The Black Chalice (53 page)

She looked at the two of us for a long moment, and I wished again that I had died in Ravensbruck. I know she blamed us in her heart — how could she not? — but in her mind perhaps she understood. War was chaotic. A man might easily be wounded and have a battle pass him by, and his liege lord killed, with no fault owing to himself.

We knelt to her and spoke our grief. She did not answer. Her own grief was enough to drown the world. But beneath her grief I saw sternness, and unyielding resolve. This was a woman whom no amount of grief would ever break.

She motioned us to stand. There were only three guards in the room, I noticed, ones she held in particular trust. The archbishop of Stavoren, grey-haired and bent, sat in a chair by her elbow.

“What happened in Ravensbruck?” she asked. “It is said the necromancers conjured forth an army of the dead to destroy our house.”

“It’s true, majesty,” I said. We told her of the invaders, how they had scaled the walls and leapt from them without harm, how weapons could not wound them. As we spoke, the archbishop became more and more distressed. He had heard it before; they all had. But until now he had not really believed it.

“I did not think it possible,” he said. “I never thought God would permit such a thing.”

She did not answer him. She was still looking at us.

“You know for a fact our sons are dead? You saw them?”

“We saw them, my lady, to our great sorrow.”

“In what manner did they die?”

“In combat, as best we could judge. Prince Armund had a great wound in his chest, and Prince Theodoric….” I faltered.

“What of Prince Theodoric, Sir Paul?” Her voice was calm, but under the calm was a terrible dread. “How was the body of my son?”

“He was … he had been … beheaded, my lady.”

“And was his head beside him on the field, as it should have been?”

“No, lady. We could not find it.”

The empress and the archbishop looked at each other. Her face was paler than before, and his was absolutely white.

“There is no doubt about it, lady,” he said. “We are dealing with the full, unleashed powers of hell, such as has never before happened in Christendom. It may be the end of the world is upon us.”

He paused. His voice fell almost to a whisper.

“With your permission, majesty— perhaps they should see it?”

“There’s no need for every fool in the Reinmark to see it,” she said bitterly.

“But they were in Ravensbruck, majesty. There may be something they know, something they would remember—”

“You’re grasping at straws, archbishop. But very well. It scarcely matters now.”

She looked at us again. “The night my sons were killed, I was seized by a terrible dread. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t pray, I wandered through the castle like a lost soul. I tried to believe I’d had a bad dream, and my terror would go away with the morning. It didn’t go away. It grew more and more terrible.

“You know there is a chamber in the castle which his lordship has always kept locked. The chamber began to haunt me; I thought perhaps inside I would find some knowledge of my sons’ fate.

“I have never disobeyed his lordship before. But this one time, for my sons’ sake, I called the guard and made them batter down the door.”

She stood up. “Come, and I will show you what we found.”

The door to which she led us was guarded now. Inside was a room more strange than any I had ever seen. It was shaped like a pyramid, and made entirely of stone. No sound of the world beyond could possibly have reached it. It was utterly still, utterly closed upon itself. I experienced almost immediately an awesome feeling of constraint, and at the same time, an equal feeling of power. This was a place where one could not move outward at all, but one could move upward forever.

Then I looked down, instead of up. I saw the stone prie-dieu, the stone table in front of it, and all my being froze with horror. If I did not cry out, it was only because I had no voice at all.

A silver bowl lay on the table, and in the silver bowl, wrapped in a sheath of flame, was the head of Theodoric von Heyden.

Oh, my God, my God, my God…!

I crossed myself. I looked away for a moment, hoping it had been some mad hallucination. But the image was real, as real as those we see in mirrors, perfect in every detail. It lay on a pool of water, and except for the blank look of death in the prince’s eyes, it might have seemed alive. The fire flickered and curled and smoked, lapping endlessly into his hair and across his face. Like the flames of hell, it burned and burned and consumed nothing.

I swallowed, and leaned on the prie-dieu to keep from falling. Pressed deep into the prince’s forehead was a tiny wooden cross. A cross I recognized at once, from the shimmer of crystal in its heart.

They had used the crystal to work this evil. They had taken Gottfried’s offer of grace to Karelian, and turned its power back on him.

I looked around, sick and bewildered. The room was always locked, the empress said. I did not know what it had been used for, but I was sure it was a sacred place. It was shaped like the truthstone itself; there had to be some link between them. I wondered if Gottfried now looked into his stone, and saw the same thing we saw here: this cruel image of his dead son.

