Lady Knight (20 page)

“I’ll bring it back to you,” Riannon said.

Eleanor touched the scarred side of Riannon’s face. Riannon flinched but forced
herself not to pull away this once.

“Did… did you get these at Vahl?”

“Yes.”

“Come back to me.”

“I shall.”

Riannon walked away from Eleanor believing that she would return. She had to.

Riannon took the gift sword from Alan, retrieved her own weapon from the cot,
and left him to oil her mail hauberk. She strode from the guest wing of the
grove house towards the woods. She stood at the back of the worshippers in the
grove for the service. Aveline’s notorious challenge had swollen the size of the
congregation. Riannon set both sheathed swords on the ground where gnarled tree
roots hid them from curious gazes.

The singing aroused in her no special feeling of closeness with the Goddess.
The priestess who spoke about the strength of faith probably had the duel in
mind. Riannon found nothing in her words that touched her. Her mind proved
distressingly apt to return to Eleanor. Pale, redeyed, but trying to look brave
with her glorious hair tousled from their lovemaking.

At the end of the service, Riannon watched the congregation and priestesses file
out of the grove. Aveline halted near her and signalled her attendants to
continue.

“I began to wonder if you’d come,” Aveline said.

“You had my word.” Riannon bent to scoop up both swords.

“Just how many weapons do you intend using? The gift of the Goddess will serve
you well, and better than any plain steel.”

“I told you that I shall not use it. I brought it to this place because it
seemed meet that I do so.”

“You will need it.” Aveline turned and headed across the grove. “Come.”

Riannon didn’t bother with a second denial and strode after her cousin.

After following a path that looped through several clearings with pools, each of
which Riannon might have taken for the holiest of holy ponds, Aveline halted
beside a large, teardrop-shaped pool. No visible stream fed it. Though still
twilight, the water looked black, as if this was where shadows coalesced until
they could creep out into the woods at night.

Aveline lifted her arms at full stretch, letting her robe sleeves fall back to
her elbows, and inhaled deeply. Riannon sensed no one in the nearby trees,
though she was more aware than normal of the air around her. It felt like that
prickling tension before a thunderstorm. The sky overhead burned pink and
orange.

Aveline sighed and let her arms fall. “Can you feel it? We stand at the start of
something that will shake the world.”

“We are but two mortals.”

“No. If you were just Riannon of Gast, you’d not have every man in the realm
behind you. You’re the Vahldomne. More – much more – than just a flesh and blood
woman. There is an idea about you, like an aura that reaches out and touches
men’s imaginations in a way the woman could never do. They do not see you, they
see their hero, the stuff of legend that they know and can follow. And I am not
just priestess or younger daughter of a king. Naer Aveline is royal and
consecrated, and the combination makes her greater than those two simply added
together.”

Aveline clasped the golden quartered-circle symbol hanging at her chest. She
seemed to be looking into and beyond Riannon. “We are servants of the gods,” she
said. “They move in us as we give creation a good push for them. Most people, it
is true, are born, live, breed, and die without ever tasting anything sweeter,
without even knowing there is anything more to life than their futile existence.
Perhaps that is why you and I were chosen to abstain from breeding. Our life
force must be spent in a different way. Not the screaming, bloody, sweaty toil
of squeezing a protesting infant into the world from betwixt our thighs.”

“Is not motherhood the holiest purpose for a woman? That is what all four orders
teach, is it not?”

Aveline smiled. “But they do not teach that fatherhood is the pinnacle of a
man’s purpose, do they? Once he has sown his seed, he is encouraged to honour
the gods by becoming all he can be, the better to add to their lustre. Why can
you and I not be something that is both male and female? We are not made of
ordinary stuff. We were not drawn along mundane paths. Our lives, and if
necessary our deaths, belong to the Lady of Destiny.”

For the first time, Riannon believed she heard Aveline the priestess speaking
truly and without a filter of guile. She felt that prickling tension invading
her sinews as if she had inhaled Aveline’s words. Who did not, in the deepest
part of their heart, cherish the idea that they were chosen by the gods for some
special fate?

