Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

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

  "You do yourself less credit than you deserve, then, for while the gods may direct, you are the one out here killing ugly little savages and trying to recover the heirlooms of my house. They aren’t out here, pregnant and with a reluctant hero on their hands, are they?” "Are you reluctant?” she asked, ignoring the faint slur on Bridget and Sal.

  "Very. I have no assurance that I will do it correctly.” "I knew I forgot something. My 'Hero’s Handbook.’ It is full of useful advice on how to slay dragons and what to do with unwanted princesses, the care and feeding of magical swords, and how to lay siege to a castle. But I do not recall a single word about how to judge the rightness of an action. It is the nature of dragons, I suppose, to gather up treasure and desire an occasional virgin in their diet of sheep and goats, just as it is Sable’s nature to kill birds. And it is the hero’s to slay such beasts, but that has nothing to do with right or wrong.”

  "And what, dear lady, do you do with a hero who is also a dragon?”

  "Keep him away from Glastonbury, and feed him milk and honey to sweeten his disposition, I suppose.” They both laughed, sat up, and prepared to continue their journey .

  XXVII

  A week later they stood at the end of a long peninsula and looked across blue waters toward the isle of Iona, mist-shrouded home of the quarrelsome St. Columba and his monks, though the saint was centuries dead and the monastery abandoned. Their journey had been marked by two more attacks by the natives and once by the sounds of the Reavers pursuing some other prey. Not for the first time, Eleanor wished that Britain was not an island, for she sometimes felt she had spent the better part of her adult life cold and rimed with salt.

  Iona was tantalizingly close, yet far enough away that it would entail another voyage. She had little desire to repeat her performance in changing the willow cup into a vessel, for she lacked the energy for such magicks. Alone she could cross as an orca, and Sable no doubt shared Wrolf’s ability to become some aquatic animal, but that did not solve the problem of transporting Arthur.

  "You frown, my lady.”

  "Hmm. Just trying to decide how to get there from here. I would prefer to travel on a fast wish, but I am fresh out of them. No one warned me that magic was so full of decisions. It is a shame we can’t just... call the Harp to us. Not to mention the fun it is going to be trundling a fragile musical instrument around in the wild. But I guess a harmonica would not be nearly so pretty on the arms of England.”

  It was, she realized, another onset of what she had come to call "the blacks,” that deep despair that made the blues seem frivolous. They descended upon her like some recurrent fever, unannounced and unwanted, in bright daylight or the dark of night. One moment she was fine, the next her face was wet with tears and

  Doyle’s name lay across her lips. She made stupid jokes in an effort to allay her sense of loss and her resentment at having no leisure for grief. Sometimes she wished to pick an argument with Arthur, just to relieve her frustrations, but she was afraid of his anger and even more of her own.

  The burden of the sword no longer weighed her shoulders, but little else had changed. The child in her belly grew heavier each day, and so did her sense of weariness. She had grown to respect her companion, to find some healing in the pleasure of his body, but the fact remained that he was not Doyle and never would be.

  She knelt down on the sandy soil and abstractedly scratched the panther between its ears. Fond as she was of felines, she had not yet developed any of the kind of closeness she had had with the wolf, and she realized it as an instinctive reluctance to risk love again, on even so remote a creature as the big cat. Some illogical, primitive part of her had made a causal connection between love and death, and it did not matter that her father would have perished if she had not adored him, or that Doyle would die in some midsummer, if not this one. She still felt it was her fault. It was not a Gordian knot she could hack through with any sword of her mind. The ropes renewed themselves after each severing.

  Eleanor, you have to ask. She went still at the words in her mind. Ask for what? From whom? Mother, I can do it myself. That was her own voice, a piping child’s voice, over the matter of some shoelaces. I wonder what has always seemed so terrible about asking for help. She remembered her father hunched over his huge desk, pawing through piles of books, desperately struggling to complete his last work, snarling like a cur at any interruption or offer of assistance. His rejection had hurt, and she decided that that kind of pigheaded independence was not an admirable quality. Doyle had had it, too, so she had every expectation of the child within her being willful to a fault.