“We have tried to exorcise this thing, and cannot,” the archbishop whispered to me. “We’ve tried everything. Is there anything you can tell us, anything which passed in Ravensbruck…?”

His voice fell away. He was, as the empress said, grasping at straws.

I told them I knew nothing, and I could not help. Gottfried would recognize the cross, and if he could not undo the sorcery, then this grey and palsied priest of Stavoren could not hope to do so, either.

They let me go. I went to my bed then, but I did not sleep. For the first time since it all began, I wondered if Gottfried might fail.

He cannot fail,
I told myself,
unless it is God’s will. And if it is God’s will, then it cannot be misfortune.

Then there is no misfortune, for all things are God’s will.

Evil is misfortune. Evil is not God’s will. God only permits evil.

But surely permission is an act of will. If a man said to me, do you permit me to murder this child? and I have the power to say no, then surely I must say no.

We cannot question God.

How could I reconcile those two things: a world filled with so much overwhelming evil, and a world governed by a just and loving God?

I tried then, and I have tried many times since. I have never been able to do so, except by an act of decision. By saying:
I accept it. I do not question. It is a sin to question.

There is no other way. Our doubts are crosses, and we must bear them without complaining. I look at my brother monks; I see how contented they are, how confident and saintly, and I am almost reassured.

Almost, but not quite… because I know they think the same of me. Brother Paul, they say, how good he is, how pure, how admirable in his virtue. Brother Paul, they say, is a saint.

Perhaps, in the secret places of their souls, they endure the same emptiness, the same uncertainty, the same tormenting questions.
Who is this God for whom we have given up our lives? Did he ever ask for the gift? Does he notice, does he care, does any of it matter? Does he rule the world at all?

Perhaps their look of serenity is as carefully fashioned as mine. Perhaps each one believes he is alone in his darkness, and so does not speak of it, for fear of disheartening his brothers, as I do not speak for fear of disheartening mine.

FOURTY-ONE

Between the Worlds

Here love will give him a shield which will be too strong for his foe.

Wolfram von Eschenbach

* * *

Karelian slept for days. From time to time he was aware of Raven’s presence, of her voice murmuring close by, and her hand in his hair. He spoke to her, but afterwards he did not remember it. Twice Marius brought him bowls of fine gruel, and made him waken enough to drink it. He grumbled a few words of thanks, drained the bowl down, and promptly went back to sleep.

When he woke properly it was day, but which day it was he did not know. He was in Raven’s tapestried chamber, suffused now with soft autumn light, and she was sitting on the edge of the bed. She was still hurt, wearing her shift laced high to her throat, but the marks on her face had begun to heal.

She smiled.

“Are you alive, my lord duke?” she murmured.

“I’m alive. Why do you call me that?” He remembered, and added: “Why did
they
call me that?”

“Because it’s what you will be. You’ve given the Reinmark to Konrad on a silver plate. Who else would he choose to be duke?”

“Frankly, I hadn’t thought about it.” He reached for her hand, and drew it to his mouth. “Are you all right, my love?”

“I will be. I’m half veela, after all, and we can mend most anything in Car-Iduna. But I won’t forget.”

“I should never have let you go into Stavoren,” he said bitterly.

“Really, Karel, it’s been a very long time since anyone has let me — or not let me — do anything.”

She bent, wisping soft kisses over his face. He reached to hold her, but she gently pushed his arm away.

“No, Karel. Not yet. Lie still and let me kiss you. All of you, my golden summer stag, every lock of hair, every sinew, every secret. I want to kiss you forever. I want to remember how beautiful can be the body of a man.”

He was still wrapped in an easy languor, and it was lovely to take her gift, to let her have his body and worship it as she chose. She trailed kisses down the length of his arm, and back again, pausing to nibble at his shoulder, and press her face softly into the curve of his throat. Her hair whispered over him, smelling of jasmine; he would have liked to tangle his hands in it and pull her mouth to his own.

“Karel….” She stroked his chest and his belly, let her tongue wander into the cleft of his navel; back to his nipples, where she feasted; back at last to his mouth, where she feasted more. It took a very long time, all of that, and she had only halfway begun.

“I love you, Karelian Brandeis.” She ran her fingers over his cheekbones, over his nose and his mouth, almost as though she were blind, and wanted to discover him by touch. “You are fair, and you are brave, and I do love you.”

