Last Sword of Power Read online

  “The story of the betrayal is well known,” she whispered. “Perhaps too well known. But there is nothing base about Revelation. I know. I think you should wait until you can speak with him. Hold your anger.”

  “He was the king’s closest friend,” said Cormac. “The queen’s champion. What can he say to lessen his shame? If he needed to rut like a bull, why did he not choose one of a thousand other women? Why my mother?”

  “I cannot answer these questions. But he can.”

  “That, at least, is true enough,” said Culain, dropping the bundle of dry wood to the grass. Once more he wore the brown woolen habit and carried the wooden staff of Revelation, though this time there was no beard, no lion’s mane of gray hair.

  “What happened to my mother?” Cormac asked once the fire was lit.

  “She died in Sicambria two years ago.”

  “Were you with her?”

  “No; I was in Tingis.”

  “If you were so in love, why did you leave her?”

  Revelation did not reply but lay back, his eyes fixed to the stars.

  “This is not the time,” said Anduine softly, laying her hand on Cormac’s arm.

  “There will never be a time,” hissed the boy, “for there are no answers. Only excuses! I do not know if Uther loved her, but she was his wife. The betrayer knew that and should never have touched her.”

  “Cormac! Cormac!” said Anduine. “You speak as if she were an object like a cloak. She was not—she was a woman and a strong one. She traveled with the Blood King across the Mist and fought the Witch Queen alongside him. Once, when he was a hunted child, she saved him by killing an assassin. Did she not have a choice?”

  Revelation sat up and added wood to the fire. “Do not seek to defend me, Anduine, for the boy is right. There are no answers, only excuses. That is all there is to be said. I wish it were different. Here, Cormac, this is yours.” He tossed the stone and the chain across the fire. “I gave it to your mother a year before you were born; it was what saved you in the cave. It is Sipstrassi, the stone from heaven.”

  “I do not want it,” said Cormac, letting it fall to the ground. He watched with satisfaction as the anger flared in Revelation’s eyes and then saw the iron control with which the warrior quelled it.

  “Your anger I can understand, Cormac, but your stupidity galls me,” said Revelation, lying down and turning his back to the fire.

  5

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING the trio made their way deep into the Caledones mountains, far to the north of the Wall of Hadrian, arriving at a ruined cabin just after noon. The roof had given way, and a family of pack rats nested by the stone hearth. Revelation and Cormac spent several hours repairing the building and cleaning the dust of many years from the floors of the three-roomed dwelling.

  “Could you not use magic?” asked Cormac, wiping sweat and dirt from his face as Revelation packed the roof with turf.

  “Some things are better done with hands and heart,” Revelation answered.

  These were the first words spoken by the two men since the clash in the circle, and once more an uncomfortable silence settled. Anduine was sitting beside the nearby stream, scrubbing rusted pots and carefully removing fungi from the wooden platters Cormac had found in a rotting cupboard. Late in the afternoon Revelation set traps in the hills above the cabin, and after a cool uncomfortable night on the floor of the main room, they breakfasted on roast rabbit and wild onions.

  “To the north of here is a second cabin,” said Revelation, “and close by you will find apple and pear trees. The game is also plentiful higher in the mountains—deer and mountain sheep, rabbits and pigeon. Can you use a bow?”

  “I can learn,” said Cormac, “but I am expert with the sling.”

  Revelation nodded. “It is wise also to learn what plants give nourishment. The leaves of marigold contain goodness, as do nettles, and you will find onions and turnips in profusion in the western valley.”

  “You sound as if you were going away,” said Anduine.

  “I must. I need to find a new stone, for I have little magic left.”

  “How long will you be away?” she asked, and Cormac hated the edge of fear in her voice.

  “Less than a week if all goes well. But I will remain here for a while. There is much to be done.”

  “We do not need you,” said Cormac. “Go when you please.”

  Revelation ignored him but later, as Anduine stripped and dressed the rest of the meat, took him out into the open ground before the cabin.

