by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)
“No king came when war threatened mine.”
He did not move, and she sensed how difficult stillness was for him then, this warrior who had no doubt survived on an economy of movement. “You are not a curse.”
“I am. I made the blades,” she whispered to the flames, letting sadness into her words. “I traded this village for another when I should have taken up my own sword and gone for their heads.”
“I was your sword. I took their heads.”
The words thrummed through her, giving her more pleasure than they should have. Making her want him again.
Making her want to give him everything she had.
“You were my vengeance.”
“Your weapon.”
“Today, I shall be yours.” She turned to him then, and when she met his eyes, he came for her, across the tiny space even as she raised a hand and stayed the movement. He stopped no distance from her, close enough to touch if he reached for her.
But he didn’t, and she both loved and hated that.
“I did not believe the tales, and so I did not make my blade,” she said, wanting him to understand. And then she turned and pulled the sword from the forge; it gleamed orange, blindingly hot. “Until you.”
He sucked in a breath but kept his distance, even as her skin tingled with awareness. With desire. Resisting it, she turned away and reached for a hammer and a stamp that had never been used. As he watched, she set the stamp to hot metal and made quick work, striking the steel before it lost its heat…four times in quick succession, the face of each of the men he had vanquished flashing as she did, and then, a fifth time.
His face did not flash.
It lingered, like a promise.
Like a gift.
She dropped the blade into the deep well of water nearby, the cool liquid hissing and steaming in protest. “My blade is yours,” she said softly, watching him before lifting the sword by its hilt and turning to set it on the scarred oak table where he had once set a different blade, one with less power. “The only one of its kind,” she said. “The only one marked with the flower and thorn. Mercy and punishment. Hope and fear. A balance of humors worthy of a warrior king.”
He drew close but did not look at the blade. Instead, he looked at her. “I did not come for a sword,” he said, dark and soft, like sin.
He reached for her, his hands coming to her face, cupping her cheeks and tilting her up to him. “I came for you. I came because every time I have touched a blade forged in your fire, I have seen you. And I have seen us. And I have seen our future.” He set his forehead to hers and breathed her in. “You are not my curse,” he whispered, lifting her hand in his, pressing it to the mark inked on his skin, identical to the one on her steel. “You are my destiny.”
She shook her head. “Impossible,” she whispered. “You shall be the warrior king, and I am no kind of consort.”
He shook his head. “Not consort.”
Before she could deny him again, he released her and lifted the blade, the vision washing over him. This sword, it would unite a kingdom. In peace. Just as its maker would bring him peace. Just as she would bring him joy.
He was her sword. Her weapon. Her vengeance.
And she was his power. His crown.
“Not consort,” he repeated, taking her hand and setting it to the hilt, entwining their fingers, letting her feel the power that came not from the blade, but from they who would wield it.
He met her eyes, wide and beautiful and full of wonder, and pulled her close. This time, she let him. She let his fingers stroke her cheek and tilt her face to his, let her gaze tangle with his, let herself revel in the nearness of him, in the warmth of him.
In his kiss, long and deep, tasting of hope and setting her on fire. He stroked deep, his arms coming around her and lifting her high, close, tight against him, the pleasure of the caress so intense that it chased away everything but the future.
When that was done, he lifted his head and whispered, “Queen.”
Time stretched between them, immense with the promise of a future that she had never imagined and one that now she could not deny. One that she wanted more than anything ever before.
For the first time, the Bladesmith believed in the future. And so she claimed it, alongside her warrior, and the kingdom that would be theirs.
Do, By All Due Means
Sive Doyle
“You know, my lady,” came a voice, “if you come down now, there’s still plenty of time to make it to the great hall before dinner.”
Britomart startled and had to cling to the tree branch to stop from falling. Once she was properly braced, she peered down to see a familiar face looking up at her with wry amusement. Of course she hadn’t heard him approach. Each story told at her father’s court about Merlin’s powers was more fantastical than the last. To walk on stealthy feet through an orchard would be no test of his abilities.
“My lord Merlin,” Britomart said, willing her cheeks not to heat. She had already been uncomfortably aware that choosing to spend the afternoon hiding out in an apple tree was not the mature action of a princess who was almost fully grown. The thought of how a great girl like her must seem—with one of her plaits coming loose and her skirts hiked up to show calves scratched by twigs and stained by grass—was enough to dispel the last of her bad humor and replace it completely with embarrassment. “I—I hope the day finds you well. I did not think you were expected here for another week.”
“No,” he said, “but circumstances change. For instance, if you come down from that tree and escort me to the great hall, that would be a change of circumstances. And since it would mean your good lady mother would no longer be in a tizzy wondering where you are and that I would be able to fill my belly with some excellent roast pork, I think it would be a change of circumstances agreeable to everyone.”
There was no help for it. By the time Britomart had scrambled to the ground, her face was bright with exertion and embarrassment. The old man had the good grace to look away until she had smoothed out her skirts and turned to walk back up through the orchards at his side. Still, Merlin loved to poke fun. Britomart braced herself for the inevitable teasing to come on the topic of princesses in apple trees.
“You did not replace the covering, you know” was what Merlin said next, though.
