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

by A. A. Attanasio

  Arthor pushes Melania behind him and draws the lodestone dagger. At the sight of it, the flying lamia snaps away in terror, and Brokk hurtles forward massive as a boulder. The sword Lightning flashes and stabs into the ground, jolting the dwarf to a full stop. The weapon master's large, gold-whiskered face grins upward with unconcealed delight.

  The skinny lives before him are his reward for enduring the darkness and the stink long enough to be certain that the Dragon sleeps. Once convinced of that, the dwarf allowed himself to roam freely through the netherworld, swatting at faeries with the Furor's sword, venting his rage at the spool of days undone by Bright Night's trickery in leading him here. "And now look!" he speaks aloud with delight. "I have found again the Roman witch!" He leers at Melania, then lifts a menacing sneer toward Arthor. "And you, boy—who are you?"

  "It's the Furor's dwarf!" Melania gasps from behind Arthor. "He has the twin lamia."

  Arthor draws Short-Life, and Brokk laughs. With a slippery twist of his wrist, the sword Lightning sweeps the saber from Arthor's grasp and drops it into the heavy grass. The dwarf's sword tip cuts fanciful designs of light and bright air and comes to deadly stillness at the crook of Arthor's collarbones.

  "Who are you, child?" the dwarf snarls.

  "I am Arthor."

  "Arthor?" The snarl deforms to a querying frown. "What kind of name is that?"

  "My own name."

  A flickering smile crosses the dwarf's bellicose face. "You are a brave young one. But this—" He slashes the Celtic cross of Arthor's tunic, the sword barely moving in his heavy hand. "This is an evil emblem." His hard eyes glitter. "Are you an evil one?"

  Arthor cannot hear his own voice for the thunder of his heart. "I am a Christian man."

  The dwarf's twisted eyebrows rise. "A Christian man in the hollow hills with the Roman witch! What a marvel, what a discovery of wonder this is for me. How came you here, Christian Arthor?"

  "I don't know." Arthor does not budge his stare from the dwarf's eyes of cracked blue ice. The boy's eyebrows shrug, and he strives to speak calmly. "We rode here—looking for a gleeman."

  Brokk's wide mouth turns downward with disbelief. "You rode here—on those slow, ponderous horses?" He flicks a motion to where the heavy-chested horses nervously wait in the field of stunted trees.

  "Yes."

  "Looking for a gleeman?"

  "Yes."

  "But you haven't found him." Brokk taps Arthor's shoulder with the sword and lowers the weapon. "That is why there are three horses and only two of you, eh? Well, call your horses, boy. We will ride together. If you can ride in, perhaps you can ride out."

  The sword Lightning touches Arthor's left hand, which still holds the lodestone dagger. "And I will have this stone knife that the lamia fear." He takes the dagger and points it at Melania. "And you and I—" He shows large teeth at the alarm that quakes through her. "You and I will discover together why the Norns have given you to me."

  Chapter 25: Play of Shadows

  The play of shadows through the yew branches shows Merlin how the fugitive hours escape him while he strives in vain to break Morgeu's enchantment. His own inner monkeys yawp and grin. They are the animal powers of his body that have fled the cages of his muscles and will not go back in. They want to run free, the way his spirit ran free as a demon. Morgeu has used his memories of his former life to bewitch him.

  Slowly, Merlin must unravel those memories. He must forget that he ever was a demon.

  Memory is its own unbearable mirror.

  For a long time, he lies in his stillness, immobilized by sad recollections of the wreckage he has made of numerous beings on many tiny hopeful worlds that he visited as a demon in his raging flights across the void.

  The mind is bottomless. Below memory is darkness—the emptiness that interpenetrates and encloses the neural jungle of the brain—the void that yaws between atoms and galaxies. Without it, nothing could exist. Yet with it, heaven is forfeit.

  And that is the source of his demonic sorrow.

  Embittered memories of losing heaven swarm through Merlin's oldest and deepest memories. Yet, further back than that despair is his remembrance of heaven itself. And that is where he must go to break Morgeu's spell.

  Far back into himself he journeys, past the old ghosts of his fury, past the initial shock of falling into the void, back to heaven remembered and his faithfulness to the light.

