Eleanor looked sadly at the muddy wreck of her garment on the stone floor. "Adventures sure do play hell with a woman’s wardrobe,” she commented.
"Poor Lady Vanity,” he answered, patting her playfully on the bottom.
"Well, I can’t shape-change into a bear or a badger. Thank goodness for these things we got at Nunnally, even if they are a bit damp and air-conditioned. Or thank Iseult, I should say. Go ahead. Laugh at me. I don’t like traipsing around in my altogether.”
"Why not? ’Tis splendid. Last night, in the rain, you would have put fair Aphrodite to shame.”
Eleanor blushed and giggled. Then she shook out one of the tired robes that old Roderick had grudgingly offered and pulled it over her head. It was a faded green and must have been a garment for a younger Iseult, for it came barely to Eleanor’s ankles. She tied her belt around it and tucked the willow cup into her bosom, then began braiding her long black hair. Doyle dressed himself and gathered up the remaining garments.
"You could have stopped those little dirt men if you had wanted, you know.”
Eleanor stopped in mid-plait and stared at him whitefaced. "How?”
"By pushing them back to their, essence, which is earth.”
She continued her braiding more slowly. "I never thought of 'ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ as a magic formula. Besides, I was... too scared. I couldn’t breathe.” "You are afraid of yourself.”
"What!”
"You are very brave, Eleanor, but you fear your strength, your power. No one is stopping you but you.”
"Let me see if I have this straight. I’m a bitch and a shrew and a weakling. Have I forgotten anything?” "Trust a woman to hear only what suits her. No, you are no weakling.”
Balked of argument and aware that she really did not want another brangle with the man, Eleanor changed the subject. "How could I have forced those ... gnomes, I guess, back into earth?”
"You had the answer, as you just said: 'Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’”
"But those are just words.”
"No. All words have magic in them. You... empower them.”
"With what?”
"Yourself.”
Eleanor shivered all over. "That is much too heavy a matter to face on an empty stomach.”
"There’s meat.”
"No, thank you. I am considering becoming a strict vegetarian. I don’t know why, but I get a little queasy at the thought of meat. In fact, I feel like I have the flu.”
He made no reply, which Eleanor took as faint rebuff. Illness, she knew, made her father uneasy, and she assumed Doyle felt the same. "Shall we go?”
They headed north as Albion sulked under a dismal May. The occasional farmstead provided a relief from their own company as well as a few hot meals, but those were few and far between. Eleanor began to dread Doyle’s talkativeness as she had once disliked his silence. There was something behind his sudden eagerness to instruct her in the avenues of magic that she mistrusted.
One evening, just at dusk, they came upon a sturdy wall she recognized as that bulwark Hadrian had built to hold back the fearsome Piets. The remains of a long-abandoned guardpost offered them shelter, and some coarse meal begged from a farmer provided dinner. Eleanor had found a small iron pot in an empty building and carried it along, despite its awkwardness and her uneasiness that it might be lead and might poison them. She cooked the meal into porridge and wolfed down the
gluey mess while Doyle charred a plucked grouse over the flames of their small fire.
Dusk, as they had journeyed north and the days lengthened, lasted longer and longer. Eleanor rose and explored the remains of the wall fort, amazed at the furious industry of the Romans. She climbed to the flat parapet and looked first south, then north. Some white blobs that might have been sheep moved on a hillside about a mile away, but otherwise the land seemed empty. Finally she climbed down and returned to her husband.
Doyle brooded over the fire, more bear than man in the shadows. Wrolf sprawled asleep on one side of the flames, twitching in some lupine dream. She crouched down and stared into the bright flower of light.
"What were you thinking of, up there on the wall?” "Oh, nothing much. Just how the Romans tried to keep back their Darkness with this wall, and another one farther north. They could not conquer the tribes up there. It must have been a terrible blow to their pride, because they had conquered the world, and yet they could not defeat a bunch of what they thought of as howling savages. And finally they got tired and went home. Thousands of men have marched these walls, and nothing remains but a bunch of stone and some graffiti. Just seems a bit futile.”
