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

by A. A. Attanasio

  She fits herself into her flesh, and her eyes open languidly. Wind through the trees chills her. The first taint of evening's camphor lifts from the creek where, later, fog will crawl. She rises and reclaims her gown from the branch upon which it has dried to a limp, satiny attenuation of her body.

  There is magic in this cloth. That is why she wore it to go with the dwarf Brokk to confront Merlin. When the green fabric falls over her head and slinks down her figure, the ache in her hip vanishes along with the damp chill. A surfeit of power replaces the tenderness of her bones with incandescent ceremony: She stands at the creek's marly edge not as an earthly and prayerful woman but an enchantress.

  The cloud-swift afternoon collapses slowly to the melancholy beauty of summer twilight, and she dances. Her bare feet stamp the earth in ritual rhythms far older than the island's pagan temples now in ruins, older even than the stone cirques on the plains or the highland cromlechs or even the chalk carvings of the coastal cliffs. She beats the prehistoric cadence of the aboriginal goddess, whose breasts are the sun and the moon, whose sex fills the voluptuous hills with her ache of living fire, green with the world's stubborn desire, spread wide under the semen of the stars.

  Her own soft flesh fills with inconsolable yearning as she cants and veers through the tinctures of the setting sun. Goddess-force infuses her with longing and enticement. Pleasure shimmers in green, auric waves from her hips, breasts, and belly. The etheric glow of her body burns coolly in the dusk. With limber arms, she shapes the viscous light, spins, and weaves its supernatural shine about herself.

  By the time the midsummer sun winkles away in the forest and darkness crowds the trees under the moon's rays, she blazes with green fire.

  The night breathes fireflies. Attracted by Morgeu's spectral illumination, they glitter after her in a prismatic wake as she walks through the woods. By the time she reaches the masses of hawthorn hedges near the knoll where Arthor and his companions sleep, radiance whirls about her.

  She sits. Slowly, with an effort that closes her face, that curls her body around her navel, she compresses the eerie brilliance. The green flames licking her body whorl tighter and gradually pull away from her scattered hair and her hunched shoulders and spool under her breasts into her palms turned upward in her lap.

  The quarter moon falling away from midnight settles like a pale blue petal through the treetops. As it blushes toward the horizon, Morgeu completes the preparation for her tantric spell. The ghost fire has contracted to a pulsing emerald she holds in her right hand.

  She covers the bright bauble and quietly, shrouded in moonless dark, sidles through the hedges and up the knoll. Fen, Melania, and Arthor sleep on three separate sides of the hill, the better to thwart attackers and warn the others.

  Silent as mist, she floats among spindle trees to where her half brother lies on his back in the trampled grass. Crickets sing under the wind's heavy breath, and she calls his name several times before he sits up groggily.

  "Arthor—I am here," she whispers from a dark dizzy with stars. "Come to me."

  "Who's there?" he calls, hand on sword.

  "Sh-h-h—come silently." She rises from the tall grass, a silhouette against the loud stars.

  "Melania?"

  When he stands, she crushes the gem of green light between her palms and grinds it to a ticklish powder. Then she takes three quick strides toward him, opens her palms to a flash of cold brightness, and blows the lustrous smoke in his astonished face.

  "I am Melania," she instructs him. "I want you."

  The dream dust glinting on his drowsy features dissolves to conifer coolness, and his eyes close. A moment later, he rouses himself and blinks as if just woken from sleep. At the touch of Morgeu's fingertip to his creased brow, a curtain of heat snaps open in Arthor's chest, and a mirage of breathless beauty unfurls before him.

  He sees Melania sliding out of her gown, holding out her hand. When he takes it, a realmful of desire urges him forward. She leads him down the hill into deeper darkness.

  "What you said while we bathed in the pond today moves me, Arthor." She speaks in a hush. "You are so brave to return to your humble place in Kyner's clan. You are so brave, I want to take my place with you."

  "Melania—" He gropes for words. Her nakedness blurs with pastel softness under the constellations.

  "Don't speak. Not now."

  She settles to the ground and pulls him after her. By feel and scent, he senses mint, borage, buttercup, and columbine crush beneath them. His awareness widens to unnatural limits, and he observes the starlight weaving Melania's features with bright passion. Her nipples point at him like small, dark thumbs. When she tugs him free of his loin-wrap and takes the wick of his desire in her hand, his whole body ignites with dazzling pleasure.

