Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

by The Fire Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  Indeed, the landscape was so shadowed it might have been dusk—not almost ten by her internal clock—on a winter’s morning. Eleanor looked up and saw that the sky was not clouded as she mentally expected but was clear and gray. The midmorning sun made an amber blot in the dingy sky.

  "Thank you for all your help. I hope I come back someday to return St. Bridget’s sword and cloak. I don’t feel worthy to bear them. I mean, I know God moves in mysterious ways, but this is—”

  "Was Christopher worthy?”

  "I have no idea.”

  "Go then, and be not afraid. Bless you, Alianora. Godspeed and farewell.” Ambrosius vanished inside and shut the door. She listened to the bar being slid into place and felt very small and helpless. Clearly the sooner she left the neighborhood of the priory, the happier Ambrosius was going to be. Eleanor shrugged her burdens into less uncomfortable positions and trudged down the hill. Wrolf, at least, was uncomplicated.

  Hours later, the sun was a dirty orb sinking slowly down the horizon before her. She had gone back to silently counting her steps to measure the miles, knowing that her stride was probably more than a foot, and counting five thousand to the mile. By her reckoning she had walked sixteen miles but only twelve of them in a western direction, for there were hills, and twice Wrolf had led her aside, to circle some unknown danger.

  Eleanor had met no one and passed no habitations except a long burned-out cottage, its stone blackened and its roof fallen in. There was little sound; a few birds but nothing else. Wrolf padded beside her, ears alert and nose sniffing. The trees she passed were bare, except where the birches put out a few hopeful buds. In all, it was a desolate and depressing landscape, and were it not for Wrolf s air of cheerful unconcern, Eleanor knew she would have fallen into one of her black moods.

  She came upon the circle of standing stones quite unexpectedly. Eleanor stopped in her tracks and looked around, because the stones looked both right and wrong. The solid mass of a hill dimly visible to her left, and south, reassured her. This was Avebury Circle, which she had visited the previous October. The hill was Sil-bury, a man-made earthwork about which there was much speculation and little certain data. It, too, looked different to her, but she supposed it was the lack of centuries of weathering.

  Eleanor looked back to the stones. They resembled the decaying teeth sticking out of the white gums of some old woman. Then she remembered that some stones had been hauled down by Cromwell’s Roundheads, but here they were all standing. The previous autumn, she had gone across stiles and pushed her way past sheep and cows to get to the stones. Now there were neither fences nor animals.

  The stones seemed to cast a pale light of their own. She moved forward slowly, stepping between two huge stones and entering the first circle. She knew she must have crossed the surrounding ditch at some point, but the snow seemed to have filled it.

  A faint sound broke the utter stillness. Eleanor stopped moving immediately, The sound continued, a faint throbbing, not steady but changing, and after a few seconds she decided it was some kind of music, though what kind she would not have cared to say. It was something between singing and harping but neither. After hours of silence, she found it a glad sound. As if in response to her pleasure, the music swelled and the stones began to gleam with pale fire. There was a melody of sorts, but it was like the tunes the winds play in the branches of trees, a sighing, rushing refrain that is always different and yet the same.

  For the first time since she had awakened the night before, Eleanor felt safe, despite cold feet and aching back. The priory, she realized, had made her slightly uneasy, the bare lands between, acutely uncomfortable. But this spot felt like home, though there was neither bed nor shelter. She wondered if this was what people meant when they said home was where the heart was, though she could hardly have thought of a less likely place for her cardiac organ than a megalithic monument.

  "Wrolf, can you hear the music? Isn’t it lovely?” He whined in response. "I’ll camp here tonight. Why don’t you see if you can find yourself a nice fat bunny or a squirrel? You must be ravenous. Or are you an ethical vegetarian?” Wrolf lolled his tongue out at her and loped away.

  Eleanor walked along the circle of stones slowly, moving from east to north, studying each one carefully. She noticed that each one had a voice and a color, quite as distinct from one another as people.

  When she had gotten about a quarter of the way around the circle, she came to a stone with no snow about it. Puzzled, she bent and touched the earth. It felt slightly warm. Was there a hot spring under there?

