Sword of Avalon: Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Several chariots were drawn up before the Henge. As the Companions approached, the drivers whipped up the horses and sped away. What were they doing there? Whatever it was, men on foot could not catch them—Mikantor took a deep breath and slowed. Now that they had sighted the enemy, they had better save their strength to fight them.

  As they drew near, the Henge seemed to shimmer as he had seen stones shimmer in heat haze in the southern lands. But this was a typical cool summer day in the Isle. No one else seemed to notice anything unusual, but Mikantor’s senses prickled, and after a moment Micail’s memories identified that wavering in the air as the aura of power.

  “That way—” He pointed with his spear. “Galid will wait for us. First we must go to the Henge . . .” He met the uncertainty in the Companions’ eyes with a frown, and by now, they had followed him long enough not to question. Presently the others began to see the shimmer too, but as they neared, it faded away.

  The buzz along Mikantor’s nerves eased as well. As the stones came into clear focus, he saw waiting beside the heel stone a woman, wand slim, with shining, sun-bright hair. His heartbeat faltered, then began to race as he recognized Tirilan. His Companions set up a cheer.

  “Take command—” he told Pelicar. “Form them up in a crescent as we planned, facing Galid’s line.”

  “I understand, my lord,” said the tall man, “but do not take too long.”

  Mikantor dropped his spear by the stone. Then Tirilan was in his arms and he was kissing away the tears that mingled with his own. It was only when he felt her shaking that he realized she was weeping with grief, not joy.

  “What is it, love? Did he hurt you?”

  “Not me—not me—” whispered Tirilan. “It is Velantos. My mother is with him. You must come.”

  Mikantor could not imagine what chance had brought all three of them to the battlefield, but that did not matter now. His heart skipped once more as he saw Velantos lying on one of the fallen stones, Anderle at his side. The blood on his lips was a shocking red against skin the color of whey. Even when his leg had gone bad on the way to Korinthos, he had not looked so ill. It was only when Mikantor knelt beside him that he saw the handbreadth of blade and hilt of the Sword.

  “Velantos—” Anderle spoke in the tone Mikantor remembered from his training in meditation, and he understood that the priestess had been keeping the wounded man in trance. “Come up from your sleep. Wake now, my beloved. Mikantor has come. . . .”

  “Velantos . . .” The older man did not stir, and no wonder, for even in his own ears Mikantor’s voice did not sound like his own. He took Velantos’ hand, feeling the calluses rough against his skin, hoping that flesh might speak to flesh where words failed, as it had before. The smith’s hand was cold, though Mikantor could see beads of perspiration on his brow. The squeeze that responded to his own had no strength to it. But at least that faint pressure had been there.

  “Velantos—” he tried again. “It’s Woodpecker. I’m here at last. My lord, what has happened to you?”

  Velantos grimaced as he drew the first perceptible breath Mikantor had seen. “You mean, how did I become a sheath for my own sword?” The dark eyes opened. He tried to smile, but it was clear that every movement caused pain.

  Mikantor made a little helpless gesture as Velantos took another careful breath and went on. “It was the only way . . . to get it out of Galid’s hand . . .” As his eyes closed once more, Tirilan’s quick murmur filled Mikantor in on the unequal fight.

  “This is your Sword,” said Anderle, “the Sword from the Stars.”

  “I was not so clever . . . as I thought,” muttered the smith. “Galid caught me, found the Sword. Broke the spear . . .” He stopped, becoming a shade more pale.

  Mikantor looked at the angle at which the hilt protruded and felt sick. He had been in enough battles by now to have a pretty good idea of the internal arrangements of the human body. The blade had clearly gone through the smith’s lung.

  “Why have you left him like this?” He touched the hilt, saw Velantos twitch, and jerked his hand away.

  “He insisted.” Anderle spoke in an unnaturally even tone. “He said that you must draw the Sword.”

  Mikantor looked from her to Tirilan. “And what will happen if I do?”

