The Third Magic

by Molly Cochran

  Macsen, so kind, so protective of her, Macsen who had carved stones into the likenesses of birds and squirrels for her, who had loved her almost from the moment they were born.

  It had always been assumed that Brigid and Macsen would marry. He was the grandson of the great swordmaker Macdoo, who had travelled to the far side of the sea and returned with the secret of the black swords that had made the Tor as famous as its clairvoyant priestesses. Macsen was as skillful as his grandfather, and everyone knew that one day he would inherit the forge and, with Brigid by his side, take his place in the proud community of the Tor.

  Brigid had wanted that to be her future. She had wanted it so much that she had not mentioned that she knew the outcome of events before they happened, whose babies would be lost at birth, which men would not return from battle. She had told no one that she possessed the Sight, though the burden of it was almost more than she could bear.

  But through it all she had Macsen and the sure promise of their life together. That was enough. His love made up for the discomfort of containing a gift that strained to be freed.

  It was enough, that is, until the gift decided her fate for her.

  Brigid's father was going to die. She saw it all in a horrible vision that was so strong she did not even notice that her hands were burning over the cook fire. It was her mother, not herself, who screamed and pulled Brigid away from the flames.

  "Brigid!" her mother called, bringing her out of her deep nightmare trance. "Your hands! Look—"

  "On the far side of the lake, where the men will go to hunt boar tomorrow, the earth will open up and swallow them," Brigid said. "Father will be among those who die there."

  Her mother's hand flew to her mouth. "What are you saying!" she whispered.

  "Tell him," Brigid insisted. And then she ran to warn Macsen.

  Macsen had obeyed her without question, but her father had not. "Don't be foolish," he said good-naturedly. "We're not planning to go anywhere near the lake."

  "The boar will lead you there," she cried, pleading. "Please listen to me. Tell the others, I beg you."

  But Brigid's entreaties were ignored. Her father left the next day. Her mother cast her gaze away from her daughter's, hoping that the girl's prediction was no more than foolish talk. That afternoon, as her father and his friends first spotted the boar that would lead them to their deaths, Brigid went to the priestesses of the Tor.

  "Ask the Cailleach to spare my father's life," she begged. "If she will grant me this boon, I will join you here, and forego my life."

  "We have lives, too," the high priestess said gently. "And if you have seen this vision, and it is true, then you are already one of us." She pointed to the great yellow stone with its carving of the sun. "Call the Cailleach, Brigid," she ordered. “Ask for Her help.”

  The boar led the hunting party on a merry chase through the forest before the animal disappeared.

  "Ah, well," Brigid's father said, taking a drink of his wife's fine beer, "the light's going. Suppose we'll have to make do with these paltry rabbits, eh?" He laughed. The take of rabbits and squirrels was one of the best of the winter.

  "You can content yourself with rabbits, old man," one of the younger hunters said, pointing toward the lake. The boar they had been chasing, exhausted and thirsty, was walking warily toward the water.

  "Ah, he'll be too quick for—" one of the men began, but at that moment the boar let out a bellow as its hind leg disappeared under the snow-covered ground.

  "It's gone through the ice of the lake!" the young hunter shouted, elated by their good fortune. "Help me get him, quick, before he goes under!"

  The men dropped everything except their weapons and ropes and ran toward the flailing beast.

  Brigid's father felt his heart sinking as he finally, too late, remembered his daughter's words. "Stop!" he shouted to the others. "That's not the lake the beast fell through, it's the land! Look, it wouldn't have gone out onto the lake to drink, you great bloody fools! Come back! It's not safe for you!"

  He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and felt the cold air against his skin. "Come back!" he called again, but he knew they could no longer hear him.

  The boar fell through first, with a squeal. And then the white-crusted earth seemed to crack wide open, gaping black beneath the white, as the men tumbled, screaming, to their deaths.

  Brigid's father watched it all, sobbing aloud.

  After the priestesses had consecrated the souls of the lost men, Brigid went to them.

