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

by A. A. Attanasio

  "A shapeshifter," he answers, shaking it so that its mildewed features smear to a silent howl that shows a mesh of fangs. "Sometimes called a lamia."

  "Lamia eat the cryptarch in human blood," Morgeu says with a shimmer of fear, the stained dagger rising. "Keep it away from me. Or are you here to set it upon me?"

  "Set it upon you?" Brokk had not thought of that, though it seems now a useful idea. "Not if you do as I ask."

  "What do you ask of me?"

  "Go to Merlin," he answers at once. "Use your skills as an enchantress and learn for me how to reverse the polarity of the magnetic stone that holds the sword Lightning."

  Morgeu backs a pace, baffled. "I do not know what you mean. Reverse the poles of the stone? Is this alchemy?"

  "Merlin will know."

  Morgeu waves her knife nervously before her. "If I go to him, he will use his magic on me. He could well kill me. And I cannot have that. I have great work to do."

  "Oh?" Brokk works the lamia's molten form between his massive hands and packs it into the steel-stitched hide pouch at his hip. "What work is that?"

  Morgeu sheathes her dagger. If the dwarf had come to slay her, there would be now no conversation. She brushes back her startled-looking hair, and answers proudly, "I will find the son of Uther Pendragon and my mother and enchant him with lust. I will make a child on him—a son."

  The dwarf rubs his weighty chin. "You would—and can—do that?"

  She nods, her slight mouth bent to a tight, certain smile. "It is the magic of the Old Ones, Brokk—Mother magic, Shakti-Kali-Durga, whom we Celts call Morrigan: female orgiastic magic, which ruled the world in the ages before chiefs and warlords—the tantra that warps, stretches, weaves the womb's life-force into magic. That is the power I have. Fifteen years of trance work has won me that enchantment, and I will use it on my half brother to weave a true ruler with his seed in my womb, a son of Morrigan, to be named Mordred, who will drive out the Christians and do honor to the Furor and his brethren, the Celtic gods of the Daoine Sid."

  "That is a great work, enchantress," Brokk agrees, impressed, eyes aglint like mussel blue shells. "My master would be pleased with that. And I will further this great work—if you will help me retrieve the sword Lightning."

  "Lailoken is a powerful wizard, Brokk—" She opens her arms to reveal her strong-shouldered yet lavish female form. "And I am but an enchantress."

  A cunning smile bends the dwarf's hard features. "Lailoken is a demon—but Merlin is a man. And men can be enchanted."

  Morgeu sucks breath through her teeth. "It will be dangerous. Very dangerous, Brokk."

  "Without doubt," he admits, stepping closer, attracted to the violence embedded in her eyes. "Yet, that is why you are called the Doomed, the Fey."

  "It is not a name I wish to fulfill." She does not retreat when he steps close to her, and the air wrenches with a brash smell of cave tar and rock fire.

  "And yet, that is why you have danced with demons, stared into my master's wroth eye, and survived," the dwarf says, and takes her hand. A relentless charge of horrified excitement passes between them—he feels it for a beauty that is foully organic, and she thrills to it for touching a grotesque creature exaltedly divine. Together, she realizes, they will lift the hem of the vastness.

  Chapter 15 : Keeper of the Dusk Apples

  A starved moon peers into the glade where Melania sits among the Thunderers. Aelle and his men lie in the grass picking their teeth, sharing flagons of fruit wine. The wine, the braised pig—now just a heap of bones—and the baskets of bread and vegetables are tribute from Hammer's Throw, the village beyond the forest. Melania has eaten none of the food, hoping to weaken and die.

  Cissa squats before her, his hairless, reptile-stenciled body looking bruised in the moonlight. His eyes, rolled up into his skull, gleam like two soap bubbles aswirl with rainbows. He calls upon the Furor. The emerald dark of the night sky wavers as if with boreal lights, and the furious god is among them.

  Aelle and the others cannot see him, though they sense him and rise from their pillowstones to dance in his presence. Melania raises her weary face to watch the god standing on the moon's white road, taller than the trees, his falcon's hat blotting the stars, his wild beard a moonstruck cumulus, and his one eye a prism full of nebular colors. She wants him to kill her, but he only smiles down at her, grim and tense as any lunatic.

