Adam of Albion

by Kim McMahon

  After a few endless minutes, her groping hand banged against stone. She hissed with pain—the fall had already scraped that hand up good—but at least she’d come to a wall. She kept her hand on it as she moved, afraid it would disappear if she let it go, and began to chant the words—In darkness find flint, flint, flint—as if that could help. Even if she could see, she didn’t really know what flint looked like.

  But there had to be some of it around, didn’t there? Unless this “test” was completely bogus, and it was really just a death trap.

  Her feet kept kicking chunks of rock, and also crunching on flakes of it—the floor must be covered with them. Then another click came in her mind—duh, she chided herself fiercely. Flint had been used by ancient people for arrow and spear points, axes, and knives. They’d shaped it by chipping off flakes until they got sharp edges.

  Were the flakes chunks of flint? It was worth a try.

  She crouched, feeling around for a likely candidate. Her hand closed over a chunk heavy enough to give a good whack with—now for something to whack it against. Somehow, she didn’t think flint against flint would work—it had to be a harder kind of stone, or maybe metal.

  The wall did feel different than the rocks on the floor. She dried the chunk on her robe and started striking with it, hitting so it scraped in a quick sharp arc. After several tries, she had the motion down pretty well—but there was no hint of a spark. Either the wall or the flint was wrong. She moved along a few feet and tried again. Nothing came but the scratching sounds of her useless efforts.

  She almost started screaming again, this time in sheer frustration. What was she supposed to do, pick up every bloody rock in this bloody cavern and pound it against every square inch of the bloody wall, and if she lived long enough maybe one of them would finally throw off a spark?

  You have everything you need to survive the trial, Theodora had said. Like, what else besides rocks? Brains, which she was using full blast. Her weird hair, which she was quite proud of, but she couldn’t see how that would get her out of this pit. And stubbornness. Every adult she’d ever known had told her that, sometimes with great annoyance. She kept feeling her way along, pausing every several steps to try again.

  Then her hand landed on one of the clammy things. As she brushed it away with a “Yuk!” of disgust, her fingers told her that this patch of wall had a distinctly different feel—it was studded with small nodules that were smoother and denser.

  Like metal.

  She got a good grip on the chunk and tried. No spark—but it seemed to have a slightly different sound, rougher, like striking a match. Either that, or by now she wanted light so badly she was hallucinating. She whacked again and again, taking out her rage and fear and frustration until she was slamming the chunk so hard that slivers were shattering off.

  Stop, she commanded herself. It’s not going to work, okay, we know that—but at least be smart about failing. She rested a few seconds, getting her breath back. Then she felt the wall until she located a spot where the nodules were clustered densely together. This time she struck carefully, a quick sharp downward scrape.

  Something seemed to flicker, just for the briefest of instants.

  She closed her eyes, pointless though that was, and assured herself that it was only her desperate imagination.

  It took her four more tries, but there it was again—and this time, no doubt about it.

  A spark.

  Now she wanted to scream for joy.

  Artemis kept on fiercely, trying different places on the wall and different ways of striking. Quickly, she was able to create not just a single spark but a little stream of them. Some even stayed lit for a second as they drifted to the floor.

  She paused to regroup again, breathless with excitement. Major breakthrough! But sparks were useless without fuel to make a fire. The only thing she had was cloth—she was still wearing her T-shirt and jeans, with the cuffs rolled up to her knees, under the robe. The tee would be the easiest to light, she decided, and since it was already expensively ripped, tearing off a strip wasn’t hard. She wadded that into a loose ball, streamed sparks on it, and blew gently until they started to smolder.

  Then, at last, came a tiny flicker of flame.

  “Yessss!” she yelled, dropping the flint and cupping the cloth in both hands, nurturing the little fire carefully as it spread. It didn’t give off any more light than a few matches held together, but after the inky blackness, it seemed like a floodlight.

