Sword of Avalon: Avalon

  “Lady, we seek to know the fate of the boy Mikantor. Open your eyes and look into the water. Tell us what you see—”

  For a moment all Anderle saw was the gleam of torchlight on water. Then she was falling into the fire. She gasped, believing that she was back in Azan-Ylir, but this time she too was caught in the flames. Yet she could not pull away, and now she saw that this place was much larger, as if a whole village had been built of stones like the Henge. It was not a village; it was a fortification with mighty walls. But they had not been able to keep out the army that surrounded it, and now it was burning too.

  “Where is Mikantor?” she cried, and what she had thought were stones resolved into a pile of glowing coals in a forge. Within that pulsing glow lay a sword of light. A shadow bulked beyond it; she saw the burly shape of the smith as he lifted it in his tongs and laid it on the granite anvil. Sparks flew as he struck again and again.

  “Before the metal can be shaped it must be heated,” the answer came, “forged and honed before it can serve a king. In fire the old world shall be destroyed and a new one born.”

  The smith lifted the sword, and white fire ran down the blade. He held it out to a hero, crowned with flame. Then there was only Light. Anderle felt herself being swept away. When she could focus again, she was lying back in her chair and her cheeks were wet with tears.

  EIGHT

  Velantos was in the smithy, working on a dagger with a narrow triangular blade, when the new slave came to call him to the king. His arm muscles quivered as he whispered a prayer to the Lady of the Forge and tipped the crucible to let the molten bronze pour smoothly into the mold, but there was no tremor in his hand.

  The smithy was set in the Lower Citadel that had been added to the north wall of the palace at Tiryns when they rebuilt after the great earthquake in his great-grandfather’s day. His workshop was walled on three sides, with doors that opened so that the flames could be fanned by the wind. When it did not blow, the heat could be stifling, but Velantos was accustomed to the sweat that rolled down his broad chest and spattered sizzling into the fire.

  “Lord, the king your father want you—”

  The smith sent him a quick look from beneath bushy brows, suspecting irony, but Woodpecker was new, a lanky adolescent with a jutting nose and hair a little darker than bronze, brought down to the Middle Sea from some impossibly distant northern land. No doubt they had told him that Velantos was the son of the King of Tiryns, but not that his mother had been a weaving woman, little better than a slave herself, who had caught King Phorkaon’s eye as she served in the hall.

  “A moment—” He turned back to the mold, watching carefully as the flicker of flame above the new casting died away.

  “Great lord, he want you now . . .” The slave’s voice wavered, and Velantos realized that despite his height, he was only a lad, still learning the language of his new home.

  “Be easy; if there is delay, I am the one he will blame—” Carefully, the smith set the crucible aside, then lifted the stone mold and set it on the broad rim of the raised hearth. As he straightened, his gaze fell on the niche that held the image of Potnia Athana in her aspect as Lady of Craft, upright in her one-shouldered garment and pointed hat. Broad-shouldered Epaitios brooded from the other wall. Velantos nodded with a respect that had become so ingrained it was instinctive.

  “He say quick,” Woodpecker replied, coloring up to his bronze hair. “A messenger come.”

  And why should that make any difference to me? Velantos stretched muscled arms until the bones in his back clicked. A breath of air drifted through the open door, carrying the scent of baking bread to mingle with the smoke. Though the brightness told him the day was hot, the air seemed refreshing after the heat of the forge. But the lad looked truly anxious, and Velantos had not the heart to worry him further by delay.

  The dagger would cool no more quickly for being watched. Consigning the work to the goddess, he stepped to the corner of the shed and dipped water from the big terra-cotta pithos, pouring it over his head and torso and using a length of rough linen to scrub the worst of the sweat and soot from his body. Another dipperful sluiced back the dark, curling hair that was escaping from the leather thong that tied it back when he was at the forge. His linen kilt hung from a peg. He wrapped it over the loincloth in which he worked and clasped the broad belt around his slim hips. A decade of smithwork had filled out a naturally burly build. Velantos had never taken any prizes at the footraces, but at the Festival Games he was a regular winner in the wrestling, and when the discus was thrown.

  With visible relief, Woodpecker turned to lead the way.

  “Have you seen this messenger?” Velantos increased his pace to match the boy’s long-legged stride.

  “He come from Mykenae, from the Overking.”

  Well, that was not unusual. The kings of Tiryns ruled from a small hill on the fertile plain just above the harbor. The site offered good access to trade and raid, both of which had been a constant in its history. Though Tiryns was older, Mykenae loomed from the knees of the mountains to the north, a stronghold that had never been taken by an enemy.

  But Tisamenos, who ruled there now, was young in both age and power, eager to prove himself worthy of heroic ancestors. He was, in fact, the same age as Velantos. Did King Phorkaon think that youth would speak better to youth? Was that why his father wanted him?

  They crossed the open space in the center of the Lower Citadel and climbed the roadway through the corridor to the great gateway that guarded the citadel’s eastern side. They stepped into the shade beneath the high roof of the passage. The two sets of doors at its end, banded with bronze, were open, and something within him that had been tensed in apprehension began to relax. Whatever news had come with the messenger, there was no imminent danger, or the palace would have been buzzing with armed men, and the great door barred. Up and around they climbed, through court and corridor, until they passed the painted columns of the propylon and emerged into the open air of the outer court.

