"And neither should you. Not yet. But you will."
He wrestled with the emotions warring within him, trying desperately to exert some small mastery over them. "Why did you bring me here?" he asked. "Surely not just to taunt me with riddles I cannot hope to understand? Was it to not tell me my future? It seems like great lengths to go to merely to impress me with your beauty." The more he spoke, the more he found his confidence returning, as though the simple act of questioning her somehow unravelled a little of whatever enchantment she had woven around the grove.
"So young and yet so wise, you are. Perhaps I should call you Alymere the Knower, or Alymere, Arbiter of Truth? That has a certain ring to it, don't you think? Could that be your destiny?"
"I don't know what I think, my lady," he said, finding his manners at last. "Perhaps you should tell me?" The harshness of his own words surprised him. He lowered his gaze, ashamed. No sooner had he found his manners than they deserted him once more. She did that to him. She unnerved him.
"Do you know who I am, Alymere?" the Crow Maiden asked.
He shook his head.
"Then I should tell you, don't you think? You shall call me Blodyweth,2 though I have many names. I think I like this one best, so it is only right that you should know me by it. It is such a pretty name, don't you think?"
He nodded, again slightly lost in her nearness. He was inexperienced in the ways and wiles of women, and such was her heady fragrance that he found himself intoxicated as she drew closer to him, drunk on her beauty and the perfumes coming from the garlands in her hair. No amount of flirtation — nor, for that matter consummation — could have prepared him for the effect the Crow Maiden was having upon his soul.
"This place is my sanctuary." She spread her arms wide to encompass the entire grove, the rippling pool, the stone arch and all of the trees. Not her home, but her sanctuary: her safe haven. "It is sacred to me, but more, it is sacred to Albion itself. It is the very heart of the old country. There is power here. The old ways are strong in the earth. No doubt you have noticed winter's reach does not extend quite this far into the Summervale."
"Are you a witch?" He blurted out the question, not answering her.
She laughed again, not unkindly. Above her, the crow heckled with its ear-splitting caw. The sound echoed around the grove, sounding as though it travelled miles before folding back in on itself. It was a disconcerting sound. "Hardly, but if it helps you to think of me that way, by all means, I shall be a witch for you. All you need to understand is that winter cannot touch the Kingdom of Summer."
For a third time Alymere made the sign of the cross, though this time it was greeted with derision.
"That will not help you here," Blodyweth told him, enjoying his discomfort.
"What do you want from me, witch? Speak plain," Alymere said, finding his courage.
"What do I want from you?" the Crow Maiden smiled again, though this time the veneer of perfection cracked subtly, hinting at the hag that lurked beneath the pretty little maiden. In that instant he caught a glimpse of death in her eyes and it chilled him to the marrow. Yet still it wasn't enough to break her spell on him. "It is not what I need from you, it is what the land needs from you, what your king needs from you, and what, most of all, you need from yourself. All three are in grave peril, young knight. That is why the hart brought you to me."
Three black feathers fell from the cuff of her dress, turning and turning again as they fell down to the ground. One of them landed between her toes and seemed to melt back into her skin, but Alymere was oblivious. He gazed up, full of longing, at her face.
"What would you do for your king?" She asked.
"Anything," he said without hesitation.
"What would you do for your land?"
A trickier question, being a much more nebulous concept, but again he offered the same answer, "Anything."
"What would you do for me?" He had expected her to ask what would he do for himself. She didn't. He offered her the same answer again without thinking.
"Anything."
"As it should be," she said.
Nine
"Every possible fate is woven together like threads to form something more, something greater. Each thread of fate becomes the warp and weft of the tapestry that is this life. Imagine being able to unravel each thread, to be able to pluck it from the weave and recreate the pattern in any way you so wished," the Crow Maiden said. "That is what we are, single threads."
Alymere didn't understand. It didn't matter. He didn't want her to stop talking. He just wanted to listen.
