Authors: Alice Borchardt
“No, I didn’t,” he answered.
I was afraid then, because I understood what he really had done. So afraid my face felt numb and I wondered if I ought to take action. Now!
But those smoky green eyes of his held me, the way a snake’s gaze holds a stricken bird. He grinned again and let me go.
“You made the cup never be broken at all,” I said.
“Good answer,” was his reply. “And you know what? I can make you never exist at all.”
I slid off the cushion and sat on my heels. “Then why don’t you?” I asked.
He looked away from me and into the murk around us.
“The heart of sorcery,” he said, “is the power to make the world into the sort of place you wish to live in. Accept my geis. The other two did.”
“No!” I said. “I am no more yours than I am Arthur’s, Merlin’s, or Mondig’s.”
As I answered I felt the morning breeze freshen, driving out the mist, and I realized it was that hour just before dawn when the light brightens and day enters the forest, the shore, and the sea. The tall pines were very still, the only sound the drip of water falling on the planks of Ure’s platform. A faint perfume emanated from the living trees.
Ure sighed, a strange sound from so harsh a character as he was.
“It is time,” he said. “Question the Faun before the sun rises.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” I answered. “I must find a way to fetch Arthur.”
Things, Black Leg thought, weren’t going the way he thought they would.
“Stop wiggling! Goddamn it, stop!” she was saying. “I’m trying to heal you. Heal you at least enough to stop the pain. And you’re jumping around like a goddamn scared rabbit.”
Black Leg drew in a deep breath. His skin where the vine had embraced him felt like it had been burned, and a combination of itch-searing rawness and general soreness made him want to leap into wolf form to shed this horrible discomfort.
“Don’t you dare!” she whispered. “Don’t you dare! They can tell . . . those birds . . . if you do. They’re all over the place outside, and I don’t know if the vines can keep them out of the door.”
Cold fear counseled Black Leg’s instant obedience. Jesus, those birds. He was very still. Angry rebellion flared for a moment in his mind.
It’s not fair,
he thought.
Goddamn, it’s downright humiliating. I wanted to be a warrior. Fight other men who came at me carrying swords and wearing armor so I can defeat them with my superior strength, skill, and cunning.
But between girls who jumped out of lakes and wanted lots of hot sex (actually, that hadn’t been too bad), crazy old sorcerers running in and out of bushes, nasty vines, singing flowers, pepper-laced fruit, and birds whose malice chilled him to the bone, he wasn’t getting many chances to shine as a warrior. This was not the way he’d envisioned his adventuring when he left home. He was smart enough to know he was getting a really superior education. But what he was being prepared for wasn’t at all clear to him.
He opened his eyes a little. They felt swollen and he thought that he might be blind, but just for a second until he turned his gaze to the narrow windows looking out over the gorge they were in.
It was dusk. He could see her face near the window, looking out anxiously.
The birds. Those birds were there.
She glanced down at him. “You with me?” she said.
Black Leg managed an,
“Ua!”
and she nodded.
“Keep still. Christ, they’re all over the place. But you pissed off that vine so bad—it’s still wiggling around out there like a scalded snake—that they don’t dare come near the door to this hole we’re in. I’m almost glad we found something those buggers are afraid of. Even if it did cost you. I think they know we’re around here somewhere, but they aren’t sure where. And if you change, they might spot us and manage to force the door. Those vines are mean, but the goddamn birds are stronger than anything. I can feel it. And I don’t know if I have the strength left to turn myself to stone like I did before.”
He moved slowly. His body screeched in agony when he did, and then there was a peculiar numbness about his thighs and torso that frightened him more than pain would have. But he managed to sit up and look out also.
For a second he wondered where the ravens were, then saw that they were flying, wheeling in a flock down into the gorge. So far down their wing tips almost brushed the river. Then back up, up into the slanted rays of the dying sun, the shiny black of their feathers gleaming with golden fire as the light poured over them. Then turning into a curtain of darkness as they entered the shadowed gorge below.
“An awesome sight,” he whispered.
She agreed. “Yes, awesome and chilling.”
