The Eagle and the Sword (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 2)

by A. A. Attanasio

  Then, one morning, the green doorways of the forest open upon a Saxon camp—Aelle and Cissa and their naked warriors dressed in scars and blue paint. Even clumsy as icy water, because the lamia have not eaten in weeks, Melania is still more swift and silent than any mortal, and she surprises the warband.

  The nearest Thunderer leaps up, a knife in each hand, and the voracious lamia seize him. In an instant, he is a ripped carcass hanging from a tree by his feet, his shocked face staring at itself in a mirror of puddling blood.

  The Thunderers shriek with fright. Their souls of blue lightning dim with fear.

  Except for Cissa. He shoves his startled father behind him and beats his naked chest with his fists, sounding the drum of his body to summon the Furor.

  The lamia swoop toward him and are pulled away with high tearing screams. Melania falls to her knees under the impact of their loud cries that seep like hot tar into her inner brightness, hardening to darkness within the light of her life.

  She swoons. Fading, she beholds the Furor. Colossal as a tree, his beard and mane tangled in the clouds and his vacant socket empty as the black behind the sky, he holds the lamia in one hand like squirming eels. His single eye shadows forth such azure arctic loneliness, such impossible loss and grief, her breastbone groans, unable to lift a cry, unable to carry the burden of such sorrow.

  Cissa crouches over her. He has dealt with witches before. He has wrestled werebeasts, impaled vampyres, and bound lamia in the aboriginal forests of the Thunderers' wanderings. The Furor has trained him well. He snaps open the orphic urn, and the lamia are shoved yowling into the confining darkness. Then he takes the witch's smudged face in his tattooed hands and studies her southern features—Greek nose, full lips, large dark eyes—and he nods.

  "This one lives," he announces.

  "She has killed our clansman," Aelle protests, and the other Thunderers murmur agreement. "Her blood must wash his."

  Cissa holds the basket of her ribs and feels her fear scrabbling and knocking within. "You are not a witch," he says in the Latin tongue of his enemies. "You are a frightened woman."

  Melania shakes the bleariness from her head. She looks about for the Furor and sees only treecrowns screening the far furnace of the sun. The lamia's power has vanished, and she feels exhausted, hollowed.

  The man holding her conveys the frightful aspect of a serpent, for he is totally hairless, his flesh stenciled with scaly coils.

  "This one lives," Cissa repeats. He plucks at her tangled, dark hair matted with burrs and twigs. "When she is cleaned up, she will be beautiful in the Roman way. Some use will come of her."

  The Thunderers gather around their slain comrade and lower him from the tree. "And what of his blood?" Aelle inquires of his shaman son.

  "His blood has paid for ours," Cissa answers, and releases Melania, done with her. He picks up the urn and turns it wisely in his stained hands. "Behold, noble Aelle, the shape of our salvation."

  Aelle huffs impatiently. The scar between his eyes throbs from the strong presence of the Furor, who still stalks through these woods, somewhere nearby. "Tell me plainly, son, what you see."

  Cissa's reptilian face cracks a smile. "I see that the Thunderers need not attack Camelot. I see that we need not die to distract our enemies while the Furor's dwarf retrieves the sword Lightning."

  Aelle tugs at his hay-nest beard, not comprehending. "The Furor has ordered us—"

  A rustling in the underbrush puts swords again in the hands of the Thunderers.

  From among pale poplars, a startling figure emerges—squat, immense, and fierce. A dwarf dressed in studded leather straps that crisscross an iridescent tunic of fire-snake skin.

  "Put your swords away!" the creature orders. He is half as high as a man and twice as wide, with huge, muscular limbs, and a cubed head of tufty gold hair and red whiskers that swirl over pugnacious jowls. "I am the Furor's dwarf-—Brokk."

  Aelle goes to one knee before the agent of their god. The other Thunderers follow—except for Cissa. "Get up," the shaman calls. "He is but a minion of our Lord. And one who has lost the sword Lightning to our foes and put all our lives in jeopardy. He is no longer worthy of our respect. Not until he has recovered the Furor's sword."

  Brokk scowls at him and strides menacingly closer, but Cissa does not flinch.

  The man's eyes stare cold as the icy heart of winter. "I am the viper-priest of the Furor. I am the one you have been sent to obey."

