Spear, page 10
* * *
SHADOWS WERE GROWING long as Peretur and Nimuë faced each other across the table, hands still laced around each other’s wrists.
“I was so lonely,” Peretur said.
“I’m sorry. I would have come for you, if I’d known of you.”
You should have known, Peretur thought. I knew of your lake.
But how could a mortal, even one as powerful as Nimuë, break a geas even Manandán had not breached in all his years of searching? A geas her mother had not thought twice about binding her with. But to her mother she was not a person in her own right, not Peretur Paladr Hir; she was Tâl, the payment her mother felt owed; she was Dawnged, her treasure and gift, stolen from Manandán without his knowledge. Always something owed and owned rather than loved. No one had come to find the nameless girl alone with a woman whose mind and heart were no longer whole but a handful of broken pieces. A woman who was so hurt and so afraid of being found that to protect herself she had taken away her daughter’s own memory of home and of the only love she had ever had, if it was ever love.
She let go of Nimuë and sat staring at her own hands, her not-mortal hands, while Nimuë got up and cut bread and stirred soup. The world felt wide and fragile and new as though she had lately risen from her sickbed.
Her mother, Elen, was mortal. Her father, Manandán—or as he called himself here, Manawydan fab Llŷr—was not. Peretur had eaten and drunk every day from the cup of the Tuath, the cup that was said to heal any mortal of their hurts. But the power of the Tuath would turn any mortal mad; witness her mother. And the power slowly corrupted men. But Peretur was not wholly mortal. Was she mad? Was she corrupt?
“You are not mad. You are not corrupt,” Nimuë said, for they were still lightly joined.
Peretur did not know if she could shut her out.
“You can. I can show you, but, if you’re willing, I think we should eat first. Though the choice is yours.”
A choice with so much woven into it, so many consequences, so many futures …
“You need food.” Nimuë put the wheat bread and crock of butter on the table—Peretur’s mouth flooded at the smell—and returned to the soup kettle.
The bowl of soup Nimuë put before her smelled of barley and beans and lamb. Ordinary, worldly scents. She wrapped her hands around the wooden bowl. This was real. This was the stuff of life.
They ate the soup, and bread spread with butter—when she tasted it Peretur knew the name of the cow the milk came from, and how the maid at the dairy who milked her that day had hurt her ankle from slipping on a cowpat—and because they were joined Nimuë laughed aloud. And because they were joined, Peretur laughed, too. And then she laughed because it was good to be in a world where maids milked cows, air was just air, and time moved in orderly ways. While they ate the soup made of honest broth and good herbs, they talked of this and that—how both Myrddyn and Elen had the habit of pursing their lips when they were thinking; the birds that sang in the spring of their homelands—but when the bowls were empty and the butter crock put back to cool, they fell silent. Outside, the light began to fade.
Nimuë lit a spill from the hearth, then paused, shielding the light with her hand. “Will you stay?”
Another choice with so many paths …
Nimuë began to light the tallow dips.
“Could you not just…” Peretur waved her hand.
Nimuë looked at her, then passed her hand over the dip she had lit, and it went out, and the other dips went out, and the hearth faded to black.
“I can’t see,” Peretur said.
“You can.”
And she could. The world was different in the dark. Colours faded. Living things glowed reddish gold—there was a mouse in the pantry. Dead things once living—the table, the wool hanging—gleamed like darkened bronze. Stone glimmered silver, and iron dull zinc. She lifted her hand, looked at the skin like burnished gold, then, with a kind of twist, inside the skin, then deeper inside the bone, then deeper still—
“Come back, now. Come back.” Nimuë lit the dips again, and the hearth glowed as it should. “Light is a comfort, a human thing, and it pleases me. It reminds me I’m mortal.”
“But I am not.”
Nimuë reached for her hand. “You are half mortal. You feel what mortals feel, you like what mortals like. You hunger, you thirst.”
Her hand felt good in Peretur’s, warm, more than warm.
