Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (2 page)
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Authors: Diana L. Paxson
BOOK: Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon
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POWERS
HONORED AT AVALON
HONORED BY THE TRIBES
HONORED IN THE LANDS OF THE MIDDLE SEA
PEOPLES
PLACES
HONORED AT AVALON
Banur—the four-faced god, destroyer/preserver; ruler of Winter
Caratra—daughter or nurturing aspect of Ni-Terat, the Great Mother. Venus is Her star
Manoah—the Great Maker, Lord of the Day, identified with the Sun; ruler of Summer
Nar-Inabi—“Star-Shaper,” god of the night, the stars and the sea; ruler of Harvest time
Ni-Terat—Dark Mother of All, Veiled aspect of the Great Mother, goddess of the Earth; ruler of Planting time
“Achi”—Exalted or Enduring One, used as a title of respect or a name for the goddess of upwelling power
Achimaiek—“Grandmother,” Crone Face of the Goddess
The Chiding One—proto-goddess later called Ceridwen
Guayota—the Evil One, appears as a dog
Magek—the Sun god
Apollon—Apollo
Arei—Ares
Athana—Athena
Castor and Pollux—twin demigods, sons of Zeus (also the names given by Velantos to his war axes)
Diwaz—Zeus
Epaitios—Hephaestus
E-ra—Hera
Ereias—Hermes
Keraunos—Thunderer (Zeus)
Lady of the Doves—Aphrodite
Lady of the Forge—an aspect of Athena
Paion—Apollo
Posedaon Enesidaone (Earthshaker)—Poseidon
Potnia—“the Lady,” a general goddess-title
Potnia Theron—Lady of the Beasts, or Nature
Ai-Akhsi—People of the Ram
Ai-Giru—People of the Frog
Ai-Ilf—People of the Boar
Ai-Siwanet—People of the Hawk
Ai-Ushen—People of the Wolf
Ai-Utu—People of the Hare
Ai-Zir—People of the Bull
Akhaeans—the people of the Peloponnese
Danaans—peoples of southern Greece
Dorians—peoples of northern Greece
Elder Folk—people of the oldest blood of the Island of the Mighty, now living on the edges of the arable land; includes the people of the Lake Village and the moors of Belerion
Eraklidae, Children of Erakles—the Dorians, said to be descended from the offspring of Heracles
The Tribes—dominant culture of the Island of the Mighty
Ti-Sahharin—the Sacred Sisters, priestesses to the tribes
Tuathadhoni—proto-Celtic people north of Danube Plain
Aman river—the Avon that flows through Wiltshire and Dorset
Amanhead clanhold—Galid’s home
Akhaea—the Peloponnese and Central Greece
Akhsian—territory of the Ai-Akhsi—the Dales, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria
Argolid—the plain below Argos, including Mykenae and Tiryns
Azan—the “Bull-Pen,” territory of the five clans of the Ai-Zir—Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucester, Oxfordshire
Azan-Ylir—Center of Azan, hold of the Henge Plain clan—modern Amesbury
Barrow of the Three Queens—Three Spinsters’ dolmen, Devon
Belerion—an area in Utun—southern end of Cornwall
Bhagodheunon—Dun of the Beeches, near Wurzberg, Germany
Carn Ava clanhold—Avebury
City of Circles (old Zaiadan)—located between modern Heligoland and Eiderstedt on the Jutland coast
Girun—territory of the Ai-Giru—Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk (Anglia)
Gorsefield—Shovel Down, near Chagford, Devon
The Henge—Stonehenge
Hidden Realm—Faerie
Hyperborea—Britain and Scandinavia, the country beyond the north wind.
Ilifen—territory of the Ai-Ilf, the Midlands, Warwick-, Derby-, Lincoln-, Leicestershires
Isle of the Mighty, Isle of Tin, Hesperides—Great Britain
Khem—Egypt
Korinthos—Corinth, Greece
Maiden Circle—Merry Maidens, near Penzance, Cornwall
Maidenhills—near Five Knolls tumulus, on the Ridgeway
Mykenae—Mycenes, Peloponnese, Greece
Nemea—northern Peloponnese, Greece
New Troia—lands held by descendants of Brutus of Troia, Kent, Sussex, Hampshire
Sabren river—Severn
Siwan—territory of the Ai-Siwanet, lands north of the Cheviot Hills
Springs of Sulis—Bath
The Summer Country—the Vale of Avalon
Three Alders—Tewkesbury
The Lead Hills—the Mendips, Somerset
Tiryns—ancient citadel outside of Nafplion, Greece
The Tor—Glastonbury Tor, Somerset
Troia—Troy
Ushan—Ai-Ushen territory, Wales
Utun—territory of the Ai-Utu, Devon and Cornwall
The Wombhill—Silbury Hill, Avebury
PROLOGUE
Morgaine speaks:T
hey say that the old sleep little, as if they have no need of rest with the body’s last sleep so near. Whether it is age or the weight of memory that keeps me restless, at night my sleep is broken, and I rise early. This morning I left my bed without waking my maidens to walk by the Lake just at that misty hour between the dark and the dawning, when the birds sing forth their promise that the light will return. As the first rays of the sun glimmered through the clouds, a gleam of light pierced the waters, and for a moment I saw the blazing length of the Sword.
