The Raven Warrior (62 page)

Then, as if to confirm his worst fears, he heard the sound of claws ripping the bark as the bear reached up and left his mark high on a tree trunk. In the darkness, Arthur heard the cat scream again. The wind slashed at the high forest and moaned and seemed to cry out almost in pain.

Arthur wept. He cried hopelessly and despairingly, because he had not the courage to throw aside his mantle and bedding and walk into almost stygian darkness under the trees to meet his fate. Sometimes men did not return from these journeys, and he knew now he was never meant to return. The powers of the gods of wrath and circumstance. Things he could no more cease to believe in than he could stop breathing. These things had marked him as their own. And the bear had been sent for him.

But Morgana, mouth and tongue of the goddess, could summon the cat, and she paced the dark, sobbing forest, protecting him, even against the will of the cruel forces she commanded. Because in her guise as the cat, she was one of them.

Even in memory the despair and self-loathing he felt that night seemed to rest in his stomach like a stone. But it is the nature of the beast to hope to continue, no matter what. The deepest part of our minds doesn’t believe in death. After a time, when his emotions exhausted him completely, he slept. And then he did dream.

Was it an arena or a dancing floor? The strange symbols on it fitted into each other and would have formed a solid but for the fact that there were black lines between them and each curving, graceful shape was a different color. In fact, they flowed through the spectrum, the colors seemingly formed of pure light, as though they partook somehow of the nature of the rainbow. He understood them to be kin to the symbols that flared in the palms of his hands, or on the bottom of the cauldron that ruled and protected the tower. He had seen inscriptions in languages he didn’t understand, and he was sure that’s what these were: the silent voice of a lost people.

He had a sword and shield. Poor stuff. The shield was the stiff hide of something dead, something that stank, ammonia, a sharp urine stench in his nostrils. The sword was old, the blade dark and pitted with rust, but crudely sharpened with a coarse whetstone to a dangerous edge.

All around him the garden bloomed, a riot of fruit and flowers. They mixed; ripe cherries covered one tree, peach blossoms pink and white on another. Flower beds were scattered everywhere, each holding a different set of blossoms. They were divided by gravel paths or sometimes only stepping-stones, a maze winding in and out between the trees and flowers. The men and women were gathered there, watching him. They were crudely dressed, clothes old and patched. Some of the women had children in their arms or clinging to their skirts. Only a few of them were together with the opposite sex. All . . . all, without exception, had terrible fear in their eyes.

He looked up. Towers loomed above him, towers in the sun. Or were they towers made of sunlight? The latticework of crystal that composed them caught the sun, transforming the warm light into multiple staircases. High-ceilinged rooms filled with art, representational and otherwise, tapestries and floating draperies moved in the wind. There was furniture there, but no piece stirred even the slightest recognition in his mind.

But he knew to move through those half-seen chambers was to experience a perfection of sheer formal beauty as close to the halls of paradise as any mortal being would ever get. To look at them in the distance made his throat ache with longing for a closer and more lasting vision than he would ever be allowed.

He didn’t know how far the towers were until he saw what he knew must be his adversaries emerging from among the towers and racing across a long causeway that wound over the magnificent water garden surrounding the city. Shallow pools filled with water lilies in an unbelievable palate of colors, deeper areas reflecting the blue sky, and here and there and everywhere fountains played, coming and going, crystal water shining in the sunlight.

But “They” were coming fast and They were as ugly as the garden lake and tower were beautiful. They were big and black and tan-colored, black bristles on the neck and shoulders, black face and snout. At the shoulders, bristles, not fur, began to grow lighter, until the back was a light brown, just the color of a lion’s fur and much the same texture and length.

They ran on all fours and had cloven hooves. Each one carried a sword and shield slung over its shoulder. When They reached the end of the causeway ready to meet him on the dazzling arena floor, They paused. And he saw they were shape-strong.