  "I obey none but the Furor himself." Brokk snarls, and shows huge square teeth. "I am older than the children of Woman."

  Cissa beats the drum of his body, and though the morning is cloudless, the sky darkens. Summer scatters itself before a boreal wind that burns with cold.

  Brokk's brutish face bends woefully, and he admits, "The Furor has sent me to work with you, to recover the sword Lightning."

  In the background, Melania curls more tightly against the wall of a mammoth oak. She does not understand what the snakeman or the dwarf are saying, but they hold the urn between them. In the sudden dimness, they unclasp the snake-fang lid, and the lamia, still weak from their long fast, seep out like cool mist in moonlight.

  The dwarf's leather-bound hand with its metal knuckles shoves one of the ghostly creatures back into the urn. The other, the dwarf wraps about himself like a windy shawl. Instantly, he grows in stature and stands facing the viper-priest, precise as a mirror image.

  Terrified at what she sees, Melania tries to scuttle away. Immediately, she is snatched and dragged back before the hairless tattooed warrior and the dwarf, who now holds the lamia in one hand like a limp pelt of silver fur.

  Seizing a hank of her hair, the dwarf runs blunt fingers over her quivering face. She jolts as his electricity tickles the frosty outlines of her organs. His small eyes thread a burning light.

  "I will take this one for my pleasure," Brokk announces, and folds back his tunic to reveal a red pizzle the size of a man's forearm.

  Melania scrambles backward crabwise, face wrenched with horror, and Cissa steps astride her.

  "No, Brokk. You will not have this mortal woman. She is mine. The Furor has given her to me."

  Brokk's grinding teeth brattle with a sound like falling rocks, and he steps back.

  "Now, you shall go," Cissa orders, and points into the forest. "Camelot lies in that direction. With the shapeshifter to wear, you will enter among our enemies and take back the sword Lightning. Then you will have won again our respect. Now, go."

  With an embittered scowl, Brokk wraps the lamia about himself and shimmers into the shape of Melania. He walks off in that guise and does not look back. As soon as he departs, the siege of darkness lifts from the summer day.

  Aelle bows his head in gratitude to the Furor for his able son. Then he signs for the others to prepare a pyre for their fallen comrade, and he regards the bedraggled Roman woman in her rags. "You should have given her to Brokk," he tells Cissa.

  The Furor's priest shakes his head and lifts Melania to her feet. "No, worthy Aelle. This one has another destiny."

  "You will take her for yourself?"

  Cissa passes a disappointed look at his father. "You know me better. I take nothing for my own."

  "Then, why?"

  "Why is a word. What I want from her is beyond words."

  "I do not understand you, my son. She is a Roman woman." He motions in disgust at where she stands bent and slovenly, peering at them through the twisted shag of her hair. "Look at her. She is weak, filthy, and she brought death into our camp. Look at her."

  "One must not look through the eyes expecting to see."

  Aelle shrugs and announces loudly for all the others to hear, "You are as much the Furor's son as mine, Cissa, so I cannot expect always to understand you. You may keep the Roman woman. She has killed one of ours but has liberated the rest of us from the Furor's command to attack Camelot. Let us go now to the oak grove outside Hammer's Throw, where the Celt Kyner shall free my son Fen. Then we will dep
art this island that is haunted by the ghosts of our enemies, and we shall winter in the reindeer forests beyond the rivers of the morning sun."

  Melania understands nothing of what the heathens say until the viper-priest turns to her and speaks in her language. "We are the Thunderers," he begins. "We have burned your villages and the people in them. We have taken your magic for our own. Now your lamia serve us. Know this: I have saved you from the dwarf not for myself but for our god, the Furor. If you try to flee again, I will kill you slowly in his honor."

  "Why must I stay?" Melania asks in a sodden voice. "What are you going to do to me?"

  "How can I say?" He takes her chin in his hand and lifts her sooty face to his hungry gaze. "The gods alone know how lovely the unspeakable must be."

  Chapter 10: Morgeu the Fey

  Sunset darkens in red strokes over Camelot. King Lot and his entourage set up camp on the high western meadows, where the Celtic chieftains situated themselves in the two prior festivals. The British warlords erect their tents on the eastern fields at the far side of the champaign, so that the construction site of the fortress-city lies between them and the Celts.