  “He will die. . . . We think that he is still alive only because of the pressure of the blade,” Tirilan continued as Mikantor recoiled. “When it is withdrawn, he will bleed . . . more. . . .”

  “And if you leave it in?”

  “I will die . . .” gritted Velantos, “but slowly, and in greater pain . . . Take the Sword, lad. My blood . . . has washed Galid’s taint away.”

  “You cannot die.” Mikantor shook his head helplessly. “You cannot leave me.”

  “You saved me at Tiryns . . . You cannot save me now. . . . My death was only . . . delayed. . . .” Velantos paused until the ripple of pain that twisted his features passed. “What work of my craft . . . could surpass this one? It is what the gods . . . sent me here to do.”

  The hand Mikantor held had grown so cold—As he cradled it against his breast, he met Anderle’s eyes and saw in them an anguish that matched his own.

  “The god . . . said that my blood would be the price . . .” Velantos tried to smile. “I do not think it too high . . . for you. . . .”

  I do! thought Mikantor helplessly.

  “Even Diwaz . . . cannot change what the Fates have spun. . . .” Velantos’ skin was like wax, the pauses growing longer between his words. He was bleeding to death within. “Take . . . my gift. Claim . . . your destiny, and . . . grant me mine . . .” The next breath caught on a new wave of pain.

  Stay with me! Mikantor’s heart cried. But in Velantos’ gaze he read a love, and a resolve, that overmatched his own.

  Must I beg you? came the silent appeal. Let me go!

  “Before you came he told me how it must be,” Anderle said in that same even tone, as if grief had already extinguished all emotion. “Kneel by his shoulder and draw it out, smoothly, and slow.”

  And then you will heal him? thought Mikantor, but there was no hope in her eyes. His body seemed to move of itself as he obeyed her command. He had killed men, knew the feel as the sword goes in, the shock as a man realizes his death. He had given the mercy stroke to wounded comrades, and felt the life slip away under his hand. But never like this. . . .

  And even as the thoughts passed through his mind, he gripped the gold-wound hilt and began to pull, until the Sword was freed from its sheath of flesh and came sheened red with blood and shining into the day. Blood bubbling from his lips, Velantos gave a long sigh, and the last tension in his strong features eased.

  “Is he dead?”

  “He still bleeds,” answered Tirilan as Anderle bound a folded linen pad over the oozing wound. “But I do not think he will speak to us again.”

  Anderle straightened, and spoke as a priestess once more.

  “Velantos and I created the Sword, but you are its master. The time has come to use it. Destroy Galid, and then heal this land.”

  For the first time, Mikantor really looked at the weapon he held. Through Velantos’ blood he could see its silvery gleam. It felt light and eager in his hand. He got to his feet, swaying on legs that hardly seemed his own.

  “Go,” echoed Tirilan, “my spirit will ward you . . .”

  Mikantor nodded. He walked out of the circle to the plain where two armies waited for the decision of destiny, and the Sword from the Stars shone red beneath the sun of noon.

  TIRILAN SANK DOWN WITH her back against one of the stones that supported the southeastern trilithon and began the sequence of breaths that would set her spirit free. Through a gap in the outer ring she could see the battlefield. Her mother remained beside Velantos, murmuring the spells that guide the spirit to the Otherworld. To death or victory, neither of the men they loved would journey alone.

  Surface awareness faded away. Tirilan drew power from the earth and felt heat rush up
her spine. Consciousness rode with it, for she knew herself strong enough now to launch her spirit outward and still return. Swiftly she assumed the swan shape she had used before, beating upward on shining wings, the last fears that had kept her from offering her full power falling away. Velantos had given everything. She could do no less now. The green plain whirled and dipped below her, then leveled as she caught the thermal power that flowed through the Henge and began to glide, effortless as if she floated on the stream.

  To the east she saw the shining serpent that was the river and the round thatched roofs of Azan-Ylir. Below her, the precise circles of stones in the Henge pulsed with their own light. Between them the forces of despair and hope faced off against each other, preparing to do battle for the future of humans in this land.

