Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

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

  If only he could change himself, could slay the dark beast of his soul. When what you are will not suffice, be other. Other, other. The words echoed in him, and he focused on the glinting silver of his nails for a long time.

  Change, change. Be other. Be lustless. The flute seemed to scream a promise of endless pleasure, and the beast trembled for it. I am a beast. I am not a man. Only a monstrous beast.

  His sight seemed dimmer, and the music of temptation only a distant vibration. The woman knelt, horror-struck, and he put his head upon her lap. His body felt strange, cooler and longer somehow. Dylan wondered how he had gotten onto the floor. He did not remember lying down.

  He lifted his head and looked. Something silvery and scaled coiled around her legs. It flowed like running water. He bent his head towards it, and realized it was himself, a great argentine serpent, chastely embracing his beloved. Had he possessed the capacity, he would have laughed. What would Grandmother think?

  Aenor, wide-eyed, reached out a hand and touched his head. He flicked his tongue at her. Her eyes narrowed.

  “You misbegotten monsters! What have you done to him? I will not have it!” Her face flushed with rage and the cords stood out in her throat. Aenor squared her chin, glared at Margold and said, “Cease.”

  To Dylan it was a simple sound, and yet more than that.

  It seemed to resound through his body and the rocks of the cavern. There was a crashing noise, and he peered around. One wall of the chamber appeared to be disintegrating. A crystal lantern fell from the ceiling and smashed to shards as the wall behind it cracked. The harps jerked as if they were alive, then crumbled. There were screams, faint at first, then louder, as he returned to his man’s body, mother-naked on the floor of the cavern.

  He grabbed his cloak and covered himself, glancing quickly at the ruin of his hose, boots, and tunic. The White Folk were running for the exits in complete confusion. Where Margold had sat enthroned there was a huge stone. Blood leaked from under it, and one lavender-ringed hand lay beside it, the palm upturned in mute supplication.

  Aenor was still trembling with rage, and she glared at him. She breathed rapidly for a moment, then calmed herself a little. “They will come back.”

  Dylan belted his sword and pouch around his naked waist, turning aside that she might not glimpse his bare thighs. “No doubt. Shall we go?”

  “Where? They will look for us the way you came.” Dylan had the urge to smack her as he would one of his sisters for being provocative, a firm swat on the behind, and realized that it was more to release his still-aroused demon of desire than to hurt her. The enchantment the White Folk had put on him still lingered, and he knew it was not entirely of their making. It was a shame, really, that females were not as rutty as men. Then he thought of the way his mother sometimes looked at his father, even after twenty-some years, and decided that perhaps they were. Aenor’s throat was flushed with more than simple anger. She was looking at him, not at his face, but at his form beneath the cloak, a sidewise glance of speculation.

  “Do you often become a large, silver serpent?” she asked.

  “Only to avoid rape,” he replied. “At least, so far. I am new to shape-changing. I am sorry if I frightened you.”

  “It was not that,” she replied cryptically. “I felt so strange, like Eve in the Garden. You are a most handsome serpent, for your eyes remained the same. I have been a long time in this place and forgotten much that I knew. Is it common for folk to become other creatures now?”

  “No. You might say it is a family trait.” He picked up his pack.

  “How curious. And was your hand always argent?” “What?” Dylan held his hands out and saw that while the nails of the right remained faintly silver, the entire left hand now shone with it. He flexed it tentatively and found it still felt like flesh and blood, but stronger too. “No. Do you know your way around these caverns?”

  “No, I do not. For a long time I was unable to see at all outside the presence of the Queen’s influence. I ran away, but they always found me. The last time I had a guide, but they killed him.” She paused between sorrow and anger. “I killed his murderers,” she continued in a terrible voice, “but it did not bring me back my friend. I have slain two Queens as well, the old one and this creature, with my song, but it did not bring me back my friend. What use am I, that I bring death?”

