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

by A. A. Attanasio

  Arthor blows a hollow sigh and rubs his beardless cheeks. "I cannot, Melania. Perhaps someday. For now, I am done with adventuring. I have been to the hollow hills and stood in the Furor's shadow. Last night, a succubus ravaged me. In the face of these frights, my anger at life, at my father and my brother—at myself, really—it all seems so petty now." He shakes his head, amazed at the profound misunderstanding of his earlier life. "I just want to go back to where I belong. I want to serve my people—the ones who adopted me and made me their own. They loved me then despite my bitterness. And now that I'm purged of that rancor, I owe them my service—my love. I owe them at least that."

  "That is right," Fen says, with a taunting grin. "You have found your place as a little man."

  Only a flicker of eyelids betrays the sting Arthor feels at the Saxon's tone. "I am a little man, Fen. That is what God made me. And I am not ashamed of that as once I was. Now I just want to go home."

  "At least you have a home," Melania complains. "The barbarians have seized mine."

  "You have Fen," Arthor assures her, and this time does touch her cheek, enthralled by her loveliness. He steps back. "And he has you. Together you will make a home for yourselves." He faces Fen, and says stoutly, "You are always welcome to stay here—on this bleak and remote island. I will speak to Kyner on your behalf, Fen. He is a good Christian and will make a worthy place for you in our clan."

  "I don't want a place in any clan," Fen grumbles. "I want my own place in the world. Melania and I discussed this. We are beholden to no clan, to no god, to no one but ourselves. When you are done serving those less than you, when you can truckle no more to the demands of inferior men, like that clod Cei, then you seek us out, and we will welcome you to our household in our own land." He thumps the thunderbolt cicatrix over his heart, and his stridency breaks off abruptly as he gazes down at his naked chest and grass-kirtled waist. "But for now, let's get those garments and some good food."

  Melania laughs with Fen, and their mirth sparks shared joy in Arthor. He feels happy for them, glad that they have found themselves in each other, because this proves to him what, in his loneliness as an orphan and a mongrel, he has always needed to believe: that love is bigger than clans and transcends even the strict precincts of faith. He laughs with them, and together they stroll through wet grass and mobs of flowers to the hill where the palfrey waits patiently in soft sunlight, nibbling weeds.

  The journey to Telltale is lighthearted, a morning walk with friends. They speculate about the eerie gleeman and decide he must have been the elf-king. How else could he have had the strength to wound the Furor? And they also wonder nervously if the dwarf and the Thunderers, driven from the hollow hills, still haunt these woods.

  Both Fen and Arthor are good trackers and, seeing no signs of trespass through the wild broom and swaths of knotweed and wildflowers, proceed fearlessly. By noon, they arrive at Telltale. A small party of pilgrims bound ultimately for Galilee is departing as the wanderers enter the thorp, and the opportunity to join them seems too propitious to ignore.

  Arthor gives the couple his coin pouch and receives a hasty kiss from Melania, a clap on the shoulder from Fen. And then, abrupt as a wafting cloud shadow, they depart. The last he sees of them is their laughter and jubilant waves from the back of a wagon rocking through a noonfield of citrine flowers. Melania tosses her head, her sable hair flowing over her shoulders, and she smiles at the man she loves.

  The sudden absence of his companions leaves Arthor feeling lonely and eager to be on his way. After spending his last coin for bread and cheese and a hemp jerkin to replace his rent tunic, he rides off.

  The memory of Melania's loveliness lingers, and several times he pauses to turn back, to join her on the quest to reclaim her ancestral estate. But the amorous mystery of last night's enchantment stops him each time. He feels uneasy with her now that he has made love to her wraith. Beautiful as she is, she belongs to Fen. Only her shadow has given itself to Arthor. If he pursues her, he will be chasing a phantom.

  At last, when his heartache becomes unbearable, he stops in an alder grove dripping pollen, and among light-splinters and butterflies scribbling in the wind, he kneels before his shield and prays.

  Mother Mary, my anger is exhausted. I learned in hell that power means being alone with a loneliness many times yourself. I want no part of it. Let Kyner and Cei have that. I will serve them gladly now. Only ease this burning desire for what I cannot have. Take Melania out of my heart.

