Orion and King Arthur (27 page)

I called to her with all my soul, but received no answer. The gods and goddesses are busy at other tasks, I told myself. They have universes and worldlines to tend to.
The problems of Arthur and Orion are too insignificant for them to worry about.

“Don’t be foolish, my love.”

Anya’s voice! Speaking in my mind.

“Even though I am far across the sea of stars, Orion, you are in my heart and in my thoughts.”

“And you in mine!” I shouted.

“Aten seeks Arthur’s destruction,” she said. “It would be wise for you to bow to his will.”

“Never!”

“Then you must use
your wits and your strength to help Arthur to pass this test that faces him.”

“Test?” I asked.

“Use your wits and your strength, Orion. Find the way to pass this test.”

The scene blanked out. Instead of that warm, sunny hillside I was stretched out in my sleeping roll on the stone floor of the castle chamber, in the cold and dark, an infinity away from the goddess that I loved.

But I knew
what I had to do. The question in my mind was, could I do it?

7

A squire could not even raise his voice among the assembled knights, much less offer them a way to settle their dispute. I needed an ally, a mouthpiece.

Lancelot.

In the cold and gray morning I found him in the courtyard, standing alone in a corner, looking disconsolate. Other knights were hacking away at each other merrily, the
cracks of their blows and the grunts of their exertions echoing off the courtyard’s high stone walls.

“Sir Lancelot,” I called to him. “Why so glum, my lord?”

Like an unhappy little boy he confessed, “None of the other knights will face me.”

“None?” I asked. “No one at all?”

“They all claim I’m too good. Too eager to win.”

I nodded knowingly. Lancelot was faster than any of them, I knew,
and obsessed with proving himself, despite his youth. Or perhaps because of it.

“I will practice with you, my lord,” I said, “if you will accept a humble squire as your opponent.”

He broke into an eager grin. “Gladly!”

So we faced each other with wooden practice swords. I took a shield and helmet from the storeroom at the far end of the courtyard; it would have hurt Lancelot more than a thrust
through the heart if I had faced him without a protective shield or helm. My senses went into overdrive automatically, but I deliberately allowed Lancelot to hit me now and then as we danced back and forth along the courtyard’s snow-covered ground. Many of the other knights stopped their banging at each other to watch us as we hacked at each other.

By the time he at last cried, “Enough!” we were
both puffing steam into the frigid air and our shields were well dented.

As we headed back inside, I said, “My lord, how do you suppose we can get all these others to support Arthur’s rightful claim to kingship?”

Lancelot shook his head. “I wish I knew.”

He was sincere, I knew. He worshipped Arthur, who had raised him to knighthood.

I began carefully, “I wonder if it would be possible…”

By the time the nobles gathered again in the great hall to resume their disputation over Ambrosius’ legacy, Lancelot was aflame with the idea I had planted in his thoughts.

“A contest?” King Mark asked, once Lancelot had spoken to the assembled knights and kings. “You mean, like a joust?”

“Nay, my lord,” said Lancelot respectfully. “Not a contest of arms, but a contest of God’s will.”

“God’s
will?” King Leodegrance’s usual smile vanished into a befuddled scowl.

Bishop Bron, wearing a plain black robe this day, looked troubled. “And how do you propose to fathom the will of our Lord and Savior, lad?”

His face beaming with enthusiasm, Lancelot explained, “The old High King’s great sword lies upon his grave. Let he who can pull that sword from its scabbard be recognized as God’s choice
to be High King of the Britons!”

The bishop’s parchment-skinned face wrinkled into a suspicious frown. “That sword is riveted to the stone slab covering Ambrosius’ grave. It cannot be removed.”

“It could be,” Lancelot retorted, “by the man God has chosen to be our High King.”

“But…”

“Nothing is impossible to God, my lord bishop,” Lancelot coaxed. “Is that not so?”

The bishop nodded warily,
unable to disagree but still unconvinced of Lancelot’s plan.

It took nearly two more hours of discussion, of voices raised sometimes to the point of violence, before the bishop finally conceded, “Why not? If it be God’s will, which of us can oppose it?”