“What are they?” he whispered.
“My powers fail me where they are concerned. I thought myself a being of sagacity and wide experience in both my world and many others. But they humble me. I cannot imagine what they are. Putting it succinctly, your guess is as good as mine. But I think the moon in this place banishes them for a time.”
“They are hunting us,” Black Leg whispered as she leaned into his arms. She was wet, fading again, he thought, dying.
He could feed her. He had today. But the water wouldn’t answer her needs, only substances from the flowers that spoke in musical ways. There simply weren’t enough here for her to live on.
The cool wetness of her wilting flesh felt good against the raw skin on his chest and abdomen. He looked down at himself and felt sick. He was burned red with raw, weeping patches from his chest to the tops of his thighs. And moreover, he was discovering the stimulant effect of certain types of pain.
Oh, no,
he thought, because he knew he wanted this, but didn’t. The triggers were so deep in his brain that he couldn’t reach them to turn off the pain-pleasure junction.
In a haze of desire, he watched the company of birds rise into the dying sun, then fall like some magnificent living curtain into the growing dark until the sun no longer shone on their bodies and they turned. Flying low over the waters to escape the rising moon, they followed the river of water, a river of wings vanishing down the gorge into the darkness.
She was trembling. Or was he the one quivering with a vicious delight?
“I die,” she whispered as her nails bit into his back, his inflamed hot flesh making her clutch doubly painful.
“Don’t you dare. You are . . . killing me!” she whimpered.
“No! No! If you’re so afraid, tell me you don’t want it too.”
She moaned, clawed at his face. He felt the wetness but wasn’t sure if it came from her dissolving flesh or from ribbons of blood that poured from his lacerated cheek.
“When you go, I’ll be alone,” he whimpered. “I’ll never look into your eyes again. I want something.”
He was entering her body, her soft darkness, velvet darkness. His body cringed at the thought of what he was about to do, but he found his mind detached and rock solid.
He shuddered as his whole being seemed to pour like a waterfall into the point of exquisite fire between his legs.
“Take it! Take it all!”
The pleasure ceased, cut off at the instant of absolute gratification, and his genitals shriveled with absolute and utter pain. He rolled away from her, retching violently, the spasms of pain bending his body into an arch, locking his muscles and nervous system into convulsion. Again, and again and again.
Until after an eternity of suffering, he collapsed and all his sphincters let go: piss from his penis, shit from his ass, drool from his mouth, tears from his eyes, and his stomach spasmed and emptied a cupful of bitter acid onto the stone floor.
He blinked his eyes to try to clear them. Did clear them and saw the she-wolf where her dissolving body had been, strong and healthy, gazing at him with wide, shocked, yellow eyes.
The two shadows stood in the wind-ruffled grass looking down at him as Uther awoke. He remembered his thoughts about time, its end at the barrow doors.
“They succeeded in their endeavor, didn’t they?” he said.
“Yes,” one of the shadows answered. “We are their achievement.”
Uther sat up. “Where is Morgana?”
“Gone. She left a message for you.” One of the visitors spoke, pointing to the ground.
Uther saw the paw marks of the Cat Sith clearly delineated in the sandy soil.
“Ah,” he said.
“She knew we would accompany you on your travels.”
Uther wasn’t sure he wanted a close look at the pair. His neck prickled with alarm.
They could not be living beings,
was his thought.
“I’m not sure I want your company on any journey I might make at present,” he said. “Unless . . .”
“No! You are a living man,” one of them said. “And so are we.”
Uther rose to his feet and faced them.
“The Brotherhood of the Bagudae greets you. But to join us, you must yield up your sword. But fear not, we have a replacement.”
They were only shadows still. Uther scratched at the stubble on his cheek with his right hand. Where was Morgana? Even as Cat Sith she should not have abandoned him.
The Bagudae! He’d heard of them, the bane of the dying Roman Imperium. But they were in Gaul, Iberia, Italy, not here among the Britons. How could this be?