In the flickering ochre-and-gold light, Peretur saw the heat rise in Nimuë’s cheeks, and her lips redden, and her own belly warmed, and she filled with another hunger. She lifted her hand and laid it on Nimuë’s upper arm, and stroked, gently.
Nimuë’s breath quickened, and she in turn laid her hand on Peretur’s arm. Peretur’s breath sharpened, and her breasts. They looked at each other. Peretur leaned forward, just a little, and Nimuë also, and now they could smell each other, and Peretur breathed deep. She rubbed her cheek on Nimuë’s and smelt butter, and salt, and smoke, and, beneath, sharp woman scent.
She knew that scent, and her need rose like the tide. She groaned and dragged her mouth down that soft, soft cheek, and Nimuë turned, and they kissed, deep and clean and strong. She stroked the side of Nimuë’s breast, and Nimuë’s hand was on her waist, on her belly, between her legs, and then Nimuë was holding her upright on the stool—or she would have fallen, would have slid helpless to the floor—as Nimuë found her way beneath her clothes and began to touch, delicate, teasing, taunting, until Peretur was lost to anything, to all but that hand. Then Nimuë was pulling off her dress, pushing down Peretur’s breeches, pushing her down by the hearth, pushing up against her, sliding in light and heat.
Later, Peretur leaned up on her elbow and said, “Do you have a bed?”
Nimuë laughed, a rich, rippling laugh. “No, I hang from the roof like a bat, as all good sorcerers do!” Peretur laughed, too. “I have two beds.”
“Two?”
“From time to time I invite visitors. Lance comes. Most often with Gwenhwyfar.”
Most often?
“Once with Artos. Though those two usually go hunting together for a few days.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. And that knowledge would cost your life if you revealed it.”
Peretur was no longer listening. She was watching the play of shadow on Nimuë’s throat, and then began to kiss it, and Nimuë made a sound, and soon they were lost again.
Later, as the fire dimmed, they found Nimuë’s own bed, and slept.
* * *
AGAIN, THE GOLD path, and the mist moving along it, scenting, questing, and Peretur called out, Mother! Mother! And the mist swirled and darkened, and reached out. No, she thought. No! You cannot have—
“Peretur. Peretur, love. Peretur!” Nimuë, stroking her forehead. “What is it? I felt—” She sat up. “Tell me.”
“Nothing. A dream.”
“It was more than a dream.” Nimuë shivered and pulled the coverlet up over her shoulders.
“You’re cold. We can talk about it in the morning.”
“It is almost morning.” Nimuë tilted her head, studying Peretur. “We need to talk about this now, I think, before you sleep again.”
* * *
IT TOOK SOME time to stir the embers, and while the milk warmed, they dressed. Although Nimuë was plainly worried, every time one of them fastened a tie, or pulled up hose, the other remembered untying it or pulling them down, but Nimuë tapped Peretur’s hand away as she tried to slide it beneath her overdress. “The milk will burn.”
Spiced, buttered milk drunk halfway down, then oats added, and eaten with a spoon, and then the sky was turning pale grey.
“Now. Tell me your dream.”
“It’s nothing.” She could not bring herself to speak of it, even to shape the words. And when she tried to think about it, it slid away slippery as a fish.
“You’ve had it before?”
She shrugged helplessly. The words would not come.
“You can’t speak of it?”
Nod.
“This is a geas. Your mother?”
“No,” Peretur managed. Bêr-hyddur, the geas is broken. “Not anymore.” She was sweating, and now she could not even remember what she couldn’t say.
“You broke her geas?” She sat back. “You broke a geas made with the strength of the cup? Well. I only wish you’d asked her questions.”
“She wouldn’t have answered.”
“She would. It’s the nature of a geas that when it breaks, the caster and the caught must, for a while, speak only truth.”
“How long a while?”
“Perhaps we’ll find out. For we must break this new geas.”
