Dragon's Teeth (19 page)
Authors: Mercedes Lackey
Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #historical, #dark fantasy
You are ARTHUR,
it shouted, making him wince.
You are King Arthur, Warleader and Hero!
“Now it’s
you
that’s loopy,” he told it sternly. “I don’t bloody well think! King Arthur indeed!”
The only recollection of King Arthur he had were things out of his childhood—stories in the schoolbooks, a Disney flick, Christmas pantomimes. Vague images of crowns and red-felt robes, of tin swords and papier-mache armor flitted through his mind—and talking owls and daft magicians. “King Arthur! Not likely!”
You are!
the sword said, sounding desperate now.
You are the Pendragon! You have been reborn into this world to be its Hero! Don’t you remember?
He only snorted. “I’m Michael O’Murphy, I work at the docks, I’ll be on the dole on Monday, and I don’t bloody think anybody needs any bloody more Kings these days! They’ve got enough troubles with the ones they’ve
—Gawd!”
He fell back into the bed as the sword bombarded his mind with a barrage of images, more vivid than the flicks, for he was
in
them. Battles and feasts, triumph and tragedy, success and failure—a grim stand against the powers of darkness that held for the short space of one man’s lifetime.
It all poured into his brain in the time it took for him to breathe twice. And when he sat up again, he remembered.
All of it.
He blinked, and rubbed his mistreated head. “Gawd!” he complained. “You might warn a lad first!”
Now do you believe?
The sword sounded smug.
Just like the nuns at his school, when they’d gotten done whapping him “for his own good.”
“I believe you’re damn good at shoving a lot of rubbish into a man’s head and making him think it’s his,” he said stubbornly, staring down at the shining expanse of blade, about ten-centimeter’s worth, that protruded out of the sheath. “I still don’t see where all this makes any difference, even if I
do
believe it.”
If the sword could have spluttered, it probably would have.
You don’t—you’re Arthur! I’m Excalibur! You’re supposed to take me up and use me!
“For what?” he asked, snickering at the mental image of prying open tins of beans with the thing. “You don’t make a good pry-bar, I can’t cut wood with you even if I had a wood stove, which I don’t, nobody’s going to believe you’re a fancy saw-blade, and there’s laws about walking around with something like you strapped to me hip. What do I do, fasten a sign to you, and go on a protest march?”
You—you—
Bereft of words, the sword resorted to another flood of images. Forewarned by the last one, Michael stood his ground.
But this time the images were harder to ignore.
He saw himself taking the sword and gathering his fighters to his side—all of his friends from the docks, the ones who’d bitched along with him about what a mess the world was in. He watched himself making an army out of them, and sending them out into the streets to clean up the filth there. He saw himself as the leader of a new corps of vigilantes who tracked down the pushers, the perverts, the thugs and the punks and gave them all a taste of what they had coming to them.
He saw his army making the city safe for people to live in, saw them taking back the night from the Powers of Evil.
He saw more people flocking to his banner and his cause, saw him carrying his crusade from city to city, until a joyous public threw the House of Hanover out of Buckingham Palace and installed him on the throne, and a ten-year-old child could carry a gold bar across the length of the island and never fear a robber or a molester.
Or try this one, if that doesn’t suit you!
This time he saw himself crossing to Ireland, confronting the leadership of every feuding party there, and defeating them, one by one, in challenge-combat. He saw himself bringing peace to a land that had been torn by strife for so long that there wasn’t an Irish child alive that didn’t know what a knee-capper was. He saw the last British Tommy leaving the island with a smile on his face and a shamrock in his lapel, withdrawing in good order since order itself had been restored. He saw plenty coming back to the land, prosperity, saw Ireland taking a major role in the nations of the world, and “Irish honor” becoming a byword for “trust.” Oh, this was cruel, throwing a vision like that in his face! He wasn’t for British Rule, but the IRA was as bad as the PLO by his lights—and there wasn’t anything he could do about either.
Until now.
Or here—widen your horizons, lift your eyes beyond your own sordid universe!
This time he started as before, carried the sword to Ireland and restored peace there, and went on—on to the Continent, to Eastern Europe, taking command of the UN forces there and forcing a real and lasting peace by the strength of his arm. Oh, there was slaughter, but it wasn’t a slaughter of the innocents but of the bastards that drove the fights, and in the end that same ten-year-old child could start in Galway and end in Saraejevo, and no one would so much as dirty the lace on her collar or offer her an unkind word.
