The Lazarus Vault Part 37

She gazed uncertainly into the hole. 'You want me to go in there?'

'It's not as bad as it looks. I'm Leon, by the way.' He stuck out his hand and Ellie shook it. He was older than she'd expected, probably in his fifties, but thin and wiry. With his thinning hair and his rimless spectacles, he reminded her of her fifth-form geography teacher.

'You've done an extraordinary job. We're almost there now.'

Following his instructions, Ellie knelt down on the rock and slid her legs backwards until they dangled into the hole. A weathered groove gave her a handhold in the rock she wondered if it was natural. Her legs hung in the void. Icy water spattered her calves where the waterfall roared down inches behind her.

'Let go.'

She stared up at him, his anxious face staring down against the dark sky. He gave a worn smile. 'Trust me.'

She dropped but not as far as she'd expected. A couple of feet, no more, landing on a ledge invisible in the darkness. Through her shoes she could feel criss-crossed lines hatched into the rock, giving her grip.

A red-hooded head appeared above her. 'If you shuffle in, you should find a tunnel.'

Ellie crouched and stretched a hand in front of her. She touched nothing but air. She crawled forwards, sweeping her arm in broad arcs to check the way. She heard a thud and a splash; the dim light at the opening disappeared completely as Leon dropped in after her, then came back artificially bright as he switched on a torch.

'You can stand up now.'

She did, feeling gingerly for the roof. She walked on; she counted thirty paces, then felt a change. The air was colder and somehow clearer. She could sense s.p.a.ce around her.

Leon came out beside her. The head-torch strapped to his forehead played over the s.p.a.ce as he looked around, showing flashes of carefully mortared stone walls, fragmentary images of knights and damsels rendered in plaster, lancet windows filled in with earth, fan vaults spreading into the inky darkness above.

Ellie gasped. 'Where are we?'

'The Chateau de Loqmenez.'

The torchbeam came down again, crossed a flagstone floor and came to rest on a shiny petrol generator sitting in an alcove. Leon bent over it and yanked back a cord. It coughed three times, roared into motion, then settled into a regular hum.

The room came to life. Bare bulbs strung between the walls filled the s.p.a.ce with light. They seemed to be in some sort of great hall, with a fireplace at one end and a carved stone doorway opening on to the tunnel they'd come through. The only sign of modernity was the lights, and the tangle of cables around the generator. Further back, she could see a tower of stainless-steel scaffolding on wheels. She wondered how they'd got that in.

'Is this a castle?'

'It was buried in a landslide two hundred years ago. Even then, it was already derelict; afterwards, people forgot it completely. But credit to the builders, they built to last.'

Ellie nodded, though she wasn't looking at the architecture, or the fragments of plaster murals still clinging to the walls. She was staring at the far end of the room. A black spear hung in mid air, floating weightless above a stone table.

'Is that ... the lance?' Her voice trailed off. She felt giddy, as if she were suspended in s.p.a.ce. The world seemed to have been pulled inside out, a mirror-realm of strange enchantments.

An unreadable look crossed Leon's face. 'Chretien used poetic licence. The blood that flows from the tip I don't know where he got that from.'

Captivated, Ellie reached to touch the lance. Leon's sharp voice drew her back.

'Don't touch!'

Ellie stepped away and gazed around the empty hall. 'I thought there'd be more of you.'

'We haven't used this place in years. It was only after we heard about what happened at Mirabeau that we guessed you might make your way here. We've been scouring half of Europe for you.

'I'm glad you found me,' she said. She wasn't sure she meant it. Leon's manner unnerved her, so breezy and offhand. He didn't seem to have any idea what she'd been through. And there were too many things that didn't make sense. She felt like the victim of some monstrous hoax, that if she shone a bright light on this castle she might find it was all made of cardboard. She looked at the floating lance again. Now that her eyes were used to the gloom, she thought she could make out thin wires holding it in the darkness.

'What about the poem? The pattern in the chapel?'

'The poem's a feint a ploy. When Chretien published Le Conte du Graal, we needed something to distract Saint-Lazare's people while we worked out what it all meant. It was only a stopgap we never imagined that it would obsess him so long. Or, eight centuries later, that you'd be using it to try and find us.'

He offered her an admiring look. 'You're the first person ever to solve that particular riddle.'

I didn't do it alone. She wished Doug was there. She could feel his absence, a pain in her chest.

