“It can’t get us in the workshop either,” she told me. “Come on.”
I did. We made glue. Glue is disgusting stuff. It stinks, gets in your hair, under your nails, on your skin, on your clothes. She was a help cleaning up, though. She could make unpleasant things disappear by waving her hand. She did that when she got a big, nasty spot on her dress.
“You’re a goddess,” I said. “Why can’t you just kill it?”
“A goddess,” she repeated, interested, while I braided sinew and then braided the braids with rawhide. “That’s what those Greeks called me. I lived in a cave on the rock where they founded their city. A goddess—no name—just a goddess. Athena. The A is feminine.”
“I know,” I said. “Dugald tried to teach me Greek. Did you really turn that dumb girl into a spider?”
“No, not guilty,” she said. “I won’t say I haven’t done a lot of unpleasant things. No good reason to be a goddess if you can’t make life unpleasant and even short for some shitasses. Like Bademagus, for instance, trying to steal one of my sacred wells.”
She ground her teeth. “He won’t come within arm’s reach of me. And I don’t blame him. I’d melt him down into a little puddle of piss. If I ever get the chance, of course.”
“You’re pretty far from home,” I said.
“Distance is as distance does. What would you know?”
She had me there.
“The girl said she was a better weaver than you are.”
She chuckled. “Not difficult. Any human is. Look at you.”
“Lend me a finger,” I asked. “I’ve got to tie this bow together. Maeniel taught me,” I said.
“Yes, but you are clever enough to build the thing without any experience when you need to.”
“Let’s hope,” I answered.
“Yes.”
She put her finger on the string. I tied.
“That’s half. Let me do the other.”
“The only thing I did for those Greeks was keep the peace. I didn’t fool with turning anyone into anything. Do you know what a goddess is good for?”
“No,” I answered, braiding away.
“There is always something that needs to be done so that events may take their proper course. A rock balanced at the top of a ridge might fall to the right or the left unless… what?”
My skin grew cold.
“Unless you give it a push,” I said even while I was thinking this one might push mountains.
“Poor child.” She patted my cheek. “I’m not comfortable company, am I? Well, the simplest way of putting it is that I gave those talented, exasperating Greeks a push. I created a truce at my shrine, because those fools reminded me a little of your people—when they weren’t talking, they were fighting. They needed to give their bellicose dispositions a rest, so they could concentrate on other matters. And my plan worked. Otherwise, I feasted on my sacrifices, enjoyed my new dresses—the women made me a new one every year—and in general enjoyed their company. They were very stimulating individuals, and when nothing much was happening, I gazed out over the very beautiful Aegean Sea.
“They asked me to tell them the future. I am no better than average at that. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s not difficult. I remember one sweet thing, she had a husband and not one but three lovers.”
I began laughing.
“As you can see,” she told me, “some things ought to be obvious.”
“Then explain to me why Risderd has to die if I can’t kill the monster.”
She walked away from me, out of the circle of lamplight.
“Because he is a Icing, chief, husband—words are limiting.”
“Try to transcend them,” I said.
She laughed.
I set the bow down on the floor and crouched, arms around my knees, wiggling my toes on the dusty floor.
“Where to begin?” She half turned toward me, her face in profile. “With an explanation for kings?” she asked. “No, too long and complex,” she answered her own question. “I’ll keep it simple. He must wed the Flower Bride. That was what he was trying to do when Bade sent the monster to destroy him. His people, the Atrovinties, are great warriors, but they fled like thistledown before a wind when Risderd could not complete his task. Only he remains, with his family.
“His wedding the Flower Bride seals his people’s title to their holdings here. Their land, in other words. His failure means they cannot ask sustenance of this earth.”
She stamped her foot and pointed down. “This earth here. The embraces of the Flower Bride confer title to them. She is sovereignty. For him to fail her maims him. Makes him like the Fisher King, one who cannot draw sustenance from the earth at all. And if he can’t, his people can’t either.
“He feels it is better for him to die. That way, they can choose another chief—perhaps one who can face down the monster. So he will drink the spring mead, go to her dwelling…”
“That horror will tear him limb from limb,” I filled in the sentence.