  Merlin's memory of heaven welds him to timeless rapture. At first, he resists it, because he fears that he will sink deeper into coma and maybe not wake for days, years, maybe never. He rails all the more wildly at Morgeu for the evil cunning of her enchantment. And the inner monkeys grin and yawp louder.

  Reluctantly, the wizard accepts his fate. He returns in memory to the time before time, before the long, long loneliness. He conjures again the light that casts death's shadow, the first light, pure energy of origin, the radiance of Creation.

  The light absorbs him. In its radiant refuge, he forgets all shadows—distance, form, and memory—and he exists again without body or mind. He exists like a jewel, like minerals that have dwelt a long time in darkness and are astonished to find themselves suddenly clear and full of light.

  This is only memory. The blood circling in his veins calls him back from his serene recall—and he finds that the inner monkeys are gone. He sits up. The shadows have carried only a few minutes away.

  All the more limber from his deep rest, Merlin bounds out of the yew enclosure. Sunlight hurts his eyes, and he hurries blinking through the thistle field to the willow banks of the creek, searching for Arthor. Of course, he is gone. But where?

  Faeries flutter in the willow shadows like moist starlight, and the wizard hurries there. Behind a green curtain of withes, the faeries glitter against the rock wall of a hillside. Underfoot, hoofprints walk into the boulders, and in the air, the wizard hears the creaking of saddles.

  Morgeu's spell helps him now, because the deep trance that he had to enter to break her enchantment has suffused him with more power than usual. He chants for the faeries to guide him into the hollow hills.

  Like bees, the golden bodies of the faeries tuck themselves behind the creepers dangling over the rock wall. Merlin parts the veil and finds a narrow crevice through which he must squeeze sideways.

  Inside, black acres of cinders and ash crawl under poisonous air toward a serrated horizon of windy flames. Dead stars float in the arched darkness looking like the purple embers of a scattered fire. Their fumes wrinkle the lightless void with luminescent plasmas, and by their vague illumination, the wizard finds his way toward the precincts of flame.

  As he advances inside the addling heat, discarding his hat of woven ivy and breathing the putrid air through his mouth, he seeks out the Furor's tracks that he saw earlier in his trance. They shine with astral light in the sullage of soot where the god has walked.

  So intent is the wizard on finding his way to the Furor, hoping that Arthor has not encountered the war god, that he does not see Morgeu hiding under an outcropping of lava.

  She watches him pass and keeps her mind clear so he will not hear her thoughts. With her attention focused beyond her sweltering niche, on the plangent breeze from faerieland lapping at the scalloped edges of the scorched lava cliffs, she eludes detection. The wizard passes, and she squirms out of her blistered crevice and climbs down the niter-crusted rocks to the mossy slopes and purling breezes.

  No longer does she care if the Furor notices her. The acid stink of the burned ranges is unbearable. She staggers into the chaparral and falls to her knees before a rivulet of glacial water.

  She will wait here for Fen to return from his homicidal mission. With her smutched face leaning into the icy water, she rolls up her small, weary eyes toward the bloated moon and the stars in their webs of time, and she prays it will not be long.

  While she slakes her thirst, Arthor, Melania, and Brokk ride out of the fields of dwarf trees toward the softer grasslands. The dwarf wants
to get close to the sky lakes that gleam like valuable stones in the distance. He wants to hear the mermaids singing while he takes his pleasure with the Roman witch.

  Sexuality is not a hasty desire among dwarfs as it is with organic creatures. For Brokk, his whim to penetrate the witch is a mechanical delusion—an unrealistic ambition to imitate the gods and experience something beautiful and unexplained. After he experiments with her, he will ride into the ice mountains and seek there a way out.

  The Christian boy will prove useful if any elves appear. They are always willing to trade information for humans, whom they must use for slaves now that the Dragon sleeps and no longer needs to be fed. For an able and young man like this Arthor, the elves will surely show the dwarf the path to the upper world. If not, there is always the sword.

  The savor of the dwarf's well-thought-out plan vanishes, empty as a mirage, when he sees at the speckled lip of the lake the Furor, his beard and mane huge as fog. Around him stand the Thunderers, hairy and lean as wolves.

