Chains of Gold Read online

  Arlen decided to be very precise with the seer. “Ophid,” he said, “we want you to give the baby a new name, so that Lonn will have to leave him.”

  “What is called for is not always what is wanted,” said Ophid obliquely. “The goddess, her names are Meripen and Mestipen, death-in-life and fate-in-fortune. I will study the snakes.” He got up, pulled a blazing fatwood stick out of his fire by way of a torch, and lifted it up into the vault of his cave. Its light revealed a design there, a circle carved in deep line and high relief into the stone, a sort of chart in the shape of a great wheel of twenty-eight segments. I saw the emblems for full moon and dark moon opposite each other, top and bottom, and within each segment was inscribed a runic figure, all loops and whorls, and other symbols I understood even less.

  “The great mill wheel of the universe,” Ophid murmured, and then, standing there with arms and torch raised, he seemed to go into a trance. The torch dropped from his slackened finders and lay yet burning on the stone floor. His hands came down, loosened his gray robe, drooped yet farther; the robe slipped from his narrow shoulders and fell about his feet. At the limits of the firelight the snakes stirred and slithered, rearranging themselves. Ophid turned slightly toward us, peering at them—

  “But he is a woman!” I blurted.

  Plainly, he had breasts. The sound of my voice startled him out of his trance, and he gazed at me blankly, not at all dismayed.

  “I am both things,” he said. “Like the glycon.”

  Indeed he was. The blue glain pendant that hung between his breasts nestled amidst thick curls of golden hair. And the forms of other organs showed through his linen loincloth; he tugged it tighter around his slender legs. “As an oracle, I have to be both,” he said. “That is why there are not more seers.” He smiled. “It would help if I were blind, but it is not required. Lady, I beg pardon for disrobing before you. I had forgotten you were here.”

  And I had thought he would be angry at me for startling him. “We will go outside,” Arlen said.

  “No need. I am done for the nonce.” He put on his robe again, picked up his torch, and walked about to peer at his yellow serpents, glancing from their sleeping bodies to the wheel-like chart carved above us.

  “Oh!” I exclaimed, then felt like a fool, always my mouth speaking out of turn. But Ophid merely nodded.

  “Yes. I search for the runes in the twinings of the serpents.” He studied them for a while longer, then gave it up with a shrug and a sigh. “The signs are very unclear,” he said, coming back to sit by the fire with us.

  Arlen got up and gifted him with a chain of rich gold that shone ruddily in the firelight.

  “Thank you.” Ophid took it placidly and wound it about one hand. “It is very handsome. Still, the signs are quite unclear. That was no hint for payment, but merest truth.”

  “So what are we to do?” Arlen asked.

  “For the time, nothing. Sleep. Right where you are will do, by the fire. Never fear, the serpents will not pester you, for I am going to sit here and study your dreams. And here, let me hold that troublesome babe.”

  Arlen and I lay down at a seemly distance from each other. But even under the gaze of Ophid’s bland and curious blue eyes we could not stay long apart. We inched toward each other until our faces lay side by side and our feet nudged against each other under the blankets, and then we slept. Twice during the night Lonn cried and I rose, unwillingly, to feed him.

  FOURTEEN

  We stayed with Ophid for three days, and on each day he asked us different questions, and on each day he told us a different story. And although the stories said nothing to our hands, to tell us what we should do, they spoke to our hearts and comforted us, for we sensed that they made us part of a great circling pattern and a great wheeling dance.

  On the first day he asked me questions about myself and Arlen, about our love. How had we come to be so much in league with each other, after such a short time, that we had conspired to run away together? In a confused fashion, I told him about that first night and my first sight of Arlen in the stable of the blessed on the Sacred Isle.

  “There was a sort of—sheen of glory on him.”

  “The glamour of the goddess. Yes. But you stayed together once it was gone?”

  “Well.…” I hestitated, faltering. “The bond.…”

  “The golden chain of the goddess. Yes. But have you regretted it?”

