Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

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

  He found the thought intolerable, and he wanted to wrap his huge hands around Aenor’s lovely throat and demand her secrets, her very soul. Dylan glanced at her profile, at the unmarred flesh above the bones, the dark line of eye lash against her skin, and knew that if he lived to be a thousand, he would never know more of his beloved than he did at that moment. It was both terribly, heartbreak-ingly sad, and completely right.

  “In the end, Aenor, there is only now.”

  She gave him a sparkling look, a smile that cheered and frightened him, and nodded. “True. But how did you get so wise in so few years?”

  “Wise! Hardly that. But even when men create machines to command time, they will still have only now.” “Machines?” Aenor was wide-eyed.

  Dylan frowned, unsure if his mother’s stories were history or fable, the ones about that future of flying ships and boxes that kept food fresh for years, then shrugged. It was all the same for him. So he told her a tale as they moved through the woods, and another as they passed a little hamlet where the cottage doors slammed as they went by.

  The grey day was fading into twilight when they decided to stop. Dylan’s feet ached from the narrow boots, and he longed for a horse, or the great licorne he had left near the entrance to the realm of the White Folk. Aenor was quiet and she drooped with exhaustion. He cursed himself for not seeing it sooner, then realized it was she who had pressed forward without pause.

  They spread out their cloaks—Dylan’s well-worn but now clean one, and another somewhat moth-eaten but serviceable that Brenna had given Aenor—in a pine-needled clearing. She stretched out, pillowed her head on a bent arm, and stared at the sky. Tears trickled out of the comers of her eyes.

  Dylan viewed this phenomenon with dismay. Women, in his experience, cried for such a remarkable variety of reasons—for anger, joy, or sadness—that he could not fathom the cause, though he searched himself for some error or misdeed. After a moment he could not bear it, and reached out his silvery hand to brush the offending moisture from her cheeks.

  Aenor smiled. “The world is so beautiful, even grey it is more beautiful than I remembered. What an agony to never look upon the sky, the sun, to never hear the birds. My song seems quite pitiful by comparison.”

  Relieved that these were tears of happiness, Dylan patted her hand and watched several forest creatures come out to pay him homage. It was still a strange sensation to find rabbits and foxes tamed by his very presence. Aenor might have been invisible or nonexistent for all the notice they gave her as they frolicked across his legs, the natural enmities between their kinds forgotten. Weary from the walking, he stretched out beside Aenor and fell asleep.

  A howl echoed across the woods, a bloodcurdling sound in the stillness. He snapped awake into complete night and sat up abruptly. The small animals which had blanketed his body—hares, squirrels, foxes, and a solitary badger— scattered and scurried off into the darkness as the fearful cry was repeated by several voices. Aenor was on her feet, hand on sword hilt, quivering with alertness, before the last of them had vanished. Dylan stood beside her.

  There were hoofbeats and the snort of horses, the jingle of bridle rings, and the savage growling of large animals. Wolves by their voices, he thought, puzzled. Dylan glanced toward the sky, but the starry track of the Milky Way was just a faint gleam, not the vivid river which had brought the hell hounds upon him before.

  A dozen figures rode forward, cloaked and muffled, their auras nearly invisible, their faces shadowed by their hoods. Behind them a restless collection of large beasts moved—wolves, bears and red-eyed wild boars—all roaring or growling. The leading man lifted a hand, and silence descended.

  He brushed away the hood and looked at Dylan. Pers Morel’s long, elegant face seemed worn and weary. “I believed you dead, Chevalier Sable. ’ ’

  “No.”

  “And you, Aenor. Must I drag you back down to the caverns a second time?”

  “So it was you who stole me from my bed. Husband, I believe my grievance preceeds yours by some decades, and I demand the right to slay this mongrel.”

  Dylan was caught between his fear for her safety and his fair assurance of her ability to survive. “My lady, I wish you will not sully your noble blade with this creature’s foul blood,” he answered.

  Morel laughed. “You foolish children, to believe you can stand against me.” He raised his hands and made a swirling gesture.

