The Lazarus Vault Part 36

'Tell me your tale, and I'll see how I like it.'

I lift my shoulders, tugging against the rope. 'It's easier to tell with my hands unbound.'

A guard cuts the rope. I rub my wrists, then walk over to the table and take a cup of wine to wet my throat.

'Long ago, when Arthur was king ...'

I make it up as I go along. Sometimes I catch myself digressing, or repeating too much, but each time some instinct draws me back to the story, like a blind man feeling the edge of the path with his stick. I watch the King's face the same way I watched Ada's when we sat by the river at Hautfort, catching the things that please him, amplifying them where I can. Some of it comes from the stories my mother told me; other pieces from sc.r.a.ps I've heard in other halls, or half-remember from the books I studied as a child. For the rest, I take the coa.r.s.e threads of my life, dye them vivid colours and weave my own tapestry to hang in the hall.

I tell the king how Perceval was born in the waste forest of Wales. How his father and his brothers were Arthur's knights, all killed on the same day. How his mother raised him with no knowledge of knights or chivalry, to protect him from the same fate but how the moment he saw a company of knights riding through the forest, he knew it was his destiny.

I tell how Perceval went to Caerleon where Arthur kept his court. I make great play of looking around the hall.

'It wasn't a particularly great or magnificent court ...'

Morgan flushes, sensitive to any insult.

'... only three thousand knights or so.'

They all laugh. Morgan thumps the arm of his chair and nods his approval. The energy in the room lifts and channels into me.

I tell them more. How Arthur dubbed Perceval a knight, and how Perceval set out to find adventures. How he met the Lady Blancheflor, saved her castle from the wicked Clamadeu and made her his sweetheart, though not his wife. In my story, there's no husband to get in the way.

The hall's growing dim the servants have forgotten to replace the candles. I shift position; I crouch to keep my face in the light. I tell how Perceval set out again and came to a broad river and met a fisherman. How the fisherman directed him to a castle in a hidden valley, and how that night at supper he witnessed marvels he did not understand.

As Perceval and his host were talking, a squire entered the hall carrying a lance. He walked in front of the fire, so that everyone there saw the wood and the iron point. A single drop of blood rolled down from its tip and touched the squire's hand.

Then two more squires entered carrying golden candle-holders, each with a dozen candles glittering off the enamel inlay. A girl came behind them beautiful and n.o.bly dressed and in her hands she carried a grail. The dish was made of purest gold, studded with the most precious jewels in earth and sea, and the light from within it was so bright that the candles were swallowed up in its radiance, like the stars at sunrise.

The grail pa.s.sed by like the lance and disappeared into another chamber. The knight watched them go, but didn't dare ask who or what purpose it served.

Afterwards, I couldn't tell you how it came to me that way. All I know is that at that moment there isn't a man in the hall who would not stay there until dawn to find out what the grail and spear mean.

I tell them how Perceval woke the next morning and found the castle deserted. How as he was riding over the drawbridge it closed behind him. How he never found the castle again how the quest drove him mad. How he lost his memory so totally that he no longer even remembered G.o.d. He wandered for five years, forgetting everything, until on Good Friday a hermit took him in and restored him to sanity. How he vowed he would not spend two consecutive nights under the same roof as long as he lived, until he had found out why the spear bled, and what the grail contained.

How I break off suddenly. Morgan thinks it's a dramatic effect; he waits a moment for me to continue. When he realises I'm not going to, he rises forward like a man woken from a dream.

'And?'

I shrug my shoulders. 'I don't know the ending. The story hasn't finished yet.'

LI.

London Blanchard sat in his office and stared at the chessboard on his desk. It was late in the game: the only surviving pieces were two kings and a white knight. He toyed with the knight, testing possible moves.

Which way now?

He was a good chess player not formally brilliant, no automaton, but hard to beat. He knew that you had to read play not just from your perspective, or even as a textbook might judge it, but as your opponent understood it. Where does he see his strengths? His vulnerabilities? What will he do next? On the rare occasions he played against computers, he did badly: he needed a man sitting across the table to dissect, to worm into and ultimately to defeat.

Take Ellie. The moment she'd walked into his office, even in her frumpy clothes and wide-eyed innocence, he'd known she'd be a formidable adversary. Saint-Lazare had called her a p.a.w.n: Blanchard saw she was a p.a.w.n who could become a queen. For all he respected her, he'd still underestimated her. He'd failed to block her path. Now she was almost home.

