The Black Chalice

Twenty-Six

Sir Lowick found the monk hunched over Alymere's body.

Seeing him lying there, lain out on the muddy grass all broken and ravaged by the fire, it seemed impossible that he could still be alive.

All the pride he felt at cheating death swept from his body in a wave of grief; the stupid fool of a boy had gotten himself killed.

He raced across the cloister garden to his side, the sorrow caught in his throat.

The blind man's fingers were in Alymere's mouth.

Was he trying to choke the last bit of life out of him?

The man seemed to be trying to pull the tongue out of his throat with his filthy fingers.

The knight roared, grasping the hilt of his broadsword with two hands and raising it high above his head as he charged across the muddy grass, ready to do murder.

And then he saw his chest heave.

And everything changed. He dropped his sword and sank to his knees beside his nephew. "What have you done to him?"

"The boy lives," the monk said, trying to calm the knight, "but whether it remains that way is in the hands of the Lord, Knight. His wounds are most grievous indeed. His skin was ablaze as he plunged from up there," he pointed up at the shattered window with unerring accuracy. For a moment it was impossible for Sir Lowick to comprehend the fact that the man was truly blind; he spoke with such certainty, yet all of his understanding came from sounds and smells and touch, not from what Lowick thought of as the most basic and trustworthy of all the senses, sight. "And but for my brother's body beneath him, the fall alone would surely have killed him. Yet, for all his fortune, without aid far beyond my limited skill I fear he will not live to see morning. Once, perhaps, we had the medicinal herbs here on Medcaut, and the physician's gift, but now, now our home is burnt barren. Who knows what is left in the herbarium worth scavenging? And I fear that after this night nothing will grow. As much as it saddens me to say so, there can be no healing for Alymere here." The knight could not recall having used the boy's name in front of the monk. That he seemed so familiar with it placed a chill in Lowick's heart. "You need to take him to the mainland."

Tenderly, he rolled his nephew away from the body beneath him and onto his side, seeing the raw pink flesh where the fire had burned away the features down the right side of his face. His cloak had burnt onto his neck. The knight teased the blackened wool away from the sores, whispering wordlessly over and over. He had no unguents or salves and no way of lessening the fire beneath Alymere's skin. All he could do was pray, and pray that words uttered in this holiest of places found their way to the Lord all the more quickly.

He saw the book clenched in Alymere's hands. Its leather binding was burned beyond recognition, but as far as he could tell the pages within were merely scorched along the edges. The skin from Alymere's palm had burned off on the front of the book, leaving a black and bloody handprint in the middle of the binding. He tried to ease it out of his nephew's hands, but Alymere's grip on the book was rigor-tight. And try though he might, Sir Lowick could not pry the damned book from his hands. He left it be, and instead cradled his nephew in his arms.

Until dawn it was as though the burning monastery, the blind monk, all of the dead men and the raging sea ceased to exist.

The world was reduced to the boy in his arms. Everything beyond that was gone.

Sir Lowick did not see the blind monk kneel over his fallen brother, nor hear the low mumble of his prayers, the rhythm of his words matching the ebb and flow of the tide, and so he missed the one true miracle that would ever occur in his presence, as the blind monk wrapped both of his hands around the hilt of Alymere's sword, drew the blade from his brother's chest, and cast it aside.

The dead man drew in a sudden sharp breath and shuddered back to agonizing life. The cackling of the fire masked his moans.

Neither did Sir Lowick see the wound in the hitherto dead man's stomach begin to heal as the skin puckered around thick scar tissue and drew together to form yet another long white gash in the mesh of old wounds that marred his abdomen.

Nor did Sir Lowick witness the dead man rise like Lazarus and walk away with his brother toward the shadow-figures that stood waiting at the monastery gates. Had he looked up he could have counted the silhouettes and realised that not a single monk had fallen to the raiders' claymores.

The Brothers of Medcaut left him alone with his grief, merging with fire and flame until only their shadows remained, and as the fires died down those too departed.

Come dawn the fires had burned themselves out completely, leaving only scorched earth and a few walls of the blackened shell that had been Medcaut's holy monastery intact. The stones still smouldered. Atop their highest point the black bird watched intently with yellow eyes. When finally content that Alymere would live, it took flight, banking in the clear blue morning and flying back toward the mainland and the forest that was its home.

Their horses had long since gone, driven away by the raging fire. No doubt they had bolted as soon as the tide allowed.

The knight gathered Alymere into his arms and walked the miles back along the causeway to the mainland. Grief cut through the soot on his cheeks and the tears flowed freely. His nephew was near weightless in his arms; like a scarecrow, he was no burden at all.

The tide lapped around his ankles as he walked, his gaze fixed on the horizon.

He never stopped praying, beseeching the Lord to show mercy, to save his flesh and blood, and making promise after promise of what he would do in return for a moment's grace, as though he were in a position to bargain with the Almighty.

Twice more he saw the crow in the periphery of his vision, shadowing him as he walked toward the stretch of beach and the dunes and thick maram grass beyond them, but every time he tried to watch it for more than a few moments the bird banked sharply and flew away. He would never have seen it save that it was the only bird in the sky.