Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (18 page)

Clearly, whatever she wanted him for, it was not personal. Whether this was more or less disturbing Velantos could not decide. He made the obeisance due a priestess and stood waiting, trying to read meaning from the sculpted planes of her face, smooth as one of the golden masks that covered the faces of the dead.

“What did the messenger from Tisamenos have to say?”

For a moment, Velantos thought of replying that if the king had not thought fit to tell her, it was not for him to say. But it was well known that it was the queen who was the strong one in their partnership, and if she did not know already, surely she would soon. There must be another reason why she was questioning Velantos now. He looked up, disturbed because the dangling ornaments kept him from seeing her eyes.

“There’s some tale of raiders, but such vermin have always prowled our borders. There is no reason to suppose—”

“The goddess is uneasy,” the queen interrupted him. “The Children of Erakles trouble the land.”

“Does she still hate him?” Almost instantly, Velantos regretted the question.

The golden lilies trembled as a shudder passed through the queen’s frame, and Velantos felt a chill without understanding why.

When she spoke again, her voice had changed. “Erakles is now a god but his children are men. This enemy is very old, but the war will be new, a kind of fighting that you have never known.”

Tanit took a quick step forward, then stopped, biting her lip. Abruptly Velantos understood what had happened. He had seen Naxomene carry the goddess before, at the festivals, but there had never been any reason for him to be near. His skin prickled as it did sometimes on days when the wind was high, though the air here was warm and still.

“Yes, Lady,” he answered her as both goddess and queen. “What would you have me do?”

“A new war will need new weapons.”

New weapons? How could he make new weapons when he did not know what the danger was? “I will do what I can,” he whispered.

“You will—I will make sure of it. That is what I do.” There was something terrifying in her smile. “Knowledge will be given to you. Epaitios is my son. He will show you what to do.” She sank back against the throne.

“Go; go quickly,” whispered Tanit as Velantos stood staring. He had never been more glad to obey a woman’s command.

 

 

 

“YES, THAT ONE—PUT it into the chest—fold it carefully, now!”

Woodpecker glared at Estaros, the thin and grizzled upper servant who was supervising the packing, and picked up the robe. The man had been yammering at him since morning, as if he should somehow know not only what Prince Velantos would need for his journey but where to find it. Barely a day had passed since he had been transferred to the prince’s service. He was beginning to wonder if his early relief had been a mistake. Would Velantos beat him if he wrinkled a garment? He looked strong enough to do it himself, not like the boy’s second master, or was it the third, who liked to watch as his slaves were whipped by his musclebound bodyguard.

He shook out the folds of linen, as if by instinct knowing how they should fall, straight across the shoulders so that the garment formed a square and then folded inward so that the design on the back would lie flat. But of course it would be familiar. He had often assisted Larel when he wore such robes in ritual. He banished that memory, then turned the robe and stilled, staring at the emblem embroidered there. It was the head of a bull with curving horns and a sun disk upon its brow.

Why should he be surprised? These people valued cattle—he had seen the stylized horns set up outside their shrines. It meant nothing that he should find such an image on a princeling’s robes. But for a moment what he had seen was the bull’s head emblem of the Ai-Zir.

He thanked the gods that such moments came rarely. Everything here—trees and flowers, the very shape of the hills, and the scent of the air—was so different from his homeland that he could go for days at a time without remembering. And then some chance sight or scent, like the smoke of Velantos’ smithy, would overwhelm him, and for a moment he would be lost.

“You! Mooncalf! What are you staring at?” The servant’s voice seemed to come from some great distance. When the man slapped him, his cheek barely felt the sting. “Do you think—”

“Estaros!”

The deep voice that overrode the man’s next words brought the boy around, flushed with mingled embarrassment and apprehension. Velantos filled the doorway, heavy brows meeting as he frowned. His forehead and cheekbones had the strong lines of cast bronze above the short black beard. Estaros flinched, and Woodpecker braced himself for a blow. This morning Velantos wore the long linen tunic appropriate to his rank, but when Woodpecker saw the prince stripped and sweating over the forge, he had been amazed at the strength those muscles implied.

