Arthurian Cultivation

Book 2 Chapter 77 - The power of relics

At first, there was only the sensation of movement, my stomach dragging behind me as I was hauled up like a fish on a line. The rope I’d tied off at my waist drew me skyward. That wasn’t what woke me though, it was the crushing weight of the aura. There was an uncomfortable sharpness to it as well, threatening to slice me as it crushed me.My eyes opened reluctantly, and for a moment all I could see was the dull shine of steel. The chest was clutched tightly in my hands. Despite the overwhelming pressure of the death glamour, I hadn’t let go.

The death glamour was still there, and I had to tightly control my breathing. The density of the glamour was dropping with each frantic heartbeat, but still it surrounded me as if it were water and I had been thrown into the depths of the ocean.

I knew then something was wrong. Rensleigh was efficient but not brutal. She would not hold me hanging here like a prize catch if there wasn’t a good reason. I hoped I’d move the box and see an unimpressed Rensleigh eyeballing me, and see my fellows behind her standing victorious.

It wasn’t to be.

I was thrown down near what I assumed were the remains of Rensleigh. I couldn’t look, the death glamour was too potent. I had to look away. I found instead Maeve radiating the Evil Eye at a level I’d never felt from her before as she knelt over the dead Steel. The Saint stood staring at the prize. The cursed box.

As she gloated, I looked around. I almost lost control of my breathing as, a few paces away behind a crude fortress of stone, I spotted Sephy. She was alive. She was on her knees beside a propped-up Tristan. Both were wounded, her eyes latched onto mine, and a shared bolt of relief sparked through us both.

Arthur stood nearby, pale and unsteady, his arm draped across Bors’ shoulder. Bors looked exhausted. Given the amount of rubble strewn around their improvised barricade, he’d clearly given his all to keep the team alive.

I didn’t dare yell or celebrate. The death glamour would be stable soon enough. I just had to keep control until then. Not only did it feel perverse to pull on the glamour of someone who’d died protecting me, but I didn’t dare risk it. Having it touch my hearth permanently risked my foundation.

Which is why I was surprised to see, on the stairs a few steps before the corpse of Fallowmere, the Mercy Paladin, Mordred. He was cultivating, I could sense it in the air. For a moment, I wondered if it was some trick, but then I caught sight of his eyes. They were those same pinprick eyes that made my skin crawl. Even beyond inhaling Rensleigh’s death glamour, I knew there was something deeply wrong about him. A single priest coated in blood lingered near him, though the man kept his distance as if uncertain whether the man beside him was friend or foe.

Ginevra was talking, and I shook my head a little, trying to sort out what was happening. She seemed to be addressing Mordred. It was only then I noticed the headless corpse of the other Paladin at his feet. What had happened here?

“You honour me, Saint. It is a Paladin’s duty to give his all for the Guiding Star.” Mordred’s voice finally stirred me to full attention.

The words sounded steady enough, but the way he shook himself beforehand looked far too much like a rabid dog lost to the hunt finally catching its master’s voice. For a moment, I wondered whether he even knew how far gone he was. I doubted it. The power was flowing through him, his hands were twitching, and despite the end of the fight, he was still infusing death glamour into his blade.

Routine etched deep grooves in the mind, and he hadn’t forgotten himself so much that he couldn’t still follow them. It would come though. Mordred was on the path to becoming like the death knights spoken of in hushed stories and sombre songs.

“Now, the lot of you are going to behave. Your miracle came and has spent itself,” the mocking voice called out.

Maeve tensed.

She was still kneeling beside Rensleigh, shoulders drawn tight and head bowed just enough that the Saint might mistake grief for obedience. When she looked up though, the expression in her eyes had nothing to do with surrender. It wasn’t directed at me, but I could feel the Evil Eye in her, the rampant lust for violence making her aura scream at me.

I caught her gaze and gave the smallest shake of my head.

It wasn’t much of a message, but Maeve bit her lip so hard it bled. Her jaw tightened, and I had no doubt she understood a reckless attack would do nothing but waste her mentor’s sacrifice. She and I focused entirely on one task, looking for a moment of weakness.

As if reading our minds, the Saint laughed and spoke.

“Stow it. The lot of you combined can’t threaten me. And I am perfectly capable of dragging you back with all your limbs cut off.” Something so obvious for a Steel to say that I was surprised when I tasted the lie in her words.