  “She is in great danger, Cormac, and if you are to protect her, you must make yourself stronger, faster, more deadly than you are now. As matters stand, an old milkmaid could take her from you.”

  Cormac sneered and was about to reply when Revelation’s fist hammered into his chin. The youth hit the ground hard, his head spinning.

  “The Romans call it boxing,” said Revelation, “but it was refined by a Greek called Carpophorus. Stand up.”

  Cormac pushed himself to his feet, then dived at the taller man. Revelation swayed back, lifting his knee into Cormac’s face, and the ground came up at him once more. Blood oozed from his nose, and he had difficulty keeping Revelation in focus. Still he rose and charged, but this time a fist crashed into his belly and he doubled over, all air smashed from his lungs, and lay on the ground battling for breath. After several minutes he struggled to his knees. Revelation was sitting on a fallen log.

  “Here, in these high lonely mountains, I trained your father—and your mother. Here the Witch Queen sent her killers, and from here Uther set out to recapture his father’s kingdom. He did not whine or complain; he did not sneer when he should have been learning. He merely set his sights on a goal and achieved it. You have two choices, child: leave or learn. Which do you make?”

  “I hate you,” whispered Cormac.

  “That is immaterial. Choose!”

  Cormac looked up into the cold gray eyes and bit back the angry words crowding for release. “I will learn.”

  “Your first lesson is obedience, and it is vital. In order to be stronger you must push yourself to the edge of your endurance. I shall ask you to do more than is necessary, though at times you will feel I am being needlessly cruel. But you must obey. Do you understand, child?”

  “I am not a child,” snapped Cormac.

  “Understand this, child. I was born when the sun shone on Atlantis. I fought with the Israelites in the land of Canaan, and I was a god to the Greeks and a king among the tribes of Britannia. My days are numbered in tens of thousands. And what are you? You are the leaf that spans a season, and I am the oak that weathers the centuries. You are a child. Uther is a child. The oldest man in the world is a child to me. Now, if you must hate me—and I fear you must—at least hate me like a man and not like some petulant babe. I am stronger than you, more skilled than you. I can destroy you with or without weapons. So learn, and one day you may beat me … though I doubt it.”

  “One day I will kill you,” said Cormac.

  “Then prepare yourself.” Revelation thrust a long stick into the ground, then a second a foot to the left. “You see that stand of pine on the mountain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Run to it and return here before the shadow touches the second stick.”

  “Why?”

  “Do it or leave this mountain,” said Revelation, standing and wandering away toward the cabin.

  Cormac took a deep breath, wiped the clotting blood from his nose, and set off at an easy lope, the clean mountain air filling his lungs, his legs driving him easily up the mountain trail. Once he was among the trees, he could not see the stand of pine, and he increased his pace. His calves began to burn, but he pushed himself. As the gradient grew ever more steep, his breathing grew faster. He emerged from the trees still a half mile short of the target and staggered to a walk, sucking in great gulps of air. He was tempted to sit and recover his strength or even to return to Revelation and tell him that he had reached the
pine. But he did not. He struggled on and up. Sweat drenched his face and tunic, and his legs felt as if candle flames had been lit inside them when at last he staggered into the grove. Hanging from a branch was a clay jug of water. He drank deeply and set off for the cabin. On the downhill run his tired legs betrayed him. Missing his footing, he stumbled, fell, and rolled down the slope, coming up hard against a tree root, which gouged his side. Up once more, he continued his halting run until he came into the clearing before the cabin.

  “Not good,” said Revelation, staring coolly at the red-faced youth. “It is only two miles, Cormac. You will do it again this evening and tomorrow. Look at your mark.”

  The shadow was three finger breadths past the stick.

  “Your arms and shoulders are strong, but it is strength without speed. How did you build them?”

  Cormac, at last able to excel, moved to a tree and leapt to grab an overhanging branch. Swiftly he raised himself to touch his chin to the branch over and over with smooth, rhythmic movements.