  I looked at him in astonishment. Times had some of them been hard for us, for Arlen and me, but how could I regret? “But I had never been loved before,” I protested.

  “Yes, you speak as one who knows the value of love.” He looked away from me then and out across the mists of the Naga, as if finding something there. Arlen came and sat silently by us. When Ophid spoke again, it was very softly, his voice like a wind out of the caves of the departed and the departed times.

  “Once before now, once very long ago, there were from the Sacred Isle a pair of legendary lovers. Rowan and Fionella were their names. He was one who was reared to be winterking, and she was one who wore the white robe, not much older than he and her babe newborn. The child had been taken from her, as is the custom, and she knew nothing of it, but she felt an emptiness and an ache beneath her breasts. Seeking comfort somehow her eyes came to rest on Rowan, and his on her, and they risked confidence in each other, and came to an agreement, and met, in secret, and met again, and again, and more often, their hunger for each other overcoming their fear. And though Rowan was pledged to chastity for the goddess, and though Fionella had sworn fidelity to a dead king as all Gwyneda must, and both knew the penalty should they break their vows, a love grew in them that could not be denied, and they consummated it.

  “Rowan had a friend among the youths of his age who knew of this most harshly forbidden passion, who sometimes carried messages from lover to lover. And this friend betrayed them to the elders of the Gwyneda, so that one soft afternoon as they lay beneath the mayblossom they were surrounded and taken. The fury of the elders was without bounds, for these two youngsters had that which the others were never again to know: that is to say, love.… Rowan and Fionella were bidden to repudiate each other under oath, which they would not. They were tortured with fire and bidden to repudiate each other, which they would not, but only swore troth the more fiercely. Then Rowan was put to death much in the manner of sacred kings, except with reversals, so that he was castrated and flayed while yet alive and conscious, and Fionella was made to watch. Her heart broke, and she fell down in a swoon of death. But before they could touch her, her white-robed body underwent a change and arose, and she was a swan, a fair and lovely white swan, and she took wing. And the body of Rowan burst its bonds, and he was a swan as red as rubies, as red as his spilt blood on the mayblossom, and he took wing and soared to fly beside Fionella. And their necks entwined in embrace, and then they flew away together, down the Naga. And folk say that still they live on the ait that is called after them, Swans’ Isle, the island where golden apples grow. It is said that the goddess gave them immortality in this way for the sake of their passion, and that they are yet lovers.”

  “So the Gwyneda and the goddess do not always agree,” I murmured.

  “I trust not.”

  We had taken the tale personally, Arlen and I, queasy at the mention of the tortures. “I trust you would not be inclined to turn us over to the gentle hands of the Gwyneda,” Arlen said wryly.

  “Why should I?” Ophid replied, and we took the question as he had intended it, as the simplest of reassurances. Why should he, indeed? He was not a cruel person, or one to lend hand to cruelty. If he provided an ordeal for the youngsters who came to him in the springtime, it was only the ordeal of his own strangeness.

  We slept, and the snakes did not trouble us, and Ophid studied the runes. The second day he asked Arlen questions about himself and Lonn.

  “He was my faithful friend since I can remember,” Arlen explained. “How can I tell you—he was good to me in so many wa
ys. When we were eight or ten, they would hang live animals from stakes, rabbits and such, and make us kill them with the spear, to prepare us for—the bound and living target someday to come. And I could never kill animals, still can’t, or won’t, so Lonn would kill mine on the sly, to save me from a beating. Yet I could be cruel in other ways, to humans, when he would not.”

  “It is an awkward world, always blundering through the dance,” said Ophid quietly. “But how did you come to be such comrades?”

  “It just happened. We were of much the same age—”

  “How do you know? Can you tell me the dates of your births?”

  Arlen scowled, for of course no one knew such things on the Sacred Isle. “No, but we must have been near the same age, for they said that already in our cradles we were comrades.”

  “How strange,” Ophid murmured. “That they would say such a thing, I mean. Could it possibly be that you are brothers?”

  Arlen merely blinked at this arrant nonsense. Gwyneda were allowed only one afternoon of joy in their lives, one child they could not even call their own. “How so?” he asked, as politely as he was able.

