The Chapel Perilous Read online

  Other Works By Kevin Hearne

  Don’t miss the Iron Druid Chronicles, listed here in chronological order:

  Book 1: Hounded

  Book 2: Hexed

  Book 3: Hammered

  Book 4: Tricked

  Novella: Two Ravens and One Crow

  Book 5: Trapped

  Book 6: Hunted

  Book 7: Shattered (available June 2014)

  Further tales of the Iron Druid Chronicles:

  Novella: Grimoire of the Lamb

  “Clan Rathskeller” (free on website)

  “Kaibab Unbound”

  “A Test of Mettle” (free on website)

  “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” in the Carniepunk anthology

  kevinhearne.com

  Copyright

  “The Chapel Perilous” is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Kevin Hearne. This story first appeared in the anthology Unfettered, edited by Shawn Speakman.

  All rights reserved.

  Dudes. Please don’t jack my work without givin’ me a lil’ something for writing it. I’m trying to save up enough to score my kid a sandwich. :) You have my sincere thanks for buying it!

  eBook ISBN 978-0-9914238-0-4

  Cover Art © 2014 by Galen Dara

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Other Works by Kevin Hearne

  Copyright

  Author's Note

  The Chapel Perilous

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  For quite some time I’ve been fascinated by the old Grail legends that developed in several countries of western Europe but today are largely associated with England. The legends illustrate how our stories and beliefs evolve over time, for the Grail originally had nothing to do with the Christian mythology that got stapled onto it in later iterations.

  Modern scholars have filled many pages trying to figure out the pagan origins of the grail, most notably Jessie L. Weston’s From Ritual to Romance that inspired portions of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Since several scholars have suggested that the grail was of Celtic origin and in fact may have been Dagda’s Cauldron—a far cry from the cup of Christ—I could not resist the opportunity to explore that idea in “The Chapel Perilous.”

  The Chapel Perilous is a feature of many grail legends, a final challenge that the questing knight must face before he’s ready to see the Fisher King, the keeper of the grail. Though the details vary from version to version, it’s definitely not a place of peace; it’s uniformly creepy, often surrounded by a graveyard and suggesting an abandonment or test of faith more than anything else. In the early Gawain story, the knight comes upon the Chapel Perilous in the rain and must face a rather terrifying Black Hand.

  I originally wrote this story for an anthology edited by Shawn Speakman called Unfettered. Apart from the fact that proceeds went to pay off his medical debt after his fight with cancer, it gave me a chance to indulge my penchant for mythological geekery and provide some backstory on Atticus that wouldn’t fit into the regular chronology of the series. The frame of the story is set during Granuaile’s training period after the events of Two Ravens and One Crow but four years prior to the events of Trapped. Hope you enjoy this glimpse into the past of Atticus O’Sullivan before he became the Iron Druid.

  —Kevin Hearne

  Stories are sometimes born in fire, but regardless of origin they always live around fires and grow in the telling. If bellies are full and the veins pulse with a flagon or two, why then, all the better for the story. Sometimes, as a Druid, stories are expected of me. People just assume I’m a part-time bard as well.

  Oberon said. We were taking a break from training by camping on the Mogollon Rim near Knoll Lake. After cooking fresh trout over our campfire for dinner, we were relaxing with hot cocoa and roasting marshmallows.

  “You want a story?” I said aloud. My apprentice couldn’t hear my hound yet; she was still four years away from being bound to the earth and practicing magic. To be polite and include her, I sometimes spoke aloud to Oberon by way of inviting her into the conversation.

  “Usually he wants snacks,” Granuaile said. “I’d go for a story, though. It’s a nice night for one.”

  Oberon said.

  “All right, what are you in the mood for?”

 

  Granuaile didn’t hear any of that, so she spoke over him and offered her own suggestion: “I want a story where you took part in an historical event—a famous one.”

  “All right.” I paused to think and plucked a gooey marshmallow off a steel stake before answering. “How about the quest for the Holy Grail?”

 

  “No way!” my apprentice said. “You weren’t a Knight of the Round Table!”

  “No, absolutely not,” I agreed. “But the Grail legends didn’t start out as highly Christianized tales about Arthur and Lancelot and so on. They were based on the adventures of one man—a Druid, as it happens—and then that story got changed, the way stories do, in the telling and retelling of it around hearthfires and campfires like this one.”

  Granuaile crossed her arms. “So you not only know the original story of the Grail, you’re telling me you actually found it?”

  “Yes. It was my quest.”

  She still thought I was bluffing. “Who gave you the quest?”