Thus the knights and kings gathered in the frost-covered graveyard around Ambrosius’ headstone, staring at the heavy two-handed sword riveted
to the stone slab covering the old High King’s mortal remains.

One of the castle’s blacksmiths was summoned to examine the broadsword and affirm that it was riveted solidly in place.

“It cannot be moved, your grace,” the burly blacksmith told the bishop, “without the proper tools … and a great deal of sweat.”

Satisfied that it was impossible to remove the sword with a man’s unaided strength,
the bishop raised his hands in prayerful supplication. As the noblemen knelt on the snowy ground, Bishop Bron intoned, “Oh Lord, we humbly beg that Thou showest Thy favor to the one You choose to be King of all the Britons.”

A deep chorus of “Amen” answered the bishop’s plea.

Then the old man turned to Lancelot. “This is your idea, lad. You try first.”

“Me?” Lancelot squeaked with surprise.

“You,” said the bishop, with a beatific smile. From where I stood, on the outskirts of the gathered nobles, I thought the bishop’s smile masked a subtle humor. He seemed to be saying to Lancelot, You thought up this nonsense, let you be the first one to be humiliated by it.

Glancing warily at Arthur, Lancelot stepped up to the headstone. Arthur smiled at the young knight, warmly, without malice
or any trace of jealousy.

Lancelot placed both his hands on the greatsword’s hilt, planted his booted feet firmly on the edge of the stone slab, and pulled with all his might.

The sword did not budge.

One by one, for more than an hour, the knights and self-styled kings trudged up to the sword and tried to pull it out of its scabbard. One by one they strained, red faced and grunting, until they
admitted defeat. King Leodegrance accepted his failure with a wry smile. King Mark tugged and huffed until I thought he would pop a hernia.

The sword remained in its scabbard.

The moment was coming for Arthur to try. It was the moment when my test would come.

I had seen Aten and Anya create a stasis, freezing the flow of time to suit their whims. They were Creators, with godlike powers. I was
a creature, made by Aten to do his bidding. I had learned how to translate myself from the point in spacetime where I existed to the eternal city of the Creators, far in the future of the place and time where I dwelt. Aten always scoffed at my skill, claiming that he or one of the other Creators had aided me.

But I knew I could translate myself across the worldlines. Now a different task faced
me. Could I create a stasis? Unless I could, my plan for Arthur would turn to ashes.

8

Praying silently to Anya for help, I brought up in my memory the times that Aphrodite and Hades had created a stasis, once at the megalithic monument of Stonehenge, and then again when we’d been at Sir Ector’s castle at Wroxeter.

Humans think of time as a river that flows in one direction, I recalled. But
time is like a vast sea, with currents that surge this way and that, eddies and whirpools, and great surging waves. Create a whirpool, I told myself. You have experienced it before; now use the power of that knowledge to suspend the current of this timeline.

I realized that every time I faced battle, my sense of time slowed, stretched like taffy being pulled into a languid stream. I had that
capability, Aten my Creator had built it into me. Now I would use it to create a stasis. Without help from Aten or Anya or any of the Creators. I would do this myself.

I hoped.

I reached out with my mind and sensed the flow of time, the streaming current that was carrying these people through their lives. Closing my eyes, I willed the current to be still, to freeze in place. I did not want a
whirpool, I wanted this timeline to stop where it was.

I opened my eyes. Arthur stood frozen at the edge of the stone slab covering Ambrosius’ grave, his hands reaching for the greatsword. Bishop Bron stood near him, his creased parchment face staring intently at Arthur’s strong, youthful figure. King Mark, Lancelot, Gawain, King Leodegrance, Bors, and Kay and all the others stood motionless,
not breathing, as if encased in invisible ice.

I rushed through the motionless courtyard, past the frozen knights and squires, past Friar Samson, standing at the edge of the crowd and staring sightlessly like a statue made of petrified flesh, and headed for the blacksmith’s shop. Not even the air moved; the courtyard was silent and still. Birds hung unmoving in midair.

I rummaged through the
blacksmith’s tools as the burly smith and his two young apprentices stood stock-still, unblinking, unbreathing. Back to the gravesite I hurried, with a stout pry lever in my hands. Wondering in the back of my mind why I felt this urge to rush, I worked on the rivets that fastened the greatsword inside its scabbard. They popped loose at last, and I bent down to replace their broken ends in their proper
holes.

