Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (14 page)

“ ‘ Woodpecker,’ you call me!” he blurted. “Who gave me that name, and when?
Who am I?
”

He knows!
thought Anderle, mind racing in speculation. Had someone told him of the prophecy that the son of Uldan would return to save his people?

“Has someone said that you have another name?” she asked, playing for time to let her speeded heartbeat slow, and like an echo heard,
“I know the name you had before you were born,”
a phrase from the Mysteries. And was not the purpose of one’s life the manifestation of that primal identity?

“No one had to tell me,” he said quickly, but his flush told her that
something
that started him down this path. “I don’t know if I have another name, but I have only to look in the reflecting pool to see that I am no child of the Village. They should have called me ‘Cuckoo,’ ” he added bitterly. “Where did you find the chick you put into Redfern’s nest?”

Anderle sighed. At least she could stop wondering how to tell the boy about his heritage. She should tell him to sit, but she was not sure he could bend without falling down.

“I suppose that we should have told you before, but you must understand—you are still a child. We did not think you would understand.”

Try me—
said his answering glare, and for a moment someone much older looked out of his deep-set eyes.

“You do have another name,” the priestess said then. “It is Mikantor.”

He blinked, trying to process that information. “That is not a name from the Tribes,” he said at last.

“Your mother was my cousin Irnana. Like me, she came of the sacred line of Avalon that goes back to the People of Wisdom who came here from across the sea.”

“Then why pretend I was a child of the Lake?” he exclaimed. “Why—” He stopped short, staring. “The lady Irnana was married to the king of the Ai-Zir,” he said slowly. “I have heard that tale. He died when Galid opened the gates to the Ai-Ushen, and his lady burned with their child. . . .”

“So it is said,” Anderle agreed. “But I got you away. Galid knows that you lived, but not what became of you afterward.”

“Then it is because of him that my parents died.”

What,
she wondered, had the boy heard? “It is, indeed. So we must keep you hidden as long as we can.” That would not be long, she thought, seeing already beneath the soft contours of childhood a hint of the stronger features he would have as a man. Though they had been refined by mixing with the blood of Avalon, he was still going to have the look of old Uldan. “It’s as well that you know now. There are things you will need to learn if you are to defeat him. Your cousin Cimara has no brothers. As her closest kin, you have the best right to lead the Ai-Zir.”

“What if that’s not what I want to do?” he said mutinously. “It seems to me that you have all made very free with my destiny.”

“You are the Son of a Hundred Kings!” she cried, temper snapping at last. “Azan is only the beginning. In times to come a Defender will be needed to lead all the tribes. The gods tormented me with visions until I went to Azan-Ylir to save you. It is they who have given you a hero’s destiny. All I have done since then has been to make sure you live long enough to claim it!”

She saw him recoil and took a deep breath, fighting for calm. He could not know how she had suffered on that journey. It must be hard enough for him to assimilate the facts—it was far too soon to expect him to show gratitude.

“You are overwhelmed,” she said, “and you have reason. I will leave you here to think about it. You are excused from lessons for the rest of the day.”

WOODPECKER OPENED HIS EYES to a misty twilight. He was leaning against something hard. A dozen paces away he saw an upright stone about half his height that seemed to glow from within. Others stood to either side. It was the stone circle on top of the Tor.

He remembered climbing the hill and speaking with Lady Anderle, and then she had left and he had sat down because his legs would not support him anymore. Images from that encounter surfaced, dim and confused as memories from a dream. Once more he heard the Lady of Avalon calling him the “Son of a Hundred Kings . . .” Certainly
that
memory had come from a dream. Perhaps he was dreaming still. The top of the Tor was always a little uncanny, but this did not look quite like the world he knew.

He got to his feet. The Vale of Avalon lay before him, a marvelously variegated tapestry of marsh and meadow and woodland that, like the stones, seemed lit from within. He could see the seven sacred islands clearly, though from here they seemed no more than radiant green hills in a landscape whose proportion of land to water was far greater than he remembered.

How long had he slept? He could not see the sun, but perhaps it had just gone down, for the sky had that soft radiance that held the memory of light. But as he turned, his skin chilled, for the light to the east and to the west was the same. Where was he?
When
was he? He had heard tales of folk who wandered into the Hidden Land and when they returned found everyone they loved long dead and themselves no more than a distant memory.

He should have known better than to fall asleep in the circle. He should—He turned again and sighed with relief, for the shiny lady was standing there. He stifled a laugh, realizing how long it had been since he had thought of Anderle by that name. And then the Lady smiled, and he realized that although she too was small and dark-haired and beautiful, she did not look like the Lady of Avalon at all.

“Be welcome to my country, child of the ancient line—” Her voice held the ripple of water and the lilt of birdsong.

Without intending it he found that he had fallen to his knees. He could see now that instead of priestess-blue she was wearing a garment of pale doeskin, and her waving hair was crowned with summer flowers.

“Will you give me your name?” Once more she smiled.

He blinked, aware that like eating the food of the Otherworld, giving out that information might mean more than it appeared. But just now he did not care. “The Lady of Avalon called me Mikantor.”

“And what do you call yourself?”

“I do not know.”

“Then I will call you Osinarmen, for that was your true name when I knew you long ago.”

He realized that he was gaping and shut his mouth. If he could say nothing sensible, at least he could avoid sounding like a fool.

“You were older then, grieving because you thought that your only child was dead and your line would fail.” She shook her head. “You children of earth have such strange fears. In my realm we never die, but you who do may still return again. Do you not remember?”