  “Twins.”

  “But—” Arlen struggled with this—“We are—were—not so very much alike.”

  “Twins need not be alike.”

  “But how can we know such a thing?” Arlen shook his head violently. “It is not so odd that there were two babes much of the same age. Often there are three or more, for they bring them in from—somewhere—to make up the necessary numbers should a child die of disease, or the sacred king’s bride bear a girl, which must be sent away, or, the goddess forbid, should she fail to bear at all—”

  “What happens then?” I asked curiously.

  Arlen would not answer me. “She is drowned,” Ophid said briefly, “as one who lacks the goddess’s favor. And it is true that they take boy babes from cradles all up and down the Naga. Which is one reason why few folk live here.”

  “So I might not even be the get of the Gwyneda,” Arlen said.

  “So much the better. A secular can have twins as well.” Ophid leaned back and met Arlen’s eyes levelly. “The signs are much in favor of it.”

  Arlen stared back with a face gone bleak. It was much to bear that he should have sacrificed not only a comrade but a brother, a twin. He licked his dry lips twice before he could speak. “What does it matter?” he whispered at last, and Ophid told the tale.

  “In the beginning days lived the glycon, the great serpent, before it had been beaten down into the deep. And it lifted its long coils and embraced the goddess in her form as the moon, and of that union the first winterking was born. Son of the serpent was the winterking, and the serpent threatened to slay him. But the goddess wanted him for herself, and took form of the great copper-brown strong-necked mighty-breasted keen-hooved mare of war and trampled the glycon down and drove him into the deep, and she took form of the fierce undine with long, pointed teeth and she bound him there with chains of orichalc and iron. To this day he yearns for her and lifts his coils in the deep, and she beats him down with whips of wind.

  “But before many months of his captivity had passed, the glycon gave forth the glain, the blue egg of stone, and the winterking found it lying on the strand and carried it to his mother moon, and she ate it and conceived. And out of that union the summerking was born. Within a few days’ time he grew to be a man, the very brother and twin of the winterking, and the winterking looked on him and was enraged with jealous wrath, for he knew the goddess would love him. Therefore he took his spear of ice and slew him and put him in fire and burned him. And the goddess took the winterking in his stead to her black velvet bed of sky, and her hot love destroyed him, and he died. But from the ashes of the summerking arose the summerking again, as bright and beautiful as ever. But the get of the winterking was a serpent. And in the turning of the season the summerking lay with his mother, and the serpent stung him. But before he died he took sword and slew it. Then out of its severed body stepped his brother, whole and beautiful, and the two looked at each other, twins and rivals, and wept, for they knew there would be no end to their striving.

  “And so on it goes, and winter vanquishes summer and summer vanquishes winter, and the goddess is mother and lover to them both, and so on it will go until the great mill wheel of sky ceases to turn on its chains.”

  Ophid stopped and looked at us as if he had told us something of importance.

  “Are you saying,” Arlen asked heavily, “that it is in the nature of sacred kings to betray each other?”

  “I am saying that there is a pattern. Summer and winter, night and day, the turning of the wheel. You and Rae have stepped outside that pattern, with the help of Lonn you have shattered it, and now—”

  “What Lonn did was valiant,” Arlen interrupted, fire in his voice. “More than valiant—loving and mighty. He was a hero, the most courageous of heroes—”

  “And now the pattern seeks to reassert itself,” Ophid said.

  We stared at him, not quite comprehending, and he tried most kindly to explain.

  “It is not a punishment. It is in the nature of the world to cleave to the pattern, as it is in the nature of caterpillars to crawl or of birds to eat them.… A hero of Lonn’s stature is quite outside the pattern. The wheel turns, and what is night to his day?”

  “Villain,” Arlen mumbled, reluctant to say the word.

  We ate grain and honey and hazelnuts, and slept through another night, and Ophid studied his yellow snakes and the runes. On the third day he asked questions of Lonn.

  “Why have you not taken your passage? What is your grudge?”

