Blood and Iron (52 page)

The two men fell into step among the dark and the silvery boles, the rustle of beech leaves counterpoint to each stride. Keith knew he was being outwaited, and didn't intend to be the first to speak, but Murchaud had the patience of a cat to go with his pale, cunning eyes. At last, Keith sighed and gave in. “You wished to speak with me, my lord duke?”

“Please,” Murchaud said. “Call me by my name. We are related by matrimony after all, and it is a rare enough pleasure to hear my name spoken.” A pause, which Keith did not fill. “You know I was the husband of the former Queen?”

“And yet she sent you to the teind.”

“No,” Murchaud said, studying his flawlessly manicured nails. “I had a lover. She sent my lover. But he had had dealings with the Morningstar in the past, and I could not permit that one to claim him again.”

“He?”

“Does that surprise you, Sir Wolf?”

Keith looked him up and down, considering. “I don't hold it against you, if that's what you mean. So she sent your lover to Hell out of jealousy?”

“Nay,” Murchaud said, shaking his head. “Out of need. He is a poet. He was a favorite of hers.”

“. . . Cairbre?”

That drew a short bark of a laugh. “Cairbre's former student. A stolen poet, a mortal man.”

“And what became of him, after you went to Hell in his place? He did not come to the crossroads to pull you down?”

“No.” Murchaud gave over his perusal of his fingernails and let his hands drop to his sides. The sleeves of the surcote he wore over his black chain hauberk fell to cover them. “He followed me.” An expressive shrug. “But it is different to be a guest in Hell rather than a captive. So I should say that I
have
a lover, not that I
had
one . . .”

Keith turned to stare at the iron spiral laddering into the sky, and could not keep the coldness from his tone. “You have many lovers, it seems.”

“I have many liaisons,” the Elf-knight answered, unperturbed. “I have one lover.”

“And are you here now by your own choice, or by the Prince of Hell's? Or perhaps I should say, how is it that one once given in the teind is free to walk the earth again?”

“This is not the earth.”

“Nevertheless.” They exchanged a smile, understanding one another, and walked on. The ground was springy, worm-honeycombed under the rustling leaves.

“Ah. Now that is a complicated question.” Murchaud's broad gesture took in the beechwood, the glade beyond, the valley down to the furrowed earth beside the bridge to mortal realms. “Did you know that stands of quaking aspen are all one plant? They connect underground like horsetail ferns, out of sight, unseen. The trunks may be damaged, but the parent organism survives and regrows, for thousands—perhaps millions—of years.”

“These are beeches,” Keith said. “Quaking aspens are a New World tree.”

“Irrelevant to my point,” Murchaud answered with a smile.

“You're constructing an analogy.”

“Indeed,” he said, pleased. “Thus it is with the Morningstar. You cannot hope to comprehend what lies beneath the surface of his plotting and counterplotting.”

“But you're going to tell me anyway?”

“Hah! I can impart no such enlightenment. There is a geas.”

“There always is. Is this your roundabout way of telling me that you are here in the service of Lucifer, Murchaud?”

“No. It is my way of suggesting to you that I am here of my own free will, and went to Prometheus as an agent of Hell.”

Keith swallowed. “How does one return from the tithe?”

Murchaud turned his face up to the sunlight. “One is permitted to leave. The Morningstar is not such a bad master. ”

“So what does he want?”

“What we all want. The love of a just and generous Deity. Not to be cast out of Heaven, and the sight of God.”

It should have surprised Keith to hear an Elf-knight speak such words so easily. But really, little was surprising anymore.

Arthur crossed the vale toward me and I stood up to meet him, untangling my hand from Ian's. He smiled at me as I went, and Hope smiled too. I forced one in return and went to talk to Arthur. “I'm coming with you,” I said as I pulled the baldric off my shoulder and offered him the blade.

“I can't allow it,” he said.

I smiled. “You can't prevent it. Do you know how to find her cave?”

“The Merlin will show me. I spoke with her.”

“And I've spoken with her since, Arthur. We won't intervene. But Carel and I will come and bear witness to this thing you do.”

