The Knight

She held up the empty skin. “They brought this for me.” She laughed as she tossed it aside, and her laughter was lovely and inhuman. “Ah, the tenderness of my old guardians! ‘Let her be stupefied, and happy, until Grengarm’s jaws close upon her.’ I wish we had more arrack.”

I searched for another skin, but she stopped me. “There is no more, more’s the pity—it would have dried you. As for me, I will not be wet, and before I go I will confide to you, my kind knight, a great secret.” She leaned toward me, and whispered, “Had he who turned that altar devoured me, he would have been as real here as in Muspel.”

At the final word my cloak slumped, empty, to the stone floor, and the dead Aelf with it.

―――

Outside, the sunlit gorge held no one save myself. I climbed out of the stream slowly, choosing every hand—and foothold, conscious only that I did not want to fall back into the water—no matter what else might happen, I did not want to fall back into the water. The thing I remember best about that time (almost the only thing I remember at all) is how tired I was.

At our camp, where we had built our fire and tied the lame white stallion Lord Beel had given me, I had rags and a flask of oil. I wanted to get them and oil the strange mail I had pulled out of the well. I remember looking at it in the sunlight and noticing that every fifth ring was gold. I wanted to oil my dagger, too, and Sword Breaker, which I had carried with me; most of all, I wanted to care for Eterne. I would have to draw her to clean and oil her blade, and the phantom knights would come. I knew that, and tried to think of some way to prevent it, but could not. I was worried about the scabbard, too. It was of gold set with precious stones; but I knew there would have been a lining of some kind, probably wood, and I was afraid it had rotted away.

Behind me, the great, deep, lisping voice of the griffin rumbled, “Would you see him? Look west.”

I looked at the griffm instead. Stared, in fact. He was all white save for his beak, his claws, and his wonderful golden eyes. “Look west,” he said again.

At last I did. There was a storm gathering in the west, thunderheads plucking at the sun; against the darkness of the storm, something flew that seemed darker still.

“Yes. Will you spare him?” From his roost upon the cliff, the griffm dropped into the ravine, and his weight shook the earth. “Or will you destroy him?”

“I can’t,” I said. “I would kill him if I could.”

“I fly as swift as he, and swifter. Will you go?” The eagle face loomed over me, and the claws gripping the rocks of the gorge might have held me as a child holds a doll.

Ravd had not been among the phantom knights who had fought beside me, but it seemed to me that Ravd’s phantom stood behind me as I said, “I will.”

The griffm nodded, one solemn bowing of his great, grim head. I waited, wanting to rest and knowing that I was going into the fight of my life instead; and he did something that surprised me as much as anything that happened in the grotto. Turning to look down the gorge, he called, “Toug!”

Toug appeared so quickly that I knew he must have been watching us from some hiding place. “Here’s your bow, Sir Able,” Toug said, “and your arrows are in here, and here’s your helmet. You left that, too.”

I took them, and gave him Sword Breaker and my old sword belt. “You can speak again.”

“Yes, Sir Able, because you got it. Got the sword. I’ve been waiting, he’d already talked to me—”

I turned again to stare at the griffm.

“Yes, him, and he said I could go if it was all right with you because he saw I wanted to so much only I couldn’t answer, and then I could, and we knew you’d gotten it then and it was going to be all right. So can I, Sir Able? Can I go with you?”

“May I,” I said, and felt Ravd’s hand upon my shoulder, though not even I could see him.

We rode the griffin’s neck, both of us, half buried in his white feathers to keep out the cold, me before and Toug behind. “You will be a knight if you live,” I told him over the roar of the beating wings, “after this, no other life is possible for you.”

“I know,” Toug said. His arms were about my waist, and he clung as tightly as a limpet.

I felt the spirit of prophecy come upon me, the spirit that comes to those about to die. “You will be a knight,” I repeated, knowing that in his heart Toug—a boy now verging on manhood—was a knight already. “But nothing you do as a knight will be as great as this. You begged a boon, which I granted. Now I in my turn beg a boon of you.”

“Yes, Sir Able.” His teeth chattered. “Anything.”

“Say, ‘granted, whatever it may be.’”

“Granted, whatever it may be,” he repeated. “Just don’t ask me to jump.” He was looking down at the slate-green sea so far below.

“I want you to have this griffin painted on your shield. Will you do that?”

“You—you should have it, Sir Able.”

“No. Will you not grant my boon?”

“Yes, Sir Able. I—I will.”

The griffin looked back at us, then down; and following the direction of his gaze I saw Grengarm in the sea.