“I’d gladly hold you, Raven, if you’d let me.”

“After.” She purred softly, the shameless purr of a veela pleasuring. “I want to have you first. All of you.”

More kisses, right to the nails on his toes, back again. She lifted his knee, and began to nibble downward along the inside of his thigh. He had been aroused for some time, and even innocent caresses were exciting now. This was all but unbearable. She was whispering over his loins like a moth, idling away and coming back, tormenting him until he moaned.

“Lady, do you have it in mind to kill me?”

“No man has ever died of pleasure, my lord duke.”

“That may be so, but I would hate to be the first.”

She laughed, but she yielded to his hunger. She took him with her mouth, slowly and gloriously, and after he came she went on caressing him, treasuring him, taking back all her joy in his manhood and his grace, coming finally to lay beside him, her face tucked into his shoulder and her splendid body wrapped possessively against his own.

And he thought before he slept again that he did not want to leave Car-Iduna, not for Konrad, not for the duchy of the Reinmark, not for anything. In a part of his mind he knew it was enchantment, and it would pass. Men who strayed into the Otherworld always wanted to go home in the end.

But he also knew the common world could no longer satisfy him, either. He would hunger after Car-Iduna and its witch queen until the day he died. He would keep coming back, and if he could not come back the world would turn grey and empty, and he would break against its emptiness, and crumble, and blow away like dust.

That night he went alone into the chamber of the gods. He was permitted to do so now; he was no longer a guest in Car-Iduna.

It was dimly lit with candles, but the Chalice seemed to shimmer with its own light, dark and melancholy, yet suffused with an enduring, nurturing power. Like existence itself, he thought; like the very earth he walked on.

He felt the rush of a deep, long-thwarted wish to worship… or perhaps worship was the wrong thing to call it. Perhaps it was worship he had always objected to, the absolute self-abasement, the absolute surrender of identity and will. He did not worship these old gods; they were too bound up with the fate of the world. But he honored them, as he honored the sun and the snow, as he honored love and turning time, as he one day would honor death: because they were there, because they made everything else possible.

They were neither all-good nor all-wise, no more than a man could be. They were not omnipotent, for they yielded to each other and to the unfolding patterns which they themselves set into motion in the world. Yet they were powerful, and knowing, and deserving of honor.

It was these gods, strange and precarious and yet pitilessly real, who could stand at the world’s center and truthfully say:

We are who are.

* * *

When he rode south again, the men of Ravensbruck who rode with him were real. More than half of Arnulf’s knights had surrendered and sworn fealty to Konrad; they added substantially to his small army. He could have taken Stavoren now, with a good stiff fight, but neither Gottfried’s lady nor her depleted garrison judged it wise to wait for him. He was advancing from one side of them, and Konrad from the other. They abandoned the ancient seat of von Heyden for the first time since their family had possessed it, and fled into Thuringia.

It was a golden day when they met again, Karelian and Konrad. It was early November, but it might easily have been early October. The world was still rich-hued with harvest and drunken with wine. The count of Lys took a moment to savor the sight of Konrad’s banners flying everywhere above Stavoren; then he rode through the gates. And felt cold for a moment, remembering how Raven had almost died here.

The king did not send anyone to greet him. He was there himself, weary and troubled, but young enough to forget all his troubles in this moment of triumph.

“Karelian! God’s blood, you’ve served me well, and I’m glad to see you!”

“My liege—”

He barely managed to bow; Konrad embraced him, and then stood back a little, gripping him hard by the shoulders.

“You keep your promises, by God! We’ll take the Reinmark right out from under his feet, you said. And with so few men — you’ll have to tell me how you did it. The stories are enough to make a man’s hair stand on end. Come, you’ve made a long journey: let’s have some wine.”

“You are well, my liege?”

“I’m all right. My knights took a hard beating, though.”

Servants stood nearby with a flagon of wine, two silver cups, a tray of pastries and chicken.

The king took only wine, but urged his vassal to eat. “Please, refresh yourself, Karel. Then we must talk.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“All the signs are for a long, dry fall,” the king went on. “We may have a month of good fighting weather left, perhaps even more. Plenty of time for Gottfried to come back and try to finish it.”

“Plenty of time for other things to happen as well, my lord.”

“Indeed,” Konrad said grimly. “There’s all manner of strange matters in the wind. Come, Karel. I’ve sent for Thuringia and my captains to meet us within the hour, but first I want to talk to you alone.”

