The Black Chalice by Marie Jakober

me again, until I was angry, and hit him with all my strength. I almost broke my wrist, and he laughed.
    I thought he was cruel then, but I could see now he was right. In truth, I had seen it already in Jerusalem. The crusader knights were brave and sturdy; they endured hardship as well as my father ever had.Yet in their morals they were weak, because everything they suffered was only from necessity, never from choice. When the fighting was over they forgot it all. They let the city fill up again with infidels; they reveled in the taverns and the brothels every chance they had; they dressed themselves in rich garments and hired fine Egyptian cooks, while the priests who came with them shook their heads, and the Saracens spat in the dust when they thought no one was looking: God’s people, indeed….
    Thinking about all these things, I lost track of time, and did not pay attention to what passed at the table, until I heard the soft ripple of a harp, and looked up. It was the lady herself who had begun to play. Her chair was drawn back from the table and turned a little, so the harp could rest against her knee.
    I knew it was the devil’s work, but it was beautiful, a shimmering sorcery of music so haunting that the whole room grew still; nothing even whispered now except the torches. Later, I would learn she was a shape-shifter; this was the first of many transformations. The worldly seductress was utterly gone, and in her place was someone exquisite and strange— wanton perhaps, but also elusive, a veela who could be won but never held, a goddess whom men would kneel before, and beg to serve.
    Her voice was not delicate at all, as one expected from a woman, but it was beautiful and very clear, almost eerily so, like the voices of wild birds crying across a marsh, the sound still quivering against the grey sky after the birds were still. It took all my strength to withstand its power, all my strength and the grace of Jesus Christ, just to sit unmoved, and not soften towards her, not even a little.
    Her song was not really a song, but a chanted story. I have not forgotten it, nor have I forgotten Karelian’s face as he listened. That brief time, I believe, was when he fell beyond hope. He saw how powerful she could be, how much she had to offer him. Her gifts were all lies, of course, all illusion, and the price was lethal to the end of time. But how enchanting she must have seemed to him, there in the torchlight, how eerily lovely, how close to his reach.
    Just ask, my lord, and all of it is yours….
    The story she told was strange, full of foolishness, as all pagan stories are, but it must be told, for it is part of what came after. As best I can recall it, it went thus:
    Long ago, in the beginning times, there was born in the far north a lady called Erce, who had care of everything which lived. It was she who taught the birds to sing, and named the flowers; and she took for her home the fairest place in all the Reinmark, the rich green valley of Dorn. There she married a lord who came from the east, a stranger who was proud and strong. He loved her dearly at first, for she was very beautiful, and they had many children.
    But in time he grew bitter towards her, and his heart became filled with envy. He saw she could bring forth children and nourish them and he could not. She could take pleasure more than he could, any time she wished. She could laugh at everything, even death. He forgot his own gifts, which were many and very fine; he wanted only those he did not have. He spoke often to his brother, complaining about her; and his brother, who was a holy man living by himself, with neither wife nor children, counselled Erce’s husband thus:
    Clearly, he said, she has some magic talisman inside her body, which gives her these powers. Take it from her, and the powers will be yours.
    So it was that Erce’s husband led her away into the forest, promising her a gift, and he slew her, and cut open her body. But he could find