"We must try to get the Grail back, " I said. "That is what we are here to do." Lobkowitz spoke softly, almost by way of confirmation. "Your father feared Bek would perish once the Grail left your family's safekeeping. He feared the entire family would perish. You, of course, are his last remaining son." This was not something I needed to be reminded of. The waste of my brothers' lives in the Great War still made me despair. "Did my father start the fire which killed him?"
"No. The fire was a result of the demon who volunteered his assistance in fulfilling your family trust. A reasonable thought, I suppose, in the circumstances. But your father was at best an amateur sorcerer. The creature was not properly contained with the pentagram. Rather than defend the Grail, it stole it! "
"The demon was Arioch?"
"The 'demon' was our friend Klosterheim, then in the service of Miggea of Law. She was drooling crazy and feeling her power wane. Klosterheim served Satan until Satan proved insufficiently committed to the cause of evil and sought a reconciliation with God through the medium of your Bek ancestors. Through your namesake, as a matter of fact. Your ancestor was charged by Satan himself to find the Grail and keep it, until such time as God and Satan shall be reconciled."
"Fanciful old stories, " I said. "They do not even have the authenticity of myth! "
"Stories our immediate ancestors chose to forget, " said the Austrian quietly.
"But you have more than one dark legend attached to your family name-even into recent times with the Mirenburg legend of Crimson Eyes."
"Another peasant fireside tale, " I said. "The invention of the undereducated. You know that Uncle Bertie is now doing a perfectly respectable job in Washington."
"Actually, he's in Australia now. But I take your point. You must admit, my dear Count Ulric, that your family's history was never as uneventful as they pretended. More than one of your kinsmen or ancestors has reason to agree." I shrugged. "If you will, Prince Lobkowitz. But that history has little to do with our current problems. We must find the Grail and the Sword but need your suggestions as to how we might get them back."
"Where else?" he said. "I have told you. Where the Grail has been for so many centuries. At Bek. That is why the place is so heavily fortified and guarded, why Klosterheim keeps permanent guard over the Grail chamber, as he calls it. You know it as your old armory."
That place had always possessed an atmosphere. I cursed myself. "We saw Klosterheim go to Bek. Are we too late? Has he removed the Grail?"
"I doubt he would wish to do that. I have it on the best authority that Hitler himself, together with Hess, Goring, Goebbels, Himmler and company, are all making plans to meet at Bek. They can hardly believe their luck, I'd guess. But they wish to ensure it! France has fallen and only Britain, already halfdefeated, stands in their way. German planes have attacked British shipping, lured fighters into combat and weakened an already weak RAF. Before they invade by sea and land, they intend to destroy all main cities, especially London. They are preparing a vast aerial armada at this very moment. For all I know it is on its way. There is very little time. This meeting at Bek involves some ritual they believe will strengthen their hand even more and ensure that their invasion of Britain is completely successful."
I was disbelieving. "They are insane."
He nodded his head.
"Oh, indeed. And something within them must understand that. But they have had total success so far. Perhaps they believe these spells are the reason for it. Clearly whatever supernatural aid they have called upon is not disappointing them. Yet it is unstable magic-in unstable hands. And it could result in the death of everything. Like Gaynor and the rest of their kind, their ignorance and disdain for reality will eventually destroy them. They relish the notion of Gotterdammerung. These people seek oblivion by any means. They are the worst kind of self-deceiving cowards and everything they build is a ramshackle sham. They have the taste of the worst Hollywood producers and the egos of the worst Hollywood actors. We have come to an ironic moment in history, I think, when actors and entertainers determine the fate of the real world. You can see how quickly the gap between action and affect widens... Of course they are expert illusionists, like Mussolini for instance, but illusion is all they offer-that and a vast amount of unearned power. The power to fake reality, the power to deceive the world and destroy it under the weight of so much falsification. The less the world responds to their lies and fancies, the more rigorously do they enforce them."
I began to realize that Prince Lobkowitz, for all his practicality, was a discursive conversationalist. At length I interrupted him. "What must I do when I have the Grail?"
"Very little, " he said. "It is yours to defend, after all. And circumstances will change. Perhaps you'll take it back to its home in what the East Franconians called the Grail Fields. You know them . by their corrupted name of the Grey Fees. Oh, yes, we've heard of them in Germany! There's a reference to them in Wolfram von Eschenbach, who cites Kyot de Provenzal. But your chances of getting to those Graalfelden again are also very slim."
I had the advantage, he said, of knowing Bek. The old armory, where the Grail was held, where I had received my first lessons from von Asch.
"Guarded presumably by these SS men, " I said. "So there isn't much chance of my strolling in calling 'I'm home, ' saying I've just dropped in to pop up to the armory, then tuck the Holy Grail under my jacket and walk out whistling."
I was surprised by my host's response.
"Well, " he said with evident embarrassment, "I did have something like that in mind, yes."
Chapter Twenty
Traditional Values
Which was how I came to be wearing the full uniform of a Standartenfuhrer, a colonel in the SS, including near-regulation smoked glasses, sitting in the back of an open Mercedes staff car driven by a chauffeuse in the natty uniform of the NSDAP Women's Auxiliary (First Class) who, with her bow and arrows in the trunk, took the car out of its hidden garage into the dawn streets of Hensau and into some of the loveliest scenery in the whole of Germany-rolling, wooded hills and distant mountains, the pale gold of the sky, the sun a flash of scarlet on the horizon. I was filled with longing for those lost times, the years of my childhood when I had ridden alone across such scenery. The love of my land ran deep in my blood.
Somehow we had gone from that pre-1914 idyll to the present horror in a few short bloody years. And now here I was riding in a car far too large for the winding roads and wearing the uniform which stood for everything I had learned to loathe. Ravenbrand was now carried in a modified guncase and lay at my feet on the car's floor. I could not help reflecting on this irony. I found myself in a future which few could have predicted in 1917. Now, in 1940, I remembered all the warnings that had been given since 1920.