The Book of Battles
The wind bloweth where it wishes, and so you thou hearest the sound thereof, but can not not tell from whence it comes, so are the Mages, first children of the Wind.
- from The Book of the Air
“Can I hold you while we sleep?”
“You are a very peculiar boy.”
“I’m not! Lots of boys did it in Arvon. Some boys took each other for lovers.”
“I am not your lover.”
“You’re more my lover than you are my brother.”
“What do you know about lovers?”
“As much as you. You think you’re so much older. You’re only a few years older. What’s more, you know about magic and healing and card reading, Gods and history. And that’s all very nice. Really it is. But you do not know about loving.”
Annatar said nothing, and then Avred spoke again.
“Are you offended?”
“It takes more than that to offend me.”
“Then may I hold you?”
“Very well,” Annatar said, gruffly…
Leaves and patterns of leaves.
What is this? Where is this? But it is me. It was me. I knew completely who I was. This is my home. This is…. Like something on the edge of sleep. Like a dream half remembered…
Like a puppy, the boy Avred snuggled up to Annatar and wrapped his arms about him. Annatar’s hands covered Avred’s and Avred’s penis rose up in contentment. It throbbed gently with the closeness of the other young man’s body, and Annatar made no note of it.
Avred was content.
He was lighthearted and joyous like this when they went to High Service in the Great Minster, and because he was filled with such happiness, floating on a cloud, the next day when he was going to the Tournament with Kay and Kay was prepared to joust within an hour, he was paying no attention at all. He had been most scatter brained in dressing Kay Maracandas and now, when Kay said, “Sword! Sword, Rhys! Rhys, where’s my sword?” the young man’s eyes bulged.
“You imp!” Kay said with the first signs of genuine rage Avred had ever seen in his fosterbrother. “Where is it?”
“It must be… at the House.”
Kay looked like a vein was about to burst in his head and so Hace grabbed his friend’s wrist and said, “We’ll get you a new one. C’mon, Rhys.”
Avred nodded. Hace had already procured a cycler, and he set Avred on its handlebars. Dangerously, the boys careened through the muddy roads of the Tournament and into the city, hot for the sword before Kay missed his chance to prove himself as a knight before the peers of the realm.
“If he doesn’t get to beat another young knight across the head before the day is over, he’ll beat my head in for the rest of the year!” Avred declared.
They were racing through the city when Avred cried out, “Stop! Wait!”
“There’s no time—” Hace began, but Avred insisted, “Stop!”
Where are we?” Hace said.
“We’re in front of Springstone,” Avred said, pushing himself from the handlebars.
“Well, I know that,” Hace murmured. “But why?”
The opened gate of the low bailey was near four stories high, though it was to the lowest part of the castle, and high above them. Far off, rose Gariavan, the Emerald Hold, and then beyond that the Mountain. But they entered through the main gate and Hace whispered, “There’s no time.”
The low bailey was so empty. A rare snow dusted the weed choked yard and hollow eyed, black windows stared out at them from the walls. Beyond was an old stair case, dingy from years of spring and summer rain and autumn leaves, cracked by the snow. But where Avred went was the chapel.
“Kay needs us to get the—”
“Kay can go hang,” Avred murmured as he went up the steps. He entered into the temple, and his eyes went to the altar.
“Well, look at that!”
Avred raced across the empty chapel, his boots making a hollow sound through the abandoned place.
“How did you know?” Hace demanded.
Avred did not bother with saying he didn’t know. He crossed the floor, made the sign of honor, and climbed up the steps to the altar. With the ringing sound of a blade pulled from its sheath, Avred brought out the blade.
Hace said, “It could be sacred. It could be there for a reason.”
“The Gods won’t mind,” Avred said. “We’ll bring it right back to them. Only… be careful on the way back. There’s no scabbard for this thing.”
“What is happening to him?” Anson whispers. “Is he only dreaming?”
“He is living in his other lives,” Nimerly says, “and for now he gets there by dreaming.”
“Can I go to him?”
“Presumably,” Nimerly said, “We are already there. In another form. In another way.”
“He has been asleep for some time.”
“I am going to him,” Anson decides.
“You cannot,” the voice of Nimerly speaks. “Ohean is a mighty sorcerer and it is his right to drink from the water and touch the Tree. If you do this you will die.”
“But is there the chance,” Anson asks, “that he himself will die.”
Nimerly does not answer.
The last true memory is of running to the cycler. After that the rest is legend, told over and over again. How they arrived on the field just in time and Kay took the sword, swinging it over Avred’s head, shouting: “I ought to knock your block off right now.”
But there was no time, for it was his turn to joust, and he was just going to do it when Jon Lackland rode up to him.
“What is that?”
“It is a sword.”
“It is not a sword,” Jon said, his fingers twitching, but not daring to touch it. “It is the sword.”
Jon called Ilyn Maracandas over and said, “Look at your son’s sword!”
And then he was calling others over.
“It is Dragon’s Tooth! That is Dragon’s Tooth! It is the Sword of Kings. Dragon’s Tooth.”
“Did you take this sword up yourself?” Jon demanded.
Kay looked back at Avred, who was looking at him, from the midst of the crowd.
“I did,” he said.
But then he looked at Annatar. Annatar’s dark eyes looked at him almost impassively, like the eyes of a crow, and now Kay said. “No. It was not I.”
Kay hadn’t been in the chapel to see it, so he said, with a question in his voice, “It was Avred?”
The eyes of the kings and lords, about thirty, turned to the large boy, and Annatar came through them all, touching Avred on the shoulder, “Tell them the truth. Never fear. It is only the truth.”
