The War Hound and the World's Pain

“You know of the Grail?” Sedenko was suddenly curious.

  “Who does not? We know of many things in the Valley of the Golden Cloud, for this is a land which is sought by those who dream of Eden. We are used to legends here, stranger, since we are ourselves a legend.”

  “A legend and you exist. So might the Grail exist,” I said.

  “One does not prove the other.” The guardian shifted a little in his saddle. “You are the men who killed our eagle, are you not?”

  “We were attacked!” Sedenko became defensive. “We protected our own lives …”

  “It is not a crime to kill an eagle,” said the guardian evenly. “We of the Valley of the Golden Cloud do not impose our own laws on strangers. We merely ask that strangers do not bring their specific ideas of justice to us. But once you have passed this gateway, you must agree to obey our laws until you leave again.”

  “Naturally, we would agree,” I said.

  “Our laws are simple: Steal Nothing, whether it be an abstract idea or another life. Examine Everything. Pay a Fair Price. And, remember, to lie is to steal another soul’s freedom of action, or some fragment of it. Here a liar and a thief are the same thing.”

  “Your laws sound excellent,” I said. “Indeed, they sound ideal.”

  “And simple,” said Sedenko feelingly.

  “They are simple,” said the guardian, “but they sometimes require complex interpretation.”

  “And what are the penalties for breaking your laws?” asked Sedenko.

  The guardian said: “We have only two punishments here: Expulsion and Death. To some, they are the same.”

  “We will remember all you have said,” I told him. “We seek Philander Groot, the hermit. Do you know where we might find him?”

  “I do not know. Only the Queen knows.”

  “She is the ruler of this land?” asked Sedenko.

  “She is its embodiment,” said the guardian. “She dwells in the city. Go there now.”

  He moved his horse aside and made a sign so that the iron portcullis might be lifted by unseen hands within the towers.

  As we passed through, I thanked him for his courtesy, but such was my state of mind that I determined to look carefully about me. It had been many years since I had been able to believe in absolute justice, and some weeks since I had been able to believe that there existed in the world (or beyond it) justice of any kind.

  The air was sweet as we followed a road of well-trodden yellow earth through fields of green wheat towards the distant city, whose towers and turrets were predominantly white, reflecting the gold of the mist above us.

  “A noble creature, that guard,” said Sedenko, in some admiration, looking about him.

  “Or a self-righteous one,” I said.

  “One must at least believe in Perfection”—he had become serious—”or one cannot believe in the promise of Heaven.”

  “True,” said I to that poor damned youth.

  Chapter X

  THE GUARDS AT the city gates were clad in the same antiquated regalia as the first guard we had encountered. They did not challenge us as we entered the wide streets to discover a well-ordered collection of houses and public buildings, a cheerful and dignified population and an active market. Since we had been ordered to present ourselves to the Queen of this land, we continued on our way until we reached the palace: a relatively low building of extreme beauty, with sweeping curves and pinnacles, bright stained glass and a general air of tranquillity.

  Trumpets announced our coming as we passed under the archway into a wide courtyard decorated with all manner of shrubs and flowers. The unpretentiousness of the palace, its Atmosphere, reminded me somehow of my boyhood in Bek. My father’s manor had possessed just such a mood.

  Ostlers came forward to take our horses and a woman in skirt and wimple of olden times emerged from the doorway to beckon us. She was an exceptionally lovely young female, with large blue eyes and an open, healthy face. She looked like the better type of nun.

  “Greetings to you,” she said. “The Queen expects you. Would you wish to refresh yourselves, to bathe, perhaps, before you are presented?”

  I looked at Sedenko. If I was half as filthy and as unshaven as he, I felt I would be happier for a bath and a chance to change my clothes.

  Sedenko said: “We have been travelling through snow, lady. We hardly need to wash ourselves. See? Nature’s done that for us.”

  I bowed to the young woman. “We are grateful to you,” I said. “I, for one, would like some hot water.”

