Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01]

by The Fire Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  It was warm at the bottom of the hill. Eleanor could see that the meager light was fading fast and that she 'had a choice of camping in the willows or using the last light to try to circle the mound. She knew its base was only a few acres, but standing under the bulk of it, it loomed like Everest. The path to the left looked clearer, but she was now suspicious of ease, so she walked north, to the right, and Wrolf trotted along beside her. She counted her steps and pushed aside low-growing bushes.

  Quite suddenly, an opening yawned in the face of the mound. She stopped and stared at it. Wrolf sniffed and wagged his tail. Then he bounded into the tunnel a few feet and barked at her.

  She paused, staring into the darkness at the faintly silvered form of the wolf. He was her guide, and she trusted his instincts and his choices. But she hesitated a long moment. Trust or not, she had no desire to go traipsing into the bowels of any ancient mounds.

  Finally, Eleanor took a deep breath. "You know best, old fellow.” Then she followed him.

  The tunnel bore straight into the mound for a short distance, then branched off. The floor beneath her boots was smooth, as were the walls around her. Eleanor found the regularity of the walls uncomfortable. She wondered what could have made the tunnel and found images of great, blind worms boring into the earth floating in her mind. She banished them as firmly as she could and followed the wolf.

  A soft, rumbling noise made her pause. She looked over her shoulder and saw the entrance vanish behind her. It was not, she found, entirely unexpected, but she didn’t like it much. "Why didn’t I stay with Sam and Sarah?” she whispered as she went after Wrolf. The passage branched, turning right into the center of the mound. The feeling of tons of earth around her was oppressive, and she moved on slowly. The rowan stave seemed -brighter in her hand.

  The tunnel changed color subtly, the walls beginning to give off a golden glow, making Wrolf a silver-and-black shadow. Ahead, Eleanor could see a larger golden area and eventually they came to a chamber. It was circular, perhaps forty feet around, with a smooth floor. In the middle of the room, there was a pool of water, a spring, and beside it stood a silvery willow tree, the long branches trailing into the bubbling water.

  Eleanor stopped at the entrance to the chamber. She felt a great reluctance to enter—not a fear but a sense of intrusion. She studied the room. On one side of the fountaining spring was a great chair, carved with moons and blossoms. On the other was a short bench. The water played up into the branches and she heard a faint sound, like someone being tickled.

  "May I enter, oh, well and willow tree?”

  There was a sound of vast laughter. "Your welcome should be obvious, child,” said a female voice, which came from the walls or the air.

  "Thank you, whoever you are.” Eleanor stepped into the room timidly . Wrolf walked in with his lord-of-the-manor air and flopped down beside the pool. Eleanor, more cautious, dropped a curtsy in the direction of the spring and another toward the chair.

  "You are very polite, aren’t you?”

  "I try to be.”

  A woman stepped from behind the chair. She was very beautiful to look upon, yet terrible, too. Her skin was so white, the sun had never touched it, her lips a deep red, and her hair as black as Eleanor’s. But her eyes were all white, and they seemed to speak of dreadful suffering. Eleanor bowed her head to release herself from that chilling gaze and curtsied again, feeling the point of the sword bang her leg.

  Laughter. "Don’t be frightened, girl. I won’t harm you. I’ve had enough trouble getting you here. You are a very tough nut to crack, you know. Now sit, and we will talk. You can call me... Sally.”

  The snort of laughter this name produced escaped before Eleanor could suppress it. She clapped a hand over her mouth, then said, "I beg your pardon.”

  "You haven’t forgotten how to laugh. That is good. And why not Sally? It’s a good enough name for a simple country goddess.”

  Eleanor found the courage to lift her head and look at the woman. In the black hair and pale skin, she caught a glimpse of her own features. The half-mad girl Rowena had mistaken her for this woman, and Eleanor wondered if she would be chastised for impersonating a goddess. All she said was, "If you are a simple country goddess, then I am Maria of Rumania.”

