The anger that flowed into her a second later surprised her a little, for it was a hot rage. Unlike the attacks of the little savages, during which she had felt vaguely sorry to have to kill or injure anyone, she wanted to hurt these people. She took a deep breath to try to dampen that feeling.
Eleanor released a gout of flame from her mouth, which turned the bag over her head into ash without any intermediary combustion, though her brows were slightly singed. Then she turned on her somewhat dumbfounded attackers with the fire still flowing from her mouth. They fell back, two nervous-looking men with cudgels, and her breath touched the fabric cover of the wain behind them. As she saw it burst into fire, she wondered what she was doing to her lungs. As they scurried away, she turned to look at the rest of the camp and saw that they were barely aware that anything was amiss. Arthur was nowhere to be seen.
A scream from a woman nearby drew attention to the burning cart and Eleanor’s conscious and unfettered state. After a hurried gabble, several men started to rush her, and her rage, starting to cool, flared up again. Bridget’s fire leapt from her hands and spumed from her mouth in a way any dragon would have been proud of. The head of the rowan staff was a ball of golden flames. In seconds, there was screaming chaos as women snatched up babies and men ran pell-mell.
Eleanor fought to control herself and her magic, because she knew she could easily, between the dry grass and the fire, cremate Arthur in some wagon without even knowing it. The flames on her arms died slowly, and it cost her some effort.
Someone in the small mob had kept his head, for the panic subsided. Eleanor collected her thoughts, feeling utterly spent, as her friendly used-wagon dealer stepped forward. Now he looked less genial, however, with a smear of ash on his face and a singed tunic hem.
"You leave now, witch. We got the king and we will keep him until it is time.” He sounded less certain than his words.
The fragile controls snapped like a stick. Eleanor saw the dark fear lurking in her mind that Arthur would perish as Doyle had, and it kindled her rage again. She struggled feebly inside herself, trying to suppress this convenient opportunity for relieving a host of pent-up demons in favor of rational, civilized behavior. It hardly mattered that her adversaries were neither. But she was too tired and too frustrated to manage the task of reasonability. Or too Irish, she told herself.
Still, it would not hurt to try for a little sweet reason. "The king is not for the likes of you. He has a greater destiny. Return him now, and I will stay my just anger at your miserable presumption.” I sound just like Mother, she thought. It heartened her that she could take on any aspect of the formidable female, even if it was only to be quelling.
The man shifted uneasily, casting a glance over his own shoulder at the nervous people, then over hers, telling her that someone was sneaking up on her back. She gave a scant thought to Sable, who had faded out of sight as they approached the encampment, and was rewarded by the sound of the panther’s cough. It was a noise to make any Kenyan shake, but the would-be assassin did not know his peril. Aware that her back was as protected as it could be, she returned her entire attention to the fellow before her.
"A greater destiny? Fine words, but there ’tisn’t any better end than the one we are going to give that young man.”
It was a philosophical argument she had no energy for. A movement beyond the milling crowd, toward the pyre in the stone circle, told her where Arthur was. "Give him back to me, or you will never light another fire for the rest of eternity.”
"Wha—”
"I serve Bridget, and what she provides she may also withhold.” Eleanor had not the faintest idea if that was true, but it sounded good.
"You? Hah! She would never pick such a scrawny, dark handmaiden—and maiden you are not.” He pointed to Eleanor’s belly, which while not large yet, was obviously enceinte under the close lines of her clothing.
"Return him to me or you are dog meat, old man.”
But he was no longer paying attention to her. He stared past her shoulder, first with an expression of anticipatory glee, followed by one of horror. The scream of the man and the scream of the panther mingled in the sultry air, but she did not turn.
Eleanor saw a sudden flare of fire in the circle, and she bent her energy to snuffing it out. This was more difficult, she discovered, than making it. The lifted brand guttered and smoked, and she began to move toward it. There were perhaps a hundred yards between her and the edge of the stone circle, and that seemed about ninety too many for her magic to be effective. She was hardly aware that the man attempted to block her way. She just shoved a flaming hand into his chest and left him alight, a human torch.
