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

by A. A. Attanasio

  His fabulous falcon hat and mantle blue as a lost piece of sky identify him as the barbarian's chief god. At his feet, they spot a swarming troop of blue horses mounted by frantic men with streaming red hair. The radiant impact of the god's spear twists away the faces of Melania and Arthor.

  When they look again, the blue horses and their riders are erased in smoke. The Furor pulls his spear out of the steaming ground and stalks off through fiery vapors, a giant lumbering through the ruins of sunset.

  Thunder widens across the fields, and Master Sphenks startles awake with a burst of barking.

  "Prayer has not saved us!" Melania despairs, and skids along the glassy bough, eager to reach the ground, far out of sight of the murderous god.

  Arthor follows. "If the barbarian god is on the black cliffs, perhaps that is where we will find the exit to the upper world."

  Melania looks up at him with a horrified expression. "I'm not going back into that hell," she asserts, and slides to the groin of the tree, her gown blossoming with caught air. "If the north god is there, the Thunderers must be there as well—and Cissa. I think they are hunting us."

  "Don't be silly." Arthor slips after her down a curved length of bough, swings from a lower branch, and drops to the ground. "We are nothing to them."

  He offers his hand to help her down. She ignores him and plops into the grass, her impact blowing pollen into the wind. She rises and shakes her coiled hair from her eyes. "Cissa used me to anchor the Furor's lover in the tribe. I was important to them. They will come after me."

  "Then we should move," he says, and walks toward where the horses graze.

  "But where can we go?"

  "I don't know." The shadow of the dog glides ahead through the field. "We will ride. We will search for a way out."

  "You saw the north god, too," Melania says, running after him and catching him by the elbow. The sixth sense that Cissa opened in her with his snaky magic brims in her again. Did she alone see the mad god from the treetop? A depthful fear arrives inside her chest—a fear that threatens to return her to the mute trance of the viper-priest's nightmare. She squeezes Arthor's arm forcefully. "You saw him."

  He steps back from the fixed and desperate wideness of her stare. He has never seen madness before. He thought he had seen it on the battlefield in the wild stares of men facing death, but he has not. "Yes."

  "I am glad." Her frightened face looks relieved and dolorous in the tattoo light from the branches. "I feared that the magic Cissa worked on me had touched me, with the Furor's madness." Her eyes search his for understanding. "He told me that the gods alone know how lovely the unspeakable must be. And when the god's lover spoke in me, when the goddess spoke—the pain—" The peril of tears breaks her stare, and she looks away. "The pain was bigger than I could hold."

  Arthor ventures to put a hand to her cheek. "You are free of that now, Melania. Look around you. The Furor has gone off. He is not looking for us."

  She lifts a look of anguish. "Prayer did not work, Arthor. You said if we prayed, God would show us a way out."

  "Give it time."

  "Time?" She steps back a pace. "Why does the Christian God need time? You saw the Furor. He is here! He walks among us. I do not think that our prayers go to a god who hears or cares."

  A prong of sadness lifts his eyebrows. "Have you no faith at all?"

  "I have faith in what I see." She motions to the anthracitic cliffs. "Who were those people the Furor destroyed?"

  "Faerie-folk, I think." Arthor rummages for fireside memories. "Maybe elves. Kyner spoke of elves."

  "Their god did not hear their prayers, either," she says unhappily—and sadness heightens her beauty, as though all that is desirable about her hides a secret, a truth whose terrible cost denies all hope. "We are alone down here, Arthor—and there is no God to help us."

  The thought that the heaven of mercy and love is tenantless, that a woman with an angel's loveliness could believe this, frightens him. "Stop this." Arthor waves her away in disgust and whistles for the dog. "You are a Christian woman. Jesus died for you. How can you abandon him?"

  "He has abandoned us."

  "I say no." He takes the reins of the palfrey and swings himself up into the saddle. "We are alive. You are free of Cissa and his evil gods." He leans down, and his golden eyes slim as if with threat. "The Thunderers are evil. And their gods are evil. They hurt you. We both saw the Furor kill the elves, the people of this secret land. That god is evil, and so he walks this world that God has given to the Devil. I tell you, woman, our prayers have been heard in heaven. And now we will find our way out of here."