"Nothing lasts forever. But you mustn’t let that stop you, ever.”
"How splendidly morose.” Eleanor tried to ignore the prickle of apprehension that jangled along her nerves.
"No, not morose. The effort, the attempt, is what is important, not the outcome.”
"Why do I feel like I’ve suddenly gone deaf or lost my reason? No, don’t tell me. I really don’t want to know.”
"Yes, you do. But I won’t plague you with it if you’ll play the word game with me.”
"What a choice,” she muttered. For the past few weeks, Doyle had been egging her to a strange play. At first, it had seemed mildly amusing, to think of all the things a given word might mean, and it served to pass the time. Until one evening when she had been so intent on snake that she materialized a very annoyed and spitting cobra over the fire. It had fallen into the flames while Eleanor and Doyle scrambled away and Wrolf barked madly from a few feet away. Writhing out, it had reared its hood and spat, missing Eleanor’s face by a breath. In a panic, she brought the fire out to consume it, and a few minutes later stared down at the charred vertebrae. Even as the venom had passed before her, she had not believed it was real. The bones would not be denied. She picked up the flat skull and held it at arm’s length in the flickering firelight. A milky drop of fluid oozed along one elegant fang. Eleanor wrapped the skull in a tattered piece of her steadily deteriorating clothing and carried it in her pouch to remind her not to play any more games. And until now, Doyle had not asked her to engage in it again.
"Doyle, tell me, where did that snake come from? Did I transport it from its swampy home in India?” "No, though you could have. But you let down the doorways in your mind and made it. You created it. it was the essence of 'snake’ to you.”
"How do you know that?”
"When we were at the tor, I saw your mind. It’s very tidy, all the little bits of knowledge folded up in pretty bundles and locked away. And you are very good at matching up odd pieces—what you call motifs. And there you stop. You know, and refuse understanding. Until you are tricked into letting go.”
"Why?”
"Because you are afraid of your own essence. And you should not be. It’s quite good.” He smiled at her complacently.
"If I’m so good, why a cobra?”
"Who troubles that beast?”
"No one in their right mind.”
"That is part of you.”
"Oh. 'Don’t tread on me.’ I see, I guess.”
"Does it frighten you to know how strong you are?” "No, because I don’t know—and I don’t want to!” "What do you mean when you think of strength?” Eleanor was silent a long time, mesmerized by the dancing flames. "A kind of careless arrogance,” she answered finally. "Which isn’t strength at all, is it? Only a noisy weakness. My father was the strongest man I ever knew. He made himself the sun, and we all revolved around him. I’ve seen him arm-wrestle men half his age and win. He made everyone else seem small.” "Tell me, did it make him happy?”
"I don’t believe so. The year before he got sick was a kind of nightmare. He was finishing a book—or rather, I was finishing it. There was a young man, Dennis, whom I rather liked, but he couldn’t stand up to Daniel. No one ever did, expept maybe my mother. And several pretty graduate students. He’d favor one for a month, then discard her for another. One day he was a big laughing man an
d the next he was a shriveled husk. Whatever it was in him ate him up. But for all his loud laughter, I don’t think he was happy.”
"Did you ever rebuke him?”
Eleanor laughed. "Not on your life. Before I came to Albion, I barely said boo to a goose. He would have squashed me like a bug.”
"So you had the strength of forebearance.”
"Is that what it was? It seems more like cowardice to me.”
"A coward is a man who always runs away. You fight when you must, which is real strength. And you do not let sentiment weaken you, which is rare in a woman. What is the strongest thing you can think of?” "Sequoia gigantus”
"Who is he?”
"Not he. It’s a tree, a great, mucking, four-thousand-year-old tree.”
"And how is it strong?”
"I don’t know. It—they—endure. Snow, drought, wind—anything but fire. They just stand there. They don’t do anything. They just are. One year my father did a guest professorship in California, and we went to Muir Woods. It’s so quiet there. Like the beginning of the world.” Eleanor did not add her youthful fantasy of elves and ents, for her visit to the redwoods had come close upon her discovery of Tolkien. "I did not want to leave.”