He's safer out of this.

Leon looked at her backpack. 'What about the other thing? Did you bring it?'

Ever since she'd crawled out of the Monsalvat vault with the box in her hands she'd been desperate to get rid of it. Every minute since, she'd felt the burden of it dragging her down. Yet now, she was surprised to feel a pang of loss as she unzipped the bag and handed over the ebony-black box. The red symbols glowed into life as Leon's hand touched the surface.

'Can you open it?' she asked. Suddenly she was bursting to know what was inside.

Leon shrugged. 'We've been waiting almost nine centuries to get it back. We can afford to be patient.'

She tried not to let her disappointment show. 'What's inside is it ...?' Even now, she struggled to say it out loud. '... the Holy Grail?'

'It isn't holy not in the Christian sense and it isn't a grail. But it's what Chretien was writing about.'

'Was Chretien de Troyes part of your brotherhood?'

A dark look, impossible to read. 'He was like you. He was never one of us, but he got ... mixed up. I don't know if he ever saw the Grail, or just glimpsed it, but it obsessed him for the rest of his life.'

A flash of insight. 'That's why the poems don't finish. That's why his symbols have driven readers crazy for centuries. He didn't know himself what the Grail was.'

'He invented it,' said Leon. 'And ever since, it's been like a game of Chinese whispers down the generations. From a serving dish to a cup, a cup to a stone tarot cards, esoteric wisdom, everlasting life ...'

He carried the box to the head of the room. Ellie expected him to put it on the stone table, but instead he stepped around and laid the box in the fireplace. The hovering spear swayed as he went past.

Ellie shifted on her feet. She was freezing.

'So is that just a legend too? Everlasting life and all that?'

Give me something, she thought. Anything. A reason for what I've done for you.

His face twitched. 'It has certain powers.'

'What powers? What does it do?'

'More than you can comprehend.' Standing behind the stone table, the spear hovering in front of his eyes, he looked like a priest at an altar. 'There are two principles in this world: life and death, creation and destruction, whatever you want to call them. There are certain objects which govern them, like a magnet moving iron filings on the table. There aren't instructions, no b.u.t.tons to push or triggers to pull but by G.o.d they're real.'

Creation and destruction. 'So the lance destroys ...?'

'Think of it like an atom bomb. A chain reaction ripping through the fabric of the world.'

'... and the Grail ...?'

'It heals. It's like a wave breaking over a beach. However rutted and chewed up the sand gets, the water smooths it whole again. Monsalvat want the lance because they thrive on chaos and disorder. We want the Grail so we can try to do some good in the world. For eight hundred years we've been stalemated. We had the lance; they had the grail. Now, thanks to you, we've got both back together.'

His intensity frightened her. 'Is it magic?'

'Have you ever seen a baby playing with a remote control? They think that's magic and they're right. Magic's just the name we give to powers we can't understand.'

'It doesn't make sense,' Ellie murmured.

'That's the point. Do you know what rational means? It means you can divide things up, one into another, ratio to ratio. For three hundred years we've been obsessed with mechanics: taking things apart into smaller and smaller pieces to see how they work. But life isn't a thing. If you dissect it, rationalise it, it's gone. That's what Chretien got right. If you pursue the Holy Grail as a quest, as something to be owned and possessed, you're doomed to failure like Gawain and Perceval and all those other inadequate knights. That's why it drives us crazy because we can't have it.'

In his red parka, the head-torch still strapped to his forehead and his eyes glowing with righteous fervour, he looked terrifying. Suddenly, Ellie was desperate to get out.

'Where do we go now? Harry said you could take me somewhere safe.'

'Soon. We just '

He stopped. From down the tunnel, they heard a rattle like a stone or a pebble being kicked along the ground.

'Is anyone else coming?'

'No one who likes us.'

Terror seized her. 'No one followed me, I swear.'

'Did Blanchard give you anything?'

She shook her head. But even as she did, a horrible thought began to gnaw at her. Her hand strayed to her jeans pocket and felt a lump, a small bulge digging into her thigh.

Her mind flashed back to the vault at Monsalvat. Blanchard, sliding the cold ring on to her finger. 'A ring of power.'

She tugged it out of the pocket and held it in her palm. 'He gave me this.'

Leon wasn't angry. A strange look had come over his face, a serene calm. Almost as if he'd expected it.