“Wherever the builders of the stone tombs went, we come.” One of the shadows made this statement. “You called us. You came to our door. We will show you our paths, guide your footsteps into the Saxon camps. Come. They are still holding the horse fights, still choosing a king. There are many things for you to learn in London. Lew’s City, it is still called. Yield up your sword.”
Uther was tired; that was all he could think. He had looked forward to dozing in the saddle on this journey under the stars. Now they wanted his sword. What were they planning to do? Lead him out on foot into the wilderness alone?
“Show me this replacement for my horse and sword. And you will no doubt mean for me to dispense with my mail helmet and shield.”
“Yes.” The answer was soft but firm. The shadow on the right unslung something he had on his back. He was carrying it much the way a long sword is carried, in a baldric that touched against his back in the same fashion as a large sword. He stretched out the bulky object to Uther and placed it in the king’s arms.
This was no sword. Much more broad and thick, the only way to receive it was to enfold it into an embrace. Uther knew what it was as his arms closed around it. And he was glad for the darkness because he was ashamed of his tears.
Uther surrendered his weapons without a qualm or quibble. Sword, hauberk, and helmet went into some mysterious place in the barrow. He kept his mantle and sax—the sax Morgana gave him so long ago on the day . . . the day he found he must be a man . . . the day his two brothers died in Gaul serving some pretender to the purple, the imperial throne of the Caesars. The day he last touched the harp. Only she had known he put the instrument away from him forever, afraid even to touch it lest it distract him from the single-minded pursuit of the High Kingship—his destined fate. Put it away lest the simple touch of his hand on the case rise up his arm and strike his heart with such pain that he would be unmanned.
He burned his need and his grief forever, leaving it hanging on the wall in the young man’s hunting shelter—a place that he would never visit again, being now too important, preoccupied, busy, involved with a life devoted to the struggles of rank.
Uther slung the harp over his back, drew his mantle up over it and his shoulders, and set out with the two into the night.
For a time they followed the road, but then, steering a course by the stars, they left it and set out over the countryside. Roman villas were everywhere, but his companions threaded their way between them, keeping to the strips of meadow, forest, and waste that lay between the broad expanses of cultivated land. A few, it is true, had been abandoned in the upheavals that accompanied the end of Roman occupation. But good land was not something usually left uncultivated; and most times, though the central residence might be a burned-out ruin, the land was farmed by those who owed allegiance to owners who were safely ensconced in the walled towns that dotted the countryside. Owners who were not slow to collect their due at the point of a Saxon sword. Owners who were more than happy to burn any village that showed an unwillingness to pay the extortionate taxes that funded the Saxon mercenary forces who served as their enforcers. Owners who rounded up children every year to be sent to the east as slaves.
Uther and the two from the tomb threaded their way between the villas, silent and unseen through the darkness. They were good guides and seemed to know the country well. Their star knowledge was greater than his, though his was not inconsiderable.
Near dawn—he realized dawn was approaching by the setting of the Pleiades, and the dew was beginning to soak his leggings—he knew that they must have covered a great deal of ground. They slowed to hunt.
The rabbits were out feeding on the wild greens, cold, crisp, and dampened by the settling ground mist. His companions took them on the fly. A rabbit confronted by a predator freezes, then jumps left or right. A human has a fifty-fifty chance of nailing the rodent if he moves before the rabbit jumps.
Most of the rabbits died so quickly at the hands of his escorts that they never had a chance to scream. Uther was interested to see that out of ten, they got six. The seventh was a pregnant doe and had to be released.
When they paused at a stream to clean and gut their catch, Uther became aware he could see. For a moment, he had reservations about looking at them. What, after all, might have arisen from a tomb in the dead of night? But in the growing light, they seemed human enough. Both were dark, so weather-beaten they looked as though they might never have slept in a bed in their lives. They were of indeterminate age, not old but then not young, either, and leather-clad from head to foot. Identically dressed, soft leather boots, trousers and tunics of the most supple tanned hides he had ever seen.
Then he saw they must be twins by the shape of their rather fine features: identical eyes, mouths, noses, eye and skin coloring, the same dark, thick curly brown hair.