  It wouldn’t last much longer than matches, either. She held it up in front of her at arm’s length, straining her vision to get a glimpse of her surroundings. She could just tell that the cavern’s ceiling was about twelve feet high. Beyond the weak little ring of flame, everything else—except for a wave of small dark shapes slipping away across the floor, fleeing the violent intrusion of light into their murky world—disappeared into blackness.

  But there! Something that didn’t fit was jutting out from the wall up near the ceiling. She could just make out that it looked like a crude, short broom, with a wooden handle and a bundle of twigs at the top. She gasped in delighted surprise. It looked like a torch!

  There was just one problem—it was at least twice as high as she could reach.

  A sharp hot nip at her fingers reminded her that she was holding a ball of fire burning down to its end. She hastily set it on a dry spot on the floor—she couldn’t afford to let it go out, she might not be so lucky trying to strike up another flame. With trembling hands, she hiked up the robe again and ripped another, bigger strip off the T-shirt bottom, which left her midriff bare—not a bad look, she noticed distractedly, she’d have to try it again if she ever got out of here. The flames sprang up higher when she added it to the first scrap, but she had to move fast—eventually she’d run out of clothes to burn. Her gaze flicked around, searching for anything that might help her get the torch. Tear the robe into strips and make a lasso? But that fabric was too heavy to shred easily, and the fire would be gone long before she could finish.

  That left rocks, the one thing she had plenty of.

  All right, then—rocks it is, she thought. The torch was wedged into a niche, but it looked like a good whack might knock it loose.

  Throwing was not something she was particularly good at, but she gave it her all, lobbing stone after stone that went clunking and skittering off into invisibility. She got close enough a couple of times so the twigs quivered like fingers waggling to taunt her, but the torch stayed firmly in place. Her shoulder started aching and her throws got feebler. Her frustration started boiling up again, and with it came fury at the Sisters of Isis and this fiendish game they’d concocted to torment silly young girls.

  But that anger gave her another burst of strength. As the last of the fire was ebbing out, she formed a clear mental picture of Theodora’s face, and placed it on the bundle of twigs like projecting a slide. With clenched teeth, she wound up and hurled a fist-sized chunk that caught it dead center.

  The brittle twigs crackled, with bits flying off. The torch tipped off to the side, swung downward, hung there swaying—and then dropped to the floor. She was on it like a cat on a mouse. In another few seconds, the twigs were crackling with flames.

  Artemis found a flat stone slab that was dry and didn’t appear to be anything’s living quarters, and plunked herself down on it. She felt like she’d just finished a marathon. The twigs burned fast but the torch itself was a pitch knot that settled into a smoother, steadier flame. Its light was dim and smoky, but so wondrous it could have been coming from Aladdin’s lamp. If it lasted long enough, at least she wouldn’t be trapped here all alone and in the dark when she died of starvation or snakebite.

  But she’d made it this far—a lot farther than she would have believed half an hour ago, let alone when she and Adam and Orpheus had first landed here.

  And while the Sisters were still crazy and evil—there was at least some truth to the verse.

  In darkness find flint, with fir
e find glint.

  Darkness, flint and fire all were here, just as it promised—next came glint.

  Sure. No problem.

  She got painfully to her feet, wincing as her scrapes and bruises reminded her of their presence, and started off to search for something that glinted, besides the beady eyes watching her from the rockpiles.

  She hadn’t taken many steps before she spotted something light-colored, lying on the floor ahead. She hurried toward it excitedly—there was no glimmer to it, but at least it was different than the darkness everywhere else.

  Then she stopped, numb with dread. It was a skeleton, of a small human being—say, a young woman—with rat-chewed tatters of a black robe still clinging to the bones.

  When she got her nerve back enough to keep on walking, she realized that the skeleton was only one of many. Some were mostly intact, others just scattered bones. There was no way to count them, and she didn’t try. She didn’t want to know.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  King Richard lay wallowing in a stone tub of water, still wearing his tunic. Several big chunks of ice floated around him like rubber ducks, and smaller ones clinked in his wine goblet as he swilled from it. He seemed as happy as he’d been grumpy when Adam first arrived.

