The Raven Warrior (9 page)

“Warrior. You want to be a warrior?”

The abrupt change of subject disconcerted Black Leg. He sat up on the edge of the slab and dangled his feet over the river. It was still warm, but the sun was withdrawing more and more. In the canyon, the shadows lengthened. The wind was beginning to grow cold. Black Leg felt uneasy.

“Soon it’s going to be dark,” he said. “If we can’t get back, I don’t think it will matter much about what I want to do with my life. I want to have one to play around with.”

She laughed. “Hell, I’ve been down lots of roads along the tunnel. Got stranded a few times. I always got out all right. So will you. You’re long-lived, like me. The power to change does that—gives you long life.”

“That’s why she turned me down,” he said.

“Yeah. And I can’t say I blame her. We’re best with our own kind. But still, I think she could have given it a little tiny bit more thought than she did. But the only bigger screwballs than human men are women.”

“How so?” Black Leg bridled.

“Simple. She knows you well. Hell, she knows you almost as well as she knows herself. You’re good-looking, good-natured—that’s important—smart, and she gets her arms around you long enough to know you’re probably good in bed. But nooooo . . . she can’t wait to go running after . . .”

Black Leg waited a minute, then prompted, “What?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He used to come to my well in the mountains with his kin. They made offerings and didn’t pollute the water. They knew the rules and taught him how to behave himself. But in my life, I’ve met maybe four—no, five—mortal men who frightened me. He’s one of them.”

“Fine!” Black Leg commented. “Just fine.”

She nodded uh-huh. “Just fine. And I’ve had a long life. But this kid scares the shit out of me.”

“How long?” Black Leg asked.

“Full of questions,” she said.

“You cause me to want to ask a lot of questions. You are one peculiar being.”

By now she was up and seated beside him.

“I suppose I am . . . to you. But believe me, I’m completely predictable. Part of the logic of the universe.”

“The logic of the universe?” Black Leg repeated.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, I wish you would logic us out of here. It’s getting cold, and I’m getting scared.”

“Turn wolf,” she said. “Your fur . . .”

“No,” he told her. “I’m about half drunk on the wine. If I turn wolf, I’ll lose my buzz. I won’t be cold, but I’ll be even more scared than I am now.

“You must be getting cold, too,” he said. “Your friend’s not back.”

“The vine,” she said. “I know. And I’m sort of bothered by that. It’s scared and I’m not sure about what.”

“It can’t tell you?”

“No. The water lily’s more verbal, but it’s been alone a long time. There’s no gardener here to look out for it. And its music . . . is . . .”

Black Leg heard the trill of notes again. A distant harp.

“It won’t come out, and acts like it expects me to know why. But I don’t comprehend the language it speaks well and—”

Just then the bird landed on a spearhead of rock near Black Leg’s arm. He was astounded, thinking at first that it was Magetsky.

“What’s she . . . ?” he began.

Then the bird gave a cry like a single, ringing note of a silver bell, and he knew it wasn’t Magetsky, couldn’t be.

Black Leg found he was afraid of it. His hackles rose and he felt the wolf slide over him like a cloud covers the sun and creates not darkness but shadow change. And he knew something more than the wolf was summoned. He drew on reserves he didn’t know he had.

The bird gave another cry and the ravens swept like a black wave down the canyon from caves above the waterfall.

The bird went for Black Leg’s eye with its sharp, onyx beak . . . and got it.

There wasn’t time for Black Leg’s brain to register the shock of absolute pain that losing an eye creates. Instead, it comprehended something infinitely worse, willed by the thing that inhabited the bird.

“I cripple . . . I destroy your life, wolf. When I am done with you, wolf, you will be bereft of sight, hearing, your mortal body punctured with a thousand wounds that will by suppuration cause you untold agony. You will have life of a sort for a time. But you will not desire to continue your existence in such a guise. And so you will pass from hence into a sea of madness, then all unknowing into oblivion. I am from the dead and the change is useless against my power.”

Even as the bird took his eye, Black Leg’s jaws closed on it. The thing powdered the way a chunk of wood turned to charcoal by a roaring blaze retains its shape even though its remaining substance is ash.

