Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (26 page)

His eyes were becoming accustomed. On Paion’s face he glimpsed an enigmatic smile and eyes that gazed with implacable calm through his seeming to his soul.

“Your Lady chose well,” the god said then. “A purpose you have, already destined. Unknowing, you have set your feet upon that path. Where you are going you will find Me once more, though day be turned to darkness and warmth to cold. Where the human wolves howl, My wolves shall hunt them, and My silver bow shall slay your enemies.”

“And what must I do in return?’

The serene smile blazed. “What you most desire. You shall forge a Sword from the Stars for the hand of a king. . . .”

“Where? And how?” Velantos cried, but the shining figure only reached down and touched his leg. Pain blazed through him, so intensely he could not even scream. When he could think again, he saw that the scene was shifting, golden light whirling away in mists of silver into which the figure of the god disappeared.

When Velantos became aware once more, a cock was crowing, and the cool gray light of dawn filled the room. He lay without moving, savoring a feeling of being at ease in his body that he had not known since he was a child. The light strengthened and the white-clad priests entered the room, moving from one patient to the next.

“I have no need to ask how
you
fare,” said the old priest, bending over Velantos. “The god’s glory still gleams in your eyes.” He lifted the light woolen blanket and with a delicate touch unwound the bandaging. “Look”—he called to the others—“Paion has touched him indeed.”

At that, Velantos heaved himself onto his elbows to see. There was still a depression in the calf of his leg where the dead meat had sloughed away, but the raw flesh was now covered by smooth pink skin.

 

 

 

WOODPECKER DIRECTED THE MEN to set the heavy chest down on the stony ground and motioned them away again, watching Velantos warily. The smith stood beside the empty hearth in the workshop King Aletes had given him, waiting with the same serene smile he had worn since his night at Paion’s shrine. The workspace was little more than a shed built on to the side of the megaron. The narrow space atop the akropolis left little room for a palace. But it would have to serve.

“They are all here—” The boy indicated the box. “All your things from the smithy at Tiryns. Kresfontes sent them with us. He said no use to have a smith without the tools of his trade. . . .” His voice faltered.

What had Velantos dreamed? He must have told the priests, for they seemed pleased. And the king must have been informed that his captive’s wound had healed, for two days later men had come to fetch the two slaves to the citadel. Woodpecker had been told nothing at all.

He frowned resentfully.
Why won’t you talk to me? Why do you gaze around you with that exalted smile?
He wanted the old Velantos back again, temper and all.

“That was thoughtful,” said the smith. “Perhaps we should open it. My muscles are like clay.” He laughed softly. “I will have to get my strength back before I can work again.”

That sounded like an order, and Woodpecker bent to wrestle with hasp and pin. Sunlight gleamed warm from the metal within. “Here’s a small hammer for you to begin on—” He held out the tool.

As Velantos took it his posture changed, the lines of his face firming, the hammer becoming an extension of his hand. Woodpecker sighed in relief. This was more like the man he knew.

“A good choice,” the smith said softly. “My first teacher gave it to me when I was so young this was the heaviest tool I could hold. This is a hammer for fine work, not for weapons. But that is just as well. Before I make anything for the king, I have promised a votive offering to the god.”

TWELVE

T
he third winter after Mikantor had disappeared brought cold such as the community at Avalon had never known. The water in the marshes froze and the Lead Hills were covered with snow. The houses where the priests and priestesses slept had never been intended for such harsh weather. As the cold increased in the black months that followed Midwinter, Anderle gathered everyone in the pillared hall where they took their meals, built of solid stone with a central hearth. Hangings stretched between poles gave them a little privacy, but the air in the chamber was heavy with the scents and sounds of crowded humanity.

To Anderle, huddled in her heaviest woolen tunic, two shawls and a cloak, the pressure of so many other souls and bodies was almost unendurable. She knew how to shield her spirit at the great festivals, but this was Avalon, and these the people to whom she had spent her life learning to open heart and soul. Now, what she was picking up from them was physical discomfort and an undercurrent of fear.

