by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
“That’s six foot five, everyone,” Gawain stage-whispered.
“But of all the knights in Christendom, I have had the best luck of all and never lost to another man. So I think I do not know well what it means to give much in exchange for love. And then one day my luck ran so strong I received everything I had ever wanted. Now I have nothing left to win and can only lose.”
“Trying to win through an appeal to our sympathy,” said Yvain. “No, it won’t wash, Galehaut; you’re not going to make me pity a tall, well-favored duke who’s lord of thirty kingdoms and best friend to Lancelot besides.”
“Let me add this, then,” I said. “I will not outlive my friend—will not outlive this tournament, for even now I see his flag falter and fear him undone by treachery and false knights, enemies of true friendship. Take me out to Joyous Garde and lay me there; even if he should get up by some miracle, Galehaut will not survive Lancelot touching earth.” So it was I won that day and thereafter died. Lancelot got up again after touching earth, but I was not there to see it—he touched it, and I went into it. To go into ground now or later, now that I had done what I had set out to do, was a matter of supreme indifference to me.
After me, for Lancelot: to ride in the cart, and humiliation, disgrace, talk of treason, of felony, next the contempt and loathing of the crowd, the cloud of shame, the publicly unsatisfying reunion with Guinevere, the tepid reception of former friends, the stink of degradation, all without me to strengthen or console him—oh, how lucky he is, my darling boy, to sink so low for me.
I Being Young and Foolish
Nisi Shawl
Nia rose from her boat’s bench smoothly, a skyward pour of milk. Her cat had made up their mind. Steady though she stood, her boat bobbed slightly in the rippling water. The boatman hunched uneasily against the bright wind, which fluttered Nia’s sleeves and the ends of her head cloth and pushed her robe of undyed wool against her chilled body. Nia reminded herself that this lake was reputed shallow, no more than a couple of fathoms at its deepest, in its center. And here among the reeds at the island’s edge, even with the wetness of winter’s onset, she ought surely to be able to wade to shore, as Odeh could leap the little distance—if only they would leap it—
On the beak of the boat’s painted prow, Odeh wriggled their gray-striped hindquarters, teetered their triangular head down, up, down, up, down—and jumped! King Bear’s command that she come to study here was in accord with her chosen destiny, the knitting together of the world’s webs. A sigh released breath Nia had not known she held. Then the rustling of dried grass told where Odeh walked ahead. Carefully, using an oar to provide balance, Nia stepped from the boat into the water’s freezing cold. Only two paces and she reached the rock where her cat had landed, splashing the stone’s lichened sides as she climbed to its low, flat top. She looked back.
She’d need her boots. Her slippers were wet, as was the bottom of her gown, despite her kirtling it. “My bundle. Pitch it here.” The boatman frowned, then did as bidden. She caught his toss and ignored his face. In these strange northern lands Nia had come to see such expressions as her common due, and they were certainly less frightening than some smiles she’d had to face on her journey. Or, for that matter, back in Nakasongola.
The boatman turned away obediently enough and worked his oars, gradually diminishing from sight.
Once he’d gone, the music of the land welled up to fill her. Wind rushing. Waves lapping. Birds crying. Stilling, she listened wider. Clouds blowing above, so reliable, so welcome. And there: the soft brush of Odeh’s tail against plants growing along the path they took. A narrow path, made by the shy Cymry deer coming down to drink. Nia followed it upward to a hazel copse where golden leaves littered the ground, and the empty fragments of split shells. A good burial site. Odeh stretched contentedly along a low, flexible limb waving from the grove’s queen tree, grooming a dainty forepaw.
Nia approached them, hand held out to caress. But stopped. Percussion interrupted the landmusic’s flow: wood on wood. A door banging open. Banging shut. She dropped her hand and faced the sound’s source. Nothing further came from its direction. She walked toward what she’d heard, hesitantly.
A new path. Human broad, the smell of a smoky fire hanging over it. This must be the way to the hut King Bear had described.