  "I have come to keep my promise," she said. Music, high and sweet and secret, seemed to be coming from the great altar stone.

  "The Cailleach's song," the holy woman said. "Can you hear it?"

  "Yes," Brigid whispered, trembling. "I have always heard it. I am one of you." Then, weeping, she collapsed on the yellow stone as if she had been longing all her life to touch it, her fingers tracing the crude engraving of the rising sun, her spirit listening to the song of the Cailleach sounding through her, transforming her, making of her body an instrument of the goddess. "This is where I belong."

  Some distance away, Macsen the swordmaker hung his head.

  That had been half a lifetime ago. Now, at the age of thirty, Brigid was herself the High Priestess, preparing to consecrate a special gift to the Goddess. It was a sword that looked as if it had been made from moonlight. The black iron swords from Macsen's forge were the finest in the land. They had brought victory to the Tor's warriors and wealth to its inhabitants. In a single generation, Macsen had advanced the art of swordmaking by a hundred years. But this sword, this gleaming unique being of a weapon, was beyond anyone's imagining.

  He was approaching the altar with it now. The women gasped at its beauty, at the deep silver of its blade and its gold pommel encrusted with gems; the men regarded it with something akin to sadness. Nothing so perfect should have to be sacrificed, they thought, each of them wishing that they could, just once, hold the magnificent object in their own hands. With it they would be invincible. In battle, it would come to life for them, hungry like its name, voracious, Excalibur.

  Macsen would not meet Brigid's eyes. He had made the sword for her, she knew, just as he had made delicate and beautiful jewelry for her. It had taken him many years to create, but he had never faltered in his devotion to it, just as he had waited each of those long years for Brigid.

  When she had told him she was to enter the house of the priestesses, he had not objected. "You'll come back," he had said, certain that his love would be enough to break whatever bonds she was forging with the holy women.

  "I cannot," Brigid had said. "It is my duty to serve our people as priestess. I cannot be your wife."

  "Then I'll wait until you can," Macsen answered.

  And he had. He had waited for fifteen years. He had not married, nor courted another woman in all that time. He had used those years, instead, to craft his masterwork.

  He knelt, holding the sword out to her. "For your goddess," he spat.

  Brigid regarded him. She knew how proud he was of the sword, how much it meant to him. "Why are you giving this up for sacrifice?" she asked.

  His gaze rose to meet hers. "So that she'll give you back to me."

  She stiffened. "My vow is for a lifetime," she said.

  His jaw tightened. It was the only movement that betrayed his heartbreak. "Then I will wait for the next," he said. "I will wait until the gods themselves fall and die, if I must. But I will have you, Brigid. You are mine."

  She stepped back, aghast. The villagers murmured. Some fled, expecting the Great Hag to send demons on horseback to destroy them for Macsen's blasphemy.

  "And I am yours," he finished in a whisper.

  The sword wavered in Brigid's hands and almost slipped out of her grasp. "Do not attempt to bargain with the mighty ones," she rasped.

  "See if she'll accept my bargain."

  Brigid's eyes blazed at the sacrilege while her throat constricted with love for the man who had wait
ed for her with such foolish steadfastness.

  "I will offer the sword," she said at last.

  Then, holding it high, she summoned the elements about her: air, water, fire and earth. The wind grew, howling, blowing her hair about her. The sky darkened and rain fell, cold, punishing, pouring so hard that she found it difficult to breathe. Lightning flashed across the sky, crackling with its white flame of liquid light. Finally the earth itself seemed to tremble. The altar stone rose up, as if straining to leave its place in the ground and go sailing away like a leaf.

  Then Brigid spoke. Rather, words came out of her mouth, but the voice was not her own. Hollow and wispy, as if the sounds issuing from her had traveled through a universe of time and space to reach her, she delivered the Cailleach's message to the young man who had crafted the sword of the gods.

  "This gift is worthy," she intoned. "But you do not give it freely."

