Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon Read online

  As Velantos took it his posture changed, the lines of his face firming, the hammer becoming an extension of his hand. Woodpecker sighed in relief. This was more like the man he knew.

  “A good choice,” the smith said softly. “My first teacher gave it to me when I was so young this was the heaviest tool I could hold. This is a hammer for fine work, not for weapons. But that is just as well. Before I make anything for the king, I have promised a votive offering to the god.”

  TWELVE

  The third winter after Mikantor had disappeared brought cold such as the community at Avalon had never known. The water in the marshes froze and the Lead Hills were covered with snow. The houses where the priests and priestesses slept had never been intended for such harsh weather. As the cold increased in the black months that followed Midwinter, Anderle gathered everyone in the pillared hall where they took their meals, built of solid stone with a central hearth. Hangings stretched between poles gave them a little privacy, but the air in the chamber was heavy with the scents and sounds of crowded humanity.

  To Anderle, huddled in her heaviest woolen tunic, two shawls and a cloak, the pressure of so many other souls and bodies was almost unendurable. She knew how to shield her spirit at the great festivals, but this was Avalon, and these the people to whom she had spent her life learning to open heart and soul. Now, what she was picking up from them was physical discomfort and an undercurrent of fear.

  Fear, she decided as she took the earthenware beaker of hot mint tea that Ellet handed her, was as debilitating as the cold, sapping heart and will. She cradled the beaker between her hands, luxuriating as its warmth penetrated cold fingers, and felt the tightness in her chest relax as she breathed in the fragrant steam. She wondered how were they faring in the Lake Village. They could insulate their walls with bundled reeds, but the stilts that kept the platforms that were the bases of their houses above the floods also lifted them into the wind. At least, in this weather, no one was traveling, and the only illnesses they had to fear were the ordinary coughs and fevers that came with the cold. Perhaps she should send to see if they needed more feverfew or white willow. With the Lake frozen there was no need to call for a boat. One could walk across it, with care.

  No—she thought suddenly—she would go herself. In this cold even Galid must keep close to home, and for the moment the gray skies seemed to hold no snow. After their confrontation the previous year, she had hardly left Avalon, and then only when she was well guarded. After murdering Agraw, the warlord had held Cimara prisoner for a time before exiling her to a small farm. His threats to Anderle had been scarcely less dire, and there had been moments when she wondered if he would let her return to Avalon. But whether it was fear of the Goddess or some buried superstition of his own that constrained him, he had not raped or murdered either the priestess or the queen.

  She glanced around her. Larel was telling a story about snow spirits to the children. Swathed in sheepskins, he looked like a snow monster himself as he acted out the tale. Ellet had joined Tiri and the younger priestesses near the fire, the only place where it was warm enough to spin. The whirling weight of the spindle drew out the thread, inducing its own trance as the spinner found the rhythm that would allow her to wind it onto the shaft, add more wool, and let the spindle spin downward once more. Conversation was only a surface distraction from that perpetual motion, in which an afternoon could easily be lost. The others had likewise found occupation for their hands or minds, or rolled up in their blankets to sleep some more.

  She swallowed the last of her tea and moved quietly to the door, mut ing her energy so that no one would notice or question her. She spooned more herbs into bags, working quickly as the chill of the still-room numbed her hands, then shrugged on her own sheepskin cape, fleece side in. Lamb-skin mittens protected her hands. At the door she turned back and selected one of the walking sticks whose ends Larel had sharpened to give a grip on ice or snow.

  Anderle nearly turned back as she came out into the cold air, but there was peace in that silent chill, and the air held no scent at all. She strode out strongly, willing her heart to pump, her muscles to kindle heat within. By the time she reached the center of the Lake, she was almost warm. She paused, breathing carefully, allowing herself for the first time to open her awareness to this strange white landscape that had replaced the world she knew.

