The Eagle and the Sword (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 2)

by A. A. Attanasio

  "No, she would not," Melania agrees, peering at him with a sweet expression. "I will come with you, Arthor. I have the urn. Perhaps we can recapture the lamia."

  He blows his anxiety into the fire. "Far easier to kill it outright."

  "Then how will we find the second monster?" An expression of soft alarm creeps into her large eyes. "I cannot live with myself knowing I have released these horrors into the world. If we capture one, it may lead us to the other."

  Arthor tilts an appraising look at her. "You ask a great deal of yourself."

  She reaches out and clasps his big-knuckled hand. "You could well have walked away from the Saxon camp and left me where you found me. It is you, Arthor, who ask much of yourself. Will you help me?"

  He places his other hand atop hers, and assures her, "The Virgin Mother will help us."

  Chapter 17: Magic against Evil

  At dawn, Morgeu finds her husband outside their tent coming back from his ablutions in the woods, the sun like a spoonful of honey in the trees behind him. "I will go now and face Merlin," she tells him, and he waves away the young servants who approach to braid his wet hair.

  "Why must you go?" he asks, peering sadly into her small black eyes, the eyes of crows. "Ignore him. Make yourself forget him."

  An ugly moue twists her scarlet lips. "You know the terrors born out of the forgotten. I cannot ignore the murderer of my father." She places both hands on his broad, bare chest, and her sharp fingernails bite him gently. "You are a good husband, Lot. Only you, my soul, have given me peace in this life."

  "Yet not enough to keep you with me." He moans, and puts his weathered hands over hers. "Stay with me, Morgeu. Prolong our happy season together."

  Morgeu bites her upper lip to keep her tears from starting. She has not lied to him. This fierce man of regal countenance seamed with age has been the tender joy of her life and the fullness of all promise. Together, they have climbed pleasure's heights, plumbed each other's sorrows. In his arms, she has forgotten her pain and her vengeful mission and been surprised time and again when that devilish hurt remembered her. She puts her mouth on his mouth and feels the remaining warmth of the fire that has gone by. It warms the hope that she will return.

  "I will kill him for you," Lot says, when she peels away. "I will bring you his head."

  "No. That is not your way, my king." She smiles a tilted, ironic smile. "I am called to this by my fate. When it is done, if I live, I will return to you."

  He bows his noble head, and his brindled hair shines like the current in a river. She cossets him, and when he looks up, his pale eyes shine with sorrow. "You must tell the boys. You must not go until you tell our boys."

  Gawain and Gareth have already left camp and gone down to the river to spear fish. They stand on their reflections in the shallows among ghostly boughs, ragged curtains of moss, and luminous egrets. Fish light the black waters with glints and shimmers like stellar atmospheres, and at first the boys ignore their mother's call.

  Morgeu wades toward them until the pulse of the river knocks at her knees and her voice easily penetrates the green gloom. "I am called away."

  The youngest, Gareth, splashes closer and plunges his spear into the mud so that he can grasp for his mother. "Who calls you away, Mother?"

  "A fateful call, child."

  "Magic." Gawain knows. He pushes his spear into the mud and slogs to Morgeu's side. "You are called away to work magic. Isn't that so, Mother?"

  She nods and puts her green-robed arms about her boys. "You know I work magic for our people."

  "Like Grandmother," Gareth says, "before the priests of the nailed god took her magic away."

  "Yes." She smiles at him and brushes the orange bangs from his eyes. "Like Grandmother, of whom the people still speak. She worked strong magic to aid the crops and baffle our enemies."

  "Are you called to fight the storm raiders?" Gawain asks, confronting what seems the worst.

  "No. But what I must do is just as dangerous. And I want you to know, because you are both old enough now to know, that the legend of our land is yet unfinished. We must all work for the salvation of Cymru and her people. We must give everything we have."

  Gareth presses his face to Morgeu's shoulder. "Are you going to die, Mother?"

  She kisses his brow, feeling as though her heart has been thrown into the depth of this pool, and the waves close around the dream that was her life. "We all die, Gareth. How we live is what matters. You know that."

  "I believe he means to ask if you are coming back to us," Gawain says, and swallows.

  She meets the dread in his eyes with steady calm. "I don't know," she answers, and keeps all her grief coiled tightly between her ribs. "That is why I have come to say good-bye."

