Cloud Castles (18 page)

I shivered. ‘Odd? Christ, no wonder that place was so spooky! I wish I’d smashed that bloody stone—’

‘No, Stefan!’ murmured Katjka, sounding shocked. ‘To take a hand,
daj
– but a helping one!’ She sighed. ‘That is how it usually workss out, anyway.’

Jyp riffled back his red hair. ‘Sure. It’s a power for good, this, Steve – in the long run, anyhow. Always has been, so I hear. You know it’s shifted around, that city? And changed its whole look. Always to places where Europe’s identity’s been threatened, somehow; always to the borders, always where
the dark’s creeping in. Nowadays that’s somewhere around the fringes of Germany and Eastern Europe, the old Russkie empire; but it’s been other places. Last war they said it’d turned up round a corner in south England somewhere. A long while back, the Middle Ages, it must’ve been, when the Moorish caliphates were boilin’ over into Europe from Spain – it stood on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees. It was called Montsalvat back then.’

I sat bolt upright. ‘Now wait a minute …’ Even I’d heard that name, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on the context.

‘Yeah,’ nodded Jyp. ‘Back in those days the power it sheltered was called the Sangraal, or just Graal. It came to be known as the Holy Grail.’

It was just as well I was between mouthfuls of beer. The breath stuck in my throat, and going by Jyp’s expression I probably looked like a bullfrog about to burst.

‘Bloody
hell
!’ I exploded, when I could. ‘You mean you’re telling me that this is – I mean I don’t know much about the legend, but I had this storybook – that great lump of stone, you’re telling me that was supposed to be the cup Jesus drank from at the Last Supper? That they caught His blood in afterwards? And the Spear was what a Roman soldier – a
blind
Roman soldier? I always thought that one was a laugh – wounded him with? Come on, Jyp! I’ve run into some pretty weird things on the Spiral, but
this?
’

‘Hold hard, hold yer hosses!’ drawled Jyp, with wry amusement. ‘No call to go gettin’ all het up with your ay-gnostics, you goddamn heathen! The Grail tale’s no part of the Scriptures, that’s for sure. Me, I was brought up strict, you can take my word on that. It’s not part of the Faith. It’s a legend about it. See the difference? It’s one of those archetype things, like the rest of the Spiral. ‘Cause all kinds of folks believed it was a relic of Christ, that’s the shape it has for them. But the Graal’s older than that legend. Much older. Even in the earliest Christian versions of the tale there wasn’t any Christian thing about it. It was a stone, a miracle-stone, like one of those Greek horn things – you know!’

‘A horn of plenty? A cornucopia?’

‘Right, right! That’s how they saw it. It’d been a pagan archetype, see, an ancient thing folks used to worship, like the Golden Fleece. But the Graal, it went back further still. Right back beyond the henges and the standing
stones, the dolmens and the menhirs and the great barrow-graves, deep into the depths of the Age of Stone and a cult that spread across savage Europe in the wake of the Great Ice retreating. What the archaeologists call the cup-and-ring stones, from the way they’re marked; but the Spear that was the other half of the rite, always tipped with flint or obsidian – that’s something the double-domes haven’t cottoned onto. The Graal was the centre of that cult, their great original. And you – don’t ask me why or how, but that’s the way you saw it, godless heathen type that you are!’

‘Spear and cup?’ I protested. ‘For – those are just symbols, Jyp. Pretty obvious ones!’

Katjka arched her eyebrows. ‘You have something against them, maybe? That iss not the Sstefan I know and love!’

Jyp chuckled. ‘Okay, they’re symbols. Crude ones, maybe, by our lights, but potent. Fertility really meant something then, remember. And like a heap of other symbols, Christianity kind of picked them up along the way as it spread. You know the strange thing? They stayed the same; they fitted in real neatly.’

‘As if,’ said Katjka soberly, ‘as if they had been designed sso. As if it had been intended, all along.’

Jyp inclined his head. ‘Could be. Could easily be. For one thing’s sure, Steve, the Graal’s got a daunting power, and a purpose.’

‘Jyp, it’s just a
thing
, a lump of stone with a spear across it, and some sort of cloth. It couldn’t move, couldn’t see or hear—’

I stopped short as it came back to me all of a rush, the terrible sense of watchfulness that filled that hall. ‘Okay! Maybe it has got senses of some kind – but how does it
do
anything?’

