For Camelot's Honor (39 page)

Now that they faced each other on level ground, Geraint felt he had indeed shrunk back to a stripling boy. Had they stood side by side, the Great King would have been head and shoulders above Sir Kai, who was called the Tall by the bards. The club might at first seem a crude weapon, but its master carried it as easily as Geraint carried his spear, and probably he knew as much of its use. Geraint's own arms seemed suddenly flimsy in comparison. Even his shield felt thin as parchment.

“Come then.” Rhyddid swung his club back and forth, and Geraint thought he heard regret in his voice.

In answer, Geraint stepped back and let the Great King come forward.

Slowly, they began to circle one another, the first steps of the dance that might end with life for all, or might end only in death.

Elen waited in the darkness. Behind her, she felt the others rather than heard them. She felt them in the way they made the air stir against her skin and the vibrations of their many hearts that woke again the hunting hunger within her.

Where was Calonnau? Where was Geraint? Had the battle been joined yet? Did he even still live? She did not dare take her mind and will from what was before her.

Angry now, she called out again. “Maius! Maius Smith! Your daughter Elen calls you!”

I cannot have been wrong.

“It would seem your lover has failed you,” came the mocking voice of the mouse-king. “Will you go in search of him, bitter willow bound about your brow?”

But even as he spoke, the darkness around them changed. The red light of the lit forge seeped across the floor, turning the pools of milk to pools of blood. Ahead on her left hand, Elen could make out a doorway limned in the fierce glow. Heat crept across her skin, prickling the fine hairs on her arms and cheeks.

Ching-ching. Ching-ching.
The smith's hammer rang out from behind the door.

Behind Elen, all was still.

Elen walked forward, the precious jug held close against her, as if it might shield her from what was to come. At her approach, the door fell open, and beyond it, she saw the forge. It did not matter that this was not where she had seen this chamber before. Nothing mattered, save the crucible heat of the forge poured out to envelope her, and there was the smith twisted and bent under the disfiguring scars, standing behind his silver anvil, forging yet another link for the golden chain that bound him as tightly as it bound all the others in this cursed place.

It was not the fae you displeased. Oh, Father I am sorry.

Pity drove out fear, and Elen was able to stand at the threshold of the forge. The heat beat down on her wave after wave. She welcomed its first touch, as one welcomes the dawn after the winter's night, but soon she felt its claws sinking into her skin, seeking the flesh underneath. She could not imagine what it was like for the smith with his so many burns still so raw.

“Maius,” she whispered. She had no doubt he heard her. He lifted his ravaged face, turning the swollen and ragged slits that had once been eyes toward her.

“Daughter?” The word was thick and heavy, for his lips were so twisted by their scars they could scarcely move to help shape the words.

“Yes.” She stepped across the threshold. Heat seared her skin. Perspiration sprang out against her brow, and was gone in a moment. “I am the daughter of your daughters.”

“Ah, gods all!” Maius raised his face as a man might when praying to heaven. To her surprise, Elen saw the tracks of tears running from his burned and ruined eyes. “I did not think there was more he could do to me. Why came you here!” Even as he wailed aloud his hands worked. The hammer fell, again and again, his fingers turned the gold chain.

Ching-ching.

“I am come to free you, Father,” said Elen. “I have come to put out the fire.”

“You cannot,” he said with the conviction of a man speaking of death. “There is not water enough in the world.”

But Elen strode forward. The heat worked down her throat into her lungs. She stood in a stone oven. The coals glowed so brightly her eyes squinted and blurred, but there were no tears for her. The heat had dried them up before they could fall. The stench of burning surrounded her. It filled her mouth and lungs. It was the smell of death, the smell of the ravaged village as she ran through it trying to reach her mother's corpse. It was the smell that came when she fell onto the ground and saw Bevan, his hand stretched out toward his broken harp.

“Stop, daughter, stop,” lisped the smith, his hammer beating frantically at the gold. He was trying to drop the tool, trying to move, she saw his muscles bunch and strain beneath his skin. “Go back before he finds you. He'll know.”

