Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  It was a pool, perhaps tens ells across, smooth as a mirror. The licome bent its head to drink, and Dylan caught the wavery reflection of its horn as the muzzle made circular ripples in the water. Dylan knelt and drank and laved his face. Then he undid the napkin from around a sweet loaf which Rowena had given him, and wet the napkin with cool water and washed the licome’s cuts. The beast suffered these ministrations stolidly, without any equinelike pleasure in the attentions it was receiving.

  “Here. Let me get that stuff off your horn,” Doyle said.

  The licome snorted, but bowed its great head so Dylan could reach the spiral of black and white. The bone was hard and cool beneath his chill fingers, and he washed away the dried blood and nameless bits of tissue that clung to the turnings. He gazed into the silver eyes for a long moment when he was done, seeing there a sort of intelligence that was neither human nor bestial, then rinsed out the fine linen, wrung it out and tucked it into his belt to dry. One day on the road and already I am a clothes line, he thought, grinning.

  The licorne headed away around the pool and he grabbed his bundles and followed it. He wished he could have brought a couple of horses and a squire with him, but the captain of the little ship had refused him passage for his steed, and no squire could be found who would dare the dangers of Shadow-hidden Franconia. Prince Geoffrey would have come, but his father had forbidden it, of course, and Isabeau of Flanders would have looked unkindly upon such an adventure.

  The trees seemed greater beyond the pool, silent giants of deadly yew and spreading oak. Night stole into the darkness of the forest as if it were an intruder into the dim world beneath the branches. So busy was Dylan avoiding fallen branches that he barely noticed when a path opened between the trees. Only when he was well into an avenue of stately yews, two columns of silent sentinels, did he realize that he had passed out of the world of nature and back into the world of men.

  Ahead, a dark outline against the sky, Dylan could make out a structure. A keep by the shape of it. The licome lengthened its stride a little, free of obstacles, and he had to trot to keep up with it. He was panting and sweaty by the time they reached the yawning gates.

  There was a courtyard beyond the gates, empty of all but leaves and a well with a broken cover. Beyond it the door of the tower stood ajar. Dylan paused a moment, sniffing the air like a hound. There was only the faint sound of the breeze, the clop of the licome’s hooves on the cobblestones, and the smell of dust and leaves. Still, he put one hand on the hilt of his sword as he walked towards the entrance.

  The great hall was dim and empty, though the light of his own spirit, his aura, cast enough of a glow to reveal the grosser features. The reeds strewn upon the floor were dry and brittle, and the trestle table was bare except for a couple of gleaming trenchers, two goblets, and a flagon. It had the look of a place just vacated, and he puzzled that anyone would leave behind silver trenchers. The two great fireplaces were filled with logs, and he walked towards one, wishing he had his mother’s gift of making fire with her will alone. Bridget’s Fire, she called it, and said it was a gift of the goddess, but his father insisted it was something which might be learned, like riding a horse, in time. Magics, Doyle claimed, were nothing more than natural abilities coupled with hard work. Dylan had long before realized he had no natural affinity for fire, and carried flint and steel with him instead.

  He knelt before the cavernous fireplace and opened his belt pouch. It held a whetstone for his sword and his flints. He peered under the logs but there appeared to be no kindling, so he thrust some of the dessicated floor reeds under one log and started striking.

  So intent was he upon his task that he did not hear the faint slither of something being dragged across the reed-strewn floor until it was almost beside him. He whirled to his feet, sword drawn, eyes wide, his mind making pictures of dragons and great, deadly worms.

  A woman stood before him, a faint glitter of blue light around a sad-faced female of indeterminate age. She was pretty in an odd sort of way, her face too long and narrow for real beauty, her eyes wide and unblinking. The woman’s hair, if it was hair—the dim light made it difficult to be certain—seemed to have been cut in tiny half circles, like fish scales, and seemed a color which was neither blue nor green. She smiled, displaying what seemed like a great many teeth, and Dylan felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle.