  Together, they rock in each other's embrace, brinking on wider dimensions. Time falls away. Their bodies slap sparks of sweat from each other that fill the night with stars. Melania's wild face drinks from his mouth. Her legs clasp him tighter to her, and the stars begin moving.

  Turning over and over, they roll onto, into, and through each other. And each time that lust breaks inside him and into her and he collapses in ecstatic disaster, she clasps her mouth to his and breathes hard into his lungs—and his carnal fire flares again with inexorable force. He bucks against her, and they grapple in a whiplash of caresses, their joys stitched into each other, sewn tight and slow to explode.

  The spires of the trees rise toward dawn's greasy light before Arthor finally reaches a deep, abiding truce with Melania. He lies limp in her arms, wrung of all heat. Until sunrise turns buttery, he does not move but hugs her against his lean shiver, glad for their love's leisure.

  Then, languorously, he rolls over and opens his sleepy eyes. The soft length of her body is a bunched mat of weed-strands and crushed grass. He sits up, puzzled, and wipes tangled straw from his face. His shoulders bear the hot bruises of love bites or he might almost believe he has dreamed it all, as vividly unbelievable as this lewd memory is.

  Rubbing the stupor from his brow, he gathers his loincloth, tunic, and sword and looks about for signs of her. She is gone. Among the narrow trees and the dark hedges, slants of morning mist totter drunkenly.

  Chapter 28: A Dream Has Wings

  Hannes and Merlin bathe in a black tarn where white herons glow like paper lanterns. Among blunt rocks, they wash their garments and exchange them, each glad to be restored to his proper garb. The wizard, spent by the Furor's attempt on his life, curls up in his robes, hides his face in his wide-brimmed hat, and sleeps.

  Hannes watches over him in the cinnamon light of the forest mere. Plying his magical sight, he looks into the wizard and sees a darkness black as the uttermost reaches of the abyss. Quickly, he looks away—yet already, hours have fled.

  The hollows of the night forest echo with lorn owl calls. Hugging Excalibur to himself with fright, the carpenter lies down at his master's feet and waits impatiently for sleep. Rest does not come. His desperate heart beats in the swamp grass with fearful vertigo for the namelessness of the depths he has glimpsed.

  At the first touch of sun, he rouses the torpid wizard, and they slouch away among hanging vines and brown, dusty rays of sun. By noon, Hannes leads Merlin out of the dark and perilous woods of Crowland into the rolling pastures and cow-dotted meadows of the old Roman estates.

  Among the lonely ruins of once splendid villas, thatch-roofed farmhouses and rude hamlets cluster. Gold coins lost in past centuries hide in the worm-fill of these regions, under lichenous blocks fallen from sunken temples. With the fine threads of his magic, Hannes feels them out and pulls a few glittering to the surface while his master dozes in the shade.

  At a farm cottage, they buy hot, fortifying mugs of chicory brew and two horses from stables under a sour vineyard. When the vintner appraises with loud awe the remarkable sword that these two old men possess, Hannes speaks forgetfulness to him while Merlin wraps Excalibur in a horse blanket.

&nbs
p; They ride along the ancient highway that leads to Cold Kitchen, passing drays mounded with that summer's bounty destined for the open markets of Uxacona and Viroconium. Hunger thrives in the travelers, and they stop at hilltop crofts for meals of salt fish boiled in milk and purees of beans with chestnut cakes—hearty food to restore their stamina.

  Merlin eats with gusto but says nothing the entire journey, though Hannes burbles with questions. The carpenter wants to know more about elves, faeries, the hollow hills, the Dragon, the Furor and his dwarf. He asks, too, about magic and how it works.

  Merlin says nothing. Hat pulled low over his brow, the aged wizard rides like a sleeper. He reaches with his heart's brails for the young king, wanting to know that he is safe—but his grasp wavers and shreds in the wind. The wizard's body feels like a nest of bones, his magic an egg not yet hatched.

  Camelot rises to view in river mist and moonlight. Hannes leads the horses into a hazel grove, ties them off, and begins looking about for kindling, assuming they will ride the last steep miles into Cold Kitchen with the morning.