  For a second Dylan felt dizzy. Then his wild self woke with a suddenness that cramped his guts like a flux. His brow ached with the energy of the stag and the sacred cross as well, and the two warred for a long, almost unendurable moment. He gritted his teeth and bound them together with his will, although it felt like an iron stake being driven into his skull. No damn hedge wizard was going to push him around.

  Beside him, Aenor gasped for air, as if she was being strangled. Her hand clutched at her throat and her eyes were wide with terror. Morel laughed like a madman. Dylan plucked one of Beth’s leaves from his pouch and pressed it against the slender column of her throat as Morel shouted a command.

  The pack of beasts surged forward around the mounted Guardians of the Way, baying, howling, and grunting their challenges. Aenor took a normal breath and he turned to face the attack, pulling his sword to battle them as a man. For a second he forgot the power of his beast-self.

  As the lead wolf, a huge grey animal, a very king of wolves, prepared to spring at him, Dylan paused, drew air into his lungs, and lifted his empty hand. The wolf froze and howled, and the rest of the pack stiffened in mid motion. The howl became a whimper, a piteous sound in so noble a creature, and it fawned at Dylan’s feet like a puppy.

  Morel gestured frantically, but the pack did not obey him. He turned towards his companions and they urged their horses forward to attack. The animals reared and tossed their heads as if reluctant to enter the fray, and one rider was unseated before the rest dismounted, leaving Morel alone upon his horse. It stood statuelike, deaf to his orders and unmoved by quirt or spurs applied with fiendish energy.

  Dylan commanded. He used neither word nor gesture. His beast-wili simply turned the pack, and with a horrendous communal bellow, they swarmed back the way they had come, ravaging the approaching men with great claws, sharp fangs, and deadly tusks. The riderless horses went mad, some dashing off into the forest, the rest lashing out at the maddened animals which were attacking without discrimination. In a minute the glade was a charnel house of rended men and bleeding horses. The pack scattered into the woods, their fury spent, fleeing Dylan’s mastery as much as anything else.

  Morel remained untouched upon his horse somehow, an expression of rage and confusion on his features. He gave a glance at his dead or dying companions, and bent his head forward for a moment. Then he dismounted and pushed his cloak back. He pulled his sword in a confident gesture, every inch a fearsome fighter, easy and graceful in his movements.

  “Before I kill you, you really must tell me what sort of misbegotten creature you are,” he almost purred.

  Dylan looked at him and felt a curious sadness. He was not angry at Morel any longer, for what the man had worked to preserve was already in ruins below the very earth they stood on. The White Folk were dying; Brenna de Chanterelle would never have her vengeance or the love she longed for. He had Aenor, but at a great price which he knew would haunt him until he was laid to rest in the bosom of his grandmother. It seemed such a horrible waste.

  The leather pouch on his belt was suddenly very heavy and wriggled as if it was alive. Suspecting some further magic, he glanced down at it. A tawny triangular head popped out of the opening followed by a soft paw. At the same moment he recalled the ending of one of his mother’s tales.

  “Why, I am King of the Cats,” he said, as the animal leapt from his pouch, fell to the ground in a graceful bound, and grew to an astonishing size in a moment. It attacked Pers Morel with huge claws and sharp teeth, and the man screamed and brought the edge of his sword against its torso
. The two figures wrestled desperately for a moment, and Dylan found Aenor clutching his arm in horror.

  Morel struggled, then pulled a small knife from his belt and stabbed at the great cat until it bled in several places. Finally he shoved the knife under the heavy torso and stabbed the beast in the heart as it sank its teeth into his throat and tore the flesh apart. The two fell as one and the cat vanished.

  Brenna du Chanterelle lay upon the bloody breast of Pers Morel, her arms around his shoulders in a lover’s cmbrace, her red-smeared mouth curved in a terrible smile. Her dishevelled black hair spread out softly, and they might have been asleep except for the gaping tear in Morel’s throat and the many wounds on the woman’s body.

  Aenor sobbed against Dylan’s shoulder and he almost felt like joining her. Instead he held her close and comforted her with clumsy pats and meaningless words. Finally she calmed.