“How should the lad know what to do when he never saw my belongings before? We do not leave for two days. Give him time.”

Woodpecker flushed again, hearing beneath the rough timbre a warmth that he found oddly comforting. He brought his fist to his forehead in salutation, then, with nimble fingers, finished folding the robe.

 

 

 

BEYOND THE CURVE OF the road Anderle glimpsed a glitter of blue water and the pointed top of the isle that guarded the bay. It was time for the festival that welcomed summer in Belerion, and the clouds had lifted at last. Creamy primroses were blossoming beneath the oak trees, and the hedges were starred with hawthorn blooms. But the cheerful sparkle of the blue waters before her seemed a mockery. In that sea all her hopes had drowned. Ellet tried to console her with the memory of the prophecy that had come from her own lips after they heard that Mikantor was lost, but the words the others had taken down were no more than a disjointed rambling, and she herself had no memory of what she had seen. A great clanhold of stone? What could that have to do with them here? And as for the Sword, if the hero who was to wield it was dead, what use could it be?

But even to her priestesses, she could not admit how completely her faith had failed. And so when the king of the Ai-Utu sent to tell her that Kaisa-Zan had died and a priestess was needed for the rites, she had agreed to come herself. If the queen had been young, she and her consort would have performed the ritual that welcomed summer in, but she was failing. Kaisa should have been able to take her place until it was her daughter’s turn to rule. The sudden fever that had carried the priestess off was no more than the latest disaster. King Sakanor did not need to know that Anderle had begun to doubt that even the magic of Avalon would stop the storms or drain the sodden fields. She would go through with the ritual, and trust that the gods had hope even though she had none.

That night they were guests in the house of the family that guarded the stone circle called the Maidens. Near the house was a mound where a thorn tree grew. Beneath it a long chamber had been carved. In the old days it had been a place of initiation, sunk into the earth where the power flowed from the stone circle north and eastward across the isle. That night she took a lamp and made her way down the slope past the stone where a carven warrior warded the opening, and settled to open her awareness to the spirits of the land.

The stones of Belerion had been old when the priests from the Drowned Lands raised the trilithons of the great henge. The earth energies that they channeled flowed strongly, and would continue to flow no matter how much rain might fall. Anderle sat up straighter and let her breathing deepen, sensing the loves and lives of the people whose spirits had become part of this land.
Ancestors
, she prayed,
watch over your descendants
.
Give us the wit to change what we can, and the strength to endure what we cannot change.
And in that confined space it seemed to her that the pressure of the air grew greater, as if a crowd of invisible companions had joined her there. And though no clear message had come to her, when at length she left the chamber to seek her bed, she found that her spirit had been eased.

The next day was the eve of the festival. She spent it in seclusion, and when the day drew to an end, Ellet and the local women bathed her and set a hawthorn crown above her veil and led her down the road to the circle of stones. From ahead she could hear drumming, and knew that the king awaited her there. Compared with the great henge these stones were modest—no more than waist to chest high. But they were far older, and on this night Anderle could feel the energy that sparked from one to the next.
Perhaps,
she thought as she entered the circle and felt that power shock through her,
the gods have not abandoned us. Holy Caratra, bless the work we do.

The part of her mind that was still her own noted that King Sakanor’s beard was growing gray. But her body was swaying to the beat of the drum. She sensed the glow of power begin to gather around him as it must be limn ing her. Laughing, she led the maidens weaving in and out among the stones of the circle, and when men and women came together at last, the king was no longer a middle-aged man with arms a little thinned and belly broadened by the years, but the virile protector, and she, no longer small and dark, but the glowing lady of the land. Man and maid surrounded them, singing, as they lay down together, and Anderle felt the power she had sensed in the underground chamber surging upward, to be intensified and channeled in a river of light to bless the land.

