Steven Savile - The Black Chalice

The applause was rapturous, heady. He breathed it in. They loved him. He closed his eyes, savouring it for a moment more before he stood. He rose slowly, and turned to summon the boy, but before he could, the king clapped him on the back and put an arm around his shoulder. "I think it only fitting that your first duty as my knight should be to save the fair maiden. What say you?" he called out to the gathering, who met his question with a roar of approval. "Go, Sir Alymere, cut the Queen free from her prison."

"But our toast? The Chalice?" Alymere hated the way he sounded, like a whining child, but the words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

"There will be time enough for that later, Sir Knight. The night is still young. Right now there is a damsel in need of saving. And what sort of man would my newest knight be if he left her trussed up like some prize pig? Besides, it is customary for the hero to claim a kiss, is it not?" Arthur offered a crooked smile.

Alymere had no choice but to cut her down. He couldn't force the king to drink.

Once again his hand moved to touch the linen favour tied around his arm, and he pulled it away sharply. The boy took the sudden motion to be his signal and came scurrying forward with the Chalice clutched in both hands.

Alymere was torn.

He started to call out to the boy to stop, raising his hand, but saw the way the king eyed the Chalice in his hands expectantly and stopped himself. There was nothing he could do, the die was cast. Now it was down to the Fates.

"Is that it?" Arthur breathed beside him.

"It is," Alymere said, nodding. His mind raced. He needed to think through the alternatives open to him, even as they were rapidly diminishing. He could always snatch the Chalice from the boy, he realised, but before he could reach out for it, the king said, "I'll take that, boy," and, coins or no coins, there was no way a guttersnipe was going to disobey his king.

Alymere's heart sank. He clenched his fist and ground his teeth, then turned his back. It was out of his hands now, literally and metaphorically.

The king had the Chalice.

It would work its pervasive magic on him, just as the book itself must have done. He had been canny in allowing the king, even encouraging him, to feel the curious flowing script inked deep into the pages, just as Alymere had after taking the book from the blind monk. Touching the book gave strength to its voice, allowing them to soak into the reader and draw them back to the pages, again and again until they utterly possessed him. And then, likewise, he would be driven to possess the book, which would mean killing Alymere.

Arthur was damned if he drank from the Chalice, and damned if he didn't. But he had no desire to die. He liked this body.

He had to trust that the seed he had planted — that one sip from the Devil's cup would grant Arthur the perception to see through lies — would be enough to make the king willingly choose to drink from the Chalice.

It didn't need to be a public spectacle; as much as he wanted to savour the king's humbling, an unseen death served him just as well. The thought raised a bitter smile. Indeed, there were several advantages to privacy, the most obvious being that there would be nothing to link Alymere to the deed, and he wouldn't have to partake in the wailing and gnashing of teeth as the commoners mourned. There was only so much lying even the Devil was prepared to do.

He turned his back on the king, allowing a smile to spread across his face. He had no need to mask his excitement anymore, he realised. He could be himself. More fool them, if they believed he was sharing their high spirits.

The crowd parted around Alymere as he walked to where the maiden was tied to the Maypole.

He strode confidently through them, offering a smile here, accepting a hearty back-slap there, until he stood before the bound woman. He started to pull at the streamers, tearing them away from her face and body. Others came up to join him and soon there were ten men crowded in around the Maypole, shredding the ribbons. Once she was free, with nothing to support her, the May Queen slumped forward into Alymere's arms. She was surprisingly light. He looked down at the woman, her name bubbling up in his mind, along with a bewildering rush of recollections and desires.

She opened her eyes, done with playing dead, and looped her arms around his neck to draw him down into a kiss. As the kiss broke, much to the delight of the crowd, she breathed the words "Do you love me?" into his mouth, and Alymere's buried voice cried out: Yes! Yes!

Before he could say anything, the other men claimed her, taking the May Queen into their arms and carrying her away from him.

Alymere touched his lips. The taste of her lingered there; the taste of summer.

A meaty hand clamped on his shoulder. He didn't need to turn to know it was Sir Bors; the big knight was always there when he least wanted him. "So, Sir Alymere, am I to take it you are smitten with our new Queen?" He said it lightly enough, but the ghostly Yes! Yes! of that buried voice still answered him.

Alymere lowered his hand from his lips self-consciously. "She is quite something," he said, even as the inner voice mocked him with the promise that had started it all, and the gift with which she sealed their pact, so that I am always close to you, wherever you may be. But he could not remember her name. He clenched his fist until it hurt; he struggled to impose his will upon the voice, but it wouldn't be silenced.

" Enchanting is the word you are looking for my young friend. She is a woman worth pursuing, eh?"

Enchanting… Witchery…

No, Sir Bors was wrong. The word he was looking for was love .

He had said it to her before, he now knew with shocking clarity. He had said those very words to the girl with the daisies in her black curls, even as he had lain with her, and again, after, as they lay spent. He had sworn to love her. And he knew this now because her kiss had set him free, providing the spark within him the fuel it needed to burn once more, in the engulfing darkness where the Devil's cup had banished him.

He looked around for the woman, the May Queen, but she was gone, swallowed by the revellers.

That didn't stop the sense of turmoil rising in him. Alymere sniffed the air as though he might smell her on it — her briarwood, her hawthorne and spruce, her daisies and bluebells and buttercups and all the flowers of spring — but all he could smell was sweat and ale.

And then he heard it. An ear-splitting caw . He spun around, scanning the skies.

They were all involved, the hag and her damned bird, the maiden, all of them, one and the same.

It took him a moment to find it in the oppressive sky, a single speck, blacker than black, flitting across the moon, but he knew beyond any doubt that it was the crow with the streak of white feathers, watching from afar. He watched it bank and turn and expected to see it swoop closer but it was gone, lost in the black sky. It didn't cross the moon again.

He lowered his eyes and scanned the faces in the crowd instead, looking for the hag. Surely if the crow was here, the old crone couldn't be far removed? They were bound.

"Where are you?" he demanded harshly. "Where are you, woman? Face me!" He yelled, shrilly. "What game are you playing, witch? Damn you! Face me!"

The people closest to him looked at Alymere as though he had lost his mind. Bors tried to reassure him that the pretty young thing who had obviously stolen his heart was fine, and that he'd have the rest of his life to plight his troth, if that was what it took. Alymere shook off his hand.

"Ignorant whoreson!" Alymere roared, startling Bors with the vehemence that drove his words. "Get out of my sight, or so help me G — " he stumbled over the word God , and instead raged: "Go! Go, damn you! Leave me be!" Alymere placed his hands flat against the big man's chest and pushed him, hard.