Kingdom of the Grail (46 page)

“Will he have to apologize for marrying you?”

“Probably,” she said. “But not to me.”

CHAPTER 56

E
veryone went up to the walls before that day was over, to see what they all faced. Darkness fell early, in a grey weight of cloud. The enemy's fires spread as far as the eye could see, myriad ruddy sparks in the starless night. The lord of them all had still not shown himself. The anticipation, the fear, worked on the besiegers as he had no doubt intended. The longer they waited to see, the deeper their dread became.

Roland had been the besieger often before, but not the besieged. The sense of confinement dismayed him more than he would let anyone see. Already some of the troops were fretting, yearning for the sky.

If they were fortunate, this siege would not last long. If not. . .

He was forbearing to think of that, and making his somewhat preoccupied way from one of the garrisons to what he hoped would be a night's rest, when he was waylaid by a delegation of lords and princes. They trapped him in a hall in which servants had just finished taking down the tables from the daymeal, backed him ever so politely against a wall and, with remarkable bluntness for courtiers, taxed him with what they reckoned his arrogance.

“The Grail is the greatest relic of Christendom,” said one elegant creature. “It is kept hidden for its great rarity
and its great power. If it were shown abroad, at will, without discrimination—”

“Has it been taken out of the castle?” Roland asked civilly. But he had interrupted the spate of words, and that was not civil at all.

These princes of the Grail were suitably offended, but suitably nonplussed as well. They could hardly rebuke him for insolence; he was set above them.

The one who seemed deputed to speak for them found his tongue quickly enough. “If it were shown to those who are not pure of heart, who have never sworn themselves to it, who were brought here to fight as levies, as conscripts, then what mystery would remain in it? What power would be left to it?”

Roland looked at them. These were the knights of legend, the sacred brotherhood, men who had been brought to this place to serve and defend the Grail. They disliked greatly to bow their heads to him, creature of muddy earth that he was, with his hawk's eyes and his half-barbarian ways.

He spoke softly, and as politely as he could. He said, “Nothing can diminish the Grail. Not even darkness and silence and the prison of a shrine.”

“The Grail is never diminished,” said the one who spoke for them. “But its power in the world, its strength, its capacity to drive back the evil—that must be protected.”

“It is protected,” Roland said. In spite of himself, his voice had gained an edge. “I do as the Grail bids me. If it chooses to reveal itself through me, what right have I to refuse it?”

He had not silenced them, nor had he expected to. “You came here,” said one of those who had not spoken before. He was younger, maybe; it was difficult to tell, among these ageless people. He was angrier, certainly, or more able to show it. “You came here as one roused from the dead, and took the sword, and took the Grail. And yet what do you know of us—of any of us? You are an outlander. This is not your country.”

“Nor was it Parsifal's,” said Roland, “when he first came here. What was it you called him then? Parsifal the Outlander—Parsifal the Stranger. Did you resist him as strongly as you resist me?”

None of them would meet his eyes. He looked from face to face, seeing men of great power and valor, ancient in wisdom and steeped in the light of the Grail—but they were, after all, men.

They were afraid, he thought, not only of the enemy who might conquer them all, but of the stranger who had come to command them. They neither knew nor trusted him.

And maybe there was more to their resistance than that. Maybe they were jealous. They had served the Grail long and faithfully, but none of them had been chosen to lead this war. Durandal had come to a foreign hand. The Lady of the Grail had passed them by, and chosen a man whom none of them knew.

He spoke to them gently, but there was no disguising the steel beneath. “Whoever I am, wherever I was born, this land seems to have made me a part of it. Be sure of this, my lords. I serve the Grail. Maybe I didn't choose to, maybe it chose me, but now that it's done, I won't undo it. You will accept this, my lords. Or,” he said, softly implacable, “you may go.”

They stared at him in disbelief.

“You may go,” he said again. “You may leave. We cannot have dissension here.”

“But where will we go?” the youngest demanded. “How will we live?”

Roland did not answer that.

For those whose armor was words, silence was a devastating weapon. These lords of the Grail fidgeted and fretted and shifted from foot to foot.

“You have no power to send us away,” the youngest said. “This is our place. We were chosen for it. We are sworn to it. You cannot cast us out. And,” he said fiercely, “we will not go!”

“Then stand behind me,” Roland said. “Accept what the Grail does through me. We have enemies enough without. There will be no contention here.”

They did not like it. But they were men of reason, it seemed, after all. They bowed sullenly, but bow they did.

Roland was sure he had not heard the end of it. For the moment he would take what he was given, and see that word was sent to all the brotherhood and court of the Grail, that if any objected to the charge that was given
him, that one had until the morning to depart from Carbonek.

The night was endless. Roland snatched a little sleep, but the bed was too soft and the wards of the castle too sorely taxed by the enemy's assaults. Even with the full count of the nine raising the shields from the shrine of the Grail, ill things walked in the shadows. Fear crawled through the stones. Dread thrummed in the air.

And this was only the first night. He walked among the people, those struggling to sleep and those standing uneasy watch, giving them such comfort as he could.

There were others doing the same. Turpin led the priests and monks and those who were Christians in the chanting of psalms. Their voices echoed in the vaults, long and slow. Where that sound was, the darkness was less.