And so Avred did, and he was at the head of a large crowd of folks, forgetting the tournament, entering the city, winding their way to Springstone. As the news of what had happened went through the Citadel, women joined the men. The Queen and her children were entering the Chapel, and there was the scorched altar, but no sword. The sword was in Avred’s hand.
“Place that sword back,” Annatar commanded, and when Avred obeyed he leapted back in surprise as the flames erupted from the sword and Jon Lackland nodded his head.
“And now pick it up again.
Avred blinked at Annatar, but Annatar said, “It will not harm you. Trust me.”
Avred did, and so he went to touch the sword, and the fire died. He lifted up the long sword with the dragons twisting about the hilt.
“Long live the King!” Jon Lackland cried, and he kissed the boy’s hand. He turned about and shouted, “God save the King!”
He cried it out five times until others, at first half heartedly, began to cry it out. Jon fell to his knees.
Blinking in amazement, the boy beside Annatar watched as the chapel, filled with kings and princes, dukes and lords and now ladies, cried out, “Long live the King. God save the King!”
And their voices rang through the walls of the old temple, stinging Avred’s ears.
This is familiar. Anson is here… but unfamiliar. Rhodry too. But… no, I know them both. I am… I AM Annatar. Both of these stories…. Both of these worlds are mine.
Anson sleeping in the forest in Rheged where the fairy women had come to him. Branches poking him from the mists, and brushed his face, but tt was not painful. The branches gave way, They were tender, they curled around him only to uncurl, brushed him lightly, wrapped around his ankles in a way that terrified him, and then at last seemed affectionate, and as he rested his back into them, he felt their roots. For a brief time Pol lay beside him. Austin smiled at him, and caught his hand, and then, on the wind, he flew away, a multi colored bird.
Anson blinked in the mist. All around him he felt a writhing, a moving. The mist was like smoke and Anson was still sure he was dreaming until Ohean said, “Between waking and sleeping comes truth.”
Anson looked around. It was warm and dark and the white mist crawled over Pol and Ralph, and the sleeping form of Ralph.
“In our waking we hold the worlds apart, but in sleeping the walls between them, the walls between what we see and what we believe fall. Stay in this time with me a little longer.”
Ohean was quiet and peaceful. Anson closed his eyes and shivered a little.
“What am I feeling?”
“Does it feel like something slithering above and around you?”
Anson thought and then said, “Yes. It does.”
“Then that is Kurukan, the Great Serpent.”
Anson looked at Ohean.
“All the stone serpents you saw, on the temples, on the banisters, in the palaces, their eyes fierce, feathery blooms up and down their backs, manes of bright feathers, they are all the children of Kurakin, and they are all his face. Many names they have, Queztalon, Mazaron…. In the language of the Northmen they are called Vurms, Worms, firedrakes.”
“As in the tales,” Anson breathed. “As in the tale when Sevard slew the dragon with his sword… my sword.”
“There are many dragons. They very ancient live in the mountains, the spines of hills, the lines of power in the earth, for dragons rarely die, but transform. Kurukan fell to the earth and became the great Land Serpent, the Power in this land. The Serpent is this mist twining about you. That Serpent flows through the trees and the strength of your arms.”
“In your magic?”
“And in your magic too, for you have your own sort. And it is in the tingling of your toes during lovemaking.”
When Ohean said that, Anson knew that he was naked, and he looked down to see the serpents, once tattooed to his flesh, mow moving up and down it, writhing over his biceps, his chest, down to his thighs and up again, eyes flashing.
Anson stood there in wonder, feeling the hum of the Kurukan through his body. There was thunder and then a flash, and he thought he saw eyes. Was the wind his roar, the flapping branches of trees those plumed feathers.
“Stop,” Ohean said, simply. “It wants to enter you.”
“There are many dragons, most old and retired to the mountains or under the sea. The very oldest are now mountains, the spines of hills, the lines of power in the earth, the charges of lightning in the air. Dragons rarely die, but transform. Pen Pryd fell to the earth and became the great Land Dragon, encompassing his bride. He is the Power in this land. The Dragon is this mist twining about you. That Serpent flows through the trees and the strength of your arms.”
“And In your magic?”
“And in your magic too. For you have your own sort. And in the tingling of your toes.”
Avred sat there, feeling the hum of the Dragon Father through his body, feeling his coiling lengths tangle through the wood, over roots and over branches. There was a thunder and then a flash, and he thought he saw eyes.
“Stop,” Annatar said, simply. “It wants to enter you.”
Ah, and here it merges… here both realities become one…
“Enter—”
“Enter you,” Annatar said.
“The Dragon is all around us night and day and how many sense it? Few. It is the inheritance of the people of the Land, yet how many people inherit it? Few. But you have.”
“Do it. Simply lie back down and breathe.”
He sat up suddenly surprised by the daylight. Sitting placid beside him, now in the same blue cloak as in the dream, was Annatar.
“Come with me,” Annatar whispered.
Avred got up without saying anything. He took Annatar’s hand. It had been so long since Annatar had touched his hand. He longed for it, longed to be guarded by the mage. He was such a beautiful man, but he had been closed like a flower. Now he was open. Annatar said, “There it is.”
With the thoughtlessness of a dream, Avred knew it was there even though he did not know what there was. They bowed down together before a deep pool. The moonlight was shining on it.
Rising up from the water was came first an orb like a shining apple, a knob. Now the knob was at the end of a long leather stick. While Avred tried to comprehend it, in the distance, or out of the earth he heard singing.
Every tree, every flower,
the mountains rising from
the earth and earth
coming up from waters,
all the world was made
by love and desire…
Avred blinked understanding that this was what he had not expected. It was, scabbarded, a sword. The sword rose up, the point of the scabbard, poised on the water.
“Yes,” Annatar murmured. “Take it.”
Avred looked to Annatar, and then Annatar nodded.