Temptress Unbound

by Lisa Cach

  We held silent, our breaths caught in our throats as Maerlin took hold of the grip and pulled the blade free of its scabbard. The same vines from the scabbard had been engraved down the edges of the blade, while embedded in the center, running from hilt to halfway down the length, the sword’s name had been written in a curved, flowing style utterly unlike rigid Roman script.

  Skalibur, the sword declared itself. “Immortal,” in Phannic.

  Gazing upon it, I felt with ever fiber of my being that it was.

  “You didn’t follow the design I gave you,” Maerlin said into the silence, while the lot of us gaped at the sword we had helped to wright.

  “I couldn’t,” the smith murmured in a tone that admitted no guilt; he was as lost in the beauty of Skalibur as were the rest of us.

  “It would have been a tragedy if you had.”

  The ride back to the villa was one of barely suppressed excitement, the wool-wrapped sword lashed to Maerlin’s saddle. We raved about it, we wondered at its magic, we talked of how others would react when they saw it. We speculated what Arthur would think, when he finally came home and Maerlin handed it over.

  “I’m not giving it to him,” Maerlin said, the statement cutting through our chatter and shocking us into momentary silence.

  “You’re not keeping it for yourself !” Una burst out, the first to get her tongue back. “It’s not yours!”

  “Of course he isn’t,” I said, telling myself that that had to be true. Surely it was true! “You should know by now that your father’s words always have more than one meaning.”

  A muscle twitched at the corner of Maerlin’s mouth, and he cast me a sidelong look and a slow blink of agreement. “Skalibur demands more ceremony than being plopped down in front of Arthur like a bowl of stew. The first time people see it, the event should be something special. A spectacle.”

  “The sword is spectacle enough,” Brenn said, a note of worry in his tone. Like me, he’d seen enough of Maerlin’s “spectacles” to know how often they went awry.

  Maerlin smiled at us. “Trust me.”

  “Gods and goddesses help us,” I said.

  Brenn muttered beside me, “There aren’t gods enough to stop him when Maerlin has a plan.”

  We were soon back at the villa, and as we came into the courtyard, it was clear that something had happened. There was an air of excitement, a tension that hadn’t been there when we’d left.

  Terix jogged forward ostensibly to help me dismount, but the moment I was on the ground he shielded me from view, capturing me between his chest and the horse. “Arthur’s back.”

  My heart leapt, a flood of hope suffusing me. I opened my mouth to ask the dozen questions that sprang to mind, but Terix laid his fingertips against my lips and bent his brow down to rest on mine.

  “Arthur and Wynnetha are betrothed.”

  5

  I shivered in the misty predawn beside a small lake, clad in polished tin fish scales and disbelief. It was May Day, and I was about to become a lake spirit and deliver Skalibur from the Otherworld, Annwyn, where supernatural beings dwelt. Lakes were doorways to Annwyn, and for centuries the Britons had thrown swords, horns, and gold into their depths in sacrifice to the denizens of that unknown land.

  Maerlin had thought it fitting, then, that for once a sword should emerge from a lake. He couldn’t very well send Arthur slogging through the shallows, though, looking for it amid the weeds. It wasn’t dignified. There was no spectacle to it. So Maer­lin had, at first, devised a plan involving those colorful exploding powders from the distant east, and a trebuchet to shoot the sword from a hidden spot, intending that Arthur should catch it.

  At my urging Terix had set aside his arms training to help, coming up with an idea with less chance of severed limbs and fleeing guests.

  For guests, there were: Briton chieftains allied to Ambrosius; chieftains like Druce, who had not been friends, but made a concession in the spirit of peace; Horsa, with his bartered daughter Wynnetha pale at his side; and even two Saxon leaders who were allied to Horsa. All had been invited to the wedding of Arthur to Wynnetha.

