Kingdom of the Grail by Judith Tarr Page A

and shadow across that face and that wonder of a body.
    His own body was burning, his manly parts in outright pain. There was no thought in his head but to take what she so freely, so irresistibly offered. A very distant flicker of sanity cried to him to run, but even as he thought of it, she had him in her arms. She smelled of spices, and of something darker, closer to earth. Her lips fastened on his. Her body wound itself about him.
    On his breast over his heart, warmth mounted to heat, and heat to the agony of fire. He reached to tear at the amulet, to cast it away, but his hands were caught, trapped in hers. He could not breathe: she had kissed the breath from him. He was drowning. He was—
    Somehow, impossibly, he found strength to thrust her away. But she only wound the tighter, the harder he fought. She did not laugh as a woman might when she had a man in her clutches. The only sound she made was a hiss.
    His sight was going dark. He was dying. He was calm, unafraid. She was killing him, crushing the breath from him, sapping his warmth, draining the life from his body. She did it deliberately, coldly, as a snake will take its prey.
    No.
    It was not even a word. It was pure will. Her arms held him fast, her legs wound about him, her body pinning him to earth.
    But she could not hold a falcon. He was too small, too swift. The falcon saw no woman at all but a snake, a supple black-and-silver thing coiled tight round empty space. He soared up and up amid the branches of the trees. The sky was free above him.
    He turned his back on it. He clapped wings to sides and plummeted, beak and talons wide. The full weight and force of him caught the serpent where it lay, just behind the flat wicked head.
    It thrashed in agony, battering tree-boles, spraying water from the stream. He clung for his life, gnawing, clawing,grinding down through scales and hide to the supple joinings of the spine. To rend, to tear, to break—to kill.
    The serpent’s throes flung him bruisingly against the ground. He beat with wings, struggling to catch air, to rise before the creature crushed him. It was heavy, so heavy, far too heavy to be an earthly serpent. The weight in it was magic: old and cold, black and deep.
    He was light and fire. He was Merlin’s child, the master’s pupil. He was the champion of the sword. He rose up with all his strength, lifting the serpent with him, high and high. When he had reached the summit of heaven, he cast his burden down. He flung it headlong, crashing through branches, striking the earth with crushing force; he flung himself after it, dropping like a stone. He cared not at all if his own body was broken. Only that the enemy was destroyed.
    It lay unmoving on the tumbled ground. Black blood seeped out of it. Its back was broken. Its eyes were flat, empty of life.
    He tore at it with his sharp hooked beak. Its blood tasted of grave-spices and of old tombs. He gagged on it in revulsion so fierce that it shook him out of hawk-shape into bruised and naked humanity.
    No woman lay there, nor serpent either, but a creature who was somewhat of both. Roland knew that long pale face, that colorless hair, that shaved circle of tonsure. Of the monk’s robe he saw nothing. The naked body was hairless, sexless, not a woman’s nor yet a man’s. Faintly on its sides he caught the glimmer of scales.
    With a deep shudder he recoiled. Ganelon’s servant was dead. His—its neck was broken. But that alone had not killed it. On its smooth and nippleless chest was a raw red wound. It was as if a coal had burned through flesh and bone to the living heart.
    The amulet was hot against Roland’s skin—not hot enough to burn, not quite, but very close. He clasped it with a hand that could not stop trembling. Its song was as clear as he had ever heard it, a high sweet singing like the music that drove the spheres of heaven. White magic, high magic. It had protected him; saved him.
    Even high magic