day by day.

For the moment he needed Ganelon. The sorcerer had not given him the secret of the garden, nor had he been able to discover it for himself. Without it he could not return to Francia.

Time enough for that when he had learned all that the sorcerer would teach. And, he thought, when the war was won.

War for the Grail. Much of what he learned was directed at that mighty instrument of power: winning it, holding it, mastering it. Ganelon's army would break down the gates of the Grail's kingdom and destroy the men and spirits who defended it. But when that was done, there was still the Grail to take and keep.

For that, Ganelon needed Pepin. He needed a prince of blood royal, whose soul was his own still, who had not sworn himself to the powers of the dark. This was Pepin's power and his protection. As long as Ganelon needed him whole and free, he was safe from the sorcerer's malice, and that of his servants. Some of them might try, but he had learned spells to blast them where they stood.

He took considerable pleasure in the refinements of the spells. Better, he thought, to leave the man alive, but take away his hands, or leave him without feet, or seal his lips and tongue so that he could not speak. Two or three such workings, and the rest bowed before him in awe and fear.

Pepin Crookback was no laughingstock now, no object of pity or scorn. Nor would he ever be again.

There was no counting days here between the worlds. The sun rose and set. The moon was born and died. They seemed to bear no relation to one another, nor were the days of equal length. Sometimes the day was endless, sometimes it flashed past in a moment. One night the moon was full, the next it was a thin sliver of new moon. Time was all strange here. The only constant was the breath in Pepin's lungs, the beat of his heart, and the relentlessness of Ganelon's teaching.

One morning—or so the sun's height told them, and its nearness to rising—the army rose and broke camp and marched toward the shimmer of the horizon. Pepin had had no warning. He woke late and was nearly left behind. He had to scramble his belongings together without benefit of servant. His horse was saddled and waiting, but there was no one to strike his tent.

He stood staring at it. Anger surged up in him. He called the spirits of air. They came in a whirlwind, swift enough almost to take him aback. He knew a moment's flutter in the belly, an instant's fear; but he was stronger than they. “Strike my tent,” he commanded them. “Bear it to the baggage-train.”

They strained at his will, but he held firm. With a last rebellious wail, they did his bidding.

The army was moving slowly, yet move it did. He mounted. Already the foremost ranks had vanished into a shimmer of mist. He spurred his horse after them.

This was not hell, nor yet purgatory. It was, Ganelon said, a world beyond the world. The mist was the power of the Grail, obscuring their sight and confusing their minds. The earth flung up stones to trip feet and bruise hooves. Rivers snaked across their path, seeming to widen as they approached, and deepen and grow swifter, so that they were hard pressed to ford the roaring torrents. Mountains reared in front of them.

But they pressed on. They camped when it grew too dark to see, whether with cloud or night. Their will did not falter, for it was Ganelon's will. He ruled them all.

This was not such an army as Pepin had known. There were no gatherings of lords and counselors. There was only one general, and that was Ganelon. Captains led at his pleasure. If any showed signs of chafing against the
sorcerer's rule, he vanished. Ganelon heard no one's word but his own. His rule was absolute.

Pepin was Frank enough to find that rather uncomfortable. A king could do whatever he pleased—but what if he needed advice? Or more to the point, what if he needed someone to take the blame for his mistakes?

He held his tongue, learned his lessons, felt the power grow inside him. The farther they traveled into this strange dim country, the stronger, rather than weaker, he became. He could see the strain about the army, the bindings fraying. Now and then a demon or a spirit would escape. Some simply vanished. Others ran wild in the army, sowing havoc, until they were caught and either bound again or destroyed.

The Franks were beginning to wake a little. They would look up suddenly, look about, shake their heads. Or one of them would begin to speak, seem to reconsider, fall silent again.

Ganelon himself seemed unmoved. That was a mask: the army was the image of his strength, and it was struggling against the power of the Grail. One morning, evening, it was difficult to tell, he said to Pepin, “The Franks belong to you. Control them.”

Pepin stared, struck briefly dumb. Ganelon's eyes were bitter cold. Past startlement, past fear, Pepin knew the first dawning of elation.

Twenty thousand men. Twenty thousand Franks, given to him as if they had been an outworn tunic. “May I do whatever I please with them?” he asked.

“You will make sure that they follow me,” said Ganelon, “and that they fight for me when we come to the battle. There will be not one man lost, not one drop of blood shed. They will come whole and obedient to the field. But past that,” he said, “you may do as you like.”

It was little enough, but there was still great pleasure in the thought of it. Pepin had barely turned away before he let the grin escape.

He knew the spells. He had seen Ganelon work them, and assisted in the chanting. He was sure that he could remember exactly how to raise and hold them. It was easier in any case, because the binding was already made. He had only to strengthen it and turn it toward himself.

It was evening, he decided. The sun was setting. Camp was made. Fires burned, pale in the mist. He was stiff from a long while—day, whatever—in the saddle, but he rode among the Franks, for no good Frankish prince would be seen afoot when he had a horse to carry him.

Men should have been tending campfires and preparing the night's meal. A few of them were doing that, but more were huddled together, muttering, shooting glances at the grey sky, or at the wall of grey cliff against which they had camped.

“Spain,” Pepin heard one say. “We're still in Spain.”

“Italy,” said someone else.

“The marches of the Rhine,” said a third.

“So where's the king?” demanded the first. “Where's the lords all high and mighty, riding back and forth? Did they all get killed in the mountains—or did we dream that, too?”

Aiee, thought Pepin. They were awake indeed.

“Maybe we're dead,” the second soldier said, “and this is hell.”

“I don't remember dying,” said the third.

“Would we?” the second asked. “What else can this be? Have you seen what we march beside? I swear I saw a thing with fangs, and another with batwings. They're devils. We're in hell.”

“Hell would be a long march to nowhere,” muttered the first man.

Pepin had the spell ready to hand, the words on his tongue, the gestures half-begun. But something, some demon perhaps, held him back. He rode in among them.

They barely moved to give space to his horse. They did not look on him in hostility, but neither did they bow to his rank or his name. He had seen such faces among rebels and newly subdued enemies. Never among Franks from the heart of the realm.

He leaned on the saddle's high pommel, looking from face to face. They stared insolently back. He smiled. “You're not dead,” he said, “and you're not in Francia, either. How would you like a war? A real war—one you can win.”

“Another crusade?” said the first soldier with more than the hint of a sneer.

“No crosses here,” Pepin said. “No lies. This war is real. There will be battle. There will be victors and vanquished. One army will stay on the field, bait for the crows. The other will take a great kingdom, great wealth, and a glorious prize.”

“Loot?” the first Frank said. His eyes had brightened, but doubt had swiftly dimmed them. “One prize? What's that?”

Pepin paused. He had been a fool to let that slip.

Make the best of it, he thought. “We'll take a castle,” he said, “and a king, and nine beautiful ladies.”

“Castle,” the man sneered. “King. Ladies. What good is that to us mudfoots?”

“Gold in the treasuries,” Pepin said, “jewels, treasure uncounted. Women, too. All the loot we lost at Roncesvalles, all the loot we should have won in Spain, would barely fill one treasure-room in these vaults.”

That won his argument for him. The lure of gold and the promise of battle swept them all up together.

For the first time Pepin heard men cheer his name, and salute him as commander. It was a heady sensation, glorious, wonderful.

And he had cast no spell at all. The one he did cast, let them see the demons about them as men of sundry nations. Best, after all, that they not know the whole of the truth. They would follow him, and the hope of the Grail, and the promise of treasure. They need not see the faces of all those they marched with, nor understand what master they fought for.