  He looks up to heaven, and wind turns the leaves in the branches and reveals a kingdom of clouds. They are his childhood dreams of a majestic domain all his own, which he is glad to see blowing away. The domes and streaming pennants of his puerile ambitions dissolve and take with them the responsibilities of power he is now relieved to let go. Whip strokes of lightning glint in the far distance, where the Furor patrols his own realm.

  The clouds part, and the sun makes him lower his eyes. The Blessed Mother gazes gently and wistfully from his shield. Her answer to his plight remains the same, he is sure, and he speaks for her: "Love is first. Never abandon."

  For a while, he sits in the hot light thinking about love. He suspects that love is only desire until it is returned. And that is why the succubus came to him last night, while Fen was welcomed by Melania herself.

  That decided, he hangs the shield from the saddle peg and mounts. He rides decisively now, sure of his destination. Head high, he stares above the horizon into the blue that, like loneliness, goes out as far as he can see. And the wind travels with him.

  Chapter 30: The Star Stone

  Days have entangled themselves while Kyner leads his caravan along forest trails and hill traces. He and Cei vainly seek an exit from the valley where Brokk trapped them. Grapevines curtain whole walls of the forest, attesting to the lingering remnants of ancient Roman invaders. Now and then rubble from a lost mill or granary, some of it with Latin inscriptions, appears among the profuse dodder.

  Kyner calls the lumbering caravan to a halt several times each day to pray. Everyone kneels in the drizzle of sunlight that falls through the dense canopy. Though the prayers are intoned by the elders and the chieftain with strenuous sincerity, no pathway appears out of the tall forest.

  Cei wants to abandon the wagons and carts and walk the horses out of the valley. Kyner refuses to forsake their property. He remains convinced that earnest prayer will reveal a trail. "The Romans were no fools," he keeps saying. "They surveyed more than one way into a valley. If we look, we'll find a path that the avalanche has not blocked."

  When it rains, the chambers of the forest glisten and drip as if inside a cave. Motes of pastel daylight glint in the air like minerals. Behind the overcast, time sits still, and the caravan trudges on morosely.

  For a while, the youngsters taunted Kyner with mocking singsong rhymes, especially when the narrow hill paths he led them along thinned away or, as happened once, ended in a clutter of old stones and a graven satyr with a laughing face. The children had no fear of the chieftain, because he could never bring himself to punish them. When he got most furious, he would line them up against the wagons and beat their shadows.

  After a while, even japing the chieftain lost its appeal. Now the children play in groups while marching alongside the caravan or join the women in the wagons and busy themselves helping with stitchwork.

  Kyner's voice as he prays contains more frequent registers of frustration, anger, and aggrieved justice, and he turns a blind eye to the small offerings of honeycomb and herb sachets left behind on the trail for the faeries.

  One evening, at the watery hour of twilight, will-o'-the-wisps appear. They run along banks of orange saprophytes sprouting in a rocky creek bed, and Kyner is so desperate he follows willingly. The caravan rattles and groans on the riprap, and the fleet, gaseous gusts of light disappear and circle back, clearly leading the slow line of wagons. At last, the fox fires bleed off the wind into an open sky jammed with stars, and the wanderers find t
hemselves on a Roman highway at the throat of the valley.

  Leagues away in Camelot, Merlin feels them emerge from obscurity. He has been searching in trance for Kyner, too weak to find him until now.

  Vigor has been returning slowly to the wizard. Puffed and sleepy, he paces the great hall of the citadel, listening to but not hearing the distant music and cheers of bonfire festivities.

  He wants to bring Kyner to Arthor, to protect the young king on the last leg of his journey to Camelot. Without the full verve of his magic, he must rely on the faeries.

  Ghostly flits of radiance come and go through the tall, empty windows where night stands in its glittering black robes. The faeries bring news of Arthor asleep in a forest glade while the moon rummages through clouds. They urgently warn of a wildwood gang camping in the dense grasses nearby. Surely by daylight they will encounter each other.

