Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (42 page)

The Horned Hunter steps forward, arms out, head a little bent. It is a wrestler’s stance, though he no longer remembers where he has used it before.

“I am the King . . .”
roars the Stag.
“Who comes to challenge Me?”

“I am the Son of a Hundred Kings!”
comes the reply.

Into the mind of the Hunter comes an image of the clearing atop the isle of the Wild God. He remembers does in red-brown summer coats, and the Stag with his antlers in velvet, and a golden-haired child who danced with the sunbeams.

“Now, you are worthy of my horns!”
The Stag huffs again, with a sound that is very like laughter.

“We are always the same,”
comes the reply.
“Always in our prime, always the King.”

The Hunter springs forward, dances aside as the antlers swing, darts in again. The Stag rears, striking out with sharp forehooves and driving the Hunter to one side. Back and forth they weave, attacking and defending in a deadly dance. An unexpected twitch of the antlered head lets a sharp tine score the thigh of the Hunter. Blood spots the fallen leaves.

Around once more, the Hunter leaps in, grapples, and is flung away. His blood continues to flow; he is growing a little dizzy now.

“Generation follows generation, and each time we fight, the weaker one must fall. The blood of the old king feeds the ground, and the young king gives his seed so that our Mother may bear anew
.
”

The Hunter’s time is running out. He crouches, breath sobbing in his breast, waiting as the Stag swerves back and forth, waiting. The crown of knives plunges toward him, at the last moment he swivels on his haunches, uncoiling as the antlers pass. Powerful hands grip the antlers at their base and force the great head down; he hooks a foot around a foreleg so the Stag cannot strike, and holds. For a long moment they strain, neither giving way, until at long last the Hunter feels the force that opposes him falter.

In some other lifetime, someone had asked if he was willing to die for the land.

“Do you go consenting?”
He asks the question now.

The Stag heaves, loses balance and goes down on one knee.
“I am the Offering. . . .”

“As one day I myself shall be
—
”
The Hunter’s grip tightens. Muscles flex and ripple as he wrenches sideways. Bone cracks. He holds as the mighty body of the Stag convulses, holds until the last twitchings have ceased, and the light fades from the dark eyes, and time begins once more.

 

 

 

“CUT HIS THROAT, MY king. His blood must feed the ground—”

He blinked, turning, and saw beside him a man with dark eyes and grizzled hair. Presently memory supplied the name,
Badger.
He realized that the flint knife was still hanging at his side, and drew the blade. The wooden hilt and bindings were new, but the stone was darkened by use and age. He wondered how many times that knife had tasted the blood of a king.

It was very silent. He pulled back the stag’s heavy head to stretch the throat and stabbed just beneath the angle of the jaw. Another wrench pulled the knife through skin and veins and the rubbery windpipe and feeding tube. The air filled with a hot metallic tang as blood flowed in a red tide. Senses still attuned to the Otherworld noted the shimmer of energy above it, dissipating gradually into the forest as the blood soaked into the ground, and from the forest itself, a grateful sigh. The golden light of late afternoon shafted through the trees. The mist had gone.

“Go in peace, my lord,” he whispered, “and leave your blessing on this land.”

Badger dipped a finger into the blood and drew a red line between Mikantor’s brows, more across his cheekbones and another upon his breast. When the flow of blood had almost ceased, the other men came forward, heaving the stag over onto its back and making a careful slit in the belly. He had seen the gralloching of a deer a hundred times before, but never had each movement held such solemnity.

One man pulled away the skin so that another could reach in and draw out the offal to leave for the scavengers of the wild. While the hunters bound the stag’s legs and passed spears between them for transport, Badger sluiced and bound up the gash on Mikantor’s thigh. He could feel it aching, but as a distant thing. Some of the power that had borne him through the hunt remained. One of the hunters unslung a cow’s horn and blew three long blasts. In a moment the call of another horn echoed from the distance. From hill to hill his triumph was proclaimed—
“The king is dead. . . the king returns. . . .”

