Sword of Avalon: Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Mikantor centered himself on the earth he loved, balanced in the stance for fighting with sword alone that Bodovos had beaten into him, right shoulder forward, sword held two-handed at an angle from which he could strike high or low. For a long moment they stood without moving. Galid broke first, moving surprisingly fast for a man of his girth. Mikantor shifted his own blade just enough to catch the other and saw a chunk fly from the edge of the bronze sword. Galid reeled back, face flushed.

  “That’s a good sword, isn’t it?” He laughed. “Went into the smith’s chest sweet as pronging a girl—”

  Mikantor started forward, fury darkening his vision as Galid had intended. And the Sword from the Stars sang to him once more—You hold the power in your hand—

  Defend the weak, direct the strong,

  Sever sickness from what’s well,

  Good from evil, right from wrong.

  He stopped, took a deep breath, and felt Tirilan’s spirit steady his trembling arm. “No . . .” he whispered. “You come to me. . . .”

  Galid’s shout could have been exultation or agony. He charged, swinging wildly. Mikantor took one step to the side. With a crack like thunder, the Sword shattered Galid’s blade. As the severed half spun sunward, Mikantor struck at last, and Galid turned with a movement that if Mikantor had known it was very like the one with which Velantos had faced him, and opened his arms to be set free.

  ANDERLE AND VELANTOS STOOD at the edge of a field full of fire. For her the vision wavered, so that sometimes she saw wind rippling through the grass on the plain, but that happened less and less often as the afternoon drew on. When she had come here to guide the spirits of the dead to the Otherworld, she had remained firmly rooted in this one, but as internal bleeding slowly released Velantos from his body, the smith’s mind had proved stronger, drawing her into his world. That was a danger she had been taught to fear, but she no longer cared if she returned.

  Here, they could speak of all those things for which there had never been time, and admit what pride would never have allowed them to say.

  “You will watch over the boy?” said Velantos, then shook his head. “No—you must tell him to watch over you—he is a man now, and a king. Tell him that I loved him, as well as I knew how.”

  “My dear, I think he knows.”

  In the silence that fell between them the sound of cheering came faint from the other world. “Mikantor!” they heard. “The Sword from the Stars and the Lady Tirilan . . .”

  “Is it over?” Velantos asked.

  “He is safe,” she answered as the exultation grew. “I believe that we have won. . . .”

  “Then it is time for me to go.” He gathered her into his arms, surrounding her with a gentle fire. “They are waiting for me—do you see?” He pointed, and she saw bright figures beckoning. “The god who brought me here, and the Lady of the Forge. She has your face. . . .”

  Anderle looked away, unable to bear the beauty that blazed from the Lady’s countenance. She had always thought Velantos mad, she remembered now. But for a little time his faith had enabled her to bear a tithe of the Lady’s power—was that indeed what she could become?

  “Yes . . .” came the answer, “you may. . . .”

  Velantos’ fire blazed up around her. When it faded, she was sitting in the circle of stones. The light of the setting sun sent their long shadows toward the men who were coming toward her, and touched each blade of grass with flame.

  Velantos’s body lay beside her. He was already cold. How long had it been since that great heart had ceased to beat? After passion, peace, she remembered, wondering how long this serenity would remain. But for now, there were things that must be done. She saw Mikantor coming. As Tirilan woke from her own trance, he began to run.

  EPILOGUE

  As the first stars lit the heavens, the funeral pyres were kindled upon the Plain of Azan. Three days had passed since the battle, time enough to search the field and identify the slain. In the fighting, Adjonar had fallen, and Romen, and Beniharen, felled by a stray arrow as he tried to drag a wounded man off the field. Those too badly hurt to recover had received the last mercy from friend or foe. The prisoners had been put to work carrying bodies and gathering wood for the pyres.

  Much of the labor of organizing the funerals had fallen to Tirilan. Anderle had scarcely spoken since Velantos died. She sat now upon the grass beside Velantos’ pyre. The loot of Azan-Ylir had yielded a length of linen of intricate weave from some southern land to wrap his body. He looked like a carven image, lying there.

  The authority which the queens had given Tirilan included the duty of leading the rites for the slain. Her function here was, she realized, the complement to the power the people had granted to Mikantor. And so, one by one, she had blessed the pyres. This was the last, and the chief men of all the tribes had gathered to bear witness as Mikantor said farewell to the man who had forged the Sword about which so many tales were already being told.