  Arthor's bold certainty comforts Melania, and she nods softly, like a child, and goes for her horse.

  Arthor blows a silent sigh, not at all sure that prayer can pay the deficit that evicted them from the natural world. He has nothing else to offer her. So, he rides to the gray mare, takes its reins, and walks the horses slowly through the chaparral grass and shrubs, wondering where to go.

  Far above him, in the yew tree's skeletal silence, Merlin cannot bear the paralysis that keeps them apart. He allows himself to dissolve toward sleep, and as his body slumbers, he glides with his dreambody into the hollow hills. Like a small flame, he shivers in the dark. Quickly, he finds his way over the cinder tracts, following the Furor's massive footprints in the ash.

  He flutters above the impact site of the Furor's spear. The ruptured rocks reflect his spirit light in a crazy mosaic of charred glass. All that remains of the dead elves and their horses has pooled in the rubble to patches of shriveled sludge, a gummy tar in the seams of cracked rock plates.

  Circling through the slaggy grotto, he finds several wounded elves cast off by the blast, bleeding to mist. He can do nothing for them. They are already merely waxen shapes, soft limbs and harrowed faces melted atop the rocks.

  He flits over the crazed stone floor of broken cobbles and spoil-banks of ash, searching for survivors. He is only a spark, and the spurts of flame that leap from the grouts of broken pavement threaten him. He spirals back upward to his sleeping body, never noticing the limbs sticking out of a scoria dune, his own floppy-brimmed conical hat perched at its crest.

  Hannes pushes free of the suffocating soot. His round face with its jug ears and pug nose smutted with carbon exhales a lungful of chalky smoke. Dust falls from his blinking eyes that wink wide and white as a statue's in his black face. Aching in every joint, he rises, streaming fumes of powdery dross. Magic alone spared his life, though now he wishes it had not.

  Anger pulses in him. The elf-prince, Bright Night, is gone, fetched away in the searing blast that evaporated the others. Hannes coughs smoke and swats dusty clouds from his robes. A shuddering sickness competes with his rage at the senseless deaths of the others, and he must stand still and chant a calming spell to ease his stomach and tight diaphragm.

  Calmed to a quiet fury, Hannes picks up his hat and staggers through the flame-flickering nightworld, a smoking mess. He gradually gathers the pieces of his strength out of the remote reaches of shock and fits them back into his stunned body.

  All is lost, he moans to himself. The elves dead—Excalibur lost. Hannes, you fool. You murderous fool, with your pawky dreams of wizardry—look what you have done! Why are you yet alive?

  Determined to correct that wrong, to pay for his terrible blunders with his worn and foolish life, he follows the red glim of the Furor's footfalls. Head slung forward like an ocelot, he hurries along, reading out of the darkness the fateful light of his own necessary doom.

  If the Furor listened, the god would hear the small man's desperation. But the All-Seeing Father does not pay any heed to his back, which is protected by the Thunderers. Instead, he swings his attention ahead of him, searching out more elves, other war parties intent on thwarting him from reclaiming his sword.

  Upon the jade chasm that leads down into faerieland, he spies Arthor and Melania riding among water meadows. He does not know who they are except that they are
out of place, humans in the hollow hills where only elves and faeries belong. They must be destroyed yet are not worth the effort of a spear throw. He may need that strength for greater dangers ahead.

  With a thought, he commands Fen to feed his lamia with their lives. Cissa has no desire to distract his god with the annoying detail that the woman below once helped the Furor to meet his lover in human form. He signs for Fen to go.

  Morgeu the Fey watches helplessly from behind an obelisk of lava rock as Fen lopes down the shattered steps of the cliff trail to the chaparral. When the Furor threw his spear, she sidled deeper into darkness, hoping to be ignored. If she moves now, they will see her, and she dreads the attention of the furious god. She must let Fen go. He will slay her brother, and what tantric designs she has for taking revenge on Merlin will die with the youth. Still, she consoles herself, the demon Lailoken will suffer to lose the pawn he wanted for king—and there yet remains hope that her own son Gawain shall wear the crown.