"Power?”
"Yes. Like the energy under the tor but older and more silent.”
"That is earth, Eleanor. Earth of which my mother is but an echo. Take it.”
His voice was a whisper above the crackle of the fire.
Eleanor hugged her knees to her chin and remembered the many voices of earth she had heard—the singing stones at Avebury, the groaning ground beneath the Black Beast’s feet, the murmur of Nunnally’s foundation, and the hum of Muir Woods. There were other sounds as well. The faint, slithering noise of Or-phiana’s house, the song of Sal’s mound, the scream of the tunnels of the gnomes. She felt herself turn to dirt, to dust, to stone. It welled up and over her, turning her to molten rock, and she forgot for an eternity any name or presence. There was no air, no water, no fire.
She fell, past stars, past wars and loves, into a silence that promised nothing and gave all. It swallowed her into darkness. There was a dance in that blackness. She did not see it, nor hear the music. She felt it in bone and sinew. And then the void retreated, and she found herself lying pillowed in Doyle’s lap.
"I must have fallen asleep,” she croaked. Her voice sounded like a rusty hinge. "What a strange dream I had.”
Doyle stroked her hair and forehead. Then he lifted her shoulders and held the willow cup to her lips. Eleanor gulped down the bitter contents. She was hungry and thirsty and weak as a baby. Doyle handed her a piece of cooked bird, and she tore the flesh off the fragile bones with her teeth.
Halfway through the meat, she started to shiver uncontrollably. Eleanor dropped the food and clung to him miserably. Doyle wound her in cloaks and blankets, then held her against his body. "Am I sick?” she gasped.
"No, just weary, dear one. You have journeyed far and no doubt disturbed my mother at her virtuous rest. There, there. Go ahead and cry.”
Eleanor struggled with tears, because she could think of no reason why she should be crying, except she was tired and she ached all over, even the soles of her feet, and she was cold and the ground was hard and rocky. Suddenly, she said, "I’m pregnant.”
"Yes, I know.” She stared at him, for he sounded a little sad. Eleanor touched his face with a trembling hand. Then her eyelids felt like lead, and she slipped into a healing slumber usually reserved for the very young or the very old.
Dawn tinted the gray stones of the wall a sickly yellow. Eleanor stared at them a long time, then became aware of Doyle on one side of her and the wolf on the other. A faint bleat of sheep broke the morning’s stillness.
Doyle sat up and stretched beside her. "How are you?” "I think I have a hangover without the drunk before.”
"Well, at least you didn’t lose your tongue. Hungry?” "Ravenous. Oh, lord! I’m pregnant.”
"You never called me that before.”
"Don’t give yourself airs.”
"Ah, my sweet-mouthed vixen. So gentle. So tender.” But he held out another piece of cooked bird as he spoke, so Eleanor decided to forgive his teasing.
As she ate, she surveyed the campsite. The depth of the ash and the cleaned bones of several grouse bore witness that she had been there more than a night. "How long?”
"Four nights.”
"I slept for four days!”
"No, not slept; traveled, perhaps.”
"I’ve done nothing else since I got here! A Cook’s Tour of the Cosmos on five dollars a day! Lousy accommodations. Next time I want first class.” Eleanor rubbed her forehead. "I have a terrible headache.”
He handed her the willow cup, and she drank from it. "Poor Eleanor.”
"No, just confused. Doyle, how long have you known I was pregnant?”
"A while.”
"Why didn’t you tell me?”
"Because you did not wish to know.”
"Oh.” She pouted a little. "I hate it when you are right. Four days! It must be nearly the middle of June.” "Only the sixth.”
"Yes, but there’s still the small problem of finding the Heir. You know, I never imagined the goddess was subject to a schedule.”
"Time is the ultimate master.”
Eleanor caught the tinge of sadness in his voice again and wondered why. Then Wrolf leapt up barking, and a rather slovenly shepherd drove his flock through the gate. The phalanx of ovine imbecility flowed around them, baaing and butting, and the moment was gone.