  "Hello, stone. Do you mind if I camp by you tonight?” There was a low throbbing vibration she took for a yes. "Thank you very much. I appreciate the hospitality.” She almost laughed at herself, being polite to a rock. Her father had chided her once that if she were being cooked for lunch by cannibals, she would probably teach them grace.

  Eleanor unslung her burdens, remembering her father, who was often rude, and how she had developed the habit of being extra polite to compensate. She unwrapped the blanket from the cloak and sword, folded it in quarters, and sat down on it with a deep sigh. She wriggled her aching toes inside the boots. For a long time, Eleanor just sat and listened to the music, feeling herself filled with the strange beauty of the stones’ song.

  Finally, she pulled the leather bag open and poured the contents into her lap. There was a small loaf of coarse bread, a slab of hard cheese, and an earthenware jar. She opened the jar, and the smell of honey rose to her nose. Mead, from the priory’s small hoard, she decided. That extra kindness touched her. Eleanor closed it up carefully and put it back into the bag. There was another bottle, very small and made of glass, a widetoothed wooden comb, and a cloth-wrapped object. She ran the comb through her long, black hair, hitting tangles and muttering for a brush for several minutes before she opened and unwrapped the last item in Ambrosius’s bag. It was a small book.

  She looked at it in amazement, for she knew that books were uncommon and precious. This one did not appear to be a missal or Bible, but was a slender volume, too small to be either. She opened it.

  The first page read "The True Chronicle of St. Briget of Hibernia,” in a clear, clerical hand. Below that, in a different and less elegant hand, it read, "Milady Ali-anora. This is an incomplete copy of this history, penned by Brother Guillaume before he died. I hope it will be of service to you. God be with you, always. Bro. Am-brosius.”

  Eleanor broke off a small piece of bread and munched on it as she hunched over the book in the fading light. In a few minutes she was lost in an adventure of epic proportions, full of evil wizards (some of whom she recognized as thinly disguised Irish gods) and great monsters. She read until she found her nose almost pressed to the page. She closed the book and rubbed her neck to ease the crick she had given herself. She sighed because, even with the light from the stones, it was too dark to read further.

  "'A book of verse, a jug of mead, and thou, Beside me in the Wilderness, Ah, the Wilderness is paradise, enow,’” she said to the air. "I apologize to Omar Khayyam, but I am not sure he has been born yet. And if there is no Mohammed, if he ever will be. Which will make Mr. Fitzgerald very cross,” she said, thinking of the Victorian translator whose entire reputation depended on the Rubaiyat. She cut off a small piece of cheese with the knife from her belt pouch and put everything carefully back into the bag except the little glass vial. This she opened and sniffed. There was no odor, confirming her suspicion that it probably held holy water. She tucked it into the pouch with her knife, then spent a few minutes braiding her hair. "Why didn’t I think of this before it turned into a mare’s nest?”

  Eleanor got up and unfolded the blanket, propping the still bound sword at one end and the lumpy bag of food at the other. She unfolded the extra clothes and spread the robe and shift out on the blanket, shaking the still damp hose out vigorously, then spreading them on the warm ground nearby. Then she wrapped herself in her cloak, glad for its rough warmth, and lay down on he
r back, looking at the sky but seeing no stars.

  She felt the earth beneath her, through the layers of cloth, complaining and groaning. Eleanor heard a faraway noise, like someone dragging a chain across a piece of metal and knew she really did not hear it. There was the sound of waters as well, as voiced and colored as the stones around her, green and golden, and one dark river that was as cold as sin. She moved her hand and felt the stiffness of Bridget’s sword under it. She sat up abruptly, realizing that resting her head on the cloak and sword was causing her strange auditory hallucinations.

  Wrolf came bounding up the curve of the circle, his tongue hanging out and his muzzle matted with blood. He barked sharply, then flung himself down beside her, wagging furiously and panting. She looked at his black fur in the silver glow that surrounded him.

  "Hello, handsome. Did anyone ever tell you you’re a messy eater?” He responded to her question by licking his chops and then his paw pads. "No matter, unless you killed some farmer’s sheep. And if you did, and you didn’t bring me any, I would be very annoyed. You are the best friend a girl ever had. I’m still a girl, you know. Twenty-one and never been kissed. What will Mother think when she finds my bed empty? You’re a lucky wolf. I’ll bet you’re a bachelor with no responsibilities.”