  Since her capture by the Thunderers, the warrior-priest Cissa has used her to work his magic. Usually, captured women are slain unless they grovel subserviently enough to offer promise as slaves, and then the tribe's women must decide. There are no women in this war party trespassing the Celtic forests. These warriors have come to retrieve one of Aelle's sons, Fen, or, failing that, to raze in vengeance as many towns and farmsteads as they can before winter drives them back to their nomad settlements in the east.

  The Thunderers believe Melania is a witch. She brought them the lamia, which killed one of their own. The sphinx-handled urn that held the monsters hangs from Cissa's loin-wrap. Around his throat, he wears the viper-patterned guardian band, and at his hip is the lode-knife that can kill the razorous specters. She is for him yet another of these magical possessions, a thing to be used for the worship of his gods.

  Moving like quick shadows through the glade, the Thunderers dance past her, their greasy bearded faces glaring hatred. They want to kill her slowly, cutting off pieces of her as they sing the praises of their dead comrade slain by the lamia. But Cissa squats close to her, keeping her for himself and his magic.

  She is the shell, the husk, the hull of his power. Poltergeist strength plucks at her secret parts until they shine with painful pleasure that burns coldly through her like abhorrent intercourse, like a devil's sexual intrusion. She is damned, and she screams. Her cries crawl out of her, heavy and cold as ether. When she is emptied of everything but an ovarian glow, the goddess comes down from the Night Tree and fills her body.

  Then Melania floats to her feet, filled with otherness. Soulful beauty saturates her. She feels beautiful despair as she becomes other than herself. It is the glorious grief of the Furor's mistress occupying the lighted shaft of her body. As inflamed with loveliness as Lucifer, she dazzles. She is Keeper of the Dusk Apples. She is the Furor's lover. She inhabits the created world under the totem moon with a supernal grace wholly indifferent to the animal that carries her.

  Melania gazes out from herself as if from another life. She is the unhappy reality far back in the mind of the goddess who uses her body. Keeper of the Dusk Apples has come to earth to stand with her lord in the dangerous rootlands of the Storm Tree. Here in the muck of the world, in the magnetic rubble of the Dragon's hide, they can touch each other in new ways, so wholly different from their luminous lives above.

  The Furor pours himself into his priest and stands in the garment of Cissa's body, bright eyes brimming with the rain of joy and wonder to meet her here like this.

  "Where the forests fail, the fields begin," the Furor speaks, and Cissa's body is not big enough for his voice, and he quakes in all his physical joints so that his form appears about to burst apart from some enormous internal pressure.

  This terrifies Melania in the stunned distance of her alertness. When Keeper of the Dusk Apples answers her lover, the horrified woman feels her skeleton twist with a pain wilder than fire. "All this will be yours in time, One-Eye," the goddess says. "And the fields will again grow trees. And the trees will gather to forests."

  What else they say, she does not know, for she swoons from the pain. When she wakes, everyone is asleep in the pearly darkness except for Cissa, who watches her with desolate clarity.

  Too confused to cry, she anguishes to remember who she is and why this tattooed pagan regards her with such exquisite sadness. When she does lift memory out of its stupor, the blue-white knuckles of her hand fly to her mouth, and she prays again to die.

  "When I was an eagle," Cissa tells her, "you were the salmon I plucked from the river."
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  Melania lies back in the dew-shining grass and closes her eyes. She smells the morning. Across the channel, in the valley of the Loire, Great-grandmother lives in her stone tower, waiting for her to return, and the same morning light touches the old woman as well. Silent grief rises, and she curls into herself.

  Night seeps down into the forest among trees full of summer and birds singing colors back into the world. Not far into the woods, Arthor and Fen arise from their leaf beds. The gleeman is gone. During the night, he and Master Sphenks slipped away, to stroll off to Hammer's Throw. The wizard dares not enter the camp of the Thunderers. Cissa would see through his disguise instantly and call down upon him the wrath of the one-eyed god.

  "We are close to my people," Fen announces, after relieving himself in the bushes. "You heard them in the night."

  Arthor has unbound his hostage's wrists after visiting the bushes himself. "I heard thunder under the moon," he says, saddling his horse. He wears a white tunic emblazoned with a Celtic cross in scarlet. His shield, cuirass, helmet, and sword lean against the tree under which he slept.