They ceased to be animals but did not become men, though they stood upright. The legs and feet of the creatures changed and became more like those of a bear, covered with hair, long and so muscular they resembled tree trunks. The arms and hands seemed almost human but massive and covered by the same tawny hair that covered the legs, chest, back, and groin. The shoulders were two ax handles broad, the neck massive, but almost nonexistent, and it supported a head that resembled a wild boar more than anything else. The snout was a pig’s, but no boar ever sported six tusks, each curving upward from the snout.

A pig’s teeth are bad enough, yellow bone chisels, very sharp at the points. But these things had fangs, the upper ones fitting into the bone jaw between the upcurved tusks, the lowers short chisels with tips like razors. The whole face was covered by the black bristles, all but the black snout and big, dark eyes.

Studying them, Arthur decided the things could probably see better than he could. The things’ foreheads were high and the eyes wide set. He wondered if they would all come at once. There were five of them, and he probably wouldn’t stand a chance. But one at a time . . .

They looked at one another the way picked warriors will, as though they were saying, “After you, gentlemen.” “Oh, no, no, sir. After you. Please do the honors.”

Behind him Arthur heard the murmur of many voices and he could make out only one word:
tiaeloig
. This talk came from the humans behind him. Despite their interaction, he couldn’t tell if they said anything or not.

Then one of them stepped forward. “My kill!” the voice grated.

Arthur stepped back. The sword was well enough, but the shield? It was made of wicker and hide. It had only a hand grip. There was no place to put his arm. Such a shield, one that cannot be braced with the arm, is of only slight usefulness in a fight.

His opponent swung his sword in a mighty blow, a roundhouse arc that should have cut both Arthur and the shield in half. He didn’t stay to meet it. He stepped to his opponent’s right and slammed the shield into his sword arm. The blow was hard enough that it would have broken a human’s forearm, probably in at least one place, and perhaps disarmed him.

But this was like hitting a tree—correction, a moving tree. The shield was forced back toward him, and the massive head dropped. Arthur saw the bone-white tusks rip through the shield, and when he felt the grip being torn from his fingers, Arthur let go.

He had his opponent where he wanted him: turning. Free of the shield, Arthur reached for his foe’s left arm and spun him around. Normally he couldn’t have moved so massive a being, but the thing was caught off balance. A second later, his back was to Arthur and he drove the sword in above the kidney, assuming the thing kept its kidneys there. The left side of the blade severed the spinal cord; the point tore through the pericardium, the left lung, and the abdominal aorta.

A second later the thing fell, dying, legs paralyzed, gushing blood from the massive torso wound, the snout, and mouth. As it fell, it ripped the sword from Arthur’s hand and he found himself weaponless, facing four more of these horrors.

He woke rigid, heart hammering as though it wanted to leap from his chest, and sick with fear. A dream? He’d never had a dream so vivid, so real, before. Then he thought,
no, that wasn’t true.
The ones he had about his mother were almost that sharp and clear.

Was that what he had been supposed to see? His tired mind could make no sense of it.

He rose and the icy water in the spring cleared his head. No, Morgana must not be allowed to protect him again, not tonight. No. There was another place up here. It was even more difficult to get to.

The forest house backed up to a ridgeline. At the end of the ridge was a high spur that overlooked a narrow fjord. Nothing lived on those windswept cliffs. No trees, not even seabirds nested on the shattered black rocks that overlooked the fjord. Wind and rain bettered them, and extremes of heat and cold sometimes shattered the ancient Cambrian surfaces, sending sheets of stone peeling away from the cliff to shatter on the shingle by the sea below.

The chamber there was a hole hollowed out by wind and rain, but it was almost entirely open along one side, roofed only by a slab of rock with a rude bed chipped out of stone on the far wall. It took him the best part of the afternoon to reach it. No one went there now. The footing on the ridge was treacherous, and last year a young shepherd who braved the ridge trying to rob a falcon’s nest was killed when the scree that covered the ridgeline collapsed and sent him tumbling down the steep slope into a pile of boulders.

In fact, the whole place had an uncanny reputation, and it was reputed to claim at least one life a year. And sometimes more. He saw why when he got there, his nails worn away, his knees scraped and his hands painfully cut by the jagged flints on the ridge.

