The Black Chalice

the black grail.

Alymere gathered every last ounce of strength he had and threw it behind a wild overhead slash at the guardian's bare head. If it bit, the fierce swing would have cloven halfway through the bone and brain and left the sword buried, while Alymere twitched and contorted in the dirt, dying before he could even remove the blade. At the last, Alymere threw himself sideways, sprawling in the dirt, the sword spinning harmlessly from his hand even as the axeman's huge swing chopped down where his head had been only a heartbeat before.

The massive axe slammed into the centre of the cross, shattering the keystone that anchored the entire structure together. The axe clove deep into the soft rock, which splintered with a sound like bones breaking.

As the core of the cross crumbled, so too did the stones it held in place. Alymere scrambled away, bleeding and in absolute agony as the cairn groaned and the first stones began to shift. He could barely see through the sting of tears. He felt everything, not merely the tears in his flesh, but the prickle of the wind, the brush of his shirt against the cuts, everything. He was dying. He didn't know how long he had left; minutes? Less? It was all he could do to crawl a few feet further away from Nectan's cairn. He needed to put distance between them before it came down. If it came down, he amended. And even if it did, what then?

The ground beneath his hands and knees shivered, trembling, and then the black warrior tore its axe free of the stone crucifix, wrenching a dozen more of the pale stones out of the wall. The cairn could withstand the odd stone being dislodged, but the crucifix anchored the entire structure. With its integrity destroyed, it was only a matter of time before the whole thing came tumbling down in an avalanche of jagged rocks.

Alymere rolled over onto his back, clutching at his stomach as the cairn came crashing down. The noise, as stone crashed and cannoned off stone, was hideous. It drowned out every other sound, rolling like thunder across the mountain.

Part of him had hoped that breaking the cross would be enough to vanquish the thing, but it wasn't. The two had to be linked though, surely?

The thing remained eerily silent as the falling rocks battered it, hammering off its armour and skin without any seeming effect. One huge piece of slate struck its shoulder and shattered; another broke at its feet. The axeman made no move to protect itself. It wasn't created to offer any resistance, Alymere realised. It existed purely to protect the Black Chalice.

With the destruction of the cross, the key to the cairn, the axeman had failed in its duty as the last defender of the Devil's Grail. If Alymere had guessed right, the cross in the wall had marked the spot where the Chalice itself was buried, like a treasure map. And now, as the Chalice was uncovered in the cairn's collapse, its guardian would be buried in its stead. There was a fearful symmetry to it.

It didn't offer any defence as the stones smashed off its chest and head. It simply held on to its axe, waiting for Alymere to attack again. It had no understanding of its own, and didn't grasp that the stones were Alymere's last, best weapon against it — a weapon he did not need to wield, at that.

The axeman was the last ward, the final protection for the Chalice. Anyone looking to steal it must first best himself, not as he was, but the best that he could have been. The axeman was all that Alymere might have become had he not strayed from the road into the Crow Maiden's glade and lain down with her in the snow as it melted around them, their embrace taking them to the kingdom of summer and back. What he saw reflected in the axeman's black eyes was the good he had lost along the way.

He would never recover it; he knew that. He had accepted it. It didn't matter.

All that mattered was finding the Chalice. If it truly was the Devil's cup and had similar properties as the legendary Grail, then one sup from it might save his life. Or damn him forever.

That was the risk he was just going to have to take. He was damned if he didn't, and most assuredly damned if he did.

Clinging to consciousness, Alymere lay on the damp grass, watching Nectan's cairn collapse, burying the thing even as it revealed the long dead clansman's tomb.

Forty-Seven

He crawled through the rubble. It was all he could do to force himself to move. His blood streaked across the stones as he dragged himself forward. He couldn't control his legs; his left foot trailed uselessly behind him, dislodging the broken stones as he crawled toward the unearthed tomb. The rocks shifted beneath his weight, skittering away down the banked ruin that was all that remained of the high wall.

He could see into the hollow heart of the cairn and, laid bare despite the shadows, the coffin of the great laird.

Alymere's right foot slipped as he scrambled desperately down the other side. He collapsed onto his back, gasping, every muscle on fire. His entire stomach and chest felt as though it was being ripped open and peeled back on his ribcage.

In scaling the debris, Alymere's exertions had exposed the guardian's broken and twisted forearm. It lay there lifelessly amid the rest of the rubble.

Alymere watched it in horror, wildly fearful. His jaw hung open, each new breath a strain. He didn't have the strength to fight on; he barely had the strength left to drag himself to the tomb, and had no idea how he was going to open it. If the Chalice was not inside, he was a dead man, and even if it was the chances were he would never get it open to find out.

He dug his fingers into the dirt, using every ounce of strength left to him to pull himself forward, his eyes on the stone tomb. His vision swam in and out of focus. His blood trailed slickly across the dirt as he reached up, desperately trying to snag the top of the tomb and claw himself up against it.

He didn't know what he had expected; perhaps to find the Black Chalice laid on top of the stone tomb, but there was no sign of it.

Alymere left bloody hand prints on the stone face and a smear of blood across the granite chest, trying to force it from its resting place. He heaved his weight up against its side, weakly, trying to crack it open, but it didn't give so much as an inch. He levered his body around, trying to push his shoulder against the stone lid, but it wasn't moving. Not for him, not for the Devil, not for anything.

So close, but, as with everything in his life so far, he was destined to fall tantalisingly short.

He slumped back, content to die.

There is life still in us, is there not? There is breath still in our lungs. Blood still in our veins. Use it. Use the last of that life, and the rewards will be beyond imagining. Let me fill you, let me lend you my strength to sustain you. We are one. We are Alymere. Now rise!

Alymere pulled himself up, needing the tomb to support his weight, and took one step away from it on trembling legs. He saw the silver edge of the axeman's double-headed blade through the rubble and stumbled unsteadily towards it.

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,