That same serenity bore Mikantor back along paths he did not remember having seen before, back to the clearing where the people waited to hail a new king. There the women set the King Stag’s head upon a pole and swiftly stripped off the hide. The heart and other choice portions were grilled above the coals while the rest was disjointed and cast into cauldrons to boil.

The king feeds his people,
thought Mikantor as they draped the wet hide across his shoulders and led him to a seat before the fire. The priestess was waiting to crown his antlers with a wreath of red berries like her own. They brought her a platter with the roasted meat and she cut off pieces to feed him, beginning with the heart. With it came a beaker of honey mead.

Mikantor felt dizzy and did not know whether it was the drink, or the shock of eating meat after so long, or the presence of the woman beside him that made his head swim. Most of her body was hidden by her own deerskin robe. He could see one bare leg and a round arm. Her hair was done into a multiplicity of tiny braids. His flesh stirred at the thought that beneath the deerskin she must be as naked as he. Through the eyeslits he caught the gleam of eyes. Her hand brushed his as she handed him another piece of meat and he felt the pulse of power between them.

This was not quite like the morning’s dissociation, when the spirit of the deer had overwhelmed his humanity. Once more his consciousness was being pushed into the background, but this time what was replacing it was a power at once fierce and benign, the power of a god. As his awareness shifted, his perception of the woman by his side was changing as well. Overlaid upon her mask he saw a multiplicity of images, human and animal, fresh maiden and opulent mother. He desired them all. Even the deathly hag called to him to pour out his life in her embrace.

As folk finished eating, the drumming began once more, supporting a bone flute whose shrilling touched the nerves with sweet pain. The hunters circled the fire, the deer hooves strung around their ankles clicking out the rhythm as they danced the story of the running of the deer. More drums added to the thunder as others joined the dancing. Women bent and swayed before him, loosening their garments to reveal a round breast or a flash of bare thigh. On this night he could have any woman he asked for. He was the king.

But Mikantor had eyes only for the one who sat beside him. The need to possess her was becoming a torment. He grasped her wrist and stood, pulling her against him.

Around him, the people were laughing. “This way,” said someone. “A bed has been prepared for you.”

He found his balance again as he followed the priestess along a path where the bones of the earth reared up through the soil. Beside a dark gash in the hillside a torch was burning. The priestess slipped from his grasp and disappeared into the opening. His escort unlaced the antler crown. Light-headed, he let the stag’s hide slip from his shoulders and followed her.

In the flickering light of an oil lamp set on a ledge he had an impression of a womblike space just large enough for two. A bed of hides and furs covered most of the floor. The priestess had paused at the edge, as if for the first time uncertain. A step brought him up behind her, gripping her shoulders, pressing his body against hers. Her deerskin robe was in the way; he reached around to pull out the pin and drag it aside, hands closing upon her breasts before she could move. He strained against her, felt her nipples harden beneath his fingers, heard her sigh.

She twisted within his arms and slid free to face him, her swift breathing an echo of his own. She had pulled off her mask, but the lamp was behind her, and her face was in shadow. His eyes fed on a landscape of rounded white breast and swelling hips, painted as he was painted, with sacred signs. Seeing her beauty, the frantic lust that had consumed him a moment before vanished though his whole body was still one ache of desire, and he remembered that he had been trained at Avalon.

“Blessed be your lips, that speak Her holy words.” he whispered, and leaning forward, gently set his lips to hers. They were soft, and sweet, with the taste of honey. He could spend an hour worshipping her lips alone. But the ritual carried him on. “Blessed be your hands, that do Her work . . .” He took first one, then the other, and set a kiss upon each palm. “Blessed be your breasts, that feed Her children . . .” He cradled them in his hands, felt her shiver at the touch of his lips. He kept his hands upon her, sliding them down her silken sides and legs as he knelt to bless her feet that walked in the Lady’s ways. He remained kneeling, reaching up again to clasp her hips. “Blessed be your womb, the source of Life . . .” he whispered, drawing her against him. “You are the Goddess,” he said hoarsely. “Let me serve You.”

