by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
No. The clasp was Merlin’s, so tight as to hurt and bring her back here. Nia turned her palm up and slid it to touch his. A thrill of coolness shot up her arm.
“I am glad you agree,” the magician said. She agreed? Agreed to what? She had nodded, maybe, had possibly let her head droop, dozing off as the hall’s soothing warmth and sedative airs overcame her. Treating that accidental nod as deliberate provided one way out. She inclined her head—again? The stress of Merlin’s regard, the grip he established on Nia’s hand, seized and lifted her the way a talon lifts a prize.
“By your leave.” The magician assumed the king’s assent and left. What twinkled in the air behind them? No chance to check. With a quickness Merlin brought her to the foot of the stairs to the divided chambers above the hall’s annex.
Was it privacy the magician sought? She could have told him it would not be found here. Children, maidens, and a round-hipped woman Nia remembered from her earlier stay occupied the two largest rooms. A smaller third was piled high with bales of cloth and stacks of dead lumber, leaving no room for entry. The smallest, the fourth, contained nothing but another staircase. One which Nia was sure had not been there previously.
They climbed to where the stairs stopped: underneath a hatch reminding Nia of the ships on which she’d voyaged from Tunis and Corsica. The hatch swung upward at the magician’s touch, revealing a sky full of stars like goblets running over with light. Stepping out, Nia at last retrieved her hand from Merlin’s grasp. She stood on the roof of a tall tower. Baring her feet, she felt flat tiles slippery with friendly moss beneath her soles. The keep, the hill on which it stood, and the wall around it were nowhere in sight.
Nia dug her toes deeper into the moss, and it responded, sparkling in circles spreading outward from her feet. “When are we?” she asked.
“A time when I built what King Bear really needs. Not the future, not the past. A time of choice.”
He seemed to be in a mood to answer questions. She asked another. “What’s in the basket? What is my gift to the king?”
Green, yellow, pink, and white, the moss lights shifted and winked, showing by their abrupt absence the roof’s edge.
“His sword.” The magician looked upward, throwing his face into shadow.
“He has a sword.”
“Not this one. This is a sword of destiny. He who wields it rules all Cymru.”
“You give it to me so I may give it to him and thus usurp you as his counselor.” Two steps and she touched his mantle, felt through its weave the warm muscles of his upper arm. “I tell you twice that’s no wish of mine. I came to these lands to learn; I’m not here to conquer anything or anyone.”
“Yet you have.” His face remained averted. And they’d spent the day apart, he riding, she walking. How could Nia know what sense his words held? She did, though she didn’t want to play this game she’d won.
Where was her pet? Odeh, who ought to have been here helping now, had approached the bailey by Nia’s side but fled at the noise of the trumpets. Still, they should be able to reach her here as easily as within any other of Merlin’s constructions. She called to them using the blossom pressed flat beneath the cloth covering her head.
Abruptly the tower’s roof caved beneath her. Or did it disappear completely? Disoriented, Nia staggered. Again Merlin had her wrist. Yes, her surroundings had simply vanished. No debris. Only the littlest scintillation of dust—mist?—that swiftly cleared from the air. At tables around them sat the same women and men she had left in the magician’s company, in almost the same positions. And before King Bear stood the basket containing her gift to him. The sword. Softness assailed her calves—Odeh rubbing between her legs.
Again Merlin bowed. He stayed bent as he spoke. “Inspired by foretellings of your greatness, the sorceress Nia has procured for you that weapon of which I could only prophesize.
“Lady? You will perform the honor of untying the basket’s lid?”
Simple knots in strands of supple ivy parted easily at Nia’s touch. She removed the basket’s lid and smelled more than saw its contents: damp, rich earth, fully awake and clinging to the blade piercing its heart.
“Lord?” Merlin had straightened. He beckoned to the king.
The king rose. His golden beard did little to conceal the tension of his half-pursed lips. He swung his arms to match the rhythm of his stride. Reaching the basket, he stopped and faced his warriors and their women. “Witness as I fulfill the requirement. Father Peace? You will record what happens?” A shaven-headed, hook-nosed man seated at the hall’s entrance nodded.
With a dramatic flourish, King Bear lifted both hands high, turning them palms in, palms out, palms toward one another. He lowered both together, clasped with interlaced fingers something buried in the basket’s earth, and pulled forth by its leather-bound hilt a shimmering blade of finest steel.
“Cleft-Cutter!” cried Merlin. “Bane of Cymru’s enemies!” The king spun in place, showing the sword to everyone in the hall. “Drawn by our rightful ruler from this adamant rock!”
But the basket contained only soft soil. Nia thought to plunge her hands in it to prove this. The magician warned her back with a glance. The king paraded his prize from one fighter to the next, basking in their admiration. Cleft-Cutter seemed to reflect more light than it received, shining radiance upon the faces bent over it turn on turn. Magic, yes. But her magic? Not originally.
Now the king returned to kneel in front of her. “Lady Nia,” he said, in a voice meant for all to hear, “consider me beholden. A boon is yours in payment for securing me the chance to claim this gift.”