  Cristof was reading aloud to him the letter that Adam had brought from Saladin, translating it as he went—Richard couldn’t read Arabic, and for that matter, as he himself cheerfully pointed out, he could barely read English. The message was courteous but not obsequious, repeating the Sultan’s assurances that he’d had nothing to do with the uproar at yesterday’s truce meeting, and hoping that they would reconvene as soon as possible.

  Then Cristof bent close to the King’s ear and read the last part in a whisper. When he finished, both men looked at Adam. He felt his face redden with embarrassment and a touch of fear. It seemed that Saladin must have said something about him. But neither of them mentioned it—they turned their attention back to business.

  “Well and good,” Richard said, with a wave of his hand. “Write him back, Cristof—you know what to say far better than I. When shall we set the time to meet again?”

  “Why not tomorrow, my lord? The longer we wait, the longer Gerard has to stir up trouble.”

  “And the more of my ice melts. Done!”

  Cristof made a slight bow and stepped out of the tent—leaving Adam alone with the King.

  Richard flopped back in the tub with a contented sigh.

  “Haven’t felt so good since this accursed fever set in.” He thrust his goblet toward Adam. “Another of these, there’s a good lad. With plenty of ice, mind you.”

  “Yes, sir. Uh—is it okay to call you ‘sir?’ Or should it be, like, ‘your majesty’ or ‘my lord?’”

  “You may call me your Uncle Dick for all I care—just keep my tankard full!” the King growled jovially.

  Adam hurried to the leather wineskin hanging from a tent pole and tried to figure out how to pour from it without spilling.

  “Where do you come from, Adam?” Richard asked—the wine seemed to be getting him into a chatty mood.

  “A place called Montana, sir. A little town called Albion.”

  The king’s face swung toward him, looking surprised. “Albion? That’s the ancient name of England.”

  “Really?”

  Richard’s brow furrowed. “But I’ve never heard of this Montana. Is it so named because of mountains?”

  “Yes, there’s lots of them.”

  Richard grinned. “With loads of ice?”

  Adam smiled back shyly. “As far as you can see in the winter, and some of them all year round.” He managed to get the hang of the wineskin, then hurried to the table where Cristof had left ice for the King’s drinks, and added several slivers to the goblet.

  “Well, unless someone attacks someone else today, I’ve nothing to do but loll around,” Richard declared. “I understand war quite well, but beyond that, my brain is dull and my heart is rough. I’m a soldier by nature and a king by birth, but no more.”

  “That’s actually quite a lot, sir,” Adam pointed out. He was tempted to add that Richard would go down in history as a legendary figure, but that might be TMI.

  Richard grunted. “It keeps me busy. But when it comes to diplomacy and that sort of thing, I leave it to Cristof. You notice that I think highly of him?”

  “I can see why. He seems really—” Adam groped for the right word. “Really smart. But more than that. It’s like the kind of strength you feel even though he doesn’t show it off.”

  “The Muslims call it baraka,” Richard said with a nod. “It’s a mysterious power—they believe it’s linked directly to God. Well, Cristof earned his baraka, and not easily. He was born a peasant in Alsatia. The Hospitallers allowed him to join them because he’s valuable—a fearsome fighter, and well learned besides. Instead of roistering in his free time, he reads everything he can get his hands on, and he speaks a dozen languages. But some of the nobles don’t like having a knight of humble birth in their ranks, and it’s all the worse when he outshines them.

  “One day, some years ago, he was riding alone not far from here, and he was ambushed by several men. They overwhelmed him by surprise, cut him down and left him for dead. If you see him without his tunic on, his scars look like a Saracen mosaic.