  Brokk lifts the sword Lightning in salute and sends forward Melania and Arthor on their horses as tribute. "Hail, All-Seeing Fath—"

  "Silence!" The Furor dares not shout, for fear of the Dragon; yet, his voice lashes, and the wild grasses jump, and the mermaids' indecipherable songs disappear. "Why have you made me come down here into the stinking roots of the Tree to get my sword?"

  "My Lord—" Brokk falls from the gray mare and thuds to his knees. "I sent for you to be certain that the elves did not trick me. I did not want to lose the sword."

  "When must a god come to a dwarf?" the Furor asks, veins thick at his temples. "My life is in jeopardy here."

  "No, my lord," the dwarf blurts, holding the sword Lightning forward in both hands. "The Dragon sleeps."

  "So you say." The god groans, and steps forward to receive his weapon. "The Sid are devious. It were better that you had risked losing this sword to them than bring me here, in the rootlands where the Dragon's claw easily reaches."

  The Furor snatches the sword and whirls it over his head so swiftly it flashes like mirror dust. "And why are these two alive? I ordered them slain."

  Melania whimpers and moves to pull her horse around and run, but Arthor seizes the reins and steadies her with a hard stare. Flight is certain death. That he knows, having seen the one-eyed god spin the sword like fire. Better to die facing death than fleeing, his steady gaze tells her, and she relents and sits in her saddle, lame as a skeleton.

  Arthor feels like he is floating. There is no bottom to his fear. He stares into the god as into an abyss, and his heartbeat wavers in him like a dream.

  Cissa comes forward, bald and leering. "I will do the ritual killing, here in the rootlands of our enemy, and we will leave this cursed place stained with Christian blood."

  The Furor holds the hilt of the sword toward the viper-priest. "Do it."

  Cissa takes the sword Lightning and feels the Furor's aura upon the weapon—a fragrance of far horizons that skirls up his arm like wind and makes him feel strong as a tree. A serpent grin widens along his tattooed jaw. He motions with the weapon for the riders to dismount.

  Melania's legs cannot hold her, and she sinks to her knees, head bowed, hands fisted in the grass with terrified futility. Arthor slides off his palfrey and takes his shield in his hands. Courage failing, balance fading, he grips the buckler hard and stares intently at the serene and sorrowful face of the Virgin. What she has suffered eats a hole in his heart. Almost immediately, his fright diminishes enough for him to turn and face his killers.

  The sight of the Furor, with his dark soul in the empty socket of a face like a cliff, penetrates him and bleaches his strength. Before this tremendous entity, he is no more than a dead white thing. All thoughts of appeal, all words of beggary and mercy turn colorless and silent in his mind. A hot flush runs down his leg from his frightened bladder, and he leans on the air and must grip the shield in numb hands with all his might to keep from falling.

  "Mother Mary," he begins to pray aloud, his voice stony, oracular, "see your Son's enemies before me, heartless in their vanity. See them, Mother, and show me now, in this dire and fatal moment—oh, please! Show me now that your Son's love for us is not perished—even in this hateful place. For though God shall bring every work into judgment by the witness of your Son—yet all mercy shall come from you, Mother. Do not forsake us to evil, Mother! Show us your mercy—for the love of your Son!"

  Cissa laughs like a cough of winter, and the sword Lightning keens softly as it spins over the viper-priest's head. He says something in his barbarian tongue that makes Brokk and the Thunderers laugh—"Let's see if he sings as pretty with a foretaste of oblivion!"—and he swings the sword tip with a razor's accuracy so that it slashes across Arthor's chest, fluttering the rags of his tunic and inflicting a burning flesh weal.

  Arthor drops his shield and cries out but does not fall. A brush of silver air slices through the space where he would have fallen.

  "Courage wins him another song," Cissa jeers, passing the turning sword from hand to hand, "before the wind sings in his bones."

  But Arthor cannot find the prayer in him anymore. The searing pain across his chest and the deepening cold of certain death have taken its place. Sweat glitters its sequins on his young, shivering face.

  "Kill him, Cissa," Brokk says, eager to be done with the boy and on to the woman.

  "Where is Mother?" Cissa taunts, and the sword Lightning rises high for the blurred arc that will swipe the Christian's proud head from his sobbing shoulders.

  "Stop!" A voice loud and dark as thunder rolls over the savanna.