So it was. Soon a clearing appeared before her, and a small building, stone but constructed in the Cymru style, on one side, a brushwood wall on the other. A beautiful man of middle years standing in its center. Nia met his pale eyes and felt her current intensify.
He spoke. “Well that you come.” He wore a dark belted mantle, its hood pushed back to show straight brown hair cut to the blunted knife of his jawline. His voice was odd—louder than a whisper, softer than should have been audible sixteen paces off.
Nia gathered herself in. “You expected me?”
The beautiful man came closer, nodding and curling his slender fingers. “Say rather that I hoped for you. King Bear’s messenger arrived the day before last Sabbath with word you had been advised to visit but that you had received this advice without committing to heed it.”
He spread his arms to show himself weaponless. “I’m right? You’re the foreign sorceress?”
“So they call me.” If she had stayed in Nakasongola, she would by now be revered as a Muganda. Unless, of course, she had been rejected, as had begun to seem more and more likely. Which likelihood had led to her present course of wandering the world to learn its many magics—and the misnaming that went with that course.
“And who is this?” The man’s gray eyes were aimed over her shoulder. She whirled, but it was only Odeh.
“My cat.”
“He came with you all the way from Ethiope?”
“No. Odeh didn’t join me until I left Egypt.” Ethiopia was not the actual country of Nia’s origin, but she let the error pass, as she had learned to let pass so many. “And you are Merlin, King Bear’s magician?” He did not have a tame air about him, did not seem any sort of courtier, but she supposed he must be the one she had been recommended to seek.
“Yes, to be sure.” His disturbingly light eyes met hers again and this time held them. Was that how her eyes appeared? “You’ll want to see where you will stay. And to take refreshment—or perhaps you fast?”
“No.”
Neither of them moved. Once again it was Odeh who tipped the moment’s balance. Ignoring the magician, they dashed to the stone hut’s threshold and abruptly halted.
Wards? No—well, perhaps; door wards would make sense, but the sudden scent of fish blood was most likely what had stopped Odeh there. Inquiringly they raised their nose. A straw sack hung wet and glistening from a peg in the whitewashed wood of the door’s jamb. Merlin, ahead of her, grinned and shrugged. “You’ll share it with me? Fresh-caught trout make for a fine dinner.”
Entering the twilight of the hut’s interior, Nia felt only the weakest resistance, like a bubble waiting to pop. Wards, but apparently she had been classified a friend and allowed to pass. A raised platform near the hearth bore a heap of heather. “Yours,” said the magician.
Not “ours.” She would be warm enough, but…“Where will you sleep?”
“The woods. Or the yard. Or the loft.”
Nia noted the order of listing. Presumably it indicated preference. No, Merlin was not tame.
However, he was extremely civilized for a man of these parts.
Christianity had been rife since her voyage over the Tyrrhenian Sea, but he didn’t appear to practice it: the hut’s walls bore no crosses, no bones or hair stolen from the bodies of dead ancestors. The fish were quickly baked in a mud made fragrant with sweet herbs and served on a board lined with rare greens: fresh, tender sorrel leaves, which tasted wonderful. Both mead and beer accompanied the meal.
Hospitality had ceased to be much of a problem for Nia onc
e she left behind the dark-skinned peoples who viewed her albinism askance. As she had been told, the farther north she traveled, the more acceptable her pallor, the more welcome her assistance with herbal formulae and other simple spells. She’d only had to share the most childish of enchantments to pay her wandering way.
They ate in the open air, seated on a felled oak a few feet uphill. Nia noted that a wind blowing from the direction of the lake afforded better hearing than could have been expected. No surprise visitors. Good planning. Odeh sat quiet as a hunting dog and watched every bite of the fish into her mouth. “You have a pet also?” she asked the magician.
“A serpent. Macha. The cool weather of the year’s ending makes her sluggish and lessens her appetite. She’ll still be digesting the rat she caught yestermorn.”