  "That was the Furor's voice, hiding the singing and laughter of his warriors," Fen tells him, stepping close. "But I heard their jubilation, because I am of them."

  "Then we won't have far to ride, will we?" Arthor firmly pushes the Saxon away so that he can bend to tighten the cinch strap without fear of taking a blow.

  "Do not fear me, Royal Eagle of Thor. I will not try to kill you now." Fen's white hair glows, and his pale face looks blue in the dawn haze.

  Arthor casts him a cold look. "You will not have a second chance."

  "You were stupid to throw your sword away and leave a weapon within my grasp. You should be dead now. The gods spared you my death blow. Such is battle luck. At your age, my father took an arrow between his eyes and was not felled. Perhaps the Norns spared you so you could meet him."

  "Saddle your horse."

  They ride through forest tunnels hung with dawn-smoke. The lonesome cries of night birds tarry in the cavernous dark, and from dense boughs mist and dew drip like spider's milk.

  "Leave me here, Royal Eagle of Thor," Fen says, drawing up beside him. "Go your own way now."

  Arthor says nothing and rides on.

  "The Thunderers are not far from here," Fen adds. "The gleeman and his wise dog knew well enough when to depart. They saved you once. Let them save you again."

  "I am returning you to Aelle as Kyner commanded."

  "Ever the obedient dog," Fen smirks, "even unto death."

  Arthor glares at him. "If Aelle breaks his word, many will die—and you will be first."

  "A grand boast, Royal Eagle of Thor. But these are not hungry, masterless brigands you face. These are hardened warriors handpicked by Aelle for this mission. They are men with their own battle luck, men who love death and so are loved by our fierce god. Do not go among them."

  "Why do you care? Yesterday, you wanted me dead."

  "Don't you know?" Fen gazes hotly at him until he sees that the boy does not know. In an exasperated voice, the Saxon answers, "I am a Thunderer. If I return with your scalp and weapons, I hold my place in the tribe. But if you return me like a battle-prize, like some warhorse exchanged between chiefs, I will have no place of honor among my people. They are not like the Celts. I do not have the rights of respect and authority that the oaf Cei possesses simply because he is Kyner's son. No. Each Saxon is judged by his deeds alone. It matters not that I am Aelle's son. He will scorn me."

  "Why then did he risk all coming after you, here in the hill forests of Cymru? Why did he give Kyner information that doomed other Saxons?"

  "You do not understand the Saxons. They are not a nation. They are many warbands that speak one tongue. Death's Angels and the Sons of Freeze angered my father when they joined the Foederatus, the union of Saxon, Pict, Jute, and Angle that holds the eastern lowlands of this island. You have heard of the Foederatus? Aelle goes his own way. Exposing Foederatus raiders to Kyner, even though they are Saxons, is no betrayal for him."

  "I still do not understand how you can say Aelle scorns you." He peers into the sadness of the Saxon's face. "He and his handpicked lovers of death will die if they are found by the Celts."

  "That is Aelle's bravery. It adds to his legend song. He has not come out of love for me—as Kyner would for you. He comes out of pride, as if I were a warhorse taken as coup." A hurt mix of anger and fear cuts a crease between his blue eyes. "Do you see now? If you take me back, I am shamed."

  "Then you will be shamed." Arthor looks away. "That is no concern of mine."

  "It is your concern," Fen pleads. "It must be. You have Saxon blood in your veins. We are brothers. I am in your power. What does it matter to you if I ride into my father's camp alone? You have fulfilled your task. I am returned."

  "My task is to return you directly to Aelle."

  "Why? You say that you will never see Kyner again. Why must you do as he says?"

  "I must, because I will never see Kyner again." Arthor speaks without looking at his hostage. "This task frees me of him and all his commands. I will never serve him again. I will never serve anyone. Ever."

  "Then stop serving now. Let me go on from here alone."

  "No." Arthor looks at Fen, his yellow, slant eyes caged, offering no compassion.

  "Why? Tell me why."

  "I don't have to tell you anything."

  "But you have a reason? You are not simply Kyner's dog?"

  The sides of Arthor's face flex. "Kyner gave me his sword, and I gave my word. That is all I have now. If I betray that, I have nothing."