He shook his head, crow's-feet in the corners of faded blue eyes. His beard seemed more gray through the red in the few days since he had awakened, and he looked tired. “I will not risk your life, Your Majesty.”

I couldn't remember the last time I'd lain down to rest. My wedding night? The green power of Annwn filled me and lightened my step. I rubbed my aching arm. “My life is mine to risk.”

He raised the hand that didn't cradle sheathed Excalibur, and stopped. He studied my face, Arthur, King of Britain, and let a slow breath trickle out of his nostrils. “It will be as you wish it. Get your things.”

The three of us paused by the entrance of the cavern and I smiled up at the blooming and twining vines. As gnarled and thorny as the black iron bridge, they still put me in mind of something else entirely. “Third time's the charm,” I whispered.

Carel pushed the vines aside for Arthur and me. “Aren't Kings for slaying dragons?” she asked.

He laid a hand on the hilt of Caledfwlch in its ill-fitting sheath. “There are many sorts of dragons,” he answered, and went forward into the darkness as if without fear.

Carel and I shared a look, and she shrugged and followed him. I came up beside her, briefly laying a hand on her arm. She said nothing, and I answered the same way.

We followed the sinuous underground highway down and down, through the mist and the darkness, aided as before by a conjured light. I let it fail when we rounded the corner into flame, and I could feel Carel trembling beside me. Her last trip here had put the fear of Mist in her, as well. “Be of good courage,” Arthur said without turning. I wondered how he knew.

Because he's a King, of course.
I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, and we walked up to the end of the tunnel and stood three abreast, looking down into the cavern of the Mother of Dragons. She lay silent, her chin on her knuckles, and I felt the heat rising off her. Arthur blinked and ducked his head, resting his chin on his chest. I saw him square his shoulders.
He means to die,
I realized.
That's what he meant about sacrifices. That's why he didn't take the scabbard.

Arthur Pendragon opened his eyes and drew his storied blade into his strong right hand. “Mist,” he called into the echoing spaces. “I've come to help you.”

She lifted her head—now a serpent's, now a lizard's, now a horse's head festooned with tendrils and streamers, red flesh glaring under shifting black scales like Ian's heart shining between my fingers, like magma gleaming beneath the spreading edges of the world, somewhere too far under the sea for the water to have a hope of boiling. “Help . . .
me
?”

Mockery and disbelief. Amusement and a smile. “Arthur Pendragon. Best beloved of all my servants. And the Merlin. And you, Queen with no Name. Greetings and welcome. Few come to see me a second time, or . . . a third.”

“Show me your chain and I will strike it off,” Arthur said. “I've come back to you for a reason, Mother of Dragons—mistress of worms and serpents, from the smallest crawlers that renew the loam to the world-girdling monster devouring his own tail.”

“Mother of more than Dragons, Dana,” I said.

I swear that Dragon looked me in the eye and winked. “My chain?” She leaned back on her haunches, and turned away.

I sat down on the floor.

The black iron ring sunk into the flesh on both sides of her spine must have been as thick as Arthur's powerful thigh, and each link of the chain that braced it was the size of the span of a big man's arms. “It would cripple me to tear it loose,” Mist said. “I'd recover, of course. Your kind would not survive my struggles. Think better of your intention, King.”

Arthur swallowed and held up his black-bladed sword. “Excalibur,” he said. “Caliburn. A sword made of iron fallen from a star.”

“I know it,” Mist said, licking her lips. “You couldn't get close enough to use it, mortal King.”

Arthur pressed his free hand to his side, just below the rib cage. He closed his eyes. I flinched, and thought of boar spears and bear spears. They have a crosspiece lashed on them, to keep the beasts from charging up the length of the spear and slaughtering their murderers . . .

... as Arthur had done, when Mordred, mounted, had driven his lance through the armor and into the side of the unhorsed King. “I can endure it,” Arthur said softly. “Show me the way down.”

Carel reached out as if to lay her right hand on Arthur's shoulder, and I caught hers in mine. She looked at me, startled, and I nodded, and couldn't say a word.
This is why he's remembered.