  The observers held their breath. Even among the powerful priestesses of the Tor, this was no ordinary occurrence. Brigid's lovely features seemed to twist and gnarl until she took on the countenance of a wizened old crone.

  "In this life you shall have neither the sword nor the woman," she said. "But in another you shall have both, and you shall have to choose between them. How will you choose, Macsen? The sword of the gods, which will make you invincible, or the love of a mortal possessing neither power nor Sight?"

  "I will have Brigid!" he shouted.

  The Hag Goddess laughed. "That is to be seen." Her voice seemed to grow until her laughter filled the clearing, booming as the thunder in the sky. "You may wait... but she shall serve me."

  Suddenly all sound stilled, plunging the glen into dead silence. Brigid's eyes cleared. Her hands shook slightly. No one moved.

  She brought the sword down. At the point where the tip of the steel blade met the sacred stone, a blinding spark rose out of the rock, leaving the spectators blinking. When they could see again, the sky had cleared, the rain had stopped, the thunder had subsided, the lightning had vanished.

  And the sword rose out of the rock like a flower growing out of the earth.

  Brigid heard the music then, the song of the Cailleach who had taken the gift offered. You may wait, the music said, but in this life she shall serve me.

  In time Brigid would become a goddess herself, she of the clear sight, goddess of women and childbirth, curer of blindness. She would be remembered.

  And the sword became famous, too, so famous that even when the Tor no longer held any inhabitants, when the name of the Cailleach was no longer spoken, and the magic of the place was long vanished, the legend of the Sword of Macsen remained, along with the promise of its creator.

  He had waited, as he had promised. Through one lifetime after another, his soul had searched for hers, until he found her again, and made her his.

  "Arthur," Guenevere said, waking to see his face before hers.

  The fog of Morgause's drug was beginning to wear off. Guenevere drifted in and out of consciousness, the images of her dream still prominent in her mind. "I saw the ancient goddess Brigid," she said thickly, trying to sit up. "I was Brigid, Arthur! And you—"

  At that moment she realized where she was, in the midst of enemy raiders who had taken her from her home and nearly killed her, and that Arthur, her soul's true love, had come to save her.

  "You're here," she said, holding on to him fiercely, kissing his eyes, unable to keep from crying any longer. "You've come back for me." She tried to pull herself into wakefulness, but the dim fog in her mind was spiraling her back into sleep. She saw the sword again, growing out of the rock. And she saw Arthur's face—no, not Arthur, that wasn't his name then, though it was the same soul, saying he would wait for her through that life and others. "Just as you promised ..." Her fingers touched his lips as she sank back into unconsciousness.

  They burned against the young man's mouth. Gently he took her small hand in his. "My lady," Launcelot du Lac said.

  She was delirious, he knew. In her confusion, the princess Guenevere had obviously mistaken him for the High King. It was Arthur whose eyes she had kissed, whose lips she had touched with such tenderness.

  Yet Launcelot could barely contain the feelings that rose within him as he knelt before her, this perfect woman who was destined to be the King's wife.

  Softly he touched her bruised face, smoothed the loose strands of her hair. "Yes, I am here," he whispered. "I will always be here for you, my queen." Launcelot rose to leave. "Always."

  Chapter Thirty-One

  LAUNCELOT

  Melwas surrendered almost instantly.

  Certain as they had been of being able to reach their homeland before the King's troops, the Orkneyans had not prepared for an attack on the road. Arthur's advance guard may have only numbered twelve knights, but they were well armed and backed up by more than four hundred well-armed troops, already visible in the distance.

  Even the dullest of Melwas' countrymen understood which way a fight between themselves and the High King's soldiers would go, particularly since Princess Guenevere was either already dead or close to it. Without Leodegranz's daughter, their entire plan had lost its legs. The only question now was whether or not Arthur would put the entire Orkneyan contingent to death for their misadventure.

  They steeled themselves for battle, each man and woman prepared to fight to the death.

