To Dream of Dreamers Lost: Book 3 of The Grails Covenant Trilogy Page 2

  The first of the steel bands snapped easily, leaving only two circling the ends of the case. There was a sudden banging from within, a hysterical, scrabbling sound. Montrovant ignored it. He went first to one end of the case, then to the other, snapping the restraints as if they were paper.

  “Behold our enemy,” he hissed. He grasped the edge of the case, stepping back, and the lid came away in a sudden motion, revealing the man—creature—that lay inside.

  Abraham shivered convulsively, wracked with hunger. He fought to surge toward those who gaped at him, fought to make his way to the blood that pounded through their veins, but his struggles were vain and pointless. The steel cords still bound him, and now Montrovant stepped forward to take those cords in his powerful hands, lifting Abraham as if he were a child.

  Staring into his captive’s wild, manic eyes, Montrovant’s smile slipped to a sneer of contempt.

  “You have made two grave mistakes, friend Abraham. You chose to serve the wrong masters, and you allowed me to catch you at it. Do you have anything to tell me, or shall I put you back in your little box—forever?”

  Abraham twisted and squirmed, sobbing with his need, and with the shame of his captivity.

  “I…I know nothing. They…left me behind. They…promised, but…”

  Montrovant, his sneer becoming a snarl, shook the rope savagely. The cords bit into Abraham’s weakened flesh, and he cried out in agony.

  “I don’t give a damn about their promises. I want to know where they’ve gone.”

  “I don’t know,” Abraham choked out. “I don’t know. The night fell, and they were gone. I found the vault open and empty, just as it was when you took me. I don’t know any more than you…please believe me. Please…”

  Abraham swiveled his head, and his gaze locked onto du Puy’s, the nearest source of warmth and blood. He began to gibber meaninglessly, his eyes rolling in on themselves, his lips drawing back to reveal the fangs beneath. Even though Montrovant held him as easily as before, this transformation from coherent man to slavering beast set du Puy back a pace. The tall knight muttered an oath under his breath.

  Montrovant threw back his head and laughed uproariously.

  “He will not harm you, my friend. He will harm none of God’s children from this moment forth. Of that you may be certain. He may not be able to provide me with the information I require, but he can provide entertainment, and you have no idea how valuable that gift can be to one such as I.”

  Jeanne Le Duc stepped forward with a chilly smile, ignoring Abraham’s writhing, twisting form. “My lord, we must act. This…child…he knows nothing. We must take the trail before the scent has vanished to the shadows.”

  “And so we shall,” Montrovant replied, tossing Abraham contemptuously into the wooden case and turning from him without even deigning to glance downward. “We will leave at dawn. You must set your affairs in order and be ready to ride, all of you.

  “Our honor, and our position with Mother Church are at stake. The Order must be rooted out, the treasures returned to the Church where we can guard them properly, and this failure put to rest.”

  There was no sound for a long moment when Montrovant had finished speaking, but every eye gleamed in anticipation. There was none among them comfortable within a castle’s walls for long, and this promised to be a long and treacherous adventure indeed.

  “Go,” Montrovant said finally, dismissing them. “I will take care of this one, and I will meet you at the temple gates before dawn. Ride, and may God be by your side.”

  “And also at yours,” they intoned as one, turning and heading for the door.

  Montrovant watched them leave in silence. Behind him, Abraham flopped helplessly in the casket-like wooden case. He was face down, and his neck and back were bent at odd angles from the position into which he’d fallen.

  Montrovant turned back to him.

  “So, my friend, you are as weak in spirit as you are unwise in choosing your companions. I should have expected as much. How could you believe, after all the years they have hoarded their famous ‘Grail blood,’ that they would share it with such as you? You cannot even control your own hunger.”

  Abraham groaned, but he did not speak.

  “I have a special treatment for what ails you. It is more than you deserve. What I should do is drain you dry myself, take what small strength you possess, and leave your dust to be spread by the feet of peasants. That would be fitting, and the memory of it would amuse me.

