“No,” Orlando warned. “He lies.”
“Silence!” Kivar turned his body toward the wizard’s voice, but when Orlando took a silent step to one side, he didn’t react. He didn’t see him.
“Why should I share the Chalice with you?” Simon answered, taking a silent step closer. “Why should I not use it for myself, become a mortal man again as I have always wanted? Even if you kill me afterward, I will die in grace.”
Kivar smiled, showing his vampire’s fangs inside the dead monk’s rotted mouth. “Because your little lamb will die as well.”
“She’s dying already.” He moved closer still. “You’ve made certain of that.” He raised the stake, and Orlando’s eyes went wide
, but Kivar did not react. “Why should we not die together?”
“Because you are no martyr, Simon,” Kivar said. “You are no knight, or you would not be here now.” He smiled again, his one remaining eye glowing like fire, blood red, but blind. Looking back, Simon could see the Chalice through the veil of ice, so thin now it was transparent. One more moment, and it would be gone; the Chalice could be his.
But before him, he saw Isabel, the mortal innocent who had shed her blood to save him, the woman that he loved. She slumped between the obelisks, hanging now from her bonds, soaked in her own blood, too weak to stand. But her eyes were alive; she could see him, and her mouth silently breathed, “No.”
“You will be a god,” Kivar was saying. “You will be my son.”
“God is in heaven,” Simon answered, driving the stake into the demon’s heart. “And my father is with him.”
Kivar let out a single scream, and the skeleton he possessed lurched upward, exploding in a moment into dust. Falling back, Simon saw him not as he had known him in the caliph’s palace but as he must have been before, a young man with green eyes and shining red hair so much like Isabel’s he could have been her brother. The ghost-like form looked down in horror and turned toward the Chalice, the veil of ice turning thicker and whiter again. “No!” he roared, the sound reverberating through the cavern as he rushed forward, his form dissolving as he went. He reached the veil just before he disappeared completely, diving for the forest beyond it, and the wall exploded in a hundred thousand shards of ice, falling to the ground as stone, the cavern wall collapsing into the rubble, the window to the Chalice lost.
“Isabel!” Simon ran to her and tore away her bonds, catching her in his arms as she fell. Her head fell back over his arm, the welt he had left on her throat livid purple against the deathlike pallor of her skin. He gathered her closer, listening with vampire perception, desperate with fear, and finally he heard it, the delicate throb of her heart.
Isabel felt her angel’s arms around her, and she smiled. For once he felt warm. She tried to speak to him, to hold on to him and tell him all would be well, but she couldn’t seem to move or speak at all. Letting her eyes fall closed at last, she surrendered in contentment to the dark.
15
The king’s agent had been waiting in the solar of the castle Charmot for most of the long, late summer afternoon, so long that he began to wonder if the castle’s lord and lady were even there at all. But just as the sun was beginning to set, the door opened, and his mind was put to rest.
“Well met, my lord,” the lady said, making him a curtsey as he rose from his seat. “I do apologize for keeping you waiting. I am Isabel of Charmot.”
“My lady,” he answered, rather dazzled as she took a chair. The legendary beauty of this cursed manor was even more exquisite than her myth proclaimed—he had never seen a woman so fashionably pale. “Your presence is most… charming. But to be honest, it is your husband I must see.”
“My husband is occupied elsewhere.” She motioned him to a chair with a smile. “But he will be joining us presently.” She took up a bit of sewing, the perfect picture of domestic tranquility. “Was the king displeased with our tribute?”
“Oh, no, the money was lovely,” the agent answered. A former clerk, he had only acquired his title by virtue of his brains; the customs and niceties of these born nobles still made him rather nervous. “But His Majesty is a bit concerned for your safety.”
“How very kind.” In truth, she didn’t sound impressed. “You may assure him I am perfectly safe.”
“Yes, but… what of the Black Knight?” He expected she might scream or faint or at least burst into tears at the mention of the demon who had kept her prisoner so long, but she didn’t seem to miss a stitch in her sewing.
“My husband vanquished him,” she answered with another placid smile. “Obviously.”
“Yes, of course.” He fumbled with his papers. “Wonderful… we’re all quite pleased.” He hesitated to bring up such an indelicate matter to such a delicate creature, but it was the main purpose of his mission, so he supposed he’d better have it out. “But there’s still the matter of your husband’s identity, my lady. Or I should say, Your Grace.”
“You should indeed.” The man now standing in the doorway was a perfect match for his lady, in beauty at least, and the agent thought he looked more than a match for any demon loosed from hell. “She is the duchess of Lyan.”
“Don’t be cross, darling,” his lady scolded gently with another secret smile. “You must admit, it’s all rather confusing.”
“Confusing, yes,” the king’s man said eagerly. The so-called duke was giving him such a look, his guts felt like pudding all of a sudden. “That is just the word.” Simon took the chair beside his wife. “His Majesty remembers the duke of Lyan with great fondness from his youth.” He spread the scroll with the listing of nobles in front of them on the table and pointed, avoiding the other man’s eyes. “But it seems he left England—or Ireland, rather—some fifteen years ago on Holy Crusade. There is no record of his having any progeny before he left or that…” He looked up into the new duke’s eyes and gulped. “Or that he ever returned.”
“He did not.” Simon smiled, and the agent’s heart leapt up in wild relief. “Nor did he have any child.” He took the parchment to his side of the table and pointed himself. “My father was this man, Seamus of Lyan, a native Irishman and the duke’s castellan. When he died, the duke took me with him on Crusade.”
“As his squire!” Everything was suddenly quite clear and quite wonderful, the agent thought, and the king was a madman to have ever doubted this most excellent young man’s claim. “And he made you his heir.”
“Yes.” Simon turned to Isabel, and she shook her head over her sewing, suppressing a smile. “I have his signet ring to prove it.”
“Of course, of course,” the king’s man said, rolling up his scrolls. “Your seal was quite in order on your oath of fealty to England.” The suggestion that the ring might have been stolen now seemed utterly absurd, and he was quite ashamed to think he had been the one to make it. “But I fear your estates in Ireland have fallen into disarray, Your Grace—the troubles with Wales and with France, you know.”