  Then she turned her head, as did the wolf, his ears pricking at some noise yet beyond her hearing. Eleanor listened, noting the sighing of the stones and the faint murmur of the earth beneath her, until a sound, a regular crunching noise of footfalls, made her tense her shoulders. Wrolf looked into the darkness but did not move.

  A figure, glowing faintly, emerged from the gloom. It was a girl, perhaps sixteen, with pale hair and a dark cloak around her body. She paused beside the pulsing stone and lifted her hand as if to shade her eyes.

  "Hail to thee, bright lady,” the girl said. She bowed deeply.

  Eleanor said nothing for a moment. Then, responding to a feeling of sureness she did not trust, she said, "Greetings, Rowena.”

  The girl’s eyes widened. "Thou art truly She. My father begs you will come to our house. We would be honored.”

  Eleanor hugged her cloak about her. She had named the girl from some inner voice, and the knowledge that she had gotten it right bothered her a little. "And why did he not come himself?”

  "He was afraid to approach you, milady.”

  "And thy mother?”

  "My... mother sent no message.”

  Wrolf gave a low growl. Eleanor smiled and said, "Come closer, child. I won’t bite. Give me your hand.” She found an icy hand thrust into her left one.

  Leaning on the cloak and sword with her right hand, she "saw” the house to which she had been invited, a tumbledown hovel squeaking with rats. The father had empty eyes, and she knew him for a creature of the Darkness. The mother was a poor miserable soul, frightened into speechlessness. Eleanor looked into Rowena’s eyes and found a kind of gentle madness there.

  A fire filled Eleanor. It seemed to race along her right hand, into her veins, up her throat, then into her brow. She was afraid and yet steady. The stones hummed around her, and she knew that Rowena’s father was some kind of trap. A kind of light seemed to suffuse her whole body, extending upward like a pillar of fire.

  "No, thank you, Rowena. I prefer to sleep under the stars.”

  "What stars?”

  "Look!”

  They both raised their heads, and the gray blanket of shadow parted a little. A tiny diadem of lights twinkled overhead.

  "Oh! How glorious! I have never seen stars, only the moon, a little.”

  "You will see them again, whenever you wish. Let me kiss you.” Eleanor placed a kiss in the center of the girl’s forehead. "Now go home. When you get there, kiss your mother as I have kissed you, and tell your father ... nothing.”

  "Yes, lady.” Rowena stumbled to her feet like one dazed or drugged. She trudged off across the snow and finally vanished from sight.

  Eleanor felt herself begin to shake all over, not from cold but from sheer terror at her presumption. She knew she had believed in the goddess from the first time her father had told her of Eiru and Badh, ancient deities of Ireland. But this was the first proof she had ever had of her own ability to embody the attributes of that entity. It was not a pleasant feeling.

  Finally, she relaxed a little, telling herself she had done no harm. She stretched out, pillowing her head on the sword again, for the folds of Bridget’s cloak cushioned it nicely, tucked her own cloak around her as closely as possible, and sighed. "Thank you, Bridget. I think. I never realized that hiding your light under a bushel basket could be so' hard.” Then she slept.

  Eleanor found she slept very lightly. Wrolf lay beside her, his back pressed against her side, and drowsed with an alertness common to the canine, ears erect and nose twitching at the slightest sound. After a couple of hours, as near as she could estimate, Eleanor woke fully. Her body was still tired, but her mind seemed fully aroused. She sighed and grumbled a little under her breath, but weary as she was, sleep would not return. She knew herself well enough to know that this was a signal that she was supposed to do some hard thinking. She indulged in some crabby thoughts about bossy subconsciouses as she stared at the dull sky above. The slender moon was rising again.

  She reached a hand out from under her coverings to touch Wrolf’s rough coat. The harsh feel of the hairs was reassuring, though she had never touched anything like it, except possibly a German shepherd in his winter coat. Then she listened to the quiet harmonies of the stones around her.

