Read The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) for Free Online

leg out of me as I fell.
    The dog released me and stood watching, waiting.
    I got up, trembling with fury, but said to Llew, as humbly as I could, “I pledge, Lord Prince.”
    “Sobeit!” said Llew, and the contract was made out into the world and before the eyes of all the gods and demons and the spirits of the dead.
    I was terrified of this withered old man with the unnatural voice of a boy.  But I was greedy for the steel sword that could make me a power in the world.  I would pledge anything to get that sword.  But I did not know what I had pledged.
    Fresh wind howled past me and out the citadel and across the mountains.  I should have gone with it, and damn the sword and its quest.
     
    * * *
     
    Galabes and I climbed out of the sword factory following the hound Caval along a trail that carried onto an ice-matted ledge pointing through a gap in the mountains where I could see another valley opening to a sprawling plain.  Out there, rising from the snow like the marker of a tomb, were three stone columns holding up a broken pediment, the leavings of the Giants who had lived in the Island before the Britons.  The columns were cold, distant, and ruined, like the rest of the country.  They made me want to weep.
    Galabes said, “Out there you see Llew’s kingdom, the last bits of it.  He was born a prince among those old stones and fell to misery when his father’s kingdom was obliterated by the Saxons.  Me, I was raised from nothing to greatness by Arthur and plunged back to nothing by Camlann.  Llew is hopeful, I am bitter.  There is the roiling difference between us.”
    “What does any of that mean to me?” I said, before I remembered the good manners that kept me from another swatting and added, “My dear father.”
    The beggar-knight turned his face from the broken columns to me.  He had a frightening dreamy frenzy in his eyes.  I staggered back.  The hound was there at my back, buttressing me, and fear fled from me, leaving only wonder that this monster man could have such feeling in him for everything that was dead and past.
    Galabes said out of his sudden frenzy, “Prince Llew believes only a holy man or woman can swing the finest of his prize blades.  Bah!  I’d give them all to the demons if demons would do my work returning Arthur to us!”
    He put his face very close to mine, so close I could smell the meat-rot and sour wine on his breath, and said, “But Llew and I agree that only a woman with the courage to be obedient to a queen’s way in the universe – a woman who has killed an enemy and has no more fear of death – can wield a tempered sword.”
    He clutched my furs and jerkin and cried, “Before I give you to him, I’ll make you a soldier or you’ll never survive what Prince Llew will do with you.”
    Send me back to Carbonek! I wanted to scream.  I’ll clean the privies forever to get away from you two lunatics!
    But I said, “Out there, Father?” as I goggled at the three broken columns and the dreary snow plain.
    “Oh, it’s worth the pain of what you have to face to feel in your grip a great sword, to possess it and be possessed by it,” said Galabes. “To feel the need and hunger of the sword and to know you must fulfill them.  A glorious sword makes you glorious yourself.  Or it makes you die in pain and infamy.”
    “I don’t want to die in pain and infamy!” I cried, struggling in his grip.
    But he could not hear me, he was so wrapped in his vision.
    “A sword is destiny!” he cried.  “The Lady of the Lake made Caliburn.  Caliburn made Arthur.  Arthur made Camelot.  You see it, don’t you?  You must!  To learn the destiny that a sword dreams – or to invest a sword with your own dream – is to control Fate and to win the power to remake the world!”
    “Yes, Father,” I said, to please him, knowing now that he was completely mad.
    “‘Yes, Father?’” said Galabes, startled out of his reverie.
    Caval turned his face to me.
    Galabes