  "That fellow Graves has a great deal to answer for.

  I think he positively enjoyed frightening people. I am not nearly as bad as he painted me. Sit down, there’s a good girl. You have a great many silly notions in that pretty noodle of yours.”

  "Yes, ma’am.”

  "I know all your mind, your history, everything. No, you haven’t nipped back to your century and your world; yes, I could speak directly to your mind, but I have a great fondness for the human voice. It is such a wonderful instrument when it is used well. Besides, the whole purpose was the entertainment. It’s all meaningless without that.”

  "Entertainment?”

  "I see that surprised you.” The woman climbed into the great chair and leaned back. "I myself do not know if in the beginning there was but one of us or if we were many to start with. We are many now. Once, I think, we were much as you are, as the race of man. There is such a great deal I have forgotten.

  "But we changed. Time ceased for us. Time is the measure of all things, but we did riot create it, though some of our company have presumed to pretend to have made it or ruled it. Saturn!” Sally made a derisive, snorting noise through her nose. "And some of your people have given the dominion of time to us. But, time is. I have no doubt it existed before any creatures came to measure it.

  "Time is more than a way to count the passing moments. It is a measure of change, of growth. And when it stops for any organism, there is no change. No change begets boredom. So, for millenia we have watched you with your brief lives and great violences. But you change. Thus, you are our entertainment. It is rare we even need to put our fingers in the pot to keep it interesting.” "Excuse me, but was I dragged back to thirteenth-century Albion for amusement?” Eleanor lost her awe of the goddess before her in a very human rush of rage.

  The woman sat forward in the chair and opened her eyes, which had remained closed while she mused about the old gods. The blank orbs stared at Eleanor. "Oh, no, my dear, no.” Sally shuddered. "Do you know what you did at the circle last night?”

  "I killed a mucking, great, ugly snake.”

  "It wasn’t really a snake, but you did destroy it. Now, why didn’t you just run away? It was slow. Why did you stand and fight?”

  Eleanor had no ready answer, so she considered for a while before she spoke. "I... was offended by it. When I set aside the assumption that Bridget meant me to kill the beast, which isn’t clear, because I’m not sure I was ever meant to wield that sword, and ignore the underlying premise that the beast was evil and therefore killing it was the right thing to do, I think I have to say it was an aesthetic decision.” Despite the complexity of her sentence, Eleanor felt very clear in her mind. "Evil seems to be a matter of viewpoint, at least it does a lot of the time. On another level, I killed it because the circle had offered me shelter and hospitality, and it was going to be violated. I did it for a lot of reasons.”

  "An aesthetic decision! Can you regard life as art, then?”

  "Yes and no. I’m not Japanese. It has to do with value, which is so subjective that you can’t even talk about it without getting confused. Uh, take this tree and the spring. It’s a very beautiful tree, but in and of itself it has no great value to me. However, as a symbol of all willow trees, and by extension, all living things, I would regard it as valuable. The well, on the other hand, is water. Water has an immediate value to me, and I don’t need to get symbolic about it. I can value it as good, clear water. People will often fight to defend a symbol of something they value as hard as they will defend the thing itself. And everything is both, I guess.”

  "Do you really believe that evil is all simple and relative?”

  Eleanor thought again. "No. I believe true evil exists, just as t
rue good does. But most of us never have to deal with the final absolute of either. Instead, we cope with small... shadows of a reality too big to encompass. But, I believe in life, probably because my mother struggled so hard to bring me forth. Now it’s almost like she invested me with all the life she had in her. I don’t like to think of her suffering my loss, because I know she would miss me. Am I dead, back there in my world?”

  "Would it be cruel if you were?”

  "Cruel? No, but very hard. I suppose I am feeling guilty because I’ve never valued my mother as much as she deserved. I shut her out, and now I want to say I’m sorry. I’m very good at being selfish, almost as good as my father.” Eleanor, embarrassed at these revelations, yet unable to dodge or hedge under the blind stare, gave a crooked grin. "When does the bench turn into a couch, Dr. Freud?”

