The Black Chalice Read Free

leaf and feather he would drive himself mad.
    Then they came to the inn, and his heart misgave him again.
    The inn was the last habitation along this road, the last shelter they would find until they passed through the forest and arrived at Marenfeld, beyond the hills. He did not expect it to be a pleasant lodging, or even a comfortable one, but he was appalled at the gloomy look of it. It was low and rough-hewn and almost windowless, cowering against the base of a heavily wooded hill. It seemed to him less a hostel for travellers than a hideout for thieves.
    The innkeeper and his servants were accommodating— indeed too much so. They fell over themselves scurrying to welcome such an extraordinary guest as the new count of Lys. But it seemed to Paul they smiled too much, and much too easily. The innkeeper had an ugly laugh and a vicious scar across his cheek. A long knife hung from his belt, and he wore a thong around his neck on which were threaded several heathen charms. All the country folk wore such things, and kept on wearing them no matter what the priests said. In some villages, Paul knew, the priests started wearing them, too. The innkeeper’s wife was the only woman in the place; she had a hard, unsmiling face, and sullen eyes. She rarely spoke, but when she did her words were clipped and bitter.
    Karelian did not seem concerned at all. Over the years he had rubbed shoulders with many kinds of people, and he accepted his surroundings with an easy worldliness. After everyone had eaten, and the beer had flowed freely for a while, he put his feet up on the crate where the innkeeper’s cat was snuggled, and asked how the north had fared during the duke’s long absence.
    The innkeeper shrugged and said nothing.
    “We met some merchants on the way,” the count persisted, “who were turned back at Karlsbruck. They said many things have suffered from neglect.”
    The innkeeper smiled. “That be true, my lord, but we knows the duke been fightin’ heathens, and winnin’ back Jerusalem. And God’ll shower favors on us for it, an’ make us rich in heaven. Won’t he, my lord?”
    He spoke with perfect humility, but his hand while he spoke fingered some horrid animal thing hanging from his neck, and his eyes were not humble at all.
    But Karelian showed no resentment. The cat stretched, eyed him for a moment, and wandered onto his lap. He reached to stroke it idly.
    “The duke brought many riches back from the east,” he said. “He’s promised to make the Reinmark into the jewel of the empire.”
    The innkeeper crossed himself. “Pray God I live to see it,” he said.
    Paul shifted irritably in his chair, wishing Karelian would object to this carefully servile insolence. In the same breath he admitted that Karelian’s unruffled self-possession, his refusal to make quarrels out of trifles, his willingness to listen to almost anyone at least once— all were the qualities of a wise and steady man.
    “My squire is growing weary,” the count said. “And in truth, so am I. We must make an early start in the morning.”
    “You be headin’ back to Karn, then, my lord?”
    “No. We’ll take the forest road, and go through Helmardin. It will be a rougher journey, but a quicker one. I was already expected in Ravensbruck some days ago.”
    One by one the scattered voices in the room broke off, and Paul could hear the wind howling, and the crackle of fire in the hearth, and the harsh scrape of the innkeeper’s iron cup as he shoved it across the table.
    “Be a strange place, Helmardin,” he said. “Some as goes there don’t come back.”
    “We are well armed,” Karelian said. “Any bandits who attacked a company as large and skilled as ours would be foolish indeed.”
    “It isn’t bandits you got to fear!” This was one of the hostlers, a young man, skinny and ill-kempt as a mongrel. “Leastways, it isn’t only bandits. I been in that place once, and I wouldn’t never go there again, not for all the gold