The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) Read online

“Eat or die here.”

  I ate.

  “Three of everything and no more,” said Galabes. “Three sips of water, three radishes at noon, three apples at evening, three mouthfuls of beef at meals, three sips of wine when ill. Of course, only one life’s love. There the rule fails any intelligent man or woman.”

  Galabes laughed a grotesque, rasping laugh and broke into a winter cough from which he spat.

  “Or are you so ignorant you’ve never heard the story of Guenevere who loved both Arthur and Lancelot? A frightful story. A crime against goodness that ended the world! I put my curse on that Gallic whore, and on her family who couldn’t hold the kingdom against the Saxons when Arthur died.”

  “She was a brave queen,” I said. “I’ve heard the stories…”

  Galabes hit me and knocked me flat into the mud.

  The hound watched.

  I got up, slapping off muck, and cried, “You must be a saint or a demon or mad to act this way!”

  Galabes hit me again. “Never dispute me.”

  I lay in the mud, bleeding, and said, “I won’t, I swear!”

  Galabes wiped away the blood he had made on my face.

  “You’ve Arthur’s prideful blood in you but I intend you learn your place with me if you’re to learn your place in the world. Call me ‘Father.’ Say it. I want to hear it.”

  “Father!” I cried, to prevent another blow.

  Galabes held up the bowl for me to finish my three-part meal. “One day you’ll eat my own heart with as much relish.”

  May it come soon, I thought, soon.

  “The lady-knight you’ll be must know three things. Her own honor, her own sword, and her own ancestors. For that last, your blood-father is Arthur. But how do you call him?”

  “Why should I call a dead man?” I said.

  “For his strength and courage to get into you, you fool. ‘Arthur’ is his common name. To the Saxons, that means ‘Thor’s Eagle.’ He was ‘Artoris’ to the Caesars and ‘Artour’ to Guenevere’s Gallic family. But his soul-name is Artyr – use that to call him to you.”

  I tried the word.

  The hound turned its head to me.

  “Arthur’s mother’s blood was founded by a god on a Roman princess. From his father Uther he came of pendragons out of Troy. That blood is yours.

  “Arthur got the kingdom from his brother, Gurthrygen – ‘Proud Tyrant’ – called ‘Vortigern’ by the Romans who have to simplify everything foreign to their awful garbling language. Gurthrygen hired the Saxons, a race hateful to man and God, to help us drive out the blue-faced Scots. Together we pushed them beyond Hadrian’s Wall.

  “But the Saxons stayed camped on Britain – in those times, we called it ‘Prydein’ or ‘Ynys Prydein’ for ‘Island of Britain.’ The Trojans and the Greeks called it ‘Pretannike.’ It was ‘Logres’ to the Romans and ‘Ierne,’ ‘Belerion,’ and ‘Belerium’ to other pagan races, but those are foreign words without power over our people. It’s soul-name is ‘Lloegr’ and that’s the only name you need to know.

  “Arthur drove the Saxons back across the sea to their dank forests in Saxonia. But he was betrayed – by the adultery of Guenevere and Lancelot, by the treason of his son, and by the treaty-breaking return of the Saxons. He was killed at Camlann by the son he named ‘Modred’ whose soul-name is a horror – ‘Medraut’ – and whom people these days call ‘Mordred’ for the dread his memory brings them. Arthur and Guenevere-the-Whore were buried by Morgana at Glastonbury Abbey in Avalon – we call it ‘Yniswitrin’ – where two thousand monks sing in a perpetual choir over their tombs.

  “Arthur’s hound” – the black dog turned its silent head to Galabes – “was called by common people ‘Cavil’ but he was ‘Cabal’ to Arthur and his soul-name was ‘Cavall.’

  “Arthur’s sword was ‘Caliburn,’ his war horse ‘Llamrei,’ his dagger ‘Carnwennan.’ He wore special magic – a cross painted on each shoulder of his armor and the Virgin Mary painted on the inside of his shield so he could fight his filthy pagan enemies while looking into her holy face. On the outside of his shield he painted his red dragon and eagle insignia, a badge that terrified the superstitious and simpleminded Saxons.