  Merlin unwraps the sword Lightning. Reflections slip over its blade like light in a cat's eye. He points with the sword to the mountain shadows under the hard white stars. Hell-swirls of moonlit mist rise from the river ravines of those heights.

  On foot, the wizard guides the carpenter upward through oak forest tunnels where lunar fumes congregate as in a hall of spirits. They walk past midnight before they look down through shagged walls of cedar into the gorge of the River Amnis.

  Hannes gives thanks for his magic as they descend rocky spillways and ferny couloirs toward the loud current. Sometimes, by invisible hands alone, they grasp vertical slabs of jasper and walk straight down into the roaring darkness.

  At bottom, they traverse a bankside path over slippery shale and through bracken selvage to where the river broadens. The indolent current slides quietly around birch islands and their ghostly reflections in the black water. Mons Caliburnus stands tall against the moon, and bats spin around it in silvery darkness.

  Merlin shoves the magnetic counterstone into place at the base of the mount, then climbs to the top, and Hannes follows. They pause in the hackberry shrubs near the star stone. The illusory Excalibur still stands where Hannes set it. All the night's luminaries show themselves in its mirroring blade.

  "A fine work of magic that is," Merlin praises his student and then peers downslope from their covert. "There are people on the hill."

  Using his magical strong eye, Hannes discerns a half dozen people on the sward below. Most sleep, while a couple kneels in prayer.

  A banshee's feverish wail ululates from Merlin, and the startled sleepers and worshipers leap up. Another ghostly cry from the wizard sends them dashing for the path away from the river.

  Merlin emerges from the hackberry bush. At his touch, the illusion of Excalibur wafts away like heat, and he holds the gnarled stave in his hand. He removes it, and as he restores Excalibur to its place, the blade kisses stone with a clear chime.

  Placing the stave across his lap, the wizard sits in the grass before the standing sword and gazes up at the lucid weapon. Instantly, he sinks into trance, allowing his energy and the sword's to merge within him. Inside the sword's shafts of diamond light, inside its destiny, he strives to find Arthor.

  Time blurs. Out of its smoke emerges the sword, pointed upright, suspended in the air. Arthor appears in the time-mist, naked, dewed with sweat. Behind him is Morgeu, also naked, her thighs and the red tuft of her genitals slick with sexual chrism.

  Merlin's heart bangs like a thunderclap, and he reels almost unconscious before the madness of this evidence and its ugly truth. No! It must not be!

  Afflicted with the hope that what he witnesses has not yet transpired, he reaches out with all the magical power he can muster, and he tries to pull the mists of time over this horrid image.

  The haze of minutes and hours slips away from him and leaves the naked couple standing in clear light, their pearly bodies reflected in the blade of the sword that floats behind them—and by this he knows that what he sees is actual.

  Morgeu places her hands on her white belly, feeling inward to her womb and the baby of a future that Merlin has not anticipated. He groans—and time blurs.

  At dawn, King Lot arrives on Mons Caliburnus with his sons Gawain and Gareth, because the boys want to try their hands at drawing the sword. They find Merlin sitting in the grass stone-still and Hannes with his back against the stone, asleep. The king nudges the carpenter awake with his boot-tip. "You—wake up!"

  Hannes judders alert. When he sees the fierce warrior-king glowering at him, he throws a look at Merlin. The wizard sits entranced.

  "Who are you?" the king asks, sternly.

  "I—I am the master builder Hannes," he stammers, "apprentice to Merlin, wizard of Britain."

  "You told me you were Merlin," Lot practically growls at Hannes, then drops a wrathful stare at the motionless wizard. After examining him, he announces, "This is Merlin. Yes, I recognize his bony face now. What has become of him? Why does he not move?"

  "He wanders the spirit realm," Hannes assumes. "He must not be disturbed."

  Gawain and Gareth crouch beside the still wizard and ogle his weird countenance and half-lidded mineral eyes.

  "Leave him be, boys," Lot enjoins; then, turning to Hannes again, "Why did you lie to me?"

  "At Merlin's command alone, my lord," Hannes answers abjectly. "He feared that if his absence were known, fighting would ensue."

  Lot nods curtly. "His fear was sound. Now tell me, where did he go when he left you in his place?"

  Hannes speaks to the warrior's boots. "That is for him to say, my lord."