  Cissa's arm locks like iron, and he grimaces as if stabbed.

  Arthor and Melania turn to look at where the Furor and the Thunderers are glaring. Out of the sere grass, a lanky man with a long, long beard rises.

  "It's the gleeman!" Melania sings to Arthor.

  The narrow old man throws both his hands up and shouts in his supernaturally big voice a barbarous cry. The sword in Cissa's hand wrenches free and flies on the loud wings of the cry directly at the Furor.

  The scowling god blocks the thrown blade with his spear. Weirdly, it spins about the shaft of the spear and drives hard into the Furor's shoulder.

  A monstrous cry flays hearing to deafness and throws everyone into the grass except the howling god and the skinny old man. From where the sword is ripped free, silky darkness spills upward like squid ink, blotting the onrush of stars.

  Arthor clasps Melania's hands, and their shrill faces gawk at each other through the grass stems. "You were right all along," Arthor cries as their deafness subsides. "I don't think he is a gleeman."

  "Lailoken!" the Furor shouts, and hurls the sword Lightning at him, which he instantly regrets.

  The wizard diverts the flashing blade with another crazed cry that sends it toppling across the grassland. All his strength is nearly spent now, but he is satisfied. He has fulfilled the mission laid on him by the angels and given all he has to serve his king.

  Master Sphenks, who cowers behind him, charges away across the savanna, released from the magic spell that Merlin used to summon it so that he could find Arthor. Had he the energy, the wizard, out of gratitude, would cast over it more of the invisibility that had hidden them as they approached this fateful encounter. But he barely has the strength left to remain standing before the Furor's wrathful immensity.

  With the blue veins in his face darkening, the wounded god strides forward and jabs with his spear. Merlin catches the sharp tip under his arms and feels the icy metal against his chest as it cuts through his tunic. Hoisted off his feet, the wizard clings to the spear and hangs for a moment above Arthor and Melania. "Run!" he calls to them, his aged face a rage of fright. "Run!"

  Arthor leaps as if spurred and pulls Melania after him. The Thunderers rise to stop them. And the wizard screams a shrill barbarous command with the last wisps of his strength: grass tangles the warriors' ankles and yanks them back to the ground.<
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  Shaking with pain and anger, the Furor whips his spear, throwing Merlin free. The god shambles over him and places the spear tip at his heart. The earth's rotation and the moon's gravitational ambit pivot here in the demon's heart.

  Rage wants the god to impale him instantly and explode him to chaos. Only wisdom won from pain insists he hold him fast under his spear and draw from the fulcrum of his cosmic being the very life-force that binds the atomic seams of his body.

  Merlin writhes as the light in his bones bleeds out of him and his life blurs. Silences join out of the spaces between nerves, widening emptiness.

  While the enraged god extracts the vitality from the demon that the Furor needs to heal his wounded shoulder, Morgeu the Fey watches, thrilled. She commands a clear view from her vantage on the agate slopes above the chaparral. And she witnesses the north god in his swarming mane and blustery beard shining like a glacier's icefalls and seracs. Below his bent, hulking form, the demon's plush heart pools in the field like frost mist.

  Merlin dies! she exults and must restrain the urge to leap and dance.

  Across the wide solitude of the savanna, Arthor and Melania charge. Morgeu spies them, and hope bounds joyfully in the enchantress. All the blight of the past and its shame and bitterness dim now before a glittering future that consorts with her proud ambitions.

  With Merlin dead, Arthor is nothing. No need for tantric magic now. Vengeance is at last and wholly accomplished. Her half brother will fade into obscurity, while her sons Gawain and Gareth ascend the tiers of power to attain supremacy in Britain and even Europe.

  Morgeu's serene euphoria cramps at the sight of the jug-eared carpenter who had stood in Merlin's place at Camelot.

  The old fool crouches in the chaparral at the edge of the savanna. Morgeu can barely see him—but she sees clearly the clouds of faeries flocking about him. They are busy. Mist rises from their swirling frenzy.

  How?

  She is too distant to discern the tiny bodies gathering dew and swatting those clear baubles between their wings, scattering moisture to humid wisps that gather in their thousands and thousands of thousands to haze, then mist, then rolling depths of sluggish fog.