“Thank you,” I said. “I hope to remain one.”
He gave a pleasant laugh. “No chance of that, my dear. You will be much better off if you make an accommodation with me right away. I’ll tolerate a few harmless passes so that you may salvage your dignity. Then you slip. I put my sword at your throat and the deed is accomplished.”
“Suppose I don’t agree?” I was surprised at my own pleasant tone.
Something ugly crept into his eyes.
“They say you are a stranger to our ways. So I had best explain what happens when a Woman of the Wager is captured. The men of the capturing family take possession of her body. All the men. Now, I can defend you tonight and say you are my own. Or I can yield you up to whomever I favor. That is the rule. The first night of a new woman can be . . . shall we say, very painful.”
I got the picture, but it didn’t matter to me much, because I was pledged to endure no second night. And I knew then that I would not. Perhaps Albe could reach me in time, but that didn’t matter, though I was certain my head would be a powerful talisman to the Painted People. But if she didn’t get there, I could do the deed myself.
Was the Hall of the Tree silent, or did the rush of the rapids drown out the sound and murmur of many voices? No. I glanced at the spectators and saw they were watching raptly.
“Well?” he asked.
“As you wish,” I answered. “But a few passes, please, for the sake of my dignity.”
“Certainly.”
“And,” I said, “I hope you’re a man of your word.”
“You’ll find I am, you little darling.”
Then he advanced.
I edged back as though nervous toward the edge of the platform.
“Now don’t jump in the river,” he cautioned as he raised his sword.
I leaped forward, just a little out of his world. I hoped enough. I went right through him. There was darkness and a stench of muck.
A second later, I stood behind him. This was no time to hold back. Hero’s salmon leap, both feet up. We were in the same world now. Both of my feet slammed into his back. I hit the ground rolling and saw my stratagem had worked. He pitched over the edge of the platform into the rapids.
The cheers made the lights on their long wands quiver. I raised my sword. More cheers thundered around me.
I was congratulated from another source, too.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were going to do?” The mass of mail on my torso shifted alarmingly.
“What?” I hissed. “And give the game away?”
“True! True! What’s wrong? You are still wound tight as dried sinew.”
“That was one. There are six more,” I snapped.
I gazed downstream and saw some helpful people were pulling my opponent out of the river. Just at that moment, I saw the second dagger fly at the platform where the Diviners Guild sat. Even from here I could see the handle was red.
The head of the red family rose. There was a loud murmur from the crowd.
“That trick won’t work twice.” I spoke to my unseen companion.
“No, but then this time I don’t think you will be facing a human.”
And I saw my friend was right. The pieces of armor in front of the leader of the red family had risen of their own volition and formed themselves into the semblance of a warrior.
“I wonder where he got that? And, you know, it’s very dangerous.”
“That’s not helpful,” I said. “What is it?”
My companion was uncharacteristically silent.
Helmet, cuirass, arm guards, leg guards, thigh protectors, greaves, and shoes. They hovered in the air, then turned in the exact way a living fighter would. One mailed glove stretched itself out for a sword. Someone placed the hilt of one in its hand.
“I don’t know what it is,” my unseen companion said.
A shield rose from the table and took its position in front of the thing’s arm. The stones began rising in the direction of the red platform. When they were in place, the thing leaped easily to the first and headed toward me.
“It’s a construct,” my companion finally said. “Something like a tool put together to solve a problem.”
“Not a lot of help,” I said. “How do I defeat it?”
At that moment it leaped from the last of the stones onto the platform and was on me in a second. For a minute I was as busy as a fighter can be. Our swords rang together and struck sparks as I parried an attack as vicious as any that has ever happened to me. I danced in a circle, trying to get away from the flying sword and the empty helmet.
I could see the whole hall through the joints in my adversary. It was as though I faced an invisible opponent. I used a variant of the trick I had used on the first swordsman. It nearly got me killed.
I eased out of the world just a bit and let the sword pass through me. I felt it, but I was only a specter to the force of the blow. That gave me a clean swing at the space between helmet and breast plate. Or where the neck would have been on a human. My blade whistled through empty air and since I had to return completely to strike an effective blow, my foe’s sword caught me at the waist.
It rang against the ring mail and threw me down. The next sight I saw was the thing’s blade descending toward my face. I rolled clear and got far enough away to leap to my feet. The thing caught up to me in an instant and a second later, I was frantically parrying a rain of blows.
I fled to the only spot that offered respite, the world the ring mail came from. A second later, the rain was slashing at my face. My companion presented me with a view of the ruins. I found I was not in the same place I had been before. I was on the other side of the jumble of broken towers on a broad, shallow stair.
I’d been here before when I had fled the fish eater. The fish eater, King Bade, sent to steal “Her” pool. He had tried to lay hands on immortal powers. “She” used me to rebut him.
The immense shell of the rainbow chamber rose on my left. Even in the thick gloom of perpetual storm clouds it burned white, reflecting the giant curved steps I stood on. Green, gold, gray, churning like the turgid storm clouds above, lit by brilliant flashes of blue lightning and swirling patterns of silver rain. I’d taken the Faun’s head in the chamber.