Britomart startled again, but this time the color drained from her cheeks.
“That looking glass is a powerful thing, Britomart.” Merlin’s voice was grave and had in it no hint of humor, just the echo of an ancient might. “I did not make it for my own amusement. Or at least, there have been other objects whose making I have enjoyed more. You know what it can do. To leave it uncovered is to let things look back. Dangerous things.”
“I didn’t—my family—”
Before Britomart could start into a panicked run toward the great hall, Merlin held up a hand. “I made it safe before I came in search of you, young lady. What were you thinking?”
The looking glass was one of the king’s great treasures. Like the shard of some enormous and highly polished pearl, Merlin had enchanted it so that it could show the image of anything that the world contained between heaven and earth. King Ryence used it to sense whether any enemies approached and had long impressed on his daughter the importance of using it to keep their realm safe. Britomart knew that the looking glass was a powerful tool and a necessary one for the preservation of a small realm surrounded by many much larger kingdoms. The king owed a great debt to Merlin for such a mighty gift.
But Britomart had thought that to use it for herself, just once, could not be so terribly selfish, especially not if she used it to discover something that would shape the kingdom’s future. So she had crept into her father’s private solar that morning, carefully unfolded the brocade cloth that normally enfolded the mirror, and asked it a question.
“This morning, my mother said that it was time for me to marry and that she and the king will decide on a match for me soon,” Britomart told Merlin. It hadn’t been a shock, exactly. She’d had her courses for three years now, and she was her father’s only heir. Britomart had never been destined for a nunnery, much as she thought sometimes it must be a very restful kind of place to live. That wasn’t a sadness in itself. She didn’t think she’d ever had a calling to the habit. She just didn’t feel any desire to get married, either. Britomart had never been able to understand why so many of her childhood friends now found boys to be so very fascinating. Boys were all well and good when they washed their feet, but there was nothing about them that made her want to risk a death in childbed. “I only wondered about how it might all come about, and so I thought to ask the looking glass.”
“Ah.” Merlin looked at his feet in their battered boots. “And the husband you saw was not to your liking, I take it?”
“Well, that’s just it,” Britomart said, recalling the confusion and frustration that led her to flee for the orchard’s solitude. “It didn’t show me a husband. It only showed me, well…me.”
Merlin halted now and regarded her with a quizzical look, head cocked to one side like an overgrown bird. “You?”
“Yes. Well, not me precisely,” Britomart clarified. “I was dressed as a knight in armor, as completely as any one of my father’s banner men. I wore a gilt-edged helm and carried a shield that bore the device of a crouching, crowned hound and had a great spear in my other hand. And there was someone else there, another woman—though I don’t know how I knew that; all I could see was a vague reflection on my armor. I didn’t know what it meant and I was upset and I—I ran. I’m sorry.”
Britomart had been raised to wield a bow and arrow as well as she did a needle and thread. She’d even wheedled some sword lessons from the more indulgent members of her father’s personal guard, the ones who had known her since she was a babe in arms. They’d told her she wasn’t bad. But she had never felt so utterly confident in her ability to wield anything as did the Britomart she had glimpsed in the mirror—and she was quite sure that that other Britomart had never felt so young and so awkward as she did now. What a fine daughter of the royal house she was showing herself to be.
Merlin had fallen silent and was gazing out through the orchard’s main gateway, to where the sun was starting to sink toward the horizon. “I suppose I never thought to make sure it wouldn’t develop a will of its own. I’ve grown foolish in my dotage.” He shook his head and then continued, “Well, my lady, I am sorry for it, but I’m afraid you’ve discovered what happens when the mirror itself looks back. There’s nothing to be done. You’ve acquired what we in the business call a destiny.”
What Merlin meant by that, he wouldn’t say. Instead he hurried to the great hall at such a pace that, even with her long strides, Britomart was hard-pressed to keep up. For such a fine-boned, frail-looking old man, he moved with surprising assurance. Merlin ushered her up the stairs and bid her pack together what necessities could fit into a small bundle, refusing to answer any of her questions and grumbling the whole time that he was missing out on what smelled like a very fine bowl of pottage.
“Go to the stable and take the third horse on the left, but tell no one you’re leaving,” Merlin said. “Ride south until you reach the river and then follow it upstream until you find something that makes you stop.”
“That makes no sense at all,” Britomart said, frowning and fixing her hair so that her plaits were tidily pinned once more. It was hard not to be swept along by Merlin’s calm confidence, much as she felt confused and disoriented by it. She clutched her pack to her. “And what do you mean, I’m leaving? Why wouldn’t I tell my parents? Are they in danger?”
Merlin shook his head at her. “You’re the one who looked into the mirror, my lady, and who let it look back. There’s no way out now but through, and time is pressing. You’ll want to get on your way if you are to make it in time.”
The magician looked so strange and solemn when he said this, his eyes so dark and depthless, that Britomart found herself swallowing her objections. She crept back down the stairs, mindful of the cheerful hubbub spilling out from the great hall proper, and then hurried across the bailey to the stables. The third horse from the left, a roan gelding, was patient as Britomart first saddled him and then led him out to the yard. For a moment she hesitated. Without Merlin there to spur her on, all her apprehensions came back. The great hall was a comforting bulk behind her. What was to stop her from returning the roan to the stables and going inside to her parents and to the promise of a pleasant evening spent in undemanding company? Nothing at all, perhaps, except for the memory of that look on Merlin’s face—and her own curiosity.