The sword released him, then, and he sat blinking on his shabby second-hand bed, in his dingy rented room, still holding his aching toes in both hands. It all seemed so tawdry, this little world of his, and all he had to do to earn a greater and brighter one was to reach out his hand.
He looked down at the sword at the side of his bed, and the metal winked smugly up at him. “You really think you have me now, don’t you,” he said bitterly to it.
It said nothing. It didn’t have to answer.
But he had answers enough for all the temptations in his own mind. Because now he
remembered
Arthur—and Guinevere, and Lancelot and Agravaine and Morgaine.
And Mordred.
Oh yes. He had no doubt that there would be a Mordred out there, somewhere, waiting for him the moment he took up the sword. He hadn’t been any too careful, AIDS notwithstanding, and there could be any number of bastards scattered from his seed. Hell, there would be a Mordred even if it
wasn’t
his son. For every Warrior of the Light there was a Warrior of the Dark; he’d seen that quite, quite clearly. For every Great Friend there was always the Great Betrayer—hadn’t Peter betrayed Christ by denying him? For every Great Love there was the Great Loss.
It would
not
be the easy parade of victories the sword showed him; he was older and far, far wiser than the boy-Arthur who’d taken Excalibur the last time. He was not to be dazzled by dreams. The
most
likely of the scenarios to succeed was the first—some bloke in New York had done something like that, called his lads the “Guardian Angels”—and even
he
hadn’t succeeded in cleaning up more than a drop or two of the filth in one city, let alone hundreds.
That scenario would only last as long as it took some punk’s parents to sue him. What good would a sword be in court, eh? What would he do, slice the judge’s head off?
And this was the age of the tabloids, of smut-papers. They’d love him for a while, then they’d decide to bring him down. If they’d had a time with Charles and Di, what would they do with him—and Guinevere, and Lancelot—and Mordred?
For Mordred and Morgaine were surely here, and they might even have got a head start on him. They could be waiting for him to appear, waiting with hired thugs to take him out.
For that matter, Mordred might be a lawyer, ready for him at this very moment with briefs and briefcase, and he’d wind up committed to the loony asylum before he got two steps! Or he might be a smut-reporter, good at digging up dirt. His own, real past wouldn’t make a pretty sight on paper.
Oh no. Oh, no.
“I don’t think so, my lad,” he said, and before the sword could pull any clever tricks, he reached down, and slammed it home in the sheath.
Three hours and six aspirins later, he walked into the nearest pawn shop with a long bundle wrapped in old newspapers under his arm. He handed it across the counter to the wizened old East Indian who kept the place.
The old boy unwrapped the papers, and peered at the sword without a hint of surprise. God alone knew he’d probably seen stranger things pass across his counter. He slid it out of its sheath and examined the steel before slamming it back home. Only then did he squint through the grill at Michael.
“It’s mild steel. Maybe antique, maybe not, no way of telling. Five quid,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”
“I’ll take it,” said the Pendragon.
This is one of those fun ones. I submitted this to Andre Norton for her
Magic
in
Ithkar
braided anthology for Another Company; this was during that time when braided anthologies (otherwise known as “shared worlds”) were Hot Stuff. I didn’t know if I had a hope of getting in, but I tried—and she accepted it! Later, since
Magic
in
Ithkar
only made it to volume two, and I really liked the concept of the Free Bards, this became the basis for the “Bardic Voices” series I do for Baen. This is a case where I was able to “file the serial numbers off” and do a rewrite to fit the story into an entirely original world; you can’t always do that, but sometimes it works.
Fiddler Fair
Mercedes Lackey
All the world comes to Ithkar Fair.
That’s what they said, anyway—and it certainly seemed that way to Rune, as she traveled the Trade Road down from her home near the Galzar Pass. She wasn’t walking on the dusty, hard-packed road itself; she’d likely have been trampled by the press of beasts, then run over by the carts into the bargain. Instead, she walked with the rest of the foot-travelers on the road’s verge. It was no less dusty, what grass there had been had long since been trampled into powder by all the feet of the pilgrims and fairgoers, but at least a traveler was able to move along without risk of acquiring hoofprints on his anatomy.
Rune was close enough now to see the gates of the Fair itself, and the Fair-ward beside them. This seemed like a good moment to separate herself from the rest of the throng, rest her tired feet, and plan her next moves before entering the grounds of the Fair.
She elbowed her way out of the line of people, some of whom complained and elbowed back, and moved away from the road to a place where she had a good view of the Fair and a rock to sit on. The sun beat down with enough heat to be felt through her soft leather hat as she plopped herself down on the rock and began massaging her tired feet while she looked the Fair over.
