The child looked alarmed. She reached her small hands up to grab his dangling arms. At her touch, the monstrous vision of the doomful future that had left him eaten half-away sank into him like an ice wind, deep and unavoidable as history. "Take my hand, All-Father. I will pull you down."
Alarmed, he snatched his hand away. "No, Skuld." He exhaled a trembling sigh and pulled himself up to his thong-tied ankles. With one deft tug, he released his legs and curled into his fall. He landed on his feet with bent knees and a forceful groan beside the child. When she tried to steady him, he waved her off. "I'm fine, young one. Just tired. Very tired." He staggered sideways and sat down in the gravel, his legs in their wolfskin boots and leather-strapped trousers stretched out before him.
"You do not look well, All-Father."
"I'm fine—yet I am not well, Skuld." He wiped the sweat from his wrinkled brow and brushed his long and wild hair from his one eye. "I suspended myself that I might see what is to come."
"You suspended yourself?" Skuld frowned, not comprehending, and sat beside the big-shouldered god. "Why? I can see what is to be. You've only to ask me."
"I want to see for myself. It is important that I see for myself."
"And what do you see?"
"I see the iron cities."
"And do you see the wagons without horses?" she inquired excitedly. "The shiny metal wagons without horses? Do you see them?"
"Yes."
"And the metal ships that fly with wings that do not move? Do you see them flying faster than the wind?"
"Oh, yes. I see them. All the wonders to come. The horrible wonders."
Skuld's excitement dimmed. She nodded drearily and leaned against the Furor's bare, muscular arm. "It is horrible, All-Father. The forests are gone. And the sky has no birds."
"The fire—the storms of fire ... "
"Plague first," Skuld whispered drowsily. "Plague makes the cities sick. Then come the terrible fires."
"You have seen this?"
"I see it."
"And after the fires?"
"No more iron cities."
The Furor regarded the child half-asleep at his side. She was a child, and she watched with immature eyes. Now he had beheld this evil reality for himself, and he nodded with woeful agreement. "This world's age is over when the iron cities burn. Can we change what is to be?"
"You must ask Verthandi," Skuld mumbled, and nuzzled against the warm arm of the All-Father.
"No, Skuld." He nudged her awake. "I am asking you. Is there any other future for us?"
She blinked sleepily at him and shrugged. "Everything I see begins with Verthandi. Speak with her, All-Father."
The chieftain with the storm gray beard shook his head. "Listen to me, Skuld. I gave my right eye for the power to behold the future, and I learned from the dwarfs how to hang myself from this topmost branch of Yggdrasil that the strength of heaven would fill my head. I have seen what you have seen. I do not accept it. I cannot. For what purpose anything if all is burned to ash? There must be a way to change this evil vision!"
"Hush!" Skuld perked up, lifting her dirt-streaked face to listen to the wind moaning across the Raven's Branch. "Do you hear it?"
From afar came a song without music, a human voice soft and insistent with the cadence of a chant but without rhyme or meter:
Even our fear is not as old—though it will take our whole lives to know for sure.
"Who is that?" the Furor asked, staring into the ice blue eyes of the child, suddenly afraid, remembering who he was with. "Who is singing to me?"
"Not to you, All-Father. To your wife, to Lady Unique." Skuld turned her bedraggled head to listen better. "It is the poet-king Wesc. He sings to your wife. He sings to the goddess of poetry, that she may favor him. Listen to his song."
The fatigue of smoke—the torn mist rising from the sea, the beard of the moon—this is the voice that was trapped so long ago—in cages of light—in mirrors—and dreams—trying to tell us what will be left—after everything that might have been enough—is used up.
"Is that poetry?" The Furor's one eyelid lowered skeptically. "I hear no rhyme or rhythm. It sounds like speaking, not poetry."
"It is speaking, All-Father. King Wesc writes for Lady Unique a poem that runs free from the heart. It is a love poem—so much in love it throws off rhyme like a lover undressing."
"Nonsense!" He gently pushed her away. "Why are you distracting me with this, young one? I have come to Raven's Branch to confront evil and find a way free of it."
"But, All-Father, this poetry is free." Skuld knelt beside him and began to play with the leather laces of his boot. "Wesc loves Lady Unique—and she loves him. With her love, he rules the north tribes. And ruled by him, they will soon invade the West Isles."