He had one chance left, a single shot. The engineers at Mirabeau said that the chapel was beyond repair: whatever secrets had once adorned it had been blown to pieces by the helicopter. Ellie might resurface, but after their run-in at Annelise Stirt's she'd be careful about showing herself.

Which way would she go? Which way should he go?

He pushed the chessboard aside, toppling over the king with the sudden motion. He took out his computer. His white finger hovered over a b.u.t.ton, then stabbed down.

In twenty-four hours, he'd know.

Caerleon, Wales Thirty-five knights crammed in a stockade makes for an uncomfortable night. There's not even s.p.a.ce to relieve ourselves, except by p.i.s.sing through the palings. At least we stay warm.

Around midnight the King's seneschal unlocks the door and brings us back to the hall. The fire's smouldering, the guards have gone. The King sits alone, wreathed in smoke, as if the dragons on his throne have started to stir.

'You can have your horses, your arms, and safe conduct out of my kingdom.'

Hugh starts to speak, but Morgan cuts him off.

'I'll also give you some news. The men you want left Morgannwg this afternoon, heading north-west. They stopped at an inn to feed their horses the stable boy heard them talking about a place called Cwm Bychan. It's in Gwynedd, near the sea. Three days' hard riding through the mountains.

Hugh gives a slight bow. 'Thank you, your majesty.'

A terse smile. 'Make sure you keep your storyteller safe. I want him to tell me how it ends.'

For three days and nights we ride, s.n.a.t.c.hing sleep and food where we can, never more than half an hour, then back in the saddle and on again. The pace is brutal, the terrain unforgiving. I understand why the Normans never really conquered Wales why Morgan ap Owain could overthrow them the moment the King's attention was elsewhere. It's a wild land of sheer valleys, icy swamps and dark forests that stretch to the horizon. It punishes the horses. One by one, they go lame or collapse with exhaustion. We leave the riders behind, though it's a long, dangerous journey home.

It feels as if the land is swallowing us. Each day the valleys grow deeper, while the peaks reach further towards the clouds. Snow blankets the upper reaches, vast heights where only G.o.d and eagles roam.

On the second afternoon we pause at the top of yet another ridge. Hugh reins in next to me and turns round in his saddle, looking for something.

He points back. 'Can you see them?'

I strain my eyes, but don't see anything. 'Who?'

'The riders. They've been following us all the way from Caerleon.'

'Malegant's men?' I look again; I still can't see them.

'Morgan's.'

'Has he changed his mind? Are they chasing us?'

'Stalking us.' He gives a grim laugh. 'Did you really think your story was so powerful it moved Morgan to mercy? He understood what you were saying, for all you disguised it. He knows we're after something powerful a weapon. He wants it for himself.'

I scan the long valley behind us, the ranks of trees like furrows in a field. Browns fade to greys as they fall in the mountain shadows. It feels like the end of the world.

At dusk on the third day we come to a long lake nestled in a valley. High summits loom all around it like sleeping giants. On one of them, at the eastern end of the lake, a fire glows against the sky.

Hugh slips off his horse. 'That's them. Please G.o.d we're not too late.'

We dismount and leave the horses drinking from the lake. We don't need to tether them they don't have the strength to wander far. We're not much better off, but we don't have a choice. We jog along the dusky lakesh.o.r.e, hoping the men on the hill don't hear the sound of our arms.

Even on foot, the hill looks too steep to climb. But at the far end of the lake, we find steps cut in to the mountain face, climbing towards the pa.s.s between two summits. It doesn't surprise me. I remember what my mother said, how Wales is a wild realm on the rim of the world, how every rock and tree might hide the door to an enchanted land. Stones stand upright like trees; sometimes when the tide goes out, whole forests appear on the seabed. I think these steps must be the same, a hidden road that's opened by a beam of moonlight, or the song of a wren.

Scrambling up the stairs in the dark is agonising work. There isn't a muscle in my body that doesn't ache from so many long days in the saddle. The moon's behind a cloud: we scuttle like crabs, ungainly in our armour, testing every rock to make sure it won't make a noise. Distant thunder rumbles across the valley a storm's coming. Above us, the flames on the mountain sway into the night.

The last few yards are the hardest: an almost vertical climb up a damp rock face. There must be another way, but Hugh doesn't want to run into any sentries. We strap our swords to our backs and cling on with numb fingers, praying the fire masks the noise we make.

At last I haul myself over the lip of the cliff, and flop belly-down in a patch of heather. I tilt back my head and stare at the open hilltop.