The crowd parted before her, scrambling over one another in their haste to avoid the figure of living fire that charged at them. She reached the pyre and halted.
Arthur was trussed up like a fowl and lay faceup on the stack of wood. He appeared to be asleep, though whether he was drugged, hit, or already dead, she could not tell. She paused, letting the Bridget fire die along her body. Flickers of flame around the circle informed her that they had only in part succeeded, though it was a sickly fire, anemic somehow, which she knew was almost certainly due to her own efforts. The air seemed terribly poor, and she gasped, feeling dizzy. The fire guttered and smoked, and Eleanor realized in a dazed fashion that she had somehow displaced a portion of the local oxygen supply. It was effective, but it was also awkward, for she could hardly breathe.
I despise stopgap magic, she thought as she released the subtle spell she had cast on the circle and felt sweet air flow into her laboring lungs. The fire, of course, flared into new life, and she heard a weak chant from some onlooker. She leaned upon her staff, defeated.
Eleanor shook herself all over, grasped her staff tightly, and shifted her weight from foot to foot, seeking a solution. She could almost certainly climb the pyre with impunity, but she doubted she could lift Arthur’s weight. Some shape-change could enable her to have the needed strength, but it had to be something impervious to fire, and she was too tired to construct something. Without Doyle’s assuring presence, she felt doubtful of that particular capacity.
The mob, seeing her hesitate, surged into the circle, and Eleanor went down in a sea of fists and kicks. She coiled fetally to protect the baby and felt tears sliding down her face into the dry dirt under one cheek. A booted foot thudded into the small of her back, and she knew that Death was there, waiting for her. It was so tempting, except that there was no surety that Doyle was on the other side, waiting for her. Or even that there was another side.
Eleanor felt a spatter of spit hit one hand, and with Celtic perversity, she was suddenly damned if she was going to roll over and die for a bunch of half-baked, degenerate pagans. She bunched her body smaller, pulling the starry cloak around her, ignoring the continued blows. Instead, she pressed an ear against the ground, listening for the voice of water. She touched her fingertips to her tears, drew her anger out, and called the storm.
The sonic clap of thunder rumbled over the low hills, and the wind rose from gust to gale in moments, sending sparks flying into the clothing of the mob. They paused in their efforts to kick her to death to slap out flames, and sheet lightning brightened the suddenly darkening day with an actinic glare that penetrated past her sheltering hands and into her closed eyes. A hiss like a nest of serpents whispered through the air, a rush of rain through the low trees and into the circle where it poured down with deluvian energy.
Eleanor crawled to her knees, then used her staff to stand up. The ground turned to mud beneath her boots as the mob milled in confusion. The wind rolled wagons off their wheels as the rain soaked everything. The pyre was a drenched pile of wood with a still-unconscious Arthur atop it. She drew a shaking breath and banished thoughts of pneumonia.
The sturdy ponies picketed throughout the enclosure decided that the lightning was too much for even their phlegmatic dispositions and began to rear and yank at their rope halters, whinnying eerily. One li
ne pulled free, and there was a surge of still-connected horseflesh away from a burst of lightning through a group of people too dazed or too stupid to understand their peril. As they went down under sharp, shaggy hooves, Eleanor was filled with remorse. If only she could have just put out the fire.
The mob was now simply a collection of frightened individuals fleeing the little valley as quickly as possible. The storm rushed southward where it would dampen some farmer’s summer crop, hopefully not fatally. Eleanor watched it move, an almost sentient presence, and wondered if it would drench London before it dissipated.
It hit her then that she had burned a man to death, caused a stampede fatal to who knew how many, and had let Sable tear up another man. It sickened her, for these were hardly howling savages. She watched the valley empty as every man fended for himself and felt her body rebel both at her own acts and the beating she had taken. She emptied her stomach onto the sodden ground, then leaned against the staff while dry heaves racked her chest. A feeble, shaking hand tried to soothe the pain in her kidneys where a kick had landed, but the throbbing continued.