  The citadel of Tiryns crowned the small hill. Velantos paused a moment to savor the breeze from the bay that sparkled below. Beyond the walls spread the tile-roofed houses of the city, and then the fertile plain, divided into plots of tilled earth or orchards of olive trees and fenced fields green with vines. To east and west, the sheltering circle of the mountains ran down to the sea. It was a good, rich land, and one that many folk had desired. On the summit of the great headland a watch post guarded a beacon, ready to give warning of attack from the sea, as once it had waited to signal the end of the war in Troia.

  At the thought, Velantos felt a flicker of unease once more. Without warriors, what use was warning? The strength of Akhaea was not what it had been before the Overking led the flower of its warriors to Troia. That conflict had left not loot but legends as its most enduring legacy. So many of the heroes who survived the victory had failed to survive their return. Certainly the House of Atreos was diminished. In Mykenae, the grandson of Agamemnon still ruled, but Velantos wondered if even the gods could purify the family from the stain of that bloody kin-strife, wife against husband, mother murdered by son. Surely their blood still polluted the ground.

  “Lord, you must come!” Woodpecker’s touch on his elbow brought Velantos to himself again. He realized that he had been staring unseeing at the shimmer of the sea beyond the wall.

  Light and shade succeeded one another as he led the way between the columns of the smaller entry and across the central court toward the megaron, pausing to honor the sacrificial altar as he passed. He blinked as he came into the shadow of the prodomos, taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust. When he could see the blue rosettes in the frieze that ran along the walls, he passed through the easternmost of the three doorways that led to the megaron.

  One of the four red-painted pillars that supported the ceiling blocked his view of the king, but he could see the messenger, standing between the throne and the great circle of the hearth. A reflexive glance tol
d him that the queen’s seat by the pillar was empty. No doubt she was in her own rooms beyond the hall. Did the easing in tension come from this additional evidence that there was no emergency, or simple relief at not having to meet her flat glare? Perhaps he wronged her—it was well known that Naxomene’s vision was poor, and perhaps she did not see him at all. That was, after all, the way a Royal Woman was expected to view her husband’s chance-got child.

  But the Lady of Tiryns was a priestess of E-ra as well as queen, and the wife of the Cloud Gatherer had a history of hostility to the fruits of her husband’s love affairs. Her hatred had hounded Erakles and driven his children from the land, so that it was a princess of the House of Persaios whose marriage had made the line of Pelops the city’s lords. But E-ra was still Lady of the Palace. Only in the forge did Velantos’ own bright-eyed Lady hold sway.

  Potnia, be with me, he said silently. Grant me the wit to understand and the will to meet whatever test faces me here today. Composing his features, he crossed the stone threshold and entered the room.

  Tall and gaunted now with age, King Phorkaon looked up, greeting him with his usual tentative smile, as if wondering how he could have begotten such a broad-shouldered, burly son. When he was small, Velantos had thought that perhaps the king was right to question. He had always had a fellow feeling for the persecuted Erakles. King Phorkaon was descended from a bastard brother of Atreos, but Erakles was heir to the Perseids, and his descendants were Tiryns’ rightful kings. In his more exalted moments, Velantos had dreamed that his mother’s lover had been Erakles himself, returned to the kingdom he had loved and lost. One day he would stand forth and proclaim that he was a child of the great hero, come back to claim his own. But at other times, when his half brothers had been tormenting him, Velantos would feel gloomily certain that some slave or guest must have begotten him, and not the king at all

  He crossed the patterned tiles and moved around the right side of the hearth to stand before the throne. The messenger must be of some importance, for Phorkaon had put on the cap of kingship, and the fringed wrap that left one bony shoulder bare, and his sword.

  “You have called, my lord, and I am here. What is your need?”

  “The Overking has had strange news. War is brewing to the west of us and in the north. Some say it is only a few ragtag bands of barbarians that are raiding, but others whisper that the Children of Erakles have come at last to reclaim their land.”

  Velantos blinked, hearing that name, but his wildest fantasies had never included a barbarian horde.

  “It may be no more than rumor,” the king went on, “but we should take precautions. Go as my voice to the Overking. You know our strengths. Confer with him on how we may defend this land.”

  Our strengths . . . and our weaknesses . . . thought Velantos. He was the one who supervised the workmen when they repaired the walls, and the one to whom the warriors came to repair a piece of harness or edge a new spear.

  “Alone?” he asked.

  “If Aiaison comes back from Argos before you return I will send him after you. He will need to talk to Tisamenos’ commanders. But for the essentials, yes, you are the one who knows.”

  Velantos bowed, as much in gratitude for that recognition as to cover his unexpected pleasure in receiving it. The arms of the octopus painted on the tile at his feet seemed to flex, seen through unshed tears. However accidental his birth, he was valued. Only now did he realize that he had never been quite sure of that before.

  “I am at your service, but if we are to go now, there is a thing I must finish at the forge.”