  “Oh, Dylan, he ... he stole my voice. It was horrible, as if he had taken my very soul, and I hated him.”

  “There, there. It is over now,” he said inadequately. He remembered the instant when Morel’s magic had rendered him powerless and understood how she felt.

  “But that,” she said pointing a shaking hand at the corpses, “that is worse.” She shivered all over and took

  her cloak up from the ground, pulling it around her. “Vengeance is horrible. Let us leave here quickly.”

  “Surely.” Dylan recovered his cloak and felt a soft nose butt him in the back as he stood up. Morel’s horse nickered softly, and bent its head reverently. Three of the j other horses crowded around them, their flanks slashed here and there, but less hurt than he would have expected. I They ignored Aenor and blew warm, horsey kisses into his face.

  Dylan gathered their reins and turned them aside. He helped the woman mount and grinned at the lovely sight | her long legs exposed as the skirt rode up over the saddle.

  He got on Morel’s big black animal and felt something he I had never experienced before, a sense of oneness with the beast which was quite uncanny. It was not the wild part of Dylan which responded, but his very human self. This was simply the best horse he had ever ridden, and he loved it I with a passion approaching that he held for Aenor. They rose slowly into the west towards Angers and another day.

  XX

  Morning came with a thick pall of mist which rose off the river like an Albionese fog. The air was still and breathless, and Dylan looked towards the west for some sign of an approaching storm. There was nothing but sickly greyness, and the rising sun behind them was an amber orb.

  Aenor stood in her stirrups and leaned forward, sniffing. “Do you smell smoke?”

  Dylan scented the air and caught the rank odor of rotting vegetation, sewage, and just a whiff of wood smoke. “A little, yes. Why?”

  “I smell a great deal of it.”

  “Your lovely nose is clearly a finer organ than my own.”

  “Is it? Dylan, I fear Angers is burning.”

  “Perhaps Louis has come to the city already and departed for somewhere else.” He hoped that he would somehow avoid another meeting with the King, despite his promise to return and fight the Shadow.

  ‘ ‘Is he not your friend? When you told us your tale you spoke well of him.”

  “He is a great man, and his soul is as pure as any, but he is still a King. Worse, he is a King who serves God, so he can make the pretense that what he chooses is not his own will, but that of the Lord. A King, a priest, and a mage. That is a dangerous combination, I think, and I sense too that more draws him to Angers than the force of Shadow. Brenna du Chanterelle is not the only one who seeks the future in dark crystals.”

  “Are you afraid of him, my love?”

  “I am afraid of any man who wields great powers and who answers only to God. And I do not care for magic.” Aenor nodded and reached across and touched his hand. “Shall I abjure the power of the song within me?”

  “No! I am not so mean spirited that I would ask you to deny a part of yourself. Louis is an honorable man, but he is only a man. That is what disturbs me. He will see you as a prize, a pawn to use in his plans, and I may face the choice of regicide or submission.”

  “I have no say in this?” Aenor’s voice had a slight edge to it.

  Dylan felt trapped. She was his to protect, to care for, because she was a woman. That was the way of the world. But she had proved repeatedly that she could, in many ways, look out for herself. True, if he had not come to the caverns of the White Folk, she might have languished there ageless for several aeons. Or she might have escaped on her own. He wished he might consult his father, for surely Doyle had faced the same problems with Eleanor. How could he be manly in the presence of her undeniable power? He was unnecessary in the fulfillment of her destiny.

  “No. You have the same choices I do. And your temper is much quicker than mine. You might rob Franconia of her King in a moment of anger, as you sung the roof down upon the hapless Margold.”

  “She deserved it.”

  “Perhaps. But do not be too quick to seize death as a solution to any conflict.”

  “They took my will, Dylan, and locked it away from me, and something within me screams that 1 must never permit any force to do that again. I cannot submit.”

