Orion and King Arthur (36 page)

Now his face became stern, severe. “Arthur would have died long ago if it hadn’t been for you and your silly notion of defying me. As it is, all you’ve done
is made his death more bitter. His own son will slay him, at Camlann.”

“Not while I live,” I said.

“You’re a fool, Orion. The next time I make a creature to serve me, I’ll have to build more intelligence into his feeble brain.”

And with that, Aten disappeared, like a light winking out. I was alone once more in the dank, dark, cold forest.

But not entirely alone. I felt a presence, a pale tendril
of another person, glinting weakly, just on the edge of my perception.

“Anya!” I called.

A pale silvery glow appeared before me, like a patch of moonlight in the darkness. It shimmered and took on a faint, flickering shape.

Anya.

She was as insubstantial as a phantom, as fragile as a snowflake, but it was her. My love. She wore a graceful robe of pure white with a garland of flowers crowning
her flowing, onyx-black hair. The Lady of the Lake.

“Orion,” she whispered, in a voice so weak I could barely hear her. “Orion, I thought I would never see you again. Aten has decided—”

“I know what Aten wants,” I said. “Where are you? I can barely see you, hardly hear your voice.”

Her fathomless eyes were wide with wonder. “You’ve broken through the stasis that Aten has placed around your
locus! You’ve reached across millions of light-years to contact me.”

“With your help, goddess.”

“No, Orion! I did nothing! You summoned me to you. By yourself, without help from me or any of the Creators. Despite Aten’s barrier, you broke through.”

“But only just barely. You seem as insubstantial as a specter.”

“So do you, my darling. But we’re in contact, in spite of Aten. And you did it
by yourself. Your powers are growing!”

With all my soul I wanted to take her and myself away, back to the Paradise we had known long ages ago, when the paltry few humans on Earth lived in tribal hunting bands and the world was open and free of villages and farms and wars.

But that could not be, I knew. Not yet.

To Anya, I said, “Aten has schemed to destroy Arthur and all he stands for. Even
now, Arthur is heading toward a battle against his own son, a battle he fears he cannot win.”

She nodded faintly. “Aphrodite has insinuated her poisonous thoughts into Arthur’s mind. Aten is using her powers to drain Arthur of his vigor, to bring him to defeat even before the battle begins.”

“How can I stop her?”

Anya’s image began to waver even more. Her voice became fainter still. “Aten has
discovered your link with me!” she said, in a weak, fading sigh.

With all my strength I tried to hold on to Anya’s presence, but I could feel her slipping away.

“How can I stop Aphrodite?” I demanded.

“Accept what cannot be changed, Orion. Accept the inevitable.” She was fading away, dissolving before my despairing eyes.

“Anya, don’t leave me,” I pleaded.

“I will return to you, my love,”
she called, her voice as faint as the distant whisper of a hunting owl’s wing.

And I was alone again in the night, surrounded by the dark boles of the trees, glistening wetly in the fading moonlight.

2

Aphrodite was helping Aten, sucking the fighting spirit out of Arthur’s mind like some psychic vampire. What could I do about it? How could I free Arthur of her mental thrall? Anya told me I
must accept Arthur’s fate, but how could I? How could I allow Aten to snuff out this flickering candle of civilization and allow barbarian darkness to engulf Britain—and the whole world?

The morning rose bright and clear, but so cold that the grass was stiff with frost. The men creaked and groaned as they awoke and went through their morning pissing and complaining.

Once we were mounted and
clopping along the paving stones of the old Roman road once again, I rode alongside Arthur.

Trying to sound cheerful, I asked him, “How do you feel this bright morning, sire?”

“Old, Orion,” he replied, downcast. “I feel old and weary.”

I forced a smile. “Let the sun soak into you. That will warm your bones.”

But Arthur shook his head. “Gawain, Bors, my foster father Ector, his son Kay … all
gone. Dead. That’s what makes calamity of long life, Orion: all those you hold dear depart from you.”

“There are new friends,” I rejoined. “Young knights like Sir Percival, Lamorak—”

“Even Lancelot has left me,” Arthur muttered.

He was not going to allow himself to be consoled. Morganna/Aphrodite had somehow taken all the fighting spirit from his soul.