  “Watch for his friends and enemies in your dreams and future. Look for Merlin, also called ‘Myrdin’ – his soul-name in his last life was ‘Kaermerdin.’ He’s lived many times as a man or a woman. He made the fog through which Uther Pendragon slipped to impregnate Igerne, the wife of his greatest duke, to create Arthur.

  “Merlin stole the child Arthur and raised him to the purity and power to draw the sword from the Brutus stone to prove himself king of the Britons. He also made the Round Table for Guenevere’s father who dowried it to Arthur.

  “The most important knights of the Table were Galahad, bastard of Guenevere and Lancelot who was himself the son of Vivienne also called the Lady of the Lake who gave Arthur the famous Caliburn.

  “I believe Arthur was to Galahad what John Baptist was to Jesu Christ or David to Solomon. Galahad, heart-pure, alone of Arthur’s war band was granted a vision of the Holy Grail, the cup that Jesu consecrated at his last supper. But Galahad failed Britain, as we all failed. He died at Camlann and is entombed on his island kingdom of Sarras in the sea between Europa and Africa, guarded by dragons.

  “Next was the butler, Bedivere, then called ‘Bedifer’ and soul-named ‘Bedwyr.’ He returned Caliburn to the Lady of the Lake at Arthur’s dying command.

  “Second was Lucan, whose names I won’t bother to tell you now. He alone survived Camlann, a wanderer and exile from life. It was his task to administer the Table. His vassals and tools were Menw the Spellcaster and Gwrhyr the Interpreter of Tongues.

  “But that’s all of the story you need now.”

  Galabes repacked the part-eaten heart that I hoped was ox and not human and we tramped into the forests of Wales, skirting the great city of Caerleon-upon-Usk where Arthur had built his university and endowed it with Roman books. Here the destruction after Camlann had left the people in such starvation and disease they had eaten Arthur’s books, burned them for heat or traded them to Irish pirates in ransom for their lives.

  We came to the mountain I had fore-seen at the beginning of our trek. We climbed its trails past caves’ fire-flicker. “Greetings!” roared out from the holes’ depths as of spirits calling out of tombs. Hags and madmen, armless soldiers, legless thieves, derelict veterans of Arthur’s last great battle, all hobbled out to see me, Galabes’ scrawny and lice-hopping trophy.

  He made me prostrate myself before each of this hermit tribe, kissing their filthy toes or allowing them to place leprous hands on my head in blessing.

  Bitten by more ticks and fleas than usual, skin crawling with the unnatural desire to bathe, I followed Galabes over the peak. We looked across a crystalline beauty of valley. It seemed to me the place that should hold the fabulous Camelot.

  But climbing out of the valley’s far side was a staircase carved into the mountainside. It led to a weird citadel on a thrusting peak. A castle full of gaping windows and sagging ramparts from which, even at this distance, I could hear the wind wail like unforgiven souls.

  “There,” said Galabes, “is the palace of the swordmaker.”

  “That crumbling wreck is a palace?” I cried.

  “Yes, the shambles where you will learn to live, or die.”

  Chapter 2 – The Swordmaker

  We crossed the valley and mounted the stairs, one thousand of them, beneath the howling wind. I, breathless behind Galabes and Caval, sweating through my wrappings of fur, was so concentrated on keeping my footing that I suddenly found myself alone before a wall half again the height of a man.

  “Father!” I cried, my voice caught up by the howling wind to echo across the valley, startling me. “Where are you?”

  Galabes leaned out over the wall and reached down to haul me up.

  We crawled through a door half a man’s height and dropped onto the stone floor of the ci
tadel.

  Here was a porch with a conical roof and moaning windows. Stone troughs where water had frozen, trapping conjure bones, animal and human. At the porch’s edge was a massive forge. On the few glowing coals, a bundle of rags that did not burn.

  The bundle moved. Unfolded across the coals into a shriveled old man with wizened face and a nose – that thing that grows without stopping – overhanging his chin. From its nostrils yellow hairs grew tangling in his three-pointed beard.

  He had drawn a yellow witch stripe from hairline down his nose to its tip. Something that had been a veil hung below his neck from the mattings of fur and cloth around his head. He stank of rot and age and urine.