  Tirilan heard a murmur from the crowd and turned. Mikantor was approaching, with Ganath and Grebe, Lysandros and Pelicar and Ulansi behind him. He was carrying the Sword. It was not only the gold headband and the gold that pinned the white mantle that made him look like a king. His dark eyes seemed set more deeply, the line of jaw and cheekbone more clearly defined. Her heart gave a little skip, as it always did when she saw him after an absence, opening her soul to his. He looked up as if she had called his name, and his fixed expression eased. She stooped at her mother’s side and helped her to stand. Their roles, she thought wryly, were reversed from those of a few days before. Now it was she, newly clad in a crimson robe, who was strong, and Anderle who wore the black rags of grief. She seemed to speak to them from a distance, as if a part of her had gone with Velantos to the Otherworld.

  Mikantor came to a halt, gazing at the pyre. A muscle twitched in his jaw. Then he turned, forcing his own features back to stillness as he faced the warriors and chieftains who had gathered around it.

  “We are gathered here to honor the passing of Velantos son of Phorkaon, a prince of Tiryns by the Middle Sea. You know that he crafted this Sword. Know also that Velantos faced Galid weaponless and alone, allowing his foe to sheathe the blade in his body in order to wrest it from his hand.”

  He waited as a murmur of appreciation rose from men who remembered vividly the terror of battle even when they fought with comrades at their sides.

  “We must be worthy of his sacrifice,” Mikantor went on. “With your help a great evil has been cleansed from this land. But there is much left to do. The times our fathers knew will not return. If we cease to fight each other we can learn to live in a world that will be as fair, even if it is different, than it was before. Let us save our swords for those who share Galid’s sickness, meet greed with generosity, and bring hope to counter despair.”

  “Easy for you to say,” came a voice from the crowd, “armed with that sorcerous blade.”

  “The magic was in the making, not the metal—” Anderle spoke suddenly. “And the making was directed by the gods. But you are right to fear the power of the Sword from the Stars. The smith himself set a curse upon it, that the blade shall turn on its wielder if ever it is used to conquer instead of to defend.”

  “Then put the thing away,” came a mutter. “It hurts the eyes.” There was an uneasy murmur from the crowd, and Mikantor held out the Sword as if wondering whether he should lay it on the pyre. Tirilan stepped forward. Her mother and Velantos had not labored so hard to forge the thing for one battle alone. Now was the moment she had been waiting for.

  “The Sword was made to defend you, and it will be needed again.” She spoke clearly. “Galid sheathed the Sword in Velantos’ body, but I will give you something better, a scabbard to keep the Sword in peace instead of war.” She held out the red leather sheath she had kept hidden among the folds of her gown.

  Mikantor’s eyes widened. “You speak for the land, my lady.” He took the sheath and carefully slid the sword inside. For a mom
ent he held it so, hilt and crystal gleaming; then he handed it back to Tirilan. “My Lady, I entrust you with this power. You will tell me when it is right to draw the Sword.”

  She could feel the energy in the blade, but the sheath contained it. Mikantor held out his hand. “I defend you,” he added softly, “but you sustain me.”

  “Mikantor!” shouted Ganath, and hundreds of voices took up the cry. “Mikantor and the Lady Tirilan!”

  The earth trembled to that shout, or perhaps it was she and Mikantor who resonated to the waves of exultation coming from the people who surrounded them. She opened her awareness to respond, and realized that she was also sensing the flow of power through the earth.

  This is what the Lady of the Hidden Folk promised, she realized then, the thing my mother could not understand. I am still a priestess—but just as Mikantor has become the Defender, I am Lady of this land.

  Still holding her hand, Mikantor turned to the pyre once more. “My lord Velantos,” he said softly, “I owe you more than you could ever understand. I had lost myself, and you gave me back my soul. For me, you transcended the limits of your craft. At the last your sacrifice gave me this victory. All that I can give you now is the fire. When it is finished, we will build a great mound for you among the kings on the plain.”

  “No,” Anderle spoke suddenly. “Let his ashes lie in the old tomb by his smithy above the White Horse Vale.”

  “She is right,” said Grebe. “The elder folk would ask it. He should rest there.”

  “Very well—” For a moment Mikantor’s attention went inward. His posture changed, and another man seemed to look out of his eyes. Then he spoke a Word. It was not in any human language, but Tirilan felt the hairs rise on her arms at the passage of power. Though no clouds hung in the heavens, thunder crackled across the sky, and a bolt of lightning flared to ignite Velantos’ pyre. It caught quickly with a roar like the forge fire, gold and orange and around the edges a silvery blue.

  “The smith has gone to the fire again . . .” said Anderle as those flames embraced the still form. “Lady, ward him well, until he is drawn forth from the forge, made new.”

  AFTERWORD

  As I complete this book, beside my computer is a small table that bears a hammer and an anvil, a bit of meteor iron, and a small wrought-iron Thor’s hammer. There is also a clay reproduction of a Mykenaean goddess, a small bronze figure of Hephaistos, and a red candle. Leaning against it is a reproduction of a leaf-shaped sword. Together, they represent the sources and influences that shaped Sword of Avalon. There were times, during the writing, when I felt as if I were on the anvil myself, being hammered out like the sword.