“Arthur Pendragon,” the Dragon said. “Bear of Britain. Aptly you earn your name.” She gestured with one streamered wing, tracing a line in the cavern wall. Living rock flowed like water, reshaped itself into steep and narrow stairs. “You two”—her eyes gleamed like fractured crystal—“stay where you are.”

Carel nodded. I held tight to her elbow, and she squeezed my hand. Almost languidly, Arthur turned and smiled at each of us before he started down the stairs.

It seemed to take him an eternity to travel that distance and then wade across a sea of gold and jewels, chalices and coins and crowns undamaged by the weight and flame-heat of the Dragon.
More magic, of course.
He strode along the wall, as far from Mist as possible, and she lay down again and rested her head on the gold, her wings spread wide. She seemed to grow darker, blacker, as I watched, shrinking slightly, as if she cooled and solidified.

“Sweet hellfire,” I whispered as Carel squeezed my hand.

“I can't watch,” she said.

“You have to write the songs about it, Merlin. You will watch.” I made my voice cool and crystalline, and she seemed to draw strength from it. “And I will watch with you,” I continued, and tasted blood as Arthur came forward and set his boot upon the extended leather of Mist's obsidian wing. “Don't move an inch,” he said to the Dragon, “or you'll throw me.” We heard him clearly amid the echoes of his voice, which seemed very small and far away.

I saw him flinch, but he didn't pull his foot back, and a moment later I smelled scorching leather. “Jesus,” Carel whispered, and I bit back bile. I didn't bother to remind her.

Moving quickly, careful of his balance, Arthur threaded the length of Mist's wing to her spine, and made his way down the length of her back, walking between the jagged bony spikes that decorated her hide. I could see the smoke rising now, and imagined that any moment flames would lick the soles of his feet. He limped, but kept walking, and once he stumbled and slipped and caught one of her spines to right himself. I saw the blood from the wound on his hand and heard him grunt loudly, although I could only imagine the blood running into his beard as he bit his lip, only imagine the lines of concentration creasing his brow.

“Arthur.” Something stung my eyes, something cold and hot. I smelled searing flesh now, and Carel whined like a dog in pain. It might have taken a minute. I would have sworn it took him an hour.

Arthur reached the anchor point of the chain. It was almost invisible against the roughened char of Mist's dark hide, and the rest of it vanished under the litter of gold and jewels by her feet. He paused, for a moment, and raised Caledfwlch in both hands. Fire kissed his ankles and trousers. His feet burned in their boots, and he somehow stood, steadying himself on the vast iron ring welded into her spine. He kicked the chain to one side, and I could see why; even with a sword like that, the massive ring was too thick to part with one blow, and he'd have to put all his back behind it to burst the chain. If the blow went through and severed Mist's spine . . .

“For Britain!” he roared, burning, and brought his blade down.

Mist howled and reared up, her blood springing forth and smoking over Caledfwlch, over Arthur's face and hands as the King fell, screaming now that his task was done, sliding down the Dragon's blazing side and—engulfed in flames—tumbling bonelessly the vast, hard distance to lie among the treasure scattered on the floor. The chain slid down beside him and pooled there, bright with the Dragon's blood.

Mist threw her massive head back and bellowed pain, bellowed grief and triumph and fury.

Carel turned to me and buried her face against my neck, but I felt no wetness of tears. I put an arm around the Merlin and watched as Mist remembered and set her pain aside. She turned and breathed over Arthur, a cloud of cooling vapor. The flames flickered and died, but the fallen King did not stir.

Mist raised her head, impassive as dragons are. “Hail, Arthur Pendragon,” she said. “Hail, the Bear of Britain.”

“I can't write this song,” Carel said, helpless.

“You will,” Mist answered, and bowed her head. “Ask me a boon, Queen with no Name, in return for this service. ”

“Destroy the Magi,” I answered promptly.

Mist chuckled. “I won't. But ask another.”

“Will you fight for Faerie, then? Or Hell?”