It was a bit overwhelming. Certainly it was much bigger than she’d imagined it would be. It was equally certain that there would be nothing dispensed for free behind those log palings, and the few coppers Rune had left would have to serve to feed her through the three days of trials for admission to the Bardic Guild. After that—
Well, after that, she should be an apprentice, and food and shelter would be for her master to worry about. If not—
She refused to admit the possibility of failing the trials. She couldn’t—the Three surely
wouldn’t
let her fail. Not after getting this far.
But for now, she needed somewhere to get herself cleaned of the road-dust, and a place to sleep, both with no price tags attached. Right now, she was the same gray-brown from head to toe, the darker brown of her hair completely camouflaged by the dust, or at least it felt that way. Even her eyes felt dusty.
She strolled down to the river, her lute thumping her shoulder softly on one side, her pack doing the same on the other. Close to the docks the water was muddy and roiled; there was too much traffic on the river to make an undisturbed bath a viable possibility, and too many wharf-rats about to make leaving one’s belongings a wise move. She backtracked upstream a bit, while the noise of the Fair faded behind her, crossed over the canal and went hunting the rapids that the canal bypassed. The bank of the river was wilder here, and overgrown, not like the carefully tended area of the canalside. Finally she found a place where the river had cut a tiny cove into the bank. It was secluded; trees overhung the water, their branches making a good thick screen that touched the water, the ground beneath them bare of growth, and hollows between some of the roots just big enough to cradle her sleeping roll. Camp, bath, and water, all together, and within climbing distance on one of the trees was a hollow big enough to hide her bedroll and those belongings she didn’t want to carry into the Fair.
She waited until dusk fell before venturing into the river and kept her eyes and ears open while she scrubbed herself down. Once clean, she debated whether or not to change into the special clothing she’d brought tonight; it might be better to save it—then the thought of donning the sweat-soaked, dusty traveling gear became too distasteful, and she rejected it out of hand.
She felt strange and altogether different once she’d put the new costume on. Part of that was due to the materials—except for when she’d tried the clothing on for fit, this was the first time she’d ever worn silk and velvet. Granted, the materials were all old; bought from a second-hand vendor and cut down from much larger garments. The velvet of the breeches wasn’t
too
rubbed; the ribbons on the sleeves of the shirt and the embroidery should cover the faded places, and the vest should cover the stain on the back panel completely. Her hat, once the dust was beaten out of it and the plumes she’d snatched from the tails of several disgruntled roosters were tucked into the band, looked brave enough. Her boots, at least, were new, and when the dust was brushed from them, looked quite well. She tucked her remaining changes of clothing and her bedroll into her pack, hid the lot in the tree-hollow, and felt ready to face the Fair.
The Fair-ward at the gate eyed her carefully. “Minstrel?” he asked suspiciously, looking at the lute and fiddle she carried in their cases, slung from her shoulders.
She shook her head. “Here for the trials, m’lord.”
“Ah,” he appeared satisfied. “You come in good time, boy. The trials begin tomorrow. The Guild has its tent pitched hard by the main gate of the Temple; you should have no trouble finding it.”
The wizard of the gate looked bored, ignoring her. Rune did not correct the Fair-ward’s assumption that she was a boy; it was her intent to pass as male until she’d safely passed the trials. She’d never heard of the Bardic Guild admitting a girl, but so far as she’d been able to determine, there was nothing in the rules and Charter of the Guild preventing it. So once she’d been accepted, once the trials were safely passed, she’d reveal her sex, but until then, she’d play the safe course.
She thanked him, but he had already turned his attention to the next in line. She passed inside the log walls and entered the Fair itself.
The first impressions she had were of noise and light; torches burned all along the aisle she traversed; the booths to either side were lit by lanterns, candles, or other, more arcane methods. The crowd was noisy; so were the merchants. Even by torchlight it was plain that these were the booths featuring shoddier goods; secondhand finery, brass jewelry, flash and tinsel. The entertainers here were—surprising. She averted her eyes from a set of dancers. It wasn’t so much that they wore little but imagination, but the
way
they were dancing embarrassed even her; and a tavern-bred child has seen a great deal in its life.
She kept a tight grip on her pouch and instruments, tried to ignore the crush, and let the flow of fairgoers carry her along.