I realized as I raced back to the smithy that I couldn’t maintain the stasis indefinitely. Perhaps Anya or another of the Creators could, but I felt in my mind the subtle, insistent power of the time flow gnawing at the edges of my stasis, eroding it like a river wears away solid rock.

By the time I returned to the crowd of noblemen gathered around the grave, the stasis gave way and time
resumed its flow. Men breathed and stirred. The chill winter breeze gusted. Birds flapped across the pewter-gray sky.

And Arthur bent down to grasp the hilt of Ambrosius’ sword. For an instant it did not budge, but then suddenly the rivets I had broken popped loose and the sword slid easily from its scabbard.

For an instant no one moved, no one spoke. It was if another stasis had frozen the
moment in place.

Then Arthur raised the greatsword over his head and every man in the graveyard raised a heartfelt cheer.

“Hail to Arthur,” the bishop bellowed, “rightwise King of all the Britons!”

From the back of the crowd, Friar Samson shouted, “Deo lo volt!” God wills it.

Every man dropped to his knees, except Arthur, who still held the sword exultantly in both his raised hands.

High
King of all the Britons. Deo lo volt.

CHAPTER NINE

Leodegrance’s Wedding Gift

1

Leodegrance appeared to swallow his own ambition and take Arthur’s accession to the High Kingship with good grace, knowing that his daughter would become Arthur’s queen. The wedding was set for the spring, but before she and her father left Cadbury castle—together with all the other nobles who had assembled there—Arthur had to be formally crowned.

It took a week to plan the coronation, a week in which Bishop Bron held nightly vigils and morning masses, and the high-strung court chamberlain flitted through the castle like a hummingbird darting from flower to flower as he prepared for the coronation feast.

Not one of the noblemen left the castle; none of them wanted to miss the great ceremony. Arthur spent his time, though, huddled with
Bors and Kay and his foster father, Sir Ector.

“If the High Kingship is to mean anything,” Arthur said to them earnestly, “we must use it to bring peace to the land. We’ve got to find a way to stop the wars and the constant fighting and allow the people to prosper once more.”

We were in Arthur’s room, high in the castle’s stone keep. I stood by the door; the others were seated around the trestle
table near the foot of the bed.

Bors gave Arthur a scowl. “Stop the fighting, eh? Tell that to the Saxons.”

“Men will fight for what they want,” said Ector, more mildly. Tugging unconsciously at his white beard, he went on, “When men have a dispute between them, an appeal to arms is the natural way to settle it.”

Shaking his head, Arthur countered, “That wasn’t the way the Romans did it. They
had laws.”

“And officials with the authority to enforce those laws,” said Kay, jabbing a finger in the air to emphasize his point.

“And courts to decide disputes,” Ector added.

“Then that’s what we must have,” Arthur said flatly. “Laws and courts, instead of constant fighting and bloody wars.”

Ector shook his head. “I don’t see how you can make free and independent men accept such restraints,
my son.”

With a wry smile, Arthur replied, “Neither do I, Father. Not yet. But that’s what we must do.”

2

The day Arthur was to be crowned dawned at last. I had been sleeping in his chamber, wrapped in my bedroll on the floor by the chamber door. As usual, I opened my eyes as the first light of the new day crept through the room’s only window.

Arthur was already standing by the window, fully
dressed in a crisp new tunic of white emblazoned with the red dragon that was his totem.

As I scrambled to my feet, Arthur turned toward me. “The day is here,” he said softly. The expression on his face was pensive, almost sad.

“You’re about to take on a great responsibility, my lord,” I said as I reached for my clothes, draped across the back of one of the chairs.

“And a wife,” he said. “The
High King must have a wife, so that he can have a son and heir.”

“I meant the responsibility of returning Britain to law and peace.”

“Oh, that.” He smiled carelessly. “That will take a lot of effort, but it can be done, I’m sure.”

“Do you truly believe that you can bring these fractious Celts to a law-abiding society?” I challenged.

“The Romans did.”

“They had an army to enforce their laws.”