  Dylan heard the pain in those words and realized this

  was a wound too fresh to have healed, and that ii mi)>ht never become so. It was like his own horror of death and destruction. The cleansing of Paris would forever weigh upon him. Perhaps that was the real mystery of the world; that a man might do deeds too terrible to speak of and yet eat and drink and love.

  “Then we must seek a compromise, macushla."

  Aenor made a face at him. “Gah! I have no talent for such, so I must be glad that you seem to.”

  Dylan saw for the first time the power of the peacemaker and wanted to possess it. “We will just point out to Louis—or to your brother—the peril of bestowing you as they might think fit.”

  “Would you not fight to keep me?”

  “Yes. And that terrifies me.”

  “Why?” She sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “Because I am a beast, and any man who does not fear the beast within him is a fool.”

  “Dylan, beloved, what is it like to change?”

  “I am very new to it,” he began, enchanted by the way his name sounded on her lips, “and I wish my father were here, for he knows it very well. I wonder why he never told me about it?” He was fairly certain his mother had forbidden it, for she always got an expression of faint distaste on her face when her own transformations were mentioned. “I have no mastery over it, though perhaps that will come with time. It is as if there was a tiny imp inside me who appears when certain kinds of danger come. It wrenches me out of my self, and it is both terrible and wonderful. It is a wild thing, and once I almost chose to remain a beast.” He remembered the heady scent of the hellhound bitch, the warm, musky smell of her flesh, and the temptation of untrammelled bestiality. He was not sure he would ever be free of a faint yearning for the freedom of the woods of the world. It seemed almost shameful to be beside this splendid woman, lover and friend, and long for the quietude of ancient forests. Beth had told him he must find the god within himself, and he thought perhaps it was one of those strange deities of old Egypt, part man, part animal, ass-eared Set or dog-headed Anubis, his mother had told him of. It was not a comfortable idea, he decided.

  “Does it almost sweep you away, like a rushing river?” “Yes, almost.”

  “My song is like that too. Greater than myself, as if I were only a course the music runs through. It almost frightens me that 1 will be washed away into oblivion—not Aenor, nor Alianora, not anyone. I was mindless so long.” She touched the jewel at her hip. “And, too, I only borrow the song, I think. I wonder why my grandmother gave it to me and not to one of her daughters.”

  “Who knows? Perhaps some goddess guided her, or she looked in a crystal and saw the future.”

  Aenor giggled. “
My grandmother never took counsel but from herself. She was bom to rule.”

  The mist began to darken and the smell of fire intensified. They followed the river and passed small hamlets which might have been deserted except for the curls of smoke from chimneys and the occasional brave soul who stuck a head out to look at them. They heard the homey sounds of screaming infants and lowing cattle and though they were both hungry, they did not stop to ask for food. They both felt the sense of urgency, the bristling tension in the air, and spurred the horses into a bone-rattling trot.

  Smuts began to rain from the air, fouling lungs and nostrils. The surface of the river, barely visible under the fog, was dull and leaden. Aenor’s golden hair acquired a grey covering, and she coughed from time to time. Bits of ash collected on her skin, rubbed in as she brushed them away, until she was a pair of bright blue eyes startling out of a nearly black face.

  “You look like one of the forge folk,” she told Dylan, informing him that he presented no better appearance than herself.

  “Probably. I would suggest a quick wash in the river, but I think it is dirtier than we are.”

  Perhaps a minute later a howling pack of lightless Shadow Folk darted towards them from a small copse, waving pitchforks and cudgels. Aenor wheeled her horse into their midst, using her sword effectively, and Dylan followed her, his horse lashing out viciously at the attackers. The two riderless horses behind him joined in the fray, and the Shadow people fell or fled.

  Dylan bit back several sharp criticisms for his headstrong beloved, and she glanced at him. “I know,” she said. “Be careful. Look before I leap.”

  “Well, do try not to get yourself killed, dear one,” he responded, more mildly than he felt. His heart was almost cramped with fear for her safety.

  Aenor hung her lead a little. “1 deserved that. Very well. I shall try to school myself to caution, but you must admit it is very difficult. ’ ’ She wiped her blade clean on her cloak and sheathed it calmly.