Then the powdered ash was turned into a horde of dark, hard insects, all burrowing into his coat toward his skin.

He changed—for only a split second was human. And he realized the bird’s threat was made fact. He retained only one eye and was being eaten alive by the shimmering coating of insects covering his body.

In that split second, he tried to see where she had gone. Where she had been sitting, the Weyvern clung to the rock. It seemed made of stone, mottled green stone flecked and veined with red. A dragon seemingly hammered out of the rock composing the riverbank.

Black Leg screamed. The Weyvern’s mouth opened and he was bathed in flame.

Arthur slept in the tower he received from the Queen of the Dead. He sat between two waterfalls with the ancient vessel at his feet. Even in his dreams he was still a king and he sensed he must have been a king even when he floated in his mother’s womb and kicked at her belly.

He had been a king and known it even as a child when he had been tormented by his mother, Igrane, and her lover, Merlin. He had known they wished to quench the strength in his heart. But they failed, thanks to Uther, and he stood on the threshold of his inheritance. His own man, one who would rule in his own way, and never allow his power to be usurped by another.

A king is a sacred being, the high priest of his people, who may be offered to the gods if the circumstances should arise. That called for the most valuable thing they possessed. Arthur understood this, and it was bred into his very bones.

She had given the cup into his hands and allowed him to quench his thirst just before the final ordeal. Now it floated before him, glowing in the dark silence of sleep, and her voice commanded him, “Drink.”

He caught the cup between his hands and drank. He received a mouthful of blood.

Because he was a king, he could in no wise refuse her, and he swallowed. He found himself in the dim, steel cavern where they first met. But the roof was gone, and he stood among ruins that lifted their structures against a cold, gray sky. Beyond the boiling clouds the sun still burned, but it was only a somewhat brighter spot among the ashen clouds.

He glanced around at the chairs of the rotunda that once held the remains of the nonhuman dead and saw that each was occupied by an icy blue fire. She spoke to him from the high seat. “It is done. We are free. It is time for you, your people, to claim their inheritance.”

“What is this place?” he whispered, studying the desolation around him.

“The end is in the beginning,” she said. “As the beginning is in the end. This is the place where our world ended and yours began. I have done my best, but I can offer no better explanation. For what it’s worth, our thought is demonstrated by the tower. Oh, King, let its logic rule you. The greatest thinkers among your people wrote nothing down but taught by the example of their lives. Oh, King, immortal in name and fame but placed beyond all comprehension, fare you well.”

Then they were gone, shooting up to and through the clouds that darkened the midday sky almost unto night. He woke gazing into the beauty of the glowing cup on the floor. He rose and saw it was filled with rich, cool milk. He was hungry and weary. He lifted the cauldron and tasted the milk.

The topmost room of the tower revolved like a kaleidoscope around him. Reality is a guess made by the mind, based on the information imparted by the senses. Here the speculations of reason (not lightly put aside) were suspended. The how of such an accomplishment was incomprehensible to him, and he bowed to the master builders of the tower, acknowledging their skill and intellect.

The why was more clear: movement from location to location.

Beyond the waterfalls, on each side of the throne, he saw a glade, a glen filled with forest, birdsong, and falling water, very green grass, abundant tree growth, bushes laden with fruit and flowers. The pale mist of shallow cataracts hovered, cooling and dampening the emerald parkland shadowed by oak, elder, birch, apple, and sloe.

He lifted the cup and drank again. He saw the sea crashing against barren cliffs, an angry sea, seeming to want to tear out and uproot a palace composed of glass that crouched at the foot of the cliffs. The waves moved over it, pounding, caressing, thundering at the mosaic of windows that formed its roof. The cloud-shadowed sun came and went, illuminating both palace and surging sea. Green, clear, dark, almost black, ever changing, never resting, the waters moved over the transparent domes beneath.

Igrane is there,
he thought.
No, her journey is her own now. I am no longer a part of it.

Then he passed through a murk fire and darkness. Her blue eyes looked into his, a cruel torment in them. Hurriedly, he lifted the cup to his lips; he wanted to go to her.