Jyp shrugged. ‘The way I hear it is, the stone or the chalice, the Spear, they’re only this thing’s kind of sheet anchors in the material world, channels for its power. That’s why it created that city around it, to give it followers to work through. The Graal itself never stirs, just draws them in and rules through their leaders – a king or a queen, the stories say. Special folk, anyhow, awesome folk, in harmony with the Graal, sharing its thoughts and its power. Some followers it keeps around, so there’s always a living community, others – knights or soldiers, I guess you’d call ’em – it sends back out into the world. The rulers, too, sometimes; not just throughout the Spiral, either, but deep into the Core, with the
power of the Graal behind them, to help the downtrodden, and pursue the wicked, and champion good causes in secret.’

He took a deep draught of his beer, and chased it down with a phial of plum brandy. ‘So that’s what Le Stryge sent you up against. Nice of him, huh? It’s a miracle to me you’re still here. Might take an even bigger miracle to keep you that way. Sonuvabitch’s getting ambitious in his old age.’

‘But why? What on earth could the old bastard hope to gain?’

‘Maybe much,’ put in Katjka sombrely. ‘The Graal is not the only ssuch earthly power. There are otherss, darker ones, and they sstand in deadly opposition to it. Maybe the
Sstregoica
is in bond with one. Maybe he hopes himself to become one. I know ssomething of their long wars with the Graal, and what they would plan sshould it ever fall into their hands. Could they break it, or but imprison it, then that would at least remove the Graal’s influence from the world. Should they bend it to their will – what then?
Mnye Stefan
, I greet no dawn gladly. But even if the fires must first consume me, that one I pray I never ssee. In their hands that greatness might be turned to terrible ill.’

She spat a mouthful of
tujica
into the fire. It sizzled momentarily into eerie blue flame.

‘Ssomehow,
Stefan
– and how, it is beyond me to imagine – you have gone and sstolen half this ancient
power. Half, perhaps, of its very being.’

I almost laughed. I wanted to – but all too clearly I saw a parade of faces, the horrified soldiers and townsfolk, the uneasy blend of greed and terror under Stryge’s acerbic mask, the horror of the consuming fire. The words came out as an idiotic bleat. ‘But—’

It wasn’t doubt, it was protest, against the unfair fate that had dumped me down headfirst into this mess. ‘But if it’s so bloody all-powerful, this thing, what about me? How on earth did I manage to just rush in there and run off with it?’

‘It is not omnipotent, this Graal,’ mused Katjka. ‘I have heard it said the world wars of the old century dealt it a terrible blow, even to causing the death of its last king. I know that it has become more withdrawn ssince then, perhapss weaker.’

Something clicked. ‘I could believe that,’ I said. ‘From all you’ve told me, that city ought to reflect at least something of modern Europe – but it doesn’t. Not a trace. It’s stuck firmly in the pre-World War I era. Even so, weaker or not, the Spear blasted that ogre-creature on the spot neatly enough – why not me?’

‘Your very innocence, maybe,’ suggested Katjka. ‘The Graal would ssense it, and hesitate to hurt a true man.’

Jyp’s mouth twisted. ‘Even at the cost of being stolen? I don’t buy that one, Kat.’

Again I felt that strange little thrill of understanding. ‘And yet Le Stryge seemed to expect it!’ I said. ‘Expect something, anyhow. Or why’d he go to so much trouble choosing me as his instrument at all?’

‘We-ell …’ Jyp writhed in an unaccustomed torment of tact. ‘Remember he’s not seen you since you were a
lot younger. Could be he thought you were kind of – well, steerable. He sure didn’t expect you’d just shake off his lousy compulsion the moment you became aware of it.’

‘No more would I,’ said Katjka, still thoughtful.

I clutched at my forehead. ‘Look,’ I said, as calmly as I could. ‘I suppose I’ve got to believe all this, but knowing it isn’t going to get me much further. The Spear, well, that should be safe enough for now. Even I don’t know where it is at this moment, not exactly. I should be able to get a message through to this city somehow, shouldn’t I? So at least they won’t shoot me on sight when I try to return it?’

Jyp whistled softly. ‘Ordinarily that’s a main hard place to find. But now, you can bet the knights’ll be looking high and low, scouring the Spiral. I can get messages left where they’ll surely find them – with Myrko here, for one.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘That’ll deal with the immediate problem. They can have the bloody thing back any time they want, with pink ribbon round it for all I care. What’s worrying me a lot more is, how is my own company tied up in all this, and C-Tran? What’s Lutz’s stake? He tried to murder me, though I can’t prove it. If he’d succeeded, Le Stryge wouldn’t have been able to use me – so are they allies, or rivals, or what? Don’t tell me there’s more than one power hanging around over my head. I’d enough of that out East! If Lutz is planning to misuse C-Tran somehow, I’m the only one with enough clout to stop him. I’ve got to find out! Can you help me there?’