  The sky was covered by high clouds, through which a pale light diffused to illuminate the white world below. The Lake’s expanse was a mottled mixture where storms had broken the ice and driven the slabs against each other in tumbled windrows, white shading into blue and gray. Here and there the surface shone where the wind had scoured away the covering of snow. Beyond, ice gleamed from reed and shrub and tree, and farther still, the white hills were studded with the black arrows of the trees. Only the Tor, kept treeless now for centuries, rose like an ancient pyramid in pristine white, crowned by the ring of stones.

  She had huddled, trembling, beneath the howling fury of the winter’s storms, but on this day what she felt was a profound peace. This was not the immobility of death but a focused stillness, as if the world had contracted all its forces into this cold kernel to await the moment when the time was right for those pent-up energies to break free.

  The priestess took a careful breath, filling her lungs gradually to mute the shock of the icy air, then let it slowly out again. In and out she breathed, in the pattern to which she had been trained since childhood. Beneath the ice she could sense the gelid depth of water; above, the shimmer of ice crystals suspended in the air. To either side she extended her awareness, then behind and before, until she stood poised at the intersection of three axes of power. She took one step, maintaining that balance of forces, and then another. From here she could go anywhere, do anything. She stood poised at the still point of possibility.

  This was not the unthinking liberty of a child, but a freedom created and upheld by a lifetime of discipline. I have found the Center . . . Anderle realized in wonder. What can I, should I, must I do?

  From somewhere deeper within came the answer. Change. . . .

  Ever since her childhood it seemed to her that the world had been not so much changing as running down, becoming colder, wetter, less organized, and the more people clung to the old ways, the more they seemed to lose. Even Galid’s violence was a symptom of that decay of order, the spasmodic convulsions of a dying beast that does not understand its doom.

  Or perhaps the warlord understood what was happening only too well. He felt free to flout their ancient customs because he believed that the floods that devastated the land were washing away the foundations of all law. With an inner chill that owed nothing to the cold she remembered the look on his face when he speared Agraw. He had enjoyed that. For such as he, even rape would have affimed life too strongly. She doubted that even making him king of Azan would give him ease. The only feelings intense enough to reach Galid now were pain and fear.

  “Goddess!” her spirit cried. “If there is no hope, why have You sent me so many dreams and visions? If You have abandoned us, why am I still compelled to fight for Avalon?”

  Change . . . The word resonated in her awareness once more.

  Balanced between earth and air and water, Anderle sensed within herself the one element that was lacking, the living warmth of fire, and recognized the moment when love and will could set the world in motion once more.

  “Lady of Light . . . Fire of Life . . .” she said aloud, and the fire within began to pulse and grow. “I call You! Consume me, transform me! I offer myself as a channel for Your power. Change me, and change the world!”

  For a moment she stood, the surging heat within contained by the cold outside. Then she whirled, arms opening, releasing the power within her to flare out before and behind her, to either side, above and below. Light exploded around her. When she could see again, she stood in a world of rainbows and crystal. The clouds had opened, and sunlight flashed and flickered from ice and snow. She laughed for s
heer delight in the sudden beauty of it, and again as her cheek was kissed by a breath of air in which a hint of moist warmth had replaced the cold.

  She struck her stick into the ice for support as it quivered beneath her, and looking down saw a crack angling toward the farther shore.

  Goddess! Don’t let me escape freezing only to drown! Still grinning, she hurried back toward the Tor. When she reached it, she looked behind her and saw the six intersecting cracks radiating from the place where she had stood. In their center a gleam of open water mirrored back the light of the sun. But what she could see was only a visible expression of the energies she could feel vibrating in every direction. The transformation she had invoked was beginning, though she might never know what changed or how.

  It was a few days later, when the snow was still melting, that Badger sent her a bouquet of small white lilies drooping on slender stems that they had found blooming at the edge of the hills. “Snowdrops,” the hunters called them. Anderle had never seen them before. She found a vase to hold them and set them on the altar in the Hall of the Sun, beside the eternal fire.