  “It will be provided.” She beckoned and led the way into the palace’s cool interior. The ceilings were tow and decorated with murals, as were the walls. We passed through a kind of cloisters and here were apartments evidently prepared for guests. The young woman showed us into one of these. Heated water had already been poured into two large wooden tubs in the centre of the main room.

  Sedenko sniffed the air, as if he saw sorcery in the steam.

  I thanked the young woman, who smiled at me and said: “I will return in an hour to escort you to the Queen.”

  Refreshed, I was ready and dressed in my change of clothes when she came back. Sedenko had no change of clothes and had scarcely let the water touch his skin, but even he had deigned to shave his face, save for his moustache. He looked considerably more personable than when he had arrived.

  Again we followed the young woman through a variety of corridors, cloisters and gardens, until we were led into a large-sized room with a high ceiling on which was painted a representation of the sun, the stars and the moon, what is sometimes called, I believe, a Solar Atlas.

  There on a throne of green glass and carved mahogany sat a girl of perhaps fifteen years. Since she wore a crystal-and-diamond crown upon her dark red hair we naturally bowed and murmured what we hoped were the appropriate greetings.

  The girl smiled sweetly. She had large brown eyes and red lips. “You are welcome to our land, strangers. I am Queen Xiombarg the Twenty-fifth and I am curious to know why you braved the eagles to visit us. You were not drawn here, as are some adventurers, by legends of gold and magic, I am sure.”

  Sedenko became alert. “Treasure?” he said, before he thought. Then he blushed. “Oh, no, madam.”

  “I am upon the Grail Search,” I told the young Queen. “I seek a hermit by the name of Philander Groot and believe that Your Majesty knows where I could find him.”

  “I am trusted with that knowledge,” she said. “But I am sworn never to reveal it. What help can Heir Groot provide?”

  “I do not know. I was told to seek him out and tell him my story.”

  “Is your story an unusual one?”

  “Many would believe it more than unusual, Your Majesty.”

  “And you will not tell it to me?”

  “I have told it to no one. I will tell it to Philander Groot because he might be able to help me.”

  She nodded. “You’ll trade him secret for secret, eh?”

  “It seems so.”

  “He will be amused by that.”

  I inclined my head.

  Sedenko burst out: “It’s God’s work he’s on, Your Majesty. If he finds the Grail …”

  I tried to interrupt him, but she raised her hand. “We are not to be persuaded or dissuaded, sir. Here we believe neither in Heaven nor in Hell. We worship no gods or devils. We believe only in moderation.”

  I could not disguise my scepticism and she was quick to notice.

  She smiled. “We are satisfied with this state of things. Reason is not subsumed by sentiment here. The two are balanced.”

  “I have always found balance a nostalgic dream, Your Majesty. In reality it can be very dull.”

  She was not dismayed. “Oh, we amuse ourselves adequately, captain. We have music, painting, plays …”

  “Surely such ideas of moderation require no true struggle. Thus they defeat human aspiration. What greatness have these arts of yours? How noble are they? What heights of feeling and intellect
do they reach?”

  “We live in the world,” she replied quietly. “We do not ignore how it is. We send our young people out of the valley when they are eighteen. There they learn of human misery, of pain and of those who triumph over them. They bring their experience back. Here, in tranquility, it is considered and forms the basis of our philosophy.”

  “You are fortunate,” I said with some bitterness.

  “We are.”

  “So justice requires good luck before it can exist?”

  “Probably, captain.”

  “Yet you seek out experience. You tell your young people to search for danger. That is not the same as being subjected to it, willy-nilly.”

  “No, indeed. But it is better than not searching for it at all.”

  “It seems to me, madam, that you yet possess the complacency of the privileged. What if your land were to be attacked?”

  “No army can reach us without our knowing of it.”

  “No army can march by land, perhaps. But what, for instance, if your enemies trained those eagles to come through the Golden Cloud carrying soldiers?”

  “That is inconceivable,” she said with a laugh.

