Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (31 page)

There was another space, and then more flute players, followed by girls shaking sistrums that filled the air with a shimmering sound. The priests and priestesses walked behind them, each arrayed in the vestments of their grades and gods. The temple dancers came with them, stripped to clouts and brief skirts of twined wool cords, interpersing cartwheels and backflips with the sinuous movements of the dance.

Velantos glimpsed a blaze of gold and turned. Everyone was shifting to stare down the street, as flowers turn toward the sun. A light wagon was coming, drawn by a chestnut mare. Sides, spokes and all were covered with gold. In the wagon rode the queen, robed in a saffron mantle so thickly sewn with golden oranments that she seemed an image cast in gold, steady and strong. From what he had heard, her image reflected reality. There was no need for the wagon to bear an image of the sun. She
was
the sun for her people, her rayed headdress scattering light each time the orb in the heavens peeked through a gap in the clouds.

“Sowela! Sowela!” the people cried, casting their remaining flowers into the road before her. “Bring us warmth and life again!”

Her face was painted so that one could not tell her age, for the sun had no age, unlike the ever-changing moon. In the south, men thought a god, bright and merciless, ruled the solar orb. But Velantos could understand why folk might seek light from a goddess here. He lifted his hands in adoration as she passed. It was going to be a long winter.
Bring us life,
he prayed as he felt the first drops of rain . . .

 

 

 

WOODPECKER TOSSED ON HIS straw mattress, twitching too badly from exhaustion to sleep. The guard had been ordered out to help the people of the Fifth Circle, and muscles he had thought hardened by Bodovos’ training were throbbing with pain. At least he was finally warm and dry. Rain pounded dully on the thatching over his head, driven by a wind from the west that moaned around the eaves. Winter had been cold and relatively calm, but as the wheel of the year rolled toward the Turning of Spring the elements seemed determined to hold off summer’s coming with a defense more violent than anything the city had ever known. For three days storms had battered the coastline, with the promise of worse to come.

Tonight he would have welcomed one of his dreams. He no longer fought the visions, frustrating himself and frightening his friends. To walk the green fields of the Island of the Mighty—the native land that his conscious self had tried so hard to deny—would have been a relief after such a day. However soggy, the island was at least solid ground. He hoped that Velantos believed that the nightmares had ceased. At least it had been some time since they had used a bucket of water to awaken him.

He told them he did not remember what he had been dreaming, but it was not true. More and more often, the memories were bleeding into his waking awareness, so that sometimes it was the City of Circles that seemed unreal. And he carried his knowledge of the City with him when he walked on Avalon. Still, if he looked hollow eyed with strain, he was not the only one whose face bore witness to his anxieties. Tonight, he could probably have shouted without disturbing Velantos, who lay snoring on the other side of the bed. The smith had spent all his waking hours with the builders. By the time he fell into bed, he was far too tired to worry about the younger man.

When Velantos returned today, he had worn a look Woodpecker had not seen since Tiryns fell. All their efforts were failing. Those who lived on the outermost circle had been told to seek refuge in the inner rings. Finding room for them would not be a problem—many of the City’s people had already fled to the mainland, preferring to battle human foes than pit themselves against the Powers of the Sea.

And yet, would one of his dreams have been any improvement? His visions had shown him Belerion sacked by seaborne raiders, and the farm where he had herded sheep crushed by a rockslide. He saw Galid’s men tormenting a captive while their leader laughed. There had been other scenes in places he recognized as belonging to other tribes. By now he probably had a better idea of what was happening on the Island of the Mighty than anyone but the Lady of Avalon. The state of affairs was not much better than things in the City—he suspected that things were not much better anywhere. But in this liminal state between sleep and waking, he could admit to himself that the island was
home.

He wondered if he could summon a vision of the holy isle. Surely he would find peace there. He took one breath and let it out slowly, and then another, closing his eyes. He would imagine he was looking at the Tor by moonlight. He smiled a little, seeing the pure line of the slope, the faint gleam on the standing stones that crowned the hill. But the image was not quite what he had expected—within the circle he glimpsed a warmer glow. As the light grew stronger, he realized that someone had lit a fire on the altar stone. At least, at Avalon tonight there was no rain.

As he drifted toward that light, he felt a vibration in the air. The priests and priestesses of Avalon stood within the circle of stones. They filled the night with a full-throated shifting shimmer of sound. This was no full moon ritual, but one of the great magics, forbidden to uninitiated eyes. The elder priests had been quite explicit about what could happen to any child who dared to spy. He willed himself to turn away, and realized with a thrill of fear that he was still moving toward the hill.

A stand of Singers . . .
they had called it, when seven notes were sounded to weave a tapestry of harmonies. Like a leaf caught in the current he floated toward the sound. A single trained voice lifted above the others.

“I call the one who will bring us hope!” Anderle scattered incense upon the fire that burned on the altar stone and a sweet smoke swirled upward. “I call the one who will comfort the bereft and rebuild what is broken, he who shall defend the weak and command the strong!”

At each word, Woodpecker remembered the visions of disaster that he had seen, and felt once more his frustration at being unable to do anything to change them. With every tone the buzz along his nerves intensified, if he had nerves here. He struggled to escape, but this was no current; it was a vortex that was drawing him inexorably in.

“I summon the hero who will save our people! I call the Defender!”

The smoke of the incense was spreading in a luminous cloud above the altar, curling around him. He had always been an invisible witness before.

“Holy Goddess, show us the one who will save us! Hear and appear! Hear and appear! Hear and appear!”