Hope surged as I looked over the wounds she carried. Outwardly, they didn’t look severe enough to matter to someone like her, but the air around us smelled faintly bitter beneath the iron stink of the battlefield, and that scent reminded me far too much of alchemy. And not the healing kind.

Had Elaine given her some poison?

It would be of limited use without Elaine here to enforce it, but it was something. The fact she was lying meant the Saint wasn’t quite as invulnerable as she wanted us to believe. I didn’t think we could beat her in a fight. But there was an opening that wouldn’t normally be there.

We just had to find it.

“Now, you with the box. Impressive to save yourself from that fall and find this.” The Saint taunted me.

Normally, this would be the moment for some clever remark, something light enough to entertain the room while buying myself a few seconds to think. I’d escaped before by leaning into that skillset. I almost went to speak, so long had I relied on my wits to help me.

Not this time. My lips remained sealed. The death glamour was so thick it felt oily on my skin, like it was trying to slip down my throat. Every instinct I possessed told me I couldn’t allow myself the distraction.

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So instead, I lowered my eyes and looked suitably obedient, which felt deeply insulting to my professional reputation but was probably the wiser choice.

“You’re even luckier. See, it seems that some in the Church want to speak with you. So you get to know you’ll live until then.”

It took everything I had not to flinch.

Had the Harkelys finally managed to untangle my disappearance? They shouldn’t have. Or was it some other Inquisitor who suspected something? No. It was probably something else. I’d been involved in enough to get their attention.

Still, the very idea of being dragged back into those halls sent a spike of terror through my chest that even the Saint’s presence couldn’t equal.

I was almost lucky I couldn’t talk. I wouldn’t like to hear my voice right now. My silence clearly bored her, and she moved on from me. Still, in that moment I decided if the choice came down to it, I would happily inhale the death glamour here, and try to go out carving chunks from this vile woman. The build-up of impurities meant there was a limit to my renewal, and I’d blow through it before going back.

“You, the rat, what traps are there?” The Saint turned her attention to the pathetic wizard. Nermil stammered through his inspection. I tried to think, which was difficult given everything going on right now. What could I do? How could I get out? What was her weakness? But it all came back to one central question.

How was she even here?

She was a Steel. The exact kind of target the Green Knight was famed for targeting. This place was near the centre of the Green Knight’s power. Beneath the canopy of the Oak. The fae should be taking exception to this woman. I doubted she’d bowed to the Oak and her eyes were full of greed. Was he distracted?

Would he appear in a moment, apologising for being late, before separating the Saint from her head?

As the wizard finished speaking, the death glamour rushing from Rensleigh began to settle. The frantic pressure retreated enough that I could take a casual breath without risking insanity. Without that pressure crowding my senses, another presence became impossible to miss.

The relic hanging from the Saint’s belt.

It was a stubby scroll case worked in gold and silver, no longer than my hand, and through a narrow pane of coloured glass, I could see a fragment of pale bone held in a lattice of glowing strands of glamour.

The thing hummed softly against my senses. It had to be important. I could even see that it had taken a hit, the chain on one side severed, like Rensleigh had tried to cut it.

I jerked my attention away as she turned back from the pathetic conman to me. I couldn’t let her know I’d seen something.

“Hmm, not the worst work. Maybe I’ll have use of you yet. Go stand next to Priest Tobias, and don’t try to be clever.” The forlorn wizard obeyed her words. And I had her attention again.

Behind her, Maeve was tensing. She’d caught the jerk of my movement. I didn’t dare look directly at her, but I hoped she’d remain patient.

“So, my lucky bard, open it up and let’s see what we have.”

Lucky. I resisted the urge to comment on that. It wasn’t mere luck that had brought me this far. I was cunning. I was resolute. And I was willing to die, if temporarily, to win.

Kneeling before her, the metal rune-covered box on my knee, I found the clasps. The chest had different dimensions to Vermald’s and overall a better quality of production. His seemed a poor recreation of this one, if I had to guess. Thanks to my foreknowledge, I easily found the clasps. Eight in total.

I unlocked the first.

I kept one eye on Maeve, who had shifted just enough that the tension in her stance was unmistakable.

