Steven Savile - The Black Chalice

How much?

"More than anything."

I want you to do something for me, for us, to bring us closer together, to make us complete. Will you do that for me?

"Yes."

As the image of the Black Chalice swelled to fill his mind, the Devil commanded: Bring it to me. Bring me the Chalice. Go first to the great Laird's cairn; you will know your way from there. And, as Alymere closed his eyes, all of the real secrets, the darkest, most thoroughly hidden treasures of the Devil's book made themselves known to him in a dizzying rush. The thrill of them raced from his fingers to his heart, traversing every nerve and fibre, transforming him into a conduit for the book's dark wisdom. He opened himself to it, drinking it in, absorbing every fateful ounce of knowledge from the first sins to the greatest evils, the secrets of creation and the lies of faith and flesh. Every treachery, every deceit and betrayal, every bare-faced lie whispered or told bold as brass, echoed through his head; not the words, but a deeper understanding, of the lies themselves. He not only understood the drive to lie, to cheat, to steal, but revelled in it. The thrill he felt was almost sexual in its nature, a force that owned him body and soul. And it came at no little cost. His entire body trembled, every muscle tensing, and then he began to convulse violently as the arcana took root within him. Beads of sweat broke and ran from his temple and brow over the too-smooth planes of his deformity. He blinked them back as they stung his eyes. He chewed on his lower lip until it bled. His breathing was ragged. Excited. Fearful.

Alymere whispered the words back to the air, repeating what he heard inside his head. As they left his lips, the words began to take on a life all of their own. He fell into a rhythmic chant that matched the pounding of the blood through his temples. The words came faster and faster, growing louder and louder until he was sure he was shouting, yelling, but he couldn't stop himself. And he couldn't pull his hands from the book.

Alymere's eyes rolled up inside his skull, his jaw locked open in a silent scream as the ink chased up from the page, roiling through, over and under his skin, painting him as the illumination fled the book. The symbols chased after each other across the flat plains of scar tissue up to his throat, then up over his chin and across his cheekbones and into his eyes, flooding into him. They began as words, identifiable, legible, but as more and more wisdom bled out of the book into him the ink became a solid blackness that transformed him into something demonic: a creature of ink.

As the last traces of writing fled the page and entered his hands, racing up his forearms, the skin left in its wake returned once more to raw, pink flesh. Stain by stain, his body returned to its natural state, the words of the Devil bleeding into his eyes to stain upon his soul, and then he began screaming again. It was a scream like none that had ever been heard in this house.

Seconds after the screams began the door flung open on its hinges, slamming against the wall.

The huge figure of Sir Bors de Ganis filled the doorway, sword in hand, as Alymere fell forward across the book, utterly spent.

For a moment Bors didn't move. He stood as though trapped in the doorway, staring at Alymere's collapsed body, and then everything exploded into sound and panic as a bird flew at the glass window, cannoning off it in a flurry of feathers as the glass cracked, and whatever spell had bound Bors broke along with it. Seeing Alymere was alone, he dropped his sword and crashed into the room, and bounded forward, arms outstretched as though to catch Alymere, despite the fact that he had already fallen.

The knight gathered Alymere into his arms.

He lifted him and carried him to the cot, where he laid him down, stroking the matted hair away from his brow with curious tenderness. Alymere didn't move; didn't make a sound. It took a moment for Bors to realise he wasn't breathing. He couldn't think. He feared the worst, ready to beat on the boy's chest and try to hammer the life back into him, but as he leaned in close he heard a sound, so quiet he almost missed it: a gasp as the breath caught in Alymere's lungs escaped. It might almost have been a death rattle, but it was followed by a second and a third breath. He felt the warmth of Alymere's breath against his cheek as he began to breathe again.

Bors closed his eyes and said a silent prayer of thanks.

He took the blanket from where it was bundled up at the bottom of the bed and covered Alymere with it.

Seeing the book on the floor, Bors stooped and turned a few of the pages, but could make no sense of the scrawled words. Something about the book, however, the very physical presence of it, repulsed him. It was wrong in a way he couldn't begin to explain. Looking at it, he had the overpowering desire to take it across to the hearth and consign it to the flames.

His skin crawled as he reached down to close the book, and as he did, he broke whatever connection Alymere had to it, but when it came to it he couldn't throw the Devil's Bible into the fire.

It didn't matter. Even with the book closed, Alymere truly was no longer himself. Burning it would not have saved him.

Bors did not see the single white feather that had caught in the broken window. Even if he had, he could not have known what it meant, nor how far his young friend had fallen.

Alymere regained consciousness some time before dawn. He came to slowly, still groggy and, while not feverish, sheened with sweat. He pushed back the blanket. The first thing he did was reach for the book, but it wasn't where he had left it and wasn't in its hiding place beneath his bed. A surge of panic rose within him, and he threw himself out of the low cot and scrabbled about on the floor, looking around frantically for the Devil's book. He clawed up the rug and tugged at the corners of several floorboards to pry them free, but while they creaked and groaned beneath his weight none of them were loose enough to lift. He turned, still on his hands and knees, and saw the ash in the hearth, all that remained of the fire that had burned out during the night. He crawled across to it, a low, feral moan escaping his throat as he sifted through the ashes. There was no sign that the book had been burned. But where was it? He felt as though half of his soul had been stolen from him. He didn't need the book. The words were alive inside him. But be that as it may, he wanted the book. It was near, somewhere — he could feel it — just not in this room.

Who had taken it?

And then, some thing, some trace of his nightmare, crossed his mind and he saw Bors looming over him in the open doorway. Bors had taken the book. He must have. He had put Alymere to bed after he collapsed, and had found the book lying open on the floor. Had he tried to read it? Had he tried to steal it from him? Had he found it, started to read, and then the book offered up its secrets? No. No. That couldn't have happened. Bors couldn't have read a single word of it, so pure was the knight. The thoughts raced crazily through Alymere's mind, each coming before the previous one had time to fully form. He tried to think, to reason, as his uncle had taught him to; to think through the problem using only the evidence at hand, not chasing flights of fancy. Bors had taken the book. No other explanation made sense. And for his reasoning to work, that meant, surely that the big man had taken it simply to destroy it? But why would he do such a thing? Why would he take the one thing left to Alymere, the last good thing in his life, and crush it?

Because, the voice crooned at the back of his mind, like everyone else, the knight only cares for himself. That is the extent of his virtue. You are nothing to him. Why should it matter to him if you are whole? Why should he care if you are fulfilled? He treats you like a child. A joke. You are neither. We are neither. Go, find him, take the book from him, and if he tries to stop you, cut him down.