Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (51 page)

“That will certainly distract me—” he said with a smile.

“I thought it might—” She squeezed his hand.

“Better lay a piece of heavy cloth across my loins, lest I embarrass us all,” he added, and saw her blush, and laughed.

They had laid out a straw mattress near the bonfire. The old man was there already, mixing a dark blue liquid in a bowl made from the bottom half of a gourd. The Sacred Sisters were there as well, with Anderle. He ought to have expected they would come to bear witness for their tribes, reflected Mikantor as he bowed.

“The boy has good manners,” said one of them. He thought it was Linne of the Ai-Giru. “You taught him well—”

“I have tried . . .” Anderle’s tone was even, but Mikantor felt Tirilan’s fingers tighten on his. The priestess got to her feet, draperies as blue as the stuff in the pot swirling around her.

“Mikantor, son of Irnana, you are summoned here to confirm your commitment to all the tribes. Know that in the ancient lands across the sea, these dragons marked those of the royal line who dedicated themselves to serve. Is that your true will?”

My true will . . .
His head whirled. How could you ever really tell? He knew only that he had set his feet upon a path from which he could not turn back now.

“I serve my Lady. I am ready to do Her will . . .” he said aloud, not adding that ever since he returned to Avalon he had seen the Goddess with the face of Tirilan.

His tunic had short sleeves, so he need not disrobe. He pulled at the lacing on his leather bracers, slid them off, and handed them to Ganath, who had entered with the rest of the Companions behind him. With their eyes upon him he would not dare to groan. The skin that the bracers had covered was pale, the skin tight across the hard muscle, threaded by blue veins. The tattooing should show up well.

Tirilan took her place at the head of the pallet, and Mikantor eased down before her, suppressing his response. He had not been entirely joking about the cloth.
When I no longer rise to your touch, my beloved,
he thought wryly,
you will know I am dead and gone.
They gave him a piece of wood to grip with his other hand.

“I am Fox,” said the old man in the elder tongue. “You will please lie very still.”

“I thank you, honored one,” Mikantor answered in the same language, stretching out his arm. He twitched at the first touch, but it was only a narrow brush with which Fox was drawing the sinuous shape around his arm.

“Breathe slowly,” came Anderle’s voice from the other side of the fire when the design had been drawn on both arms. “Ride the drumming. Ride the song . . .”

He closed his eyes and Tirilan set her hands on either side of his head, stroking back his hair.
This is not so bad,
he thought at the first prick of the thorn. He breathed in to the drumbeat and out again. Tap, tap, tap, the little hammer pecked the thorn into his skin with a rhythm like the beat when Velantos was hammering out some golden ornament in the forge.
If beating on me would help you to master that lump of metal,
he thought distractedly,
I would set my arm on the anvil.
It was beginning to hurt more now, a throbbing ache that radiated out from the actual wounds. He tried to make his pain an offering, but it was getting hard to think about anything but his arm.

“Breathe slowly,” whispered Tirilan as he gasped. “I am here . . .” Mikantor let out his breath, forcing himself to relax against her. “Do not resist the pain, let it flow through you . . .”

“You are flowing in the river, you are blowing through the grass, you are glowing in the fire, you are here and you shall pass
,
”
the women sang.

Mikantor fixed his mind on the images, and for a moment he rode the agony. Did a woman in childbed feel like this, striving to bring new life into the world? He took another breath, let it out, clinging to the beat of the drum.

“You are here and you shall pass
. . .
”
they sang once more. Who were the men who had worn these dragons before? His mind reeled and for a moment he was standing on a terrace of reddish stone, looking down at a sea whose color was a brighter blue than any that ever washed his own Isle’s shores.

“From life to life still learning, to joy transmute your pain. From death’s dark sleep returning, walk in light again,”
came the singing. It was one of the sacred chants of Avalon. If he could sink into that sleep, where would he awaken? His awareness flickered with memories that were not his own.