"Some parts of the pattern must never change, and others are more… malleable," she continued. "I know you will claim your father's seat at the Round Table, that is woven into the tapestry and cannot be changed, but the rest," the Crow Maiden's smile was gentle, "you are a dangling thread, Alymere the Undecided. I cannot tell you the future because you haven't decided it for yourself."
She could see he didn't understand, so she took one of the flowers from her hair and told him to watch as she plucked the petals from the daisy one by one. "He loves me," she said, blowing the white petal away from her fingertips, "He loves me not." And another petal was blown away. "He loves me." Again and again until the flower's stem was denuded. The final petal left her lips to the promise of: He loves me. "It's a children's rhyme, but it demonstrates the fact that, whilst it seems that nothing is decided, from the moment the flower began to bloom whether he loved me or not was always going to be dictated at this point of time. It was decided, even though I hadn't so much as pulled that first petal away. It is the stem that never changes. Without it, the flower couldn't exist. And like most of us, the flower only wants to be loved."
He watched the way her lips moved, willing to believe every word they said.
She took a second flower from her hair, a bluebell this time, and crushed it between her fingertips. "But not all beautiful things are cherished." Her words — love, cherish, beauty — conjured an image in his mind of some peaceable kingdom, a place of love and beauty, tranquillity, harmony. A place like this, he realised, looking around the grove. What had she called it? The Summervale. He felt the warmth settling on his shoulders, as though intensified by her words. He began to sweat beneath his thick travelling cloak and his mail shirt. He unclasped the hook fastening it around his throat and let it fall to the ground. He was still too hot. He pulled at his mail shirt, starting to lift it over his head.
"Think on this," the Crow Maiden said. "Some strands of the tapestry exist merely to mar it; almost as though there is beauty in the imperfection."
Alymere cast the mail aside. He felt so much better for having his skin bare, more in touch with the world around him, closer to it. "You are speaking in nonsense words. This is no tapestry," Alymere thumped the ground. "This is Albion. This is a forest, that is a lake. Those are oaks and if I pluck this strand of grass and rub it between my fingers it doesn't all come undone. The oaks are still oaks, the stones still stones and the lake is still a lake. The world doesn't work like that."
"Then let me speak plainly to you," she said. "These oaks, these stones, this lake, all of this — everything you can see, everything you can't, all of it — is in danger. These are the petals on the flower, and you, Alymere, you are the stem. Should you fail they will all wither and die."
"How can I fail if I don't know what I am supposed to do?" he said.
She placed her hand flat on his chest. Where he saw soft fingers he felt long talons sinking in deeper and deeper in search of his heart.
"Tell me," he pleaded. "How can I serve you?"
Instead of answering him, the Crow Maiden gathered the hems of her dress and drew it up over her head. She stood naked before him.
"There is one thing you can do for me," she said.
"Anything," he said eagerly.
"Love me," she said. "Love me unconditionally, body and soul," and opened her arms to him. Alymere couldn't help himself. He stood on unsteady legs and ste
pped into her embrace. She whispered into his ear, crooning soft words, sweet deceits. "If you can do that, you can do anything."
"I can do that," he promised.
Only when he was lost inside her did the Crow Maiden dare whisper, "Do you love me?"
"Yes. Yes."
"Tell me again, what would you do for me?"
"Anything," he said breathlessly.
Her smile widened, turning predatory. Alymere could not see the cracked and broken teeth in the cemetery smile. He had his face buried in the nape of her neck, tasting her sweat and breathing in her sex.
"Anything?" she whispered in his ear.
"Yes," he said, all the promises in the world were nothing though, until he spilled his seed, sealing the pact between them.
Ten
They lay together on the soft grass, spent.
For all the pretty words she had used, there really was beauty in that moment. Beauty and peace.
She owned him then, body and soul.
Alymere rolled onto his elbow. He looked down at her, seeing finally that there was nothing innocent about her nakedness. There was a look of utter contentment on her face. He smiled.