“I have dreams,” Arthur said, in a low,
troubled voice. “Every night I dream of Morganna and the wicked lovemaking we indulged in. The sins of our youth, Orion. The sins of our youth.”

So that was how Aphrodite was destroying his courage. Using his feelings of guilt, amplifying his remorse about the past.

“She is truly a witch, sire. You were young and she took advantage of you, tempted you.”

“Aye, that she did. And I gave in willingly
enough. If it hadn’t been for the Lady of the Lake I’d have been killed all those years ago.” He sighed heavily. “Maybe it would have been better that way.”

“No,” I snapped. “You’ve given Britain more than twenty years of peace.” Sweeping the colorful autumnal landscape with my extended arm, I urged him, “Look at the land around you, sire! The farmsteads are safe from barbarian raiders. The harvest
has been rich and full. The people are happy, prosperous—”

“And we march to face my son in battle,” Arthur countered. “One of us will die on the day we meet.”

He seemed inconsolable, staring at a past he regretted, looking forward to a future he dreaded.

All that long, golden autumn day I pondered over how I might break Morganna/Aphrodite’s spell over Arthur. By the time we stopped for the
night and made camp, I had decided what I must do. The question was, could I do it?

3

That evening, as we made camp at the side of the Roman road, I walked off and left the men unfurling their sleeping rolls on the cold grass. Churls and esnes were putting up the tents for the knights. Arthur’s was flanked by his red dragon pennants, but in the deathly calm night they hung limp and spiritless.

A noisy brawl suddenly erupted among the tents. I saw two of the squires tussling with each other in the flickering light of the campfires. Over a woman, I supposed. A trio of knights, swords drawn, quieted them down. I shook my head; discipline was falling apart, and Arthur was doing nothing to reinforce it.

More men would sneak off this night, I knew, deserting Arthur and the coming battle.
I was leaving, too, but I intended to return.

Once far enough from the camp I looked up at the harvest moon, grinning lopsidedly at me as it rose full and bright above the wooded hills. I saw my namesake constellation of Orion climbing sideways over the horizon and thought of Anya, somewhere out there among the stars, kept from me by Aten’s barrier.

Very well, I thought. If she can’t come to
me, I will go to her.

I willed myself to the timeless city of the Creators. The moon-bright night of Britain vanished and for a moment I was in total darkness and cryogenic cold. I could sense the geodesics of spacetime shifting, bending. To my will.

Abruptly, I was in the city of the Creators. Not on the flower-dotted hillside above the city, but inside the city itself, standing in its central
square, surrounded by the immense monuments the Creators had built for themselves over the ages: the Parthenon stood before me, a giant golden recumbent Buddha smiled beneficently at me on my right, a steep Aztec pyramid rose on my left. Turning, I saw a massive granite sphinx staring sightlessly at me, with columns and temples stretching into the distance behind it.

I turned back to the Parthenon,
and its matchless statue of Athena, armed with shield and spear.

“Anya,” I breathed. “Please come to me.”

“I am here, my love.” She appeared before me, again wearing the robe and flower garland of the Lady of the Lake. Her fathomless gray eyes were solemn, her matchlessly beautiful face grave.

“We are all here, Orion,” came the haughty voice of the Golden One.

And indeed they were. All the
Creators: cruelly beautiful Aphrodite, dark-bearded Zeus, Hades, looking almost amused, Ares with his shock of rust-red hair, his beefy arms folded belligerently across his chest, Hermes, Hera, all of them in flowing robes or skintight uniforms or even sculpted armor.

In his usual sneering manner, Aten said to me, “You grow tiresome, Orion, summoning us here. We do not cross the light-years of
spacetime to please your whims, creature.”

“Yet you are here,” I said.

“For this one time,” said Aten. “For this one
final
time.”

Anya stepped to his side. “You mustn’t destroy him! After all the services he’s done for you—”

“He’s always been a nuisance. Now he’s becoming—”

“A threat?” I interrupted.

Aten glowered at me. “You’re going to die, Orion. And this time there will be no revival.”

“You’ve never revived me after death,” I said. “You build clone copies of me, fill their brains with the knowledge you want me to have, and send me out to die for you again.”

Zeus smiled tightly. “He’s learned quite a bit, Aten.”

