Pendragon's Heir (21 page)

She blinked the tears from her eyes. Arthur of Britain had gone. But she was not alone.

Under the arch leading into the courtyard stood a tall slim black-haired woman, clad in red so sulky-dark it was almost black.

“Fair niece,” she said, and smiled with all her teeth, “at last we meet in the flesh.”

16

I saw pale kings and princes too,

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;

They cried—“La Belle Dame sans Merci

Hath thee in thrall!”

Keats

F
OR
B
LANCHEFLEUR
,
ALL COHERENT THOUGHT STOPPED
. Still smiling, the Witch of Gore sauntered into the garden and paused to look at the headless dragon. “Well, well, well,” she breathed.

With an effort Blanchefleur summoned her thoughts. She wasn’t dead
yet
, and that was more than she had expected ten seconds ago.

Suddenly her surroundings jolted into clarity. The luminous dull-gold sky, the molten-red dragon, the violence of splashed blood and splashed maples against emerald-green mossy ground and wall, struck her with an almost tangible blow. She was
alive
, and life had a terrible splendour.

All this in the fraction of a second. Then Blanchefleur laughed, and said:

“Not what you expected? The dragon headless and the maiden entirely unsinged?”

Morgan lifted her head slowly, and her eyes held wariness. “Not quite,” she said.

She paced on, roving restlessly as sea-water, to and fro, up and down, and Blanchefleur, without thinking, moved as well to keep distance between them.

“Tell me what happened here,” said Morgan.

“I think you know.”

Morgan shrugged and rolled her eyes. “As you like.
You
did not deal with it, at any rate. So much is clear. Who was it, your champion? The Yap-Mouth of Wales?”

Blanchefleur realised that Morgan meant Perceval, and frowned. If Perceval did like to talk, at least he did what he boasted. “Maybe it was. Your dragon gave him no trouble, at any rate.”

A smile. “Oh, do tell.”

Her voice, smooth as samite, said nothing plainly but inferred anything at all. Blanche attempted hauteur. “I don’t see why I should tell you a thing.”

“Dear niece, even if I were interested in your little intrigues, I’m hardly likely to disapprove, eh?”

“Intrigues—what? What do you mean?”

Morgan arched a thin brow. “Oh, don’t try to deny it. I saw you in his arms.”

Blanchefleur flushed scarlet. “What? That was my
father
.”

Morgan smiled. Blanchefleur realised she had been outwitted and lifted her chin a little, trying not to care.

“Ah, my dear. Still so much a child, to be matching wits with
me
. To be guarding the Holy Grail.” The tip of her tongue flicked out to touch her lips. “So, my dear brother rode to your rescue, like the perfect gentle knight he is.” Her tone had been offensive, but now her eyes narrowed, and her voice dripped malice: “Or did he? Did you
see
him kill it? Arthur Pendragon, who gathers better men to his banner to do the work he is incapable of himself. Lancelot. Gawain. Bors. There lie the real powers of Logres. And he boasts of it.”

They stood facing each other, having worn one or two circles in the grass, and at this moment Blanchefleur was nearer to the door in the green garden wall. She had not taken her eyes from Morgan since the first moment she saw her, but now, without a word, she turned on her heel and went to the door.

It was a reckless thing to do, and her shoulders clenched tight in fear of a blow as she walked away, but it had suddenly occurred to her that she had no reason to stay and hear poisonous words.

Besides, short of stabbing her in the back, what could Morgan do? Run after her? Shout? But Morgan had far too much pride to run or shout, and had spent too much time talking to intend violence.

Beyond the mossy courtyard, Blanchefleur found a main road running up to the cathedral at the peak of the mountain. She forced herself not to look over her shoulder, but moved as soundlessly as she could, listening, listening. In the deep living silence of Sarras, only her own footsteps sounded against the street. Then, far away, there were other footsteps like the drip of rain, needling at the edges of her calm… Blanchefleur quickened her pace a little and fixed her eyes on the cathedral spire.

