Grailstone Gambit. James Axler

      

      Grailstone Gambit

      Outlanders^®

      James Axler

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Contents

      Acknowledgment

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Chapter 30

      Chapter 31

      Chapter 32

      Chapter 33

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgment

      Special thanks to Mark Ellis for his contribution to the Outlanders concept, developed for Gold Eagle.

      Prologue

      Cornwall, the Penwith Peninsula

      To the measured thunder of drums and the skirl of pipes, the warriors of the grail danced among the Merry Maidens.

      The glow of the full Moon struck gray highlights on the stones that stood in a circle on the moor. The dark megaliths loomed like weathered sentinels, standing guard over the passing aeons. Centuries of erosion had carved deep fissures and furrows across their surfaces.

      Many times in the dim past, the six-and seven-foot-tall stones had watched humans dance within their embrace, performing their ceremonies to bring rain or increase fertility. This night, the gathering was no common dance ritual.

      The circle was full of excited people and more little groups straggled in across the moor. They were not dressed in the homespun linen usual for farmers or fisherfolk—the men wore leather and brass warrior’s harnesses, and the moonlight glittered from spearpoints and great broadswords. Peat and faggots had been laid in a shallow trench around the megaliths and they flamed with fish oil, so the ring leaped high with a border of flame.

      The beat of the bodhrains, the Celtic drums, and the fierce screech of the pipes sped up the heartbeat and sent the blood coursing. The air was heavy with the smell of smoke and home-brewed poteen.

      As graceful as cats, the women danced to the wild music. Their skirts slit at the sides, and wearing silver ornaments on their pale limbs, they laughed as they circled the great stone slab in the center of the ring of standing stones. The slab crawled with symbols and glyphs, cup-shaped hollows surrounded by labyrinthine spirals. Radial lines stretched out in all directions.

      The people knew the spiral patterns symbolized the maze of life and death, the departure from the womb and the return to it. The women clapped their hands and sang as they went through the wild, twisting convolutions of the dance that mimicked the designs cut into the stone.

      A tall woman came forward, her carriage as erect and as straight as a tree. Her simple black robe clung to her supple figure. A scarlet sash girded her narrow waist. The fabric of the robe was so gauzy it concealed nothing, clinging to her breasts and buttocks and thighs like a layer of oil.

      The woman’s long hair was as blue-black as a raven’s wing, intricately woven into round braids on either side of her head, with some strands spilling artlessly over her bosom. Fair skinned, her childlike face seemed all big eyes and full lips.

      Her eyes were a black so deep, they were almost obsidian. Her hands were crossed over the hilt of a long, slender, golden sword. The point nearly dragged in the dirt. A man walked beside her. He wore a bronze helmet bearing the design of a goblet with a many-boughed tree growing out of it. The same image was worked into the boss of the round shield he carried on his left arm. In his right he gripped a six-foot-long lance.

      He pushed the dancers aside, making a path for the tall woman. At the thick stone slab, she raised the sword and struck it three times with the edge. Bell-like chimes rose above the cacophony of music and song, shivering and vibrating through the air.

      Abruptly the drummers ceased beating and the pipers lowered their instruments. Utter silence fell as if a gigantic jar had dropped over the stone circle. Everyone dropped to their knees, facing the slab. Nothing moved, only the wavering of shadows from the flames in the surrounding trench.

      The silence lasted for nearly a minute. Then a blossom of light sprouted from the center of the stone slab. Threads of blue witchfire streaked along the grooves of the carvings, pulsing like the lifeblood through a circulatory system. In an instant, the entire inscribed surface of the stone blazed with a webwork of dancing light.

      The kneeling crowd drew a single breath and then released it in one prolonged gasp of awe.

      A bolt of energy erupted like a column of lightning. Instead of shooting straight up, it described a 360-degree parabolic fountain, emerging from and returning to the center of the stone, arcing back on itself in an ever-tightening spiral of energy.

      The cascade of light spun like a diminishing cyclone, shedding sparks and thread-thin static discharges. As quickly as it appeared, the glowing light vanished, as if it had been sucked back into the stone. A tall figure stood there, leaning on a long wooden staff.

      The kneeling assembly only stared, unmoving, as if transfixed by the light, eyes swimming with multicolored spots, shaken and stunned. The absolute silence was broken abruptly by a sharp crack as the figure rapped on the stone with the end of the staff.

      “I greet you, my brothers, my sisters, my children—my warriors of the grail!”

      The people leaped to their feet, roaring one name over and over: “Myrrdian! Myrrdian!”

      The gaunt man standing inside the stone circle was old, his long, thin face a parchment of tiny furrows. The long hair that spilled from beneath the edges of a dark gray helmet was the color of aged ivory. The incurving jaw guards of the helmet framed the slash of his mouth. The forepart swept down his forehead like a widow’s peak made of silver. Right above the peak, a sphere of metal bulged outward like a blind third eye.

      Despite his white hair and seamed face, Myrrdian’s eyes were a compelling, opalescent golden color. A faint interlocking pattern of scales ringed his brow ridges, extending over and meeting at the bridge of his nose.

      He wore an ankle-length cloak of midnight-blue caught at the throat by a golden-jeweled torque. The illumination from the full Moon struck dancing highlights on the shiny metal strands that wove a pattern of arcane symbols throughout the fabric of the cloak. Beneath it he wore