  The story of King Arthur remains one of the most enduring legends of the English-speaking peoples. One of the elements everyone remembers is his magical sword, Excalibur. But the medieval romancers refused to speculate on its origins. Marion Zimmer Bradley was scarcely more explicit in Mists of Avalon— Fallen to earth in a falling star, a clap of thunder, a great burst of light; dragged still smoking to be forged by the little dark smiths who dwelled on the chalk before the ring stones were raised; powerful, a weapon for a king, broken and reforged this time into the long leaf-shaped blade, tooled and annealed in blood and fire, hardened . . . a sword three times forged, never ripped out of the earth’s womb, and thus twice holy. . . .

  What was this sword whose possession gave Arthur both victory and authority? Where did it come from? How old might it be?

  These are the questions I have tried to answer in Sword of Avalon.

  Since Marion had established that the sword was both very old and had been remade more than once, I knew that I would have to begin well before the Romans came to the British Isles. The aborigines of Britain might have roughly hammered a piece of meteor iron, but the first point at which such a piece could have been turned into a sword would have been at the end of the Bronze Age.

  Scholars agree that around 1200 BCE, the great cultures of the Mediterranean world fell. That is the only thing on which they do agree. Causes ranging from epidemics to ecological catastrophe to barbarian incursions with new weapons have been suggested. Those who have read The End of the Bronze Age, by Robert Drews, will recognize that I have drawn on his theory about the effectiveness of the leaf-shaped sword. For information on the Bronze Age in general, see The Rise of Bronze Age Society, by Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larsson, which includes material on that period in Northern Europe which is often ignored.

  Archaeology tells us that in the south, the palaces of Tiryns and Mykenae burned, and in the north, the climate was growing colder and wetter. But the problems we have today teach us that disasters rarely have a single cause, and nothing happens in isolation. Perhaps a change in the climate set populations in motion and eventually impacted the Mediterranean. For both ends of Europe the twelfth century BCE was a time of transition, when people had to change or die. I was able to visit Greece while I was writing, and thought it would be fascinating to combine the story of a Mykenaean master smith, displaced by the destruction of his world, with the birth of a legend in a time when Britain was suffering as well, a story that turned out to be uncomfortably relevant as it became clear how very much we need to change, and to hope, today.

  TO TELL THIS STORY, I had to explore the world of the smith. What inspiration, divine or otherwise, led men to discover the secrets of making bronze and working iron? For some time now it has been popular to assume that the magical swords of mythology were made from meteor iron, which is tougher than pure iron because it includes nickel. Until smelting was mastered it was also the only source of large lumps of iron. The tools of smithcraft have not changed all that much since the Bronze Age. The technology is historical—but in the knowledge of how to apply it to iron—there lies the fantasy.

  To understand the mystique, I drew on many sources. Published materials that were particularly inspiring or useful include The Forge and the Crucible, by Mircea Eliade, Craft and the Kingly Ideal, by Mary W. Helms, Ukko, by Unto Salo, and Jane Sibley’s The Divine Thunderbolt. For methods, I drew on The Complete Bladesmith, by Jim Hrisoulas, Iron for the Eagles, by David Sim and Isabel Ridge, and the amazing wealth of the Internet, from debates on the properties of meteor iron to a YouTube video of bronze-casting at the experimental archaeology museum at Old Lejre in Denmark (in fact I should put in a word of praise for the burgeoning resources available online, which have added immeasureably to the accuracy of my information). I was delighted to find that other scholars have also speculated that the name “Excalibur” (or “Caliburn” as it is in some of the medieval romances) might come from chalybe, the old Greek word for steel, which itself comes from the name of the Anatolian tribe whom legend made the discoverers of ironsmithing. I am even more grateful to my correspondents from the SCA West e-list, to Scott Thomas, the blacksmith at the Ardenwood Historical Farm in Fremont, CA, who spent an afternoon demonstrating techniques, and to Loren Moyer, who let me come and hammer both bronze and iron at his forge.

  MANY ELEMENTS OF LATE Bronze Age culture survived into the Iron Age and beyond. Language and mythology were evolving into those we know from history. A reference to a “Lady of the Forge” in Mykenaean documents suggests that the archetype of the goddess who is both the forge fire and the inspiration of the smith goes back a very long way, as does the archetype of the dour smith who strikes lightning with his hammer. We find him in gods from Ilmarinen to Ogun and Wayland Smith. We may find Her in the later relationship between Athena and Hephaistos (see Karl Kerenyi’s monograph), and the identification of Brigid as a goddess of goldsmithing.

  And so, in Brigid’s season, I offer this book to Her. May she shape us well!

  IMBOLC, 2009

 

 

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