The Sword of the Lady c-3

by S. M. Stirling

  He blinked back to something like the waking world, where light flickered ruddy on tree bark. ?It?s… it?s like the way Sandra Arminger sees the world. From what I picked up over the years in what you might be callin? her unguarded moments. Dead, in a way. Everything moving on its own, without spirit. Grand and glorious and wonderful, but… empty. And we gone like a candle flame when we die.?

  He blinked alarm.?You?re not saying that?s true, are you now??

  She smiled gently at him, and indicated their surroundings. He nodded, taking the point, and she spoke: ?No. But once it was, until it was made to be different. What did?-she looked up at the ravens-?a certain old gentleman tell you once about history and time??

  He blinked again; that night on the mountainside was far distant in miles and months, but it wasn?t the sort of thing you forgot. Even if you?d been dreaming a vision while your wasted body lay on the edge of death. He repeated what those deep tones had so cryptically revealed: ?Fact becomes history; history becomes legend; legend becomes myth. Myth turns again to the beginning and creates itself. The figure for time isn?t an arrow; that is illusion, just as the straight line is. Time is a serpent.?

  After a moment he went on:?Was that truth? The whole truth?? ?Yes. No.?

  The figure who bore his mother?s semblance smiled sympathetically as she denied him certainty. The blond maiden spoke:?It?s so hard to say this in words-? ?But hey, you?ll give it a try,?dapa,? the black woman said sardonically.

  The Maiden tossed her fair head and said:?Then see again.?

  His body dropped away, and once again he floated in nothingness. The point of light, and the same eon-upon-eon passage from light to dark. But this time a light was born in the last darkness, and it looked at him. ?That is Mind,? the Mother whispered.?Wisdom. Wisdom itself, that brought together all knowledge of all that ever was.? ?Hope,? the blond Maiden added.?Love.? ?That?s us,? the black figure of the Wise One said.?Including you. Many times removed. Mo? removed than you can imagine. More than we can say in words-? ?You keep saying that, but you speak in words nonetheless!? Rudi said, exasperated.?And it?s more ignorant I am afterwards than ever I was before!? ?Then see,? the Three said together.

  This time the perspective was different. More abstract; he strained to see pattern, and meaning, but for a long moment all was chaos. Then order appeared. Instead of the point of light, there were two great sheets of… Being. Rippling through spaces in which whole universes of stars would be less than one kernel of barley in an ocean, like the banners of divinity flying on the ramparts of the Western Gate. The sheets drifted towards each other, and in that contact was born the light he had seen at the Beginning of his twin visions.

  But there was a difference. Something passed from one cycle to the next. Something tiny, yet containing everything, and from that all changed as existence spread out again. ?Mind,? his mother, all Mothers, said.?The universe births life. Life creates Mind. Mind encompasses that which bore it blindly, spreads through all the stuff of matter and makes a new Heaven and a new Earth. One in which from its beginnings through all time life is no accident, and is not doomed to death forever, but instead is transformed. To return upon itself once more and give Itself birth.? ?And now there is a God,? the Wise One said.

  He fell through singing veils of light, struggling with awe and anger at himself, that he could not grasp the concepts roaring by him like dragons. Then he stood before the fire again. ?Is Godhood many, or one?? the Mother said. ?Both,? Rudi replied.?Both at once.? ?She is all things.? The Maiden nodded. A sigh.?And so, He is divided.? ?Your friend the padre would say there was war in Heaven,? the Wise One added.?He?s not wrong, either. Don?t mistake this you?re seeing for the only truth.? ?The Cutters!? he said suddenly.?As above, so below. Sure, and if there?s war here, there must be so above.?

  The three nodded. The Mother spoke: ?Not exactly. In the stuff of Mind, there is… it?s more like arguing with yourself than a fight between Good and Evil. Would you say a tilled tamed field is best, or a wilderness unbound and unguarded, living only by its own law??

  Rudi blinked.?Why… both, of course. How could either be best ? Both are needed for the wholeness of things. Humankind is there to be the guardians of it; to tend, to take what they need, but not to take all.? ?Yet some long for order; for the hedged garth, for the tame-bred kine, for the richness of the grafted fruit. Some long for the wolf?s howl. Some would have the universe unfold as it will, and run to its ending as matter itself decrees; others would take matter up into the stuff of Mind.? ?Submission against structure,? the Maiden said. ?Not a fight for us, unless you mean inner conflict and that happy therapeutic horseshit,? the Wise One snorted.?But it?s sure enough a fight at your level, boy! One between Good and Evil, or Us and Them, which is close enough for government work.? ?You need have no doubt I?ll fight,? Rudi said grimly.?Whether I may win or no. The Cutters… the Cutters and the Power behind them claim all humankind and the world as well, and say none of us may breathe or believe save as they permit. If a God said that to me, a God with the sun in His left hand and the moon in His right, I would dispute it by the sword. Or my fingernails, if they were all I had.? ?Good man! And it?s a fight you?d better win,?cause we can?t do it for you. Not without undoing ourselves and more worlds than this.?