  “To those who live with danger and have no choice,” I said, “nothing is inconceivable.”

  She shrugged. “Well, we are satisfied.”

  “And I am glad that you are, madam.”

  “You are a stimulating guest, captain. Will you stay at our Court for a few days?”

  “I regret that I must find Philander Groot if I can, as soon as I can. My commission has some urgency to it.”

  “Very well. Take the West Road from the city. It will lead you to a wood. In the wood is a wide glade, with a dead oak in it. Philander Groot, if he pleases, will find you there.”

  “At what time?”

  “He will choose the time. You will have to be patient. Now, captain, at least you will eat with us and tell us something of your adventures.”

  Sedenko and I accepted the invitation. The dinner was superb. We filled ourselves to capacity, spent the night in good beds and in the morning went by the West Road from the young Queen’s tower.

  The wood was easily reached and the glade found without difficulty. We made a camp there and settled down to wait for Groot. The air was warm and lazy and the flowers softened our tempers with their beauty and their scents.

  “This is a place to come home to when you are old,” said Sedenko as he stretched himself on the ground and stared around at the great trees. “But I’d guess it’s no place to be young in. No fighting, precious little hunting …”

  “The lack of conflict could bore anyone under forty,” I agreed. “I cannot quite get to the root of my irritation with this place. Perhaps there is a touch too much sanity here. If it is sanity, of course. My instincts tell me that this kind of life is in itself insane in some ways.”

  “Too profound for me, captain,” said Sedenko. “They’re rich. They’re safe. They’re happy. Isn’t that what we all want for ourselves in the end?”

  “A healthy animal,” I said, “needs to exercise its body and its wits to the full.”

  “But not all the time, captain.” Sedenko looked alarmed, as if I was about to expect some action from him.

  I laughed. “Not all the time, young Kazak.”

  After three days of waiting in the glade neither of us was so willing to rest. We had explored every part of the surrounding country, its rivers, its meadows, its woods. We had picked flowers and plaited them. We had groomed our horses. We had swum. Sedenko had climbed every tree which could be climbed and I had studied, without much understanding, the grimoires Sabrina had given me. I had also studied all the maps and had seen that Mittelmarch territories seemed to exist in gaps between lands where, in my own world, no gaps were.

  By the time the fifth morning dawned I was ready to mount my horse and leave the Valley of the Golden Cloud. “I’ll find my way to the Grail without Groot’s help,” I said.

  And these words, almost magically, seemed to conjure up the dandy who sauntered into our camp, looking around him a little fastidiously but with the good humour of self-mockery. He was all festooned lace and velvet, gold and silver buckles and embroidery. He walked with the aid of a monstrous decorated pole and he stank of Hungary Water. His hat had a huge brim weighted down with white and silver feathers and his little beard and moustache were trimmed to the perfection demanded of the most foppish French courtier. His sword, of delicate workmanship, seemed of no use to him at all as he stared at me with a quizzical eye and then made one of those elaborate bows which I have never been able to imitate.

  “Good morrow to thee, gentlemen,” lisped the dandy. “I am enchanted to make your acquaintance.”

  “We’re not here to pass the time of day with men dressed as women,” said Sedenko, scowling. “We await the coming of a great sage, a hermit of the wisest disposition.”

  “Aha, forgive me. I will not keep you long, in that case. Pray, what are your names, sirs?”

  “I am Ulrich von Bek, Captain of Infantry, and this is my companion Grigory Petrovitch Sedenko, swordsman. And yours, sir?”

  “My name, sir, is Philander Groot.”

  “The hermit?” cried Sedenko in astonishment.

  “I am a hermit, sir, yes.”

  “You don’t look like a hermit.” Sedenko put his hand on the hilt of his sabre and strode forward to inspect the apparition.

  “Sir, I assure you that I am, indeed, a hermit.” Groot became polite. He was distant.

  “We heard you were a holy man,” Sedenko continued.