hey say that the old sleep little, as if they have no need of rest with the body’s last sleep so near. Whether it is age or the weight of memory that keeps me restless, at night my sleep is broken, and I rise early. This morning I left my bed without waking my maidens to walk by the Lake just at that misty hour between the dark and the dawning, when the birds sing forth their promise that the light will return. As the first rays of the sun glimmered through the clouds, a gleam of light pierced the waters, and for a moment I saw the blazing length of the Sword.
Time converged around me, and once more I was in the Sacred Barge of Avalon, and Arthur lay dying in my arms. Lancelet cast Excalibur into the Lake and saw it received by the Lady. My breath stopped as I waited to see if Her hand would reappear, returning the Sword from the depths to choose a new King to save Britannia.
Vision followed vision, but what I saw was fire—the metal first forged in the fires of heaven, hailed as a thing of power by the folk who dwelled on the chalk before ever a Druid or Adept from the drowned islands came to these shores. I saw the fires of the forge in which a master smith, fleeing his people’s doom, had made it into a sword to fit the hand of a king. Hidden and renewed, broken and reforged, in the time of Britannia’s greatest need it had returned to bring victory.
I stared, and clearing vision showed me the surface of the Lake gray and still once more.Then I wept, and even that image blurred.The dark people of the hills who had been the Sword’s keepers were gone.Water, not fire, hid the blade Arthur wielded, and there was no king of the ancient line to call it forth again. The gleam that I had seen had been the leap of a fish, no more.
And yet as I began to walk again I realized that the tears in my eyes were not from despair. When Excalibur went into the Lake, I knew it for the end of an Age, the loss of all that I had loved. And yet behind its veil of mist, Avalon endures. The star-steel was only metal until the skill of a smith and the passion of a priestess en souled it. What they did in those days, when the world they knew seemed doomed, may be done again if the Lady of the Forge takes up her hammer once more.
The Sword is gone, but hope does not die.
ONE
F
ire.
ire.
The acrid reek of burning thatch catches in her throat; then smoke sets
her coughing, panic flaring along her limbs as red light flickers across the floor. She snatches up the wailing child. The hide across the door is wrenched away. Beyond, she glimpses figures and the gleam of blades.
her coughing, panic flaring along her limbs as red light flickers across the floor. She snatches up the wailing child. The hide across the door is wrenched away. Beyond, she glimpses figures and the gleam of blades.
A woman screams with a shrill intensity that cuts across the clash of bronze weapons and the battle cries. The scream is her own, and yet the self that knows this is somehow detached from the hot breath of the flames.The baby coughs and struggles, strong limbs, strong spirit fighting to survive. A roof beam crashes across the doorway and she whimpers, wracked by an anguish beyond her body’s pain. She stares through the flames, seeking an escape, and enemy faces leer back at her. She recoils and sinks to the floor, smoke stealing her breath as a cry severs soul from sense—“So dies the Son of a Hundred Kings!”
And awareness whirls outward—she sees the thatched roofs of the royal enclosure collapsing as the fire spreads; the bull horns mounted above the great gate crash down. The bodies of warriors, startled naked from sleep, lie scattered on the bloody ground as enemies pile up the looted cauldrons of bronze, the fine weavings, the cups and ornaments of gold.
Time speeds, and the charred timbers of Azan-Ylir become sodden lumps that are soon covered by green. But the flames spread, and the Ai-Giru, the Ai-Ilf, the Ai-Utu, and then the Ai-Akhsi and the Ai-Ushen and even the Ai-Siwanet far to the north are engulfed in turn.The tribes of the Island of the Mighty tear at each other’s throats like starving dogs as generations pass. And when ships with painted sails approach the white cliffs of the island, there is no one to face the fair-haired warriors who leap onto the sand, their striped and chequered garments swirling about their knees. They rampage across the countryside, burning whatever the earlier wars have left, and the songs, the arts, the wisdom of the Seven Tribes are as if they had never been.
“Goddess, what can save us?” her spirit cries.
And in answer she hears a call, “From the stars will come the Sword of the King!”
“LADY, ARE YOU ILL? What’s wrong?”
Shuddering, Anderle opened her eyes. Kiri was bending over her, her old face creased in concern. Smoke hung in the air, but it carried the sharp scent of burning charcoal, not thatch . . . not the smell of roasting flesh. She caught her breath, fixing her gaze on the soot-blackened ceiling of the smithy on the Maiden’s Isle, and trees and sunlight on the green peak of the Tor.
Summer had come at last to the marshlands. For the moment, the clouds had retreated, and everything living made the most of Manoah’s light. An exultant tide of greenery choked the watercourses and hung above the pools; insects hummed in the humid air.
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