  The goddess laughed. "My sister Bride has always had a talent for people. But she seems to have none for direction. Or perhaps she is more fortunate in her confidence. Laughter is easier than tears for her, and I am the other way around. I am something of a bitter pill to take.”

  "It must be all the salicylic acid,” Eleanor answered without thinking. Then she reminded herself that she was talking to a powerful and capricious deity, not a nice old lady.

  "Do you think so? Is the symbol different than the object? Or is it the same? If I changed the nature of the willow tree, would I alter in turn? No, I don’t believe I want to do any tinkering. You have a good share of bravery, child. No one has made fun of me to my face in eons. It’s quite refreshing. You can’t imagine how tedious it gets to have no one pay attention to you at all.”

  "What do you mean?”

  "You call me 'goddess’ and offer me reverence. I am, indeed, what you call me. But I am also a reflection within you. We, my brothers and sisters and I, have speculated endlessly as to whether we created you, as we claim, or you created us, or something outside made both of us. If the last is true, then, for what purpose?

  "Long ago,” Sally continued, "I withdrew much from the company of my family and so have had a great deal of time for thought. I was always a bit solitary in my nature, but as my relations became more meddling and what you would call decadent, I became more reclusive. All that clamor they made. Perhaps that, too, comes from the willow and the water. I am not haughty as much as austere; I am not cruel as much as stern. I see in your mind the joylessness you perceive. Laughing willows are only in tales for babes.

  "But I saw my kind demand more and more adulation from your people, until they were like fiends. There was no giving, and this troubled me. And then we stopped changing and growing. After a time, the worshipers grew disenchanted, and we began to fade. So, I think we are two voices intended to sing in harmony. I believe our disharmony has brought the Darkness.”

  "Will you tell me about that?” Eleanor had decided she was never going to get her question answered, but the more information she had, the better. Besides, did it really matter why she was chosen to be a heroine?

  "Yes. As much as I know. First, there are many worlds of Earth. They exist only a breath away from each other. Do you remember that day in Ireland, you and your father lunching in a circle, and he began to recite an old tale? You fainted and were unconscious for some hours.”

  "I remember, yes.” She did but very vaguely.

  "You nearly slipped into the world where that story happened. Only your deep attachment to your father prevented it. I do not think any agency could have dragged you away while he lived.”

  "All right.” A question rose in her mind that she did not like at all. Had "they” killed her father just to get her? Eleanor tried to dismiss it as paranoia or vanity, but the nagging worry persisted.

  A deep resentment arose in her again, for being pushed about and ordered, around, for getting cryptic answers or none at all to questions, when she could frame the queries at all. She had an impulse to just say "Go jump in the lake” to the powers that were using her. The words gathered in her throat and died there.

  Something else stirred inside her, beyond the resentment and the anger. It was a feeling she did not have a name for, though it was rather a pleasant sense. She looked inwardly at it, and finally Eleanor could recognize what it was. She was being treated as if she were an able person. Haven’t I always been? she wondered. And then she knew that she had always been used, fettered by her father into a fleshy extension of himself, excluded by her mother into an anxious, spiky child. She felt, in that moment, no anger at them, just a kind of vague disappointment that neither of them had been big enough to leave her some room for herself.

  But, now, here, she had a sense of space and freedom. Bridget and Sally were no less demanding in their needs, but she felt as if she had a choice. No, not really, she reflected. I took the sword. Why did I do that? Of all the dumb moves, that’s got to be some prize. I’ve always wanted to do something. What? Special. Important. I think my brains are made of noodles.

  Sally began to speak again, and Eleanor was aware that she had been observed and monitored in her thoughts, and that she had passed some undefined test. "Each of those worlds is a little different, but if you laid them all in a line, the two ends would be very contrasting. Some of the worlds are already utterly dark, some gray, and silver, and some white.