Britomart mounted the horse. Then, taking a deep breath, she spurred it out of the royal enclosure and turned south.
As she rode toward the river, Britomart thought she caught sight of a figure that looked very much like Merlin waving a salute at her from atop a low esker ridge. But there was no way he could have made it there ahead of her on foot. A trick of the eye in the failing light, Britomart thought, and rode on.
The sun set and the moon rose, bright enough to see by as the roan followed the path worn along the river’s bank by many feet over many years. Britomart was tired and hungry and cold, and after a few hours she longed for nothing so much as to stop, light a fire, and bed down next to it. Yet while she may have been impatient enough to look unbidden into an enchanted looking glass, she was not so foolish as to disregard a magician’s direct instructions. Ride on until you find something that makes you stop, he’d said, and Britomart intended to follow that command faithfully.
It wasn’t until the horizon was starting to lighten to pale gray, and Britomart was the farthest east from home that she’d ever been, that she finally spotted something to make her rein in her horse. Ahead of her, the river curved out and back sharply in a meander so pronounced it almost made an island of the land it surrounded. In its middle stood an earthen mound, and on top of that mound was a ring of trees, and inside those trees was a small building. It was a tomb, she realized as she drew closer, made all of elaborately carved stone.
Britomart dismounted and turned the roan free to crop its fill of the sweet grasses that grew along the water’s edge before approaching the tomb. At first her steps were hesitant, since she was stiff from so many unaccustomed hours in the saddle, and wary, given Merlin’s warning. But the ground didn’t open up beneath her feet, no lightning bolt struck her down, and Merlin did not appear to chide her for her foolishness. And then, too, she found that curiosity quickened her steps, because the nearer she drew, the more beautiful the little building seemed. Britomart did not think she had ever seen such a fine example of the mason’s craft. The tomb was made of alternating bands of porphyry and pale marble, each delicately carved into vines and flowers and boughs so lifelike that they appeared to move as you looked at them.
For a moment, Britomart had the feeling that she’d seen the tomb before, but the name carved into the marble in gilt letters was an unfamiliar one: Angela. Below it in smaller lettering ran: Queen of a Martial and Mighty People. Take up her Example and her Arms. Who might such a person have been? Sometimes the roving jongleurs who visited her father’s court told tales of women warriors, but they either were all figures of fun or had lived so long ago that little in truth was known of them beyond their name and the land they came from. Britomart had never thought she’d see a monument raised in genuine tribute to such a woman.
She made to kneel in front of the tomb in respectful prayer, but as soon as her knees touched the marble plinth, there was a loud grinding sound. Britomart fell back and watched as part of the plinth moved to one side, revealing a shallow, stone-lined pit. Inside it, stacked neatly and still shining as brightly as if a squire had only just finished polishing them, were all the a
ccoutrements of a warrior: gleaming mail and solid plate, a helm and sword and shield and spear.
But not just any arms and armor, Britomart realized with a slow, creeping feeling of unease. This was the same armor she had seen her other self wear in the looking glass; the same ebony spear and painted shield she’d seen herself wield. She reached out gingerly to touch the shield just to check if it was real, but then snatched back her hand before she made contact. What if it were cursed?
“Now you show caution?”
Britomart jumped. Merlin’s voice—yet as she stood and looked around, she could see no Merlin.
“Come, child,” Merlin’s voice continued. “You hardly think I made only one looking glass? Anyway, time is wasting. You don’t want to be late for your own destiny, do you?”
“That definitely makes no sense,” Britomart mumbled.
“Of course it doesn’t,” Merlin’s voice said. “It’s magic. Anyway, the queen bequeathed these to you for a reason. I’d take them up, if I were you.”
“But who was this Queen Angela?” Britomart asked. “Why have I never heard of this place, or of such a person among my ancestors?”
Merlin made no answer. Britomart was beginning to realize why some at her father’s court rolled their eyes so heartily whenever the magician’s name was mentioned.
She looked back down at the pile. Well, she told herself, a sulk got you into this mess, and another sulk won’t get you out of it. Britomart gathered up the items. They didn’t spark at her touch or feel unusually warm or oddly cold. That was a little disappointing but perhaps for the best, she thought as she carried them down the side of the mound. She’d seen more magic in the last day than she had in the past year; she didn’t want to acquire two destinies in quick succession. There was no knowing what that could do to a person.
Britomart set down the arms and armor in the shade of a willow tree and retrieved her little pack from the back of her snoozing horse. Her tiredness had ebbed but now came back with renewed force. She ate some of the hardtack and cheese she’d brought with her before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep. By the time she woke, the sun was high in the sky and the roan was once more contentedly cropping grass. The worst of the tiredness had gone, but Britomart felt strangely restless, as if a thousand itches roiled beneath her skin. She sat up and looked balefully at the armor. Well, there was nothing for it, she thought.