  Rudi nodded his head, a single brief jerk. He wasn?t sure of much, but he was suddenly certain that the person whose appearance that Power bore had also been a warrior once. ?You?ve shown me matters great and terrible, Ladies,? he said. ?But… one thing I do know, and always did. This Earth of ours, however bright and dear and grand to us, is but the smallest fleck in all that is; and you?ve shown me that that All is vaster by far than I knew. Yet here the Powers are contending for our allegiance as if we were the sum of things. Why us??

  The Three looked at him. The Maiden spoke gently: ?Because here is where Mind begins. There has to be a one first place… and this is that one. From it, all else springs.? ?Fermi,? the Wise One added.?Not to be too paradoxical.?

  The Mother cast an exasperated sidelong glance.?Don?t stray from the issue just because you?re limited enough again that you can be distracted, Marian.?

  To Rudi:?It nearly didn?t happen here either. Mind is a weapon as well as a blessing, and its power is terrible even when newborn.? ?The Wanderer spoke of a child with a knife, or with fire.?

  She nodded.?Terrible especially when newborn.?

  They faded before his eyes. For a moment he saw the island, but with no cover save a few crumbled ruins of brick and stone, a bank of sand that glowed with heat. Hills of salt lay where the ocean should have been, save for pools in the distance that seethed in a bubbling roil that would end only when they were gone forever. The air lay thick, hazy, hot, and motionless. ?A thousand times ten thousand times that was the end,? the Maiden said.?Or others that were worse.? ?What could be worse than that??

  The same landscape, but the very air was gone somehow; the sea had turned to ice, that sublimed outward into the outer dark beneath a sky that crawled with steely energies and strange, powerful engines. Then another vision, where water still curled on the sandy beach beneath a clear blue sky where birds flew, but their patterns were mathematics precise beyond his comprehension. A man walked between buildings that were perfect, and empty. He turned to look at Rudi for an instant, and where his eyes should have been were silvery tendrils that waved and sought. ?We could agree on stopping those histories,? the Mother said, as the campfire returned.?Edging them out, cycle upon cycle, until they vanish in implausibility.? ?Yet the Others would not let us do much more,? the Maiden said, sadness in her voice.?What we did… was something so terrible that only a greater terror made it possible to think it.?

  The Mother nodded.?All we could do while Mind was divided… was take this island out of its year, so that it could then reach across the spiral and make the Change. The Change gives you time, no more, as the island was given time. Time to learn, so that when you regain the powers taken from you they?ll be used properly. How the future of this
turn on the Wheel is shaped… what we become… that is up to you. You youngsters. You are the seed of God. We can turn through time-we have traveled the endless coil-but we cannot do more than help, and open possibilities.?

  The Maiden scowled.?The Others can. They take, because they care less for the damage they do, they who serve entropy. So we have made the Sword for you, to sever their power and show humankind the truth of things. That much we can do in this turn of the Wheel, without breaking reality asunder with our contentions. All the rest is your burden.?

  Rudi took a deep breath.?I will bear it.?

  There was a glint of tears in the Mother?s eyes as she spoke with a trembling tenderness: ?Then bear what you must, O my child, my child.?

  The Maiden?s warmth, a scented flower meadow in spring: ?Do what you must, beloved.?

  The Wise One?s sternness, like rock and iron: ? Become what you must, to serve the world?s need.?

  And he was… elsewhere.

  The others saw him as he stumbled down the stairs, bleeding from nose and ears and eyes and mouth. The sheathed form of the Sword lay across his palms. He met their eyes, and choked out: ?Remember. Remember, all of you. Most of all you, Matti, anamchara , beloved.?

  Mathilda?s voice was infinitely gentle:?Remember what, my darling?? ?That I was a man, before I was King. Remember for me, when I forget.?

  His hand closed on the black double-lobed hilt, and the moonfire in the opal glowed. He drew the Sword, thrust it high.

  And screamed as pain beyond all bearing ripped through him like white fire, turning his body to a thing of ash and smoke.

  He screamed, and knew.

  TheSwordoftheLady

  EPILOGUE

  THE NEMED (SACRED WOOD) CASCADE FOOTHILLS NEAR DUN JUIMPER

  MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON) IMBOLC, FEBRUARY, CHANGE YEAR

  24/2023 AD

  BD breathed out, and in, and out, and in, her chest vibrating with the deep-toned sounds of the power raising, breath steaming in the chilly air. That was full of the mountainside forest scents, the musty smell of damp earth and the spice of fir resin, wet wool and the sputtering torches. Every one of her sixty-odd years ached in her joints, from today and from the hard travel south from the Kyklos villages. Mist drifted across the steep forests and the outthrust knee that held the nemed, merging into the clouds above.

  This Imbolc ritual had given her no peace. As many as could make the journey to the nemed had come, and it was crowded, almost enough to jostle her; she was far from the only non-Mackenzie. The dim late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the circle of great bare-limbed oak trees in shafts, picking out people in hooded robes of many colors, though white and yellow dominated. It was Imbolc and the rising of the sun, the lengthening of the days that started the Wheel of the Year anew.

  Beginnings, she thought. Start of term for Moon Schools, babes brought for wiccaning, apprenticeships started. But not this time.