A small object sailed out from the doorway that led to the tunnel, bounced once, and rolled across the floor to the centre of the room. It sat there innocently, like a drinks can tossed from a pa.s.sing car.

'Cover your eyes!' Leon shouted.

LII.

Cwm Bychan, Wales, 1143 A bolt of lightning splits the world from the heavens to its core. Thunder rolls over the hill and hits me like a wave. I feel weightless, s.n.a.t.c.hed off the hilltop, caught in the sound. I see the whole hill, a single instant of the battle frozen in the blue-white light.

Then the light goes out. Lazar reels away screaming, clutching his side in agony. Something stings the back of my hand. I think it must be a raindrop, but when I look down I see blood. Is it Lazar's? A little way off, a spent arrow lies on the ground. But none of Malegant's men were archers.

Something plucks at the sleeve of my hauberk. Another arrow. I don't know where they're coming from, but if I don't find cover it won't matter. I dive behind the rock altar. Behind me, Hugh's crouched by the stone pillar cutting the King loose. The moment he's free, they run across and join me.

An arrow rattles off the surface of the stone. Grit rains down on us.

'What ?'

'Morgan's men.'

There's a broken shield lying on the ground behind me. I reach back and drag it to me, then lift it over my head and peer over the rock. Two arrows strike almost at once: the shield shudders as they stick in it.

The battle seems to have been decided. The only men I can see are ours. It's a pitiful sight of the thirty who set out, only a dozen are left, crouching under their shields as the arrows rain down. Corpses litter the ground around the fire. Some twitch as the falling arrows make redundant wounds.

I can't see Malegant anywhere.

'Where ?'

'He escaped.' Another flash of lightning seizes the hilltop. Arrows seem to hang in mid-air. The thunder follows, more slowly this time. The storm's moving on. A cool wind brushes my cheek; I can smell rain coming.

Hugh gestures to the lance lying at my knees. Trampled in the mud, it looks like any other weapon lost on the battlefield.

'Take that and make for the coast. We'll follow when we can.'

'What about the King?'

'William can take him to Harlech the garrison there are loyal.'

'And you?'

Hugh wipes his sword and rises to a crouch. 'You didn't kill Lazar. He's still got what we came for.'

Loqmenez, France Even with her arm shielding her face and her eyes screwed shut, Ellie saw the brightness of the flash. A white light more brilliant than anything she'd imagined, searing through her eyelids, like staring into a lightning bolt. At the same time, or so close she couldn't tell them apart, came the loudest noise she'd ever heard not rolling like thunder, but a single sharp clap that went straight through her skull.

She smelled smoke and opened her eyes. Most of the lightbulbs had blown, while the ones that survived cast eerie beams through the dust and grit trickling down from the ceiling. Her nose was running when she wiped it on her sleeve, she saw blood and her ears were ringing. She could feel fluid in them, like water trapped after a swim, and wondered if that was blood too.

Ellie looked at the door. Five figures stood there in the swirling smoke, machine guns couched in their arms and torches on their heads. She tried to raise her arms, but she was trembling so badly she couldn't move.

One of the men stepped into the light and pulled off his head-torch. Through weeping eyes, Ellie saw the familiar, brutal contours of Destrier's face.

'In a puff of smoke ...' He laughed. 'Got you at last, you b.i.t.c.h.'

He turned his head, as if he'd heard something down the tunnel, though Ellie couldn't hear a thing. Even his voice sounded impossibly distant, as if the words had been poured through some viscous liquid.

A new shaft of light beamed out of the tunnel. A moment later, Blanchard stepped through the carved stone doorway, a torch in his hand. He surveyed the hall, saw Ellie and smiled. But he didn't move. He seemed to be waiting for something else.

A wheelchair rolled into the hall and stopped. Ellie stared at the man in it. His body seemed impossibly frail gaunt and pale as bone, his skin almost translucent with age but the sky-blue eyes that stared at her were fixed with purpose. She wondered how badly he must covet what she had, to risk crossing the boulder field and being lowered down that narrow crevice by the waterfall.

'Eleanor Stanton.' The box on his throat machined out whatever humanity survived in his ravaged body. The cough that followed sounded like a death rattle. 'You have done everything we expected.'

She realised the ring was still clenched in her fist. She opened her hand. Blanchard saw it.

'You kept it. My ring of power.'

For the second time that day, she found herself asking, 'Is it magic?'