  Dylan remembered the cleansing of Paris and understood her pain. “I regret, Lady Aenor, that I am not a bookish fellow with a quick answer to that question, which troubles me as well. Let us hope we can discuss it over wine and cakes in the clear light of day some time. Foi now, we must choose to try to retrace my steps, or to go in some other direction where these folk will not think to look.”

  A rustling noise sounded in the broken wall behind the throne, and a salamander emerged from it. Dylan watched the sensuous body move across the floor and half reached for his sword. Aenor bent to fondle the soft snout, to caress it in a manner which gave him a sharp pang of envy. It was so tender.

  “He says he can show us a path, though it is not an easy one.”

  Dylan looked at the broken remnants of his boots, opened his pack, and removed his soft shoes and his second pair of hoses and put them on. They were not suitable for caves, but they were all he had. Despite the chill, he left his other tunic off. It was unspeakably filthy. He made a mental note to undress before shape-shifting again, then laughed at such foolishness, and followed the woman and the beast out of the cavern.

  XVI

  They travelled downwards in silence for some time. Finally Aenor said, “I did not dream you were so . . . furry.”

  Dylan had thrown back his cloak on the left, to leave his sword hilt free, and his chest was half exposed. “I am sorry.”

  “Oh, no. It is rather nice, like a bear. Once a man came to our castle with a bear who danced. I thought it was cruel to keep a wild thing for amusement, but it was a friendly beast, so I do not suppose the man treated it badly. Still, if beasts have yearning, it must have longed for its forests. I have not thought of it for a long time.” She spoke in a child’s voice, half bemused.

  “Where was your castle?”

  “In a forest, near a river. I called the licomes, and they came to me.” She reached down and touched the jewelled hilt of her sword, and Dylan saw there was a braided cord hanging from the great, green gem. With a start, he realized he still carried the sheath of the sword in his pack. He had forgotten all about it in the enchantment of her eyes.

  Without pausing to consider, Dylan swung his pack down and pulled it out. The woman and the salamander stopped and looked back at him. Dylan held the interlaced scabbard and belt in his hands and reflected what a curious gift it was to give one’s beloved. If that was what she was.

  They were yet no more than companions in peril, and though he adored her fair face, he did not know her.

  Dylan extended the scabbard. “This will save your gown from further rain, milady.”

  There was no light except that cast by his aura, and Dylan realized that as far as he could perceive, Aenor did not have one. Like someone in Shadow. He peered, suddenly anxious that she might be some simulacrum devised by White Folk magic to betray him.

  Aenor stepped towards him clumsily, as if she could hardly see, and bent her head towards the object. There, at the crown of her skull, was the merest spark, like a bright jewel nestling in the golden hair, and he released his breath as her fingers closed around the scabbard. He knew that somehow the White Folk had confined her light to that single point, and he felt a warm rush of fury. What sort of people were they to be so fair and act so foul? Melusine had said they were proud, but this was a strange sort of deliberate cruelty he found outrageous. A man’s soul light was too precious to be hidden from view.

  She turned the scabbard over in her hands, traced the designs curiously with an elegant fingertip for a moment. “ ’Tis a handsome tiling,” she remarked, and twisted around to slide it over the sword. The cave walls s
eemed to sigh around them.

  Aenor gave a gasp and clutched her chest. Then she convulsed violently, her body jerking madly, as a gabbling scream came from her lips. Dylan leapt forward to support her just at the moment the spark of aura on her head burst into coruscating light around them both. He felt his flesh tingle as his muscles knotted and the hair on his chest and head literally stood on end with energy. It was a horrible, jolting sensation, like being lightning struck, and he fell to the floor with the woman clutched in his arms. She gave a little mewling whimper, like a sick cat, and shuddered all over for what seemed an eternity.

  It passed, finally, and they lay together on the cold, rocky floor, their arms embracing and the hilts of their two swords touching. Dylan could feel her heart pounding under his hand, and feel her ragged breath upon his bare chest. Her rainbow aura cast curious shadows on the wall of the corridor.

  A soft snout nosed between them. Dylan felt a moist tongue flick his forehead. Aenor gave a slightly hysterical giggle.

  “What?”