  "Mother, let us go with you," Gareth pleads. "We are old enough now for battle. We will protect you."

  Morgeu takes his chin and speaks to the backs of his eyes. "This is my own battle, Gareth. Soon enough, you will have your battles to fight. And then, you must be as brave as I must be now. Help me to do what I must by promising that you will be brave and strong in your love of Cymru no matter what happens to me."

  Then she looks to her eldest, and says, "Remember, Gawain, all I have taught you means nothing if you forget your limits. Freedom is devotion. Keep to your father and your brother. Keep to your people. Do not be swayed by the lore and promise of a foreign god. Love the land that made you and love its gods." She steps back from them, and her slender pale hands retreat from touching them to cover her breasts. "In my heart I carry the memory of you both. In your hearts, carry me. Look for me there."

  In a steep meadow above the river, the dwarf Brokk waits for Morgeu. As he paces through the rye and bushes of purple mallow and orange daisies overflowing in late, rough-headed blooms, he drags the lamia after him. It will have to eat soon, but before he bothers with that he wants to be done with Merlin. He wants to learn how to free the sword Lightning from the magnetic aerolite; then, he will feed the lamia and use its heightened powers of disguise to flee with the sacred weapon.

  "Why do you tarry?" he complains, as Morgeu ascends through marigolds and eyebright from the river gorge. "The morning is already old, and now the wizard will be among the people."

  "Then we shall meet him among the people," Morgeu answers curtly, and strides past. More than the dwarf does, she wants to be done with this lethal confrontation. Magic turns like smoke in her, folding into itself and pushing out, growing stronger with her fear that she will never see her children again.

  The empty hands of sunlight that the trees let down to touch the earth offer to lift her out of her body. That is her most powerful magic. She hoards that strength. She compacts her trance power so that she feels as though her body were a garment of bright particles ready to blow apart into radiant weightlessness.

  In the secret sexual place of her core, she compacts her magic. It will not be enough to face down Merlin, but it is all she has of her vehemence with which to fight the demon—and for her children's sake alone, it will be enough.

  Brokk pulls the lamia over him into the shape of Chief Kyner and follows Morgeu the Fey up the sun-stained slopes to the large fields around the nucleus of Camelot. A crowd has gathered, and Merlin is visible among them, working his magic.

  To Morgeu, he does not appear as she remembers him. He seems smaller, more contained. What has become of his sinuous posture, his tiger's slouch, his disjointed gestures? He possesses a wholly human demeanor now, and this frightens her all the more.

  Hannes does not see Morgeu or Brokk approaching. He exults among the people who have gathered to celebrate his position as wizard of Camelot. Successfully he has defended the citadel from the grasping ambition of Severus Syrax, and he has withstood the scrutiny of King Lot. Even Chief Kyner, who rumor asserts entered the vicinity the day before, has kept his distance. Hannes remains convinced that, as improbable a counterfeit as he is, he inspires awe.

  When Lord Urien's party arrives, Hann
es leads the jugglers and musicians across the pastures to greet him. In the dense summer sunlight, the carpenter summons starlings to spin circles in the air, creating a gentle breeze with their wheelings. Urien, his long white hair and silver mustache streaked back from his bony face in the bird-whirling dazzle of wind, laughs and shouts praises to Merlin.

  "You tricky shapeshifter!" the Celtic lord calls from his cart filled with singing and laughing children. "I see you've learned to make yourself look more like a man. But your magic displays you for what you are, you old demon." He leaps down, and though he is aged and etched with the scars of many battles, he lands with lithe ease and takes Hannes in a mighty hug. "Show us a good time, wizard!"

  Hannes does not disappoint. He brings on whirlwinds of butterflies and laces the air with floral perfumes. To the accompaniment of the musicians, squirrels perform acrobatics among the squealing children, and gusts of flower petals roll like clouds across the sky, to drizzle over the jubilant throngs.

  In the midst of his proud display, Hannes notices a surly, ferocious dwarf in the crowd wearing a fiery blue-and-red tunic bound with heavy leather straps. He has a square head and devil-slit eyes that peer angrily at the carpenter.