And then the singing stopped. He lay, breathing carefully, a part of his mind wondering at the throbbing ache in his arm while the rest grasped at the images that had come with that pain. There was movement around him. The old man was switching to his other side.

No—
he thought dimly at the first prick of the thorn.
I can’t do this again. Not yet. Not now!
But his will did not reach his limbs. The drumming caught his breath, and as the anguish in his right arm began to match that in his left he let it carry him away. The rush of images began to focus to the memories of one lifetime, the one he needed to remember now.

He was rocking in a boat as the world exploded in fire and thunder, seeking something unimaginably precious that he had lost . . . He was standing in the ring of a great henge, singing to the stones . . . He was standing atop the Tor at Avalon, a bright-haired woman in his arms . . .

He opened his eyes, saw her gazing down at him. “Eilantha . . .” he whispered. Her expression changed as confusion gave way to a dawning joy.

“Osinarmen . . .” she replied. “At last, we have returned.”

He could feel the dragons on his arms outlined in fire. His gaze met that of the old man, who faltered for a moment, then bent back to his work. He gazed around the circle of faces, sensing that if he looked long enough at some of them he would know their names. His gaze met that of the slight, dark woman on the other side of the fire, and he remembered that she had been a mother to him, though never the woman who bore him. Nor had this earth borne him, though it had cradled his bones.

“When I was Micail, I tried to rule this land with magic, and repented it,” he whispered. “This time what is needed is a warrior with a sword.”

“You shall have the Sword,” said the dark woman, rising and coming around the fire to gaze down at him, speculation and wonder warring in her eyes.

“It is done,” said Fox. The wounds stung as the old man poured clear water over them and blotted the blood away.

The sensation divided his memories and sent him whirling back to awareness of his body once more. He blinked, and knew that he was Mikantor, but that other was still awake within him, just as he still saw the woman he had loved as Tiriki looking out of Tirilan’s eyes. He lifted his arms and saw the dragons outlined in drops of blood darkened by the dye.

“I give you herbs to put on it. They will help to heal, take pain away.” The old man spilled the remaining dye into the fire and began to pack up his gear.

“Can you sit up?” asked Tirilan.

“I think so,” he replied, flexing stiffened muscles and rejoicing in the strength of a young man’s body as he came upright. Micail, he remembered, had died old.

His men set up a cheer as he got to his feet, but the sound faltered as they met his eyes, sensing that the man who now bore the dragons was not entirely the same as the one who had lain down by the fire. He reassured them with Mikantor’s crooked grin. The queens returned his smile with appreciation, their kings, more warily.

They too know that something has changed,
thought Mikantor. Was this why Anderle had never suggested giving him the dragons? Had she known the ordeal would waken knowledge that would transform him from the boy she had raised to a man?

The only thing that had not changed, he realized, was his love for Tirilan. To the accompaniment of more cheers, he turned, though at each movement the wounds on his arms throbbed and stung, gripped her shoulders and kissed her, long and hard.

 

 

 

ANDERLE LOOKED BACK OVER her shoulder at the southern circle of stones within the Carn Ava Henge, where the long shadow of the great central standing stone lay across the green grass. When the sun came up at dawn, that shadow had pointed at Mikantor. He still blazed in her memory, standing like a young god in the first light of the longest day with the royal dragons coiling around his arms. The people had seen that as an omen and hailed him as Defender of the land. The gods had given her what she had worked for, and if things had not worked out precisely as she had planned, she would be a fool to complain. But she was finding it hard to enjoy her victory.

“Mother—”

She allowed herself a sour smile as she saw Tirilan standing there.

“Mother, I thought we would have time to talk at the festival, but they tell me you are planning to leave this morning . . .” Her voice trailed off uncertainly.

“I was not aware that there was anything to say,” answered Anderle as they continued across the grass toward the causeway. “You have what you wanted. You get to be with Mikantor and still be some kind of priestess, though it is not clear whether you will end up as high queen or the servant of them all.”