  “He says this is not the time or place for coupling,” she replied.

  “Oh. A bed would be better, true.”

  Dylan released her hold, rose, and helped her to her feet. She was shaky and unsteady. “Are you ill?” He found he could not bring himself to ask her outright if she was subject to fits or had the falling sickness.

  “No. But when I placed the scabbard upon the sword, it was as if something in me broke, like a crystal flagon shattering to bits. It must have been one of the spells they chanted on me, though I thought myself free of their bindings. I can see now clearly, not dimly, as before.” She seemed thoughtful and distant suddenly.

  They followed the salamander through great galleries of silent stone, the ceilings lost in darkness. Dylan ignored the constant stubbing of his poorly protected toes on rocks and pebbles, as he thought about what had occurred. It slowly dawned on him that his chivalry had been perhaps ill-judged. He had, in some way, departed from the plans which had been set in motion long before he had been bom. He could almost hear some goddess, the cryptic Bridget who had dragged his mother into her adventure perhaps, gnashing firm white teeth.

  Once, in a rare, candid moment, his father had said, “The deities are very able at grand scheming. The little details, however, such as the way mortals behave, elude them. Little pebbles that bring a great device to a grinding rain. When I died—the immortal of me died, I mean—the sword returned to your mother, because she was its keeper. That was as it should be. But she bestowed it a second time, upon King Arthur, and that, I am certain, was not what Bridget had in her mind. The sword is surrendered by the keeper to a man she deems worthy of herself. We each paid our price, for it was a fair exchange of gifts, though I did not think so at the time. I wanted my freedom, my power, or so it seemed. Well, if I must bend a knee to anything, I would rather it be my Eleanor than otherwise.” Doyle had sighed deeply over his wine cup. “Women are the greatest mystery, son.”

  Dylan recalled that Doyle had possessed the sheath of the Fire Sword, and that it had been a marriage gift to Eleanor. Now he suspected that some important detail of the story had been suppressed or eluded him, and he realized that the sword which Aenor bore held no particular fascination for him. He did not want it. Perhaps it was the faint air of regret his father expressed whenever he spoke of the Fire Sword. Or the sometimes shouted accusation of his mother, during heated arguments. “You never really wanted me. It was that damned sword you were after,” she would scream, her voice echoing through Avebury Hall to where Dylan was trying not to hear. The battles were infrequent, but enough to make him think that the magical sword had wounded their marriage in some fashion he could not quite discern.

  So, let Aenor keep the sword. He would be content with a lesser blade and no midnight battles of rage and doubt. Let the plans of the goddesses go hang. Still, he wished he could speak to Sal or Beth for counsel.

  “What is the number of the year?” Aenor asked, scattering his thoughts.

  “Twelve forty-one, milady.”

  “Then, I am sixty-seven as the world counts years, though I think time has just begun again for me. Who are you?”

  “I am Dylan d’Avebury, a knight of Albion and Franconia as well.”

  “Who rules Albion? My loathsome Uncle John or his vile get? And who rules Franconia?”

  “No, John is many years dead. My mother had the dubious honor of slaying him.”

  “Good for her!”

  Dylan was .startled by the vehemence. “Albion’s king is Arthur, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet and his wife Constance.”

  She turned towards him, her face glowing and her eyes begemmed with unshed tears even in the soft lights of their auras. “My brother lives! A miracle. How did he ever escape my uncle’s ambition? Is he a good king? He was somewhat ill-tempered and headstrong as a boy. Tell me everything!”

  Dylan chuckled at her eagerness, and told her how Arthur had been enchanted by John’s magic for twenty years, released by the efforts of his mother and father; of the Fire Sword, and the death of John upon the broken bridge over the Thames. He said it simply, wishing he had the gift of tale making.

  “You speak as if you had been there.”

  “I was, but safe in my mother’s belly, yet. But I have heard the tale often, or bits of it, on winter evenings around the table. And, too, I have heard the King’s own version, a fine lay of many stanzas.”