"Child, you ramble." The Furor lifted his bearded chin to the indigo zenith and its crest of stars. "I have important work to do. Go now."
Skuld pouted. "Verthandi sent me to help you. And that is what I am doing."
"By making me listen to poetry that doesn't even sound like poetry?"
"Wesc will kill Arthor with that poetry."
The Furor lowered his gaze and regarded more closely the young girl toying with his bootlaces. "Arthor? What do you know of the boy-king?"
She shrugged, distracted by the tasseled red leather of his bootlaces. And when he leaned forward and took her chin in his big hand, space wobbled, and he felt as though he fell, toppling through the sky. He jolted, and a vision expanded through him.
Avalon, with rumpled green hills and valleys, sprawled on the horizon, an emerald gown discarded by the naked sea. The Furor's watchful mind moved closer. The morning hills and dells became mountain cups of apple trees. On high, verdant promontories, waterfalls fell in quicksilver threads that never reached the ground: These cascades blew away from the craggy cliffs in wild vapors and broken rainbows, disappearing in the air like a story that brims into nothingness on the book's last page.
The Furor yanked his mind away and found himself once more on the Raven's Branch, sitting in flinty gravel at the top of Yggdrasil. He felt drunk.
"What are you doing to me?" he moaned, both hands to his head. He reminded himself that Skuld only appeared to be a child. She was a Wyrd Sister, older, far older, than he. What manner of being is she? He could only guess. "Why did you show me Avalon?"
"Arthor's destiny is Avalon." Skuld untied his boot and intently strove to tie it again, speaking distractedly. "The Fire Lords have marked him. He will be witness to the reign of chieftains. Ten thousand years of chiefs and kings and emperors fall behind us. How many more years rise ahead?"
The Furor began to comprehend. "When Arthor dies, he goes to Avalon ... "
"To take the place of Rna. She is eldest of the Nine Queens. Now that Arthor is born, she is free to leave Avalon." Skuld's fingers fumbled, and the bow she tied fell apart. She frowned and began again. "Do you know how he was born?"
The chieftain of the north gods tugged his beard, wondering what Skuld was trying to tell him. Absently, he said, "The Roman king of the Britons, Uther Pendragon, sired him on the Celtic queen, Ygrane ... "
Skuld looked up at him abruptly. "See it!"
The Furor's mind slid backward through time eighteen summers and moved with the life mote inside the womb of Ygrane. He vaguely sensed the outer world around him—Ygrane and Uther asleep in each other's arms, a night camp of snuffling horses, distant owls sobbing, and the torn mist on the river adrift under a moon like a broken cup ...
Closer, the entranced god sat with the tiny cellular life taking shape in the blood-dark. Already, the wee being only hours old glowed with bodylight, the radiance of creation held to the Earth by the kitesilk of life's molecule—DNA. The molecule held a soul. The Furor recognized the ghost of a Celtic warrior who had lived centuries earlier: Cuchulain!
The cleavage of the ovum into morula cells followed the XY chromosome pattern of the male, shaping a sexual order out of helical waverings, carbon a
toms, glucose molecules, precisely tangled bunches of proteins—a new life for an ancient soul.
Cuchulain glowed with the energy of chemical bonds. His DNA acted as antennae, resonating a waveform—frequencies of ultraweak photons in a pattern unique to him. The Furor watched with all that his astonishment could bear as the multiplying cells molded an individual identity, a human destiny reminiscent of a noble history that belonged now to the joys and sorrows of an undetermined fate.
With strenuous effort, the Furor pulled himself back to the Raven's Branch.His one gray eye glared in his amazed face. "Why?" he gasped. Like all the gods, he existed as a being of energy, and for him the organic powers that shaped planetary life subsumed a mystery. "Why do you show me this?"
"All-Father, how can you destroy what you do not see?" Skuld finished tying a loose bow with the bootlaces and sat back satisfied. "There are many futures. Many. But only one comes to Verthandi."
"When Arthor dies, he goes to Avalon," the Furor repeated slowly, intently, fitting the pieces of understanding together as he spoke. "The Fire Lords will install him there to witness the consequences of one hundred centuries of rule by men, by chieftains and warlords. Apocalypse. Ragnarok. Death by plague and fire."
