Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

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

  She walked forward and picked up the fire sword and held it out to him. "This... is yours now, I think.”

  "Mine?” He gasped. "I don’t understand.”

  "Well,” Eleanor replied, crouching on her haunches with the sword across her knees, "I’m not sure I do, either. This is why Baird raped me. You remember how it hurt you when you touched it, back on the island? It would have done the same to him, for it can only be wielded by a man who has.. .brought me to rest.” She touched the interlaced sheath. "This is me, this gaudy bit of Orphiana’s hide. The sword isn’t very good without both parts—I mean, it is not as strong. I used it when I was still a maiden, but I think that was because I was untouched. When Doyle took me, it became his. Baird wanted it—wants it—and the only way he could get it was to master me. Now, I regret to say, he would also have to kill you. I thought I had taken all the risks of what we did last night into account, but... I was not thinking very clearly. Also,” she added a little bitterly, "I was not given real good instructions about the nature of the thing—just a bunch of vague directions. Magical appliances just don’t come with a user’s manual, dammit. If they did, Aladdin would never have left his old lamp hanging about on the wall, and perhaps there would be no stories.”

  Arthur was staring at her, clearly confused. "But you just said... that it is Doyle’s,” he said, fastening on the single point he had completely grasped.

  "No, it is mine—at least it is mine to bestow, in a way. Perhaps it is a remnant of those times when men got their names and arms from their mothers. I do not know. I just know that for a moment last night I saw you use it—in my mind—and since I believe such visions have meaning, I think then that I may offer it to you without reservation. Are you afraid?”

  "Only a little, for I see it binds us together in a terrible way. I must always seek your grace to wield it, and light as that fetter is, my blood bears no restraint well. We chafe at any limitation. My master often said that I would be the best of the family, could I but learn to yoke my passions to the correct cart. Then he would add that, even counting Uncle Richard, there was not a lot to choose from. I find I am loath to accept the gift.” His blue eyes sparkled, and she saw for the first time the unbending pride that several generations of strong men and haughty women had created. His mother, Constance of Brittany, had an intemperate reputation; his grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, was so strong-willed, her husband had jailed her, though not in this Albion; and his great-grandmother, Matilda, had brought England to civil war to satisfy her craving for power.

  She felt somewhat intimidated by those fierce female ancestors of his, and chuckled inwardly as she remembered the words Henry had uttered in the dungeon in Goldman’s play, The Lion in Winter, "I could have conquered Europe, all of it, but I had women in my life.” Perhaps the playwright had simply spoken a universal truth about the battle of the sexes, which like the war in heaven, went on forever.

  Eleanor sighed and reached her hand forward to the dry sticks, setting them ablaze and thinking of the struggle she had had that night so long ago, it seemed, to manage a task she found commonplace now. Her mind went back to the conversation she had had with Doyle on that occasion, remembering his healthy resentment at an existence bounded by women. As if, somehow, it was all her fault. The wood popped and crackled, and the sound brought her back to the present. Perhaps she had been wrong.

  "I can hardly force you to take it. Very well, I shall continue to bear it, though it is a burden to me.” She smiled, to take the sting of her words away.

  "You make me feel like an ungrateful boor.”

  "No, only a cautious fellow. If the Trojans had had you in their councils, they would never have let the wooden horse inside their walls, and the world might be poorer by an epic. But tell me, have there not been gifts given by your ancestors?”

  "Exchanged, if you mean the unicorns and the elf-stone.”

  "Now, that is a story I do not know. Tell me.” She laid the sword aside and stirred the remains of last night’s rice in the pot. She scooped a bit into her mouth and found that even cold it tasted of sunlight.

