The Black Chalice

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.