The Knight

Chapter 69. Grengarm

The dragon reared as a cobra rears, and wings smaller than the great wings on its back stood out upon its neck. “Who has overturned your stone, shade, that you should rise to oppose Grengarm?”

“What stone was overturned,” the phantom knight replied, “that you have seeped from beneath it, shadow?”

Still on his knees, the robed and bearded Aelf called, “This is none of our doing, Lord. I see the hand of Setr in it.”

“Setr’s hand is stronger.” Grengarm might have been amused. “Shade, wraith knight, what will you do if I burn hyssop? Or call the gods of your dead? Would not a puff of my breath disperse you?”

I knew what sword I held, as sword in hand I rose from my hiding place. “He’d call on his brother knight!”

Grengarm moved more quickly than I would have believed possible, his strike preceded by a sheet of fire the way the bray of a trumpet precedes the charge. I thrust, both hands on the hilt—and half blind with fire and smoke heard my blade rattle among his fangs—slashed and slashed, and slashed again, the dark two-edged brand slicing flesh and splitting scale and bone with every stroke.

Knights fought shoulder-to-shoulder with me who were almost real, staunch men whose eyes looked full upon the face of Hel; but behind Grengarm, and at his flanks, the Aelf fought for him with spear, shield, and slender Aelfsword, and fell bleeding and dying just as men in battle die.

Grengarm gave way, and would have dived into the well, but I and a score of knights barred his path. Like lightning he turned aside—

And vanished. Blood ran from the mouth of a piteous dwarf who scutded toward the rushing water. I sprang after him. Fire checked me. He plunged into the Griffin and was gone.

The Aelf fought on, but the phantom knights closed about them with war cries the eldest trees were too young to have heard. From the depths of time rose the thunder of hooves.

Eterne shattered Aelfswords and split heads until the last Aelf alive fled down the dark passage; panting, I turned to the woman on the altar.

An Aelf as gray as ash sawed at her bonds with a broken sword. His head had been nearly severed, and blood dribbled from his fingers to redden her milky skin and raven hair; yet he worked away, turning this way and that to bring the cords in view.

She called, “Sheath your sword and lay these specters before they harm us. And please—I beg this—free me.”

I spoke to one of the phantom knights. (He had removed his helm, and there was sorrow in his face, Ben, to tear your heart.) “Who are you?” I asked. “Should I do as this woman advises? On my honor, I won’t send you away without thanking you.”

They gathered around me, muttering that they had done no more than their own had required. Their voices were dry and hollow, as though a clever showman pulled a string through a gourd to make it talk.

“We are those knights,” the knight I had spoken to said, “who bore Eterne unworthily.”

“You would be wise,” another told me, “to do what she wishes. But unwise to trust her.”

From the altar, the woman called, “Cut me free and give me a drink. Have you wine?”

The phantom knights and I spoke further; I will not tell you what we said now. Then one brought a skin like a wineskin that the Aelf had dropped. He pulled the stopper and poured some into the little cup that was the other end of the stopper. That is how those things are made in Aelfrice. It was strong brandy, as its fumes told me; I had no need to taste it.

I wiped Eterne clean with the hair of a dead Aelf and returned her to her scabbard, thinking to take the wineskin—and the knights vanished. Picture a hall lit by many candles. A wind sweeps it, and at once the flame of every candle is put out. That was how it was with them.

The skin fell to the stony floor of the grotto and most of the brandy was wasted, though by snatching it up I managed to save a little. That little I carried to the woman on the altar, and when I had fetched my old sword belt and cut her free with my dagger, I poured it into the cup and gave it to her.

She thanked me and thrust her finger into it. At once it burned blue, and she downed it fire and all.

“Good lord!”

That made her smile. “Say, ‘good knight.’” She stroked my cheek. “I am no lord, Sir Knight. No lady, either. Are you a subject of my brother’s?” I said I was a knight of Sheerwall.

“You are, and when we meet again you will bow to me while I smile oh, so coldly!” Her breath was heavy with brandy. “But we are not at court—what are you doing?”

I was taking off my cloak to give to her. “It’s still wet,” I warned her.

“I will dry it.” She left the altar then, slender and swaying like a willow in a storm, and let me put it about her shoulders. I am accounted tall, but the cloak that fell to my ankles failed to cover her knees.

“We will both be wetter than that cloak, Your Highness, before we are out of this place.”

She held up the empty skin. “They brought this for me.” She laughed as she tossed it aside, and her laughter was lovely and inhuman. “Ah, the tenderness of my old guardians! ‘Let her be stupefied, and happy, until Grengarm’s jaws close upon her.’ I wish we had more arrack.”

I searched for another skin, but she stopped me. “There is no more, more’s the pity—it would have dried you. As for me, I will not be wet, and before I go I will confide to you, my kind knight, a great secret.” She leaned toward me, and whispered, “Had he who turned that altar devoured me, he would have been as real here as in Muspel.”

At the final word my cloak slumped, empty, to the stone floor, and the dead Aelf with it.

Outside, the sunlit gorge held no one save myself. I climbed out of the stream slowly, choosing every hand—and foothold, conscious only that I did not want to fall back into the water—no matter what else might happen, I did not want to fall back into the water. The thing I remember best about that time (almost the only thing I remember at all) is how tired I was.

At our camp, where we had built our fire and tied the lame white stallion Lord Beel had given me, I had rags and a flask of oil. I wanted to get them and oil the strange mail I had pulled out of the well. I remember looking at it in the sunlight and noticing that every fifth ring was gold. I wanted to oil my dagger, too, and Sword Breaker, which I had carried with me; most of all, I wanted to care for Eterne. I would have to draw her to clean and oil her blade, and the phantom knights would come. I knew that, and tried to think of some way to prevent it, but could not. I was worried about the scabbard, too. It was of gold set with precious stones; but I knew there would have been a lining of some kind, probably wood, and I was afraid it had rotted away.

Behind me, the great, deep, lisping voice of the griffin rumbled, “Would you see him? Look west.”

I looked at the griffm instead. Stared, in fact. He was all white save for his beak, his claws, and his wonderful golden eyes. “Look west,” he said again.

At last I did. There was a storm gathering in the west, thunderheads plucking at the sun; against the darkness of the storm, something flew that seemed darker still.

“Yes. Will you spare him?” From his roost upon the cliff, the griffm dropped into the ravine, and his weight shook the earth. “Or will you destroy him?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I would kill him if I could.”

“I fly as swift as he, and swifter. Will you go?” The eagle face loomed over me, and the claws gripping the rocks of the gorge might have held me as a child holds a doll.

Ravd had not been among the phantom knights who had fought beside me, but it seemed to me that Ravd’s phantom stood behind me as I said, “I will.”