  “That much is fact. The rest is rumor—Cristof himself has never spoken of it. There’s a mysterious Sisterhood who live in a hidden fortress somewhere in these parts. Very few even know where it is. They found him, saved his life, and taught him their healing arts as he recovered.” Richard smiled slyly. “And, I suspect, taught him a few things about the arts of love as well. At any rate, that was what sparked his interest in medicine, and since then, he’s devoted himself to it—although he’s as deadly as ever with his sword.

  “I also suspect that his attackers weren’t Muslims, but other Crusaders, jealous of this low-born upstart. He hasn’t settled the score—yet. But once the truce is made, I have no doubt that his monks will be busy with their shovels, after all.”

  The connection with the Templar who’d barged in wasn’t hard to make.

  “Do you think Gerard de Chavirage—” Adam stumbled a little over the pronunciation— “was one of them?”

  “Let’s just say that when Cristof smiles at a man like he did at Gerard, it’s the smile of death, and Gerard knows it full well.”

  And then, abruptly, the King’s good humor seemed to vanish. His gaze fixed on Adam, with that grim forceful look. Adam had been starting to relax, but that vanished, too. Richard was notorious for sudden mood swings—he could go from mellow to furious in an eyeblink, and he didn’t seem to need a reason.

  “Saladin had a word to say about you in his letter,” he rumbled. Then he rose to his feet in the tub, towering like a giant with water streaming from his beard and tunic. “Boy! Bring me my sword.”

  Adam’s heart almost stopped. He had to force himself to move at all, and when he did, it was even harder to keep from bolting out of the tent and running for it. But he grasped the huge broadsword in both hands—it was almost as tall as he was, and so heavy it was hard to believe that men could swing these things for hours at a time, let alone with other men swinging theirs back—and gave it, hilt first, to the king.

  The blade rasped like a knife on a sharpening stone as Richard drew it from its sheath.

  “Kneel and bow your head,” he commanded.

  Trembling, Adam sank to his knees and closed his eyes.

  “The Sultan entrusted you as his envoy to restore the truce process—a very important mission and a dangerous one, what with Chavirage and his men in the wings. But you’ve carried it out with courage and sound judgment, and brought me a priceless gift in the bargain.

  “Therefore, I, Richard, King of England, Lord of—oh, damn, I almost forgot, I need my crown for this part. Fetch it, will you? It’s over by my chair.”

  Adam felt like he was floating in a dream as he stumbled to the table where
the gold, jewel-encrusted crown rested. It looked like Richard had tossed it there as casually as a baseball cap. Adam picked it up carefully and brought it back to the king, who crammed it on his head with one hand.

  “Let’s see, where were we?” he muttered, impatiently motioning Adam to kneel again. “Lord of this and that, I can never remember, in recognition of your service to the throne, and so on and so forth—I dub thee Sir Adam of Albion. Your emblem shall be a mountain peak—covered with ice.”

  The flat of the blade came to rest briefly on each of Adam’s shoulders, almost brushing his ears as it passed over his head. Then Richard sheathed it again, set it aside, and, still wearing the crown, sank back into the water.

  “Arise, Sir Adam, and fetch your liege another drink,” he said, banging his goblet on the rim of the tub.

  As Adam filled it from the wineskin across the tent, his hands trembling with disbelief, he could just hear a tiny voice at his back whisper sarcastically:

  “Well, I guess somebody’s going to be pretty full of himself after that.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Artemis was starting to hear a new sound—an echoing murmur like rushing water, getting louder as she moved cautiously toward it.

  The caution paid off—the sound was coming from a chasm with a sheer dropoff. Apparently, there was a fast-moving river running through its depths. She couldn’t see it, even when she stretched out flat on her belly and held the torch down over the edge—the feeble light just faded into more blackness.

  She stood, picked up a good-sized rock, and dropped it over the edge, silently counting: one-one thousand, two-one thousand . . . A faint splash came as she mouthed the second thou. Gravity would accelerate a solid object like that about fifteen feet in the first second, and it was picking up speed at thirty-two feet per second squared—she couldn’t calculate the distance exactly under these circumstances, but it must be somewhere around thirty feet.