Again the veil of glittering dust descended. And now she heard nothing. Saw nothing around her save a soft blur of colors hurrying past her eyes fast, faster. Felt nothing till the magician’s touch calmed this weird storm. His thumb on her chin, the tips of his fingers a crescent of coolth about her cheek. The fire out and the hall empty but for Odeh waiting patiently at her tired feet.
Nia opened her mouth to ascertain what was happening. Two of Merlin’s fingertips glided across her lips. “Shush you,” he whispered. “All will be made clear in time.”
“In this time,” she insisted.
“Very well. At least, in an approximation of it.”
More mist, more magic; then they lay together on Nia’s red bed, in their future. Knowledge sat heavy on her uncovered head: it was to be their last night in each other’s arms. They’d had their time. The winter months had gone, and the rains of spring wetted the hut’s thatch. Thrice four quarters had passed since Yule, in this conjuration. Soon the seeds sown last autumn would wake from the sodden earth. By then Merlin too must be planted, in order that he grow.
The fire in the hut’s center roared, painting their nakedness with changing jewels of light, light flowing over them like pleasure. “Did you hate me,” he asked, “when I craved the king grant you my position?”
“As it was in your Seeing? Well, I did think you presumptuous.”
“And I was. Being young and foolish.” They both laughed, sadly at first. “Yet old enough at over a hundred years to understand that secrets can never be told. Only shown.”
“Yes. That’s their nature.” Her white fingers flexed in his hair, which at this moment was brown as the wing of his namesake. “You have never expected me to teach you my secrets—only to share with you the joy of learning them.”
The magician’s fingers caressed her hair also, tugging gently at the sensitive roots, tracing the paths between them. “You’ll not fight me, then? You’ll help?”
“Haven’t I promised? I’ll dig your grave myself.”
“And you’ll care for the king in my absence? Fill all his needs? Love him as I do, for the sake of the union it’s his destiny to form?”
“I’ll care for him as you would, till the time of your return.”
“But what then if I don’t return?”
Nia rolled apart from him onto her belly. “Why shouldn’t you? Is this your plan, to abandon King Bear’s realm for the web beneath the woods?”
“Nothing is ever my plan. I only go where my life takes me.”
The magic ceased. The drizzling shower of light marked its end. She stood again in the shadow-clotted great hall at Dinas Dinlle. Of course she hadn’t actually left it. She snorted, unimpressed. “How was that time an approximation of this one?” she asked.
“It wasn’t. Just a favorite of mine to visit.” His hair was once more white, but his touch on her face felt smooth, and soft as morning dew. “I trust your curiosity is now entirely satisfied.”
It wasn’t, ever. She tried to distinguish the elements of her puzzlement and voice them. “Not on two points. What of your pet, your snake? What becomes of Macha?”
“And your other question?”
“Before our second—visit, if you will, the expedition to the time coming, the excursion after I gave the king your gift—how did you hasten the passage of the night? What did others see while the world flashed by me so quickly?”
The magician’s beard hitched upward, result of an invisible smile. “They saw nothing out of the ordinary, nothing but what they expected. And in their unseeing they missed both moments when I isolated you from the stream of our present. I have taught you my methods of doing that. Look to your notes.
“As for Macha…I believe she will wake with the change of season, as is her custom, and seek for me. If I’m already interred and I’ve failed to respond to your rousing, show her my ground. She’ll know what to do.” He bent to pull Odeh’s ears. “As will you.”
* * *
—
The brooch glowed in the North’s soft sun. Garnets and gold, amber and brass—these weren’t colors Nia favored for herself, but she appreciated their beauty. She raised her head to display the gratitude in her eyes. “My king, this is magnificent.”
King Bear nodded. “It is the work of Beloved; I’ve heard you praise her skill. As she praises your powers of healing.
“Allow me.” The king lifted the brooch from the folded silk held by one of the servants he’d brought to fill Merlin’s house and yard. “You use it to hold shut your cloak or overdress. Your woman will—”
“I own no one.”
The king appeared suddenly flustered. “Of—of course not. Of course not.” He dropped the hand holding the precious trinket to his side. “I only mean the one who helps you dress.”
Who would that be, Nia wondered. And why would their help be necessary. But she relented for Merlin’s sake and allowed the king to pin the brooch on a shawl she spread over her shoulders and bosom. Also for love of the magician she let him remove it, and her shawl and robe and shift, and lay her on the bed where the two of them had very lately loved. Merlin had shown her at Dinas Dinlle how he asked this of her on the night before his burial. And she had discovered on living through the scene that she was unwilling to refuse him. She had sworn to care completely for Merlin’s charge. To bind him to her however she might.
Coupling with the king was a simple affair, face-to-face, his manner tender enough that Nia felt no worries. She could shoulder this extra duty. It added but a little to the trouble of maintaining herself in the position Merlin expected her to fill. Aided by him, she’d begun to counsel King Bear during that Yuletide visit and in the four months since. She would keep at it on her own till Merlin emerged with the newborn moon. Soon.
He had asked that she adapt a few customs of his own people to the methods she’d evolved and with these in mind had chosen to be interred among oaks. The glade of the oaks’ nearest queen tree covered a hillock to the hut’s north.
