“You believe that you can stop me, Orion. Me, who created you? Who built you from atoms of dust and molecules of slime? Every bit of knowledge in your brain was put there by me. Every breath you take is taken only because I allow it.”
Slowly I got to my feet, hatred burning deep within me at his sneering,
haughty demeanor.
“Yet I fight against you,” I said.
He smirked at me. “Not very well, I’m afraid. You’ve stepped into this trap easily enough.”
“Trap?”
“Of course. How else do you think you were able to transport yourself and this mortal here? I brought you here, into the trap I’ve prepared for you.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’ll find out that I’m telling the truth. And once I’ve put you out
of the way, I’ll get the other Creators to join me in eliminating Arthur.”
“Hades has agreed to stand aside and be neutral,” I said hotly. “Anya and others of the Creators oppose you.”
“Your precious Anya is far from here,” Aten replied. “As for Hades, I don’t need him for the moment. He’ll return to my side soon enough.”
“Destroy this one,” Aphrodite hissed. “Eliminate him for all time.”
Aten nodded. “I’m afraid she’s right, Orion. You’ve become too difficult to control. It’s sad to destroy the work of one’s own hands, but…” He sighed. “Good-bye, Orion.”
I was plunged into darkness, falling, falling in a black pit of doom, hurtling through a void where not even starlight could appear. I felt the cold of interstellar space seeping into my body, pain so deep it was like a thousand
sharp blades flaying the flesh from my bones, a cryogenic cold freezing my limbs, my mind. My body was being twisted horribly, torn beyond the limits of pain, stretched into agony as if I were on a torturer’s rack.
This is the end, I thought, my mind spinning. This is the final oblivion. A black hole is pulling me apart.
My last thought was of Anya. I would never see her, never again hold her.
Death did not matter. Pain was meaningless. But being without her, not even able to say a final farewell, that was the ultimate torture.
My body died. The pain overwhelmed me. My bones were snapping, crumbling to dust. The last spark of my being flickered as it was engulfed by the darkness.
Yet I lived. Like an out-of-body experience, I somehow looked back and saw the poor suffering entity that
was me being torn into bloody gobbets of flesh, crushed between invisible hands, torn apart on the merciless rack of the black hole’s titanic gravitational power.
Your mind still lives, I heard somehow. The information that is
you
still flows through the cosmic spacetime, Orion.
Is this what death truly is? A bodiless, nonphysical existence, a shadow world of memories and desires, the same dreams
and terrors endlessly repeating, echoing across the universes? Yet even as I wondered such thoughts, I could feel my bodiless mind fading, dwindling, dissolving into the final nothingness of ultimate oblivion.
“Focus,” a voice said urgently. “Focus before your information pattern thins so much that it is drowned in the meaningless noise of the stars.”
Anya’s voice! I was certain of it. Perhaps
I was insane, grasping at the last shred of hope like a drowning man thrashing for a piece of flotsam to buoy him up. But I was certain that it was Anya speaking to me.
“As long as the energy is there, matter can be formed. The pattern exists, and the body can be shaped from it.”
“Anya!” I cried out into the lightless void.
“I am with you, my darling,” she answered. “Even from the other side
of the universe, from so distant in space and time that numbers lose all meaning, I am with you.”
“I love you,” I said. With all my being, I meant it.
“There’s little I can do to help you, Orion,” she said, “except to tell you what must be done. You must save yourself, you must find the strength to overcome the doom that faces you.”
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me and I’ll do it.”
“The pattern
of your consciousness is fading, Orion, wafting into the cosmic void like smoke drifting from a snuffed candle. You must focus that pattern, focus your consciousness, your being. You must use your energy to spark the candle into new flame.”
I tried, but nothing happened. I concentrated, sought with every scrap of my remaining existence to focus the dying pattern of energy that was my being. But
nothing happened. I could feel myself growing weaker.
“You’re fading!” Anya’s voice warned. “Dying.”
Her voice. Her being. She was reaching across a universe of spacetime to try to save me, to try to bring me back from final death. She loved me that much. Enough to defy Aten and the other Creators. Enough to risk her own existence in an effort to save me.
I would not let her strive in vain.
“I love you, Anya,” I called across the light-years. “I will never stop loving you.”