  Lot is the first of the chiefs to arrive, and he raises his pavilions close to the tree line so that there will be ample room in the meadows for the large companies of his Celtic peers, Lord Urien and Chief Kyner. The sun sinks while the tents go up, and when the work is done a line of green is all that remains of day in the cloud-streaked skies the night inherits.

  Lot insists that he and his sons seek out Merlin to pay their respects and formally announce their arrival, but Morgeu will not face her nemesis in person. As in years past, she goes into the wild woods to worship arboreal gods and work sorcery for her people.

  This does not trouble King Lot. He is old and well pleased with Morgeu. Her amorous spells and uxorious ministrations satisfy his manly desires, while her passionate devotion to the Celtic gods exalts his spiritual status among his clan. In their fourteen years together, she has not only awarded him with two able sons, she has expertly advised him in battle strategies against the Gaels, worked magic to dispel the mighty storms that usually thrash his kingdom of the North Isles, and, by eliciting the faeries' help, delivered spectacular harvests for the domain's farmers and fisherfolk. Life has never been more rewarding for King Lot.

  Torches held in the grip of the king's guard light the night to liquid bronze, and Lot, Gareth, and Gawain march eagerly down the meadow lanes leading a long line of clansfolk. Ahead, the construction site towers in skeletal scaffolds against scattered stars, and friendly denizens of Cold Kitchen wait behind long tables laded with Celtic foods—braised salmon, quail stew, beef skewers, eel soup, hazelnut cakes, honey dumplings, black-currant pies, wheels of blue cheese, and raspberry puddings. Jugglers spinning firebrands, harpists, pipers, fiddlers, even ale-minstrels singing stories and bearing numerous horns of liquor greet the Celts.

  Inquiring after Merlin, Lot and his sons pass through the gargantuan gates of Camelot. In the central hall, among building platforms and workbenches illuminated by fiery braziers, the figure of Hannes masquerading as Merlin paces the dancing shadows, chuckling to himself.

  Since Merlin endowed him with magical powers three days earlier, he has hardly slept at all, so enamored is he of his astonishing new strengths. Hour by hour, he learns more about the skills that can yank boulders from the earth and numb water to ice, and he delights in his experiments.

  "Merlin!" King Lot calls from the arched portal to the circular chamber.

  Hannes whirls about, startled, and gawks at the tall, bare-chested warrior with drooping mustache and keen, eagle-browed stare. His half-naked boys, one to either side, radiate the feral air of young brutes, pugnacious jaws set defiantly, small eyes dark and threatening.

  "What do you want?" Hannes asks apprehensively, waving his magical stave before him, ascertaining that no host of pale people accompanies this dangerous trio. "Who are you?"

  "Who am I?" King Lot squints menacingly.

  Hannes leans on his stave, edging back into the shadows, and delivers the pronouncement he has carefully prepared, "Oh, this addled mind! Fie on these mortal brains! Only recently have I come from a magical journey into the hollow hills, and I would not recognize my own mother, blessed Saint Optima herself. Do forgive me, my lord. But—you are ... who?"

  "I am Lot!" the king announces, loud with impatience and incredulity. "And what has become of the dark thunder of your voice? You sound squeaky as a mouse!"

  "The spirits—'twas the spirits in the hollow hills! They seized my throat pipes and bent them so they squeak so."

  "Step into the light, wizard," the king commands. "I would show you my worthy sons, Gawain and Gareth."

  Hannes inches forward, head bowed, reminding himself, I must not call him lord. I am Merlin. He is Lot. "Strapping youths, hale and strong-boned to my eye. They will make fine men, stout warriors, and worthy sons of King Lot."

  Hands on his hips, the king bends forward suspiciously. "It has been full five years since we walked together among these stones, and you seem much changed by these years. Is this truly you, Merlin?"

  "Truly me?" Hannes strives to load his piping voice with umbrage. "Truly?" He waves his stave at the braziers, and the flames blaze green. With a hysterical laugh, he whacks a carpenter's stool, and it dances, sidling and whirling among support tresses and dangling pulley cables. "Behold the wizardry of Merlin!"