  "The Darkness is a force. It seems to be greater than life or death. Its origin is not known, but what it does is. It stops growth. Nothing dies and nothing is born. It is like a moment of the most intense agony, prolonged forever. And it creeps from world to world.”

  "Swell,” said Eleanor. "It makes Mordor sound like a picnic. I’m supposed to stop that, here, in Albion? I am almost afraid to ask, but why me? Why not... my father? He was big and strong and very brave.”

  "Because he did not believe. His work was intellectual. It never touched his being. In order to invest a human with some of the powers we possess, the person must be able to give us...reality, first. And, too, a female is a better vessel.”

  "I still don’t understand.”

  "Did you say to yourself, 'I am having a hallucination,’ when my sister spoke to you?”

  "Well, no.”

  "You just accepted it, didn’t you?”

  "Yes.”

  "You know us, in your bones.”

  "Oh. But, why don’t you goddesses chase the Darkness away?”

  "By ourselves, we are not strong enough. It must be two voices singing in harmony.”

  "I guess it’s too late to say I wish someone had asked me first. Great flaming owl turds! They say no man can escape his destiny. Which leaves free will out in the cold. But, dammit, I never wanted to be Wonder Woman.”

  "You don’t have to do it.”

  "Don’t I? What, go back and give Bridget her sword and cloak and spend the rest of my life feeling like a rat? I can’t. My mother always said I was as stubborn as a pig, and she was right. I’m damned mad about being dragged into an adventure with too much knowledge on the one hand and not enough on the other. I wouldn’t have come if I had been asked. You know how Daddy taught me to swim.”

  The chamber rang with Sally’s deep laughter. "I do,” she said finally. "But you lost your fear of water in that rough baptism, didn’t you?”

  "Maybe. I hate it when people do things for my own good.”

  "You are tired and hungry and dirty. It is hard to be hopeful in such a state. I think you will find the well a good temperature for bathing. Then you will eat and

  rest.”

  "Me? Wash in a sacred well?”

  "Now, you told me a bit ago it was only water. Do you see how much you believe and why you were chosen?”

  Eleanor gave no answer. Instead, she stood up and began removing her cloak. Sacred well or not, she was not about to pass up a bath.

  She soaked luxuriantly in the steaming water. It was hot enough to satisfy a Japanese bather. Eleanor let her mind go blank. The aches and tensions of her body faded slowly, and she could feel herself turning into a giant prune. The tips of her
fingers were already wrinkled, but she felt no inclination to end her bliss.

  Eleanor saw the dead-white hand out of the corner of her eye a second before it shoved her head ruthlessly into the water, just enough time to take a sharp breath and hold it. The water, where it touched her face, was cold. She counted seconds in her mind and used swimmers’ tricks for breath control, swallowing and expelling small amounts of air every twenty seconds or so, until her lungs were empty. She could vaguely feel Sally’s hand twist into her long black hair, but she was powerless to get away from the iron grip.

  She knew that in a few seconds, her inhale reflex would draw water into her lungs, but it didn’t seem to matter. Eleanor wasn’t even frightened, just a little sad at her betrayal. She liked Sally, and could not think of any offense she had given to the goddess. But after all, what did it matter? Death by water or death by fire, what possible difference could it make? She couldn’t even conjure up the energy to be angry with the lady of willows for leading her down the garden path.

  The now icy water filled her mouth and nose. It flowed down into her chest and abdomen, and the sense of great cold seemed to reach her fingers and toes, so warm a moment before. She hung frozen in the water for what might have been an instant or an eternity, void of any thought or emotion, until a pair of strong hands hauled her gasping to the edge of the well.

  She clung to the slippery stones, feeling their hardness under her hands and against her chest. Eleanor gulped air and felt the ringing in her ears subside. Then Sally caught her under the arms and dragged her up out of the pool, cradling her body and crooning softly. Eleanor pillowed her head against Sally’s breast and shoulder and gave a little mewling sob.