  “Unfortunately, I am to be denied that pleasure. I need you to perform a service for me, a service that will prove invaluable to my upcoming quest. You will be my messenger to that bumbling fool Santorini. The message I wish to send cannot be carried by one of my own. They would not understand it.”

  With a supreme effort, Abraham lifted his head from the floor of the wooden case, twisting his face to the side. He spoke, slowly and barely coherently—an icy calmness seeping into his voice. Montrovant grinned widely, leaning closer to hear.

  “You will never find them. They have left me, and they will elude you.” He paused, collecting more of his ebbing strength, then continued. “You are a fool.”

  Montrovant stared at Abraham for a long moment, then threw back his head and laughed uproariously. He shook with mirth until he nearly collapsed back across the polished mahogany surface of his desk.

  “Oh, truly, truly I have misjudged you,” he choked. “You have more spirit than I would have dreamed.

  “Know this, though,” Montrovant regained control of himself, “you know nothing of my motives, or my dreams. I will find them, but not for the Church, and not for those who follow me, whatever they might believe. I will find them, and I will find the Grail. I have nothing but time, you see, and it is a worthy challenge.

  “For now, the mantle of the Templars and the shelter of the Church suit me. Tomorrow? Who can say. The Templars have come and gone, and always I have been there. If I leave them, they may fade, but I will go on.”

  Montrovant grabbed the steel ropes again, pulling Abraham upright.

  “Enough of this. It is nearly dawn, and I must be gone soon, as you must soon do me the service of which I spoke. Come.”

  He began walking, half-leading, half-dragging Abraham behind him like a dog on a leash. There was nothing Abraham could do but try to keep from falling and being dragged bodily. Montrovant never once looked back.

  They made their way slowly to the upper levels of Montrovant’s keep and finally exited through a huge wooden door onto the walls themselves. Abraham felt a wave of giddiness wash through him as he looked down from the height, unable to use his arms for balance. He leaned as far from the precipitous drop as possible.

  “There,” Montrovant exclaimed, gesturing at the horizon. “There is your fate. You will be given a chance that you do not deserve, to live. It will be a grand battle for your soul, if you are a believer.”

  He searched Abraham’s eyes, looking for some reaction. Shaking his head, satisfied, he turned toward the mountains in the distance again. “Well, then, without faith, it will purge you as well. A cleansing. A rebirth of strength and spirit.

  “Of course, if you fail the test, and I expect that you shall, it will be a searing, blazing world of pain that will extinguish your sanity and leave you a pile of bitter ashes, making you a tribute to those you would have served.”

  Montrovant heaved his arm aloft suddenly, carrying his captive helplessly into the air and holding him as easily as he might a pint of ale.

  “You will hang from this wall, and you will meet the sunrise. If you can find a way to free yourself while the ability to outrun our friend Death leaks through your sorry frame, then you can begin to rebuild your mind and soul. You will have the greatest of motivations and purposes, things you do not possess now. You will have revenge. You will have my face, my voice, to draw you onward.

  “I do not believe we will ever meet again, but I pray that we do. Some men crave women, others crave wine and so
ng. I crave diversion.”

  He lowered Abraham over the side of the wall, letting the rope settle onto a huge metal spike that jutted out from the stone. Once his captive hung freely, Montrovant released the cord and stepped back.

  Abraham swung like a pendulum, the steel cord biting into his skin as the pull of gravity dragged him earthward. He struggled uselessly against the pain that threatened to blank his mind. On the horizon, a reddish glow was rising to paint the morning clouds. It would be less than an hour before the sun crested those mountains.

  “Die well, my friend.” Montrovant intoned, backing away slowly. “If you should survive until that fool Santorini arrives, tell him where I have gone. Tell him what I have told you. His knights are gone. They were never his. His treasures are gone; they were always mine. Tell him he may care for my keep against my return, though I may not do so during his lifetime.

  “If he comes too close, drain his useless carcass and use his strength to come after me. I would like that very much.”