Arthur moaned softly. Eleanor steadied herself, clambered up the dripping wood of the pyre, and cut his bonds. He had a lump on his left temple, and when he opened his blue eyes, the left one was bigger in the pupil than the other. Quelling visions of curing a subdural hematoma by laying on of the hands and her taste for medical dramas, which had educated her into such fears, she helped him down off the wood.
Sable padded up to the circle, lifting each paw disdainfully out of the mire everywhere. "A fine guide you are, sending us into this den of yahoos,” she told the panther angrily. Half-conscious, Arthur leaned against her, and he groaned, so she cut short her recrimination, which was as unsatisfactory as most exchanges with felines are, and half-dragged him to the closest deserted wagon.
The previous inhabitants seemed to have made no special fetish of cleanliness, for it smelled of sweat and unwashed blankets, but Eleanor could see no blatant filth, so she settled Arthur down. He closed his eyes almost instantly and was so still she could not tell if it was sleep or coma. Exhausted, she sank down beside him, kneeling on the floor and clutching his hand, until the chill of her garments forced her to move.
Eleanor struggled up and pulled off the violet tunic and the shabby shift under it. As usual, Bridget’s cloak was not really wet, and she pulled it about her. Next she rummaged through the contents of a trunk at the foot of the bed, finding little in it but a shift that was dry but no more. Then she forced Arthur to sit up, pulled off his tunic, then removed his boots and hose. She tucked a rough blanket around his naked form and prayed his youth and generally robust constitution would keep him from any permanent harm. The bump on his head worried her.
Food seemed to be the next requirement, and she climbed out of the wagon to see how much damage stampeding horses and frightened people had done. Several wagons were overturned or their coverings ripped away by the wind and their contents tossed everywhere. It appeared quite random, for some were standing between two that were tumbled. One line of ponies was gone, but the other two remained, crunching wet grass with big white teeth. There were several abandoned cooking fires, and a large metal pot hung over one. It seemed to have a stew in it that was not too full of leaves or dust. She skimmed off the top layer, coaxed the fire to life by letting Bridget’s fire leap from her hands for several minutes and tried not to remember that that same gesture had incinerated a man only hours before. When it was blazing cheerfully, she left it to find out what had happened to the Harp and the fire sword, as well as the rest of their gear. She thought she had dropped her pack on the ground, but she could not clearly remember where.
Sable moved shadowlike beside her, pausing to sniff at a bundle here and there, until Eleanor found her things shoved under a wagon bed. She bent forward slowly, groaned a little at the pain, and took it up, pressing the damp cloak everything was tied in against her chest. It was comfortingly familiar. When she turned, the blackened skeleton of a man lay on the ground, and she edged away from it.
She returned the pack to the wagon where Arthur lay, and held his pulse a long time. Then she took her willow cup, filled it with water, and pressed it to his lips. She dampened a strip of cloth and pressed it gently against the lump on his forehead, silently cursing her lack of medical knowledge. He seemed to slip into a more natural sleep, and she left him to continue her search.
"Why did you bring us here, Sable?”
The panther regarded her calmly as she paused by the stew pot to give it a stir and a taste. It was a bit greasy but not unpleasant, and she found a bowl and spoon and ate eagerly. Two bowls did a great deal to restore her composure, and she began an orderly examination of the remaining wagons. In the fifth, she found the Harp and sword, plus an embroidered tunic just about the right size for Arthur. It was very fancy, the wrists, hem, and throat exquisitely worked, the white wool as soft as a baby’s breath. She tucked this obvious festal garment over one arm and carried the Harp and blade back to their wagon.
Arthur seemed restless, so Eleanor gave him more willow water. Then her tiredness and the food overtook her, and she spread out atop his blanket, pillowed her head on his shoulder, and slipped almost instantly into sleep.