Fear, she decided as she took the earthenware beaker of hot mint tea that Ellet handed her, was as debilitating as the cold, sapping heart and will. She cradled the beaker between her hands, luxuriating as its warmth penetrated cold fingers, and felt the tightness in her chest relax as she breathed in the fragrant steam. She wondered how were they faring in the Lake Village. They could insulate their walls with bundled reeds, but the stilts that kept the platforms that were the bases of their houses above the floods also lifted them into the wind. At least, in this weather, no one was traveling, and the only illnesses they had to fear were the ordinary coughs and fevers that came with the cold. Perhaps she should send to see if they needed more feverfew or white willow. With the Lake frozen there was no need to call for a boat. One could walk across it, with care.

No—she thought suddenly—she would go herself. In this cold even Galid must keep close to home, and for the moment the gray skies seemed to hold no snow. After their confrontation the previous year, she had hardly left Avalon, and then only when she was well guarded. After murdering Agraw, the warlord had held Cimara prisoner for a time before exiling her to a small farm. His threats to Anderle had been scarcely less dire, and there had been moments when she wondered if he would let her return to Avalon. But whether it was fear of the Goddess or some buried superstition of his own that constrained him, he had not raped or murdered either the priestess or the queen.

She glanced around her. Larel was telling a story about snow spirits to the children. Swathed in sheepskins, he looked like a snow monster himself as he acted out the tale. Ellet had joined Tiri and the younger priestesses near the fire, the only place where it was warm enough to spin. The whirling weight of the spindle drew out the thread, inducing its own trance as the spinner found the rhythm that would allow her to wind it onto the shaft, add more wool, and let the spindle spin downward once more. Conversation was only a surface distraction from that perpetual motion, in which an afternoon could easily be lost. The others had likewise found occupation for their hands or minds, or rolled up in their blankets to sleep some more.

She swallowed the last of her tea and moved quietly to the door, mut ing her energy so that no one would notice or question her. She spooned more herbs into bags, working quickly as the chill of the still-room numbed her hands, then shrugged on her own sheepskin cape, fleece side in. Lamb-skin mittens protected her hands. At the door she turned back and selected one of the walking sticks whose ends Larel had sharpened to give a grip on ice or snow.

Anderle nearly turned back as she came out into the cold air, but there was peace in that silent chill, and the air held no scent at all. She strode out strongly, willing her heart to pump, her muscles to kindle heat within. By the time she reached the center of the Lake, she was almost warm. She paused, breathing carefully, allowing herself for the first time to open her awareness to this strange white landscape that had replaced the world she knew.

The sky was covered by high clouds, through which a pale light diffused to illuminate the white world below. The Lake’s expanse was a mottled mixture where storms had broken the ice and driven the slabs against each other in tumbled windrows, white shading into blue and gray. Here and there the surface shone where the wind had scoured away the covering of snow. Beyond, ice gleamed from reed and shrub and tree, and farther still, the white hills were studded with the black arrows of the trees. Only the Tor, kept treeless now for centuries, rose like an ancient pyramid in pristine white, crowned by the ring of stones.

She had huddled, trembling, beneath the howling fury of the winter’s storms, but on this day what she felt was a profound peace. This was not the immobility of death but a focused stillness, as if the world had contracted all its forces into this cold kernel to await the moment when the time was right for those pent-up energies to break free.

The priestess took a careful breath, filling her lungs gradually to mute the shock of the icy air, then let it slowly out again. In and out she breathed, in the pattern to which she had been trained since childhood. Beneath the ice she could sense the gelid depth of water; above, the shimmer of ice crystals suspended in the air. To either side she extended her awareness, then behind and before, until she stood poised at the intersection of three axes of power. She took one step, maintaining that balance of forces, and then another. From here she could go anywhere, do anything. She stood poised at the still point of possibility.