  The little baby, lying in a nest of folded blankets amid a wreath of snakes, which did not offer to harm him. Lonn did not answer. He had not spoken for days, and my heart was melting for the sake of his infant body, his petal-pink skin and the soft, fragant hair of his small head. But his eyes looked hard and knowing out of that innocent face. What lay there was not really my baby son at all.

  “Why have you not taken your passage? What is your grudge?”

  Lonn would not answer. but Ophid persisted, gently but relentlessly, through the morning of the day, and as the day waned Lonn grew angry and spoke.

  “Go away.”

  “But I live here,” said Ophid with no sign of triumph. “Why are you here?”

  “They brought me here, you know that!”

  “But you should be dancing in the meadows of the blessed, you who were valiant and good. Why have you not taken your passage? What holds you here?”

  Lonn grimaced and panted with rage, a terrible thing to see in a helpless babe. “She is mine!” he shouted hoarsely at last.

  “Who is?”

  “The lady, the bride. She is mine by right. I paid the price.”

  “But such was your gift of love to Arlen, freely given.”

  “Damn Arlen! Arlen be cursed! I would have let him die on the esker, the fool, but she saved him, and then I had to save her.… He would have died still, but she loved him back to life.”

  Arlen went rigid, trembling on an edge between rage and anguish. I put my arms around him, constraining him as much as comforting him. Lonn spoke on. He was well started now, and if he had heard the word “love,” he seemed to remember only one meaning to it, and one beloved.

  “She’s mine! I loved her from the first time I beheld her,” he declared in that dark, hoarse voice. “And if the winterking glamour had been on me to start with, she would have loved me instead of him.”

  Probably true. But it made no difference in my love for Arlen now. I held him more tightly, trying to shut out the pain.

  “I have a body now again,” said Lonn. “I will grow strong enough to take her from him.”

  Lonn ranted on, and after a time Ophid considered that he had heard enough and tried to hush him. Then, as Lonn would not hush, Ophid picked him up and glanced at me in surprise when the baby struggled against him.

  “There is pow
er already in these infant limbs,” he said.

  I nodded. I had noticed it as well, saying nothing.

  “Unhand me, freak!” Lonn raged. “Morphodite! He-she!”

  Expressionless, Ophid carried him off to the other end of the island so that we need no longer hear him. Later, by firelight, when the baby lay asleep, he told us the third tale.

  “In the days of the high kingship, when all the wars were against the fierce folk from undersea, the fell folk out of the deep, there were two warriors of the sunlit kingdom who shone above all others in valor, in strength, and in loyalty to their lord, and their names were Elidir and Eladu. They were brothers—and more than brothers, blood brothers, and friends with a friendship forged in war, and comrades. When they fought side by side, as they always did, they were well nigh invincible, and only by sorcery did the undersea folk at all stand against them. And the king gifted them mightily with chains of gold and silver-gold for their valor, the chains that bind a warrior to his lord in love and loyalty.

  “And as folk will make compare, even between their own children, so the castlefolk and even the countryfolk began to say to each other, ‘Elidir is mightier than Eladu,’ or ‘Eladu is more courageous than Elidir,’ or ‘Elidir slew the more enemies in the recent battle,’ or ‘Eladu is the more honorable,’ until coins and even landholdings were placed at stake, and all eyes looked to the king, as if for a decision. But the king dealt evenhandedly with the two heroes, and honored one as he honored the other.

  “Then courtiers tried in subtle ways to set Elidir against Eladu, and in ways less subtle to set Eladu against Elidir, and finally quite openly they bribed and dared them to combat each other, and in all these attempts they failed. For Elidir and Eladu stood up together in scorn of those who would make them adversaries. And in defiance of all such scheming they made a pact with each other: that when they went into war thenceforth, they would chain themselves together each to the other, chain themselves together leg to leg and arm to arm with chains of gold and silver and glowing bronze, so that if one were to fall the other must fall also, and neither would be accounted mightier than the other. And they sealed this pact with their word and handbond and blood.