  "Guide Kyner to Arthor," Merlin instructs, swirling his staff through the air, whirlpooling the sparks closer so that his words touch each of the tiny visitors. "The chieftain won't obey you, so you must go directly to his horses. Talk to them. Get their help. Do you understand?"

  The faeries flare up to the cedar rafters and splash among the timbers, signaling their assent. Then, they rush into the night, pulsing like fireflies, and are gone. With them goes a little more of his energy, and he slumps exhausted to a workbench and rests his head in his arms on a sawyer's table strewn with curly wood shavings and blond streaks of sawdust.

  Morning light shines on the sills when the stout, red-faced foreman rouses Merlin with his loud voice: "Wizard, forgive me."

  Merlin lifts a woozy face of matted beard and sleep scars. "Leave me rest. Work later."

  "I'm not here to work," the foreman announces in his big voice, and marvels yet again at the strange way the wizard's face changes from day to day. "Lord Severus bids me announce his presence."

  "Tell him to go away," Merlin mutters, and lowers his head toward the blackness of sleep.

  "Wizard, he will not go away," the foreman says, and leans his thick arms on the table to confide, "He has gathered together all his Britons—Lord Marcus's camp and Bors Bona's army, too. The Celts—Lord Urien and King Lot—have arrayed their warriors in response."

  "Oh, please!" Merlin groans, and pushes heavily to his feet like a swimmer climbing to land. "What is Syrax's game?"

  Merlin takes his hat from the table and, not even bothering to brush off the sawdust, puts it on. He swipes a stool out of his way with his staff and marches under scaffolds and trestles, muttering grouchily to himself. Through the arched portal of the great hall, he exits into the inner ward and a flawless morning.

  Severus Syrax, in shiny brass cuirass and turbaned pith helmet strolls, hands behind his back, examining the workmanship of the lathe-work on the main doorframes.

  When he sees Merlin, the magister militum steps back. The wizard appears more formidable than when last they met—taller and more angular. One can see the skeleton in him. And as he draws closer, Severus is astonished by the skull-like vacuity of his face: the gnarled features above a beard of bleached sea kelp. Those weird devil's eyes staring so brightly from their dark pits make the warlord feel woken from the dead.

  In a booming voice, Merlin asks, "Why are you here, Syrax?"

  Severus bows curtly, his painted face composed but with a deep pallor that tells of his fear. "It is time, wizard."

  "Time for what?" Merlin stands so close that the frightened man can smell the wizard's slow-burning blood, the cold azure resonance of a man not quite human.

  To his credit, the magister militum holds his voice steady, though his rib cage itself trembles. "It is time for what we agreed."

  "We have agreed to nothing."

  Fear and its frantic isomers of dread and stress congeal to cold anger at this apparent betrayal. "Are you twitting me, Merlin? You agreed I am the man you seek for the throne. I have come to hold you to your word."

  "Ah, I see." Merlin finally realizes that Syrax must have confronted Hannes. "My word."

  The battle lord holds his voice flat, almost devoid of emphasis, as the initial shock of confronting the wizard eases to the icy comprehension that this devil has lied to him. "I have been warned that you are the spawn of an incubus, and that your word is as changeable as your face. I see now you wear a frightful face. When last we spoke, you preferred a more comic countenance. But I am prepared for your capriciousness."

  Merlin lifts a tufted eyebrow. "How is that?"

  "Do you not hear?" Severus lifts a hand in a confidently fey gesture toward the bulwark that partitions the outer ward. The coughs of horses and the shimmer of men's voices sound from the near distance. "Then, behold!" The magister militum claps, and the inner ward's temporary lumber doors swing wide to reveal scores of horsemen and foot soldiers in chain mail and bronze helmets.

  Blond as a Saxon, Marcus Domnoni, holding the chi-rho banner of the Christian battle hordes, drifts through the martial throng on a white charger. Bors Bona, a small giant with a boar's visage and stubbly gray hair, sits at their head astride a huge warhorse. Medusa-masked helmet in hand, he grins without glee at the wizard.

  Merlin sighs. "You cannot seize the throne, Syrax, not even with this host."