The hart stood at the edge of the clearing. It wasn't alone. It seemed almost as though all of the creatures of the forest had come to witness their coupling. He saw dozens upon dozens of birds, all manner of them, lining the branches around the grove. He saw foxes and badgers and voles, rats, moles and ferrets hiding in the shadow-fringe of the trees, watching. It was the most unnerving thing he had ever witnessed. Not one of them moved. Not once did their gazes waver. They only had eyes for him.
"You could do one more thing for me," she said, not looking at him.
"You need only ask it," he said.
"Do not be so eager to make promises you cannot keep," she chided him lightly.
"There is no promise I cannot keep," Alymere said earnestly. "There is nothing you could ask of me that I would not willingly do, without a second thought."
Blodyweth shifted slightly in the long grass, and turned to look at him.
"You really mean that, don't you?"
"With all of my heart."
And with that rash promise, he took his first step on the road to becoming the man he was always destined to be. He was no longer Alymere the Undecided.
"Be my champion," she said. "Save me."
Alymere traced a finger down her cheek to her lips, and leaned in and kissed her. "No-one will harm you while there is a breath in my body."
"You are so sweet, my little knight," the Crow Maiden met his kiss with her lips and for a moment they chapped and hardened, betraying her true age, though again Alymere was too lost in the moment to notice the disparity between what he saw and what he felt. "My fearless and brave hero. Lying here in your arms like this, I almost believe that you could protect me from anything."
"On my life," Alymere swore, leaning in to kiss those lips again.
"But you cannot save me, the bones are already cast. No-one can."
"Hush," he said, pressing his finger to her lips. "Didn't you just say nothing is writ in stone?" He teased a flower from her garland, and held it between two fingers as though it were the most precious thing in the whole world. "He loves me, remember?" He scattered the petals with one breath.
And for a heartbeat her resolve crumbled, the cunning of the crow creeping to the surface for all the world to see, in her eyes and in her predatory smile, as she drew him closer and said, "Hold me." He did. And because of that, he missed the truth.
"That is not such a hard promise to keep," he said.
"If only it were so easy," the Crow Maiden breathed in his ear.
"Talk to me, Blodyweth. There is nothing you can say that will scare me away. I am yours." It was said with all of the earnest honesty of youth; the same sort of youth where mountains are there to be climbed and fears to be conquered.
"I know," she said, soothing him. "I know, my sweet, sweet knight." When at last he began to doze sleepily in her arms, and she judged him receptive, she whispered: "Our fates are entwined now, just like our bodies. You are my champion. I love this land as though it were my own flesh, and her rivers flow through my veins like blood, and you love me, don't you?" he nodded. "Here," she tore a strip of fine linen from her discarded dress, tying it around his forearm, "so that I am always close to you, wherever you may be. Close your eyes, my love. Rest, dream of me."
He did.
And while he slept, she planted the suggestion in his mind:3 "Do this one thing for me, Alymere. Find the blind monk whose skin is impervious to blades and steal the Devil's book4 from his hands… do not fail me, or all of this will be lost. Promise me now, make this the one promise you keep."
He grunted and shifted in his sleep.
"Promise me," she insisted, letting go of her beautiful face. Feathers fell from her lips to tickle his. He sighed, his lips parting.
"Promise," Alymere said sleepily, sealing his fate once and for all.
The Crow Maiden leaned down and kissed him like lovers do. His mouth opened to take her in. Finally she broke away from that last kiss and told him, "Follow the smoke. When the time comes, you will understand. You must be strong. True. If there is a weakness in you, he will exploit it. If there is evil in your heart, he will stoke it, and all will be lost. Stay true. Save me, my champion. Save me, or the Devil take both our souls."