“Yes,” she answered.
“What will happen then?”
“Umm,” she considered carefully. “When he is dead, his people will flee, leaving Bade in sole possession. They will try to begin life somewhere else.”
I looked down at the bow. It was fully tied, the center post connected to the elastic horn and sinew, and the laths at each end were also tied on and fastened with glue. In the normal course of manufacture, the ties that held it together would be cut off once the glue was set, but I had constructed them to be left on. It took a week or more for the glue to fully harden, and I was pretty sure after the day’s events that I wouldn’t have that much time.
“A very powerful instrument, that,” she said, pointing to it.
“Yes,” I answered. “It will drive in an arrow with tremendous force. Especially if you use it close up, like I’m going to. I need arrows.”
I had spent some time considering the matter and decided to favor quality over quantity. I needed to put those arrows in deep. This was no deer that would run away. I suspected that I could pepper this thing with enough shafts to make it look like a pincushion and it would be still attacking and still dangerous—no, lethal.
We began making arrows, and we didn’t talk much, because both of us were busy. I carved the heads from bone in the way Maeniel had taught me was the best for spear points if we can’t forge metal. And I couldn’t—not where I was now.
Bone or stone is worked into wide but very thin triangles, then sharpened at the tip and sides. They resemble leaves, only the edges are razor sharp. You don’t bother with a barb, because they penetrate deeply, and shock and swelling keep them from being easily removed.
My lady worked, too. Bronze is the very devil to keep sharp, so she sharpened while I carved.
When we were done, it was close to dawn, and I had only four arrows. But I reasoned that might be enough. I didn’t bother to notch the shafts, because they weren’t going to travel far and I didn’t want them to spin.
“You had best get some sleep,” she said, turning away from the grindstone.
I looked down at my fingers, blistered and bloody from my task, and set the arrows on the workbench.
She handed me a mantle. I wrapped myself in it and prepared to lie down right there.
Something floated to the top of my memory. “They say it takes a hero to rescue the Fisher King.”
I looked up and her eyes glowed strangely, a little the way the dragon’s did in the sunlight, an opalescent fire in the last light of the guttering lamp.
“Why do you think Dis Pater sent the boar for you?” she asked.
I didn’t answer.
I don’t remember lying down. Only that her eyes were pools of light and darkness both—a sea of nightmares and dreams. I fell into them and went down.
He woke, knowing he was being watched, the fear like a stone in his gut, closing his throat. He was lying under a bush, a holly bush, the sharpened points of its leaves pricking through the homespun shirt he wore. He was lying on his stomach. He moved and the prickly leaves wounded him again.
When he woke, he wiggled forward on his stomach until he was clear of the bush, then rose to his knees. He pushed up with his left hand instinctively. And when he looked at his right, he saw why. It was swollen and had two oozing marks surrounded by angry red tissue on the back where the fangs went in.
Experimentally, he moved his fingers—it hurt. And he knew he wouldn’t have much use of it for some time.
He had been bitten by a snake.
Had he been bitten by a snake? He didn’t know, his mind wasn’t clear. He was having a lot of trouble thinking. Thinking and seeing both. When he tried to look around, the light pained his eyes. But he did see enough to know he was in a forest.
He was kneeling next to the holly bush that was growing out of a pile of fallen limbs near the trunk of a giant oak, resting on its side, broken by lightning.
Just beyond the tangle of dead wood that had been the tree’s crown was a pool. He could see the glint of the sky’s reflection in the water from where he knelt.
He staggered to his feet, not out of any confidence that he could walk but because he couldn’t crawl. He was certain his damaged right hand wouldn’t support him. He wanted water badly. His tongue felt like a file in his mouth.
He was right. On his feet he was so dizzy he could barely stand. But his thirst was so great that he managed to stagger to the pool, fall to his knees, then lie down and drink.
It looked up at him from the bottom of the pool.
He jerked back so quickly that inadvertently he used his right hand to push himself, and a blast of raw agony lanced up his arm to his shoulder, followed by a terrible wave of nausea.