  Even as his words echo in the large and hollow chamber, the stool collides with a brazier, spilling sickly green flames atop the wizard. Hannes yelps with fright and pain as the green fire bites his face and hands and ignites his beard in a gust of spinning sparks.

  With terrified shouts, Gawain and Gareth leap out of the chamber, leaving their father standing alone and astonished before the burning wizard.

  "Enough, Merlin!" Lot kicks the animated stool into the air as it prances by, and it collapses to the floor inert.

  Hannes drops his stave and beats at the snapping flames in his beard with his hat, striking puffs of blue smoke from his body. Frantically, he lifts his robe over his face and hands and smothers the frenzied conflagration. The flesh of his scrawny torso looks white as flour milled twenty times, yet when he lowers his robes, his singed and fuming features show white only in his startled eyeballs.

  "You play the fool and fool my sons, demon—but you cannot deceive King Lot. I know you mock me. You mock all true Celts, for you serve the Christian god with your demon powers." Lot held himself to stillness lest he strike the giddy apparition scorning him. "You appear as a laughable man. I am not gulled. You are the very devil my wife Morgeu despises."

  Hannes stops swatting at the last sparkling embers crawling in his shriveled beard and asks tremulously, "Morgeu—the sorceress? Morgeu the Fey? She is here?"

  "Aye. Put aside your fear, wizard. I have come to introduce you to my sons and to inform you of this for certain: the years have not diminished my wife's loathing of you, nor will beholding you in this ridiculous state soften her heart. Know that she has come not to see you or even Camelot. She is here stravaging the countryside for crystal and herbal medicaments. None of us will see much of her these days. Woe for me, who loves her dearly—yet a certain joy for you, eh, Lailoken?"

  "Yes—yes—a certain joy for me." Hannes wipes his scorched brow, picks up his stave, and, bent over his pain, retreats into the shadows. He escapes Lot with the glad news of Morgeu's absence and hurries deeper into the dark corridors of the incomplete building.

  As he goes, he rubs his stave along the walls, making the stones shine with dull light that enbrowns the air. By that vague illumination, he inspects his burned hands and moans to see them laced with blisters. After a few cooling chants, the pain of his seared body dims.

  He must be far more careful with his magical displays, he realizes. In the coming days, the British warlords will arrive: Marcus Domnoni, who knew Merlin at Tintagel when Hannes built the round table, Severus Syrax, th
e oriental magister militum of Londinium, who hosted the wizard in the governor's palace, and the dread Bors Bona, who fought remorselessly for him on battlefields across Britain. How will he deceive those wily Romans who survive by expecting treachery in every shadow? He must behave in a more subdued and dignified manner. If Morgeu the Fey had witnessed his blundering antics this night, he would be dead now.

  Fear booms so loudly in Hannes's chest he worries that the sorceress will hear it. But perhaps Morgeu is not as powerful an entity as the carpenter dreads, he reasons to steady himself. Merely a mortal, she must learn and relearn her magic—unlike her arch-foe, that demon-wizard Merlin, whose powers are not human at all.

  The sorceress Morgeu the Fey does possess powerful magic—such as the ability to walk out of her body—but only after much arduous preparation. Her spells to bewitch and ensorcell depend on internal disciplines that require constant maintenance and attentiveness. The effort is exhausting, and Hannes's secret is in no immediate danger of exposure.

  Squatting in the dark woods, Morgeu stares angrily through the trees at the phlegm of stars spewed across the sky. She wants to fly as her enemy Merlin flies. Then she could swoop through the night like an owl with the soul of a dead Celt caught in her throat. She would follow her inner sense, the inner calling of her half brother's blood. It calls to her as nimbly as her own passion. In trance, she hears that lust most clearly—the adolescent urgings that thicken in his body.

  The worm of blood that crawls in his veins has the same mother as her blood, and, by that common link, she can feel him with her magic. Desire in him seeks a naked joy, and in trance she feels his longing echo in the most glorious parts of her. By that resonance, she could easily find him—if she could fly. But she cannot. And on her journeys out of her body, she loses her way, because Merlin employs his demon powers to confuse her. He has cast a spell that scatters the echoes from her half brother's yearnings, scatters them across the horizon so they seem to come from every direction. If only she could fly, she could lift herself above this scattering and see their source.