“This time you die for good,” Aten said. Then, his voice rising to an enraged howl, “And I’ll destroy the clones, I’ll destroy all the cloning equipment, I’ll destroy
the entire cloning facility!”

I made myself smile at him. “You can’t destroy me.” Hoping it was true, I added, “You can’t control me anymore, my Creator. I’ve grown too powerful for that.”

Aten’s face went white. I saw his eyes flick from me to Anya’s face, then back again.

But before he could say anything, Zeus asked me coldly, “What is it that you want, creature? Why have you summoned us
away from our tasks across the multiverse?”

Sharp-eyed Hermes spoke up. “Every time you bend the spacetime geodesics you make the cosmos unravel more and we have to toil to repair the damage you’ve caused.”

Pointing to Aten, I replied, “He’s the one who began sending me across the timelines. He started the unraveling that you’re trying to repair.”

“Enough bickering,” Zeus snapped. “Orion, you
have summoned us. Very well, we are here. What do you want?”

I looked into Anya’s infinite eyes. What I wanted was to be with her, always and forever, in the sunny glades of Paradise, where we’d been happy for so brief a time. But before that could be, I knew, I had to protect Arthur.

Looking squarely into Aten’s angry eyes, I said, “I want to save Arthur from the death you’ve planned for him.”

“He’s a mortal,” Zeus said to me, not unreasonably. “Mortals die, Orion. You know that.”

“I want him to live long enough to protect Britain against the barbarians.”

Sullenly, Aten told me, “He’s already done that. He’s accomplished his goal. The barbarian invaders have turned to peaceful ways; they’ve learned to live with the Britons. The British Isles will never become subservient to the European
mainland.”

I stared at him. Had the Golden One given up on his dream of creating a unified empire that stretched from Ireland to Japan’s inland sea? A unified empire that worshipped him?

“You’ve won, Orion,” said Anya. “Arthur has brought peace and safety to the Britons.”

“But now he must die,” Hades added. “He’s outlived his usefulness.”

“So he’s to be thrown away like a tool you no longer
need,” I said.

“If he lives longer,” Aphrodite said, “he will become a stiff, unbending tyrant. The British people will suffer under him. He must die.”

I turned to Anya. With sadness etching her lovely face, she agreed. “It’s time, Orion. Let Arthur die. Let him be remembered as a hero among his people.”

I nodded dumbly. They were all agreed. Even Anya. Arthur’s fate was sealed.

But not before
he stops Modred, I told myself.

4

It was difficult for me to look Arthur in the face the next morning. The sun rose, pale and lacking warmth, against a pewter-gray sky. The men were breaking camp, loading the carts and pack mules, saddling their horses.

Arthur stood in the midst of the morning bustle, watching his tent being taken down, his pennants furled.

As I came up beside him, he said,
“We’ll be at the Wall in another two days.”

I nodded, unable to bring myself to say anything.

Striding toward his mount, Arthur said, “Remember all those years ago, Orion, when we chased the Picts and crossed Hadrian’s Wall. How happy Bors was to be north of the Wall?”

I made a smile for him. “That’s when we encountered King Ogier in Bernicia.”

“And Morganna,” he said, his voice dropping a
notch.

“You saved Britain from an invasion by Ogier’s Danes,” I said, trying to brighten our mood.

Arthur grinned at me, remembering. “As I recall, Orion, it was you who bested Ogier.”

“I serve Arthur, High King of the Britons,” I said.

“Indeed.” He slid his foot into the stirrup and swung up into the saddle. “And you serve him well, Orion.”

Not well enough to save your life, I replied silently.

Arthur turned in his saddle and shouted to his mounted knights. “Northward! We go forward to face the enemy!”

They followed him. Reluctantly, I thought. And noticeably fewer than there had been the night before.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Morganna and Modred

1

“There they are,” said Arthur.

The morning was dank and chill, with a ghostly fog rising from the frosted ground. The sky was gray, low clouds hiding the sun. Across the mist-shrouded ground, at the crest of the ridgeline rising before us, stood the mounted host of Modred’s army, waiting for us. Modred had chosen this place for his battle, still a
half-day’s march from Hadrian’s Wall. I wondered how much Aten or one of the other Creators had helped him to make the decision.