Authors: Alice Borchardt
“She is the Flower Bride of Alba,” Lancelot said.
“She will make me king in both worlds. I know that,” Arthur said. “And the horror of it is that unless she is successful in her quests, I may never see her again.”
“Oh, I think she’s been successful all right,” Lancelot said. “Both Merlin and the Lady thought so, and whatever you may say about both of them, neither of them is a fool.”
Bax trotted from around behind them and into the water. The two men followed.
“He did say a funny thing, though. He said
we
were her destiny.
We,
not just you.”
Arthur threw him a dark look. “Become her champion, if you like, but nothing more. So perhaps in some sort of way you are her destiny, but she is mine, and always will be while life lasts.”
The water between the trees was getting deeper, but Bax looked to be fairly good at finding shallow spots between the deeper pools.
“This swamp is supposed to be filled with traps and hazards,” Arthur said, looking around uneasily.
“Maybe that’s if you’re going out, escaping from the king. I bet he doesn’t care much if you’re going in. Yes, the entrance to a trap might be sort of easy,” Lancelot continued. “In fact, I think you might expect it to be.”
Several of the ravens sailed in and settled on a branch near Arthur’s face. “You command them,” he said to Lancelot.
“No command about it,” Lancelot said. “We have an agreement.”
“Oath birds?”
“Right,” Lancelot replied.
“Ask them to check the roads ahead.”
At his words, the birds took wing. They returned quickly.
One said, “We see no hazards.”
The second said, “By nightfall.”
The third cocked his head to one side, studied both men with one eye and then the other, and said, “Be careful.”
I followed my two companions up the stair. It led to . . . I don’t know. My first sight of it was sunlight on bleached marble. I did what I had done in the city: looked out on a landscape under a different sky. It didn’t seem real, but rather like the wall paintings I had seen in ruined Roman dwellings where Black Leg and I played as children.
Maeniel brought us to see them, wishing to accommodate Dugald’s desire that I learn about things Roman. It was not at all safe to poke around abandoned Roman ruins. They were the refuge of outlaws and brigands. But Dugald and Maeniel were tough enough to give pause to any who threatened us. And so we visited these places and he would sometimes reconstruct the life of Roman colonists for both Black Leg and myself.
Such a life seemed a great wonder to me. Remember, I was brought up in a one-room hut with a smoke hole in the roof, and the thought of having different rooms to eat, sleep, and bathe and even study was almost incomprehensible to me. Servants; no, we had no servants or slaves. Everyone pitched in and helped Kyra when she needed it. Outdoor plumbing was the norm. Black Leg and I used to fight over whose duty it was to dig the slit trench every week.
I remember looking at the wall paintings that depicted a life all but incomprehensible to me. I stretched out my hand and touched the picture of an ancient theater with stepwise seats leading down to a small stage. The image shimmered the way the reflection in a still pool does when something, a drop of water or a fallen leaf, troubles the surface.
I felt in my body, my mind, the appropriate displacement that would allow me to enter what to many others would simply be an image and no more.
How would I do it? I don’t know. How do I walk or breathe, or eat or run or think, or even remember? I simply know how. And for the first time, I understood my gift as a sorceress. I had an instinct for the passage between worlds.
I stepped through and the dog women followed me.
The little amphitheater was old and long abandoned. It wasn’t one of those massive arenas where gladiatorial matches or chariot races were held. This was a much smaller place where plays were performed, poetry recited, or musical entertainments went on. It was on a small island set in a deep, blue sea. I knew it must have been on an island because I could see the drowned remains of streets; temples, houses, and streets gleaming up through the blue-green water.
This amphitheater must have been on the highest point of the island, because it seemed to be all that remained of what must have been a fair-sized town. In the distance, to the east, on the horizon, I could see the outlines of a landmass.
But of what must have been here once, this was all that remained. There was a large number of people gathered here, both men and women. The blind woman—a priestess, I’m sure—stood on the stage. I walked down toward her, and I would have taken a seat among them, but Annin and Erika urged me toward the small stage where the blind woman stood.
I climbed the two steps up to the stage. All of the women were accompanied by dogs. They seemed decently dressed, but the men were a ragged, tough-looking bunch. They had few weapons. I saw only about a dozen knives, two swords; and though there were a lot of spears, most were the wooden variety.