Anderle’s eyes widened and he realized that she could see him. The sound wavered as one of the priestesses fainted, then steadied as the others gathered their forces and sang on.

“Mikantor—” the priestess whispered, reaching out to him. “They said you had died, but I knew the gods would not be so cruel! Come back to us! Come home!” Her fingers passed through his arm.

He trembled, torn between the desire to save the people whose suffering he had seen and the memories of all his failures.

“I am no hero—” He shook his head, not knowing whether she could hear. “I cannot help you!”

“You are the Son of a Hundred Kings!” she exclaimed. “For this you were born! For this you have been saved!”

He was still shaking his head. Could he persuade her that this was his ghost, returned from the Otherworld? Meeting Anderle’s fixed and glittering gaze, he suddenly doubted that even death could release him from her demands. For a little while, between his twelfth and fourteenth years, he had believed that he was destined to be a king. Instead he had become a slave. His body had been freed, but invisible shackles bound him still.

“Goddess!” Anderle flung up her hands. “Show us Thy will!”

At the words, the fire on the altar blazed. Glowing within the smoke he saw the shape of a woman with laughing eyes and fiery hair. Then it thinned and sharpened, until what hovered before them was a sword. From the wonder in the eyes of the priests, it was like none that they knew. But he had seen it, or one that was similar, in Velantos’ hand. And yet not entirely like, for this blade was a brand of silver fire.

“Will a Sword from the Stars convince you?” came her voice, sweet and low. “The priestess summons the Defender, and the Defender will bring the smith to My forge!”

Velantos!
thought Woodpecker. Had this path been laid for both of them by the gods?

The Sword flamed wildly and he was whirled backward, outward, in an explosion of light and sound, until he found himself sitting upright in his bed, heart pounding as if he had run a league, sweating as if he stood next to a fire. Rain drummed on the roof—no, there was a sharper sound to that pounding. Someone was beating on the door.

From below he heard voices. Aelfrix or Buda, who slept by the hearth, must have answered. He could not make out words, but the sharp tone was enough to launch him from the bed. He was already shrugging into his tunic when Aelfrix flung open his door.

“Woodpecker!” cried the boy. “Waves have washed across the Fifth Ring, and the Fourth is in danger. They want every man who can lift a sandbag to build up the barriers and carry people to safety.”

He finished tying his sandal and jerked his head toward Velantos, who had not stirred. “Wake him if you can—he’ll be needed. I’m on my way to the guardhouse. May Ni-Terat preserve us all!”

It was only when the door had closed behind him that he realized he had invoked the protection of a goddess of Avalon.

VELANTOS ROSE FROM EXHAUSTED sleep like a man fighting his way up through deep water. That was not so far from the truth, from the sound of the rain. He rubbed his eyes and recognized the fragile flicker of an oil lamp instead of the gray dawn-light he had expected. Aelfrix was standing with the lamp in his hand, mouth opened to call him again. Woodpecker’s side of the bed was empty, the covers tumbled on the floor. He took a deep breath and tried to focus on what the boy was telling him.

Waves . . . the storm . . . He found it only too easy to interpret Aelfrix’s stammering attempt to repeat what he had heard. Swearing, he heaved himself out of the bed. Every muscle still ached from yesterday’s labors, but the storm would not wait for him to heal. By the time he had dressed and wolfed down the bannock Buda pressed into his hand, it was raining even harder, the wind howling like the Kindly Ones in pursuit of a sinful soul.

The streets were clogged with sodden refugees bent under bundles or pulling wagons crammed with whatever they had managed to save. Velantos pushed past them, suppressing an urge to apologize. His head told him that he had done all he could; his heart cried that he should have done more.
This is not my city!
he told himself, but guilt rose in a tide as dark and as devastating as the sea.

As he neared the bridge from the Third Ring to the Fourth, he saw collapsed houses, and then a section where the ground had washed out all the way to the road. Someone ran toward him, shouting that the western bridge was gone. Velantos groaned. His first home had perished in fire; this one seemed to be dissolving around him.

He forced his way back through the crowd toward the southern bridge. Surely it would still be whole. He could see better now—the sky was growing pale. Beyond the rooftops the masts of the ships that had taken refuge in the lee of the city tossed in the swell. He hoped that Captain Stavros was weathering the storm.

The southern bridge was blocked by a broken wagon. By the time Velantos had helped to drag it free, it was full day. When he reached the Fourth Ring, he found men knocking down houses to brace makeshift dikes with their timbers. The rain had eased up, but the sea was still rising as a strong offshore wind pushed the water higher. There had been some talk of an evil alignment of sun and moon that lent strength to the waves.

Even as Velantos labored, a conviction was growing that the City of Circles had been abandoned by her gods. The work had left him no energy to curse them, but he vowed silently that while he had the strength to defend his new home, she would not be deserted by men. He had failed before; he would not give up again. Some distant awareness told him that this was not entirely logical. No man could fight fate. But he was too locked into the work before him—the next wall, the next piece of wood, the next dissolving bank—to care. His right arm grew weary from swinging the granite hammer and he switched to his left. It required neither precision nor skill to break down walls. With the sun invisible behind the clouds, the day seemed endless. They said that in Hades the wicked were doomed to repeat the same endless tasks. Perhaps he
had
died in Tiryns, and was only now receiving his punishment.

And yet a moment came when he realized that the light was fading. The storm had driven them back to the bridge and someone was shouting that they must abandon the Ring. Shivering, Velantos thrust his hammer through his belt. Water lapped at his feet, but for a moment the wind had stilled. Beneath his feet the ground was trembling. As the road crumbled, he ran.