The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3)

by A. A. Attanasio

  When the fallen horse broke the rider's left leg and pinned him under its dead weight, Marcus cried with shrill fervor for God's mercy. A berserker with the severed head of a drummer in one hand knocked the sword from the fallen warrior's grasp. With one swipe of his ax, he brought the blade down in a flashing arc.

  Before the keen edge could cut, a leathery hand snatched the helve and twisted the ax from the Saxon's grip. A hideous man with hackles of red hair, bristly black beard, and bestial face yanked the berserker's arm from its socket with a wet, tearing noise. Wild-eyed Marcus recognized the distinctive robes of Merlin, midnight blue vestments marked in sigils and splattered blood. With this delirious perception, the pain of his broken leg blacked his mind.

  Rex Mundi tore among the Wolf Warriors with savage speed. Merlin had released Azael from his circling bond with the Fire Lord, and the demon used Rex to make quick work of the Saxons.

  In moments, fourteen warriors lay mangled on the forest floor. Then, the wizard summoned Azael back into the magically assembled body he had created from Dagonet and Lord Monkey—though, of course, the demon would not obey. With an icy howl, Azael rushed off through the woods, bound to work ill against the king in Tintagel.

  "Oh gwief!" Dagonet cried, sensing Azael's purpose.

  "Calm yourself," Merlin said. "If we move quickly in the opposite direction from the king, Azael must follow—for if too much distance comes between us, our assembled body falls apart—and the demon becomes again the ashes of a dog. Come!"

  Dagonet and Merlin turned away from the broken bodies of the dead and the whimpering surgeons and drummers yet alive. With lumbering gait, they moved Rex Mundi eastward, relying on the Fire Lord within to hold them together. The cries of the Christian survivors followed a long way among the trees.

  Knives against the King

  Azael had little time to work mischief before Rex Mundi lured him back into his circling stand-off with the Fire Lord. He reached into Tintagel with icicle fingers of fear and grabbed at the hearts of Lot's Celts. With ease, he manipulated the motions of these small bits of awareness, and in moments the demon had inflamed four warriors to heated questioning about the boy-king. Azael fanned fiery enmity against Arthor, a wizard's puppet who despised the Celt's venerable faith and worshipped an alien, nailed god. Dark looks passed among them, and Azael gloated at the consequences he read there.

  No murderous opportunity presented itself to the fervid Celts until midday. While the chiefs and their men gathered in the main hall to eat, with Kyner presiding over the Christians and Lot among the Daoine faithful, the young king sat in chapel with his mother and her nuns.

  A foreign taint of lingering incense steeled the four assassins to their grim intent, to end the influence of this strange god. They slipped silently through burgundy shadows under leaded glass windows. Footfalls muffled by the susurrant prayers of the nuns, two killers approached along each side of the dim tabernacle. They moved swiftly, bared knives held low.

  The king had left his famous sword on the altar, where two small licks of flame in crimson lampions fluttered at either end. Unarmed, he knelt on a faldstool with Ygrane, who also would die for betraying the Daoine Sid and abandoning her role as queen of a people far more ancient than the Romans.

  The nuns, absorbed in prayer, paid no heed to the four rustics. The assassins strode through the chancel gate and descended on the kneeling couple. Before they could strike, a shadow stirred from the stillness as though one of the pieces of statuary had come to life.

  Bedevere slid flat-footed across the marble, inserting himself with fluid grace between the knives and their victims. In his one hand, he grasped a short sword that flashed in the dark air like a spurt of flame.

  Clanging sharply, two knives spun free and clattered to the floor. An agile flourish of the short sword carved loops of reflected light with a viper's hiss and stalled the other two armed Celts in their tracks. Before they could flee, he jumped close enough to cut their throats and poised his blade to hold them in place, inches from death. "Knives!" the one-armed warrior shouted, and the two remaining weapons clanked against the stone floor.

  Alarmed shrieks from the nuns brought soldiers running out of the castle ward, swords drawn.

  "Shed no blood in this holy place!" King Arthor commanded. He strode to where Bedevere had grouped the four enraged Celts. "Why?"