  “Ogma of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

  “All right, fine. And what was the Grail? I mean, it couldn’t have been the cup at the Last Supper or anything, right?”

  “No, that whole business with Joseph of Arimathea and the cup of Christ was a later addition. Hell, King Arthur’s story was pulled almost entirely out of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ass. There were about six hundred fifty years separating the events themselves and the first written account of them that survived to the modern day. Plenty of time to screw everything up and fabricate large portions of it. What the poets eventually called the Grail was Dagda’s Cauldron, one of the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which could feed an army and never empty—it was an all-you-could-eat forever sort of deal.”

 

  “You went on a quest to steal Dagda’s Cauldron and that got turned into the quest for the Holy Grail?”

  “Sort of. Somebody else stole Dagda’s Cauldron. It was my quest to steal it back.”

  “So who were you? Lancelot? Galahad?”

  “No, stories about those guys got created later. I was the lad who went galloping around the country telling everyone my name was Gawain.”

  Granuaile shook her head in disbelief. “Okay, sensei, let’s hear it,” she said.

  Oberon added.

  The Tuatha Dé Danann are loath to put themselves in harm’s way when someone else can be harmed in their stead. With this in mind, in 537 AD, Ogma approached me on the far reaches of continental Saxon territory with a task he thought I’d find attractive. It wasn’t the first time he had asked for my services; he’d asked me to raid the Library at Alexandria once because he’d foreseen its destruction.

/>   “Some bloody Pictish git has stolen Dagda’s cauldron and taken it into the western territory of the Britons,” he told me. He was referring to what would eventually become Wales; at this time the Britons there were just beginning to form their Welsh identity. “But he’s spread some sort of arcane fog across the area, preventing us from divining his precise location and from shifting directly there. We need someone who can go in there and take the cauldron back.”

  “And I was your first choice?”

  “No, we’ve sent some others in as well.”

  I noticed the “we” but didn’t comment. “Other Druids?”

  “Aye, there are few enough of you left, but there were a couple willing to go.”

  “Sounds bereft of entertainment or profit to me,” I said.

  “Did you not hear me, lad? We can’t see into the area and can’t shift there. Considering that you’ve been on the run a good while now, does that not hold some attraction to you?”

  He was hoping I’d jump at any chance to escape the eyes and ears of Aenghus Óg, the Irish god who wanted me dead, but I shrugged. “It sounds like I’m trading a god who wants to kill me for a mad Pict with a giant pair o’ balls and some magical talent. One’s not necessarily better than the other.”

  Ogma laughed. “Fair enough. But you’ll be earnin’ my gratitude on top of it. The Dagda is me brother, you know.”

  “I thought I earned your gratitude already for that favor I did you down in Egypt.”

  “True. But this would be more gratitude.”

  Unspoken was the certainty that my refusal would mean less gratitude.

  “All right. Get me a good horse and a proper kit from Goibhniu so that I look like I deserve respect. Shift me as close as you can and point me in the right direction. I’ll make up the rest as I go.”

  “Attaboy,” Ogma said and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll see you soon.”

  It was a week before I saw him again, but he had the promised armor from Goibhniu and a fine horse for me to ride. There were also provisions for the both of us. I changed happily into my kit, feeling optimistic for the first time in months, and then we shifted through Tír na nÓg to a spot near the old Roman road leading west from Gloucester. It was raining heavily.

  “I’d forgotten the rain here,” I said. “And you didn’t remind me, did you?”

  Ogma ignored my complaint and pointed west. “Go that way.”

  “How far before Aenghus Óg won’t be able to sense my magic or divine my location?”

  “Not far at all. You’ll sense the change once you pass through it. My advice is to make friends with your horse before you do. I’ve heard they spook easily in there.”

  “What can you tell me about the Pict?”

  Ogma shrugged. “He’s mean and ugly.”

  “Right. Onward then.”

  Ogma wished me well and shifted back to Tír na nÓg, leaving me alone in the rain.

  The horse snorted and looked at me uncertainly. I approached him calmly and petted his neck, slowly introducing my consciousness to his, so that he would pick up on my emotions and vice versa. What I got in response was much more than that.

  the horse said.

  I was startled to hear his voice in my head. One of who?

 

  Where did you learn language?

 

  It appeared that Ogma had taken my request quite literally; he’d not only gotten a kit from Goibhniu, but the smith god’s personal horse. And it was because of this experience that I began to teach my animal companions language from that time forward.

  I am called Gawain, I said. Do you have a name?