  "My grandmother wished to have back an heirloom of her own mother’s folk, a great green beryl, and she in turn said that if Henry would bring it to her, she would gift him with a fabulous beast, the unicorn, to be a supporter of his house for all time. Since she had borne two daughters to her husband, Louis, and was no longer a maiden, Henry, though besotted, must have been doubtful of her promise. But she made it very clear she would not marry him without the stone, which had passed from her grandmother, Dangereuse, to Aenor, her daughter. But it was lost upon her death. I have never heard the full tale of how he got it—perhaps no man living knows it. But it is said he went to the caverns of the fee and got it back. And Eleanor called the unicorns from the sea, and they came, a great herd of them, a stallion and many mares, and these now live in the forests of France and perhaps other lands. They are very shy and are rarely seen except when someone calls them, as my sister could. She also has that stone, a gift upon her thirteenth year, unless it has been reclaimed by the cavern folk. If they have it, she must be dead, for she wore it round her throat and none could remove it.”

  "How charming. Here, eat some rice—it’s good.” They munched in silence, and Sable ambled into the campsite. "So, since you have nothing to give me, you can’t take the sword. And you don’t want to be beholden.”

  He nodded, but he looked at the sword a bit sadly. Eleanor simply reflected that if he was as thoughtful in his kingship as he was in refusing it, he would probably be an admirable monarch. Then she stood up and began packing her gear.

  * * *

  As they trudged along, Eleanor nursed several harsh thoughts about men in general, and the men in her life in specific. If ever there was such a pack of ornery, contrary, inconsistent, stiff-necked, prideful bastards, she had no wish to know. Then she mentally scratched inconsistent off her catalog of faults and chuckled at her need for precision. What was it her friend Cora Reed was wont to say—"Men and women don’t understand each other because they are two different races that happen to be mutually fertile”? Good old down-to-earth Cora.

  It was, she reflected, the matter of an awkward dowry, and indeed the rub of the sword against one shoulder and the opposite hip was uncomfortable, more so even today. Doyle and Arthur did not appreciate the bride price it cost. That made her grin, for bride was a common corruption of Bridget, as in Brideswell or Brides-head. She found herself escaping into the safe, sure world of myth and folklore, playing word games and humming a little as she walked. At least Arthur did not covet the sword, per se.

  "What is that tune, Lady Eleanor?”

  "Huh?” She had to think, for she had been humming mindlessly. '"The Gypsy Rover,’ I think. I was sort of skipping around.”

  "Has it words as well?”

  "Oh, yes.” She cleared her throat and began. When she was done, she glanced at her companion, curious at his reaction.

  "I like that, though the melody seems odd.”

  "Well, music changes over the centuries. Church music, for instance, is not plain chant but hymns, some rousing, mostly doleful.” She thought of Bach masses and the Verdi or Mozart requiem and decided that they were beyond her talents. "And there is rock ’n’ roll, which is the contemporary music of my time, although several other kinds exist as well.” She decided that a brief history of jazz, blues, and American folk music would not be useful. "Like 'The Yellow Submarine.’” Eleanor sang with the mental accompaniment of the Beatles in her mind.

  "That is a happy song, though I do not understand the words in some parts.”

  "Well, the men who wrote it enjoyed being a bit confusing. They were four poor kids from an industrial town called Liverpool. For a time they were the voice of the youth of their era. You could hardly turn on a radio without hearing their tunes. They became wealthy, very wealthy, and grew apart to make their music separately.”

  "What is a radio?”

 
Eleanor had to think hard before she said, "A device that transmits sound over great distances, across the world, even.” She was not about to get into any attempt to describe electricity, which despite managing to get through high school physics with a passing grade, she regarded as a kind of magic that came out of sockets in the wall. "There is also television, which provides a picture as well as sound, so that people in France can see an event in England at the moment it happens.” "What a wondrous time you come from.”

  "In some ways.” She thought of the constant threat of global war she had grown up with and was sad. "Here is a song they say your Uncle Richard wrote.” She groped in her mind for the fugitive melody.

  "I have never heard it before, but I know he had some repute as a poet. Are you angry with me for refusing the sword?”