  Ambrosius moved among them with the quick steps of a younger man, his triumph lighting his face. While only a peaceful gathering of friends and foes, with no agreements yet reached, it was still the closest he’d come to achieving his dream of a united Britannia, where tribe fought beside tribe in the protection of their island. He was eager to draw Saxons into that fold, if it meant they would protect boundaries already drawn and lift their swords to fend off Pict raiders from the north, Irish from the west, or anyone from the mainland of Europe. The wedding of Briton Arthur to Saxon Wynnetha was a chance to show that unity was more than a mad dream.

  Maerlin had persuaded Ambrosius that the bestowing of Skalibur upon Arthur was, if done with enough supernatural aplomb, a way of marking him as the war leader of the united tribes. Let rumors flow and a legend grow that Arthur was a supreme leader of men into battle; let them believe he was chosen by forces greater than mere mortals, and there would be a chance they would follow his banner. Men fought for their brothers in arms, the comrades who for years had ridden beside them in battle; it would take someone beyond extraordinary to make them willing to lay down their life under the command of someone not of their tribe.

  The wedding was to be three days hence. The valley was filled with the tents of the visiting chieftains and their highest-ranking men and wives, and their bodyguards of soldiers. Ambrosius had opened his cellars as well as his purse, and drink and food flowed freely enough to soften the edge of tension between foes, and yet not so freely that more than a few drunken brawls rolled through the muddied fields.

  And here was I, shivering in my fish scales made in haste by the same smith who had furnished Skalibur.

  Terix wrapped his arms over my shoulders from behind, lifting his cloak along with them to envelop me in its warmth. “How is it that we’re forever players upon stages, Nimia?” he asked into my ear. “As far as we run from what we once were, we end up the same.”

  I rested my hands upon his where they crossed on my chest, and leaned back against him. “It’s the only solution we know. Have a problem? Put on a mask and pretend to be someone else. Make people laugh, or cry, or lust. Then run for our lives while they’re not looking.”

  “We’ll be running as soon as this cursed wedding is done with, yes?”

  “You know I want to. But . . .”

  “Oh gods. What?”

  “I would have happily run even sooner, except for two reasons. First, it might mar the festivities and draw attention to us instead of leaving it on Arthur and Wynnetha, where it belongs. Better to smile and congratulate them, than to stir up a scene by leaving.”

  He grunted a reluctant agreement. “Couldn’t leave before this sword business, anyway.”

  “Second, the chalice. The vision Maerlin and I had shared, where Wynnetha stepped into a cauldron that could only be the Phanne chalice . . . I don’t want to leave without the chalice, but Maerlin will never let it go before it’s put to whatever fated use it was meant for.”

  Terix groaned. “Wasn’t Wynnetha walking over bloody bones in that vision?”

  “They could be the bones of past conflicts.”

  He bounced his chin on the top of my head. “Right.”

  “Other than that, there’s no reason to stay here any longer. I’ve learned what I could of my mother, and to find her I have to find the same labyrinth she seeks.”

  “The one Naji told us about, on Crete,” Terix said.

  I nodded. “It might not be the one she seeks, but it’s our only hint of where she might have gone.”

  Terix hugged me closer. “Are you certain you want to leave Brenn?”

  “I don’t want to. But I can’t stay here after the wedding. You don’t have to come with me; I know there’s so much you can learn
here, and you’ve made such advances under Brenn—”

  “Leave you? Have your wits rotted in the damp?”

  “It doesn’t seem fair, you following me when you have your own needs, your own life’s path to follow.”

  “You are my path,” he said, so softly the words were little more than a breath of wind in my hair.

  “You could have a full life here, Terix. A wife, a family, a home. Brenn would gladly take you on as a permanent part of Ambrosius’s army.”

  Terix’s arms hardened. “Is that what you want, to have me stay?”

  “No,” I whispered. “And I know it’s selfish of me, to not want to give you up. I’d be lost without you.”

  He relaxed his hold, his breath releasing in a sigh that was half chuckle. “Then it’s a good thing you’re stuck with me, even when it means I get you into situations like this.”

  I feigned a nonchalant shrug. “What do I mind drowning in a freezing, frog-clogged pond? It’s better than calling myself Nerthus and going topless while giving nonsense prophecies to a bunch of filthy Franks.”