 

  I checked the provisions and found a significant store of apples in one of the saddle bags. I removed one and offered it to Apple Jack.

  he said, taking it from my fingers with his lips and then crunching down.

  Well, it depends on what scares you. I can’t commit to a blanket statement like that. What if you get scared by the scent of an attractive woman?

 

  Goibhniu has trained you very well.

 

  I’ll bet he did. I threw my leg over Apple Jack, gathered the reins, and gave him a friendly slap or two on the neck. Let us sally forth, my good horse! Follow the road west. To danger and glory!

 

  Danger and glory? No. I was being dramatic.

 

  Point taken.

  We plodded forward because one does not trot, canter, or even manage a respectable walk in such weather. In less than a mile, however, the character of the rain changed. Instead of a proper downpour with respectable drops, it became a splattery, aggressive mist that couldn’t decide which direction to fall. It whipped me in the face from both directions and did its best to fall into my ears and leap up into my nostrils. It argued with cold, implacable determination that there was no clothing I could wear that would allow me to be even mildly comfortable. And something else happened in terms of pressure; my ears popped. We must be under the fog that Ogma had mentioned.

  The temperature dropped as well and the trees along the road did not seem to be the sort that would hide a band of merry men. They rather offered a surplus of gloom and rot underneath their canopies. The sky was nothing but a diluted wash of ink, gray swirling brushstrokes of moisture. I felt miserable and unwelcome and began to wonder if I had made an imprudent decision. Apple Jack expressed similar sentiments. Repeatedly. We were slowly turning into frozen avatars of anxiety. Dreadsicles. Doompops.

  The forest rustled at nightfall. Growls from predators and shrieks from prey were followed by cracks and wet squelching noises and very loud chewing sounds. I built us a makeshift shelter between two trees, binding fallen branches into a rough roof that bridged the gap and kept off the worst of the rain.

  Apple Jack asked.

  This will do just as well, I said, building a fire underneath the roof. I’ve asked the local elemental to keep the hungry animals at bay. Now all you have to worry about are unnatural predators.

 

  Ghosts. Witches. Goblins. The usual.

  Apple Jack tossed his head and stamped nervously.

  Hey, calm down—

 

  Settle down! There aren’t any goblins! I was only joking!

  Apple Jack’s ears flattened against his head and he showed me his teeth.

  Sorry. I know it’s spooky out there but we’re not in terrible peril yet. I’m sure that’s a few days down the road at least.

 

  I got him a couple of apples and a bag of oats to atone for my teasing and I spent some time brushing him down. I told him the legend of the Fine Filly Fionnait, the white mare of Munster, and that comforted him enough so that we could both get some sleep. Before shaking out my wet blanket, however, I spent a wee bit of time modifying the sole of my right boot. I cut a hole in it so that I would still be able to maintain contact with the earth and draw on its magic, but hope
fully it would not be the sort of thing that people would notice or, failing that, remark upon.

  The rain stopped sometime during our slumber, but promptly began again in the morning once we emerged from our temporary shelter.

  Apple Jack said.

  Who are they?

 

  Usually I’m the paranoid one.

 

  I’m guessing you’re not Goibhniu’s war horse.

  Aside from the rain and our collective fears, we had little to complain about that day. In the afternoon we chanced upon an inn with a stable and decided to call the day’s ride early. We weren’t in a terrible hurry and a bit of comfort would be welcome. After I’d put Apple Jack up in a nice stall with plenty of feed, it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen anyone taking the road out of the area. No one had passed me in either direction. Yet the stables were quite nearly full, which meant the inn—called the Silver Stallion, according to the shingle outside—must be packed with travelers. Perhaps they were all waiting for the rain to end?

  No. That’s not what they were doing. I quickly discovered that the reason no one was leaving the area toward Gloucester was that they couldn’t.

  “Here’s another one!” a salty old codger said when I walked in the door. “Welcome to hell, good sir.”

  I quickly scanned the inn. It didn’t look hellish, nor did anyone’s body language suggest that they were going to give me hell. The customers simply looked depressed as they lounged at tables and benches with flagons of ale and stared at plates of half-eaten cheeses.

  “Thank you,” I replied, keeping my voice low. “Why is this hell, though? I missed it.”

  “We’re condemned to stay here for eternity,” the old man explained, “and it’s certainly not heaven.” Medieval logic.

  “You can’t leave when you want?”

  “Oh, sure, you can leave. But you’ll be back. Take the road toward Gloucester and you’ll find yourself right back here. I’ve gone to Gloucester three times now, only to arrive back at the Silver Sodding Stallion each time.”