  Sable leaned his head into her lap and regarded Eleanor with great golden eyes. Arthur was piling dried wood for a fire, whistling what she realized was the tune for "Michelle,” for it had become a habit between them to sing as they walked, and he had learned both melody and words to several songs that had no business in the thirteenth century. He possessed a fine, clear, baritone range, and she realized with a pang that she had never sung with Doyle. And what, her scholar’s mind wondered, would be the effect, if any, of songs out of time? She let that thought distract her from memories of Doyle. A vagrant fragment of a tune floated in her mind, a voice like blown smoke she could not identify, singing all of the songs never sung for one man before, full of infinite joy and sadness, and she had to fight off tears.

  A rough wet tongue touched her wrist, and she looked at Sable. Eleanor stroked the smooth head and neck, feeling the incredible muscles underneath the skin. Its face seemed to shimmer for a second, the black muzzle fading into dead-white skin and berry red lips. Sal’s face smiled at her a moment, then was gone.

  Okay, I have to ask for help. Dear Goddess, will you please give me a boat, a raft, a log and paddle, for I am weary, otherwise I wouldn’t bother you. The ungracious tone of her supplication struck her, and she felt a little ashamed. That was hardly the two voices singing in harmony that Sal had proposed as the proper relationship between the gods and men. But she heard the tinkle of laughter and saw the reflection of sunlight on willow-shaded waters, which reassured her that no offense had been taken. With a faint sense of shock, Eleanor realized that despite the importance of her task, she did not regard herself as worthy to petition the deities for aid. It was an odd mixture of pride and humility, a vanity of self-reliance and independence, as if she needed no one. She knew it for a lie and a delusion.

  "What is it, milady?” Arthur’s words broke into her thoughts. "You have the strangest expression on your face, as if you had just swallowed sour wine.”

  "Submission has a bitter taste.”

  "Yes, but my master ofttimes told me that no man can be ruler of himself unless he is willing to bend the will of another. That the strong are ever at the mercy of the weak.”

  Eleanor stared at him blankly for a second, trying to make some sense of the words. She thought then of Bridget, trapping herself in a chilly priory so that she might continue to receive the reverence of a handful of monks, becoming less the queen of Heaven with each year as they forgot her true nature. Bridget could draw her over the centuries, but she must put her fate and that of Albion in the hands of a slender slip of a girl who never touched a sword before. She had imprisoned herself in a statue, so the knowledge of her might not vanish entirely and was at the mercy of frail men with brief attention spans. How mortifying. Or Sal, immured in her hill, because she was too proud to call men to adore her. It was a splendid isolation but isolation all the same. Was that the sole purpose of creation? To be adored?

  Eleanor decided that was much too great a matter for her and set about getting the fire alight. As she watched the spark leap from her hand, she wondered why she served Bridget and yet loved Sal the better. They were but two aspects of the same force, as Wrolf and Sable were two faces of a single thing. Perhaps it was that Bridget demanded, and Sal, with watery grace, had suggested. Or perhaps it was that for all her fiery nature, Bridget was something of a cold fish. Then she dismissed the proble
m firmly and started to prepare dinner.

  A dinghy bobbed on the waves the following morning. It was painted bright blue with white trim, and two real oars lay across the seat. Eleanor looked at it and wondered if some wealthy boatman in Newport was suddenly raising hell over the disappearance of it. She would have been content with an inflatable raft.

  Arthur raised an eyebrow at it, then began stowing their gear. Sable viewed the operation with feline remoteness. Eleanor and Arthur got aboard, and she looked expectantly at the panther, curious to see if it would turn into a seal or some other ocean creature. Sable gave her a look of mild disdain and stretched. A moment later, wings sprang from its shoulders, and the cat’s head took on an avian shape. The forepaws became eagle’s claws. The hindquarters bunched and sprang into the air, the gold-feathered wings beating and sending a flurry of sand. The sunlight reflected off the gleaming feathers as it flapped away toward the island.

  "A griffin. Of course. I should have known Sable would do something like that.”

  "Why?” Arthur asked, as he began to row in the glassy sea.