"The future grows from small things, All-Father." Skuld sat on his knee and gripped the leather braces of his leggings. "When Arthor dies determines what the future will be. There will be cities. The forests will fall. The rivers will stink with waste. Just as we see from here. But the weapons of plague and fire—they do not have to overwhelm the world."
"They do not?" The Furor took Skuld's narrow shoulders in his thick hands, then quickly withdrew his hands, afraid of falling into another trance. "If I cannot stop the iron cities, how will I stop the doom of plague and fire?"
Skuld's big pale eyes gazed openly at him. "Do you love your wife?"
"Lady Unique rules at my side," the Furor answered decisively. "Her talismans empower the north tribes and hold them together under the sway of Wesc."
"Do you love her, All-Father?"
"She is my wife."
"Then why do I see you with Keeper of the Dusk Apples?"
The Furor stared into her candid eyes without speaking.
"She is your mistress," Skuld said with the frankness of a child. "And if Lady Unique were to learn this, she would be heartbroken—and the poetry, the free-running poetry of Wesc, would not sound so very good anymore to Lady Unique. Do you see, All-Father?"
How could we know—though we listen—and the black spot, the imperfection on the eye—goes on—following—full of love for us?
The Furor put his hands over his ears. "Silence that damnable voice, Skuld ... "
How could we know—when there is nine—and the return to zero—in children's songs—and still—no way back?
"What are you doing to me?" The Furor pushed the child away and stood up. "My wife knows nothing of my affection for Keeper of the Dusk Apples. Are you going to tell her?"
How could we know—and not explain—if even to ourselves—the hazard—the pieces of darkness—hardening—in our shadows?
"All-Father, listen to the poems." Skuld sat in the gravel where she had fallen, a shadow of sorrow between her eyes. "In these small words, the entire future opens."
"I hear nothing but gibberish." He gruffly turned away, angry that this—this entity had disclosed his secret love. "This is not poetry that Wesc writes. It is a premonition of the madness to come."
How could we know—the patient water was speaking—our lives—through the salt—while we searched—the shores of the sleeping lake—for what we carried—in our mouths?
"If you won't listen to the poet-king," Skuld asked, "then will you heed the Dwellers from the House of Fog—will you heed the demons you have bound with your magic to topple Arthor?"
The Furor spun about to angrily confront the creature who taunted him—but Skuld was nowhere in sight. The Raven's Branch had dissolved to mist, to the spiritous threshold before the House of Fog, the cold domain whence the demons came and went. Under the pressure of his stare, the haze parted to reveal a lightless abyss reeking with the tarry stench of hell.
Out of the blackness of this gorge, a giant rose. Onyx monster of leprous flesh, visage molting to a skull under blistered rags of skin, a demon glared with red eyes slant and malevolent. On rickets-sprung legs, the skeletal titan reared.
"Who dares summon Lucifer?" A big voice shook cinders off the Raven's Branch so that they fell in shooting stars to the nightworld below. "Who binds my demons with magic?" Grave smoke drooled from a grin of black teeth.
The Furor stared speechless.
The enormous entity steadied itself in the dark above the Earth. Rotted cerements dangled from a brisket of chalk bones. Its calcined hands braced the cliff walls of the Raven's Branch to thrust its charnel body upright.
Its tight stare found the startled god. "The Furor! Chieftain of the north gods!" Windy light stirred behind the decayed holes of Lucifer's skull, wormbores drilled into a brain of fire. "What is your purpose with my demons?"
The Furor motioned to speak, and all he had to say he said in a voiceless instant, snatched from him by the searing look of the demon lord.
"You lost my demon Lailoken!" Lucifer's wandlike arms swung with tantrum fury. "Your crude magic intended to bind him to your war against the Britons. He should be raging with my other demons—destroying kingdoms! Instead, you lost him! And he has fallen into the hands of the angels! You dolt! Now he lives in a mortal body as Merlin, and his demon powers work against me, his master!"
Radium-fierce rays lanced from the skullholes of Lucifer's rotted head. "Now I must undo what you have done!" The giant's face ripped to smoke, ash dust encompassed in a widening radiance of thermonuclear glare.