Jyp looked at Katjka; Katjka gave me one of her slow smiles. Her hand was already over the table, riffling down the pack of cards she always seemed to carry. Where exactly, I’d never found out; but as she guided my hand palm down onto them, they felt warm and soft as skin. They flew in her long fingers, shuffled and dealt in one sweeping action. ‘Thiss time you turn one over, I the next,’ she said – or whispered, almost, for very suddenly the atmosphere had changed, and the crackle of the fire had become harder, almost menacing, reminding me of those other larger fires. ‘The firsst!’

I chose one at random, flipped it. Ten of Spades, like a thicket of black spearheads; Katjka nodded sombrely, and slid its neighbour over. A court card; I peered at it, apprehensively. I’d seen some strange faces on this
pack before. Spades again – the Knave, thickset and bullnecked like most card figures, clean-shaven, smirking, with its eyes touched in a bright impenetrable blue that reminded me of …

Katjka nodded as I turned it back hastily. ‘Your friend Lutz. He is the Knave – but who the King? Turn another card!’

More slowly now I reached for one at the end. Hearts, a seven, and Katjka smiled, and turned over the next. Ace of Clubs, with nothing strange about it except the way the flames danced in reflection on its glossy face. Katjka’s face turned stony, and she nodded me to another card. My fingers had trouble grasping it, and kept slipping, but when I turned it, it was another court card. The King of Hearts; but there was nothing odd about it at all, although it did look less stuffed and more alive than the usual card face, handsome even. Katjka stared, and reached for its neighbour – Queen of Hearts, with a face half-shadowed in the uncertain light.

‘Agnece Bozji!’
she breathed. ‘Stefan, this is very strange, but it is not all bad. You have strong enemies, the
vojevode
Lutz among them – and yes, he plans something, something very great. But the rest of this …’ She shook her head. ‘It is good. How good, I … cannot say. A chance, not a certainty, therefore it cannot be more definite. About the dark, that is definite. Lutz works with Stryge, of that I am sure, for he is not himself the King. But maybe Stryge is not either; there is a power cloaking him I cannot penetrate. And Lutz has ambitions of his own, he practises rites, gathers dark forces about him – probably how he and Stryge found one another in the firsst place. As you thought, it was something very terrible that Lutz planned for that night.’

‘What … you mean a Black Mass, something like that?’

Jyp chuckled, which was slightly unexpected. Katjka glared at him. ‘Light man! He does not take these thingss sseriously enough. Stefan, the Black Mass is largely the invention of fanatical priests and inquisitors, no worse than ssome of their own fiendish tortures save for the blasphemy. But blasphemy, however great, however ugly, conveys no power in itself. It is the ill intent that gives the rite its power, and the evil deed, the sacrifice, the staging of it all in a formal guise; many such rites embody that, in many faiths. Even witch-burning itsself was often so intended, the true demon-worshippers
hidden among the persecutors, cloaked in a robe of smiling ssanctity.’

I looked at her. ‘I could believe that, after what I saw last night – or whenever it was.’

‘And yet witches there are,’ said Katjka very softly; and for an instant, as she gathered in the cards once again, the fire blazed up with a hungry crackle behind her strong profile. ‘
Ej daj multito
, there are indeed …’

One card fluttered down onto her lap from the bottom of this pack. I scooped it up and handed it to her. Automatically she took it – and then looked at it with sudden intensity, and turned it over.

I wasn’t looking at it; I was looking at her, for the most extraordinary course of feelings chased their way across her face. But all in an instant it set like flint, her lips thinning and whitened, the deep lines from nose to mouth very intense, her eyes gleaming like a fox’s. Jyp sat up, too, reached across and turned the card to face us. It was the Ace of Spades – only, as I watched, the dancing shadows seemed to show me the outline of Clubs looming behind it, dark and empty as a half-hidden pit.

‘What the hell—’ I began.

Katjka smiled, taut-lipped, and slid the card back into her pack. ‘Don’t worry, Stefan. Your charm was over, it can tell you no more. That card was no part of it, not for you. Be thankful!’