  “Nay, nay. The enemy, if there is an enemy, is not at our gates. Finish your work and gather your retinue. I will entertain our guest as he deserves and the god requires.”

  A retinue? Velantos lifted one eyebrow. Apparently the king wished his standing to be clear. “My manservant is ill,” he replied. “May I take the boy?” He nodded toward Woodpecker.

  “Why not? I purchased him for the queen, because I thought his novelty might amuse her, but she does not care for him. If you like him, he’s yours.”

  Velantos cast a quick glance at his new possession and was surprised to see a look of relief in the slave’s dark eyes. Had the woman been so unkind to him?

  “Come then,” he said to the boy. “If you are going to serve me, you may as well begin by learning to assist me in the forge.”

  AS THEY PASSED THROUGH the propylon, Velantos caught the flicker of a gown in the door that led to the women’s quarters, and he turned. It was a purely physical reaction, for his mind was full of calculations, but the motion brought him back to himself and he smiled to see Tanit waiting for him there. In a simple belted robe, with a band of bronze flowers that he had crafted for her holding her dark hair, he found her more beautiful than any court lady in her bodice and tiered skirt sewn with gold.

  “Good morning, little one—” he began, his frown easing into a smile. “I’d hoped we could be together tonight, but the king—”

  “Never mind that,” she interrupted him. “The queen wishes to speak with you.”

  For a moment the conflict between the quickening in his flesh and the chill invoked by the queen’s name held him speechless.

  Tanit’s mouth twitched at the corner, just where he would kiss her when she was slow to warm to him, but she maintained the dignity suitable to the servant of a queen. “She will not eat you, you know—”

  Of that, Velantos had never been quite sure. But he was a man now, not a child. Stiffening his features, he followed the girl into the queen’s megaron. Its plan was the same as that of the king, except that it was smaller, and the hearth was rectangular instead of round. Like her husband’s, Queen Naxomene’s throne was on the eastern side of the room. Over her gown she had put on the robe of the high priestess, and the golden headdress with its pendant lilies bound her brow.

  Clearly, whatever she wanted him for, it was not personal. Whether this was more or less disturbing Velantos could not decide. He made the obeisance due a priestess and stood waiting, trying to read meaning from the sculpted planes of her face, smooth as one of the golden masks that covered the faces of the dead.

  “What did the messenger from Tisamenos have to say?”

  For a moment, Velantos thought of replying that if the king had not thought fit to tell her, it was not for him to say. But it was well known that it was the queen who was the strong one in their partnership, and if she did not know already, surely she would soon. There must be another reason why she was questioning Velantos now. He looked up, disturbed because the dangling ornaments kept him from seeing her eyes.

  “There’s some tale of raiders, but such vermin have always prowled our borders. There is no reason to suppose—”

  “The goddess is uneasy,” the queen interrupted him. “The Children of Erakles trouble the land.”

  “Does she still hate him?” Almost instantly, Velantos regretted the question.

  The golden lilies trembled as a shudder passed through the queen’s frame, and Velantos felt a chill without understanding why.

  When she spoke again, her voice had changed. “Erakles is now a god but his children are men. This enemy is very old, but the war will be new, a kind of fighting that you have never known.”

  Tanit took a quick step forward, then stopped, biting her lip. Abruptly Velantos understood what had happened. He had seen Naxomene carry the goddess before, at the festivals, but there had never been any reason for him to be near. His skin prickled as it did sometimes on days when the wind was high, though the air here was warm and still.

  “Yes, Lady,” he answered her as both goddess and queen. “What would you have me do?”

  “A new war will need new weapons.”

  New weapons? How could he make new weapons when he did not know what the danger was? “I will do what I can,” he whispered.

  “You will—I will make sure of it. That is what I do.” There was something terrifying in her smile. “Knowledge will be gi
ven to you. Epaitios is my son. He will show you what to do.” She sank back against the throne.

  “Go; go quickly,” whispered Tanit as Velantos stood staring. He had never been more glad to obey a woman’s command.

  “YES, THAT ONE—PUT it into the chest—fold it carefully, now!”

  Woodpecker glared at Estaros, the thin and grizzled upper servant who was supervising the packing, and picked up the robe. The man had been yammering at him since morning, as if he should somehow know not only what Prince Velantos would need for his journey but where to find it. Barely a day had passed since he had been transferred to the prince’s service. He was beginning to wonder if his early relief had been a mistake. Would Velantos beat him if he wrinkled a garment? He looked strong enough to do it himself, not like the boy’s second master, or was it the third, who liked to watch as his slaves were whipped by his musclebound bodyguard.

  He shook out the folds of linen, as if by instinct knowing how they should fall, straight across the shoulders so that the garment formed a square and then folded inward so that the design on the back would lie flat. But of course it would be familiar. He had often assisted Larel when he wore such robes in ritual. He banished that memory, then turned the robe and stilled, staring at the emblem embroidered there. It was the head of a bull with curving horns and a sun disk upon its brow.

  Why should he be surprised? These people valued cattle—he had seen the stylized horns set up outside their shrines. It meant nothing that he should find such an image on a princeling’s robes. But for a moment what he had seen was the bull’s head emblem of the Ai-Zir.