  His mother had always told him to try being courteous first and draw his blade second, so Dylan forced a smile onto his face and bowed from the waist.

  “Good evening, milady.”

  “Is it? I suppose it must be, if you say so. Still, I never was one for putting qualities on time, you see. If it were raining, would you say ‘bad evening’? Still and all, a fire would be nice. Well, not nice, precisely. Fire isn’t anything but hot and hotter. Except her fire, of course, but you and I have no feeling for that element, do we?”

  The lady moved a little closer to him as she babbled, and the long train of her gown moved oddly, as if she had some beast concealed beneath it. She extended a hand towards him in a friendly manner, and he saw that there were tiny webs at the base of her fingers and that her nails were long and clawlike. Her gown rippled like water below her long waist.

  Dylan swallowed in a very dry throat. He felt the sweat break out under his arms and he had an urge to either pull out his sword or run. Instead, he said, “No, my mother is very good with fire, her fire, as you put it, but I am not.”

  “Yes, yes. You do take after your father more, as your sisters are like your mother. Are you surprised? I see you are. That is one of the things denied me—surprise. It seems a great gift, that ability to know what is ahead. Let me tell you, it gets quite tiresome always knowing what is going to happen. By the time it finally does, you are bored to eternity with the whole thing.” She gave a great sigh and smiled again.

  Dylan suspected it was meant to be reassuring, but he still felt uneasy. She had such sharp teeth. At the same time, he felt he ought to know who she was, that his mother’s capacious store of tales should offer him some clue to her identity. His mind felt like cold oatmeal, so he turned back to the fireplace and got a small blaze working.

  He rose, dusting ash and reed from his palms and knees, and found her still standing patiently behind him.

  “It must be very lonely for you here,” he said quietly.

  “Yes. Once this place was the gayest keep in all the land, full of music and dance. I miss the dance the most, I think, and the intrigues of the court. Still, all things pass away in time. Well, most things. I do not, unfortunately. I endure, like some old song that everyone has almost forgotten. Come, let us drink a glass to time.” She gestured towards the board.

  Dylan, remembering his manners, offered her his arm, and she laid a webbed and clawed hand lightly along his forearm, so they made a stately progress across the crackling reeds. Her hand was cool through the cloth of his tunic. He held a chair while she arranged her body into it, and saw a glimpse of something like a serpent’s tail before it was hidden again by the folds of her gown.

  The lady poured wine from a crystal flagon, a sharp, flinty white that had a tang of sunshine in its nose. “I seem to have lost my talent for putting mortals at ease.”

  “I beg your pardon, my lady. You are a rare puzzle and—”

  “And like all mortals you must have an answer to it. Curiosity is another odd feature of your kind.” She sipped daintily from her goblet, then fixed him with an unwinking gaze. “I am not your foe, Dylan d’Avebury.”

  “No, I suppose not, but one may be neither a friend nor a foe.”

  “Ah, the endless alliances of men, with their accompanying betrayals. I am beyond such matters. I am old and endless, and I was once foolish enough to love one such as yourself. He is dust, long since, and I am alone. The halls of memory grow very dreary when all is said and done.” “If you say so. You are not, by any chance, a relation of my grandmother?”

  She laughed. “Goodness, no. Though
I can see how you might make that mistake. Oh, perhaps in the beginning of time we were, but I am from the line of Draconis, which is somewhat different than Orphiana’s. We are of the waters, not the earth.”

  Dylan felt a jiggle of memory, a tale of a dragon-woman who had married some ruler of Franconia. What was her name? She had made her husband promise that he would never try to see her upon Saturday, and when he had violated his vow, she turned into a dragon and flew away forever, leaving behind several children, one of whom was a supposed ancestor of Arthur Plantagenet. Melinda? Melissa? Not quite. “Melusine,” he said suddenly.