  "That is not what we agreed, Merlin." Severus, all fear abated and flush with pride, twines a sharp prong of his black, precisely trimmed beard. "The sword. I have gathered my warriors and the armies of Bors Bona and Marcus Domnoni this morning to witness my drawing of the sword."

  "Oh, is that it?" Merlin comprehends, lowering his head and stroking his beard.

  Unfazed by the wizard's obvious reluctance, the warlord adds, "The Celts have rallied their numbers as well. Now all shall witness my ascendancy."

  "Lord Kyner is yet to arrive," Merlin protests.

  "I can wait on him no longer," Severus says in a bold voice, then turns and strides toward the large war party. "He is days late. Let him learn of today's important events in the bards' songs."

  Merlin shakes his head wearily. "As you will."

  A groom leads a black stallion forward for the magister militum and an ashen mule for the wizard. Under a boiling sunrise, they ride out of the citadel and across the grassy range, where crowds, who have gathered for the festivities, mill and cheer. The Celts wait on the hillside pastures. When they see the wizard escorting the British, they lower their weapons and join the procession.

  Merlin leads the multitude down the long curving road to the vagrant river. They ride among trees squabbling with birds and shining with a meaning more than they are, as if something miraculous is about to happen.

  Severus Syrax prances proudly through the complex veils of morning mist peeling off the river and takes the lead as the parade approaches Mons Caliburnus. He dismounts among dew-sequined lime shrubs and, followed by Merlin, Bors Bona, Marcus Domnoni, King Lot, and Chief Urien, marches to the summit.

  Merlin thinks the magister militum plans to give a speech, because he pauses before the star stone and gazes out at the crowd on the hillside. But he only wants to be certain that all eyes are watching him. He looks to the wizard briefly, searching for a sign that does not come. Yet that does not dissuade the swarthy Briton. Confidently, he seizes the hilt of Excalibur and tugs.

  The sword does not budge. He pulls again, one foot propped against the edge of the stone, body leaning back.

  Excalibur remains fused to the rock.

  The anguish in Severus's kohl-rimmed eyes tweaks pity from Merlin, though the warlord's humiliation is proper and inevitable. A thin wind picks up like laughter looking for a definite shape and finds it in the throng below, whose silence dissolves into frothy murmuring, then outright glee and mockery from the Celts.

  Bors Bona puts a hand to his sword, and Merlin fixes him with his silver eyes and breathes one word, "Don't." There is no magic in his voice. He needs none, for his chill look of implacable authority is enough even for the bellicose Bors.

  Merlin crawls onto the stone
and stands, arms and staff raised. "Who laughs that has not tried his hand?" he shouts. "None are denied the chance to be proven high king of Britain. None. And those who laugh scorn all good men's hopes. Severus Syrax should be cheered. I say cheered, because he dares aspire to unite us one and all against our common enemies. That his noble aspiration has not been fulfilled now or in these past fifteen years does not diminish our dire need—nor weaken the dream that one day we will be united."

  Merlin points his staff at the mob that has been creeping up the slope to hear him. "All you who have faith in a united kingdom—all you who are loyal to our king, whoever he may be, whenever he may come, cheer now this man, Severus Syrax, who has foisted pride for hope—the hope that must not die if we as a people are to live."

  Bors Bona throws his fists into the air and cheers. First the Britons and then, gradually and in mounting force, the Celts join in the cheering. And soon the river gorge rings with jubilant cries, and Severus Syrax slowly raises his arms in the happy triumph of his defeat.

  Merlin sits down and slides off the star stone. He walks into the crowd that streams forward to congratulate Syrax and to try their own hands at drawing the sword. Around him bodies jostle and fingers snatch at his robes, hoping to draw luck from contact with him.

  His silence is so loud, his quartz eyes so luminous in their big bone-pits, that no one actually dares confront him, and, with his progress thus unimpeded, he gradually makes his way through the dense gathering to the mule that will return him to Camelot.

  This immense summer morning of rushing birds, tumbling butterflies, and fat, ample clouds offers no consolation to the wizard for the diminishment of his powers. Time alone can restore him to the magical clarity and force he once knew, yet time stands against him and the fragile hope he has created for his people.