Eleven
Sir Lowick found Alymere naked and shivering in the snow, his clothing scattered around the clearing. His eyes had rolled up inside his head and he appeared to be in the grip of some manner of fit or seizure. He knelt beside the young man, cradling his head in his arms and holding him firm until the convulsions had passed.
He fetched his cloak and wrapped it around him.
"Come on, lad. Come on," he repeated over and over, turning the demand into a mantra, willing Alymere to come back to his senses. He was sweating despite the cold. Some sort of fever sweats. He smoothed the matted hair away from the lad's brow. There was a scrap of linen tied around his forearm. Lowick couldn't tend to Alymere here. He put all thoughts of reivers5 and missing guards from his mind. One thing at a time; he needed to get Alymere to a fire, and get some warmth back into his blood. Anything else could wait.
He started to gather the discarded clothes and dressed his nephew, pulling his undershirt and shirt on over his head and his hose on one leg at a time. His mail shirt lay in the soft mud where the melt had soaked into ground, softening it up. Lowick thought long and hard about leaving it there, but knew that out of the cover of the trees where the blizzard was still raging any extra layers could be the difference between life and death. The mail would serve to lock in what little heat his body generated, so the added burden of it couldn't be measured in pounds and ounces.
Besides, the boy would be wretched if he woke to find it had been left behind in the forest.
The knight man-handled his nephew into the mail shirt and gathered him into his arms. Following their muddy tracks back to the road, Lowick carried him the mile and more back through the trees.
The horses were tethered where he had left them.
When his nephew hadn't caught up with him down the road he had turned his horse around and come looking for him. He hadn't known what he expected to find, but certainly not this. Alymere's mount was loose, but well-trained. It hadn't strayed too far from where Alymere had left the road, and the knight had been able to find his tracks and follow them. "Thank the Lord for small mercies," Lowick grunted as he hoisted Alymere up into the saddle. He draped his nephew's limp body over the animal's back, checked he was indeed still breathing, so grey and pallid was his complexion, and then draped his own cloak over his nephew's back before climbing into the saddle himself.
With the reins of both horses in his hands, the knight spurred his mount into motion, and led them back out of the trees into the cutting wind and swirling snows.
He knew this land well — he had ridden it every day for the
forty-seven years he had been on this earth — but even so, with the snow storm raging, it would have been all too easy to get turned about and lose his way. The cost of that, though, was beyond anything he was prepared to pay. Shivering against the freezing cold, and with his head down against the icy sting of the snow as it abraded his cheeks, the knight guided the horses back through the blizzard to the abandoned mile house.
He threw the door open and staggered into the room, laying Alymere down on one of the unmade bedrolls closest to the fire, and then threw off his gloves and knelt at the hearth. He set about banking up the coals quickly and fed two new logs into the grate. He fumbled with the tinder, trying to get a spark. His frozen fingers refused to obey him as he struggled to light the fire and get some blessed warmth into the place. It wouldn't light. Again and again he sparked the tinder but couldn't get a flame to catch.
The answer, of course, was in the brazier outside; the knight braved the storm one last time to gather two logs from beneath the brazier's cover. They had been soaked in oil to withstand the elements, and to light no matter how harsh or hostile the conditions. They had to. Lives depended upon it. He tossed them into the grate and knelt, fumbling with the tinder. It sparked the third time of asking and the fire caught on the fourth spark. In a matter of minutes the fire was cracking and sap snapping and popping in the logs as it burned, filling the small room with warmth.
Lowick stripped out of his own armour, and then did the same for Alymere. What had kept the heat in outside only served to keep the heat out inside. Alymere's shivers lessened as the warmth filled the room, but he didn't stir.
Lowick had set his sword down upon the small table, within easy reach.
The knight paced around the cramped room, frustration eating away at him. What had possessed the lad to leave the road? Snow madness? He had heard of such things, when the cold was so great it froze the blood in the brain, but surely the onset of any such madness demanded more time in the cold for it to worm away inside a man? He cracked his knuckles and stretched out the bones in his back.
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