He sank to his knees, pulled at the stones burying the axe and threw them aside, dragged it out of the rubble, and hauled himself up once more to lurch back toward the stone tomb. With every step he found a little more strength returning to his limbs, a little more vitality, though whether it was the strength the Devil had promised him, or somehow came from the weapon, he neither knew nor cared. He revelled in the new-found strength surging through his veins.
Behind him, the stones stirred, but Alymere only had eyes for the tomb.
Grimacing, he raised the weapon overhead. He felt a brief, wild urge to bring the huge axe smashing down into the centre of the tomb's granite lid, but stopped himself, knowing it was a futile gesture — there was a marked difference between the soft pale rocks of the cross and the flawless granite slab that marked the laird's final resting place. Instead, he worked the edge of the axe's blade between the lid and the base, and used the shaft to lever it free. And as long as he kept his hands on the axe, strength continued to flood into him.
The grating of stone on stone, as the lid started to slide, masked the sounds of the guardian clawing its way out of its grave.
With one last colossal heave, the tomb opened far enough for him to see inside. The laird's old bones had been preserved, along with some scraps of decayed leather, but nothing else. There, clasped in the bony fingers, was a silver goblet, yellow-black with tarnish, a single chalcedony stone set in its side. The gem was a bloodstone, flecked with red.
He reached into the coffin to pry the Chalice from the dead man's grasp.
He lifted the fingers one at a time with a peculiar reverence, but the bones powdered beneath his touch. As they crumbled, the sudden cacophony of stones shifting and falling behind him caused Alymere to turn; for one panicked moment he thought the entire cairn was coming down on top of him, but then he saw the axeman stubbornly clawing itself out of the rubble.
Nothing would stop it. Not being buried, not being struck down. It just kept coming. Alymere had visions of the silent warrior chasing him all the way to Camelot.
Alymere reached for the axe, and then stopped himself. The warrior was a grail guardian. He would never defeat it with axe or sword. The only way to win, he realised, was to claim the grail.
Even as the massive warrior hauled himself silently out of the rubble, Alymere tore the Black Chalice from the dead man's clutches and lifted it out of the tomb.
Yes, the Devil whispered in his mind. Yes, yes, yes… This is our destiny… Lift the cup to your lips and drink of me. Finish what you began. Seal yourself to me. Drink… sup of my blood.
Alymere raised the cup to his lips, but there was only dust and the bitter tang of the tarnished metal on his tongue. There was no blood, no water.
Press the stone against one of your cuts… Drip your blood into the Chalice… Your blood is our blood… Our blood is my blood… Raise it to your lips and drink… Drink of me. Drink to me. Drink.
Behind him, the guardian rose to its feet and kicked its way clear of the rubble. Alymere hesitated.
Do it. Now. Drink. Seal our pact. Be mine. Forever. And I will be yours.
He pressed the lip of the tarnished silver cup — as black as its name suggested — against his stomach, collecting blood from the wound, and raised it to his lips.
Inside his head the Devil howled in triumph.
And Alymere fell.
Forty-Eight
He looked up, blood on his lips, to see the cracks that had already formed in the axeman's armour, the wrinkles in its flesh and the fissures in its eyes.
In taking that draught, swallowing the tainted blood, Alymere had killed the last spark of goodness in him. His wounds still bled but they no longer weakened him. He had become the Devil's Knight. He ran his tongue around the lip of the Chalice, licking the last of the blood clean, and then lowered the grail.
He held it idly by his side, a sneer forming on his lips, and watched as the axeman climbed free of the rubble. It didn't matter. Where Alymere was multiplied, the guardian was reduced.
He waited for the thing to claw its way free, then strode across the hard packed earth to meet it. He pressed his hand against the wound in his belly, and then reached out, placing his hand in the centre of the guardian's chest, leaving a bloody hand print, and in an alien voice said, "You have done well, guardian. The grail is returned to its rightful owner. Rest now; you have earned your eternity." They were the first words the Devil's Knight had uttered, and came purely from the voice of his master. Alymere was nowhere to be heard in them.
And the cracks in the leather around Alymere's bloody hand print widened and burrowed into the guardian's flesh, weeping dust instead of blood.
The axeman's eyes cracked and shattered like fine glass beneath a crude hammer blow. The axeman's body convulsed, wracked by spasms as the taint of Alymere's blood burned through its skin and hollowed out its innards.
"Go," Alymere commanded, and as the breath behind the word touched the guardian its shell simply crumbled, as though the years it had stood watch over the Devil's cup caught up with it all at once. Within moments, all that remained of the guardian was dust, settling over the scattered stones.
Alymere shucked off his pack, loosening the strings, and took out a small cloth, which he used to wrap the Chalice before stowing it alongside the book, and shouldered the pack again.
The huge double-headed axe was still wedged under the lid of the tomb. Unlike its wielder, it hadn't crumbled to dust. Alymere tested the edge — it was still wickedly sharp — took it and walked out of the tomb.
He walked three times around the ruined cairn, stepping from night back into day, and the world he had left behind.
He did not see the old witch, the streak-feathered crow perched on her shoulder, or the beautiful maiden hiding high in the crags. They watched him go silently. They had each witnessed him drinking from the tainted cup, and knew too well what it meant: he was lost to them; their hero had fallen. Unable to help herself, Blodyweth cried out his name, hoping against hope that he would hear and come back to her, but as Alymere left the Annwn, all he heard was the raucous caw of the crow, and it grated on his nerves.
Forty-Nine
His return to Camelot was not the hero's homecoming he had always imagined. His arrival was as unremarked as his first had been, long months before. Not even Bors was there to greet him.
Alymere had been a child the first time he'd set foot in the great castle. He was a man now. As he walked beneath the portico, his journey was complete.
Pennons snapped in the wind. The lists had been decorated with all manner of devices, displaying the arms of every Knight of Albion. Brightly coloured tents were being assembled by sweating men. The sound of steel striking steel rang out from the smithy. Men with axes hewed branches from trees, that were in turn stripped and shaped into lances. To Alymere's left, people bustled around the carts and stalls, while to his right maids wound ribbons around the Maypole for the summer feast. The scraw-scritch-scraw of a prentice honing tools and arms provided a grating, atonal accompaniment to the rest.
Children laced garlands of flowers and laid them around the foot of the Maypole. Girls laughed and giggled at boys playing the fool. The air smelled of cinnamon and sweet mince, mulled wine spices and freshly baked bread. Camelot was filled wall to wall with life. No-one looked at him. Why should they? He had undergone a transformation since he had left Camelot with Lowick — he couldn't call the dead man uncle or father, as he was neither — and now he was unrecognisable, even to himself. He was a stranger in their midst. Their lives would go on without him after he made the short walk through their number and climbed the stairs to the castle door. He might just as well have been a ghost… Alymere stopped himself from finishing the thought.