  “I cannot be held responsible for what others hear or say, sir.” Groot drew himself up. He was somewhat shorter than Sedenko, who was no giant. “I am the same Philander Groot for whom you were looking. Take me or leave me, sir. This is all there is.”

  “We had not thought to find a dandy,” said I, by way of apologizing for Sedenko’s frankness. “We imagined someone in homespun cloth. The usual sort of garb.”

  “It is not my way to fulfill the expectation of my fellow creatures. I am Groot. Groot is who I am.”

  “But why a dandy?” Sedenko sighed and turned away from us.

  “There are many ways of keeping one’s distance from the world,” said Groot to me.

  “And many others to keep the world at a distance from oneself,” I added.

  “You appreciate my drift, Sir Knight. Self-knowledge, however, is not self-salvation. You and I have a fair way to go in that direction, I think. You through action and I, coward that I am, through contemplation.”

  “I believe that I lack the courage for profound self-examination, Master Groot,” said I.

  He was amused. “Well, what a fine man we should be, if we were combined into one! And how self-important, then, we could become!”

  “I was told, Master Groot, that you might wish to hear my story and, that once you had heard it, you might wish to give me a clue or two to the solution of my problem.”

  “I am curious,” admitted this gamecock philosopher, “and will be glad to pay for entertainment with information. You must rely on me, however, to set the price. Does that go against your wishes?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Then, come, we shall take a walk together in the forest.”

  Sedenko looked back. “Careful, captain. It could be a trap.”

  “Grigory Petrovitch,” I said, “if Master Groot had wished to ambush us, he could have done so at any time, surely.”

  Sedenko pushed his sheepskin cap high on his head and grumbled something before kicking violently at a clump of flowers.

  Philander Groot linked his elegant arm in mine and we began to walk until we reached the stream. At its banks we paused.

  “You must begin, sir,” he said.

  I told him where I was born and how I had come to be a warrior. I told him of Magdeburg and what followed. I told him of Sabrina. I told him of my meeting with Lucifer and of my journey to Hell. I told him of the bargai
n, of Lucifer’s expectations. I told him what it was I sought—or rather what I thought it was.

  We walked along the bank of the stream as I spoke and he nodded, murmured his understanding and very occasionally asked for clarification. He seemed delighted by what I had to say, and when I had finished he tugged at my arm and we stopped again. He removed his plumed hat and stroked at his carefully made curls. He fingered his little beard. He smiled and looked at the water. He brought his attention back to me.

  “The Grail exists,” he said. “And you are sensible to call it that because it frequently takes the form of a cup.”

  “You have seen it?” I asked.

  “I believe I have seen it, on my travels, sir. When I travelled.”

  “So the legend of the Pure Knight deceives us?”

  “It depends somewhat upon your definition of purity, I think,” said Groot. “But suffice to say the thing is useless in the hands of one who would do evil with it. And as to the definition of evil, we can accept the crude, commonplace definition well enough here, I think. A certain amount of altruism exists in all of us and if properly maintained and mixed with appropriate self-interest, it can produce a happy man who gives offence neither to Heaven nor to Hell.”

  “I have heard that you refuse loyalty to either God or the Devil,” I said.

  “That’s true. I doubt if I shall ever choose sides. My investigations and my philosophy do not lead me in their direction at all.” He shrugged. “But who knows? I am yet a relatively young man …”

  “You accept their existence, however?”

  “Why, sir, you confirm it!”

  “You believe that I have been the guest of Lucifer, that I am now His servant?”

  “I must accept it, sir.”

  “And you will help me?”

  “As much as I can. The Grail can be found, I believe, in a place known as the Forest at the Edge of Heaven. You will discover it, I am sure, marked on your charts. It lies on the farthest border of Mittelmarch. You must find it in the west.”

  “And are there any rituals I must follow?” I asked Philander Groot. “I seem to recall…”

  “Ritual is the truth made into a child’s game, at best. You will know what is for the best, I am sure.”