  “Keep going,” said Revelation.

  At the count of one hundred Cormac dropped to the ground, the muscles of his arms burning, his eyes gleaming with triumph.

  “That builds strength but not speed,” said Revelation.

  “It is worthwhile, but it must be complemented with other work. You are powerful for your age, but you are not supple. A swordsman must be lightning-swift.” He took a long whittled stick and held it horizontally between his fingers. “Place your hand over the top of the stick, fingers straight, and when I release it, catch it.”

  “Simple,” said Cormac, holding his hand over the wood and tensing for the strike. Revelation released the stick, and Cormac’s hand swept down, clutching at air.

  “Simple?” echoed Revelation.

  Three times more Cormac attempted to catch the stick and once almost made it, his fingers striking the wood and accelerating its fall.

  “You are too stiff in the hips, and the muscles of your shoulders are tense and therefore immobile.”

  “It is not possible,” said Cormac.

  “Then you hold the stick.” The boy did so, and as his fingers parted, Revelation’s hand dropped like a striking snake when the stick had fallen less than a foot. “Speed, Cormac. Action without thought. Do not concern yourself about catching the stick, merely do it. Empty your mind, loosen your limbs.”

  After some thirty attempts Cormac succeeded. There followed another ten failures. It was galling for the boy, but his will to succeed carried him on. Before the morning was spent he had caught the wood seven times with his right hand and three times with his left.

  Revelation lifted his hand to his face, and his image shifted and blurred, becoming once more Culain of the Silver Lance.

  For an hour more Culain and the tiring youth practiced with swords. Cormac almost forgot his hatred of the tall warrior as he marveled at the man’s natural grace and superb reflexes. Time and again he would roll his wrists, his blade skimming over Cormac’s to hiss to a halt touching the skin of the boy’s neck, arm, or chest.

  Culain lach Feragh was more than a warrior, Cormac realized; he was a prince among warriors.

  But as soon as the session was over Cormac’s hostility returned. Culain read it in his eyes and sheathed his sword, creating once more the silver lance.

  “Take Anduine up into the hills,” he said. “Help her identify the paths.” Turning on his heel, the warrior strode into the cabin, bringing the girl out into the sunlight.

  Cormac took her arm and led her into the trees.

  “Where is the sun?” she asked. “I cannot feel her heat.”

  “Above the woods, shielded by the leaves.”

  “Tell me about the leaves.”

  Bending, he lifted a fallen leaf from the ground and pressed it into her hand. Her fingers fluttered over the surface. “Oak?”

  “Yes. A huge, hoary oak, as old as time.”

  “Is it a handsome tree?”

  “Like a strong old man, grim and unyielding.”

  “And the sky?”

  “Blue and clear.”

  “Describe blue—as you see it,” she said.

  He stopped and thought for a moment. “Have you ever felt silk?”

  “Yes. I had a dress of silk for my last birthday.”

  “Grysstha once had a small piece of silk, and it was wondrous soft and smooth. Blue is like that. Just to look upon it fills the heart with joy.”

  “A sky of silk,” she whispered. “How pretty it must be! And the clouds. How do you see the clouds?”

  “There are few clouds today, and they float like white honey cakes, far away and yet so clear that you feel you could reach out and touch them.”

  “A silk and honey cake sky,” she said. “Oh, Cormac, it is so beautiful. I cannot see it, but I can feel it deep in my heart.”

  “I would cut off my arm to let you see it,” he said.

  “Don’t say that,” she said. “Don’t ever think that I am unhappy because I cannot share your visions. Take me farther up the mountain. Show me flowers that I can touch and smell and describe them to me in silks and honey cakes.”

  Each morning, when his arduous training was completed, Cormac would take Anduine walking through the woods—into hidden glens and hollows and often to a small lake, cool and clear beneath the towering mountains. He would marvel at her memory, for once having walked a path and found landmarks she could touch—a rounded boulder with a cleft at the center, a tree with a huge knot on the bark, a V-shaped root—she would walk it unerringly from then on. Sometimes she could judge the trails by the gradients or, knowing the hour, by the position of the sun as it warmed her face. Once she even challenged Cormac to a race and all but beat him to the cabin, tripping at the last over a jutting root.