  The Furor moves on, and the Thunderers drift after him like figments. Morgeu tarries behind, daring to separate herself from the murderous pack, at risk of losing herself in the netherworld. She will have to trust in Fen to lead her out of the hollow hills, and she fades into the squalid fumes and edges toward the cleft that opens to the fragrant chaparral.

  She fears that the Furor or Cissa will see her if she actually enters fairieland. On a barren weal of sulfur rock, she crouches just close enough to sip the cool air and wait. When Fen has killed the pretender, he will come back this way, and she will entice him to lead her out of this hell.

  Fen sprints among grass canes, eager to be away from the Thunderers and their cruel god. The lamia spurs him on, its mind, white as fog, carries one thought—to eat. Shedding distance like a serpent's skin, Fen streams through the green reeds and bright haloes of water lilies. The riders have not yet seen him, and he sweeps toward them, low to the soft ground, ready to spring.

  The starry skies above thread an eerie feeling through him that competes with the lamia's hunger. With his fist, he presses the thunderbolt scar on his chest, feeling his slamming heart. He is still a man. Yet the vapor-strewn heavens that glitter as if starred with ice make him feel as though he has found the afterlife. The lamia's turbulent strength in him is the power of a ghoul. The future falls away, as hopeless as though he were already dead.

  These doubts weaken his glide through the balmy grass, and when he pounces, the small dog senses him and has time to bark frantically. The palfrey skitters, and Arthor throws himself flat against its neck. Melania's scream skins the still air a moment before the lamia strikes. Its claws scythe the saddle where the boy sat as he flops into the loam. He rolls to his back, and the lode-stone knife and the Bulgar saber cut the space above him.

  The grin of skeletal jaws lifts away like smoke, and Fen hops back, amazed at the boy's agility.

  Arthor bounces to his feet, saber twirling, lodestone knife steady. His movements are precise as he advances, offering no chink of vulnerability, no hesitation. And Fen finds himself wondering in astonishment at how one so young can display such deft killing instinct. The youth's amber gaze burns cold and pitiless, offering malign depths in which the Saxon recognizes that death alone holds promise.

  Already, the lamia has shied away from the killer and flexes toward Melania. Fen jumps backward, pulling the lamia after him. He does not want her killed, for she is the witch who knows how to remove this monster from his flesh. He calls to her, "Woman, save me!"

  Melania pulls her horse to the side, positioning herself behind Arthor so that the lodestone knife is between her and the lamia. "Remove the guardian band!" she cries out to the Saxon. "Then Arthor can use the knife to put the lamia in the urn." She holds up the ornate crock, and it hangs against the dizzy stars like a black heart.

  Fen puts a hand to the band about his throat, retreating before Arthor's steady advance. "If I remove this," he says sharply, "the lamia will devour me."

  "Arthor will save you with the knife," Melania promises.

  Fen looks into those remote yellow eyes and shakes his head. "No. He will kill me."

  "Arthor, tell him," Melania slides off the gray mare. "You can capture the lamia with the knife. I have the urn."

  With her hand on his shoulder, he stops his lethal advance and straightens, sword and dagger poised.

  "Put your sword away," Melania orders.

  "He tried to kill me," Arthor says, and the yapping dog agrees, sliding back and forth through the grass, snarling at the evil presence.

  "It's the lamia, Arthor." Melania presses close to him, wanting physically to impose her will. "When he takes off the guardian band, it cannot hide in his body anymore. We can catch it with the knife and the urn."

  "Let me kill him and the lamia." Only Melania's firm grip on his shoulder dissuades him from this. He does not want to drive her further from him by disobeying her—yet Fen has twice tried to murder him.

  "He will kill me," Fen says, and continues backing off. "Melania—take the magic knife from him. Come to me. Help me."

  "Don't do it, Melania," Arthor warns. "He's a barbarian. He'll use the lamia on me, then take you to Cissa to earn his way back into his tribe."

  "No." Fen stands with arms open at his side, exposing his bruised and cut nakedness clothed only in the shimmer of the lamia's spidery webs. "The Thunderers are ashamed of me. Without the lamia, they would sacrifice me to the Furor. If you help me, I will not betray your trust."