  "Mother!" Gareth cries out, and leaps off the stone, where he has been futilely tugging at the sword. "Mother has returned!"

  Morgeu rides up the hill path on a white mule, accompanied by several of Lot's brawny guards. During the night, she left Arthor entranced and used the tantric power she had built with him to summon a spirit pony from the hollow hills. She had never ridden one before. The ancient magic emboldened her. Upon the rippling chine-bones of a violet creature with white-hot eyes, she rode to Camelot faster than the wind and dismounted in the pine hills above Lot's camp. Reefs of stars still shone in the heavens when she returned unannounced to her tent.

  Refreshed, she now appears with white ribbons in her hair and wearing a gown of reds, purples, and blacks. Her maids worked hard, deftly applying cosmetics of powdered seashells and minium to obscure the bruises and abrasions from her rough adventure, and when she dismounts to embrace her sons, she looks fresh and pale as morning mist.

  The boys do not ask where she has been. All their lives, she has come and gone, worshiping by moonlight in desolate places, assuring the well-being of their kingdom. When she returns, the magic in her hugs lifts them like song into the wind—and this time her touch is even brighter than usual, filling them with a superlative dazzle of well-being.

  For Lot, there is a charmed word in the ear, and his hot blood feels strung like a harp, jangling with amorous music. He smothers his face in her fuzzy hair, and its meadow fragrance crowds his heart with love. "Come to my tent with me now," he whispers to her, and tries to guide her away from the wizard she hates.

  But Morgeu has come to exult over Merlin. She gentles her husband with a soft kiss and pushes him airily aside. Then she approaches the wizard.

  Hannes steps back from his master, feebly protesting, "He is entranced and should not be disturbed."

  Morgeu laughs tautly and stands over the sitting wizard. She knocks off his hat, grasps his brow and pushes him backward.

  The surge of power in her touch breaks his trance, and he sprawls awake on the grass and squints into the rising sun. Morgeu eclipses this radiance and bends close with a mocking leer. "I have taken my revenge," she proclaims in a voice pitched for his ears alone. "My father's blood has earned a way to the throne not through grief but love. Go ahead, Merl
in, and create your high king of Britain. I will not thwart you—for I carry his successor!"

  Morgeu steps away brusquely, and daylight bewilders Merlin. He shades his eyes with his hand and sees Excalibur stuck in the stone, a ring of refracted light surrounding it. The myth of the one true ruler of Britain that he strove so hard to create, he sees now, is a bubble. It is destined to float away on the wind and burst.

  Yet, look how the clouds and trees shine! he tells himself, watching the morning wind preening the green branches. Here in the real world of weather and forests, the bubble remains intact. Arthor is alive. And I am alive! Merlin marvels, remembering with a giddy shiver the miracle Hannes worked to save him from the Furor's wrath.

  He looks about and watches Morgeu retreating downhill with her family and their warriors. Gareth rides the slow white mule, one hand spinning overhead as if taming a wild stallion. Gawain has an arm about Morgeu's waist, and Lot holds her hand. They are the very image of a happy family, wholly unaware of the hurting dark she bears within her.

  With weary effort, the wizard struggles to rise, and Hannes helps him to his feet. "Why are you smiling, Master?"

  "Am I?" Merlin asks, groggily. He leans on his staff, puts quavery fingers to his beard, and feels the shine of joy within. "I suppose I am smiling. And why not, Hannes? Excalibur has been returned, none the worse and no one the wiser. Arthor lives. And so do we! Why not smile?"

  "Morgeu the Fey broke your trance," Hannes says apprehensively, searching the old wizard for signs of dementia. "She seemed to whisper a terrible curse in your face."

  "Yes—there is that." Merlin frowns, and Hannes hands him his hat. "But, as experience has taught me, where is there truth without falsehood? Where a mountain without a valley? Morgeu could have burst the bubble."

  "I don't understand, Master."

  "She could have killed Arthor, man!" he says sharply but not to Hannes, rather to himself, in reproach. "He was in her grasp and I too weak even to know it, let alone stop her." He puts on his hat, the shadow of its large brim covers his face, and from within its darkness he mutters aloud his thoughts, "But she didn't kill him, did she? And she won't. She won't use her magic against him. Not anymore. She wants him to live now. She will protect our bubble. Soon, she will guard it with her life—oh yes, with her very life. At least, for a while."