  A delighted scream from the audience turns Hannes's head in time to see birds tangling in people's hair and squirrels pouncing on the tables, scattering offerings of nuts, berries, and cheese. With a shout, he sets the animals performing again, and when he looks for the evil dwarf, he sees instead Chief Kyner—and beside him, the tall, big-shouldered figure of Morgeu the Fey.

  Quickly, Hannes concludes his amusement and modestly waves away the applause and cheers of the multitude. He tries to lose himself in the crowd and avoid Merlin's fabled foe, yet it seems that whichever way he goes, the backslapping people turn him about so that he is led ever closer to the still and staring sorceress in her green robes and wild, scarlet tresses.

  "Merlin," Morgeu says with soft happiness as he thrusts up close to her, and she observes that he lacks entirely the elongated eye sockets, those ghastly and atavistic bone-rims of reptile skull that terrify her, as much as the sinister silver eyes that peer from their pits. Instead, this Merlin has jug ears and startled blue eyes in a round face creased and ledged more like a monkey's than a demon-wizard's. "Merlin. Merlin. Merlin."

  The enchantress's voice seems to sift down from the islands of cumulus, and Hannes finds himself floating somewhere like a froth of seeds on the silver wind, drifting very small away from the people, across fields of saffron and goldenrod, drifting uphill toward a slope of skinny trees and blue clouds.

  A hard slap at the back of his head pitches him face forward to the ground and sends his hat toppling as if in a stiff wind. With a shrill cry, he rolls to his back, staff raised to block another blow.

  "Who are you?" Morgeu demands, her moon-pale face severe with scorn. "Where is Merlin?"

  "I—I am Merlin—" he stammers, looking about for the jubilant crowd and seeing that he is deep in the woods, far from everyone. He sits up with a jolt at the sight of the evil dwarf standing behind the sorceress, squat as a boulder with a jackal's muscular, scorched face. Then, realizing he cannot sustain the ruse, adds forlornly, "I mean to say, I am Merlin's apprentice."

  "Where is the wizard?" Brokk grumbles.

  "I don't know," the carpenter admits, and feels within the pocket of his robe for the summoning glass. Is this the moment to summon help from the elves? he asks himself fearfully. "I am Hannes, a master builder, whom Merlin has appointed to watch over Camelot in his absence. Truthfully, I know not where he went."

  The anguish that has been building in Morgeu, all the dread in anticipation of confronting the demon-wizard, suddenly lashes from the enchantress with bitter fury. Invisible hands wrench the staff from Hannes's grip and send it spinning upward into the branches. His frightened face blears as a scream of ripping fabric tears the robe from his back and flops him naked on the forest floor.

  "When did Merlin leave?" Morgeu wants to know.

  "Days ago," Hannes answers swiftly. "Before you came."

  Morgeu gazes with revulsion at his withered nakedness, her tar-drop eyes cold and past mockery "I want to know where Merlin has gone." She speaks in a deeper, slower voice that widens to include the sullen, buzzing morning, as if the bees on the gentians and the dew itself in the disheveled grass speak to him, pure as music.

  Spellbound, if reluctantly, Hannes recites all that has transpired between himself and Merlin. When he is done, Morgeu stamps the ground angrily with her foot. "This one knows next to nothing," she says in disgust.

  "Then let the lamia feast!" Brokk calls out, and snaps open his steel-rimmed hip pouch. A stink of soured flesh poisons the morning. Vapors spool in the grass serpentwise, coiling upward into brightness, and a deathly visage takes shape: its sooty eyes open, cobra jaws unhinge, and talons flex in great scorpion arcs.

  Hannes's eyes bulge. He squirms against the speaking silence that the enchantress has placed upon him. "I know nothing—nothing—" he pleads, his voice sodden from where he floats in the underwaters of trance.

  The lamia, weak with hunger, slinks closer to its prey and begins to glisten as it draws body heat to itself.

  Paralyzed, Hannes watches as the lamia rises like lunar steam with the skull of the moon for a head, its cancerous face drawing closer. The carpenter screams soundlessly, all his bones ringing. In the spongy echoes, far, far back in his memory, Merlin speaks again, "You are a wizard now. The power—all the power—is in your hands. Do not look anywhere else. There is nowhere else to look."

  Hannes whimpers and pulls from within himself all his magical strength and strikes outwardly with it so forcefully that his shoulders wrench from their sockets and pop back in again. The pain winces him blind. But when sight returns, the lamia is gone.

