Valets waited with bath sponges, a fresh poultice and dressing for his wound, and a change of garments—a blue velour tunic with crimson sash and a regal chaplet of gold laurel leaves.
When the two travelers reached the narrow, ouroboros-graven portal to the wizard's grotto behind the throne in the central hall, Merlin quietly took his leave. The wizard had magic to forge against the dragons.
A herald informed the king that a distinguished emissary from the Continent waited in the main council chamber.
The spacious elliptical room gushed with sunshine. Seven shafts of prismed light, seven colored beams of radiance arched across the room in a perpetual rainbow that Merlin had dubbed the Seven Eyes of God.
Honeycomb baffles in the geodesic ceiling doubled as mullions for crystal windows and focused sunlight to individual pools of illumination throughout the barrel-vaulted hall. The daylong rays, directed by swivel mirrors atop the citadel, fell upon tapestries and bas-relief depictions of ancient and exotic courts: Curly-bearded Menelaus and his lovely queen Helen greeting the beardless emissary Paris from Troy; Imhotep, the Son of Ptah, surrounded by dung beetles and mooncalves; Gautama Siddhartha in the floriate Deer Park at the very moment he became the Buddha; and from Cathay, the Goddess of Mercy, joss sticks fuming at her beautiful ivory feet, instructing King Monkey how to defeat the yellow prince of hell.
One of the sun shafts fell upon a potted dwarf pine and beside it a stately woman who looked as though she had stepped out of the surrounding artworks. Her skin glowed with cinnamon heat. Sable curls and large Byzantine eyes glistened with darkness like a song before the sun is up.
"Selwa—" the king identified her at once. Months ago, she had helped him flee Londinium when her uncle, the magister militum Severus Syrax, had imprisoned and threatened to murder him.
The lissome woman wore white Egyptian robes and a belt of amber beads to ward off the evil eye. With a soft, spicy laugh, she lowered a tinsel-trimmed green veil. "The king without a beard—you remember me?"
"You saved my life once," Arthor acknowledged.
She lifted her arms to her sides so that the king and his one-armed guard could see she bore no weapons.
Arthor stood unmoving in the tall entryway.
"You distrust me? I come not as an assassin but a woman of culture and finesse. Seven centuries ago, my family sent trade factors with Alexander the Great to establish posts in the Kush and India—posts that remain important mercantile offices for us to this day. We have exporting factors in all the Mediterranean countries and estates across North Africa, in the Levant, Iberia, and Gaul. So, why am I here in this chilly and insignificant island of the remote north?" Her indigo lips smiled as she lowered her chin mischievously. "Because you hanged my dear uncle, Severus, magister militum of this desolate land's oldest city. And my family, the estimable Syrax family, hold me personally responsible for his death—because I took pity on you in Londinium. As punishment, I have been given the unsavory assignment of residing in Londinium and representing the Syrax trade interests among the Foederatus—a rather uncouth and rancid crowd of tribesfolk."
Arthor swallowed pain to cross the room without limping, anxious to hide his wound from this woman who bore his enemy's name. He took Selwa's arm and guided her to a mahogany settle with sides carved to flying eagles and a backboard cushioned with purple squabs. "My lady, I apologize—" He sat down heavily beside her.
"Your apology does me no good, Arthor." She pouted at him mockingly. "Is that the best you can do for the beautiful woman to whom you owe your life?"
The king grasped her topaz-ringed hand. "What can I possibly do for you?"
Selwa cast a brief, surly look to where Bedevere stood off to one side with sunlight dazzling on his balding head. Then she faced Arthor with a small, demure smile and a hopeful glimmer in her fawn-dark eyes. "Marry me. Make me your queen." Her hand tightened on his. "Why are you so startled. You insult me. Does not my physical beauty match your manly virtues?"
Arthor's grip on her hand went limp. "You are indeed beautiful ... "
Her blue-powdered eyelids narrowed.
"My kingdom is in jeopardy." He removed his hand from hers. "I am not ready for marriage—to anyone."