It was dark when she woke up and pulled herself out of the wagon. Eleanor sniffed the air and listened. A cough that was very human sounded somewhere in the darkness. She stood very still and "sensed” around her, until she knew that several men crouched to one side of the stone circle.
Eleanor could hardly , blame them for trying to recover their lost chattels, but she doubted somehow that this was their only intent. Again she wondered why the cat had led them here, and something answered, To celebrate Lammas correctly. What did that mean? That the wagon people were doing it wrong. How? Then she remembered Avebury.
With a swirl of hem and starry cloak, Eleanor grasped her staff and walked purposefully toward the circle. This proved difficult, because her sleep had allowed several muscles to stiffen, and there was debris in the darkness. Only the glow of her aura casting shadows before her kept her from disaster.
She shed the shift, shivering slightly, and stepped inside the circle as the moon edged its white face above the low hills. Walking widdershins inside the stones, she circled three times, listening for their voices. They were fainter than those at Avebury, but she finally paused before a rough-hewn slab almost twice her height. Then she drew several deep breaths, aware that a dozen yards away, an unnumbered group of very frightened, superstitious, and potentially murderous men crouched in indecision. She was pretty certain that the consensus among them was that they should have killed her and that they were puzzled at their failure. She could have slain them where they hid, but she remembered the charred skeleton and could not. The way she chose was not as easy, but it was, she believed, better.
Turning to the pyre, she sent a bolt of Bridget’s fire racing along the staff. The wood gave a whump and ignited, sending a flame a good ten feet up. A half-dozen terrified faces reflected in the ruddy light. She turned back to the closest stone, hearing its song rise with the fire. It strained upward, as if its rocky spirit yearned for the distant stars. It was a poignant and unbearably lonely song.
She stood as still as the stars themselves, the rising moon silvering the unruly tangle of her dark hair and the fire staining her skin a sort of gold. Eleanor, listening intently, did not notice when the fire began to appear along her limbs, did not realize her face seemed a clear, gold flame. To the anxious onlookers, she was a figure of fire as tall as the stone beside her.
Eleanor lifted a voice rough with unshed tears to answer the chant. At the first phrase, the stone moved. Unlike the Avebury stones, it was not going to be content with being capered around. The grayish rock lumbered forward, and Eleanor heard very faintly the sound of at least one man bolting away in the darkness. She barely cared, swept away in the strange pleasure of the circle’s song. It was a dance as old as time, a song mu
ch older, and the other stones began to move, too.
The pyre became a pillar of fire, blazing up where no wood remained as the moon sent her benign rays upon them. Eleanor knew nothing, remembered nothing, felt nothing but stone, until many hours later, as the sky lightened, they ceased their dance and the song faded. Dazed and exhausted, she stared around. Yes, the circle was definitely different. Reconfigured.
She stumbled back toward the wagon, knees trembling. Sable sprang down from the back, and she gave the panther a pat on the head. "I guess she can’t resist having me tinker with any leaking faucets in the neighborhood, huh?” His rough tongue brushed her hand in answer.
Eleanor climbed into the wagon. Arthur opened his eyes. "Where were you?”
"Out dancing,” she replied, and fell asleep.
XXIX
Six days later, they were still in the little valley, for Arthur had a truly magnificent concussion, and Eleanor found herself quite worn out. She had released the shaggy ponies and done a little more scavenging among the wagons, finding decent clothing for both of them, but for the most part she had done little but eat, sleep, and cook. The reason magic had never really caught on, she decided, was it took too much out of you. Merlin probably allowed himself to get trapped by Nimue because he wanted a rest.
She was returning to the camp with a plump grouse, her mind pleasantly filled with nothing but sunlight and a sense of well-being. For the moment, she felt no urgency. Her body was bruised from the beating she had taken, but it was healing, as her spirit was healing from Doyle’s death. She still experienced moments of black despair and terrible guilt for simply being alive, but these were rarer, and she felt she might almost dare to be happy. So she hummed and gathered the dew from the grass on her gown’s hem.
Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 01] Page 30