I called it, and the walls swirled into a symphony of green, then silver, followed by gold. My unseen companion gave a cry of shock.
“Yiiiiiiiee! Warn me when you do things like that!”
I didn’t have time to reply. The suit of red armor followed me into this world.
“You are measurably stronger. Try tripping it,” my companion shouted.
I slipped to the thing’s left and brought my sword down hard on its shin guard. The shield slammed into me, but the ring mail protected my torso. I reeled back, but when I did, I saw my blow landed perfectly.
The thing had been pivoting on that leg to follow me. The other leg was in the air. I knocked it off its pins. It went down with a crash, flying into its component pieces.
“Get the helm! Get the helm! That’s how it sees!” my companion shouted.
I threw down my shield. The helm was one of those Greek-style helmets, big cheek pieces with only a T-shaped slit for the eyes and mouth. It tried to roll away from me, but I got it by one of the cheek pieces, grabbed the nose guard, and turned the eyeholes to my body, trying to blind it.
The sword came after me by itself, slashing wildly, but apparently my stratagem worked. The sword didn’t seem able to find me.
“Got to get back!” I shouted. I was afraid to make the leap. My movements in this world might have placed me over the river in the other one.
“Hush. I’m working on that. . . . Now!”
I made the leap. Actually, I was a little above the platform. I landed hard on my knees, near the edge. I hurled the helm into the river just as the sword slammed into my arm. My armor turned most of the force of the blow, but my right arm and hand were drenched in blood from an open slash wound just above my elbow.
> But I went for the sword hilt with my left hand. I swung it once around my head, then out over the white-water rapids surrounding the platform. It vanished. The remaining bits and pieces fought me, but one by one, I ran them down and hurled them into the river.
The shield gave me the most trouble. It was triangular. It flew at me, point first. I slammed it aside with my sword, a blow that sent it flying out over the water. Once over the water, whatever motive power the thing had seemed to disappear, and it vanished into the river, joining the rest.
Then I stood on the platform, reeling.
“Two down,” I whispered. “Five more to go. I don’t know if I have the strength.”
The chain mail on my torso shifted and I felt strength flow back into me. My vision cleared; the perspiration dried on my body. My respiration slowed. Where I had been heated, I felt a cool breeze on my skin.
The audience in the Hall of the Tree was going wild. The cheers were causing the lights stretched out across the water to vibrate.
“How often can you do that?” I asked my friend.
“Not forever,” was the dark reply. “Only two or three more times, and then it will kill you.”
“Why?”
“Limited concepts! Difficult!”
“Try!”
“I draw on you . . . your unused capacity. You are a smaller sentient than I am used to.”
“Sentient?”
“Intelligent being. The Fand wasn’t—not intelligent. You are, but small. Your capacities are finite.”
“How soon is dawn?”
“Good! Soon! That might save you!”
“I hope.”
The cheers were dying down, but I saw something that boded ill for me. The heads of all the great houses were gathered together on one platform. I looked down at my right arm and saw the wound I had taken was crusted over and partially healed. I gripped the sword hilt near the guard and tried to relax my grip on it, but my fingers were a claw.
“Just as well you don’t,” my companion told me. “Flex your fingers a little. Try to relax, but don’t let go.”
The hall was silent now. Every eye was on me or the platform where the family heads gathered. They were arguing violently among themselves. Five seemed agreed on something, but there were two holdouts.
At length the two—the gold and bronze—gave in and they formed a circle, arms over one another’s shoulders, red, black, white, gold, silver, bronze, glass. I felt a wave of cold fly through my body. The sensation was rather like the one I felt when I jumped through the first warrior’s body.
The lamps above dimmed, the light turned to shadow, and I saw light was beginning to brighten the white towers that were the pinnacle of the city. Then the lights came up again and the circle broke open. There was a warrior standing in a spot that had been empty before.
He wore motley; that is, the colors of all the seven families. One leg was black, the other red. One side of his torso gold, the other silver. One arm white, the other bronze. His helm was glass.
I heard a sort of sigh sweep over the crowd. The face covered by the glass helm was that of a skull. The voice was so loud I think everyone in the hall could hear every word clearly.
“Maiden! Prepare yourself! I am the one, the only, the never defeated bridegroom. Death!”
Lancelot and the Lady of the Lake found the sorcerer gone.
“Oh, fine!” he said. “Now you’ve lost him.”
“I haven’t lost anything, you twit,” she said.
He was biting into a ripe peach he’d just taken from the table on the porch of her dwelling and admiring the glass bowl he’d summoned to convince her of his new powers. As usual the beach was white, the sun was shining, and a cooling breeze was blowing off the water.
“Paradise,” he said. “Maybe Cregan was right.”
“No,” she said. “There’s too much human in you. First you’d get bored, then you’d get crazy.”
“I didn’t tell you what Cregan said,” he pointed out mildly.
“You didn’t have to. I know what Cregan would say,” she snapped back as she was looking carefully up and down the beach in both directions. “Shut up and help me look for him. He can’t have gotten far.”
Lancelot sighed and was disturbed by a vague sense of something missing as he finished the peach. He took off his helmet and threw it up in the air. It became a raven and landed on the table with the food. It gazed at him with glowing red eyes.