"The threat to your kingdom comes from King Wesc and his filthy hordes of savage warriors." She leaned closer and enclosed him in the sapphire aura of her perfume. "Marry me, and we will buy them off. The Syrax family will hire the whole brutal lot as escorts for our caravans and protectors of our trade routes. They will be scattered from here to Cathay. And you and I together will make of Britain a paradise of profits and peace. We will usher in an age of abundance the likes of which not even Rome enjoyed."
"Your offer is magnanimous, my lady."
She tilted her head forward so that she stared at him through her jet curls.
He shrugged. "I am a Christian—"
"Then, I will become a Christian, as well. The pope himself will wed us."
Arthor sighed, and his burned eyebrows rose haplessly. "I am a Christian intent on marrying for love."
"For love?" Selwa sat back with a jolt, as if slapped. "What mad notion is that? Kings marry for the good of their kingdoms. No king has ever married for love."
"You spoke of Alexander," said Arthor, crossing his arms. "After he defeated Oxyartes upon the Sogdian Rock, did he not marry that chieftain's daughter Roxana for love? He astonished his troops."
"And you compare yourself to Alexander?" she asked with a supercilious chuckle.
"I compare myself to no one, my lady." He strove to keep his tone free of umbrage, yet pride whetted his words keenly. "I am simply Arthor, high king of Britain. Battle blood sanctioned my title against those your uncle raised to challenge me, including the Foederatus that the Syrax family now offers to buy into passivity. Though I am flattered, I am not prepared to marry anyone—even a woman as beautiful and influential as you, Selwa."
"Do not spurn me so quickly." From under her robes, she unfolded a parchment. "My offer may seem more palatable once you read this missive from your worthy enemy King Wesc, chieftain of the Foederatus."
"It's a poem." The young king knew without looking. "Wesc writes admirable poetry." He glanced at the parchment. "But he misspells my name."
"It is not a misspelling. The king of the Foederatus believes that your name mocks his god Thor, Thunder Red Hair, the son of his war god Odin. He simply respells your name Arthur, a form more pleasing to his pagan sensibility. Read the poem."
A few quick passes of his yellow eyes took in the poetry and immediately moved on to the terms of peace attached to two extra leaves. "The poem is free and elegant," he declared as he finished taking in the concluding passages of the diplomatic attachment. "He sues for peace. These terms require British fealty to earls—pagan lords who will oversee our dominions. I cannot accept this."
"I knew you would not accept," Selwa responded triumphantly, "which is why I offered you my hand. If you refuse King Wesc his portion of your kingdom, you know he will attack your little island and take it all. At this moment, he assembles a massive invasion force upon the shores of Jutland. With a moment's notice, he can descend upon you like a hawk stooping to a fat pigeon."
Arthor spoke through a tight jaw. "Britain for Britons."
"Brave words, Arthor." She smiled coolly, amused at his ire. "By summer's end, King Wesc will drink a salute to his warlords from your skull." She stood up. "Life could be sweet if you learn to love me."
"Selwa," he spoke as she turned to depart. "Return a message to the poet-king. I will consider his terms. I must counsel with all my warlords—Christian and Celt alike. This will take time."
Selwa smirked. "He will know you are stalling."
"If he truly wants peace, he will not deny me the chance to champion his terms among my people." Arthor rose and, mindful not to limp, walked over to a long conference table of ebony strewn with parchments, inkstones, and quills. "I will meet with him—on my birthday, this Mabon, the twen
tieth day of September—in your city, Londinium. And there, he will have my answer."
"If you do not agree to his terms, there will be war." She shook her head ruefully. "And it will be a quick war."
Arthor bent over the ebony table, writing deftly, heedless of the emissary's warning. "Give him this," he said, blotting the ink carefully before passing the parchment to the lean and dusky woman. "This will make it easier for him to understand me—and to hold off his invasion for now."
Selwa read aloud, astonishing Arthor with her fluent command of Saxon, for he had written his lines in the latinized rendering of his foe's language:
Let us not waste our breath
on threats of war. For what is
breath, after all?
Spirit of the wheel, apparition
of beginnings, it is breath
that shapes the words as if
to meet us
halfway
with its own meaning
the anguish of its source
the caged wings.