“I am not Osinarmen—” he stammered.

“His blood flows in your veins. You carry his soul.”

And the Word that brought the thunder . . .
he thought with an inner tremor.

“Anderle doesn’t want me to be a priest,” he replied, although another part of his mind was telling him that this whole conversation belonged to some feverish dream. “She wants me to be a warrior-king.”

“And what do
you
want to do?”

“In this life?” he challenged. This was getting easier, so long as he didn’t think of it as real. He could even allow himself to answer her question. “Keep my people safe, . . .” he said, remembering some of the stories he had heard. “And I suppose it’s my duty to get back at Galid for what he did to my . . . parents.”

“That seems an appropriate ambition for a warrior-king.”

From her tone, he could not tell whether she approved. “Do I have a choice?”

“There is always a choice,” she said gently. “To act as your nature impels you or to refuse the challenge. To stay here with me, or to go back down the hill to embrace your destiny. Be warned, the path I see before you may take you to places you cannot imagine, but if you are true to yourself, you will achieve your goal.”

Now, she
did
sound like Lady Anderle. And with that realization, a longing awoke in him for the honest warmth of a hearth fire and the sight of familiar faces. If she had offered him food, he might have been tempted, even knowing the dangers, but she stood silent, watching him with that same tender smile.

He shrugged. Compared with all the other revelations, to realize that he was a year younger than he had thought was a minor adjustment. Hard as it was to accept that he was the son of King Uldan of the Ai-Zir, to think of himself as the priest Micail who had sung the stones of the great henge into position was stranger still.

“I will go back,” he answered finally. “I don’t believe half of what you have said to me, but I won’t desert the people I love.”

“Then you have my blessing,” she said gently, moving toward him. She scarcely had to bend to kiss his forehead. “And my farewell.”

And then she was gone. Gone too was the strange light that had surrounded them. Woodpecker who was Mikantor stood alone atop the Tor. It was getting dark, but her kiss still burned upon his brow.

SEVEN

L
ook! A sea eagle!”

Woodpecker turned as Tiri touched his arm. Through the fringe of budding willows they could see the bird circling, black and white feathers flickering as they caught the sun. They hunkered down among the twisting trunks, more to stay hidden from any watching eyes on the Tor than from the osprey, whose attention was on the patch of lake gleaming in the watery spring sunlight. As they watched, that keen gaze fixed on a ripple, and then the spread wings tilted and the long glide became a lightning stoop that struck the water in a flurry of spray. A few mighty wing-strokes launched the osprey upward once more, clutching a wriggling stickleback in her talons, and she beat across the marsh toward the Oak Tree Isle.

“We’ll miss
our
breakfast if we don’t go back soon!” muttered the boy. His belly was beginning to remind him how long ago last night’s dinner had been. “I don’t understand why your mother won’t let us have any free time together. We’ve been slogging away at all those extra lessons she added last summer, and we are doing well.”

“I still think you should tell her about the queen of the Hidden Realm,” said Tirilan. As she turned her head, a little wind stirred the branches and let a dappling of sunlight through to play on her amber hair. After his encounter with the Otherworldly Lady, Woodpecker’s standards for “shiny” had been considerably raised, but he saw some of that light in Anderle when she put on her robes to conduct a ritual, and sometimes he sensed the same glimmer around Tirilan.

“She rules every other part of my life,” he said mutinously, stabbing a piece of broken branch into the muddy ground. “She told the priests she had a vision that I should get special training. I’ve heard them congratulating her on my improvement. If I tell her what the queen said, she’ll try to turn me into a priest or make me learn the genealogies of the Sea Kings as well as those of the Ai-Zir. Don’t you tell—”

“I’ve sworn a solemn oath to keep your secret, Mikantor . . .” she reproved.

“Don’t call me that.”

“It is your name—”

“A dangerous name, until I am old enough to defend it,” he replied.

“I know, but if you never think about it, you’ll never grow into it. That other name she said—that was another life, another man. You have to find your own path. My mother is determined to make me a priestess, but I think your task is more important, and I will help you any way I can.”

He dropped the stick and met her steady, searching gaze. Nothing that had been said to him by Lady Anderle, or even by the queen of the Hidden Realm, had shaken him like this simple declaration.

“If you believe in me . . . that much, I swear to do my best to be . . . a king.” Suddenly self-conscious, he looked away. “But I can’t do anything if I starve,” he added brightly. “Let’s get back before the porridge is all gone!”

 

 

 

ANDERLE TOOK A DEEP breath as Badger dug the long pole into the lake bed and propelled the narrow dugout across the water. It was one of those days that in recent years had come even in summer, when the morning mist clung to the reeds until past noon, veiling the distinctions between air and water and solid ground until crossing the Lake felt like a visionary journey through the Otherworld. She had forgotten how much she enjoyed the stately rhythm of this progress. Behind her, old Kiri, who did not enjoy being on the water, gripped the boat’s sides. It would be pleasant to spend a whole afternoon simply sliding across the smooth water, but she only had the opportunity when she was on her way somewhere, usually worrying about whatever she would have to do when she got there.

Badger’s face gave her no reassurance that this trip would be any different. He had come to the Tor that morning with the news that Willow Woman was sick with some illness they had never seen before. Kiri had argued that
she
was the community’s most experienced healer, and there was no need for the Lady of Avalon to leave her duties on the isle. But Anderle, remembering the many times Willow Woman had helped her, knew that she must go, especially if this sickness proved to be beyond Kiri’s skill.