  WHEN WINTER CAME TO Korinthos, the mountains grew white with snow, heavier, men said, than any they had known in recent years. No doubt the men who were rebuilding the town appreciated the view, but Velantos and Woodpecker very quickly learned to hate the icy winds that swirled around the citadel. Even at the end of winter, when the lambing season had begun below, they wrapped themselves in wool. The walls of the fortress were not impressive, but they hardly needed to be, with such sheer slopes below. The megaron, too, was small in comparison with those of Tiryns and Mykenae, but it held enough benches for communal meals. When the body heat of Aletes’ household was added to that of the central fire, it was almost warm enough to take off a layer or two.

  Woodpecker reached for another beef rib and began to gnaw the bone. Soon after dinner began, he had stripped off not only the moth-eaten sheepskin he wore over his shoulders but the shapeless woolen garment beneath it. He had found the dry cold of the mountains affected him less than the damp chill of the marshes at home. It was Velantos, who had spent all his life in the milder climate of the Argolid, who warmed his hands in his armpits and muttered and swore. The serenity the smith brought from his temple-sleep had gotten him through the crafting of an image of his healed leg in bronze. Since then, their work had been a succession of repairs to utensils and jewelry and weapons, with nothing that was challenging and little that was interesting at all.

  The city’s former owners had not taken their cattle with them, so despite all the discomforts, there was plenty of meat, even for the slaves. Velantos had filled out again, and Woodpecker had put on more inches. He was taller than his master now, taller than most of Aletes’ men, though some of the royal guard were from some northern land where they grew long of limb and light of hair.

  King Aletes himself was a rather small man who wore the tall cap of kingship so habitually it was rumored he slept with it on. His queen, who was Doridas’ daughter, sat on a stool beside him. He had put aside his northern wife and married the Korinthian princess in order to legitimize his rule. Woodpecker pitied the girl, who was even younger than he was, but at least she did not have to watch her father and uncle paraded on display at this informal meal. Aletes’ first marriage had produced a daughter called Leta, a sallow, brown-haired adolescent with her father’s big nose who sat at her youthful stepmother’s side. Woodpecker wondered how they got along. From all he had heard, most of Aletes’ life had been spent in a series of army camps. Perhaps the girl was so glad to live in a house she did not care who ruled it.

  He tossed the beef bone to one of the hounds that Aletes kept in the hall and carefully wiped his mustache. It was still a little wispy, and the beard was no more than a fringe. It was coming in a much brighter red than the rest of his hair. The elaborate plucking and shaving by which the nobles tended their facial hair was not for him, but at least a smith could make his own razor, and he and Velantos kept each other trimmed.

  As he passed Velantos the wine jug, the twanging lyre ceased and the megaron grew still. Aletes had risen, swaying a little. He did not water his wine.

  “Cold enough for you?” The king laughed. Woodpecker shivered refex ively. There had been a scattering of snow on the ground that morning and tonight would likely bring more. Their bench was at the very edge of the room, near the door. An icy draft stirred his hair.

  “You southern men know nothing about cold! In Thessalia snow covered the fields, but even that’s nothing to what they have in the north. In my youth I was a great traveler—” Wine sloshed from the golden cup as he gestured. Woodpecker took a drink from his own mug and sat back, wondering which of the stories they were about to hear again.

  “I crossed the great mountains that hold up the sky, so tall they bear snow all year around, looking for the copper mines in the region beyond. And then I went even farther, into a land of mighty trees. I was a guest that winter of the king of the Tuathadhoni at Bhagodheunon. That was snow! Heaped up in drifts all the way to the thatching! It lasted until the Turning of Spring!

  “He made me his guest-friend. Gave me gifts when the weather warmed at last, and sped me on my way. And when the time came for the Children of Erakles to return, I sent word to him, and he gifted me with good fighting men—” He gave a nod to the benches where his bodyguard were lingering over their wine. “Now the time has come to repay his generosity. A new messenger has come with agreements from the king.