  The ire in their cold eyes told him what their voices refused to say. When Lot arrived and ragefully ordered them taken into the courtyard, they exited tall with defiance.

  "Brother!" Arthor called to Lot, who stormed after his seditious men. The king spoke firmly, "Do not take their lives. Release them from Tintagel and our service—unharmed."

  The Root-Blood

  By day, Morgeu tended the horse that pulled her tented wagon, bathed herself in the chill creeks under the noon sun, ate whatever orchards and vegetable crofts along the highway had to offer, and dozed under the trees. She kept Terpillius the vampyre inside the wagon, covered with loamy soil. At night, he rode beside her and told her amusing tales of Old Britain.

  Occasionally, she let him roam for blood, but only with the stern understanding that he sate himself on Christians alone. He did not dare defy her, because she could read everything in his soul. The shadows spoke with her. And at her touch, his cold body either sang or cried.

  Usually, she kept him close and fed him with the root-blood of the soulless child in her womb. While she steered the wagon, he lay with his head in her lap, eyes closed, drawing hot strength directly from within her, from the source of the blood itself. On clear nights, he opened his eyes to the Great Bear, and his darkness matched the vacancies he saw there.

  "That is the fear of all vampyres," she replied to his thoughts. "There is no place for you in the Happy Woods, no path to the Skyward House, no acceptance with the nailed god who preached love but who damns with hellfire. Only emptiness waits at the end of your hunger."

  "I dream, I dream—emptiness would be sweet—"

  "But not as sweet as blood. Blood, the warmth kindled by the star candles and forgotten in the seas for so very long." She stroked his silken hair with one hand as she drove. "Forgotten until the first jungles remembered and from stardust, from the iron seeds sown in the death throes of stars, grew the red vine, the root-blood you suckle. I know this. I have seen it."

  He trembled with immemorial passions to hear her speak so. And even if he could have fled her ensorcelling grasp, he would not have. Eyes closed, he pressed his face against her womb, and her radiant warmth embraced him as she embraced her soulless child, filling his body with unworldly joy.

  Many nights of travel passed before he even thought to ask, "Why do you cosset me, mistress? Why have you taken me from my place in the forests of the north?"

  "We have a work to do, Terpillius." Her small, black eyes hardened like bits of coal. "A work of blood."

  "And when the work is done, mistress?" He did not dare open his eyes, for fear of the evil, indifferent smile he would see. "What will become of us?"

  "Become?" Her voice carried a chill laugh. "That word bespeaks a future. And for vampyres there is no such thing."

  Four hundred hours of autumn with her, after four hundred years without her, gentled his fears. He kept his eyes closed and his face pressed to the root-blood, to the tinier world within her, the forever world before time, when all life was a vampyre.

  Secret House

  "Mother, why did Lot's men want to kill me?" Arthor somberly asked Ygrane that evening. They sat alone on the western terrace with the Round Table and the Graal. "You must know their minds, who once were their queen."

  Ygrane rose from where they had been talking about his father, Uther Pendragon. She walked to the balustrade and watched the sun finding its way into the sea. "Merlin and I thought it best you were reared a Christian. But if you are to rule the Celts as well as the Britons, you must find in yourself what is more ancient than your faith."

  "You—an abbess—in
struct me to seek the pagan?" Arthor asked with open disbelief. "Mother, I have been inside the hollow hills. I have seen the faerie, conversed with the dwarf Brokk who crafted Excalibur, and confronted the Furor himself. But I tell you, these are all created beings of our uncreated and nameless God, the God of Moses—God the Father of our Savior. It is this faith that guides me—not pagan lore."

  She faced him across the Round Table, her eyes like a green fire in the dying light—and her white vestments might as well have been the worship robes of a priestess. "You are my son and king of our people, and so I speak to you from a higher place than faith."

  "Higher than faith?" Arthor reared forward, dizzy with incredulity. "What could possibly be higher than our faith?"

  "God—God Himself."

  Arthor blinked. "Mother, you speak heresy."