They tried. They tried deep trance. They tried a spellsong Nimuë had learnt from an old village woman in the north. Peretur opened her mind and Nimuë tried to chase the memory down, twisting and turning like a sight hound coursing after a hare, but it would not be caught. They even tried a foul brew, bitter as burdock, that did nothing but purge Peretur’s bowels.
By midmorning she had stopped heaving and groaning enough to manage oatmeal in plain water. While Nimuë read the runes by the hearth, Peretur sat outside on the wall bench, barefoot, enjoying the grass under her feet, eating slowly, aware of the spring breeze, and clouds scudding overhead. It would rain later. She hoped Bony and Broc were not fretting.
Nimuë came to sit by her, hip to hip. Peretur leaned her head on Nimuë’s shoulder, felt her chest rise and fall: steady, determined.
“There is one more thing to try,” she said.
“Then we’ll try it.”
“It is … not without risk.”
Peretur laughed. Risk. Her whole life was risk. And now, today, with Nimuë at her side—and keeping food down—Peretur felt she could slay a dragon. “What must I do?”
“Sip of the lake.”
She sat up. “Drink some water?”
“It’s not exactly water.”
“Have you drunk it?”
Nimuë nodded. “Once. To learn the secret of the steps and the chamber. It—I nearly didn’t come back.”
“And Myrddyn?”
She shook her head. “When he saw how it took me, he quailed. The lake sometimes has a mind of its own; there’s no telling how it might treat you. I survived. But you are not wholly mortal.”
“There’s no other way. I’ll drink.”
* * *
NIMUË GAVE HER a plain wooden cup—perhaps the same cup she had used for the milk—and bade her go to the edge and dip up a cupful. “Try not to touch the water. Some people forget what they’re doing or who they are for a while.”
She knelt by the bank, and dipped the cup in the lake. She lifted it out, dripping. The droplets seemed long and stretched, slippery as quicksilver. When it had stopped dripping, she brought it close and looked into the water. Instead of her face, she saw her mother’s. She jerked, and spilt some of the water on her foot. Immediately she heard the lake singing to her, drawing her in, down deep, where strange, toothed eels swam, and time …
She felt Nimuë’s hand on her shoulder, and with an effort she recalled herself.
“I’m here,” Nimuë said.
Peretur took a breath, lifted the cup, and drank.
The world boiled and roiled, like a storm cloud, and a great cry rose like the cry of a gull, thin and wailing: her mother. No, no! Go back! He will hear you. I will try hide you but he will come, oh he will come!
The cry faded, and now Peretur found herself swooping through the air, flying, flying high over the path to the thicket, only in real life there was no path to the thicket. But here was a path, and she knew as she saw it that she had made it with her first message floated on the seeds of a dandelion.
Some way ahead of her, striding along with a spear in his hand, a man who was not a man. He was tall and broad yet moved lithe as Cath Linx. His cloak was woven of mist and song, and his hair was spun gold; he could call the wind and soothe the waves, and he drew her like honey draws a bee.
When he turned his eyes were sea green, the sea of the Overland: a wild, restless green with depths of grey. When he smiled his teeth were white and straight and strong. “A long path I’ve been walking to what is mine, to take and to have, a long path laid by whom I knew not.”
Have. Always have, take, own.
He laughed, a great shout of a laugh. “I can’t see you, path-maker, but I know you’re there. Show yourself! Speak!”
She could not speak, even if she wanted.
“Ah, I forgot.” He waved his hand, and her tongue was free. “So, now, speak, path-maker, and speed me on my way, for though you have made a good path, a fine path, even the son of the sea grows weary.”
“Why do you follow it?” she said.
He looked about, this way and that, seeking her. “Why? So that I may reclaim what is mine. So that I may return the cup to the hall of our people, high in honour, for retrieving the greatest of the four treasures. And so that one day I may recover the other two.”
Two, not three. The sword, the stone, the cup, and the spear. “Tell me of your spear.”
Again, he turned this way and that, this time perhaps a little closer to where she floated. “The great spear of Lugh. The spear of light that flies true to its target.”