  “Now, that is an even greater miracle, for he used to squirm and fidget while the minstrels played, and pleat his tunic hem when the troubadours declaimed. But, is he a good King?”

  “He is. Albion prospers under his rule. Is it so important to you?”

  “Yes. And the Darkness? What of it?”

  “Albion is free of it, but Franconia is still greatly shadowed. Still, the new king, Louis, has determined to cleanse the land, if he must make a river of blood to do it.

  Which it will require, I think.” Dylan gave only half his attention to his words, for he was busy realizing that his companion was not only several years his elder in time, but a royal Princess, the sister of a reigning monarch, and hardly marriage fodder for a minor knight. Even if his mother had accepted the duchy Arthur had offered her, it would not be sufficient. A black mood began to gnaw at him. She was Alianora of Brittany and he was a nobody.

  He wondered if the Fates would play such a cruel trick on him to send him on the quest, to let him begin to care for this fair creature but deny him the reward of her love. They were, after all, three old women, and the rich heritage of his mother’s many stories contained many with unhappy endings. If only Aenor had not looked right into his eyes, without the sidelong, demure flirting of most females! That will teach me to fall in love with a dream, he thought bitterly, as he envisioned a hermitlike existence as the Lord of the Forest broken only by chaste interludes with the Lady of the Birches. Worse, he saw himself as a grumpy old bachelor stumping around Avebury Hall kicking dogs and snarling at his sisters, who would probably marry and move away, leaving him alone. Eventually he would die, unmoumed, and his nieces and nephews would breathe a sigh of relief and divide the holding between them.

  Dylan focussed so intently on this lugubrious scenario that he did not respond to the woman’s words until she demanded his attention.

  “Dylan!” His name sounded wonderful on her lips. “Yes? What?”

  “You are very far away.”

  “Just some foolish woolgathering, milady.”

  “But so sad! The White Folk have sad songs and happy ones, but their faces do not display it. When 1 looked at you the first time, your eyes were so happy, so glad, as if you were pleased to look at me. Your mouth curled in such a smile.”

  “I was very glad to see you milady.”

  She gave a little snort, a delicate yet clearly impatient noise. “Do not ‘milady’ me, pray. That is not a word for friends.”

  Almost boiling with frustration and his own sense of despair, Dylan swore. “Dam
n all women! I do not want to be your friend."

  Aenor shrank away a little. “Forgive me. I misunderstood the smile of your eyes.” She drew herself a bit taller, a dignified withdrawal into regal reserve. “I need no one.”

  Her voice betrayed the hurt the words were intended to conceal, and Dylan wished there was a convenient abyss to fling himself into for his sad want of good manners. How could he have been so unkind?

  “Forgive me. I . . . presumed to care for you before we met, and now I realize my error.”

  “What? I do not please you? I am ugly? I have an unruly temper?” She fairly sparkled with anger.

  “No, no. But you are a . . . Princess, the sister of my King, and not for me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Arthur would never permit such an alliance.”

  “Pah! My little brother can sit on the throne of heaven for all I care. How dare you set him between us!”

  Dylan groaned. Once, when Doyle had been abed with a flux, Dylan had asked him how he felt. “As if I had an argument about something logical with your mother, ’ ’ was the reply. He had not understood at the time.

  “I cannot do anything right it seems. You have been a long time down here, but surely you cannot have forgotten that a woman of your rank cannot wed as she chooses.” “I am a cow that the farmer leads to the right bull? I must marry a King or take the veil? I have been a captive in these halls for decades, and I shall not exchange it for another prison. My mother had such a cage, for she bore my father such loathing I wonder at my own existence. I refused a fat German princeling and a Flemish count who was dull. 1 will dispose myself as 1 choose.”

  Dylan was shocked at the soles of his inadequate footwear. Women, except his mother, were fragile creatures, to be given at the whim or need of their fathers or uncles or brothers. He remembered that her father had died when she was fairly young, and he had a few memories of her termagant mother, Constance, from his days as a page in Arthur’s court, enough to lay the blame for this aberration at that woman’s door.