With star-fusion brilliance, Lucifer dissolved the darkness and laid naked the cankerous, pocked terraces of the pit that was the House of Fog. Souls in their tiny, swarming millions ignited like electric filaments, their cold suffering abruptly burning to hot pain.
The hot light dimmed—and Lucifer vanished.
The Furor stood alone upon the Raven's Branch. Though a limb of the World Tree Yggdrasil, it also appeared as a landscape, a gigantic mosaic terrain of frost-splotched gravel and shattered plates of agate. Ten thousand hectares of rusty dunes rippled the horizon beneath an indigo sky with stars as big and evil as cactus flowers.
The Furor traversed this desolate ground stunned. The future of fire and plague, of the gods' own twilight, somehow depended upon his fidelity to his wife and also to the death of Britain's boy-king. Yet—Skuld had been ambiguous. And Lucifer had been entirely terrifying.
At a cavern in a scarp of raw stone, he stopped. Inside lay the entranced figures of his son, Thunder Red Hair, his daughter Beauty, and his staunchest allies among the Aesir gods. Their forms lay shrouded in white pumice, which had blown over them from crests of scalloped eskers and dunes. The lives of these gods remained in suspension so that the Furor could harness their power and shape a magic strong enough to bind demons.
It had seemed like an able idea—using the combined strength of the gods to command demons in his war against the Fire Lords. Lucifer, the lord of the demons, was right to berate him for letting the demon Lailoken escape. For all his magic, for all these brave gods who had sacrificed pieces of their lives, he had attained little. The trophy of Britain still eluded him—and the Fire Lords ...
He shook his bearded head. He had not even managed to confront a single Fire Lord, let alone defeat them all. And now, they had Merlin, because he had been a dolt with the unwieldy magic of the sleeping gods and had inadvertently thrust Lailoken into their radiant hands.
Troubled, he sat on the sandy ledge before the cavern of sleeping gods and rested his hoary head in his hands. A voice whispered from afar. He pressed his palms tightly over his ears, not wanting to hear more rhymeless doggerel from his wife's worshiper.
The voice only sounded louder. Not the poet-king. A
younger voice, speaking Latin:
Mother Mary, Merlin says I must leave Camelot and tour my kingdom—but I am afraid. Magic frightens me. I want no part of it. I beg of you, Blessed Mother, pray to your Son and our Father that the curse that blights Britain be lifted.
The Furor removed his hands from his ears and lifted his head, astounded. He heard the intimate prayers of the boy-king Arthor. The work of Lucifer, he was certain. The magic that the Furor had culled from the sleeping gods and had used to bind demons to his will had also connected him to the demon lord. Now I must undo what you have done! Lucifer had groused—and this psychic peephole into his enemy's soul surely exhibited the demon's work. He covered his ears again and listened:
Mother Mary, I have no fear of the sword. I know that your Son taught peace and warned that those of us who live by the sword would die by it. I am not afraid to die under the sword defending my kingdom and my people. But I am sore afraid of magic. I do not understand it.
When the Furor stood and walked just a few paces from the cave of the tranced gods, the prayerful voice of Arthor faded away. This is indeed the magic of these Aesir faithful who give me the strength to hear my enemy's most private thoughts!
He returned excitedly to the cave hole that looked in upon the sand-muted shapes of his children and allies and palmed his ears again:
By magic I have been duped into incest. Morgeu the Fey has doomed me. This I know. But I cannot accept it. Mother Mary, give me strength to bear my sin, to rule though I am unworthy. And pray, dear Mother, pray for my forgiveness.
The Furor laughed with dark glee, and his shout of triumph echoed from horizon to horizon.
-)(-
The dried scalps of slaughtered Britons and Celts strung on cords dangled from their hips. Wolfhide loinwraps and boots of human leather provided their sole garments. And serpent-coil cicatrices and raven tattoos embossed their shoulders and backs. Each bore on their hairless chests raised welts from wolf claws, received in initiation to their god the Furor, the one-eyed deity of the north tribes whom the Christians in their Latin tongue called Odin.
The Serpent and the Grail (The Perilous Order of Camelot) Page 6