  Then there was only silence. Abraham tried to control his thoughts, fought to gain purchase against the wall, but already the fingers of dawn were crawling over the horizon. He already felt the biting touch of the sun’s rays. He began to scream, loud, ragged cries that split the silence of the morning air and echoed off across the plains.

  Moments later, swathed in dark robes and a huge black hat, the cross of the Templars blazing on his back, Montrovant rode through the gates of the keep. For just a moment, on the crest of the first ridge beyond those gates, he reined in his horse, turning to watch, and to salute Abraham’s tortured form. Then he turned again and was gone, flashing across the land.

  Time, his eternal ally, was against him this once. The trail cooled with each passing second. He whipped his horse into a gallop, leaning forward and pressing into the animal’s flesh. He could sense its fear, but he controlled it, pushing it beyond its limits, making for the gates of the temple.

  Somewhere in the distance the blood of the ancients called out to him, and he answered that call. The screams echoing at his back seemed to wish him Godspeed.

  TWO

  Santorini’s mount labored under a full load, but the bishop hurried it along just the same. Santorini knew Montrovant’s hours, and he knew he had precious few of them to reach the dark one before it would become a matter of another day, rather than another portion of an hour. Montrovant was “unavailable” during the daylight hours, and Santorini, for one, had no desire to test the limits of this. Nor did he care to know why.

  Images clouded his mind, some from the night just past, others from shadows further back in time. Bishop Santorini had known and feared Montrovant for exactly the same number of days, hours, minutes and seconds. The first moment the dark one had been ushered into the same room with him, Santorini’s heart had gone cold and dead inside. Montrovant’s eyes had pinioned the bishop in place, rooting his feet so securely that he doubted a strong man could have dislodged him from that position at a full run.

  Now it had grown worse. Though Santorini truly believed in God, and the Church, he also believed in evil. Montrovant was a strong evil, and Santorini himself was only a mediocre good. His heart was willing, but his flesh was as human as the next, unless that next was named Montrovant. The dark one had seen this in Santorini from the start, had known how to play against the bishop’s insecurities. It was that quick glimpse of insight that had led Montrovant to request the bishop as the Church’s emissary in his own dealings.

  Montrovant’s keep appeared on the horizon, the first hints of dawn’s light creeping over the mountain tops. Santorini did not see the flapping, flailing shadow dangling against the structure’s stone side until he’d come much closer, and even then it seemed nothing more than some odd banner that had broken free of its ties. He paid it no mind, concentrating his energy on the confrontation to come.

  Montrovant would never allow Mother Church to dictate terms. The bishop knew that well enough. It was Santorini’s unenviable task to try to convince his own superiors that they were in charge of this mess while pacifying Montrovant’s ego. Seeing the red rays of sunlight working their way more forcefully over the horizon, Santorini dug his heels into the horse’s side roughly. He had worked long and hard this night to get the permissions and signatures necessary for the re-forging of Montrovant’s alliance. He had no intention of leaving the keep empty-handed.

  As he rode up beneath the castle wall, he heard Abraham’s lost, mindless screaming, saw in an instant the wildly gyrating form, the smoke rising, and though Bishop Santorini was not a genius for observation, the scene clarified for him in an instant.

  Leaping from his mount, not even bothering to tie the animal up, he rushed up the stairs to the huge, ornate double doors and pounded. Then, mustering every ounce of courage his God could spare him, he turned the handle and pulled. The doors swung open easily, greased and mechanically perfect, as eerie in their smooth operation as Montrovant was in his unshakable control. Slipping inside, Santorini made straight for the stairs. Whoever was up there needed his help, and it was obvious that if Montrovant were in the keep he was not of a mind to assist his guest.

  If he were lucky, the bishop mused, Montrovant was long gone, thought that would open an entirely new set of problems to debate. The Church Fathers were already unhappy with Santorini’s dealings with the “knights.” This would erode what confidence he’d given them in his ability to handle the situation.

  He passed the door to the study, where he’d stood the night before, and a shiver of fear raced up his spine. His quick strides became a run, and he was making his way out onto the upper wall of the keep in moments. Long before he reached that wall, he heard the screams.