  The battle was not, she realized from this vantage, for the earth itself. The life streams of the land flowed strongly, any areas of weakness local, and already adjusting to the challenges the changing climate would bring. It was only humanity that believed things should always stay the same. She must remember that—it was something that Mikantor would need to know.

  Galid had divided his forces into three groups, with his chariots in a line before them. Mikantor’s Companions formed the center of a crescent whose wings curved forward. The golden scales of his armor gleamed in the sunlight, but to her eyes his spirit blazed even more brightly. She realized then that the light around him had two sources—Mikantor’s own golden aura and a white radiance that must be the Sword.

  As her glide carried her across the line of marching men, she saw the glow expanding, kindling the life-lights of Mikantor’s Companions and spreading to the bands of allies that had joined them. She had seen a group soul form in this way in ritual, when trained adepts linked their spirits to work magic, but she had never imagined that so many untrained minds could be bound. But of course this was not a binding at all, but an offering made freely, as Velantos had poured his soul into the Sword.

  Was the same thing happening to the enemy? She willed herself eastward, circling, and recoiled from the miasma that rose from Galid’s men. The darkness was not universal—some sparks burned brightly even among that crew of cutthroats, just as not all of Mikantor’s warriors had blazed with equal light. But Galid’s infection of soul seemed to be contagious. At least, she thought grimly, it would be easy to tell friend from foe.

  She soared in a long glide back to Mikantor’s men. Ganath looked up as she passed, and touched Mikantor’s arm. One or two of the others who had the Sight saw and saluted. Someone called out, “A swan, a swan!” But it was the radiance that eased the grim lines of Mikantor’s face that warmed her spirit, and the connection that flared between them as she added her power to his. He lifted the Sword.

  “The Sword from the Stars!” cried Beniharen. “The Sword from the Stars and the Lady Tirilan,” Ganath echoed him, and the host behind them took up the cry.

  From the other side Tirilan felt a cold wind of opposing power. It bore a cloud of arrows. She beat upward on strong wings. In the wake of the arrows, Galid’s chariots lurched into motion, a warrior with a bucket full of javelins behind each charioteer. Mikantor’s front line locked shields against them as they charged. Javelins arced outward like a flight of serpents as the chariots swung past. Most glanced off the hardened hide of the shields, but a few found targets and men fell. Their friends lifted shields and straddled their bodies, waiting as the chariots wheeled around for another pass. Mikantor whistled, and his own archers sent a cloud of arrows after them. Two of Galid’s warriors fell screaming, and a maddened horse stampeded back into his own line.

  Before the enemy could recover, Mikantor whistled twice more. The men in his center began to jog forward, increasing their pace until their crescent had become a wedge. Their allies fell back to either side to guard their flanks, while the Companions, better armed, trained, and armored, drove forward. The enemy were closing ranks, making a bristling hedge of their spears.

  Tirilan swooped lower, tracking Mikantor’s glow. Light was all around her. She drew it in, sent it through their link, and saw him grow brighter still. A great cry rose from the running men. Shields locked, they crashed into the enemy line.

  MIKANTOR GLIMPSED THE BLUR of a spear coming toward him, struck upward through the shaft and saw the top third wheel away. The same stroke continued around to take off the head of the man who had wielded it. The Sword cut even better through flesh and bone. In the first moments of the battle, that had disturbed him, remembering Velantos. But trained reflexes carried him forward, striking left and right as he sought for Galid among his foes.

  Another warrior came at him with a bronze blade that broke as he tried to parry Mikantor’s first blow. The Sword drove onward through his corselet of hardened leather, through ribs and lung and heart and out again. He jerked it free in a splatter of red, looking for a new foe. Enemy gore had washed Velantos’ blood away some time ago.

  “The Sword!” cried a man whose leather shirt was sewn with plates of horn, trying to scramble out of the way.

  “The Sword from the Stars!” The Companions’ war cry rose above the clatter of metal and the screams of dying men. Each time he fought, Mikantor was astonished anew by the sheer noise of a battlefield.