  “Or playing the cithara while predicting the death of their chief.”

  “Or being named a Christian saint for having my head half chopped off, in the garden of a ruined Roman temple.”

  “Saint Quitterie! Saint Quitterie! Please bless my baby, Saint Quitterie,” Terix begged in falsetto.

  “It’s Kitharede,” I intoned in imitation of the offended Sidonius Apollinaris. “Why can they never get it right?”

  “Do you suppose they’ve erected a statue in your name, in Tolosa?”

  “If they have, I hope it’s not as moon-faced as the usual Christian art. Why they must make their women look bland as gruel, I’ll never know.”

  “Wouldn’t do to think about fucking a saint,” Terix said.

  “I don’t know why not. The Romans and Greeks had plenty going on between gods and mortals. What’s the use of a god who won’t come down for a bit of a romp with us humans? I’d rather my immortals be accessible. Touchable.”

  “And they’ve probably got huge mentulas.”

  “Exactly!”

  Terix laughed and released me to the cold. “It’s almost time; the sun will soon be up. I have to go make sure those lousy musicians keep the beat. And the singers!” He shuddered with offended artistic sensibilities. “You’ll be all right?”

  I shimmied my hips, making the scales tinkle and sway. “The costume’s heavy, but it’s only a short swim. As long as there aren’t horrendous beasts lurking in the depths, I’ll be fine.”

  Terix nodded, and with a last grin he jogged away, around the side of the lake. Soon after, the sound of pipes and drums carried across the water, though the musicians and the audience were hidden from me behind the layer of morning mist. The thin yellow light of dawn combed its bony fingers across the landscape and touched my scales without a hint of warmth.

  I heard Maerlin’s voice, deep and projecting as he set up the illusion they would all take for real; there was enough awe and danger in his tone to hint at what he said. Although I couldn’t make out his words, I knew them already. He was saying how Arthur had had a dream about a great sword, a sword that held the soul of Britannia. This sword had guided a legion of men and women to bring about its making, upon which the gods who guarded Britannia had demanded it be sent to them, and it had been flung into the lake. Now they had given it their blessing, and had sent Arthur a second dream: to retrieve the sword Skalibur here, upon the shores of the lake.

  When Maerlin stopped talking and I heard the singing begin, I stepped into the lake, mud squishing up between my bare toes and the shock of the cold making me curse in three languages.

  I was glad of the icy pain: it was a distraction. It was no longer a constant effort to keep my mind from Arthur, with whom I had not spoken privately since his return a month ago, and who didn’t know that he would shortly be in front of me. Though he knew this was a spectacle of Maerlin and Terix’s devising, they hadn’t shared the details with him. We’d thought it better that he be as astonished as the rest of them.

  Maerlin had made me practice swimming in the lake, to be sure I wouldn’t balk at the frigid temperature. I’d learned two things from those miserable sessions: a woman’s cunny was just as shy of dipping into freezing water as a man’s balls; and it didn’t take long for the water to feel almost warm against your skin—which was deceptive, because when that happened it meant you hadn’t much time left before you lost all strength and feeling and sank like one of those ancient Briton’s sacrificed blades.

  With both lessons in mind I waded as quickly as my gown of scales would allow, ignoring the cries of my skin to go slow. When I reached mid-thigh I quietly plunged under the water. My hair was braided tightly and hidden under the back of the gown, while a hood of scales covered my head and face. Terix thought it would spoil the illusion if anyone recognized me, and when I’d tried on the costume and seen myself in the mirror, I couldn’t fault his thinking. As a shimmering, humanlike creature without a face, I was terrifying. And completely unknowable.

  “Though I’d know you anywhere,” Terix had said. “I know your shape, your posture, the set of your head on your shoulders. I know your walk. I’d know you even if you were bound up in a sack, stuffed in a box, and hidden in the hold of a ship.”

  “I do hope you never have cause to test that.”

  “With our luck?”

  I’d groaned.

  No one else knew me that well, though, so as an ethereal spirit of the lake I should do nicely. Perhaps Arthur would be too bound up in thoughts of his new lady love to question the small, wet silver figure and think it could be me. He had barely known me at all.