  Morgeu steps back cautiously from the panting old man, whose white flesh has gone glossy violet as a liver.

  Brokk, looking fatally stricken, falls to his knees and picks desperately among the leaves and flowers for the smashed lamia. He comes up with his fingers webbed in viscous ectoplasm.

  "Look what he did!" the dwarf groans. He drips the wounded lamia into his hip pouch and jumps angrily to his feet. "You nearly killed it!"

  Morgeu puts a cautionary hand on Brokk's thick shoulder. "Leave him be," she warns. "Merlin has opened in his body the gates of power. Leave him be."

  "Keep your distance from us, Hannes," Brokk speaks in a dense voice of threat. "I like you not!"

  Morgeu turns away and drifts downhill through the spindly trees, pondering what she has learned. The old carpenter has just informed her that Merlin will be returning with the king of Britain at his side. That tells her that the wizard has gone to escort her half brother to Camelot. She must find her way into trance. She must listen deeper for the chance to attack with tenderness all that she hates.

  Brokk glares at Hannes and follows angrily behind the enchantress. He will have to unlock the sword by his own ingenuity. And that will take time. And time requires disguise. And disguise needs the lamia. And the lamia needs blood.

  Hannes watches the wicked dwarf and Morgeu the Fey dwindle among the overlapping branches and sparkling sunlight, and he swerves to his feet and puts his quavering hands to his aching shoulders. "I did it," he mutters and hugs himself. "I drove them off! I used my magic against evil!"

  He hops a small dance, until his thudding heart drives out the last of his chilled fear, then retrieves his robe. It has burst along the seam and will require very little trouble to repair. Nimbly, he climbs the tree to retrieve his staff, drops it to the ground near his hat, and swings down after it. Robe knotted into place, hat worn at a jaunty angle, and stave in hand, he strides proudly through the radiant declivities of sunlight among the trees.

  Chapter 18: Procession of Clouds

  Hay dust smokes with morning light as Brokk thrashes in the dry grass at the top of the valley above Cold Kitchen. He must feed the lamia. Beating a path thr
ough golden grass taller than himself, the dwarf ascends to a vantage from which to seek prey. Atop a humpbacked boulder, he watches a young girl bringing her three sheep and two lambs to the clover patches under some myrtle shrubs that the Roman legionnaires planted generations ago. He gnashes his teeth with disappointment, for her size will not provide as much strength as the weakened lamia needs. But then, she will be easier for the monster to subdue.

  Brokk lopes along the ridge of the valley until he finds himself directly above the myrtle grove and the young woman in her hempen gown. She is not alone. Her sheep sense the intruder before she does—a burly, cleft-jawed man in a soldier's tunic with the black-and-crimson shoulder panels of Severus Syrax's infantry. He has come to take his pleasure and makes no effort at seduction. With one hand, he grabs her shepherd's crook and, with the other, rends her gown.

  She stumbles backward and collapses, and the soldier leers over her at the exact moment that Brokk lurches from the brake of crackling myrtles. For a baffled interval, the infantryman stands back, gawking at the homuncular dwarf who holds a fistful of smoke toward him as if in blessing.

  Irate at this ugly intrusion, the soldier draws his sword, yet even as the blade rings from its scabbard, Brokk is upon him. The dwarf's grip cracks the ulna and radius bones of the aggressive sword arm, and when the large man goes down on his knees, the dwarf smears the lamia's vaporous remnants onto his grimacing face.

  A harrowing scream bounds across the valley, chasing the frantic shepherd girl and her sheep down the path to the hamlet. When the village men clamber into the myrtle grove alerted by her terrified report, they find the soldier's corpse hung head down, viscera dangling from him like obscene fruits.

  By then, Brokk has returned to Mons Caliburnus in the shadowy gorge of the River Amnis. Disguised as Chief Kyner, he gruffly sends away the handful of curious soldiers and pilgrims who have gathered to view the legendary sword, and he paces around the stone, scowling attentively, seeing no clue to its structure, until in frustration he kicks it and sits down in pain. Crawling through the feathery weeds, he seeks a lever and finds none. With his dagger, he cuts away loaves of minty earth around the stone, seeking some buried apparatus.