Kingdom of the Grail Read Free Page A

prince, and saved the Grail. He had a fair store of magic, did Parsifal. His forefathers had brought the Grail out of Jerusalem before its fall; and Nimue was his mother’s child, his own sister.”
    â€œYou taught him deliberately, then,” said Roland. “You knew what he would be.”
    â€œAh,” said Merlin, lifting his shoulder in a shrug. “I take no credit for that. The gods—or God, if you will—had rather more to do with it than I did. But he was a good pupil. Not as good as his sister, or for that matter as you are, but good enough in the end. He nearly failed, you know. When he came to Montsalvat, his foresight abandoned him. He was silent when he should have spoken, and shrank back when he should have been bold. But for that, the sorcerer would never have found the Grail’s hiding place at all.”
    â€œBut because he did,” Roland said, “he was destroyed. Wasn’t it a good thing, then, that Parsifal did seem to fail?”
    â€œSome would call it blind luck,” Merlin said. “I call it the gods’ hand—and their humor, too, maybe.”
    â€œYou are not a Christian,” Roland said, as if he had not realized it long before.
    Merlin laughed—and that was something, too, that he had not done in long ages before this child came to disturb his peace. “I am half a devil, boy. Do you think the Church would have me?”
    Roland’s eyes narrowed. His head tilted. He was notlaughing, but his eyes were glinting. “I think,” he said after a while, “that it would try to exorcise you.”
    â€œIt would indeed,” Merlin said.
    â€œAnd yet you believe in the Grail.”
    â€œI believe that it held the blood of a god. The Messiah, if you will. So yes, I believe that your Christ is the son of your God. And he is a face of the light, which I do my best to serve, though I am half a child of the dark.”
    â€œThat’s how she bound you,” Roland said. “That’s how she did it. She laid the binding on the dark half of you. But she couldn’t destroy you—which is what he wanted, isn’t it? He wanted you dead and worse than dead. She loved you; and you are half of the light. That half saved your life.”
    â€œSuch a life,” said Merlin.
    â€œYou’d rather be dead and in hell?”
    â€œNot likely,” Merlin said.
    â€œI will free you,” Roland said. “However long it takes me, whatever it costs me. I will set you free.”
    â€œYou need not bind yourself to that,” said Merlin. “I earned this captivity; I had sins enough, when all was told.”
    Roland tossed his head in refusal. “You did not! I will break the spell. That I swear to you. And if I fail, may the earth gape and swallow me, may the sky fall and crush me, may the sea rise up and devour my bones.”
    Merlin flung up a hand. But it was too late—as it had been for Nimue. The great oath rolled out of that slender body, made all the more mighty by the strength of the boy’s magic. Magic that he had inherited in full measure from Merlin, and from Nimue, who was of the blood of the Grail: light and darkness melded in him, so strong and so fierce and so headlong that even Merlin could not stop or slow him.
    Roland had bound himself in ways that he could not begin to understand. Not only to Merlin, but to all that Merlin had done, both good and ill. And—
    â€œChild,” Merlin said in the vast silence after the oath, “be wary. Oh, be wary! The sorcerer who made me, who through your foremother bound me, is still alive. He is still powerful, though never what he was before Parsifal cast him down. That is why I was guarded—as the Grail was, to protect me from him. That is why Nimue and our daughter and our granddaughter stayed hidden here. We are all safein this place, as the Grail is safe in its stronghold. But if we are betrayed—if the sorcerer finds