  Stop it, I scolded myself. Bitterness is no emotion worthy of Skalibur.

  It was easier to think of the sword than of Arthur.

  I started to swim, a silent sidestroke with my arms that kept my head barely above the water, while my feet kicked just enough to keep my legs up without splashing. The metal gown tried to pull me down and it was hard work to move—surely no fish was ever so challenged by its scales—but I consoled myself that the water was shallow enough that I could sink to the bottom and still thrust myself back up. Maerlin had made me practice that, so I wouldn’t panic.

  With the rising of the sun, the mist was beginning to burn away. Almost time to make my dramatic entrance.

  I paddled straight out to the center of the small lake, to where a suspiciously quiet raft of ducks bobbed. They were decoys, made of wood, and all tied together and anchored to an inflated pig’s bladder just beneath the surface of the water. The bladder in turn was tied to a structure that had been sunk beneath the water. For a few mad moments I couldn’t find which duck was attached to the bladder, and I listened with growing alarm to the singers’ song, which was near ending—truly, it was atrocious singing, though it was an eerie piece I’d composed and their lack of tunefulness added to the unsettling effect—and knew I was in danger of missing my entrance cue. The mist thinned yet more, and I could begin to see the shapes of people gathered along the shore.

  Then there it was, the duck atop the bladder. I reached under it to the taut rope and held tight, waiting, hoping that the people I could see could not see me.

  There. The end of the song, a dramatic rat-a-tat-tat on the drums, and then silence. I counted to twenty, letting tension build, then took a deep breath and sank. Hand over hand I pulled myself down the rope to the sunken ladder anchored horizontally above the lake bed. It provided handholds and guidance as rung by rung I moved forward, from it to a second ladder, my breath beginning to ache in my chest until at last I felt the end of the ladders and the beginning of the ramp, its wood slimy from its week in the water.

  The secret to a good illusion was in all the props and preparation the audience couldn’t see. I found my footing on the end of the ramp and st
ood, the top of my head breaking the surface. I had to fan my hands in the water to keep my balance as my numbing toes sought the thin wood slats that had been nailed to the ramp to prevent me from slipping.

  One step. Two. My forehead emerged and then my eyes, blinking madly to clear the dripping water behind the scales. My breath burned, my lungs tight and urging me to tilt my head up and gasp for fresh air, but what water spirit would do such a thing? Three steps, and my nose was out. I blew out stale air and took in fresh, as quickly and fiercely as I dared.

  A sigh and a gasp went through the gathered crowd. One of my eyes was still water-smeared, but through the other I could see them, their faces pale, their eyes and mouths shadowed hollows. Long blond hair and a light blue gown: Wynnetha, clinging to her father Horsa’s arm, her mouth wide. Brenn, his good hand over his mouth to hide his expression; he knew our secrets. Una beside him, bouncing on the balls of her feet; she knew, too. There was no way to keep anything from Una.

  The tall one in the center, there. Arthur, square-shouldered and rigid, his head tilted slightly back in surprise. Did he recognize me from the top of my covered head, as Terix would have? I thought not.

  I dropped my gaze and concentrated on emerging.

  It is not as easy as one might think, to walk up a ramp through water without looking like a frozen, half-drowned, lurching woman who sends great splashes of water out of her way. It was slow control I was after, and no hint of human feet plodding onward. I’d practiced until both Terix and Maerlin agreed that I looked as if I were being lifted from beneath and carried forward, my body perfectly still and upright, arms straight at my sides with droplets falling from the tips of my scaly, pointed sleeves. I took tiny steps on my toes, bending at the ankle instead of the knee. One slip or momentary, flailing loss of balance would destroy the illusion.

  The reaction of the gathered people was palpable, buffeting me like a breeze: I felt their astonishment, their awe, the racing tingle upon their skin that said they were in the presence of something not of this world. I drank it in, enjoying being a performer in total control of her audience. Their reaction fed me, and in return I gave them all I had, to make this an event they would remember for the rest of their lives.