Her hands closed hard on his shoulders. He felt a tremor pass through the warm flesh between his hands.

“You are my Beloved . . .” Her voice held more than mortal sweetness. “Be welcome to my arms!”

 

 

 

TIRILAN WOKE FROM A dream in which she had fallen asleep with Mikantor cradled against her breast. For a moment she thought she was still dreaming, for the furs on which she lay had never covered any bed in Avalon. A little gray light flitered through what must be a doorway, and from outside she could hear a bird’s first tentative morning song. From somewhere closer came a snort and a sigh. She jerked upright, reached out to touch tousled hair, and then the smoothly muscled shoulder of a man, stilled as he muttered and then subsided into sleep again.

A flood of images overwhelmed memory. A knowledge deeper than thought told her that this was indeed Mikantor. She had held him in her arms and more, to judge from the unaccustomed soreness between her thighs. And yet it was not she, but the Goddess, who had given herself to the God. As a priestess she rejoiced in the success of the ritual. As a woman she could weep that she recalled so little of its joy. How much, she wondered, would Mikantor remember of their joining? Anderle had told her whose rite she would be blessing, but he would not have known she was to be his priestess.

Soon someone would come to escort her back to her mother, who waited to return with her to Avalon. She fought the temptation to throw herself on Mikantor and cling so that they could not pry her away—she would not so profane the rite. And yet she refused to let this become no more than a shining memory. The Goddess had Her due, but what was there for Tirilan?

This was a gift, and a great one . . . but it is not enough,
she thought, bending to breathe in the scent of the man, mingled with the scent of the herbs.
I can expect no more help from others. Tirilan herself will have to act to achieve her desire.

From outside came the sound of a footstep on stone. She began to feel around for her deerskin cloak. Her hand brushed stiff fur, and then something harder, a knife in a leather sheath. That was all Mikantor had been wearing when he entered the cave.

“My lady—” came a soft whisper, “my lady, you must wake—it is time for you to go. . . .”

Tirilan pulled the deerskin cloak around her and fastened it with the bone pin, then reached down once more to draw the flint knife and take the sheath. Holding the cloak closed with her other hand she got to her feet and eased out through the passageway.

 

 

 

ANDERLE WAS WAITING BY the fire outside the hut where Tirilan had undergone her preparation. The girl still shivered from the scrubbing that had washed away most of the ritual paint as well as the scent Mikantor had left on her body, for at this season the water of the sacred spring was bitter cold. They had taken away her deerhide cape and restored her thick cloak of natural gray wool and her robe of priestess blue. But she had managed to retain the sheath of the knife, hanging from a thong between her breasts beneath the gown.

“You are glowing, my child—I take it that you passed a pleasant night?” Tirilan’s gaze flicked to her mother’s face and then back to the fire, showing, she hoped, a confusion that was at least modest if no longer maidenly.

“I have reason to believe that the Goddess was pleased,” Tirilan said softly. “As for me, I feel like the slave who carries the steaming meat to the master. He can smell its savor, but his belly is still empty.”

“Do not try to tell me that your body still aches for the man,” Anderle said tartly. “I know the effects of such rituals. The power rushes through mind and body and leaves a great peace behind.”

“And what of my heart?” asked Tirilan. “I want to hear Mikantor’s voice and see his face. I want to make sure that he has enough to eat and clean clothes to wear. And I want him to take me in his arms and know that it is me he holds.”

The two women had kept their voices low, but one of the clanswomen, coming back to the fire, received a glare from Anderle that sent her scuttling away. The priestess turned back to her daughter.

“He has a band of men to take care of him! As for your heart—the Goddess has first claim on that. At Avalon we are spared the burdens that make a woman of the tribes old before her time. In return we give up the daily companionship over which you are sighing. What makes you think that he would want you? I don’t recall him seeking you out when he was at Avalon. You will come home with me and be grateful for what you have had.”