You will be my queen,
he thought.

But she was swept away. The room revolved more quickly than thought, to a place where he saw his people gathered in a meadow. This time he didn’t think but spoke.

“A king is a high priest!”

The vast kaleidoscope was still. He walked toward them, the vessel between his hands. Balin gawped at him as Arthur strode out of the dawn mist on the river near the bridge.

Arthur saw that in the night the rest of the women had joined the men. The bone fires that sent the dead to rest smoldered, still sending up wisps of white smoke. They had been built along the river. The mist trapped the last evidence of the fire and shared mortality with grass bowed by the weight of dew.

Higher up the banks, some of the men had taken a scythe to the grass and cleared a comfortable campground. It was very near the thorn tree where the silver mask hung. The tree was now in full bloom, and the rose and snow flowers glowed soft as a cloud in the first light.

“You won!” Balin said.

Arthur smiled. “I don’t think she asked a victory of me.”

“What did she want then?” Eline asked.

“My soul,” Arthur answered. “I yielded it up to her.”

No one said anything, but the question was in every eye and rested silent on every tongue. Arthur answered the unspoken words.

“She received it into her hands and did no evil thing to it, but returned it to me, cleansed and filled with peace. If this is a victory, it belongs to us both.”

“No! Then it is us she cursed,” Balin said.

“You have your cattle back,” Arthur said. “How are you cursed?”

“The milk,” Balin said. “The milk from the cows is tainted. Some of it smells of blood. Other cows yield a substance that looks like liquid dung. The rest of the beasts, those with weaned calves, are dry as dust, udders wrinkled and shrunken.”

“We can’t make bread,” Eline said.

“I have some milk here.” Arthur spoke very softly. “Try it.” He offered the vessel to Eline.

She accepted it and drank. When she was finished, she gave a deep sigh. Her eyes met Arthur’s over the cup in her hands.

“Good! But is there enough to make bread for us all?”

“I think you will find it so,” Arthur answered.

Another woman approached with an earthenware bowl in her hand.

“Give me a bit, Eline,” she said. “God knows I can cut it with water and have enough for my man and little ones.”

Eline nodded and filled her bowl. Another approached, then quickly behind her, more came forward. Preoccupied with her task, she filled a dozen before she realized the cup would not empty. In fact, the more bowls Eline filled for the women, the more quickly the milk poured. The gathered women glanced at one another, then Arthur.

“Shush,” he said, lifting his finger to his lips. “The sun’s edge has not touched the rim of the hill. Take your fill of the milk, for it is what she, the Queen of the Dead, intended. Between night and morning, between sunset and dark, are the moments we touch the other world. In a place that is and is not, we find both peril and mercy. Drink! And inherit your world. She yields it to you.”

“You will be our king,” Balin said.

“If you wish, for as long as you wish,” Arthur answered.

The cup made the rounds, the men drinking their fill, the women drinking also and taking enough to make bread for their children. Even Bax took a lap as Eline offered the cup to the dog for a moment as it was passed with unflurried haste from hand to hand.

There is evil in the world, disease, pain, death, terror. The loss of loved ones, intractable human problems that destroy individuals and whole families. Drunkenness and folly. There is evil in humankind, anger, baseless envy, hate, greed, and a shadowed streak of destructive cruelty that seeks out the means to give pain to others, and at times ourselves. To take an evil delight in wreaking havoc on the natural world simply to prove we are its masters.

But there are moments when we escape the burdens of our common humanity and transcend the evils the flesh is heir to. Arthur understood this was one of those moments when humans stand hand in hand before nature and form a circle of peace. We carry away from these rites the strength to live, to labor, to love. This was one of those moments, sent by the divine thought of the universe to sustain us. And Arthur knew he was king leader and high priest to these people. And if need be, their first and most important sacrifice.

He drank last, again from the cup, and as the new sun gilded the silver mask hanging from the high branch of the flowering tree, he drained the last of the milk and found the cup empty.

I don’t remember getting back to the rest where they waited looking, gazing at the fortress across the water. But I did.