He lay down again, rolled over on his back, and closed his eyes.
She was there.
He could see her face as clearly as if she stood before him. Young, the woman’s features still a bit blurred by the child’s. Almost, not quite, ready for love. Rose petal skin, spun gold hair, lips like autumn rose hips, and eyes warm and blue as a summer sky.
Somewhere in his mind he laughed at himself. All the poetic banalities, and yet all love.
Women, he remembered someone in the warrior society saying. Oh, yes, there are always women. Women for pleasure, women for breeding—very important that. Women for work, all the ceaseless cooking, washing, and cleaning. All the worrisome, monotonous tasks women are so good at. Women. Don’t worry about women.
Her eyes looked into his. Oh, yes, they were the summer sky, an arch of cloud filled crystalline light over a green, warm world. The smell of horses, saddle leather, dogs for the chase. Woodsmoke rising from cooking fires, venison, wild boar on the spit; salmon leaping in the streams or smoking over an ash fire. All good things. Comrades, friends, food, drink, and even deadly quarrels. The glitter of edged steel in knives, swords, spears glowing, drinking in the light as it sang in their blades. All… all in those warm, sky blue eyes.
For a moment, fear, anxiety, and dread vanished and he was at peace. Then he remembered what he had seen in the water, and the fear returned with a rush.
His eyes opened; he looked over and down into the pool.
He wondered if the water could be poisonous, because there was more than one—at least a dozen skulls looked up at him from the bottom with the empty stare of the dead.
He remembered a bleak joke someone had told him once: they cannot choose but stare because they cannot close their eyes.
A small bird, very like a finch clad in gray and black, landed on a lily pad and drank. Then, with a flick of its wings, flew away.
The water was very clear and that was how he knew they were there in the first place. He could see to the bottom.
They were all scattered among the stones, looking up at him. At least a dozen skulls. Odd that they should all look up at him. None were on their side or facedown. He was sure he could tell them from the rocks that covered the bottom if they were mispositioned. But none were. Each one gazed up through the clear water at the sky or at his face. He drank again.
No, the long ago deaths hadn’t polluted the water. He felt better, much better. Then he thought the water might help his hand, so he slowly eased it below the surface.
Yes, it did, cooling the angry heat in the tissues and soothing away the throbbing that accompanied every moment.
He sighed, a forlorn breath of relief, but then he noticed the forest had gone quiet around him.
No, no, that wasn’t good. He was an alert woodsman, having been brought up in a world where the ancient forests were still a viable presence and large, almost endless tracts were as yet untouched by the human banes of an ax and fire. Where hunting was an avowed necessity, serving as an important source of meat harvested to keep his scattered people fed.
He knew the forest.
Birdsong ceased, and in a tree nearby a flock flew up as though frightened by some distant sound. He did the human thing. He stood.
He was in a brushy, open woodland with rather thin, stony soil. He could see nothing except perhaps a waver in the air of the sort that appears above hot fire.
It was coming. And he was shaking inside.
A small deer flashed past him, leaping the oblong end of the forest pool. And in the distance, he could hear the tearing of brush and trees as it moved through the undergrowth, steadily ever toward him.
He went to one knee and drank quickly, sucking the water from his cupped hands. The wind changed briefly, bringing the thick, heavy odor of decay to his nostrils. An owl, awakened from its midday sleep, glided past him on silent wings, and he knew whatever path it chose to take, everything fled before it.
But he was the special one. The person it was bent on catching.
He had been here before. Through this particular awakening before. But his mind was fogged with illness or drugs.
He couldn’t remember.
Something like wind but not wind began to twist and fling the branches of a stand of aspen saplings across the pool, and he knew it was here. The stench was a thick, almost gaseous, cloud over the water and so strong in his nostrils it gagged him.
A dilatory hare burst from a copse nearby and tried to run around the pool. In its flight, it ran directly in front of the horror.
Something of the creature’s terrible substance must have touched it, because the hare exploded into a red ruin. Blood and bits of flesh flung into the air, spattered his face.