“I will not be with Mikantor while I am finding out which it is to be, and he will be fighting a war of raids and ambushes until he can command the kings with the iron sword,” Tirilan said unhappily. “They tell me that Velantos has built a smithy near the old tomb in the White Horse Vale. I thought you would be helping him.”

Anderle glared, but Tirilan did not appear to realize what a shrewd blow she had struck just now. They were nearing the ditch that surrounded the Henge, with the white chalk of the bank bright in the sun beyond it.

“He is not a man to be driven,” she said at last, “and I do not understand his craft. The best thing I can do for now is to leave him alone, and pray that the Lady of the Forge will inspire him.”

“I will pray as well,” said Tirilan. “Mikantor has impressed the kings, but without the Sword it will be hard to gather the force we need to strike Galid down. And we cannot even begin to address all the other things we need to do until he is gone.”

Anderle looked at her daughter, young and strong and hopeful, and her anger went out of her in a long sigh. She had been that eager, long ago, and what had she been striving for, if not for the day when her children would fly free?

They crossed the ditch and started back to the camp.

“Good-bye, Tirilan. May the Goddess shelter you in Her mighty wings.” Anderle lifted her hands in blessing. As she went down the path she looked back once more and saw Tirilan still standing there, bright as a primrose in the morning sun. But she kept walking.

TWENTY-FOUR

T
his is the heart of Azan,” said Cimara, pausing as they topped a small rise. Tirilan nodded, eyes widening as she took in the undulating expanse of green. They had left Carn Ava the day before, matching their pace to that of the old pony that drew the cart with their gear, and picked up the track that ran beside the Aman river. Here it turned south across the plain.

“It is beautiful,” she replied. “The sky seems huge above all this open land.” She had heard that this was the greatest expanse of grassland in the Island of the Mighty. It was certainly the largest she had ever seen. Winding bands of darker green and the occasional silver gleam of water showed where rivers had cut through the chalk to the clay. Here and there she could make out a pond, or a dark mass of foliage, or a spiral of smoke that marked a farmstead amid its fields. But for the most part the plain was pasture for the red cattle that had given the tribe its name. Fescues and oat grass trembled in the wind that stroked across the plain, with here and there a patch of golden or purple flowers. And unlike most places in the island, it was good country for wheeled vehicles, which was why Cimara had a pony cart, which Tirilan had rarely seen in use before.

“Have you never been here?”

Tirilan shook her head. “I have only been to Carn Ava a few times, and we took the road from the west.”

“It is shorter, and these days, safer for you as well.” Cimara sighed. “When I was a girl the people of Avalon usually traveled to the festival by way of Azan-Ylir. They would rest and break their journey, and we would finish the trip together. Our families were close in those days. There have been many marriages between our lines, and we have sent many to train at the Tor.”

“When Mikantor has dealt with Galid, those days will come again,” said Tirilan stoutly.

“May the gods grant it be so—” Cimara started walking again and her servant tugged on the rein of the pony to set the cart creaking forward, with the rest of her people coming along behind.

Tirilan followed, still thinking about Mikantor. The motion stretched sore muscles and she felt her face heat as she remembered the vigor of their farewell. Carn Ava at festival time did not offer much privacy, but he had found a clearing within a thicket of hawthorn that could be reached at the cost of a few scratches, and proceeded to make sure she would not forget him with an afternoon of lovemaking intensified by several weeks of deprivation and the anticipation of several more.

As if I ever could forget him . . .
she thought fondly.
If the memory of a boy’s smile was enough to hold my heart throughout those years when he was gone, I will not forget now, when his touch burns in my flesh as vividly, if not as visibly, as the dragons mark his.

She smiled, remembering how he had lain, taut and quivering, while she had kissed every part of his body, as if thus she could armor him against all harm. And then he had made love to her with a focused passion that she had not known in him before. It seemed to her that everything he had done since receiving the dragon tattoos had an extra measure of authority, as if by remembering that other life he had reclaimed a part of himself that had been missing until now. By the time she saw him again, what other qualities might that new knowledge reveal?