  "Because... he’s summer, as Wrolf was winter. I guess he is fire and air, as Wrolf was earth and water. Elemental, my dear..She grinned at her own foolishness. Arthur gave her a half-shrug and went on rowing.

  Perhaps an hour later, they reached the island, a barren hump of land with the ruins of a monastery sitting on a rise like a set of broken teeth. Sable sat above the shore, placidly grooming his paws. They dragged the boat above the tide line, and Eleanor took her rowan staff but left everything else behind.

  Sable led them inland, startling several families of coney and grouse into hysterics by his passage. Eleanor felt uneasy, and the feeling increased as they got farther from the shore. It became a stab of pain behind her eyes, almost like a migraine headache, by the time they came to the ruins of the monastery, so she felt dizzy and weak and slightly nauseous.

  The stones of the building had been tossed around, as if a giant had played tiddledywinks there, and in the center of what had been a courtyard there was a gaping hole. Torn and rain-battered, broken-backed volumes of illumination lay around the mouth of the hole, along with several golden sacramental vessels. Whatever had happened here, loot had not been the object. A kind of cold fear began to creep into her, though Eleanor could not name what she was afraid of. The sun shone brightly onto her shoulders, and there seemed nothing extraordinary about the hole in the ground. Except her experience was that nothing good lurked in the dark places of the earth. Eleanor told herself not to be silly.

  Sable advanced to the edge of the hole, sniffed delicately, and made a hissing noise that brought his black whiskers bristling forward. Obviously, it didn’t smell right to him. Then he placed a dainty, if deadly, paw on the sloping dirt and put his head into the tunnel. A moment later, the panther had vanished from view.

  Eleanor and Arthur looked at each other. She shrugged, and they moved cautiously toward the opening. It was indeed a tunnel, high enough for a panther to walk upright or a man to move bent forward. The earth was hard-packed, as if something heavy had pressed upon it. They crept in, and Eleanor was fairly certain Arthur shared her apprehension.

  The tunnel widened and broadened as it spiraled downward, so that they could finally walk erect, though the roof of it almost brushed Arthur’s head. Their auras glowed in the darkness, making odd near-shadows against the smooth walls. Eleanor realized the walls were glassy, as if the sand in them had been fused. She wasn’t sure what kind of heat that would require, and she decided she didn’t want to know.

  Finally, they reached a chamber. At first, it seemed fairly empty but for a flaming pit in the center. It was chilly in the room, and the fire seemed to give off no warmth. Beyond the pit, the floor seemed to be a tumble of large rocks.

  The "rocks” moved, and a large, triangular head reared up, the red of the flames reflecting off the large, pointed teeth so that they appeared bloodstained. It stared down at them with a kind of contempt. A long tongue flicked out between the jaws.

  So, you have come to steal my companion. Eleanor heard the words in her mind, but that voice she would have known anywhere. Doyle! She was not sure what it meant by companion, whether the Harp or herself, nor, indeed, if the words were directed at her or at Arthur. The pain in her temples was nearly unbearable. All she was certain of was that somehow the thing staring at her was Doyle. She pressed icy fingertips to her forehead to ease the pain.

  She glanced at Arthur. "I want the Harp,” he said.

  You may want whatever you like, puny princeling, hut you cannot have my companion.

  The Harp materialized against the chest of the dragon, and Eleanor realized it looked very like the beast Doyle had become at Glastonbury, four legs and a pair of stubby arms. It clutched the instrument with a lover’s embrace, scaly fingers stroking the strings. There was no sound at his touch.

  "Your companion seems very silent,” Arthur replied. "Perhaps she does not favor your caress.”

  The dragon looked down at the Harp, peered at the woman’s head carved at the top of the upright. He clutched it closer, and Eleanor almost gasped, for the gesture seemed to press on her chest. She closed her eyes to get away from her fear that the big hand would snap the fragile thing into bits. Immediately, the pressure on her body vanished, along with the headache. "Arthur, tell me what you see.”

  "What? I see a big winged worm, the color of sand, holding a golden woman in his claws. It has fangs, like an adder, and they drip venom.”

