Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (56 page)

“From fire and water it is born . . .” said the Lady. “After passion, peace. . . .”

The blade was already cool enough to hold in his bare hands. The dark surface seemed opaque, but along the thin edges ran a rippling border of paler gray.

“Bend it—” the Lady said then. He looked at her in alarm. “Bend it, for if you do not test it now, you will always fear—”

She was right, he thought grimly. And if it failed, he could plunge what was left of it into his own heart. He swung the blade down, set the point in the earth, and leaned. His heart stopped as he felt it give. He jerked back, his cry of anguish cut short as the sword quivered in his grip like a live thing and flexed back to its original shape once more.

Velantos fell to his knees, holding the sword in both hands, examining it as closely as ever a father examined his newborn child. But there were no tiny cracks along the edges, no distortion in the blade. The sword was without flaw.

Weeping, he cradled the blade against his breast. When he could see again, he found Anderle beside him. Her eyes were shining with the same exultant light that he knew must blaze in his own. From somewhere outside he could hear cheering.

“We have done it,” she said softly. “Drink to your triumph, my dear—” She held out a clay cup. “The elder folk have sent us mead.”

He needed the support of her arm to get upright again. He took the cup, turned, and tipped it hissing onto the coals. “To You, my Lady, with all my heart,” he whispered. “This is Your miracle. . . . And
yours,”
he added, turning to Anderle. She poured more mead into his cup and he drank it down.

Then, very carefully, he set the sword on the workbench and his cup beside it, took Anderle’s from her hand, and pulled her against him. She stiffened in surprise, but not, he sensed, in rejection. Kissing her, he felt the heat grow between them. He stroked down her back, waiting for the yielding that was like the moment when the metal ceases to resist the hammer. It came swiftly—they had had three nights of foreplay, after all. The bed was before them. All thought ceased as he lifted her in his powerful arms.

TWENTY-SIX

M
y Lady . . .”

Anderle stirred unwillingly as the soft voice broke through her dreaming. And they had been such lovely dreams too. . . .

“Lady, you must waken! There is a messenger!”

She started to turn, realized that Velantos’ arm was lying across her breast and smiled, understanding that it had not been a dream after all. Carefully she moved his hand and sat up, rubbing her eyes and blinking at the pale light of dawn. It seemed strange to have slept through the night, but she could see the sword lying on the workbench. All her dreams, she thought with a surge of joy, had come true.

Velantos murmured her name and reached for her as she eased out from beside him. Even in sleep he looked happy. She supposed the smile on her own face was the same. Her skin was still sensitized by the touch of his work-roughened hands. She dropped a kiss on his palm and tucked it beneath the blanket as she drew it back over him, then rose, found her cloak and pulled it around her, and went to the door.

“What is it that cannot wait until we are properly awake?” she asked the woman who waited by the door.

“A man comes from Avalon. He says he must see you now!”

Anderle looked past her. The messenger might have come from the Tor, but he was no man of Avalon. Her throat tightened as she recognized the gray cloak with a swan’s feather tucked into the pin that marked him as one of Mikantor’s men. She pushed past the woman and joined him under the trees.

“You are Ulansi, are you not? What has happened?”

“I am sorry, my Lady—” he babbled. “I thought I would find you at Avalon, but they said you were here. I came as quickly as I could, but I have been nearly half a moon on the trail.”

“Never mind that!” she exclaimed. “Has harm come to Mikantor?”

“My lord is well in body, so far as I know—” He swallowed. “It is your daughter, Holy One. Galid holds her prisoner. . . .”

She staggered and he put out an arm to steady her. The muscle was like oak beneath the taut skin. Velantos’ whole body had been like that, hard against her own.

Galid!
Her heart raced as she remembered his threats. What would he do to her child? If she offered to take Tirilan’s place, would he let the girl go? Could she make such a sacrifice without abandoning her own duty?