  “I have been called that, yes. I have drifted into legend, but I still remain, trapped between the worlds. I cannot die, but neither can I really live. It is quite tedious.” She sounded very matter-of-fact about it. “Sometimes I am almost tempted to put on my aspects and fly around terrifying the peasants, just to relieve the boredom.” The train of her gown rustled and the cloth slid back revealing a strong tail with sharp barbs at the end. “But the few souls who live nearby are already so frightened of the dreadful place that Franconia has become that I am not sure they would even notice me. And besides, I never found much good in frightening folk. It makes them angry, and they dash about with torches and make a dreadful mess.”

  Dylan laughed. She sounded like a harried housewife. Peasants, it appeared, were the same everywhere, patient, hardworking, and eager to destroy anything that seemed unreal or unusual. “Yes, and they always track in mud,” he said.

  Melusine grinned, a frightening sight, and he wondered how that ancient King had fallen in love with such a smile. Perhaps she appeared differently then. “It is good to hear laughter. I miss it so much sometimes. And now I will tell you a tale. You need more wine. You know of the great swords, the Swords of Power, which were made by Orphiana’s lover just before time started?”

  “I know of the Fire Sword, which my mother and my father once bore, and which now belongs to Albion’s King.”

  “That is one, yes. There are others. The one you seek is quite a different weapon. When it was made, the smith set a great, green gem into the hilt. Many ages passed— always—and when the time of man began, the White Folk made their bargain with the gods for everlasting life, the fools. That was before my time, but they should have known better. They took this sword away with them into the caverns—at great cost—and wrested the stone from the hilt and set it to be the sun of their spired city of crystals. This was done by great magics such as the world will never know again, and many of them perished.”

  “Wait, please. I thought you just said they were immortal?”

  “I told you it was a poor bargain. Death is undeniable. Everything perishes eventually. Even Orphiana will pass one day, and the earth with her. These folk were already long-lived, but when they saw the advent of mankind, short-lived but fecund, they thought only to outlast them. They disdained the Clay Folk, as they called you, sure that man would destroy himself in his haste, his impatience, and his curiosity, and then they would again hold sway. They are a proud race, a haughty folk who wish only to

  rule. They thought it was their right as elders, and they could not understand that time was passing them by. So, they petitioned the Lord of the Living, first asking that he negate his new creation, and failing that, that he grant them the boon of everlasting life.”

  Melusine paused and her strange eyes seemed to darken. Dylan refilled her goblet, fascinated, and she drank. “It is not wise to attract the notice of the gods. He made them a cruel bargain. They would not grow old, he said, but neither would they bear offspring except from the loins of other races. And they must relinquish their forests and glades for the bowels of earth, and see the sun no more.” She sighed. “It was no bargain. It was an edict. They cried out against it, but it was too late. They had angered him by asking that he destroy man, and he took a slow, terrible vengeance upon them.” She heaved a great sigh, and her tail stirred across the dried rushes bn the floor.

  ‘ ‘The Lord of the Living is just but not kind. Never kind. ’ ’ Dylan knew she spoke of herself, not the strange folk of her story now, and he thought he had never heard such sorrow in a voice before. It must be dreadful to be alone as she was, solitary and friendless. Unthinkingly, he reached out a hand and patted hers gently.

  Melusine roused, as if she had been musing, and gave him a faint smile. “But, I digress. The beryl was made into a false sun and the elves made the best they could of a poor bargain. They sang their songs and danced their dances and risked the light of night—for they avoid the sun like death itself—to ensnare the occasional mortal deemed fair enough to be an object of their love.” She hesitated. “I think it was need of story stuff that drove them, for they have no love for Clay Men, in truth; but for a folk of song there must be a source, and forbidden love is perhaps the greatest well-pool of minstrel lays to be found. And they loved, I suppose, in their way, the mortals who became the objects of their interest. A strange sort of love but love nonetheless. And even that was betrayed.