“Then choose the cup as your target, and throw the spear.”
He laughed, though his laugh seemed less pleased. “I choose not.”
“Why?”
He spoke unwillingly, compelled by the geas. “The spear is not what it once was. It is … lessened. I was betrayed once, a long time ago, one treasure stolen from me, and much of the power of this one. But I will have it back.” His voice sweetened to gold. “So show me the way, now. Show me the short path now, freely, or I will bring you down and rip out your knowledge, and I will not be gentle.”
Again, the voice drew her, lower and lower. “If I—”
He hurled the spear, and she cried out as something else flew by her, and slapped her away, and she was rising, rising, faster and faster, and heard her mother’s No, you will not have it! Neither will you have the cup! Then his cry of triumph as he dissolved to mist and flowed away, fast, faster down the path—
* * *
SHE STARTED UP, wild. “My mother. He will find my mother. I must go—”
“Who?”
“Manandán, my father.”
Nimuë looked drawn. “Does he know who you are?”
“I have to go!”
“Does he know?”
“He—No. He knows I made the path. He knows now that Elen lives but not that she’s my mother. He knows how to find her. And it’s my fault. I have to go.”
“Yes,” Nimuë said. “We have to go, for your mother’s cry was loud enough to enter the dreams of even those with only a trace of magic. Soon the Tuath will not be the only seekers of the cup.”
“Dreams?” It seemed still like early afternoon.
“You’ve been here two days.”
* * *
THOUGH PERETUR WAS on fire to leave, leave now, they took some time to plan before they set off down the lake path to Caer Leon.
The first place Peretur went was the byre. The place and the horses seethed with excitement: soon there would be adventure! She stroked Bony on the nose and patted Broc on the shoulder and told them that, yes, they were going on a journey, and to eat up, eat all they could while they could.
“Not you, too, surely!” Bedwyr, leaning against the post in a familiar pose. “Don’t let Cei catch you threatening to join the quest or he’ll murder you out of sheer frustration.”
“Quest?”
“Where’ve you been? Half the fort has dreamt of the Grail—even the village healer was mumbling about it when she attended Gwenhwyfar this morning.”
“The queen needed a healer?”
Bedwyr’s face smoothed, as people’s did when they were trying not to give themselves away. “It’s nothing. Though I can’t say the same for you if Cei catches you threatening to leave when you’ve already been the-Christ-knows-where the last two days! Where have you been?”
Perhaps Peretur should learn the smoothing trick, because Bedwyr saw something in her face and tck-tcked in irritation.
“Another lass already? Who is it this time?”
Peretur’s cheeks warmed.
“Well, whoever she is should not expect you back soon. It’s bad enough that Nimuë’s been gone for—”
Peretur’s cheeks flamed.
Bedwyr stared. “The king’s sorcerer? Saint Cadog save us! Are you quite mad? She’s a heathen—not that I believe all the rantings of the priest, no; he’s an ignoramus who can barely read. No, she seems a fine lady. But she’ll tire of you, and when she does you’ll vanish like—Well, no, perhaps not. But you’ll have to leave, and this time ambushing some outlaw will not be enough to return to Caer Leon’s good graces.”
“I didn’t ambush him.”
Bedwyr sighed. “No. No, I know. It’s just … This is a bad time to get mixed up in the uncanny. Not that there is ever a good time. And this Grail business … The Eingl are again bursting their bounds and on the move, and some say this time the Saessonin are with them. And if half our men are out searching for some mythical cup, we’ll have a hard time of it.”
“Tell me of this cup.”
“Myrddyn first told the story: a great gold cup, the Holy Grail. The cup the Christ drank from at the Last Supper before he died.”
“And Myrddyn wanted this cup?”
“He did. He was always filling Artos’s head with nonsense. He had the bards sing of it. I’m glad he’s gone, to tell the truth, though you won’t catch me saying that outside these walls. A magic cup, a magic stone, a magic sword. Pah!”