  He was getting closer, he thought, leaping foward. This must be one of Galid’s guard, who knew what the Sword could do. His enemy had not been in the center of his line, but he must be somewhere in the battle. Mikantor had only to keep killing until Galid had no place left to hide. He felt another surge of power from Tirilan and drove the blade through the back of a fleeing enemy, lips moving in the song the Sword was singing in his soul—I am the blade that bathes in blood,

  The edge that eats the enemy,

  I slice and slash, I am the Sword

  That deals out doom and destiny.

  His shield had been hacked to bits, but the Sword itself was teaching him how to use it to defend as well as to kill. Lighter, sharper, more flexible than any bronze blade, it struck with the joyous precision of a tool perfectly suited to its task. If it had a spirit, it was that of Velantos in those moments when he had seen the smith perfectly centered and focused on the work at hand.

  Two spearmen who had not heard of the Sword rushed toward him and Mikantor broke the first shaft, feinted to avoid the second and dove under it, bringing the blade around in a long slash that sliced through the man’s throat.

  “Galid!” he shouted, straightening. “Come face me! Come face the blade you used to spit a disarmed man!”

  They were trampling someone’s wheat field. The dry stalks scratched Mikantor’s ankles. As he turned, the Sword flared crimson in the light of the sinking sun. Men gave way before him. There were not so many now. Here and there knots of men still struggled, but a bloody harvest of the dead lay on the field. Of those still standing, most seemed to be his own.

  They had beaten the foe back almost to the riverbank. At the edge, he saw a concentration of enemies. In his mind the Sword was whispering— Dividing lives, deciding death,

  I am the force to face the foe,

  I am the Sword, but you, the soul

  Defining where that force shall go.

  To Galid—he replied. Find him and avenge your maker. Find him and free this land!

  His Companions fell in behind him as he strode forward, and seeing their grim faces, the heart went out of what remained of Galid’s guard, and they melted away to either side.

  Galid was standing there, a bronze blade in his hand. A lucky slice had left part of his corselet hanging, but he seemed otherwise unhurt. Mikantor himself could feel a few scratches, and the stress of an afternoon of furious activity ached in his shoulders and arms, but he too was essentially unharmed.

  Good . . . no one will be able to say I killed a wounded man. Mikantor wondered why he should care about giving justice to a man who had denied it to so many others. Galid watched him approach with a sour smile. But though he knew better than anyone what the Star
Sword could do, he did not seem to be afraid.

  “Galid, I summon you to single combat,” Mikantor said evenly. “In the name of the people of this land—”

  “So, it is the bumboy at last,” his enemy interrupted him. “I pronged your master, but now you have the bigger weapon, and I suppose you intend to skewer me. Do you think that will make you happy? You can kill and kill, and it will not bring back those you’ve lost. I know.” Galid gestured at the allied chieftains who had brought their men to circle the killing ground. “Do you think your victory will make them love you? They cheer you now, but the first time you try to make them share their wealth they will turn on you. Men think with their cocks and their bellies. I know. . . .”

  Mikantor met that bleak gaze without flinching. He had certainly seen enough when he was a slave to realize—that for some men at least—that was true. But he had also known Velantos, and his Companions, and Anderle and Tirilan.

  “You know . . .” he echoed. “And what do you know of hope, or love, or sacrifice?”

  Galid shook his head with something very like pity in his gaze. “I know that they are illusions,” he said softly, “that vanish when confronted by Necessity. . . . To escape it, your own woman offered to be my whore.”

  Mikantor would not have blamed Tirilan, for he had his own memories, but their spirits were still linked, and she was sharing images of that afternoon.

  “Galid, she offered herself to ease your pain—” he replied with the same implacable compassion Tirilan had shown.

  “Lies—all lies—” Galid said hoarsely. His pupils had expanded as if he were looking into some immensity of darkness. “There is only life . . . and death. And life is what I can make you feel!” He settled into a fighter’s crouch. “Come, little bumboy, come feel my blade!”