  “There was a great prince of elvish kind who developed a terrible passion for a human female who was quite beautiful but also monstrously stupid.” Melusine chuckled. “She could not come up with the same sum twice counting her own toes. But she was beautiful, and the White Folk have always been great ones for seeing no more than the surface. They did not see, when they looked at man, the spirit which bums within him, that soul which sets him apart from all previous creations, but only saw his dim eyes and hairy cheeks and great, tearing teeth. She was pretty, and she demanded great boons of this Alfgar before she would submit to his lust. Not, you see, that she was terribly virtuous, but she was shrewd and full of low cunning. And once, in jest, she demanded the sun for a bride-gift.

  “Alfgar was quite maddened with desire, and he was fairly young as the White Folk go, and not very wise. But cunning, like the woman. They were well matched. At this time there was war amongst the elves, for having been denied sunlight and offspring they had fallen to fighting amongst themselves, as children will do on a rainy day when they have too little to occupy them. And Alfgar stole the beryl in such a fashion that each side supposed the other to have done the deed, and the Crystal City was destroyed and the White Ones much diminished by their strife. Alfgar ran away to his silly ladylove and offered her the beryl. She took it and spread her legs for him—once. It was enough. Nine moons later she bore a daughter, and when that daughter grew to womanhood, she received the hilt-stone of the sword as well. And, so it has gone for untold generations—each mother gifting daughter or granddaughter with the accursed thing and the White Ones bending every effort to recover it—forgetting what price they paid to use it in the first place. Long life does not always mean wisdom.” She drained her cup, weary and tired looking now. Her face seemed less and less human as the night advanced, but there was a sort of splendor about it, a courage he admired.

  Dylan found his hand still lay over hers, and he could feel the delicate webbing between her fingers. He refilled her goblet again. “A strange tale, milady, and one even my mother did not know. I hope 1 shall tell it to her one day, for she will like it. She has told me many stories of elves, but none such as these White Folk.”

  “You seek the Sword of Earth and she who holds it. She is captive in the caverns of the White Folk, frozen in time, unaging, even as I am. Sometimes I would cry out at my fate, would scream at this wretched existence, and so I am touched by her plight. Or perhaps I meddle out of ennui. If any deity offers you eternal life, young Dylan, refuse it. Forever is too long to be friendless and alone.” Melusine drank deeply, and he thought her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Dylan tried to think of something comforting to say, but failed. “You must have loved him very much.”

  “I did, I did. I made myself fair to his eyes, eschewing my natural form except for the one day, and now I am neither one thing or the other, neither truly a woman nor yet a dragon. It is a punishment for trying to deny my nature, I suppose.” Sh
e cast him a piercing look. “There is much you do not know yet about your own.”

  “Does any man know himself?”

  “If you do not leam your soul’s secrets, they will destroy you. But you must seek the sheath of the sword before vou seek the sword itself, Dylan.”

  "Anomer hunk of my grandmother’s hide, I suppose,” he answered, thinking of the gaudy scabbard of the Fire Sword. “Sal did not mention that.”

  “Goddesses! They are all the same! Cryptic. I believe they fear to lose their mystery if they speak plainly. Or perhaps they cannot. Your Sal is good enough as her kind go, but that is not saying a great deal.”

  “Tell me, if you will be so kind, of this sheath.” “When the smith made the swords, he drew from the elements such essence—pah, no human tongue possesses the right words—such essence that the world itself was imperiled by its existence. And Orphiana gave of herself, of her body and spirit, to restore the balance. A sword must always have its sheath, as a man must have his mate. It lies somewhere near Paris, but more than that I cannot tell you.”

  “I thank you, gracious Melusine, and only regret I have no way to repay your hospitality,” Dylan answered, somewhat chagrined to find himself going to Paris despite his intention to avoid it.

  “Ah, Dylan of the gentle heart, you have gifted me most nobly by your sweetness and your touch upon my hand. The sound of your voice has healed my weary heart, for oftimes, I should have died of loneliness in this living tomb. Were I as wicked as legend makes me, I would dare the wrath of your formidable mentor and keep you for myself. But I will not. If I but had the power, I should bring this hall alight with tapers and brighten it with lyres and tympanum, and we should dance away the rest of the brief night.”

  “But ... did you not have two children who went with you ... I mean . . .”