  “My daughter Leta shall cross the great mountains to marry the son of King Maglocunos, and with her shall go bridewealth from the treasure of Korinthos—gold and bronze, a chariot and horses from Thessalia, and a master smith of the Middle Sea!”

  Woodpecker felt Velantos stiffen and cast him a quck look—clearly this was a surprise to him as well.

  “The trade of the north will come to Korinthos,” the king proclaimed, “and the trade from the rich lands to the south that our allies now rule. Ships shall come to the isthmus from east and west. We sit at the crossroads of the world, and we will make Korinthos wealthy beyond our dreams!”

  The warriors surged to their feet with a mighty shout, cups raised high, and then, still chattering, began to stream out of the megaron. The little queen and the princess rose as well. Woodpecker wondered if Leta had been informed of the honor in store for her before this announcement was made. Her face showed no reaction, but she had clearly learned to hide her thoughts at an early age. He sympathized.

  Velantos rose and picked up the striped blanket that served him as a cloak during the day. “You go—get a fire going in the brazier. I am going to talk to the king.”

  “Be careful.” Frowning, Woodpecker watched the older man limp across the tiled floor and bow before the throne. Then he shrugged himself into his own wraps and went through the prodomos to the court beyond. As he turned down the staircase to the small chamber that he shared with Velantos, he caught sight of a woman—no, two females, one carrying a lantern, passing through the lower gate.

  Where could they be going in this weather and at this hour? Silently he followed. The tiny flicker of light was bobbing down the path that led to the shrine of the Lady of the Doves. He had visited it once himself to make a thank offering after one of the serving maids had initiated him into the Lady’s Mysteries. That had been on a sunny summer morning. It would be freezing down there now, with no shelter but the perimeter wall and the few cypresses that clung to the side of the hill. They would be lucky if the wine stayed liquid long enough to pour a libation.

  The statue was a weather-worn stone whose contours barely suggested breasts and the cleft between curving thighs. But each year they gave her a new spear and shield. Up here on the akropolis even the Lady who presided over love had weapons, but perhaps that was just as well. In the marriage to which Leta was going, she might need to be armed.

  “MY LORD, I BEG the favor of a few words with you,” Velantos said in a low voice, and wondered why
Aletes looked so apprehensive. Perhaps he feels guilty about disposing of my future so blithely, he thought with a bitter satisfaction. Even though I wear rags, he remembers I was not born a slave.

  “Do you think I should have consulted you about the journey to the barbarians?” snapped the king. He edged to one side so that Velantos, who had been standing with his back to the hearth, had to turn. He supposed that with the bulky blanket broadening his shoulders and his face in shadow he might have appeared somewhat menacing.

  “You are the king. You do what you will,” rumbled the smith. “But I would ask . . .” he added carefully, “if you are unhappy with my work.”

  “Unhappy?” The king looked genuinely surprised. One of the guards started toward them and Aletes motioned him away again. “No, not at all. Really, your talents are wasted here. What we need now, any man who can bang on a blade can do.”

  “You think they will appreciate me more in the northern wilds?” Velantos said dubiously.

  “Not so wild as you might think.” Aletes grinned, stroking his grizzled beard. “Great lords there, you will see. Think a lot of themselves. Before they seek our trade, they’ll have to be impressed by our skills.”

  The smith strove to keep his expression bland, but his heartbeat had quickened with something that was not fear.

  “They will not be impressed by the skills of a slave,” he said flatly.

  The king flushed and frowned. “You will go where I say if I have to send you in chains.” The king moved back to his throne. He motioned, and Velantos knelt before him, hearing his knee joints crack as he got down.

  “You can constrain my body,” the smith agreed, “but not my craft. You can kill me, but I work for the Lady of the Forge, not you.”

  Aletes blinked, striving to assimilate the idea that he did not own his captive’s will. “What do you want?”

  “Set me and my forge boy free.”