  "If you ride into that camp, you will have nothing. The Thunderers will kill you."

  "There is no shame to die in battle."

  Fen sits taller, and the arched bones of his face seem to sharpen. "So you know of shame—and yet you will shame me to preserve your precious word—a word you gave a man who has treated you like his loyal dog since he found you as a puppy in the forest."

  Arthor remains silent and looks ahead into the eddying fog.

  "Eagle of Thor—" Fen speaks tightly. "You are not one who cares about the honor of your word. That is what you say. But the truth is in your blood—your Saxon blood that has no tribe to tame it. In truth, you are cruel."

  No further words pass between them until after the portals of the forest open on a sunny clearing where the Thunderers wait. A dozen bare-shouldered men with salt blond hair and beards sit in the pigweed and saw grass sharpening their swords. Their legs are braced with thong sandals fitted with daggers, and they wear odd, frightful garments—dun loin-wraps belted with vertebrae, kilts sewn from scalps, short trousers with shriveled faces smeared by the tanning of human leather.

  At the sight of the riders, the Thunderers stand and gather around the one tent that sits at the edge of the glade, narrow and green as a conifer. The flap opens, and Aelle emerges, big as a bear, ruddy mane, beard, and hairy shoulders glistening like fur. He carries a spear and, at his mail-wrapped hip, a Roman gladius taken in battle.

  His wolf-pelt boots trample the grass in giant strides as he advances toward the riders, the Thunderers sweeping after. He stops in the middle of the clearing and waits for the riders to reach him. The flat look he gives his son has the heft and hardness of a boulder.

  With a gruff shout, he calls Fen down from the horse, then seizes him by his white hair and twists his head as he looks him over. A hand sign brings two warriors forward, and they seize Fen and hurl him to the others, who rip off his cassock and drag him naked through the grass.

  Arthor watches impassively, though his heart gallops.

  "Where is the big chief?" Aelle asks in deep-throated Latin. "Does he lurk in the woods? Have him show himself."

  "I come alone."

  "Alone? A boy?" A grin of disbelief glints in his wide beard. "Who is this child that Kyner sends alone into the camp of the Thunderers?"

  "I am Aquila Regalis Thor."

  Aelle steps a
pace closer, glacial eyes growing smaller. "You are Arthor. Kyner's son. I have heard of you. You have slain many Saxons."

  Arthor shifts uneasily in his saddle. "Your son has been returned," he announces. "The agreement with Lord Kyner is now complete."

  Aelle smiles easily. "Yes, the agreement is now complete, and we can kill each other again."

  Arthor backs his horse away.

  "Wait, Arthor." Aelle tilts his spear toward the camp. "Come with me. I have a token to give you, proof of bond for returning my sorry son to me."

  Arthor surveys the line of lean, silent men dressed in the remnants of their victims. Some still have swords in their hands, and they watch him menacingly, with a vile candor, loathing him for his shield with its eerie image of a dolorous goddess and his blood-crossed tunic, the circle of the sun cut by the intersecting lines of Roman punishment—the god of crucifixion who invades their land.

  "Do not be afraid, Arthor," Aelle speaks with authority. "I have sworn a blood oath. No harm will come to you in this camp. Come."

  The war chief turns and strides back toward the narrow green tent, and his men follow. Arthor watches, unmoving. He wants no token, no proof. He wants only to be away. In particular, he does not want to see what will become of Fen. He has kept his word to Kyner. Now he is free to go. Still, he feels compelled to follow the Saxon chieftain. The transaction is not yet complete.

  He nudges his horse forward and rides into the camp of his enemies. Aelle waits for him before his tent and gestures for him to dismount. Arthor complies and ties his horse to the nearest tree, where apples have dropped and melted in their skins, reeking their sour sweetness.

  The chieftain disappears into his tent, and Arthor stands uneasily beside his horse, prickling from the heat of the staring warriors. When Aelle emerges, he holds a necklace of what looks to Arthor like dried figs.

  "Bring these to Kyner," the Saxon chief rumbles with laughter. "Martyrs' relics—emblems taken from priests, monks, and nuns who have met our sword during our time in Cymru. You see, their nailed god is no match for the Furor."