  "Do you see what you've done?" Melwas shrieked in a panic to Morgause who, alone among the Orkneyans, did not seem overly concerned about their imminent slaughter.

  "If you hadn't poisoned the princess, none of this would have happened. We'd be back home."

  "What's the good of being there?" Morgause answered scornfully. "This is your chance to best the High King of Britain, Melwas. Perhaps your only chance."

  Melwas gestured toward Arthur's troops cresting a distant hill, their swords held high against the sky. "Look at them!" he shouted, enraged, spittle flying from his mouth. "We're not going to best anybody!"

  "It won't come to fighting," Morgause said. "Arthur won't want to show himself as a tyrant, no matter what you've done. The other kings are watching his every move. Killing you will be a signal to the others that Arthur will use his power to destroy them, and they'll all come after him."

  Had it been an adviser, or even an ordinary adult, who had reassured Melwas of his safety, he would have realized that this analysis was sound. But because the words had been spoken by an eleven-year-old girl, he only sneered. "Maybe you ought to tell him that," he said.

  "I won't have to. He's not an idiot." She cast a blank but telling look at her brother.

  As it happened, Morgause's thoughts were exactly what had been going through Arthur's mind ever since the renegade Orkneyans were first spotted.

  The outcome of this confrontation, he decided, would depend on Guenevere's condition. If they had killed her, he would parade Melwas through every one of the ten kingdoms, asking each of the petty kings for a verdict and sentence. Each chief, he knew, would want a part of Orkney if it were offered to him for free. In the end, Octa would have to give up all his lands, his subjects would be dispersed throughout the nine remaining kingdoms. Prince Melwas, sentenced by the entire island of Britain, would serve as a sacrificial goat, and the other nine chiefs would be not only united in a common cause, but richer for it.

  And when it was over, Arthur, if Guenevere was dead, would walk away from the throne. Because without her, what would it matter if he was High King?

  Under a flag of truce, he arranged for an envoy to check on the well-being of the kidnapped princess. He longed to go himself, but as King, his place was with his troops, facing down Melwas, preparing either to lay out the terms of a bloodless surrender, or to engage in battle.

  The envoy who had been sent was a young knight from Gaul named Launcelot du Lac.

  The tale of the sword in the stone had spread quickly even to places well beyond the British Isles. Despite his young age—Launcelot was even younger than Arthur, b
arely sixteen years old—he had come to try his hand at the magical sword and the exalted reward it carried. He never got a chance to make the attempt, however. His journey from Gaul had been long, and by the time he arrived, Arthur had already taken the great sword.

  Seeing the lad's clear disappointment, Leodegranz offered him his hospitality. After all, Leodegranz reasoned, he was already keeping Prince Melwas and half the population of Orkney. One more mouth to feed wouldn't make much difference.

  And the young Launcelot was exceptionally talented with a sword. Leodegranz had heard that the Gauls were great swordsmen, but he had never expected to see such skill in one so young. Within days, he asked Launcelot to train his troops in his method of sword fighting. A few weeks later, nearly every petty king within a hundred miles had seen the young man's remarkable skill.

  Every king but Arthur. He had been too busy trying to convince the others not to take up arms against him. But when Ector had presented Launcelot in his gleaming armor as part of the advance guard to ride with Arthur toward the Orkneyans, the new High King had accepted him with a handshake.

  If Guenevere could be recovered in good health, Arthur knew that the way he handled the incident with the Orkneyans would go far toward uniting the petty kings under the Pendragon shield. They would see that, though young, their new High King could not only mount an attack, but was intelligent enough to find a diplomatic solution that would render one unnecessary.

  "Prince Melwas, I will spare the lives of your countrymen," he began, and watched as the tension drained instantly from the entire Orkney contingent. "In fact, I give you my promise as High King that no reprisals for this misunderstanding"—he allowed the word to hang meaningfully in the silence—"will be taken against you, your father King Octa, or the Kingdom of Orkney, provided that the Princess Guenevere is alive and well."