“My lord marched off with most of the Companions to help the Ai-Akhsi king deal with some brigands who’ve been troubling him. The lady Tirilan went away with Queen Cimara to learn the ways of the land. I was still in Carn Ava—one of my cousins was there—I hadn’t known he was still alive, and Mikantor said I might stay. So I was there when Soumer—he who’s now Galid’s right-hand man—came driving up in his chariot and demanded to see the lady Nuya. When the priestess came out, he dropped Tirilan’s shawl in the mud before her, said that he had Tirilan prisoner, and if Mikantor wanted his whore back he should come to Azan-Ylir.

“But we have spies in his household—she is not there, and no one knows where he has hidden her now. We sent our best runner north to fetch Mikantor, and they sent me to you because I knew the way to Avalon. The Sacred Sister has asked all the tribes to gather on the Plain of Azan.”

At least, the priestess thought with a bitter relief, this news had not come while they were still forging the sword. Now the conflict was not between duty and duty, but only between duty and desire. From what Velantos had told her, the steps that remained to complete work on the sword were all things he understood. He no longer needed the goddess to hold his hand. Her heart ached at the pain he would feel when he found her gone, because that pain was her own. But better he should think she had abandoned him than that he should follow her and fail to complete the sword. She thanked the goddess for the miracle She had wrought in the forge—she had no right to expect happiness as well.

She gestured to the woman. “I must go with this messenger. When the smith awakens, give him food, and tell him that when he has completed the sword he must take it to Mikantor at the Plain of Azan.” Because, by the time the weapon was completed, that was where he would surely be.

“I have to return to the war band—” said Ulansi when the woman had gone, “as swiftly as I may.”

Anderle gave a short laugh. “Go ahead, if you think you can go faster, and never fear for me. I have ways to pass unseen, and I know Azan. I will search for my daughter. Tell Mikantor to gather an army that will destroy Galid once and for all.”

 

 

 

VELANTOS SAT IN THE doorway of the smithy, grinding the sandstone down the length of the sword. Beside him was a bowl of half-eaten porridge. The elder folk were still feeding him, but where before they had feared to distract him, now they feared his wrath. The smith scarcely noticed that he had not spoken to another human being for three days. Even Aelfrix was gone. First on one side, then on the other, but always in the same direction, he pushed the stone outward to smooth the surface from the swelling center to the honed edge. Already it gleamed like the wing of the gray goose in the sun.

The labor required coordination and judgment, lest one grind too much of the metal away and unbalance the blade, but compared with the forging, it was a simple, repetitive task. Once, he had welcomed this part of the making, a time to sit and think and work his own magic into the blade. Now, thought was his enemy.

Why had Anderle left him?

He had assumed they would take the sword to Mikantor together. He was sure she had told him that she had the materials with her to make the scabbard when the sword was done. And yet she had scurried off without a word to put out whatever brush fire was burning at Avalon. She had been in charge there for too long, he thought angrily. She had left a dozen full priests and priestesses on the holy isle—why did she think she was the only one who could fix the world? Grimacing, he ground out his anger and his frustration into the sword.

Sunlight flared as he lifted it. The shape he had forged had been true, but it had veiled the sharply drawn form he was revealing now, as a caul veils a newborn child. At least, he thought grimly, he could still trust his craft.

He put down the sandstone grinder and picked up the fine-grained greenstone, working it carefully down the blade to smooth away the faint lines that were like the vanes of the feathers on a bird’s wing. Even the most highly polished bronze gleamed no more brightly than the reflection of the setting sun in a pool. But the meteor sword was beginning to shine like the sun at noon.

“Blaze like the white-hot coals from which you were born! May your light blind the wicked, your fire sear all evil away!”

That radiance illuminated his spirit, but his heart still ached with uncomprehending anguish for the loss of what he had so briefly known.

 

 

 

ANDERLE’S NOSTRILS TWITCHED AS she carried the pitcher of ale into the central hall of Azan-Ylir. The hide that had covered the carved bull’s head on the wall was moth-eaten, and none of the rich hangings and gilded ornaments with which Galid tried to disguise his spirit’s poverty could dispell the pungent aroma of urine and spilled beer. It had been worse, the other women assured her, before the half of a moon that Tirilan had been a captive here.

At least Galid kept his other prisoners outside. Between the gate and the roundhouse stood a row of cages. When Anderle arrived she had feared to find Tirilan in one of them, but the captives were all men, starved creatures confined for the gods alone knew what offenses, who were released sometimes to run about while the warriors cast spears.