Riannon knelt at Aveline’s feet beside the sacred pool. She unsheathed both
swords and laid them naked, side by side, on the grass. Aveline intoned a
blessing and scooped a handful of the holy water from the pool to sprinkle
droplets on the swords. She traced the quartered circle on Riannon’s forehead
with a wet fingertip and began another chant.

The prickling inside Riannon strengthened. Something in Aveline’s prayer drew it
from deep within Riannon’s entrails to swirl through her veins. She felt –
believed – that a power planted in her before her birth now stirred to the call
of purpose and need.

“Can you feel it?” Aveline whispered.

“Yes.”

“Did you feel it at Vahl?”

The world in front of Riannon ripped apart. Instead of the folds of Aveline’s
dark green robe, she saw the tattooed man screaming. His brown eyes widened with
pain and shock. She could see the whorls of the green-black tattoo engraved in
his flesh. Her sword sliced into his neck and liberated a spray of warm blood.
The tip of his singing sword sizzled. The blade did not touch her flesh yet it
carved her face open. Riannon snapped her head up. Aveline stared down at her.
“What did you see?” Aveline asked.

“The man I killed at Vahl.”

“The Lion Emperor’s son.”

“The man who nearly killed me, like so many others.” Riannon stood. If she heard
the quaver in her voice, Aveline must also. “I thank you for your blessing.”

“You’ll remain here for the all-night vigil?”

“No.” Riannon retrieved her swords. “I need to sleep.”

Aveline did not sleep. She maintained the fast she had begun the moment the
ambassador cracked a slap to her face. The only moisture she sucked all day was
the holy water she licked off her hand after blessing Riannon and the swords.

She remained alone in the innermost grove. At nightfall, she rose from her
praying at the edge of the pool. Her bare feet touched more than dusty ground;
her flesh met the skin of the Lady of Creation. Night looked down on her with
countless white eyes. Where Riannon had knelt, Aveline unlaced her robe and let
it fall about her ankles. Naked, she stooped to immerse hands and face in the
holy water – the tears, the sweat, the juices of the Lady of Destiny.

Anointed, Aveline stood and began to dance. Her sweat dripped to nourish the
earth. Her feet thumped her heartbeat into the grass. She was part of creation,
and creation ran through her.

Whatever happened tomorrow at noon would be a victory for the cause of crusade.
Win or lose, the flames would flare and Aveline would fan them into a
conflagration to scorch the earth. The Quatorum Council could not ignore a fire
already blazing with righteous zeal.

Her feet bled. Still she danced.

She danced for Riannon. For her triumph. For her life.

Eleanor did not sleep.

She lifted her head. Her fingers still curled around the tiny metal anvil. The
shining surface reflected the yellow flame from the oil lamp.

She had been an infrequent worshipper of the god of war. Would he hear her now?
One worried, frightened, tearful voice?

Eleanor looked around the shrine room. She had knelt first and longest in prayer
to the Lady of Mercy and Healing, who seemed to have turned her merciful face
from Riannon. Eleanor had then implored Naith, nurturer of life, and Kamet the
arbiter, lord of justice and settler of disputes.

Just yesterday, she felt her world had ripped asunder with the queen’s decision
that she must marry Lord Howe. But fate had sliced an even deeper wound into
that cut. Now, she would marry any man thrice over if it would spare Riannon.

“How can you let this happen?” Eleanor tightened her fingers on the unresponsive
metal. “I did not think I could bear to lose her once. Yet you make me face it
twice. Have you not hurt her enough?”

She made no attempt to curtail her tears. Her soul bled.

“Take from me what you will. I beg you. Anything. As long as I can love the
living Riannon and not spend a lifetime mourning her. Even if I never see her
again. Just let her live. Please.”

Riannon watched dawn silhouette the woods. The rising light drenched the
underbellies of the clouds in livid pink. The colours soon leached away to leave
an unremarkable summer morning. She joined the end of the line of green-robed
priestesses going to worship.

After she returned, Alan brought food from the kitchens. Riannon ate. Her nerves
tightened and twitched before battle, but not to the point where she could not
look to the sustenance of her body. She had seen countless men who could not
sleep or eat, and who spent the time before arming in pacing or checking
equipment and horses. One Irulandi she had known used a whore all night if he
could find one – as though he needed the act of creating life to counterbalance
the fear of losing his own. He died of a plague he caught from a camp follower.

