The Black Chalice Read Free Page A

on the streets of Jerusalem!”
    “You’d be ill-rewarded if you went for that,” Karelian said dryly. “But surely many travellers must use the road, or there’d soon be no road left at all.”
    “Many do,” the innkeeper said. “And most pass safe. But even those will tell you things as makes you shiver. There be dead men there. And veelas.”
    “I wouldn’t mind seeing a veela,” Otto said lightly. His mind was always on lechery, and he was more than a little bit drunk. “I’ve heard said they’re pretty, and they don’t wear any clothes.”
    A small ripple of laughter went around the room, a mixture of bawdy amusement and very real unease.
    “You don’t want to see a veela,” the hostler said fiercely. “Not ever you don’t! They’ll kill you for anything. They say the woods is theirs. All I did was sit beside a tree to rest, and she come and tried to strangle me! Look!” He pulled open his rough shirt so they could see the mark on his neck, a thin, deep-cut mark like the scar from a garotte. “Best you don’t go to Helmardin, my lord! It be no place for Christian men!”
    Karelian considered him in silence. It was Otto’s squire Dalbert, a youth Paul’s age and not easily frightened, who asked the obvious question:
    “Well, if she was strangling you like that, then how come you’re here, and still very much alive?”
    “The Virgin saved me.” Quickly and reverently the hostler crossed himself. “I called out to her with my very last breath, and she come in a flash of light, golden as the sun, and the veela screamed and let me go, and flew away.”
    “But you were travelling alone, weren’t you?” Karelian said. “Veelas are solitary creatures. I’ve never yet heard of one appearing among large groups of men.”
    “Be a great fool if she did,” the innkeeper’s wife said scornfully.
    Her husband cast her a brief, unpleasant look.
    “Veelas be the least of it, my lord,” he said. “There’s worse things in that devil’s wood. And armed men have come to grief there, too. Near fifty good knights they were, with their sergeants and men at arms along with them, in the time of Henry II, headin’ for Ravensbruck after the massacre at Dorn. They rode into Helmardin with all their banners flying, an’ none was ever seen again.”
    “The witch got them in her castle,” one of the servants muttered darkly.
    “And the bishop of Ravensbruck, too,” added another.
    Paul shuddered faintly. The massacre of Dorn was nearly a hundred years ago, and the loss of the emperor’s men had been made into a legend. But the bishop of Ravensbruck disappeared not long before Paul was born, and his father talked about it many times. The bishop was a brave and a saintly man. Learning of pagan practices and heresies in the regions of Karlsbruck and Helmardin, he sent two of his priests to investigate. After the priests visited many villages, and spoke to many common folk, they returned by the forest road to Ravensbruck, strangely altered, and bearing an astonishing tale.
    They had, they said, become lost in a fog, and after wandering for hours they came upon a splendid castle, with high ramparts and golden banners whose crests they had never seen before. They went to bang on the gates to ask where they might be, and how they might find their way back.
    Inside was music, and tables laden with food, and knights and ladies in beautiful garments, and minnesingers, and wild animals which were friendly no matter how dangerous they looked, and many other wonderful things. Ruling this castle was a black-haired queen, more beautiful than any goddess, who gave them food and wine and spoke with them— but what she spoke of, they swore they could not remember. After some days, they begged to take their leave, and return to their duties. The queen gave them gifts of food, and let them go. When they stepped out of the castle gates, the forest road was before their feet, as though they had never left it, and when they