“The duke of Thuringia is still with you? I thought he was badly wounded.”

“If that man were dead, my friend, and there was a war going on, he would insist on being carried around the field in his coffin, so he could at least stick his head out from time to time and give advice.

“He’s rather disappointed in me, to tell the truth. He lost his duchy, and he nearly lost his life. If right and justice were on our side, it never should have happened. I swear to God he believes Odin is still riding the skies with his eight-legged horse, delivering victory to the most deserving.”

“And is that so different from what we believe, my lord?”

Konrad looked at him a moment, surprised, and then he laughed.

They went to sit in Gottfried’s pavilion, in one of the quiet inner courtyards of Stavoren. It was a lovely and graciously furnished place, open to wind and sun, but high above the courtyard, and therefore very private. Konrad ordered the servants to bring the wine, and then as an afterthought, the food as well.

He dismissed them, and sat.

“I owe you a lot, Karel,” he said. “And I’m not ungrateful. Tomorrow morning you will be formally invested as duke of the Reinmark. I would rather have waited with the ceremony, so your lady and your vassals could be summoned, but with the war in our midst, it seemed wiser not to. If all goes well, we’ll have another ceremony later.”

So. She was right, my witch… as usual.

“My lord, I’m honored, and I will serve you willingly. But I was more than content with Lys.”

“I know you were. It was the best reason I could think of for giving you more— that and your damnably good soldiering.”

“You are very generous, my lord.”

“Am I? It’ll be a hollow honor if we don’t stop Gottfried.” He leaned forward a little across the table, moving flagon and plates aside so nothing lay between him and Karelian.

“Two things have happened of late, my friend, and I don’t know what to make of either of them. I have spies in Gottfried’s camps, as you must imagine. None of them get very close to him; there’s a limit to what they can tell me. But there are whispers — from them, and from elsewhere — whispers which suggest there’s something wrong with Gottfried’s … what did he call it? … his truthstone.”

He paused, and smiled faintly. “This news doesn’t surprise you much, I see.”

“I have reason to believe the stone is… altered, my lord.”

“But how could such a thing happen? He must have kept it under guard, under lock and key. How could anyone have damaged it?”

“As I understand it, my lord, he was using it for divination. He tried to discover what was happening in Ravensbruck, and what he saw there is now sealed into the surface of the stone. I don’t think it’s a pretty picture.”

Konrad was silent for a moment. Then he asked softly: “No offense, Karel, but is that really the truth?”

“It’s close enough to the truth to serve, my lord.”

“Very well. My other piece of news is fresh; I think it will surprise even you. The couriers came just last night, and they almost killed their mounts to get here. Cardinal Volken is back from Rome. The cardinal himself, the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, and the duke of Bavaria, are calling for an immediate meeting of the electoral council— and presumably for a new election.”

“Well.” Karelian poured himself more wine. “The religious contingent wants a new election. That is interesting, to say the least.”

“The religious contingent? Yes, I suppose you’re right; I hadn’t thought of it that way. Karel, what’s maddening about this is the timing. If it were just a little later, I would think they’d heard about the stone turning strange, and decided it wasn’t a relic and Gottfried was a liar and they wanted to elect me as they should have done in the first place.

“But even allowing for the marvelous good ears of churchmen, I don’t think it’s possible. Which means they decided to call a new election just around the time Gottfried was thrashing me at Saint Germain and you were said to be leading ghosts and ghoulies to the gates of Ravensbruck.

“I don’t like it, Karelian. I don’t like it at all.”

“I don’t know if I like it, either. But there’s one good thing about it. By the time the council meets, and adjourns, it will be too close to winter for another campaign. By anyone. And we’re in no shape for a major battle, my lord; delay can only help us.”

“Provided they aren’t meeting to make him king.”

“If they do, will you accept it?”

Konrad laughed. “I’ll kiss the devil’s arse first.”

“And so will I. But whatever happens in the council, the mere fact of it will give us time. And time is on our side at the moment.

“It’s a peculiar situation, my lord. Gottfried has a fearful military advantage right now, but he’s on the brink of an equally fearful political disaster. All his credibility depends on the truthstone. His very image as a Christian lord depends on it. If he can’t use it — if he can’t even allow it to be seen — people will start to wonder if it’s really a relic. And if it isn’t a relic, then he’s nothing but a sorcerer and a usurper. His political support will erode, his soldiers will desert, the Church will condemn him—”