It was cold, silent, and utterly beautiful. The wind from the water blew constantly, and the opening in the rock looked directly out over the unchanging scene. The fjord below was the haunt of whales. From above he watched them spout and sport in the deep waters of the land, land split like a lightning-blasted tree in some cataclysm before the beginning of time.

Above the crack in the world, eagles hunted, and on the cliff below him, a pair of peregrines nested. From his own aerie, he looked down on them and the eagles as they circled above the fjord, where the water was a burnished mirror of the silver-blue afternoon sky. Light air and emptiness. If the powers wanted him, they could seize him here.

He sat and felt the sense of peace that comes to us when even a bad thing achieves its finality and we are free from doubt. He is gone. She is dead. I know, I have looked on the body. Our paths will never cross again. I am alone now, and the place in my soul he/she/it occupied will, whatever my fate, remain empty forevermore.

Or the absolute knowledge: soon I will die. It comes to us before death and presents itself as a fact. We feel little or nothing. We simply know and have journeyed beyond even the ability to mourn our own passing. This absolute assurance closes all doors.

Around the middle of the afternoon, he fell asleep. When he awakened, it was dusk. The setting sun was blotted out by a black squall line approaching the coast. The last light shone a lurid green. Wind was whistling and screaming among the rocks around him. He squeezed himself into a corner on the stone bed in the hopes of being able to escape a drenching. He was so tired, so hungry, he wondered if simply spending the night in this exposed place might kill him. But then, such fears were shameful and he discarded them.

The rain came with the darkness and so did She. To this day he could see her and concluded that She walked in her own light. Her hair was whipped by the wind, and her dress, a silver gown of spiderwebs, blew wildly. The moon was in her eyes.

He rose to greet his bride, stripped off his clothing, and, showing no fear, stepped toward her. The wild wind drove the icy rain, slashing at his face and then his body as though trying to cool the heat in his loins—heat so intense he felt as though he might be burned alive by it if he could not quench the flames in her body.

She smiled and he saw She was fanged. Raised her hands and he saw her claws. Mistress of the wild, mistress of the beasts She was, and She wanted him. And live or die, he would never deny her.

A second later, She was in his arms. They kissed and one of her fangs pierced his lower lip. He slammed his body into hers and understood what a sword, red and glowing, feels like when it is quenched at the forge.

He thought he screamed. He never knew.

She did scream, and sank her fangs into his shoulder. His male member went rigid again. He was still inside her. She threw her head back and he saw her open eyes had slit pupils like a cat or a serpent. Her bare breast tips were pressed against his chest, and they glowed so hot on his skin that he felt the fire pouring into his body.

Her eyes closed and her spasms shook him. “Love me!” she said. “Love me forever!”

Her love muscles caressed his staff. God, it was like being stroked by delicious warm velvet. He really thought he might die of sheer, raw, draining pleasure. It went on and on and on. Then he was quenched a second time. Darkness gathered at the edges of his consciousness.

“Again,” She said, and his whole body responded to her urgency and he was rigid once more.

The last passage was the most exquisite. He could never completely remember it. He felt as though he were only one thing. Desire roared through him as fire does through dry leaves.

“Love me forever?” She asked again.

One answers with the truth or one does not answer at all.

“No. No. Nothing forever.”

She roared and he felt the raking slash across his back as She dragged her claws through his flesh. But he was beyond pain, almost beyond thought, and certainly beyond fear. He had to have that coruscating, blinding pleasure again if he died for it. And it came, wrung from his whole body in an all-consuming roar of fire.

Then he was lying naked on the floor, too exhausted to move, and the rain mixed with hail was battering him. He might have died, but the landowner, afraid a king’s son might harm his high pasture, sent the shepherds to search for him. When they found him, his body was so cold and he had lost so much blood they feared he might die. So they carried him down at once, and he woke in his bed warm, with his father bending over him.

Uther told him afterward that he had been shocked at the utter certainty he had seen in the eyes that looked up into his. And indeed, he had known since that day who and what he was. And whatever he might feel, he was always confident enough to proceed with any action as one who fears nothing.