I gave another small shake of my head.

Not yet. Then I winced. Had the Saint noticed? Mercifully, she was distracted. She was fiddling with the relic in her fingers, studying the little case with a worried frown.

The second-to-last clasp came loose.

A crazy idea was forming. With each passing moment, I was more and more certain that the relic was important. It was radiating a rich aura of power, one that melded with her own. I hoped that it was the missing part of the puzzle.

The last clasp was undone. The woman looked down at me imperiously. A possessive look in her eyes I didn’t appreciate. Still pretending to be overwhelmed with death glamour, I breathed through my nose and pulled the case open.

Something within the box inhaled.

The effect was immediate and overwhelming.

The lingering death glamour vanished in a single hungry breath, devoured so completely that the air itself seemed to shudder with the loss of it, and the blood scattered across the stones dulled to a lifeless grey as the last traces of blood glamour were stripped from the battlefield.

The power that replaced it crashed into my senses like thunder on a clear summer day.

My soul, already stretched thin from everything it had endured tonight, recoiled violently under the sudden pressure as something vast and impossibly hungry filled the space around us.

It was hungry.

Far too hungry. My cloak flapped in an impossible wind, tugged by the power of it. With glittering eyes, the Saint reached forward and lifted the object free of the box.

The Grail.

It was an ancient chalice, a wide clay bowl set upon a thick stem. The rim had been plated in gold and the base studded with small gemstones, while a seven-pointed star had been worked carefully into the inside of the cup.

She turned it slowly in her hands, admiring the weight and the light that gathered along its edges before angling it slightly towards Mordred and the priest, as if displaying a particularly valuable jewel.

She was totally lost in her victory.

Maeve gave me a look and I met it. Not a word went between us, just the trust built up from the last few months of working together.

I had to live up to that trust. I had one shot at this. And failure could cost Maeve her life.

Maeve’s sword shot forward faster than I’d ever seen her move. Twice gifted in blade, fuelled by rage and her intent. The attack went for the arm clutching the Grail, right at the point where her armour had been peeled away. Her sword made it within a hair’s breadth of the flesh.

The Saint flinched. Still, even wounded and poisoned, she was a Steel.

She shifted away, dodging the strike, keeping the Grail safe. The simple clay of the artefact momentarily made her forget that we couldn’t harm the Grail. Or maybe she was worried we had some trick up our sleeve. Either way, she was not pleased. She snarled as she turned. Aura gathered, her spear already blurring as it prepared to carve into my friend.

All this happened just beyond me, a background to my personal mission.

Long ago, I’d jumped out of a window to avoid a wedding. I’d stumbled into the room to find my bride-to-be, the woman currently risking her life to give me this opportunity, with her attendant strapping on knives. It had been a surprise to us all. But I’d been prepared for the worst and managed to hurl myself through the glass.

Rensleigh was, by power alone, fast enough that she should’ve easily been able to stop me. Even though we were a good fifteen paces away from each other back then, I never should’ve even touched the window.

But I’d learned something that day. Steels aren’t immune to surprise.

The Saint’s entire focus was on Maeve. That wasn’t the surprise, she no doubt suspected we’d try something.

What she couldn’t have imagined was my weapon of choice. I launched myself forward, the powerful glamour-suppressing box in my hands.

I felt her aura shift, she’d noticed me. But she was committed to the other attack, and here I was, an unarmed Bard. What could I possibly do to her? Even properly armed, I could barely have scratched her.

Which is why my focus wasn’t on her but the relic that swung from her hip, loose on its single remaining chain. A relic that Rensleigh had thought worth attacking. She sensed some kind of threat from me at the last moment. Her aura slammed into me, like an entire coven of witches turning the Evil Eye on me. It wasn’t enough. I was hardened to such cruelty.

With a final jerk of the wrist, I slammed the box closed on the relic. The power it emitted, that wave of strange glamour, was for a second dimmed. Then I was slammed through the air, crashing into something that, while not soft, wasn’t unforgiving stone.

“No,” I heard her scream in my very bones, even as my ears rang. A fresh wave of the Evil Eye slammed into me. But it was too late.

A new power arrived. It had the fresh scent of split green wood, and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind.

“It seems someone is keen to trade strikes.” A voice like an oak twisting in a storm filled the room.