  "Listen to me, son. Faith is learned. But our souls are given. You carry within you the soul of Cuchulain, the greatest warrior of the Celts. God wills for you to reign as a Christian king. And yet, in your soul you carry lifetimes of a more ancient faith."

  "Lifetimes?" Arthor blew a gust of surprise. "Mother, listen to yourself. You sound like some blasphemous gnostic. We are each of us one life, one soul given to the glory of God."

  "This is true, Arthor. And there is a greater truth."

  "Truth—yes." He sighed, recalling the long hours of reading and discussing philosophy that Kyner had required of both him and Cei. "Truth has many sides. What is the greater truth than the one life we have for God?"

  "The destiny He gives to each one of us is unique and carries its own truth. That is the secret house of your spirit, greater than the abode of your soul. The soul needs a body. But the spirit moves like the wind and belongs solely to God." She walked around the table and sat down beside him again. "Your destiny is to serve the Christians as well as the Celts of the Old Way. As your mother, it is my destiny to show you both ways. With Merlin's and Kyner's help, you have lived as a Christian. Now, it is time for me to show you the older ways."

  "What do you expect me to do, mother?" Arthor frowned. "I will not defy the teachings of our Savior."

  "I would never ask that of you." She took his chin in her hand. "But I do require you to fulfill his greatest teaching. While you are here, before you depart, I want you to know love."

  []

  Mother Mary, I am troubled by what I hear from your servant, my mother Ygrane. I am no theologian. What do I know of our Father's will but what He reveals to me through the Holy Spirit? Yet, if I am to be king of all Britain, I must serve the pagan Celts as well as the Christians. I thought I could serve them by bringing to them the good news of our Savior. My mother speaks of their faith as more ancient, as if Jesus had never walked among us and refuted the old ways of blood sacrifice with his own blood. There is much I must ponder and so little time for reflection. My days are consumed from dawn till midnight with war councils. Soon I must lead what forces I have against invaders who give their lives freely and fiercely for what they believe. Pray for my protection, Mother Mary—not for my sake but for those whom I serve that I may continue to protect them from the ferocity of our enemies.

  God Finds Her Champion

  Durnovaria, a sizeable town of green and blue tile roofs, stood at the intersection of several Roman roads in the Celtic domain of the Durotriges. Though the neighboring Dumnoni, Duke Marcus' subjects to the west, had been Christian for generations, Durnovaria and the surrounding countryside harbored ancient enclaves where people still worshiped the Daoine Sid and the Fauni. Chief among these sites, Maiden Castle consisted of gigantic and ancient earthwork entrenchments that enclosed a temple on a hillcrest devoted to the goddess Aradia.

  Rex Mundi stood among the aspen trees that surrounded Aradia's temple. He listened for prophecy in the whispering leaves. Merlin had directed their assembled form to this summit, hoping to detect some sign of where Gorlois had taken the wizard's body.

  This sacred location emitted powerful telluric energies, no doubt the reason why the old tribes had first built settlements upon this ceremonial ground thousands of years ago. While Merlin listened and Dagonet looked out beyond the temple's earth walls at farm fields, Lord Monkey fidgeted, yearning for fruit. The Fire Lord abruptly broke loose from his circling stand-off with the demon Azael.

  Azael had no strength for voice. Holding the assemblage together consumed all his power. Yet, his scream tore like claws through Merlin, Dagonet, and Lord Monkey. Rex Mundi fell to his knees with a howl. What ith happening? Dagonet bawled. We die!

  We are not dying—not yet, Merlin assured his companion. The Fire Lord has left us, left Azael to hold us together—or revert to a dead dog and only slowly rebuild himself from ashes.

  But it hurth! Dagonet cried.

  And it did indeed, for without the Fire Lord to counterbalance the demon, the mortals experienced the demon's pain: the sundering cold of the vacuum in which the celestial orbs spun, the stabbing cold that assailed demons and Fire Lords alike since they fell from heaven.

  The Fire Lord suffered, too. As with all who had been flung into the darkness of creation when they followed God out of heaven, he knew pain. That ceaseless agony did not embitter him as it did the demons, who had flung away their light so they would hurt less. The Fire Lords embraced their burning pain all the more tightly and suffered worse than demons, because they believed that the radiant pieces of heaven would eventually lead them back home.