France The Land Rover had a satnav, but Ellie turned it off. She didn't think you could track a car through its GPS, but the idea of a chip sending a signal into s.p.a.ce, broadcasting her position, made her too anxious. Instead, she studied the map book and made a list of waypoints, then set out following the road signs. She stuck to secondary roads as much as she could. She wished Annelise had owned something less conspicuous a Renault or a Citroen.

She'd never realised how big France was. She drove for hours, but when she checked her progress on the map she still had dauntingly far to go. Around 3 a.m. she almost dozed off her eyes had closed without her realising it. The shock took her another few miles, but when she felt her eyes starting to droop again she had no choice but to pull over on a farm track and curl up in the back seat. A tractor rumbling past woke her at dawn.

Now she had a new worry. The fuel gauge on the car was edging inexorably down. She stopped at a small petrol station and spent the last of her euros on a few more litres. The needle barely budged.

She crossed into Britanny and kept driving. The main roads followed the coast, but she found one that cut straight through the middle of the peninsula, a winding valley overshadowed by a spine of hills. Even in France, she knew it was considered a wild region a place with its own language, its own customs, its own ghosts and magic. The needle touched red.

She almost made it. On a road so minor she'd almost missed it, five kilometres short of where Doug had indicated on the map, the engine cut out. She coasted down the hill and nosed the Land Rover on to the gra.s.sy verge. After so many hours being carried along by its sound, the silence was eerie. She sat in the car for a few minutes, drawing up her courage. Then she got out and walked into the trees.

The forest was an otherworldly place. Whereas the Mirabeau forest had been dead and brown, this one burst with life. Green ivy hung from the trees and crept over their bark; moss carpeted the floor in a spongy ma.s.s that soaked up her footsteps. At first Ellie found it comforting, a glimpse of spring in the depths of winter, but the further she went the more oppressive it seemed. The colour became alien, not vibrant but poisonous, stifling everything.

Black clouds began ma.s.sing in the sky. The forest darkened. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Soon the rain began to beat down, and the leafless trees were no protection. It drizzled down her neck and soaked her clothes. The pack on her back felt twice as heavy. She began to wonder if she'd ever get out, or if she'd die of exposure in this lonely forest. Sheets of rain washed over her face, blinding her.

The sky seemed lighter up ahead. She plunged on, slipping on the moss and the slick rock underfoot. She came out of the trees on the edge of a ridge and stared. Below her, a narrow valley plunged away like a scar in the forest. Few trees grew there. The entire valley was choked with boulders, a jumble of vast lumps of granite, each taller than she was, piled up like giant golf b.a.l.l.s. A stream flowed around the rocks, sometimes dammed into pools, sometimes spilling over them and falling in cascades, sometimes disappearing into hidden channels below. Moss covered everything.

Something gave inside her. She sat down on the embankment, oblivious to the rainwater that seeped into the seat of her jeans, and stared down into the rocky chaos. She was too tired to cry. She'd been running for days months, it seemed and she was spent. Whatever might be down there, or near there, or perhaps not even there she'd never find it.

She rubbed a trickle of water from her eyes and stared. In the wash of green and grey that filled the valley a bright flash of colour had appeared out of nowhere. A man in a red anorak stood in the middle of the boulder field, dwarfed by the stones, looking as if he'd always been there.

He waved, then scrambled down from the boulder and began climbing the slope. He could have been anyone a hunter, a forester, a lost hiker but Ellie didn't think so. She didn't have the strength to run any more. She sat there and waited.

Halfway up the slope, he paused and looked up.

'Ellie Stanton?'

A dumb nod.

'We've been waiting for you.'

Cwm Bychan A dozen men stand around a huge fire. They're staring at an upright finger of stone on the far side of the knoll. The King's tied to it, dressed only in a white linen tunic: he's on the far side of the fire from me, so that the flames seem to lick around him. Between him and the fire stands a flat rock, like an altar there's something on it, but the flames hide it from me. Two men stand in front of it one immensely tall and broad, suited in black armour; the other slighter and stooped, his head buried in the hood of his cloak. I can't see their faces, but Malegant I'd recognise anywhere. The other, I think, must be the goldsmith with the sky-blue eyes and the silver hand, Lazar de Mortain.

Malegant picks up a black lance from the rock-altar and advances. The King's eyes go wide with uncomprehending terror. Even now, he can't really believe anyone would actually kill a king. Malegant levels the spear.