XX
"My heart may be in the highlands,” Eleanor said, "but I wish my feet weren’t.” She felt as if they had been climbing for days, and despite hardened muscles, it was still rough going. It was not merely the yet slight burden of the child in her womb rearranging her bodily chemicals and giving her strange appetites, nor Doyle’s odd insistence on making her practice her growing command of fire and water, but the vague presence in her mind of what she had learned while she slept in the shadow of Hadrian’s Wall. She remembered little of it, but vague bits would bobble into her thoughts at odd times and, distracted, she would stumble clumsily, so her forearms were a mosaic of tiny scratches. "You don’t think I could talk Bridget into letting it go for a year, until the baby is born, do you?”
"I have never heard of anyone talking her into anything. My mother’s charges of stubborn and capricious are not without reason. And don’t tell me again the pregnant woman doesn’t go on adventures. I know nothing would please you more than a nice cottage ”
"Yes, with roses growing round the door.”
"Do not interrupt. You would be bored in a week.” "Doyle, what’s that?” A sound echoed over the hills, a hollow noise like the striking of a great gong.
"A horn, I think. A hunter’s horn.”
"I wonder who it is.”
They had journeyed from Hadrian’s Wall, northward past the smaller wall of Antonius Pius at the Clyde River, and in that time had seen little more than sheep and stags so fearless of humans that they stared at the travelers in surprise. There had been a castle or two crouched on rises of land, but they had both felt a reluctance to enter them. Despite an almost continual mild state of disagreement, Doyle and Eleanor preferred their own fractious company to that of strangers. A case, Eleanor had told him teasingly, of the Devil I know.
The horn was an uneasy sound, faintly discordant and challenging. Doyle stopped and stood listening. "I don’t know, but I think we are their quarry. Yes, there’s something on our scent.”
Under the horn came a clamor of other sounds, some canine barks, beast snarls, and a kind of murky voice that might be human.
"They aren’t very subtle about it, are they?”
"No. They prefer to course their prey.”
"How do you know?”
"They... smell of a running hunt.”
Eleanor did not question this, for while three months in the wild had taught her much woodcraft,
Doyle had a lifetime of experience. So she peered through the trees and tried to see the hunters. Something stirred in the recesses of her mind then, and the trees became transparent to her eyes. She "saw” the pack.
"There are about twenty of them, Doyle. About a dozen men in beast helms—bears and pigs and a bunch of doggy things that aren’t, somehow. The men are very, very hairy.”
"A pack of Reavers.”
"Friends of yours?”
"Hardly. They are shape-changers that have taken on some of the nature of the beasts they are. With each change, they become more beastlike, until they lose their humanness completely. So, they hunt humans. We can’t outrun them, and this is not a good place to fight so many. Eleanor, you must shape-change... into something swift.”
"Doyle, I can’t. We’ve argued that over and over.” "Yes, you can. You must.”
Eleanor swallowed and stared at him. He had shown her how and she understood the technique, but something in her was afraid of the transformation. Some part of her clung fiercely to "Eleanor,” to form and shape, to identity. "Why can’t I...just set the woods afire?”
"Because it will not stop them. We must outrun them, and these bodies are not enough.”
A trickle of sweat ran down her back, and her throat went dry. A beast was too real. She might never be Eleanor again. Something swift, he said. She thought of deer and horses, swift but vulnerable, and the fierce, feral quickness of wolves and leopards. None struck a chord she could respond to.
Her finger touched the little belt pouch that contained the burned skull of a cobra. No serpent was swift compared to that which ran on four legs, but she had a curious desire to fight. Perhaps to redeem herself from her miserable showing with the puny gnomes.
Eleanor shed her tunic, laid her hands along her sides, and remembered the "essence” of snake, which had allowed her to create a cobra. She "felt” it, and struggled, until a kind of acceptance touched her. Her body seemed to melt, and she could feel it reshape. The bough of a pine tree brushed her face—no, her hood.
Lidlessly staring at a world through eyes that saw movement but no color, she reared above the trees. A man gaped at her. She flicked out a long tongue and "heard” the ugly noise of the man-beast pack and leaned her head toward it.
Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01] Page 21