  On the roughly chiseled altar a large sheep?s milk feta perched on top of the huge round of braided bread. This was the only time of the year when sheep?s milk was used to make cheese, for the ewes went dry when the lambs were weaned. The crackle of the teine eigin, the need fire in the bowl-shaped stone hearth, gave a little warmth.

  Sternly BD brought her mind back to the chant and the purpose of the power raising. It was possible to lose oneself in the chant, but once concentration was lost, so was power. And power was their need. The strength of the CUT to influence people who were in any way corrupt had left every realm in the countries of the Meeting Montival, she reminded herself

  – in Montival exposed. Castles were falling through treachery. The CUT?s ability to defile was like tentacles of poison stretching into minds, like threads of mold in spoiled bread.

  Thank you, Athena, that some can detect their High Seekers. And fight them. Gray-eyed One, Maiden of the Spear, Defender of the Polis, aid!

  In her mind?s eye she could see the spiral, the cone of power rising. It wobbled, dangerously. She shook her head and took a deep breath, projecting the ahhhh in deeper tones than the people around her. The lower sound caught, spread, humming through bone and blood until her very teeth vibrated with it. Folk focused on the task at hand. She hadn?t been the only one distracted by fear.

  We are losing this war.

  Juniper was in the center. She held her rowan staff overhead, turning deosil, the staff-the distaff-taking up the power, revolving widdershins above her head. BD focused on the silver raven, perched on the head of the staff; inwardly she felt a sudden spurt of homely laughter at what a real bird would do, held horizontal like that.

  Flap his great wings and go: crawk! she thought.

  In her mind?s eye the power was stabilizing, the buildup almost complete. The air felt heavy with it, like the tension before a thunderstorm; she could smell the tingle in the air, feel it prickling the little hairs along her forearms and on her neck. From her usual position in the East, as Apollon?s Pythia, she shot a glance across at Judy, who also was watching. Judy caught her glance and nodded. They signaled the other two guardians and raised their hands. Voices soared from the deep tone of the ahhhh, rising to a banshee shriek as the Mackenzies followed their lead.

  Birds and small animals broke from cover, flew and ran, rustling the branches and tall grass around. Juniper twisted the staff in a complicated figure-eight pattern, raising it high and then bringing the heel to the ground with a thump that dug it in several inches through the yielding turf and soft earth beneath. She ran her hands up the staff gathering the melded power and flung them up, palms to the sky. ?Light!? she cried.?Gods most high! Lugh of the Sun! Brigid of the Healing Flame! Give us Light! Lugh, help us see! Lugh, help us see into hearts! Lugh, God of Light!?

  And Juniper?s palms glowed, two shafts of light cutting upward through the wan afternoon. They rose and merged in a twisting column. The dim gray turned bright-just on the edge of pain, but turning every twig and blade of grass into a maze of glittering diamond for an instant. Not since the old world fell had she seen such brightness, but it surpassed those ancient wonders. A moan went through the crowd, and as one they dropped to a knee. A few went on their bellies and beat their heads on the turf.

  She could see, into the hearts of trees, into the roots of the mountains, into herself. But nothing was dreamlike. It was more real than that, hard, sharp-edged, definite, each mote and lingering sere yellow leaf and fir needle so intensely itself that she could have wept for wonder.

  That?s not a vision! her mind gibbered, and she felt her body shake, commanded it to be still and her throat to let breath pass.

  The light was within her, but it was also without.

  Not just a vision. It?s not a metaphor. I?m not just seeing it with the Inner Eye. That?s photons, by the Gods, as real as sunlight or a burning torch! Apollon Helios, Lord of Light, be with us now!

  The light soared and spun, broadening into a wall that stretched into the clouds and moved eastward, fading as it went. Instant by instant it swelled, and then was gone-gone from the body?s eyes, at least.

  Juniper?s head was tipped back, her mouth fallen open, her eyes black with the dilated pupils. Before BD could react pain hit, a pain she had only felt once before, on the day of the Change. And a voice echoed, like the wind in crags, like the growth of flowers, roaring like a lion and as silent as the fall of windless snow:

  Artos holds the Sword of the Lady! The Sun Lord comes, the son of Bear and Raven! The High King comes, as foretold! Guardian of my sacred Wood, and Law! His people?s strength, and the Lady?s sword!

  Fast and sharp, the pain was gone. Juniper brought trembling hands down to her chest level and looked at them, swaying and beginning to buckle at the knees. BD and Judy and the other High Priestesses moved forward. Nigel was faster; his fox mask pushed up on his head, he snatched her into his arms, looking at the tears flowing down her cheeks. The staff cracked across his cheekbone, unnoticed. ?Did… you see that?? she whispered.?Did anyone else see that , or am I ma
d?? ?I saw. And I?m a confirmed skeptic, remember? Or I was. You?re not in the least mad. It?s far stranger than that.?

  She raised her hands to him, quivering as they touched his face. ?They?re just my own worn hands. That?s all they are!? ?That?s what they were, my dear,? he said with tender denial.?But that?s not all they are. Not anymore.?

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