It's the scene from every nightmare I've had in the last five years. The bound victim, ghostly white; the executioner and the spear. I can't let it happen again. I dig my palms into the soft ground, push myself up and launch myself forward like a wolf. Malegant's so close to the King I'll never reach him in time. I pull a dagger from my belt, grip it by the tip and throw it straight through the flames. It strikes Malegant in the back and bounces off him, too weak to penetrate the chain mail, but hard enough that he feels it. He spins around.

So does the man in front of me. He saw the knife fly by his face and turns to see where it came from. The fire lights me standing there, empty-handed, I don't look much of a threat. He steps towards me.

I reach up to my shoulder as if I'm surrendering. My hand closes around the hilt of my sword, strapped across my back for the climb. The knight can't see it. I wait until he's in range, then whip the blade out of its scabbard. I run him through the throat in a single motion.

Forgive me, I whisper to the hermit.

The hilltop becomes a battlefield. Men move like shadows around the firelight, hacking and punching and kicking. Some of William's knights have gained the summit, but not enough. It's all they can do to keep from being driven back over the cliff. At the far end, I see Malegant grab a man by the scruff of his coif and hurl him over the edge.

Malegant turns back to the king, but he's under attack again. Hugh's managed to get through. He charges at Malegant; Malegant sees him come and puts up his sword. The two trade blows: Hugh's a big man, but Malegant dwarfs him. The first strike shatters his shield, the second almost takes off his arm.

I run towards them. I'm halfway there when someone steps in my way. I see a grey face, red in the firelight, and the puckered eye-socket like a screwhole. Alberic. He's got a sword, but I doubt he knows how to use it. I make the merest of feints, then reverse direction and drive the sword into his shoulder.

I suppose he screams, though in the fury of the moment I don't hear it. I just remember his mouth, stretched almost to breaking; his good eye wide open; the skin around his dead eye pulled so tight I think it might rip apart. He wheels away, and in my surprise I let go of the sword. Straight away, I lunge to get it back but Alberic's staggering backwards. All I do is push him further. One more step, a horrible second as he teeters on the brink, then he's gone.

So's my sword. I spin around. It's impossible to say who's winning the battle, only that it's still as furious as ever. Malegant has Hugh pinned against the rock altar in front of the fire. Hugh's clutching something to his chest with his left hand, while fending off Malegant's strokes with his sword.

You've got what so many men never get the chance to atone for your sins.

I grab a brand from the fire and run towards them. Malegant beats Hugh's sword aside and pins his arm back against the rock. With his other hand he wrests away the thing Hugh's holding, an egg-shaped white stone. Hugh bucks and writhes like a bird in a trap, but he can't get free.

As casually as if it were a piece of fruit, Malegant tosses the stone aside. His gauntleted hand pulls away Hugh's sword, reverses it, and puts it to Hugh's throat.

The brand in my hand blazes like a comet. Malegant sees it and steps away, turning to face me. He has a sword in each hand now, a death-angel coming to claim me. Away on the next mountain, a flash of lightning illuminates the sky. I power on, swinging the torch wildly towards him.

Those swords could have cut off my head like a pair of scissors, but Hugh launches himself up and crashes into Malegant, hugging him so tight the swords can't touch him. Malegant tries to shrug him off, but Hugh clings on. The two men wheel away, locked in their embrace.

Now it's my turn to rescue Hugh. But as I run on, my foot catches something on the ground. I fall forward and land on my knees. In the flow of battle I almost ignore it, but some sixth sense makes me look back to see what tripped me.

It's the lance.

Malegant must have dropped it when Hugh attacked him. I reach down and prise it out of the mud. Almost before I have it in my hand, I sense a movement from my right. The whole hilltop is a melee of breakneck violence and motion, but I have an instinct, honed in the chaos of the tournament field, for when it's coming at me. I wheel round.

Lazar is running towards me. His hood's fallen back; his bony face looks skeletal in the firelight. He moves quickly, despite his age. His silver hand presses the white rock to his chest; the other holds a curved knife.

Sheer reflex makes me lift the spear. It's heavier than I expect I don't know what it's made of, but it seems to soak up the light. Lazar doesn't see it in the flickering darkness. All I have to do is hold it steady. Lazar does the rest.

Loqmenez Ellie followed the man down the slope. There were no marks that she could see, but he led her unerringly between the rocks to a hollow on the far side of the valley in the shadow of a vast boulder. A torrent of water poured down over its face and vanished into a crevice. Peering down, Ellie saw white foam bubbling far below.

'It's a bit of a squeeze,' her guide apologised. 'Try not to touch the water.'