Eventually the crowd thinned out a bit (though not before she’d felt a ghostly hand or two try for her pouch and give it up as a bad cause). She followed her nose then, looking for the row that held the cookshop tents and the ale-sellers. She hadn’t eaten since this morning, and her stomach was lying in uncomfortably close proximity to her spine.
She learned that the merchants of tavern-row were shrewd judges of clothing; hers wasn’t fine enough to be offered a free taste, but wasn’t poor enough to be shooed away. Sternly admonishing her stomach to be less impatient, she strolled the length of the row twice, carefully comparing prices and quantities, before settling on a humble tent that offered meat pasties (best not ask what beast the meat came from, not at these prices) and fruit juice or milk as well as ale and wine. Best of all, it offered seating at rough trestle-tables as well. Rune took her flaky pastry and her mug of juice (no wine or ale for her; not even had she the coppers to spare for it. She dared not be the least muddle-headed, not with a secret to keep and a competition on the morn), and found herself a spot at an empty table where she could eat and watch the crowd passing by. The pie was more crust than meat, but it was filling and well-made and fresh; that counted for a great deal. She noted with amusement that there were two sorts of the clumsy, crude clay mugs. One sort, the kind they served the milk and juice in, was ugly and shapeless (too ugly to be worth stealing) but was just as capacious as the exterior promised. The other, for wine and ale, was just the same ugly shape and size on the
outside
(though a different shade of toad-back green), but had a far thicker bottom, effectively reducing the interior capacity by at least a third.
“Come for the trials, lad?” asked a quiet voice in her ear. Rune jumped, nearly knocking her mug over, and snatching at it just in time to save the contents from drenching her shopworn finery (and however would she have gotten it clean again in time for the morrow’s competition?). There hadn’t been a sound or a hint of movement or even the shifting of the bench to warn her, but now there was a man sitting beside her.
He was of middle years, red hair going to gray, smile-wrinkles around his mouth and gray-green eyes, with a candid, triangular face. Well, that said nothing; Rune had known highwaymen with equally friendly and open faces. His dress was similar to her own; leather breeches instead of velvet, good linen instead of worn silk, a vest and a leather hat that could have been twin to hers, knots of ribbon on the sleeves of his shirt—and the neck of a lute peeking over his shoulder. A Minstrel!
Of the Guild? Rune rechecked the ribbons on his sleeves, and was disappointed. Blue and scarlet and green, not the purple and silver of a Guild Minstrel, nor the purple and gold of a Guild Bard. This was only a common songster, a mere street-player. Still, he’d bespoken her kindly enough, and the Three knew not everyone with the music-passion had the skill or the talent to pass the trials—
“Aye, sir,” she replied politely. “I’ve hopes to pass; I think I’ve the talent, and others have said as much.”
His eyes measured her keenly, and she had the disquieting feeling that her boy-ruse was fooling
him
not at all. “Ah well,” he replied, “There’s a-many before you have thought the same, and failed.”
“That may be,” she answered the challenge in his eyes, “but I’d bet fair coin that none of
them
fiddled for a murdering ghost, and not only came out by the grace of their skill but were rewarded by that same spirit for amusing him!”
“Oh, so?” a lifted eyebrow was all the indication he gave of being impressed, but somehow that lifted brow conveyed volumes. “You’ve made a song of it, surely?”
“Have I not! It’s to be my entry for the third day of testing.”
“Well then—” He said no more than that, but his wordless attitude of waiting compelled Rune to unsling her fiddlecase, extract her instrument, and tune it without further prompting.
“It’s the fiddle that’s my first instrument,” she said apologetically, “And since ’twas the fiddle that made the tale—”
“Never apologize for a song, child,” he admonished, interrupting her. “Let it speak out for itself. Now let’s hear this ghost-tale.”
It wasn’t easy to sing while fiddling, but Rune had managed the trick of it some time ago. She closed her eyes a half-moment, fixing in her mind the necessary changes she’d made to the lyrics—for unchanged, the song would have given her sex away—and began.
“I sit here on a rock, and curse
my stupid, bragging tongue,
And curse the pride that would not let
me back down from a boast
And wonder where my wits went,
when I took that challenge up
And swore that I would go
and fiddle for the Skull Hill Ghost!”
Oh, aye, that had been a damn fool move—to let those idiots who patronized the tavern where her mother worked goad her into boasting that there wasn’t anyone, living or dead, that she couldn’t cozen with her fiddling. Too much ale, Rune, and too little sense. And too tender a pride, as well, to let them rub salt in the wound of being the tavern wench’s bastard.
“It’s midnight, and there’s not a sound