  Let me see, she thought. I am at Avebury Circle, about twelve miles from the priory. This is the early part of the thirteenth century, but history is different enough that I shouldn’t make any assumptions. The Catholic Church seems pretty mellow compared to the one in my world, but I guess not putting all that energy into fighting Islam might make them less hidebound. On the other hand, didn’t the Crusades help wake Europe up from the Dark Ages? Maybe this culture is stagnant, or would be without the Darkness. If a pope had declared the theory of multiple earths in my world, he probably would have found himself drinking hemlock. I wonder how St. Francis does here? Has he founded the Franciscans yet? I can’t remember. No, wait, he was contemporary of St. Bernard, the poop who preached the Second Crusade, the one that Richard went on. I think. I never did really pay attention to dates unless t hey interested me. Anyhow, maybe there are Franciscans. And Benedictines, because the priory was founded by them. But, blue habits? Blackfriars is Dominicans, white is St. Bernard’s Cistercians, brown or gray is the Franciscans. I guess it doesn’t matter, but I wish I had asked about the embroidery. Those interlaces must have some significance.

  Stop getting sidetracked. Think! Magic seems to be sort of accepted here. At least, miracles. I feel different. Brother Ambrosius asked me if I was bewitched, but it didn’t seem to bother him much, as if people popped in and out of elfmounds all the time. Lord, if I had come to the door of a monastery with a wolf in my world, they would have locked the door against me. Or burned me on the spot. Hmm. I wonder if Joan of Arc gets to escape martyrdom. That’s going to play hell with future playwrights. I wish I had enough magic to conjure up my single-volume world history. Or, better yet, this world’s equivalent.

  No, wait. That’s the whole point. If the Darkness isn’t driven away, there may not be any history. And why did I get picked as a prime mover? I can’t believe I was picked at random.

  What special qualities do I have that St. Bridget should entrust me with her sword and her cloak? I am not brave. I’m fairly smart, but I’m not sure intelligence is a good quality in a hero. It’s too easy to start wondering about the meaning of life when the bad guys are shooting at you. Maybe it’s because of Daddy.

  Eleanor remembered her big, laughing, black Irish father, not as he had been at the end, wasted with disease, but as he had been in front of a classroom, roaring out the story of Cuchulain or Oisin or Grace O’Malley of the Clares. The university would never have put up with his
unorthodox teaching of Irish literature, except that Daniel Sean Hope had the panache of success upon him. Every two years he produced another book of folktales, mythology, or criticism that was either an academic triumph or an immodest money-maker. He took dry scholarship and gave it artificial respiration. Until Eleanor was ten, she was certain that Queen

  Maeve still lived and that leprechauns were real. Her father had breathed so much life into ancient traditions and stories that his collapse from lung cancer had been more than a shock; it had been an affront.

  She had loved him as only a single and somewhat spoiled child can. Eleanor had memorized virtually every word he had ever written, whether it was about O’Casey and Yeats or Finian and Conlabar. Every summer in Ireland, she had struggled with Gaelic until she could speak it fluently. Her mother, true to her cool Yorkshire upbringing, had stood outside the cheery circle of the father and the daughter.

  Elizabeth Leighton Hope was a woman of great strength and reserve. She stood up against her husband’s all-consuming ambition to pursue her own quiet academic career. She had been overshadowed by Daniel’s success in many ways, though her work in Scottish and Yorkshire folklore was highly respected in the small world where the names Briggs, Thompson, and Coffin were bywords.

  At heart, Daniel had been a pagan and Elizabeth a dour Calvinist, in spite of which they got Eleanor as far as her first communion. Somehow, she had never been confirmed. Elizabeth had borne the disappointment of eleven miscarriages and one small, rather sickly daughter, and then kept to herself. Daniel had lavished his love and energy on his daughter and his work, and Eleanor had chosen the laughter instead of the silence.

  Lying there, searching the gray vault of sky above her, Eleanor realized for the first time what an essentially selfish man her father had been. Whatever personal desires and ambitions she might have formed had been swept away or submerged in the full-time job of being Daniel’s daughter. Unlike girls her own age, she had not dreamed of career or marriage. She had entered college halfheartedly, studying folklore as if it were the only discipline in the world when she already knew as much as most of her father’s graduate students. She had stopped that almost gratefully when he had gotten sick. Folklore was not her greatest love, but she had never told Daniel that.