  Eleanor was nonplussed by the sudden change in topic. "No, not angry. Disappointed, perhaps. I—”

  The bushes errupted with short, dark men, naked and armed with spears. Their skins were stained blue with woad. With a smooth movement, Arthur wrested the sword from its sheath across her back, and the panther sprang upon the throat of a surprised-looking tribesman. Arthur charged a group of three men, swinging the bright blade in an arc around his head as a spear missed his back by inches. A moment later, a severed head flew through the air as Eleanor turned and raised her staff toward the attackers on the other side of the circle. Fire leapt from the carved head and caught one man in the chest. He screamed as he seemed to explode and his nearby companions turned tail and scurried away into the underbrush.

  A bowlegged fellow leapt forward to wrest the staff from her hand, and Eleanor kicked him in the crotch, then brought her staff down into his skull with both hands. Another spear whizzed by her as the crack of wood on bone sounded sickeningly. She raised the staff in the direction the weapon had come from, only to see the backs of several warriors in hasty retreat.

  It was over almost as quickly as it had begun, and there was no sound but the moans of the two men who had not finished dying. Arthur’s face was spattered with blood, and his hands were gory. About a dozen man lay around, some with their throats ripped out, some hacked with the sword.

  Arthur seemed a little dazed, though she could see no wound upon him. He looked at the sword in his hands, the blade wet with blood, and gave a sort of sigh. Sable sat and licked a rusty spatter off one dark flank. Then he stood, gave Eleanor a look that said, "This way,” and led them away from the ambush.

  They did not stop until they came to a small stream. No word had passed between them, and Eleanor wondered what Arthur was thinking as he knelt and washed his hands and face. He wiped the blade clean with grass and then sat on a rock, staring at the cloudless sky.

  Finally, he spoke. "They say that at the hour of my birth, a strange beast was seen flying around the keep. It had in its claw a flaming brand; great, leathery wings, and a head like a serpent. My mother took it for a portent and named me Arthur, after the dragon-king of Albion. It was a name that pleased no one but her, certainly not my grandmother, who wrote her sharply for her presumption.

  "I have never put much stock in the tale, for none saw the beast but some ignorant servants and superstitious peasants. The mantle of that fabled king was nothing I desired, nor do 1 desire it now. But when I grasped the hilt of the sword, a strange sense touched me. It felt... correct. As if that burning brand and the sword were one. My master often told me that if you are destined to do great deeds, they will seek you out and find you, however you hide in the bowels of the earth.

  "But he gave me, too, a sense of disgust at ambition.

  He taught me it was better to serve well and with a good heart than to seek for glory. Indeed, he said the glory came from good service, and he warned me of the dangers of my heritage. He pointed out there was no honor in son warring with father, as Henry did with his, all because he would not wait for the throne. He said it was a judgment upon my uncle that he snatched what was not his and died leaving the kingdom in disarray, with John’s legitimacy so much in question.

  "My mother burns with such ambition, and wished, upon Richard’s death, to rush me to the throne and place herself as regent. She envied Grandmother her kingly sons, I think. I was just frightened, though I cannot say what I was afraid of. I think I knew somehow it was not time. It was not yet my time.

  "But always I have borne the burden of other people’s desires for me, so I had little room for seeing my own. My grandmother did not like my father, and though she wished me no ill, neither did she wish me well. She would prefer that I did not exist at all. My mother wants me to be the dragon-king of my birth omen, that she may glory in bringing me to life. Master William wished that I would be a perfect knight, a flower of chivalry, and Pere Gerard that I would be pious. My sister alone desired nothing of me but my affection. She knew I was no hero but just a man.

  "That thing," he continued, pointing at the sword beside him on the damp grass, "makes me more than a man. Its power, even that first day when I touched it before it was my time, called the dragon in me. I had so willfully banished that portion of myself that I believed it exorcised and let it become the faint memory of a distant dream. I chose to believe that the great destiny predicted for me was a mistake, the issue of my mother’s ambition. Am I not the greatest fool ever made?”