Where was she going? Was it foolish of her to lead Morgan to the Grail itself? Or could the spire be fortified somehow? She sorted through panic-tangled thoughts, forcing her breath into a slow rhythm. If Morgan killed her it would not take the witch long to find the Grail, in any case. And since there were two things to guard—the Grail, and her own life—it seemed reasonable, with no other plan, to put the two in the same place and stand or fall together.

Then, too, there was the irrational feeling that the Grail meant safety.

She looked back, once, when she reached the roofless cathedral. Morgan was not fifty paces away, and when she saw Blanchefleur turn back, she lifted a cheerful hand.

Once again, Blanchefleur wondered if she was forgetting something. If she was walking into a trap. But she set her jaw and went up the staircase to the Grail, breaking into a run as soon as the stair took her out of sight of the church door. Her feet seemed unharnessed from her heart; what should have stranded her halfway up the stair, doubled and gasping, beat serenely on while the steps flowed away beneath her feet. She mounted to the high chamber as if on wings, swift as thought, exultant.

Yet all this way she saw nothing that could be used for protection. Here in the spire there was the Spear, to be sure, but she knew the story now. It had been used once before, decades ago, by Sir Balyn. He had snatched the spear down and wounded King Pelles in the Grail Chapel itself, and with the stroke Carbonek had been laid waste and cut off from mortal lands. The same consideration prevented her snatching up the platter and bouncing it off Morgan’s head as she rose through the stairway.

But the Signs lay on a massive wooden table, with skirt-boards reaching to the ground. Blanchefleur flung her arms around it and pulled, and to her great joy it came grating slowly across the floor. She shoved and strained at it and within a handful of breaths had it across the stair’s opening, leaving only a space of a few inches at each side. Even as she eased the table into place, there was a rush of steps from below, and Blanchefleur, looking down into shadowed darkness, saw the gleam of Morgan’s eyes.

And Morgan laughed, seating herself on the steps below. “Well,” she said, “your methods are crude, no doubt, but effective.”

Blanchefleur leaned on the table, just in case, and said, “I’m not moving. What are you waiting for? Are you trying to
bore
me to death, now your pet dragon is gone?”

“My dear, what makes you imagine that
I
had anything to do with the dragon?”

“But you—”

“Did I not inquire what happened? It was honest curiosity.”

“But you sent the giant.”

“Alas, yes.” A sigh, soft as the wind on a midsummer’s day. “I
said
it was a waste, but was I heard? No.”

“A waste? What? What are you saying?”

“That killing you was never part of
my
plan. I swear I am the most ill-used woman in Christendom. To think that I taught the creature everything I know.” Suddenly, there was a whip-crack of hatred in her words. “And now he turns my own power against me!”

Blanchefleur swallowed. Moistened dry lips. “He? Who’s
he?
”

Silence fell upon the steeple. At last Morgan’s voice slid out from beneath the table with the calm and sinuous grace of a serpent. “Oh, I
would
tell you. I am willing to tell you. I am waiting to tell you.”

Instinctively, Blanchefleur recoiled. “Never mind,” she said. “You would only lie to me, anyway.”

“Would I? Think! I, the Witch-Queen of Gore! I, the Enemy of Logres! I, Morgan, the slave of my own—
creation
. Fetching and carrying! Morgan, send a giant to another time! Morgan, that paramour of yours is growing fat and lazy in Gore, send him to murder a woman! Bah! Even
I
would not stoop so low!”

Her voice rang with genuine injury. “And all of it bungled and botched beyond recall. Do you wonder how I hate him?”

Blanchefleur clutched the edge of the table. A chill crawled over her scalp. Morgan was speaking again:

“You, Blanchefleur. You will help me destroy him. You will set me free.”

“Set you
free?
Never.”

“Did you not hear me?” Morgan put her eyes up to the space between stone and wood, gripping the skirt of the wood. “Killing you was no plan of mine. You will die, or he will. That is the only choice you have.”

The panicked tangle in her mind was getting bigger. Blanchefleur swallowed and whispered, “What are you doing here in Sarras? Another errand?”