It was not until the next morning that she was able to talk to the king, when the Powers that had worked through them had departed and they were no more than man and woman once more.

“Lady Anderle, I thank you. Kaisa-Zan was a fine woman and a strong priestess. She was taken from us too soon. The girl she was training is still young. We would be grateful if you would take her with you when you return to Avalon and finish her teaching there.”

“I will take her,” said Anderle, “for the land must be served, even though each time I see her I will remember what happened to the boy I sent to you.”

King Sakanor sighed. “That Galid could send his wretches to carry off a lad from the midst of my country was a great shame to us all, and yet I am not entirely satisfied by his story. We lose a fishing boat from time to time, and the sea eventually sends those that drown in the bay to shore. But your boy’s body was never found, and I assure you, my lady, the fisher folk searched long and well.”

“I believe Galid capable of any lie,” the priestess said sourly. “But if the sea did not take him, where is the boy?”

“The ships from Tartessos left on the morning tide. And I’ve heard that Galid’s creature Izri was seen with a shiny new southern dagger at his belt the next day. The traders buy slaves, my lady, though I forbid it. It’s possible that Galid’s men sold him to them instead.”

Anderle realized she had seized the king’s arm and let go, seeing the prints of her fingers white on his arm. She became aware how heavily her heart was thumping when he reached out to steady her in turn.

“This is truth?” she breathed.

“As much truth as I know,” he replied. “It is always hard to lose a youngster, but why should you care so much about this boy?”

“Mikantor was King Uldan’s son, my own cousin’s child—let that be enough reason for his fate to matter to me.”

“Uldan’s boy!” The king’s eyes widened. “The child of the prophecy?”

“You have heard it?”

“The whole land has heard it,” he replied. “This is heavy news indeed, for whether he has been taken to Tartessos or the Land of the Dead he is equally lost to us.”

“Maybe . . .” Anderle said slowly, “but if the gods are good, from Tartessos, he might someday return.”

 

 

 

IN THE END VELANTOS’ new servant spent more time organizing his master’s belongings than he did learning smithcraft. For that, as the boy diffidently told him, there would be time, whereas the king wanted them on their way to Mykenae
now.
Velantos was surprised to find himself responding with amusement to the boy’s insistence. His other servants, more used to growls than smiles, decided to treat the newcomer as an ally rather than a competitor for his favor. That surprised the smith as well. Accustomed to doubting his own status at Tiryns, had he been so thoughtless a master? Velantos was still mulling over the question as they turned off the main road across the plain and started the climb to the Overking’s citadel.

As they ascended the last slope and rounded the bend, he was recalled to himself by Woodpecker’s whistle of surprise. The boy was staring at the fortress that seemed to have grown from the summit of the hill before them, an eminence that would have been called a mountain in most lands. Here, it was only an outcrop, dwarfed by the sheer peaks that rose behind it. Walls of massive honey-colored stones wrapped it round, tier upon tier, crowned by the royal halls, their russet crenelations glowing in the afternoon sun.

“Impressive, aren’t they?”

“Tiryns is mighty,” breathed the boy, “but Mykenae greater still. Giants moved those stones?”

“That is what they say.” Velantos smiled. “It was built by the Cyclopes for King Persaios, when Tiryns was no longer enough for him. Of course that was before Odikeos put out Polyfemos’ eye on his way home from Troia. Even for a son of the Cloud Gatherer I do not think the Cyclopes would be so helpful now. Have they no such mighty stoneworks in your own land?”

“Not for the living,” the boy said, frowning. “I . . . remember a thing like a great stone table, where a flood washed the grave mound that covers it away. There’s great stones in the Henge where priestesses do sacred rites, sung into place by masters of magic who come to my land from across the sea. But that was many lives of men ago. My people live in houses roofed with thatch and surrounded by wooden walls—easy to burn.”

He stopped, the emotion leaving his face as a sculptor smooths the clay of an image. Velantos did not press him. For all his uncertainty about his status, the smith had never doubted his physical security. Not until now.