  "If you want trust," Arthor quickly responds, "then trust us. Come closer. Take off the throat band. Let us free you from the lamia."

  Fen's heart enlarges at the thought of freedom—but as his hands touch the guardian band, he sees again the remote steadiness of the young warrior's stare. Neither sword nor dagger is lowered, and by that the Saxon knows Arthor will attack. He will kill both the lamia and him.

  The barking dog, who once saved Arthor from the thrown ax, urges him to save them from the monster. In an instant, Arthor will fly forward to accomplish his warrior's vow. And at that moment, there passes between them a fatal understanding.

  Melania senses it and tries to hold Arthor back, but he is too strong. With a shout, he doffs her grasp, throwing her onto her back in the grass. He flies forward with incredible speed, saber weaving, dagger held low, cocked to rip upward. If Melania had not slowed his initial forward burst, not even the lamia could have saved Fen. As it is, the silver arc of the saber caresses the Saxon with its wind, and the lamia barely sweeps him away before the heavy blade spins around, light as a bird in the man-child's expert grasp, and slices through his shadow.

  Fen floats off through the waving grass, amazed to have felt the cold aura of Short-Life and still find himself whole. The boy is a killer. The only help Fen can expect from him is the succor of death. And so he flies far across the chaparral, exiled from the Thunderers and their enraged god and driven from the witch who can save him.

  At least now he knows her name. Melania. In the sound of it, the lamia's memories of her shapeshift, and he bounds through the field in her guise but naked, her lengthy curls brushing the voluptuous swerves of her body. As Melania's great-grandmother, a shriveled crone with one weak eye and one empty eye, he sits on the leopard-spotted mudbank of the lake listening to the mermaids singing their faultless songs to the moon.

  Melania swims through the tall grass calling for him. Arthor sheathes Short-Life and the stone dagger and gathers the horses. Master Sphenks, sensing some animal, barks from out of sight, charging toward the black cliffs.

  "He's gone," Arthor says, leading the horses to where Melania stands staring across tasseled fields and dusky swales toward the green sky lakes.

  She turns on him angrily "Why did you try to kill him? He has no weapon."

  "He has two. He carries the lamia. And he's a Saxon."

  His callousness brings an irate flush to her frown. "We could have helped him."

  Arthor restrains his own annoyance at her simp
leminded trust of the enemy. "He would not have helped us."

  She turns away with a vile expression that chills him. "You are no Christian."

  "I am a living Christian," he replies hotly, angry at her for hating him. "I'm alive, because I do not trust barbarians. He attacked us. Three times he has tried to slay me. Why do you care if he lives or not?"

  She does not look at him but keeps her attention fixed on the ethereal horizons under the fumes of stars.

  "You like him." Arthor feels his insides cringe at the sound of his own voice. "Why? Is it his handsome face? It's a barbarian's face."

  "Like yours?" she asks coolly and does not turn to see the sting of her words.

  Arthor does not reply. His focus has shifted away from her to a tall, shadowy figure advancing through the dwarf shrubs of the chaparral. Master Sphenks comes running from there, tail tucked.

  "He could have killed me, and he did not," Melania goes on, not noticing the stranger. "If I can help him, I will."

  "Someone is coming," Arthor warns, hand resting on the hilt of his saber. "It looks like the gleeman."

  The shadowy shape of Merlin approaches among the scrubby trees. He wears crisp robes, colorful as an angel's, and his beard and long hair float about him like visual music.

  "That is not the gleeman," Melania observes.

  "No," Arthor agrees. "Is it Fen shapeshifting?"

  "I don't think so." A baleful pallor creeps over her as she watches the stranger looming closer, seeming to float across the cluttered terrain, a rainbow for his shadow. "Arthor, I'm afraid. Let us ride from him."

  "Yes." He hands her the reins of the blond mare and climbs onto his palfrey. Master Sphenks has already rushed away and disappears in the bush. They gallop in pursuit of its fretful barking.

  The weird figure draws closer under the wide moon. The horses spook and buck, and Arthor seizes the blond mare's reins so Melania can dismount. Then he jumps down himself and watches the horses charge off in fright through the shrubs and miniature trees.