Roland went up to the walls again. Tarik had found him among the Franks and climbed up to his shoulder. The
puca
would never have admitted to fear, but the cat-body was shivering in small convulsions. He stroked it as he stood in the blind dark. Most of the enemy's fires had burned low. It was nearly dawn, he thought, if indeed dawn would ever come.

He felt rather than saw someone come up behind him. Tarik hissed. Gemma said, “Hush, you. It's only me.”

Her voice was soft, but it was its wonted self: a little rough, a little sweet, with a brisk, practical clip to it. It would take a great deal more than the Grail's ancient enemy to crush her spirit.

She leaned on the parapet near him. He could see her in the faint light of the guard's cresset. It had been a while, he reflected, since she chose to be anywhere that he was, unless duty required it.

That pain was old, but still sharp. Knowing how wise she had been, knowing that he could not take her back, not ever again, made it no easier to bear. There were too many memories.

She spoke at last, as if to herself. “We can't go on like this for long. Waiting him out won't be the answer—it will have to be battle.”

“Yes,” he said, since she could not have seen his nod in the gloom.

“Maybe you can catch him off balance,” she said.

“Maybe.”

She laughed, more wry than mirthful. “Listen to me, telling you what to do. It's this creeping dark—it turns us all into babbling fools. Except you. You, it makes more silent than ever.”

“I don't have anything to say,” he said.

“You can say more without a word than most people can with a thousand.” She moved closer to him, but never close enough to touch. “I came up here to tell you to sleep. You can't carry on day and night like this, and expect to have anything left to fight the enemy with.”

“The Grail sustains me,” Roland said.

“But for how long? You'll burn yourself out.”

“Not till the war is over.” He stretched and sighed. Was that the first faint glimmer of light on the horizon? “You should sleep, too. We all should, if we can. It's two days till the new moon. Tell them—tell the troops we'll make our move then.”

“The new moon?” She sounded dubious, but she did not offer to argue.

Bless her heart and soul. She was no lord, to be prey to pride. Before she turned to go, he reached and caught her hand. “Thank you,” he said.

She shrugged. “You're the king. You give orders—I follow them. If,” she added, “they're not too impossible.”

“I am not—”

She slipped free and was gone.

“I am not the king,” he said to the air where she had been.

The king summoned him at dawn: a plucking at his spirit, a sudden sense that he must be elsewhere. He was still on the walls. The darkness was only a little less. There would be no sun today, and little light, either, unless they in the castle expended strength to make it.

He went down through the shadows. They were stronger. He heard gibbering, glimpsed a gleam of eyes. Servants struggled to go about their duties. They were white and shaking, but they were holding on. Bread was baking, the sweet fragrance as potent as magic for lightening the soul.

He caught a servant on her way to the kitchens. “Ask the
cooks,” he said, “if they will make sweet things, wonderful things—things rich with spices and with heart's ease.”

The woman blinked, then suddenly smiled. She nodded, bowed, and ran to do his bidding.

By the time he came to the king's tower, the first hints came to him: cinnamon, cardamom, grains of paradise. He was smiling as he mounted the stair.

Parsifal clung to life by a thinner thread than Roland remembered. It was Sarissa on guard now, who must have come out from the Grail only a little while ago. Her smile was a little startled, catching the brightness of his own.

Tarik slipped down from Roland's shoulder to curl at the foot of the king's bed. Parsifal had no strength to open his eyes, but his mind was awake. He was aware.

Roland knelt beside him. The voice that spoke had no sound at all. It was a whisper in the heart. “Soon,” he said. “Soon I go. The new moon—”

“No!” The word escaped Roland without his willing it.

“It's time,” said Parsifal. “When you perform the great rite, when you bind the power, I will be part of it. I will be the seal and the capstone.”

“But—” Roland began.

“I waited for this,” Parsifal said. “I held to life for it. That was my enemy, whom I failed to destroy. This time I shall be part of his destruction.”

Roland bowed his head over the skeletal hand.

The soft voice spoke again in his heart. “Don't grieve,” said Parsifal. “Be glad. I'll be free. And before I go, I'll give you strength. It may—it will—be enough to cast him down.”

“And without it, we'll never be strong enough.”

Roland's head snapped up. Sarissa met his eyes levelly.

“You need my strength,” said Parsifal.

“How am I to take it?” Roland asked. Knowing what the answer must be. But needing to hear it, though he dreaded the truth of it.

The silence, though brief, was enormous. Roland's belly clenched. He did not want to remember what Merlin had told him. Of deaths of kings. Of old, old rites. Of sacrifices.

Royal sacrifice. High blood and great courage that went of its own will to its death. Such a sacrifice had imbued the Grail with its power.

“And will again,” Parsifal said. “I'm no god's son, but I was lord in the Grail's kingdom. The power I pass to you, the power of the great marriage, the royal sacrifice—it can stand against even the ancient enemy.”

“That is murder,” Roland said.

“Sacrifice,” said Parsifal. “Willing, with great joy. I was born for this. I was meant for it.”

“Surely there is another way,” Roland said. “We're not pagans, either of us. We're Christian men. Is there no Christian rite that will suffice? A high Mass—the offering of the wine that is transformed into blood—blood of the Grail—”