  But his voice was light, breathy, hopeful. The voice of a young man first open to love in the spring. A voice horrible to hear from his gap-toothed mouth when he cried, petulantly, “Who comes?”

  His voice nearly swept away by the howling wind and I was glad to hear it go.

  “Galabes,” said the beggar-knight.

  “Here, over here! Let me touch your faces. Caval! Galabes! Welcome! What creature’s with you?”

  “My daughter, Prince Llew.”

  “Prince?” I said, gawking at this old horror.

  The ghastly creature rolled over on his glowing bed and cried, “The promised child? Bring her to me!”

  Galabes shoved me toward the forge.

  “But this one’s so small!” he cried, prodding me. “Barely ten hands tall. With both my hands I can span her calf. She’s no Arthur!”

  He peered at me through gooey, ruined eyes and said, almost in fear, “No fit daughter for Galabes – she has the mark of Merlin in her ears!”

  “I what?” I cried, covering my ears, doubly sickened and doubly insulted.

  “So had Arthur for whom Merlin was a second father,” Galabes said. “This girl is Arthur’s spawn. She’s a great king’s daughter and fit to be a great queen herself.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Trash is trash and she is trash. A few drippings from a king’s passage through his realm doesn’t make the fighting queen we need.”

  “Who says I’m to be any kind of queen?” I said.

  “Shut up,” Galabes said, slapping me aside.

  The silent hound put its silence on me.

  The haggard prince said, with sudden greed in his boy’s voice, “What’s the bargain you’ve brought her here to make with me? What will you pay me for this new failure?”

  I started to shout but the dog silenced me again.

  “I sell her to you, Prince, for the swordmaking season for three gold coins and a promise.”

  I shoved aside the hound’s silence and cried, “Is that what you want me to be? From a queen’s slave to this monster’s slave? I won’t…”

  Galabes slapped me aside again. I wiped away lip blood and this time kept my silence.

  Prince Llew swaddled himself in his robes where he sat among the last glowing coals and asked, in suspicion, “What promise?”

  “The first sword she makes is to be hers,” Galabes said.

  “This scrawny? This infant? This is no creature to wield a tempered blade!”

  “How else can you fill your winter but in dreaming the making of her blade?”

  “I’m no self-pitying hound, Sir Beggar,” said Llew, spit foaming from his mouth. “I’ve swords enough to plan. I need no more, not one destined for a girl-child who looks too much like Merlin and feels too little like Arthur. Get away. Let me sleep away the season.”

  Llew rolled over on the coals, wrapped himself in a leather sheet, and closed his eyes for sleep.

  The howl of the cold wind rose around us.

  Now I spoke for myself, angry at this newest desperate twist of my Fate: “I’m the daughter of the High King, Lord Prince,” I shouted at him, “and I demand my sword.”

  “Do you?” he said, sneering beneath closed eyes.

  “I’ve gold for it. Arthur’s gold. From his hand to me.”

  That caused Prince Llew to open his eyes.

  He stared at Galabes but said to me, in the sweet young man’s voice, “I heard you wheezing half the distance up my stairs. You haven’t the arm or leg to swing one of my swords. How can a spindly creature like you make one?”

  “I’ll have my sword. I’ll pay for it. But not a bit more than one gold coin.”

  “Oh, you’re arrogant enough to be Arthur’s brat,” said Llew, almost laughing.

  He turned his ghastly face to me from where he sprawled on his smoldering bed. In the glow of the coals he had the face of a demented demon.

  “To Hell with gold, child. I’ll have your soul for payment if it suits me!”

  “My soul? Jesu and Woden, help me!” I cried.

  The old monster laughed and spat and made the coals sizzle around him.

  Galabes said, “One gold coin is the destined value of her blade, Prince. She’ll have it for that price or I’ll be cursed by all the too-many gods. Make it for her.”

  “The gods and goddesses?” Llew said. “More surprises! When have gods and goddesses frightened you, Sir Beggar?”

  His young man’s light voice broke into a cackle.

  Galabes held up Arthur’s Jerusalem coin.

  The wind ceased to howl.

  The withered old prince scrambled out of his glowing bed. “For a girl who offers me such a coin, I’ll teach her to make a queen of swords to make her queen of a new world!”

  Llew grabbed for the coin.