The vision of her, her courage, her loveliness, her love for me, brought new strength to my resolve. I could feel energy sharpening my consciousness, as if the streams of spacetime were flowing into me. I became a nexus, a protostar, pulling in energy and matter, growing, gaining strength.
“You’re doing it!”
Anya called from far away. “You’re succeeding!”
Orion the hunter, I thought. Orion the warrior. All those abilities that Aten had built into me, all those powers of stamina and tenacity I used now to bring myself back from the oblivion into which he had thrown me.
I am not a toy, not a puppet to be tossed aside when it no longer pleases its master. I am Orion, and I live to do as
I
will, as
I
must. I live to find Anya and be with her for eternity.
I blinked my eyes and found myself in the stable at castle Bernicia, alive and whole. I laughed aloud and actually savored the stinks and snores that surrounded me. I was alive, and it felt sweet to be so.
6
“Where have you been, Orion?” Arthur demanded.
He looked more worried than angry. I had risen with the dawn and washed in nearly
frozen water at the horse trough in the castle courtyard. Arthur, Bors, and Gawain came out of the tower where they had slept as I finished donning my tunic.
Bors’ left arm was cradled in a rude sling. He limped noticeably. Gawain’s head was wrapped in a bloodstained bandage.
“Orion’s been wenching, I’ll wager,” Gawain said. His usual bright smile was gone. He seemed to wince at the sunlight,
as if his head ached terribly.
“When you should be here, with your master,” snarled the wounded Bors.
Before I could reply, Arthur said tiredly, “Orion, as my squire you must be at my call always. If you want to go away for a day or two, you must ask me first.”
I had been missing for three days, they told me. That surprised me a little, but I was truly shocked to see how battered Bors and Gawain
were.
Arthur seemed more relieved to see me again than angry that I had disappeared. He didn’t really want an explanation; he wanted to make certain that I wouldn’t disappear again unless I first asked his leave. Worse, though, he seemed tired, dispirited, exhausted as though he hadn’t slept for days.
I apologized profusely, then asked, “My lord, are you ill? You seem … not well.”
Arthur shook
his head wearily. “How could I be, with all that’s happened these past three dismal days.”
“Witchcraft,” Bors muttered darkly. “There’s evil afoot in this castle.”
“Is that what happened to you, Sir Bors?” I asked. “And to you, Sir Gawain?”
“No,” said Arthur. “What you see is the devilish handiwork of King Ogier.”
I gaped at the two wounded knights. “The Dane did this to you?”
Bors gave me
a look that would have curdled cream. Gawain looked downright embarrassed.
Arthur explained, “I’ve been trying to find a way to get Ogier to join us. I invited him to become an ally of the High King. I told him that Ambrosius would support him in battles against the Scots and Picts.”
Ogier had laughed in Arthur’s face, he told me, and declared that he had no need of help from Ambrosius or anyone
else. He intended to bring his own Danes from across the sea and march south to take as much of Britain as he wished.
Arthur had patiently explained that such a move would make them enemies, forcing his knights to go to war against the invading Danish army.
“We have beaten every foe we have faced, from the Saxons in the south to the Picts and Scots here north of the Wall,” Arthur had told him.
“We will defeat your Danes, as well.”
“Conquer my Danes!” Ogier roared with laughter and offered a challenge to Arthur.
“Pick three of your finest, strongest knights. Old man that I am, I will fight them, I myself. If any one of them bests me, I will leave this land and return to Denmark forever.”
Arthur immediately accepted the challenge himself, but Ogier declined to fight him.
“Nay, you
are too young, little more than a callow youth. Pick three of your best knights. I will fight each of them. After I have defeated them, if you still dare to accept my challenge, then I will fight you—and your enchanted sword. It won’t protect you against me,” Ogier boasted.
So it was agreed: King Ogier the Dane would face three of Arthur’s finest knights, on foot in the castle courtyard. If he
defeated all three of them, then Arthur would face the Dane.
Sir Bors had been the first, and tough old Ogier had drubbed him thoroughly. After he was helped off the field of contest, Bors complained of feeling slow, weary, as if sick.
“You certainly looked it,” Gawain had quipped as he helped carry the bleeding Bors.