Nia bent and lay her baked mud shell on the ground for Odeh, and they began to pick cautiously at the slivers of flesh she’d left clinging to its inside.
The magician laid his shell beside hers. “Come. I’ll show you my workings while the light’s good.”
They returned to the hut. Was it larger now? Yes. Definitely. Outside and in. That stair in the corner was new. She climbed behind him to another floor. A wooden floor, and on it a narrow table running the room’s length. Windows at the room’s far end showed a flowering hedge dividing a green hillside pasture, sheep grazing under blue heavens. But this hut stood in the midst of a forest.
“Where—”
“My mother’s land. Brecheliant. And you should ask when, as well.”
Hadn’t she heard that Brecheliant was forested, too? “When?”
“In times to come.”
Without realizing, she had crossed the room, drawn to the unlikely scene outside. Now she turned her back on it to stare at him, to deny what he had said. “The future does not exist.”
“Everything exists.”
Gazing at Merlin over a table laden, she saw now, with shining metal boxes and thick glass bowls and colorful waxen effigies and all manner of curious items, Nia knew with utter certainty that Odeh had been guided aright. She needed to stay here and exchange teachings—powerful ones—with this impossible, beautiful man. She needed to know the world as he knew it. And so she formally asked him to instruct her, and he formally took her on.
* * *
—
She went to her bed of heather alone that first night and got up from it the same way. Odeh roused her when it was early morning. Outside the hut’s walls, the still-sunken sun’s light whispered the air awake.
A moment’s wait in the clearing and the trail down to the hazels formed itself out of thinning shadows. She and Odeh followed it, and under the queen’s branches she sought its roots with softly thrusting fingers, excavated the finest of their tendrilings, and ate them. She knew from previous repasts that these northern webs became less active as the year’s cold came on. Nonetheless, it was Nia’s practice to consume as soon as she could some sample of the fungal lace linking the flora of whichever woods she lived in.
Another quarter and it would be time for sowing.
A lingering redstart called her deeper into the forest, to where oak ruled the hillsides. Like her, surely, this little bird was a far traveler. Unlike her, it had returned to where it began. Though soon it would leave again. She’d met one once, on the shore of Lake Nalubaale; redstarts did not love the North’s cold winters.
“Remain here,” she instructed Odeh. They didn’t, but neither did they accompany her as she sought for the singing, slipping off instead on a mission of their own. She was able to approach the bird alone.
Singing serenely despite her presence, the redstart balanced on a high, near-leafless sprig jutting up from a young attendant tree. Nia coaxed him to her hand. “Tell my auntie I am well,” she crooned. “Find her where the shorebirds flock, casting her net from my uncles’ boat, or resting in the shade of the iroko trees which our ancestors seeded there, the place we call Nakasongola. You will know you’ve reached her because she shines like me.” She released the bird. He perched a moment more on her thumb and flew off southward.
Higher up and higher in she found the queen of these oaks and again ate from among the roots. The taste was fine. But the hazels would be better for her burying. Circling wide, she came last to the silver trunks of the beech trees, performed the same actions there, and came to the same conclusion.
As Nia returned to the hut, mist closed around her like a memory. Out of the enveloping whiteness Odeh appeared, joining her as if they’d never left her side.
The trail weakened. Nia relied on her burgeoning sense of the countryside to guide her back to the hut. Merlin greeted her at its door. “You touch the land,” he pronounced.
“The land touches me.” Breathes me, drinks me, draws me in, lets me out, she thought. All the land and air and ocean she’d passed between here and Lake Nalubaale did so now. The strength of her magic depended on this intermingling. Her magic’s strength and growth—she wandered in its service.
“Come.”
The magician fed her a cup of dried and toasted grains mixed with hazelnuts and goat’s milk. They must have been procured from an off-island farm, because she’d seen signs of none nearby this morning. With his food, Merlin brought forth the question she’d been expecting since they met. “Aren’t the people of Ethiope black of visage?”