  Eleanor, hearing the torment of doubt and confession in his every word, shook her head. The depth of his introspection seemed remarkable in one so young, but he had had good teachers, and bad ones as well. "No, you are not a fool. You are just very human, and you are afraid that you will displease, that you will fail to live up to the great expectations thrust down your throat like a pelican feeding its young. I think it is easy to choke to death on other people’s regurgitated needs. And no matter how you twist and turn, it never seems to be enough to satisfy them.

  "But it comforts me a little that you do not want the sword because of me. I have had enough of that, though I think Doyle and I had reached some compromise before he died. I understand that you are afraid of what you might become.”

  "No, no. I am afraid of what I am, of the bright madness that fills my blood when that power courses through my veins. All in me that is good and just is swept away on a tide of fury.”

  Eleanor was silent a long while, remembering Doyle at Glastonbury, so filled with berserk madness that he continued to fight in dragon-shape, that he did not recognize his peril from the angel-thing. Doyle had known his fate, down perhaps to the moment of his death. He had had years to prepare his mind to face his destiny, centuries even. The sword awakened no sleeping demons, though his love for her had perhaps roused a few. Arthur had spent his brief lifetime avoiding an unwanted destiny, only to have it shoved into his hands. She saw, too, that the rather pleasant, cooperative young man she had taken to be Arthur was a careful pose he had made to avoid both his mother’s ambitions and his cousin’s enmity. He had, she suspected, masked the famous Plantagenet temperament with geniality, so much so that he had begun to believe the disguise was real. That dragon within him must seem a ravenous beast, threatening to gobble up his fragile virtues and leave him with nothing but pride and fury. What a loveless upbringing he must have had, to be regarded as nothing more than a path to power or an obstacle to it. Now, why did I think that people were less complex in ancient days than in my time? she wondered as she searched her mind for some counsel that would ease his distress.

  "Tell me what you are.”

  "A beast.”

  Eleanor laughed, and he glared at her. "I’m sorry, Arthur, but that is one of the silliest things I ever heard. We are all beasts, sometimes, or the Darkness that shadows Albion would never find a foothold. But we are more than that as well, because... we can make choices. A true beast cannot. It is driven entirely by instinct. Put a mouse in a box with even a well-fed cat, and the cat will toy with it until it dies. The cat has no will in the matter. Upon seeing the mouse, its brain says, 'Pounce.’ There is no man who is completely virtuous or evil
. There was a great tyrant in my time who put to death millions of people but who ate no meat. In fact, being a vegetarian is considered an act of virtue and is supposed to promote a placid, cowlike disposition. There was nothing bovine about this fellow, believe me. But he made a choice to slaughter innocent people and thought it right. And if you don’t choose to surrender to your fate and become a great man, no one can force you to it. No thing can, either. That hunk of metal will not change a thing about you except by your will.” Then she paused, caught in the classic problem of predetermination versus free will. Did I exercise free will when I took the sword, or was it some plan of Bridget’s that reached forward in time to the moment of my conception, or even before, to the unlikely marriage of my parents? Does it matter? Eleanor, after several moments of staring down at the sunlight dappling the little stream, decided it did not, and that all that really mattered was the choices themselves, and their consequences. She heard Sal’s voice whisper, You are a most delightful and satisfactory daughter. A wash of affection, warmer than sunlight, filled her.

  Arthur sighed and chuckled. "You could split hairs with a cleric.”

  "That’s the Irish in me, I suppose. We are great exponents of irrational logic.”

  The man leaned back and stretched out on the grass, putting his arms above his head. "I would like to stay here forever and just be quiet.”

  Eleanor shared his wish but only if Doyle was beside her. "Well, you can’t,” she said a little sharply.

  "No.” He snaked out a long arm and pulled her down onto his chest. His hand stroked her hair. "But the world will not end if I take a moment to hold you, to tell you how strong and good you are.”

  She giggled at the words out of a slight sense of embarrassment. "No, no. I am just an ordinary woman in an extraordinary situation, and I have the good fortune to have had a very wise teacher in the Lady of the Willows. Doyle sometimes said she was his only rival for my affections.”