It was Gawain’s turn next. The next morning they met in the courtyard again.
Gawain looked pale, unsure of himself.
“In a lesser man I would have thought he was frightened,” Arthur said as we climbed the tower stairs to the room Morganna had given to young Lancelot.
“I wasn’t frightened,” Gawain maintained stoutly. “I felt sick. Weak. Feverish, almost.”
Still, Gawain had put on his helmet and gone out to meet Ogier, sword in hand. The Dane, swift and powerful as a man
half his years, cracked Gawain’s head so hard that Arthur thought he would die.
“Not so,” said Gawain as we entered Lancelot’s room. “My skull’s too thick, even for Ogier’s great strength.”
Lancelot was Arthur’s last hope. If the challenge of facing Ogier worried the youngster, he didn’t show it as he dressed for the contest.
“I won’t fail you, Arthur,” Lancelot said, smiling eagerly. He actually
seemed to be looking forward to the fight as he draped his chain mail over his tunic.
His shield with the golden eagle emblem rested by the table in the center of the room. Atop the table lay Lancelot’s sword and his helmet, a steel cylinder that covered the entire head, padded along its bottom rim where it rested on his shoulders.
“How do you feel?” Arthur asked.
Lancelot tried to smile, but
it was shaky. “Butterflies in my stomach,” he said lightly.
Arthur frowned worriedly. “Both Gawain and Bors felt sick when they faced Ogier.”
“Witchcraft,” Bors muttered again. “I tell you the witch has put a spell on us all.”
Arthur did not contradict him. “I haven’t felt all that well myself these past few days,” he admitted.
Lancelot took a deep breath. “I feel good enough to face the Dane,”
he said. Yet I thought that some of his usual vigor and enthusiasm was lacking.
I went to the window and looked down at the courtyard. Ogier was already there, bareheaded, taking practice swings with a mighty broadsword.
Someone knocked at the door. I hurried to open it.
Morganna stood there, midnight-dark hair tumbling past her shoulders, a warm disarming smile on her lustrous lips. She bore
a silver tray of apples and roasted chestnuts in her hands.
If she was surprised to see that I still lived, she gave no sign of it. Stepping past me as if I didn’t really exist, she carried the laden tray straight to Arthur.
“To show that I bear no ill will toward you, Arthur,” she said sweetly, handing him the tray.
He had been totally infatuated with her, a year earlier. It was clear to see
that she still held a powerful attraction for him.
Arthur had to swallow before he could find his voice. “Thank you, Morganna.”
She looked up at him. “I’m sorry that it’s come to this, Arthur. Once my husband bests your boy, there, you’ll have to face him yourself. He might kill you, Arthur.”
“That’s in God’s hands, Morganna,” said Arthur quietly.
“Is it?” she replied.
Gawain chuckled. “Suppose
Ogier gets himself killed, my lady? Then you’d be a widow.”
She looked at Gawain the way a snake looks at a baby rabbit. “Would you come to console me, then?”
“Aye, that I would,” said Gawain, reaching for one of the shining apples on the tray. He crunched into it with his strong white teeth. “I would indeed.”
Morganna smiled at him. “Very well then. Should I be forced to put on a widow’s black
weeds, you may come to beguile me of my grief.”
With that she turned and swept out of the room, leaving Arthur holding the tray of fruit and Gawain munching thoughtfully on the apple.
Lancelot picked up one of the apples. “A bite or two might help calm my stomach,” he said.
Bors stared hard at the closed door. “Witch,” he growled. “She put a spell on me. On us all.”
“No,” said Arthur, putting
the fruit tray on the table. “But she might win Gawain’s heart.”
Gawain said, “It’s not my heart that—”
He stopped, his face going pale. His legs buckled. I raced to him and caught him before he collapsed to the floor.
“I’m … sick…,” Gawain moaned.
Lancelot suddenly clutched at his stomach and lurched toward the window. He made it only as far as the corner of the bed, then collapsed and puked
up his guts onto the floor.
“The apples!” said Arthur. “They’re poisoned.”
Without an instant’s hesitation I pried Gawain’s mouth open and stuck two fingers down his throat. He gagged, then retched. It was a mess, but it probably saved his life. The remains of the apple came up, together with the breakfast Gawain had gobbled earlier.