Everyone, even the dogs, studied me curiously. The fear and curiosity that seemed to radiate from the audience called my armor, and I heard an audible gasp roll through the gathering as it flashed green against my fair skin.
“She is the one,” the blind woman said. “I know. I feel it.”
“Libane!” one of the men addressed her.
I knew the name. She was clad in a green mantle and rules womanly gifts. There is nothing she cannot teach her adherents to do.
“Libane, why are you so sure this time? The Dread King so far has laughed at our revolts. Yet you are so sure that she”—he pointed at me—“and the man . . . more than a man, less than a king, who comes . . . can free us.”
Another one of the men spoke up. “No one ever spent the night in the queen’s tower and emerged alive until he did. I was there when he cleansed their cattle and their bodies, setting his people free forever. He will speak law and knit up the division between men and women, between those the king allows some freedom and those who are treated like beasts.”
“Indeed she has shown herself to be mistress of the transit between worlds,” Annin said. “Otherwise, she would not be here.”
“He,” Libane added, “has withstood both the tower and the dark forest. How many others died in their toils?”
I had, I reflected, come to bring Arthur back home with me. My transit of worlds had been an accident, a simple necessity forced on me in my mission to rescue Arthur from his exile.
I sat on the Dragon Throne, one of the sacred queens of the first people to populate the White Isle. It was the duty of the queens to bring kings to the people. To lie with Arthur and make him high king was my duty. But I couldn’t tell these people what was in my heart. We needed him, but I could see they did, too.
I turned to Libane and I saw the green mask of the Danae on her face even as it was part of the armor. It was very like the moment I met my father. From a distance, I saw only a fat, red-faced man who looked as though he might be a figure of fun. But as I drew closer, the mighty warrior of the Danae was revealed to me.
It was the same here. The face I had thought pale was simply impossibly fair. The eyes that looked shadowed by blindness were gray, the pale gray of summer clouds as they spread out over the mountains on a warm summer day. And she was wrapped in the green mantle and gown of the ever-living, ever-giving, ever-abiding earth.
“Libane,” I said, “how can I keep my promises? To keep one is to break the other.”
“It is time,” she replied, “for you to greet your much sought lord.”
We left the Paradoxisus at nightfall. Libane and Annin led the procession, and it was just that: a procession. King Bade’s prisoners joined us. Many were worn down by labor while still young. I have never seen so many scars. And I know. I saw all of them bearing the marks of savage punishment. Some had been totally blinded so they could be used as draft animals. Many others were raked by whip scars. Eyes and hands were missing from many. The women, many of them designated comfort women, were a bold, cold lot. Most of their eyes burned with hatred.
In God’s name,
I thought,
how will we heal this?
Libane and Annin stood one on either side of me, and the slaves waited along the path we traversed. As I passed, they greeted me and then fell in behind us, so I saw and knew all their suffering. Some families were intact, and they brought their children. Others knelt along the route and were taken in hand by adults that would accept them.
As we wound our way through King Bade’s magnificent gardens, the procession grew longer and longer. I don’t know how many people were there. Several thousand, I think, by the time we reached the swamp.
The dark water was bright with the reflections of the torches carried by the rebels with us. We stood and waited until Black Leg and Arthur waded out of the swamp. Before he reached dry land, our eyes met. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t have more than a passing thought to spare for Black Leg.
Indeed, Arthur was the Golden King I had dreamed of. His clothing was shabby, but he filled the woolen dalmatic magnificently, shoulders broad as an ax handle. He was blond-bearded, and the shaggy hair on his head was spun red-gold.
I knew when our eyes met that long ago on the quay at Tintigal I had met a boy, but the person who stood before me in this hour was a man. A man and a king.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A
LICE
B
ORCHARDT
shared a childhood of storytelling with her sister, Anne Rice, in New Orleans. A professional nurse, she has also nurtured a profound interest in little-known periods of history. She is the author of
Devoted
,
Beguiled
,
The Silver Wolf
,
Night of the Wolf
, and
The Wolf King
. She lives in Houston.
BY ALICE BORCHARDT
Devoted
Beguiled
The Silver Wolf
Night of the Wolf
The Wolf King
The Dragon Queen
The Raven Warrior
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either
a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey
®
Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2003 by Alice Borchardt
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a
trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is
available from the publisher upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-345-46433-0
v3.0