Your brother of the pen, high king of Britain
—Arthur.
Selwa allowed a cunning smile. "Very clever—Arthur with a u. You flatter your enemy well through his weakness for the rhymeless, broken-line berserker poetry he loves. I learned their guttural language for trade—but how do you know not just their tongue but also this strange and pagan form they call poetry?"
"Not so long ago, I believed I was sired of a Saxon plunderer," Arthur answered quietly. "I took their language and songs for my own, the better to mock them in battle. I no longer seek to taunt them. I am king now. I am strong enough to respect my enemies. And as of this day I will spell my name in a manner less offensive to them. King Arthur seeks not to enrage but to win peace and security for his people."
"Well then, dear Arthur with a u, if you are truly as clever as you seem, you will marry into the Syrax family and accept our protection." She tucked his poem under her Egyptian robe. "Otherwise, I assure you, the berserkers you have mocked will rip our your lungs and those uncaged wings will carry you out of this world forever."
Chapter 11:
A World of Dreams
Ygrane rode the devil horse with her naked arms tight about its neck. The loss of menstrual blood had left her tired and achy. Though tempted to pack her womb with glamour and staunch the troublesome blood flow, she did not. Cramps, the itchiness where the linen pad chafed her thighs, and fatigue secured her humanity.
So long as she felt this discomfort, she knew that the glamour she possessed belonged to the Daoine Sid and had not yet transformed her entirely into a spirit being. She remained a woman, though she outpaced the wind on the devil horse and rode it straight through the stone face of a mountain, disappearing among cliff rocks like a ghost-bride.
The devil horse carried her into the hollow hills. She rode hard through a sunset that never ended. Fleet shadows fell to either side, and ahead shone the gaseous red sun.
This was not the celestial sun. Before her, she confronted the magma heart of the planet. The massive sphere of red light, spinning inside the Earth, wove the magnetic threads and cords that composed the roots of the Storm Tree—Yggdrasil.
In that tangle of magnetic brilliance and suffocating heat, the Dragon slumbered. And around the Dragon, demons hovered. Blurred shadows stole dream energy—wisps of dreamsong—to shape the monsters they loosed upon Britain.
The demons rushed as cold drafts through the pouring blaze. They had no shape. They loathed shape and all forms. When they took shapes, they wore hideous and disgusting guises to mock life. They existed formless in their nascent state, as close to the nothing they worshiped as they could get.
Ygrane felt her heart hide from these cold drafts of demon intelligence. If she had been simply a woman, they would have effortlessly ripped her to atoms and scattered her into the nothing that they loved. But when the witch-queen of the Daoine Sid lifted her heart from hiding, she came forth shining.
A magnetic ocean of wind flowed through her. The Sid, who had lived centuries in the hollow hills, had made their own the root-tangles of planetary flux. The whiplash force of the spinning core, big as the whole inner horizon of the world, obeyed the elvish powers, swept up the flitting demons and spun them out and away.
Cold drafts of rageful sentience shot beyond the rocky skin of the Earth and streaked upward through the atmosphere like green meteors. Somewhere beyond the Moon, they slowed and flapped into the solar wind like the blackest of ravens, wondering what had struck them.
They would return. The Furor's magic bound them to the Earth and to the will of the storm god himself. They would return to the dazzling core of the planet and to the sleeping Dragon there—and they would again butcher its dreams.
Caught in the rip tide of the solar wind, they would not fulfill these dark ambitions anytime soon. And for now, the way into the hollow hills opened for Ygrane's son, King Arthur ...
-)(-
The Furor felt discomfort as the demons he had bound hurtled into space. At first, he knew not what troubled him. He lay with his mistress, Keeper of the Dusk Apples, in a dell of dense grasses and wand-like trees seventy leagues above the Earth.
The spongy ground of red moss seemed to quake. It had not moved. The Furor's soul had shifted as his bond to the demons swerved inside him.
"What is wrong, my beloved?" Keeper asked, as her lover disengaged from their embrace. "Have I displeased you?"