  The youth came to love those walks and their conversations. He took joy in describing the flying geese, the hunting fox, the proud longhorn cattle, the regal stags. She in turn enjoyed his company, the warmth of his voice, and the touch of his hand.

  Only on the days when he had failed in tasks set him by Revelation did she find his presence unsettling, feeling his anger and hatred charging the air around her with a tension she had no desire to share.

  “He does it only so that you will improve,” she said one damp morning as they sat beneath an oak, waiting for a shower to pass.

  “He wants to see me fail.”

  “Not so, Cormac, and you know it. He trained your father here, and I would imagine he felt as you do.”

  Cormac was silent for a time, and she felt his emotions soften. His fingers slid across her hand, squeezing it gently. She smiled. “Are you feeling yourself again?”

  “Yes. But I do not understand the man. In the circle he told me to kill you should the demons break through. They did so, but he did not try to kill you. Then he brought us here in a flash of light. Why did he not do it at the start? Then we would not have had to fight the demons at all.”

  “For me that is what makes him great,” said Anduine, leaning in to Cormac and resting her head on his shoulder.

  “He was right. It would be better for me to die than to aid Wotan with my soul. But that is the strategist speaking. When it came to the battle, it was the man who fought it, and he would give the last drop of his blood before taking mine. As to coming here, he could not while the demons lived. All the enemies had to be slain so that none could mark our passing. Had we run here at the start, then they would have followed. As it is, Cormac, one day they will find us.”

  He put his arm around her, drawing her to him. “I, too, would die before allowing them to harm you.”

  “Why?” she whispered.

  He cleared his throat and stood. “The rain is stopping. Let us find the orchard.”

  They discovered the lake on Midsummer Day, disturbing a family of swans, and Cormac splashed into the water, hurling his tunic and leggings to a rock by the waterside. He swam for some minutes, while Anduine sat patiently beneath a towering
growth of honeysuckle. Then he waded ashore and sat beside her, reveling in the warmth of the sun on his naked body.

  “Do you swim?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Would you like to learn?”

  She nodded and stood, untying the neck of her pale green dress and slipping it over her shoulders. As it fell to the ground, Cormac swallowed hard and looked away. Her body was ivory-pale, her breasts full, her waist tiny, her hips …

  “Follow me into the lake,” he said, clearing his throat and turning from her. She laughed as she felt the cool water on her feet and ankles, then waded farther.

  “Where are you?” she called.

  “I am here,” he answered, taking her hand. “Turn to face the shore and lean back into my arms.”

  “The water will go over my head.”

  “I will support you. Trust me.”

  She fell back into his arms, kicking out her legs and floating on the surface of the lake. “Oh, it is beautiful,” she said. “What must I do?”

  Remembering the teachings of Grysstha in the river of the South Saxon, he said, “Your lungs will keep you afloat as long as there is air in them. Breathe in deeply, spread your arms, and kick out with your feet.” His arms slid under her body, and he found himself gazing down at her breasts, her white belly, and the triangle of dark hair pointing like an arrow to her thighs. Swinging his head, he fixed his gaze on her face. “Take a deep breath and hold it,” he said. Gently he lowered his hands. For several seconds she floated, and then, as if realizing she was unsupported, she dropped her hips and her head dipped below the sparkling water. Swiftly he raised her as she flung her arms around his neck, coughing and sputtering.

  “Are you all right?”

  “You let me go,” she accused him.

  “I was here. You were safe.” Leaning down, he kissed her brow, pushing the dark, wet hair back from her face. She laughed and returned the kiss, biting his lip.

  “Why?” she asked him, her voice husky.

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you die for me?”

  “Because you are in my care. Because … you are my friend.”