  "One or both of us sees an illusion, for the creature I see is a big, six-limbed dragon holding a Harp. Close your eyes.”

  "No! I know it is no trick. My eyes do not fool me. I have seen this worm before, in dreams.”

  This is a swell time to display Plantagenet pigheadedness, she thought. I have to open my eyes. I can’t stand around like a lump. And besides, I know it’s an illusion. So it won’t bother me.

  She opened her eyes and saw the Doyle-dragon and found it disturbed her a great deal. It crossed her mind that she might not be seeing any trick, but that Arthur might be the only one who was affected. The beast turned its gaze on her, and she was sure it was her Doyle, so certain that her heart pounded in her chest. It had to be! The goddess had not cheated her. All she had to do was touch him, and he would again be her dear husband.

  Eleanor moved around the fire pit toward the beast, discarding her conviction that she was seeing an illusion in her desire to regain her lover. Arthur, on the other side, moved, too, removing the fire sword from its sheath. She stopped in mid-step. What was he doing with Doyle’s sword? The blood pounded in her temples as she realized she had given it to him. Shame and guilt seized her. She closed her eyes again.

  A smell filled her nose, a fetid, rotten odor, like an open cesspool. She turned her face toward it. It definitely came from the beast. Doyle never stank like that. She wavered again.

  Sing for me.

  The demand had a physical presence, all the songs she had never sung for Doyle, would never sing for him. Music to soothe the savage beast, clutching a silent harp. Eleanor opened her eyes and saw Arthur, sword upswung, halted in mid-motion, frozen in time. Her throat was parched, and her mind filled with scraps of tunes, including one about a magic dragon named Puff.

  "Why should I?”

  Perhaps I will trade you my companion for yourself, if you sing well enough.

  Eleanor tried to find sufficient self-sacrifice in her to make such a bargain, but the idea of spending the rest of her life in this dank, chill cavern singing to a beast who probably had a tin ear was remarkably unappealing. She felt a laugh begin to bubble up in her belly, a trickle of humor that seemed to turn into a stream and then a torrent as it rose to her throat. It burst past her lips, a hideous, hysterical sound with no pleasure in it.

  Arthur started at the noise, moving once again, lowering the sword and peering at her. "Eleanor? Is that you?”

  "Why?”

  "Because you
look like a hag. Your hair is white, and your teeth are all rotten.”

  Eleanor held out one hand and found a wrinkled claw. The beast had cast some illusion on her, some shadow. It was, she realized, her own weakness and doubt that permitted it to happen. Without Doyle, she in truth felt like a tired old beldam, going through the motions of her quest without any real feeling. It was her duty to finish what she had begun, but she did not really care. Perhaps it would be simpler to trade herself for the Harp and let Arthur finish the job without her. The child stirred.

  Anger fountained up within her, red fury. It burned with many colors. There was the rosy glow of her rage at Bridget, the ruddy tone of anger at herself for loving Doyle and yet being the cause of his death, the ember glow of her father’s death and the betrayal that it yet seemed, and finally, the blue flame of her own despair and doubt. Her muscles twitched as if she were having

  a seizure, energy coursing through her body like a flash fire.

  Eleanor felt something change within her, some burden burning away with her anger. She grasped the rowan staff tightly in one suddenly sweaty hand and extended the other toward the fire pit. The flames in the pit seemed to bend toward her palm like a hungry tongue, and she could feel the strange chill of its light. It touched her hand, and she was cold. The breath left her lungs, and the blood seemed to still in her veins. Only where her hand held the staff was there any sensation.

  She struggled to draw that warmth into her, feeling her body grow colder each moment, her lungs screaming for air that no longer existed, her heart still. The moon-carved head of the staff seemed to glow with flames. They raced down the wood, up Eleanor’s arm, across her chest and head, and down the outstretched arm to meet the cold fire of the pit. If she could have screamed she would have, for where hot and cold interfaced there was agony, each progress more painful than the last. Finally, a gout of fire gushed from her palm, reached the other flame, and there was an explosive thump. Sparks shot up into the air.