His words made her shudder, but all he could do was plead. He must stay where he was, forging the golden chain. It lay snaked across the cracked flagstones. It was piled in loops and heaps, impossibly precious and delicate, infinite and endless, both contained within this one strange chamber, and stretching out beyond it. Elen picked her way over it. The chain caught at her skirt as if it had thorns, and all at once she felt the weight of the walls over her. She was buried. She was bound to the fire, to the stone and the earth. In her mind's eye she saw the mountains, the narrow valleys, the streams, and the forests spread out before her. She saw the teaming inhabitants, the humans and the beasts, and those who were neither, and around them she saw the shimmering walls of gold. She saw them beating wings and hearts against them. She saw them kneel in prayer with wailing voices that could not reach past the shining walls. She felt the weight of the uncorruptable gold pressing down on her until she could no longer breathe and the fear glided through her that she would smother.

I cannot smother. I cannot die.
She stretched out will and mind, and she found Calonnau. She felt the rush of the fresh air, and saw the green and brown spread of the country beneath her. Her heart soared safe. She could only be hurt, she could not be killed, and hurt she could endure. She could still walk forward, and she did, one staggering step at a time until she stood before the forge.

“No!” the smith cried.

It was a rough walled crucible, a curved and open oven with its wide bed of coals burning orange and red. A blue-hearted flame leapt up as if startled by her footfalls. Elen dragged in a deep breath of the searing air and raised the red clay jug.

She poured out the milk. Steam, smoke and ash rose up in a great choking cloud. She could not breathe. She could not see. Her eyes burned as if the fire were in them. Sparks landed on scalp and skin, pin pricks of bright pain. She smelled the horrible stench of burning hair, and knew it was her own. She forced her hands to clamp tightly to the cool, curving sides of the clay jug, and she held it high that the blessed liquid might flow out freely and she held herself strong against the pain.

It was poison, this smoke. No living creature could breathe so much, she knew that as she knew the rush and rasp of it filling her raw throat and lungs. But Elen did not live, and it was only pain, and she endured.

Little by little, the heat began to fail. The smoke began to clear. Elen's ravaged throat felt the touch of clean air. Little by little, the ash grew heavy and fell to the floor. One-by-one, and the red coals of the forge died and turned black. One coal at a time, darkness fell.

Elen's arms shook and her grip at last failed. The jug slipped from her fingers and crashed to the floor, broken, as any piece of crockery might break, into a hundred red shards.

Filthy, burned, char-covered, ash-choked, wheezing and filled with pain, Elen lifted her grit-caked eyes to see Maius Smith, surrounded by his chain, standing beside his silver anvil. His great arms hung loose at his side. For a long moment, they stood together, and there was only silence.

“It is done,” he breathed. “Done!”

The delicate hammer slipped from his fingers, falling to ring sweet and clear against the stones. In that moment, it was the sound of triumph. Maius stretched out his thick misshapen hands to her. Elen, moving slowly on her trembling legs, stumbled forward to take them. In their grasp, she felt again her mother's hands, swollen and wracked with their disease, and she wondered at it.

She tried to speak, but only coughed hard. The smith's strong grip steadied her as she shook. “A boon, Father,” she rasped. “Before you go from here.”

“Anything, daughter.” His voice was gentle now, as if he had already begun to heal from his labors. She looked at him, blinking her own burning eyes, and for a moment, she saw the man beneath the ravaged slave. She saw how his eyes had once been clear and brown, and his hands strong and with clean labor. She saw the pride, the strong, honest, pride that had led him astray to this place.

“Give me the chain,” she said.

Trembling now, those hands reached for the chain they had forged for a hundred lifetimes. They lifted it up, stretching a length of the golden lace between them, he held it out to her. In the center of that length, she saw the little curve of gold wire that was the link he had left unfinished. She saw the little chink in it, the tiny gap where of the ends were not yet sealed.

“It's yours now. I give it you, daughter, mine.
I
give it.”

Her hand closed around that precious, unfinished link, enclosing the weight and the warmth of the soft metal. “Be at peace, Maius Smith.”

“I am free,” was all Maius said, and as he did, Elen felt his heart begin to beat.

Then it ceased, and he was gone and Elen stood alone, gripping the golden chain in her burned hand.