This was not the unthinking liberty of a child, but a freedom created and upheld by a lifetime of discipline.
I have found the Center . . .
Anderle realized in wonder.
What can I, should I, must I do?

From somewhere deeper within came the answer.
Change. . . .

Ever since her childhood it seemed to her that the world had been not so much changing as running down, becoming colder, wetter, less organized, and the more people clung to the old ways, the more they seemed to lose. Even Galid’s violence was a symptom of that decay of order, the spasmodic convulsions of a dying beast that does not understand its doom.

Or perhaps the warlord understood what was happening only too well. He felt free to flout their ancient customs because he believed that the floods that devastated the land were washing away the foundations of all law. With an inner chill that owed nothing to the cold she remembered the look on his face when he speared Agraw. He had
enjoyed
that. For such as he, even rape would have affimed life too strongly. She doubted that even making him king of Azan would give him ease. The only feelings intense enough to reach Galid now were pain and fear.

“Goddess!”
her spirit cried.
“If there is no hope, why have You sent me so many dreams and visions? If You have abandoned us, why am I still compelled to fight for Avalon?”

Change . . .
The word resonated in her awareness once more.

Balanced between earth and air and water, Anderle sensed within herself the one element that was lacking, the living warmth of fire, and recognized the moment when love and will could set the world in motion once more.

“Lady of Light . . . Fire of Life . . .” she said aloud, and the fire within began to pulse and grow. “I call You! Consume me, transform me! I offer myself as a channel for Your power. Change me, and change the world!”

For a moment she stood, the surging heat within contained by the cold outside. Then she whirled, arms opening, releasing the power within her to flare out before and behind her, to either side, above and below. Light exploded around her. When she could see again, she stood in a world of rainbows and crystal. The clouds had opened, and sunlight flashed and flickered from ice and snow. She laughed for sheer delight in the sudden beauty of it, and again as her cheek was kissed by a breath of air in which a hint of moist warmth had replaced the cold.

She struck her stick into the ice for support as it quivered beneath her, and looking down saw a crack angling toward the farther shore.

Goddess! Don’t let me escape freezing only to drown!
Still grinning, she hurried back toward the Tor. When she reached it, she looked behind her and saw the six intersecting cracks radiating from the place where she had stood. In their center a gleam of open water mirrored back the light of the sun. But what she could see was only a visible expression of the energies she could feel vibrating in every direction. The transformation she had invoked was beginning, though she might never know what changed or how.

It was a few days later, when the snow was still melting, that Badger sent her a bouquet of small white lilies drooping on slender stems that they had found blooming at the edge of the hills. “Snowdrops,” the hunters called them. Anderle had never seen them before. She found a vase to hold them and set them on the altar in the Hall of the Sun, beside the eternal fire.

 

 

 

WHEN WINTER CAME TO Korinthos, the mountains grew white with snow, heavier, men said, than any they had known in recent years. No doubt the men who were rebuilding the town appreciated the view, but Velantos and Woodpecker very quickly learned to hate the icy winds that swirled around the citadel. Even at the end of winter, when the lambing season had begun below, they wrapped themselves in wool. The walls of the fortress were not impressive, but they hardly needed to be, with such sheer slopes below. The megaron, too, was small in comparison with those of Tiryns and Mykenae, but it held enough benches for communal meals. When the body heat of Aletes’ household was added to that of the central fire, it was almost warm enough to take off a layer or two.

Woodpecker reached for another beef rib and began to gnaw the bone. Soon after dinner began, he had stripped off not only the moth-eaten sheepskin he wore over his shoulders but the shapeless woolen garment beneath it. He had found the dry cold of the mountains affected him less than the damp chill of the marshes at home. It was Velantos, who had spent all his life in the milder climate of the Argolid, who warmed his hands in his armpits and muttered and swore. The serenity the smith brought from his temple-sleep had gotten him through the crafting of an image of his healed leg in bronze. Since then, their work had been a succession of repairs to utensils and jewelry and weapons, with nothing that was challenging and little that was interesting at all.