After their coupling and the king’s reluctant departure, she applied salve to hands that still ached from digging Merlin’s resting place in the stiff, cold soil, twelve nights past. It had been a difficult burial. Not because of the work involved or any fear shown by the magician but because she had no wish to watch him dissolve into the earth, though sometimes this was what he’d seemed to want.
Odeh sniffed her fingers cautiously. They approved of the salve’s honey, though its pepper oil made them sneeze. They backed away as she knelt to the hearth but not only to afford her room: the stone above Macha’s resting place lifted just slightly, and out slid the snake. She coiled herself at Nia’s feet, resting her flat head where lately the king had lain his possessive cheek. Odeh assumed a pose of aloof inquiry at the edge of the fire’s warm circle.
“Greetings, Dame Macha; you are well come for your tidings of the new season’s first steps.” Nia put down a slow hand to stroke the serpent’s dry-leaf skin. “Your magician’s away, but will return.”
The snake regarded her with placid skepticism. “Of course he insisted on a fourteen-night immersion,” she complained. A month of pillow talk had not dissuaded him. “Quite sure of himself. Thinks his training sufficient; says he’ll never learn any more without experience.” Which was no doubt true, but why should he try to pack a decade of experience into a single lesson? What reason but pride spurred him to catch up to her so quickly?
Secrets must be shown, not told, yes. And because of this their learning required patience.
The serpent uncoiled herself and flowed away to a crevice near the smoldering peats. Nia got up and got into her lonesome bed. Odeh napped with her awhile, but then left to go about their obscure business. Three more nights she slept thus. Then, finally, the time came. She donned Macha like a living collar and covered them both with her cloak. Odeh stayed curled abed, stubbornly refusing to waken. She went without them.
Dawn broke slowly in these lands. Light like thin milk soaked into the air from the east, the direction in which she traveled. The cloud of her breath preceded her, carried on the softest of breezes.
Imperceptibly her walk changed to a climb, steepness shortening her steps. The quiet, riddled with birdsong and branchcreak, embraced and released and embraced her again, without and within.
She reached the hill’s crown, the shallow grave, its loose-topped hummock already sprouting a few brave seedlings. Crouching, she transferred these to one of the fired clay bowls she’d brought, saving the other to dig with. As she worked, Macha slithered free of her clothes.
Aside from the plants the grave looked undisturbed. The straws she had put in for air stood angled as she’d placed them, away from unkind rains. But Macha knew, and so did she.
She uncovered him anyway. Though only his face. That was all she needed to see.
Merlin’s skin was unmarked, smooth save where bearded. Examining it closely, Nia proved to herself this beard was not composed of hair. Strands of white rootlets pulsing with messages grew into the magician—or out of him? His eyes opened, shining with a pure and holy light. Inhumanly holy. Inhumanly pure.
His lips opened. Nia bent and pressed her lips against them ever so lightly. They moved but produced no sound. No air escaped between them.
She withdrew. He had gone far—further into the web than she could follow. If he was going to emerge it must be on his own.
A wordless whisper came to her over the damp soil at her back. She turned to see Macha ascending the oak tree’s trunk, a green stream running skyward. From there the serpent twined herself along a high brown branch and stopped. Watching. Waiting.
The magician made no sign he saw his pet. Or her. If she should chide him for his pride, he’d likely never hear. All she could do was as he’d asked. As she had promised.
Pressing the earth down softly, delicately, discarding the useless straws, she refilled Merlin’s grave and headed home.
The Bladesmith Queen
Sarah MacLean
I
The first fell through the ice and could not swim.
The second drank from an old well and was
gone in a fortnight.
The third set sail for fortune and was lost to the sea.
And that was when she stopped kissing them.
Or maybe it was they who stopped kissing her, as it seemed the whole village learned the bladesmith’s daughter was cursed at the same time she discovered it herself.
Not cursed. A curse, which was a different thing altogether.
Receiving a devastating blow engendered pity. Being the instrument of the blow? Fear.
And so, despite the fact that she was only fifteen when Rowan fell through the ice, only sixteen when Henry drank from the well, only seventeen when Garreth—beautiful, strong, kind-eyed Garreth—was lost to the sea, she became the face of the village’s fear. Mothers clutched their children tight when they saw her in the street; fathers invoked her name when those same children misbehaved; the priest, in his ominous black robes, made the sign of the cross when she passed the stone church on her way into town. Women averted their eyes when she neared, and men—they steered clear altogether.
After all, they were the ones in the most danger.
If she had been another woman in another town, she would not have been allowed to stay. She would have been run out, sent on her way to wreak her havoc on a different place with different sons. But she was the daughter of a bladesmith, who’d been son of a bladesmith, who’d been son of a bladesmith, and so on, as far back as steel could be forged in flame, and so she was invaluable to the town for her skill.
As she was a curse, so, too, were the weapons born in her fire. Any soldier who marched into battle with a blade made by the Bladesmith Witch on his hip would fight stronger and smarter than ever before. At least, that was the tale whispered on battlefields and in taverns the land over.