It occurred to her slowly that she should have been in the dark. But a golden glow shone before her eyes. It came from the chain. It shimmered and pulsed as it coiled through the chamber, like a snake's skin beneath the sunlight. It was alive this thing, alive with all the power Maius Smith had poured into it. It was impossibly fine. It might have been a chain of silken ribbon, it was so light. It might have been the stones that made the mountains, it was so terribly heavy. It was so long she could not find its end and it lay in shin-high heaps about the floor. It was so short she could have coiled it up once and held it in the palm of her hand.

It didn't matter, the mystery of the thing. What mattered was she had been given it by its maker. It was hers now, to do with as she would.

She wasted no more time. The light of the Little King's fetter showed her the door. All around her, the room seemed to be falling into shadow. She had the feeling as if it was melting back into the darkness that had made it. Dragging the terrible weight of the chain behind her, Elen waded toward the door. She did not look back. She did not want to see the chain stretching out into nothing but darkness.

Ahead of her stood the mouse-king and his wife and all their people. They surrounded her with their pounding hearts. They watched her with their black eyes. She felt weary beyond all measure. She said not one word to the god or goddess that Gwiffert's art had made so small. She only turned her face toward the direction where the air was lighter and began to trudge forward.

They gathered behind her. They hoisted the great chain onto their shoulders, raising it up, taking what of the burden each of them could. In silent procession, they followed Elen as she led them out toward the open air.

The great club swung down yet again, catching the edge of Geraint's shield, jarring his arm up to his shoulder. Geraint backed away again, circling. Rhyddid's reach was beyond any Geraint had ever known. With each step, each feint, he cursed the loss of his spear. Some time ago, Rhyddid had caught it with his great club and snapped the shaft in two. Now it lay useless on the ground, somewhere. With only his sword left to him, distance was Geraint's only hope. But Rhyddid knew his size and he knew himself. He had seen this tactic before, and he moved sparingly, letting Geraint wear himself out with his hopping around. Geraint would tire, he would slow down, and Rhyddid would be ready for him.

Another enemy might have grinned, might even have taunted, but the young king did his work in grim silence, watching Geraint, turning to keep his face always toward his foe, swinging at the nearest feints, but holding back otherwise. He would not be rushed. He saw that time was his friend, not Geraint's. The day was growing hot, and sweat poured down Geraint's face and made his hands slick. His throat was dry, his legs aching. The Great King saw all this, and he waited.

There was one thing he did not know. Geraint dodged left, then right. He took another blow, and his shield shivered, and he heard its wooden frame crack. It would break on the next blow. He backed away, circling again. Rhyddid turned, remorseless, fresh as if they had begun, balanced lightly on his huge feet.

He did not know that Arthur had learned sword craft against his tall foster brother before Sir Kai was lamed. Rhyddid did not know that Arthur insisted all the squires he took to train for the Table Round learn well at least one trick to even unequal heights.

But there would be one chance and once chance only. Geraint forced himself to breathe evenly. He blinked hard, clearing the stinging sweat from his eyes. If he failed here, with his shield set to break, he would die.

Geraint let his breath heave, shuddering his shoulders, making his jaw slack. He watched the Great King's eyes narrow.

Geraint screamed, high, sharp and wild, the scream of the blue-stained men who hurled themselves at the sides of Din Eityn when he was a boy. He ran in, his sword raised as high as his arm could take it, already sweeping down to cut at the Great King's jaw.

Rhyddid ducked his head, and brought up his club to block the blow. But Geraint saw the curve path of the weapon, and jerked his sword away, bringing it down behind while he swung up his shield. The shield took the blow, and failed, shattering, driving a sharp splinter into Geraint's arm. But while he cried aloud with the pain, his sword stroke did not falter, and he sliced down on Rhyddid's leg behind the knee. The Great King screamed, and the Great King fell, and Geraint slammed forward with all his weight, bearing the giant down to the ground. They hit the ground together, but Geraint recovered first, and he scrambled to his feet, kicking away the club. In the next breath, Geraint brought his sword up against Rhyddid's neck.

They waited like that for a long moment. Geraint, panting, blood pouring down his shield arm, almost unable to believe the feint had worked; the Great King lying on his back, his own blood spilling onto the ground, feeling the edge of Geraint's sword at his throat, knowing he was beaten, and knowing that beyond them, the Little King watched.

“Quickly,” he said in a thick and angry whisper. “Kill me. Condemn me not to his slavery.”