“There’s another human around here.” He turned to her. “There aren’t a lot of humans here. Am I right in that supposition?”
“Yes,” she answered, folding her arms. “Far as I know, you, me, and Merlin are the only ones.”
“So one of us has gone missing. See if you can find him. And don’t take all day about it.” He was annoyed at being called a twit.
“Haughty, high and mighty, aren’t we?” the bird said.
“Please!” Lancelot added.
“That’s better,” the bird said. It took wing. It circled wider and wider, higher and higher, then vanished into the blue.
Lancelot helped himself to some bread, butter, and curd cheese, saying, “It probably won’t take him long. And while we’re waiting, why don’t you put on some clothes. I mean, we’re going to meet this sorcerer and surely you don’t want him to see you the way you are now.”
She glanced down at the gold and green willow dress, then looked him directly in the eye.
“You keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk to me. Listen up! Whatever I may look like to you, I am not—I repeat—not a human woman. And what I wear or don’t wear is none of your damn business. Is that clear?”
“I’m sorry, Your Majesty. Has your humble servant offended Your Ladyship? But I damn well don’t see why you’d want to parade around half-naked in front of that corrupt, dirty old man. What? Does it give you a thrill when he gets all excited looking at your . . . amplitude?”
“My what?” She was laughing.
“Amplitude!” he repeated stiffly.
“Hell, I’ve heard them called lots of things, some of them very vulgar. But nobody ever referred to my ‘amplitude’ before. No! Look, trust me. He doesn’t think of me as a woman. At least, not since I burned all his clothes off, then his beard and most of his hair.”
“You can do things like that?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You saw a lot of what I can do when I want to extend myself. And he was dirty. He was lousy. He had things crawling in his hair, another set in his beard, and an even more exclusive group around his groin. His clothes were trying to crawl away by themselves when I caught up with them and perpetrated another massacre.
“By then,” she added thoughtfully, “he was kicking and screaming like a two-year-old with a tantrum. I dunked him in the ocean four times. That quieted him down some. Then I held his nose and poured a potion down his throat. A potion that brought him back to his right senses. And when he sobered up, he was even more frightened than when he was out of his mind. I put some pressure on him to talk, and he sang like a happy bird. And speaking of birds . . .” Her voice trailed off as the raven circled and landed.
“About two miles down the beach, that way.” The bird jabbed its beak to the right, then became a bird-shaped helmet. The red eyes did as they usually did, glowed, gazed on the world for a long moment, then closed.
“He sounds disgusting,” Lancelot said.
“Humph! Speaking of disgusting, how long has it been since . . .”
Lancelot scratched his head. His short curly hair was stiff with dried perspiration, wood smoke, and grit.
“Too long,” he admitted, and entered her dwelling to use the pool.
After he’d scrubbed off most of the accumulated sludge, she joined him. They were washing each other when he said, “If you’re not a woman, I sure can’t tell it. Everything seems to be here and arranged for maximum enjoyment.”
She kissed him. His hands wandered delightfully and expertly as she did so.
Her breathing quickened.
“You’re getting better,” she gasped.
“I should be. I’m getting a lot of practice.”
“Oh, hush!” she said, and made a gesture. A big, soft, fluffy cloth appeared at the side of the pool. He lifted her and carried her to it.
They both made quite a few sounds after that, but neither said anything more. Not for a long time. Not until the afternoon sun found his face and shone in his eyes.
“I suppose we had better go talk to him,” he said.
They both got up. He was surprised when she donned a rose silk tunic deeply embroidered at the neck and hem with gold and pearls. It covered her from neck to ankles. She found a steel-gray silk one for him. It was fastened at shoulders by wolf-head pins and belted with gold-braid rope, thick with fine granulation.
“Where . . . ?” He pointed to her dress.
“Poppia. Nero’s wife,” she said. “She was cremated in it. The bastard gave her a magnificent funeral. He ought to have. He kicked her to death while she was pregnant. Kept kicking and punching at her belly until she miscarried and lost the child. The Greek physicians and midwives couldn’t stop the bleeding. She died that night. He was wild with grief.”
Lancelot looked down at his tunic in horror. “This . . . ?”
“Was an offering on someone’s funeral pyre. But the corpse wasn’t wearing it. The pins and belt came from a central Italian tomb.”
“You go places like that?” he gasped.
“I had business there, and don’t be a busybody. Besides, it would take hours to explain the circumstances of my visit. And yes, I go all sorts of places and don’t owe you any explanation for my activities. Shit!” she muttered. “You let them cop a feel, tumble around in the hay a few times, and they start acting like—”
“All right! All right! I get the picture,” he growled.
“No, you probably don’t,” she said grimly. “And you can feel free to disapprove all you want, but give it a rest. At least for right now.” She started down the beach in the direction the bird had indicated.
He followed. No matter how much she annoyed him sometimes, the afterglow of passionate lovemaking remained with him, and he found himself unable to stay angry with her. But the frequent reminders that she wasn’t truly human and that their relationship depended on her making allowances for him inspired a deep fire of jealous rage in his soul.
The Raven Warrior Page 49