  For now, the Fire Lord's light led him to Her, to God, who needed a champion for a moment. She had arranged an open grave for one of her most devoted—a woman worshiper in the temple. The worshiper's angry husband would not let his wife go in peace. God summoned the Fire Lord to still the husband's cries with angelic warmth. The man's momentary smile at the angel's caress soothed the dying woman, and she gratefully and serenely released her body to rejoin the ever-turning cycle of coming and going.

  Burning Isca

  Purple storm winds blew the invaders' small boats up the Exe river and past frustrated coastal defenders, helpless against the surging waves and torrential rain. Protected by the Furor and their own peerless maritime skills, the Saxons swept along the eastern banks of the river ten miles without a single arrow flying against them. The storm front flung them into the port city of Isca Dumnoniorum, Duke Marcus' largest harbor.

  The dock workers fought to protect their wharves and their homes but were no match for the ferocity of the Furor's troops. With the tempest at their backs, the Saxons clambered onto the moored ships, hacked their way across the harbor with their big axes and small, lethal throwing-hatchets, and set fire to the piers. Even as the attackers mounted the Roman walls that separated the anchorage from the town, the wind-whipped flames preceded them.

  Duke Marcus saw the scarlet glow of the burning port from the hamlet of Neptune's Toes, where he had been carried by the surgeons after their ambush in the forest. Cei arrived the next day, shortly after heralds delivered grisly reports of the sacking of Isca and the slaughter of hundreds: Their headless corpses had been strung upside down from the high arches of the aqueducts that delivered irrigation water to the outlying farmlands—estates that now quailed in horror, awaiting the arrival of the brutal conquerors.

  "Where is your brother?" Marcus shouted at the sight of Cei, and only the pain of his broken leg restrained him from lunging at the large Celt. "I've lost three towns! People will starve this winter for what I've lost! Arthor dines with his mother while people are dying, you big oaf!"

  "My lord duke—" Cei struggled for what to say in the face of this righteous rage. At the news of Marcus' defeat, Arthor had dispatched him to escort the duke safely back to Tintagel. Cei could see that this commander wanted battle plans, not retreat. "At least you are alive and will lead your men again."

  "Do you know why I'm alive?" Marcus thrashed upright from the pallet where he lay on the olive-tree terrace overlooking a bay of tiny islets, the toes of Neptune. "I live, because Merlin saved me. You go back to Tin
tagel and tell your brother that he has to do better than send a wizard too late to save my troops. A wizard who looks possessed by Satan! If Arthor wants my pledge, he must commit more than magic to our cause. He must fight our enemies with strategy and sword!" Marcus fell back. "Bring soldiers, not devils."

  Cei left the terrace, and on his way across the mosaic courtyard of the old villa, a surgeon accosted him. "Lord Seneschal—tell the king that Duke Marcus speaks sooth. I saw with my own eyes—the wizard Merlin belongs to Satan now."

  A Talk with the King

  "How can they say our wizard belongs to Satan when he saved their lives?" Arthor retorted after Cei relayed the news from Neptune's Toes. "Is it the Devil's business now to spare Christians from the Saxon's ax?"

  Cei shrugged. "Marcus is angry. He lost many lives."

  "I am angry, too, brother." Arthor sat on a black rock under the sea cliffs, where the booming surf assured a private conversation. "Lot's four men who tried to kill me, they've been found dead in the woods north of here."

  Cei cocked his head, as if to contemplate this. "A wildwood gang must have fallen upon them."

  "No, Cei." Arthor held his stepbrother fast with a harsh stare. "You killed them. I saw the bodies. They were large men but they took downward blows from a bigger man."

  "A mounted warrior ... "

  "Silence, Cei!" Arthor stood up, hands fisted. "Do you think me a simpleton? There were no horse tracks. You waited for those men among the trees—and you killed them."

  "I slew them fairly." Cei's broad face darkened at the accusation of foul play. "Lot left them their swords. I stood against them alone."

  "And you killed them—against my orders."