“It’ll be a hot day,” Alan said.

Riannon nodded.

“The ground will be firm underfoot,” he said. “I didn’t know those imperial
whoresons didn’t fight with lances. You’d have had him on his arse eating dust,
sir.”

Riannon asked him to go and check her horses. Normally, his nervous prattle
washed harmlessly over her. Today, she found it difficult enough to clear her
mind in readiness. A living ghost haunted her. Eleanor.

Riannon touched the lock of hair she wore at the base of her throat. Her cause
was just. Holy warrior. She fought for the good of the Goddess against an
unbeliever. Her sword, her skill, her life had been dedicated to the highest
purpose. She stood but hours from the promise of immortal favour. She had
striven for this. The strength of the Goddess flowed in her.

Yet, the prospect of earthly and divine glory contained a spot of tarnish, small
but persistent, coloured more chestnut than rust red. What a wretched time for
her to have discovered a purpose for her life that ran contrary to everything
she believed she wanted.

Aveline had stirred her last night. The Dark-Faced One had spoken through the
naer to Riannon. That the two of them had been chosen for a special purpose
brought something alive within Riannon. But an inconvenient fragment of herself
pulsed with longing for the mundane existence she had believed she could never
achieve even had she wanted it. Now she yearned for a life settled and fixed,
where she hung her sword belt on a peg in Eleanor’s bedchamber.

“It was never to be,” Riannon whispered. “Even if I see this day’s end, she will
not be mine.”

Riannon tugged the quilted gambeson more comfortably across her shoulders while
Alan knelt to pull the mail chausses over her feet and up her legs like metal
hose. She again slid a finger inside the neck of her shirt to touch the lock of
hair there.

Over her mail hauberk, which hung to mid-thigh, Alan helped her pull into place
the long, flowing white linen surcoat. He fastened the cord about her waist.
When it came to her sword belt, her squire hesitated. Riannon pointed to her own
sword.

“You will carry the other for me,” she said.

Riannon strode out to the pool where she would receive her final blessing. Alan
followed, carrying her helm. Priestesses stared openly at her. As the only armed
knight to ever walk this way, none could mistake who she must be. To Riannon’s
unease, most dropped to their knees as she passed.

Aveline waited beside one of the less commonly used pools. At her signal, a
priestess carried to Riannon her shield newly painted. It bore, on a green
background, a gold tree. The blazon was not that of Riannon of Gast, Knight of
the Grand Order of the Star, or even of the Vahldomne. This badge marked the
paladin of the Order of the Goddess.

Aveline prayed with Riannon, and for her.

“We will prevail,” Aveline said. “Their false god might have claws, but it can
be no match for the true majesty of divinity. Our cause is right.”

Riannon nodded.

“I’d best go and take my place in the stands,” Aveline said. “Lest that imperial
piece of filth take heart from my absence. You’re not wearing the gift of the
Goddess. You’ll need it.”

“I’ve told you why I shall not use it,” Riannon said.

Aveline’s eyes narrowed. “You wish your stubborn stupidity to cost your life and
forfeit the challenge? That sword is blessed for this purpose!”

“No,” Riannon said.

“What amazes me, cousin, isn’t that you’re so scarred, but that you yet live if
you have permitted such hare-brained considerations to guide your actions. How
many people are given a divinely favoured gift? Is it arrogance or madness that
you practice?”

“Honour.”

Aveline’s jaw worked and she jabbed her glare at Alan. “Well, at least you’ll
have it close by when you need it. I’ll have the best healers with me.”

Riannon watched Aveline stalk away. The naer limped and pulled up at the point
where the path turned into the trees.

“I’d prefer it if you did not need their services,” Aveline said.

“As would I,” Riannon said.

Aveline flashed her a grin in parting.

Riannon looked at her shadow. From its shortness, she judged it about an hour
before noon. She muttered a last prayer, traced the quartered circle on her
breast, and strode back to where John waited with her horse.

The city streets, normally teeming with people, echoed with an eerie emptiness
as Riannon rode through them towards the tourney grounds. She could mark her
direction by the muted roar of cheering, like an angry surf pounding a cliff.