The Furor swept back his silver mane with both hands and shook his head. "No." His one gray eye had glazed over. "Someone works magic against me."
"Lady Unique!" Keeper of the Dusk Apples spoke her fear and pulled about her the golden tiffanies and yellow taffetas that the Furor had peeled away during their passionate dalliance. "Your wife has found us out!"
"She suspects nothing."
The Furor's mistress heard no great certitude in his voice, and unhappiness swirled up in her at the thought of the Furor's infidelity coming to light. She had no thought for herself. A hunter's daughter who had surrendered to her chieftain with no expectations, she cherished her lover. By his favor, she had been appointed to forage the forests of Yggdrasil for the rare dusk apples that the Brewer pressed to the golden wine favored by the Aesir. Her work carried her far and wide, to remote branches of the World Tree—wild places where often the Furor would seek comfort with her unseen by the other Rovers of the Wild Hunt.
"The Lady's magic is great." Keeper of the Dusk Apples freely expressed her trepidation. "Her talismanic power—"
"She would never use it against me." The Furor reached for his wolfskin boots and tipped them to be certain no asps had curled within. "I have not always told my wife the truth. Yet she knows I have always loved the truth, and that has been sufficient to put off her suspicions. No. Some mortal dares thwart my demons."
"The sleepers!" Keeper fretted, thinking of the Furor's children and allies entranced on the Raven's Branch who had given their life strength to empower his magic. "Are they in danger? Lady Unique would never forgive you—or me—if anything were to happen to her children."
"They are in no danger." The chieftain sat still, contemplating what he had felt, and Keeper of the Dusk Apples looked with undisguised admiration upon his nakedness: his mighty limbs, broad chest, and carved torso faceted with strength seemed cast of white iron. "My power is not challenged, merely—diverted. And only briefly. I must go and see who dares."
"Seek out first the Liar," Keeper advised, and lifted the gray cord trousers that the god had tossed carelessly among asphodels and ferns. "Your blood brother has no love for you."
The Furor considered her words with a distracted expression. "Loki is gone from the Tree or hiding. Perhaps this is his mischief." The clarity in his one eye sharpened. "I must go."
"At once?" She held his trousers against her chest. "Can we not sport a little longer, my love? Who knows when next I will see you."
He smiled, his teeth in the shadow of his beard like a wh
ite mist of stars. "You are my passion and my counsel, Keeper. You alone of all the Aesir know my heart and love me with the simple caring I need to be whole."
"Lady Unique loves you." Keeper lowered her head demurely so that her long, pale hair covered her face.
"As a wife," the Furor replied. "For her, all is poetry. We, she and I, are a good rhyme: the daughter of the old gods' gatekeeper and the hunter's son who broke down those gates and overthrew the ancient order. We are the mother and father of the Aesir kingdom, a good rhyme to start a long epic. But her status as queen is more vital to her than her concern for the terrible visions that swarm in me." He shook the boots of silver fur he held in his hands. "She was appalled I entranced our children—appalled that I would use their power for the binding of demons. How could I make her see I need this demonic might to take the West Isles and stand against the Fire Lords? I never could make her understand. The only reason she helps me now with her talismans is for our children. Not for me." His desperate stare unclenched. "Ah, but you've heard all this before, my love. I trouble you."
"I want you to trouble me." She lifted her face, a visage of solar beauty, peach cheeks burnished ruddy by her long wanderings under the forest sun. "I want to shoulder your cares."
The Furor's smile broadened. Here was a woman undismayed by the eye socket he had emptied to win prophetic sight—unlike Lady Unique, who thought him addled to mar himself that he might see events flare uncertainly in a dark future. "Then, you do not think I demean myself by enlisting demons to break my enemies?"
"Your wife so thinks?"
"The Dwellers of the House of Fog disgust her. Yet, they are entities as old as time itself. To move them is to turn the very axle of the universe."
She stepped closer, watching him brightly, a sigh in her eyes. "You have accomplished what not even the Old Ones dreamed."
The Serpent and the Grail (The Perilous Order of Camelot) Page 13