  No human voice could have uttered the sound that assaulted him. No man had such pain, or such strength, within him. This knowledge nearly stopped the bishop in his tracks. If not a man, what? Montrovant?

  Bishop Santorini tried to envision a creature, or a man, strong enough to leave the dark one in such a position. Then he tried to envision himself saving Montrovant from the wall, from the light of day. He tried, and he failed. If it was Montrovant hanging from that wall, he knew, he would turn, and he would walk away, eternal soul be damned. On the other hand, if it were an enemy of the dark one’s, then perhaps he was about to find an ally.

  Moving quickly so his cowardly heart could not fail him, muttering prayer after prayer under his breath and knowing that the pounding of his heart must be drowning out the words, he slipped to the edge of the wall and peered over.

  The gaze that met his froze him as surely as a cloak of ice. Eyes, deep, hollow, both hideous and compelling at once, snagged his. Sound flowed incessantly over the thing’s lips; though it had the aspect of a man, Santorini knew he faced a demon. No man could have withstood the depth of anguish in that expression. No man’s skin would smoke where the morning sunlight hit it, and no man save Montrovant had ever held the bishop so easily with the power of his eyes alone.

  The thing was trying to claw its way up the wall, trying to rip into the very stone of the keep itself with fingers covered only in a thin, shredded coating of flesh, but those hands were bound with what looked to be steel wire. More wire bound the creature’s arms to its side, and it was from this binding that it hung.

  Santorini saw that with an effort he could lean far enough over the wall to reach that wire, and he knew that, despite his portly, ungainly appearance, there was sufficient strength in him to lift that thing over the wall and to haul it out of the sunlight. He started to lean, actually dangled his arm over that wall, nearly into the grasping, claw-like hand that reached toward him. His mind was drifting, and a wave of nausea hit him hard, half from the dizzying height, from leaning out over the void below, and half from fear and loathing, from the stench of the creature’s breath and the horrible power of its dying eyes. He cursed the guilt in his heart that would not let the thing burn.

  He hung over that ledge, not leaning closer, not retre
ating, suspended in time as surely as he was in that position of precarious balance, and as he watched the sun rose, oblivious to the drama below.

  Suddenly a hideous screech rent the air, and the creature’s back burst into sudden flame. Without thought, Santorini acted. He reached over the wall, grabbed the wire rope, somehow evading the groping taloned hands, and he heaved upward. At first it seemed he had misjudged, that it would be too much for him, but then, suddenly, fired by his anger at Montrovant, and the rush of adrenaline through his veins gifted him by his fear, his balance shifted back, and the rope snapped up and over the wall, flinging the creature past him and slamming it into the stone behind.

  The bonds still held him/it as it writhed in the shadows, trying to put out the hideous flames and only half-succeeding, but they could do nothing to disguise the hunger, the madness washing across the thing’s features. Santorini stepped back, then further, watching in morbid fascination. The flames had receded, but the rays of the sunrise had not yet slipped up over the edge of the wall.

  It was one thing to grab the dangling wire and yank the creature to the relative safety of the top of the wall, but what faced the bishop now was a more difficult task. How could he get near enough to pull the writhing thing from the sunlight without being bitten, attacked, or overwhelmed? Despite its captivity, Santorini did not doubt the outcome if it got hold of him.

  Moving cautiously forward, avoiding direct eye contact, the bishop spoke.

  “I don’t know everything there is to know about what has happened to you, but I know that if the sun is allowed to fall full upon you, it will be your death…or a second death…” The bishop hesitated for just a second, then plunged on. “I need to get you inside, to the shade, and you need to tell me what it is that you need to heal. If you attack me, you will not survive. There is no time for it. You must trust me.”

  There was a flicker of something—understanding?—in the thing’s eyes, but it did not speak. Santorini took another step forward, and though those dark, smoldering eyes watched his every movement, holding him as hypnotically as a snake might a mouse, there was no motion to attack.