She walked with bent head and curved spine, rags obscuring her body and a dirty cloth covering her hair. That, and the aura she had cast around herself, had kept her from unwelcome attention. She had always known how to cast the glamour that made her appear more beautiful. This was a simple reversal of the spell.

It was not something that Tirilan had ever needed to learn, but from what the women said, the men had respected her. Her mother was simultaneously amused and amazed that the girl had filled her time here with housework. At Avalon the students were all trained to help, of course, but it was not the kind of labor expected of a priestess. But if her daughter could do it, so could Anderle, and so for the past four days she had been Galid’s servant. There had been no difficulty in getting them to take her on. The usurper was calling in all his men, and needed all the help he could get to keep them housed and fed. The only problem was that Tirilan was no longer here, and none of the servants seemed to know what had become of her after he carried her away.

Anderle approached carefully, for Galid himself was sitting on a bench covered by a bearskin at the head of the hearth. Two men from the war band were with him, a renegade from Belerion and a younger man of his own clan called Keddam whom she had not seen here before. The men held out their beakers to be refilled without really looking at her, any more than they would have noticed one of the dogs.

“Is the bitch still alive, then?” Galid’s speech was slurred, and Anderle wondered how much he had drunk before she brought her pitcher in. “And mad—is she not mad by now?” She paused, realizing that he was not talking about a dog, then slid behind one of the great posts that held up the roof of the hall

“She eats the food I bring . . .” said Keddam with a shrug. “When I arrive I hear her singing sometimes. She sings very well. And she thanks me.”

“Nay, ’tis her lover who must be mad,” the man from Belerion replied with an evil laugh. “Will he try and kill you with a stone knife as they say he did the deer? I suppose not—by the time he gets here he’ll be too tired.”

Anderle’s heart was wrenched by pity when she thought of what Mikantor must feel. Even if Nuya had not been able to send the message to Lady Leka on the wind, the runner must have gotten there by now.

And is Velantos worrying about me?
she wondered then. She hoped he thought she was at Avalon, for he would never have believed that she could pass through Azan far more safely than he. She tried not to think about him. Such memories would only distract her now.

“Just remember that if you want to force Uldan’s cub to give battle soon, you must keep the girl alive,” observed Keddam. “If she dies, he can take the time to gather all the tribes. They have closed their eyes to what you do with folk here, but I don’t think they will be happy if you starve a priestess.”

Anderle gripped the pitcher so hard she wondered later why she had not broken it.
They will tear you limb from limb,
her heart cried,
and if they do not, I will!
With an effort she managed to hold still as Keddam went on.

“Why not let me bring the lady back here?”

“Never . . .” muttered Galid. “She is a witch and a whore. Do not listen to her singing—she will offer you her love and steal your soul. Love is the last trap . . . and the worst one.” He took another gulp of beer. “
This
”—a knife with a gilded hilt appeared suddenly in his hand—“is the only thing that’s real!” Both warriors flinched as Galid struck the blade into the bench and left it quivering there.

What, wondered Anderle, had her gentle Tirilan done to this man? He looked sick, and old, and more than a little mad. Unfortunately, whatever was wrong with him seemed to be catching. In recent years his example had been followed by bandit chieftains across the land.

The dogs began to bark as more warriors came into the hall. She slipped from behind her pillar and scurried back to the kitchen, knowing she would overhear no more useful conversation today. But clearly Keddam was the man to watch. And at least he seemed to want to keep Tirilan alive, wherever she might be.

 

 

 

VELANTOS TAPPED THE LAST rivet into place at the base of the hilt, and laid the hammer down. The bright bronze and gold shone in the lamplight, but theirs was a soft and friendly glow in comparison with the radiance of the Sword. In the pommel he had set a piece of rounded crystal the size of a pigeon’s egg that caught the light as if moonfire burned within. He gripped the hilt and lifted the sword, savoring the way hilt and blade balanced so that it seemed to swing up of its own will. The hilt shone with the light of sun and moon, but the blade blazed like a star.