“Most of us,” she answered. Like devils, she’d heard her race described. “But I’ve been as you see me from my birth.”
“What of your parents?”
Odeh turned away from the pinch of grains Nia offered them, uninterested. “Both are dead. I never knew them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I never knew them,” she repeated. “My aunt and uncles, who cared for me, tell me my mother and father were quite normal in how they looked.” She licked off the grains Odeh had spurned and reached for the napkin to wipe her hand.
The magician held it. She tried to tug it away. He kept his hold tight, his gaze on her hand. On her skin. “Those in your village thought you a witch because you were not as they.”
Indeed they had. But rather than respond so, to answer what had been stated, not asked, Nia reached with her other hand to lift that tucked chin and raise Merlin’s eyes to meet her own. He stared without blinking. A Seeing was on him.
For five long beats of her blood Nia cradled the magician’s jaw in her steady left palm. Then he jerked and drew back. He staggered to his feet, kicking a table leg. Bowls skittered to the table’s edge.
What had frightened him? Something Seen? Her experience with other tutors had taught Nia not to pry early on in a relationship. She would wait for whatever explanation was offered.
“I’m sorry,” said the magician, again. And that was all she got from him for the moment.
* * *
—
The quarter passed. Seven days. A pattern emerged: While the sun hung above the horizon she went about fishing, foraging (for berries, nuts, mushrooms, and other provender), and harvesting herbs that would be helpful to have over the winter. As evening dimmed and sank the sun, Merlin called her to him to teach her: in the ephemeral room above the ground floor or in a cave opening in the slope behind his hut. He showed her trays crawling with people as small and purposeful as ants, opened books filled with images that moved while she watched them, then returned to their starting places when she looked away. He blinked slow as Odeh in approval of her ability to sit, motionless as a heron, through a lesson on creating new homes for the future to live in. That brought a troubling bout of smugness. Stillness was the first skill the trees had taught Nia.
Tools for digging rested against the hut on the side opposite its entrance. On the seventh day, after gathering a pan of rose hips off a wild hedge the oak trees showed her, Nia began her grave. She left the full pan on the table for Merlin to prepare as he would, shouldered s
hovel and pick, and went to work. The hazels’ roots parted easily for her. By midday the hole was deep enough. She set about widening it. Odeh watched her from atop the little hill of dirt she’d cast up. Only watched. Their part would come soon. Tonight.
She finished well ahead of time, even allowing herself a trip to the brook to bathe before returning to the hut to eat.
The rose hips steeped in warm water—a tea or syrup, then. To be consumed later. The meal itself consisted mainly of roots. But these had come in trade, from farmers’ crops, and gave Nia no knowledge—what little they once possessed Merlin had peeled off with a knife and boiled away. There was much for him to learn. He had yet to ask her to teach it. Or to grant him any other favor.
The evening’s study session commenced as usual, though in a new venue: a blooming bower, a summerish arch of flowers with two seats of living wood. The method of the bower’s conjuration was Merlin’s chosen topic; he ignored her attempts to lure him onto others until the lesson’s end. For a moment both of them sat in darkening silence.
The magician plucked a spray of sweet-scented briony and plaited it with another of honeysuckle. “You’ll wear these during your burial this night.”
He knew. “Who told you?”
“We have a similar…ritual in these lands, but for men. In the spring.”
As near to an answer as the magician ever gave. He twisted the ends of his plait together to form a wreath and presented it to her. “Here. Shall I accompany you, or is this working solitary?”
“I won’t be alone; Odeh attends me. They’ll finish my burial for me, and in the morning they’ll begin my excavation. But I’m sure they’d welcome your help.”
She donned the wreath over her head cloth and proceeded with him to the hazel grove. Her grave looked bottomless in the gloaming. She half reclined in it as if in an oversized Italian bath. With Merlin’s aid, the earth covering Nia rose quickly. Her white-draped arms submerged themselves in the soil for a final time.