“He sent me to fetch you. Dead or alive, he said. He didn’t tell me about the dragon.”

She picked up that thread and tried to follow it through the maze. “So you say. Why wouldn’t he tell you?”

“Why would he? He has never admitted me to his counsels.”

“Tell me his name.”

Below, in the shadows, Morgan moved restlessly. “I hardly dare…Lilith!” she swore. “Why am I talking to you? Why do I not finish you now? You would never believe me—and when he learns that I am plotting against him, he will kill me.”

Blanchefleur remembered to whom she was speaking, and came back on guard. “Let me know when you make up your mind,” she said with a hard edge in her voice.

“A game,” said Morgan.

“What?”

“A game of riddles. If you win, I will show you who my master is. If I win, you will agree to come with me—alive.”

Blanchefleur said: “Nonsense! I’m not playing any such game.”

“Then I’ll kill you now.”

Blanchefleur frowned, weighing the odds. There was the table to navigate, and she had assumed Morgan was unarmed. But then, she was a witch, and a powerful one.

Again, Blanchefleur wondered if she was being a fool, but there was no time to sort out all the possibilities. “All right. If you win, I’ll go with you, but you must give your word to do everything to keep me alive. If I win, you tell me who your master is and then you go away and leave me in peace. Agreed?”

“Agreed.” And Morgan gave the first riddle:

A father’s child,

A mother’s child,

But no man’s son.

Blanchefleur, braced with outstretched arms over the table, slackened with relief, for the answer seemed obvious. “A daughter,” she returned. When Morgan did not reply, she gave one of her own:

In the garden was laden a beautiful maiden

As ever was seen in the morn.

She was made a wife the first day of her life,

And she died before she was born.

“Eve,” Morgan said, after only a moment.

“Yes.”

Morgan said:

I sought for it, ‘twas easy its finding:

The thing that God never found and never can find.

Blanchefleur swallowed. “Repeat it?”

“You heard it once,” Morgan said, and there was the gleam of eyes from below.

But then the answer came. “An equal!” Without stopping to hear whether her answer was correct, she rushed on, nervous now:

What has six legs, two heads, four ears, two hands,

But walks on four feet?

Again this hardly seemed difficult to Morgan. “A man riding a horse—a knight.”

“Yes—right.”

Morgan chanted:

What does man love more than life

Fear more than death or mortal strife

What the poor have, the rich require,

and what contented men desire,

What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves

And all men carry to their graves?

Blanchefleur bit her lip. A corner of her mind was screaming that if she could not answer, she was bound to shift the table aside and go down to Morgan, to be delivered to a far worse enemy if she was telling the truth, or to be killed out of hand if she had lied.

She clenched her teeth, slammed a door on the inner scream, remembered the last six words of the riddle, and gasped in another breath of freedom. “Nothing.”

The silence stretched out, and Blanchefleur knew again that she had guessed correctly. And more calmly now she picked another riddle, dredged it up from the mists of lower memory with words still hanging in the golden air.

What is the best furniture for a man’s house?

This time there was no answer. The long seconds passed, each in silence. Blanchefleur peered down past the table to see whether Morgan was still there.

“Well?”

“A moment.”

More time passed. Blanchefleur felt her fingernails beginning to hurt and, looking at her hands, saw that she was gripping the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles showed white through her skin.

“I have it,” said Morgan suddenly. “A hearth.”

Blanchefleur closed her eyes. “Wrong,” she returned. “The answer is a daughter. A daughter is the best furniture for a man’s house. But you wouldn’t know that.” And she braced herself against the table, half-expecting Morgan to attack the barricade.

Instead, Morgan’s voice came up like an audible shrug. “You win, then. Reach down and take my hand.”

“You were going to tell me his name. Your master.”

“I never said that. I said I would show you who he was. Take my hand.”

Blanchefleur stood back from the table. It was happening, it was happening, the thing that she had forgotten or overlooked or failed to account for when she drove a bargain with a witch. It didn’t matter that she had no idea what it was. All that mattered was the certainty gripping her by the throat, that in winning she had lost.