  “I don’t want her queen of any world,” Galabes said, holding back the coin. “I want her to return to us a king. Make her a sword that can call out of limbo the High King.”

  “If I could do that I’d have done it!” cried Llew’s young voice, suddenly wretched. “How do you think I can do it now?”

  “You were never before paid this coin,” said Galabes. “You never before were commanded to make a sword for this child.”

  Llew took the coin gently, hands trembling, tears in his fogged eyes.

  “A great sword is only part of the magic. It’s the spirit of the man or woman who holds the sword that can bring us Arthur. Can this filthy, wasted creature really do it for us?”

  “She’s Arthur’s daughter – who else might? She’s almost a woman. At the New Year she’ll be fifteen when I expect her to kill an enemy and become a knight. In the killing I’ll know if she has the power to find Arthur.”

  “Kill someone?” I cried.

  “What else will you do with your prize sword, you idiot?” said Galabes.

  Prince Llew said to Galabes, “You’ll do all that must be done, invest all your meager treasure, steal my time and my swords from me, to make this filthy creature a champion. But you won’t know if she can be our king’s savior until she kills a man?”

  “What else can I do? I’m weary of all this. I’ve struggled too long. I gamble it all on her.”

  “But you can lose everything! I can lose all my winter’s dreaming. You must be mad!”

  “She gave you Arthur’s coin,” said Galabes.

  The old man reached out a gnarled hand, threw open my tunic, and grabbed my breasts with a young man’s hot hands and made me jump and squawk.

  “She’ll never be fifteen!” the prince cried in sudden misery. “She’s too weak. She’s too stupid to live until the sword is finished. She’ll be dead by springtime. The winter will kill her. The mountains will kill her. You will kill her. Or your damn hound. What of all my dreams then? What of my wasted dreaming?”

  I jerked away from the old, blind monster and arranged my clothes and was ready to spit but the hound demanded I keep a furious silence.

  “When the sword is done,” said Galabes, with a voice like the awful banging of a sword on a shield, “she will be a thousand years old and the breaker of worlds. That’s my guarantee, Prince, or you can have all my blood for your tempering baths.”

  “What do you mean, a thousand years old?” I said.

  “The quest?” whispered Prince Llew, astonish
ed. “You’ve chosen this one for the quest? Great Don, is the world really so desperate we’ve only this forgotten spittle of a dead king to save us?”

  “She must be what she must be,” said Galabes, “because I want to die and be done with it all.”

  “You were saved alive out of Camlann for this work!” cried Llew. “You cannot die too soon…”

  “The checkered shield is filled up,” said Galabes.

  “All my Lords!” groaned the prince. “She makes up its last square?”

  “She wins or the world dies again.”

  “What checkered shield?” I said. “How can this world die?”

  The wind that had been still and silent began to hiss past us.

  Sudden bright calculation flashed across Llew’s cataracted eyes.

  He said, “All right, for the world’s last chance, give me two silvers, the fair price of a skinny girl who’ll be a skinny woman when the season opens and a skinnier antique when the sword is done. Two silvers for the work and for the corner I’ll give her to sleep and the bones she’ll gnaw with my dogs. Plus the Jerusalem coin to buy her own sword.”

  “I’m satisfied with that,” Galabes said.

  “I’m to eat with his dogs?” I said.

  “And two sides of beef,” Llew said, “and the vegetables you always seem to scour from the villages to the south. With the usual Mosella wine for the tempering bath.”

  “For you to guzzle down, you mean. Is that all, Prince of Thieves?” said Galabes.

  “Out of my generosity, yes. But the girl isn’t acceptable to me, Jerusalem coin or not, unless she comes to me in the spring with muscle on those brittle bones.”

  “Brittle bones?” I cried. “I’m strong as any other slave in Carbonek Castle!”

  “Muscle on the girl, agreed,” Galabes said to Llew. “But one side of beef, two lambs alive, the vegetables, and Mosella.”

  “Goat, not lamb. Three, all female, by the rule. I love milk.”

  “Agreed, Prince Milk Drinker.”

  Llew now turned to me and said, “My last demand, you forgotten drip from Arthur’s loins, is for you.”

  “But I don’t have any goats or beef to give you,” I said.