Three hearts and three lions

19

THROTTLED, HE TRIED to kick, but the faintness was already upon him. His brain spun toward night. When he was let go, sheer reflex opened his mouth in a gasp.

He did not drown. He sat up. For a moment he couldn’t think who he was, or why or where. Awareness returned. But he needed minutes to see what lay about, for his eyes were not trained to such things.

He sat on white sand that reached beyond sight in graceful ripple marks. Here and there lay stones covered with a brilliant green overgrowth of algae, whose long filaments wavered upward. A luminosity filled the air, akin to the sourceless un-light in Faerie, but faintly greenish. Only... not air. For bubbles streamed from his mouth and nostrils, to rise like tiny polished moons. He saw a fish go by, from the wanness on his left to the perspectiveless distances on his right. He sprang to his feet, bounced, and drifted down with ghostly slowness. His body seemed to be without weight. The water flowed sensuously around each movement.

“Welcome, Sir ’Olger.” The voice was cold and sweet.

He turned. A woman poised lazily before him. She was nude and paper white, with delicate green traces of veins under the skin. Long hair floated about her shoulders, fine and green as the algal weeds. Her face was broad and flat-nosed, with yellow eyes and a heavy sensuous mouth. Neck, torso, limbs, and hands were by contrast not quite human in their slenderness. Holger had never seen such grace as was hers, save in eels.

“Who, who, who?” he choked.

“Nay, now,” she laughed, “you are no owl, but a highborn knight. Welcome, I say.” She edged closer with a kick. He saw her feet were mostly toe, and webbed. Lips and nails were pale green. But the sight was not horrible. On the contrary! Holger had to remind himself he was in serious trouble.

“Forgive my impetuous invitation.” Bubbles swarmed bright from her mouth. Some clustered like jewels in her tresses. “I must needs seize the fleeting moment when you had no iron and were in an unblessed mood. Truly, no harm was meant you.”

“Where the devil am I?” he exploded.

“Beneath the lake where I, its nixie, have dwelt these many lonely centuries.” She took his hands. Her own were soft and cool, with an underlying sense of the strength that had captured him. “Fear not. My spell guards you from drowning.”

Holger noticed his breath. It felt no different from usual, except for a slight heaviness on his chest. He rolled his tongue around in his mouth and squirted saliva between his teeth. Somehow, he thought—striving for a toehold on sanity—the forces called magical must be extracting oxygen from the water for him and forcing it into a thin protective layer, perhaps monomolecular, on his face. The rest of him was in direct contact with the lake. His clothes flopped soggy. Yet he was warm enough... What am I gabbling about? I’ve got to get out of here!

He jerked free of her. “Who put you up to this?” he demanded.

She stretched her arms over her head till the verdant hair entwined their whiteness, arched her back, and poised on tiptoe. “None,” she smiled. “You cannot imagine how wearisome existence grows, alone and immortal. When a beautiful young warrior, with locks like the sun and eyes like heaven, chanced hither, I must love him on the instant.”

His cheeks burned. The detached part of him reflected that she, being of the Middle World, was as immune to the illusion which disguised him as he was himself. Even so... how did she know his name? “Morgan le Fay!” he flung out.

“What matter?” Her shrug was a flow along her whole body. “Come, my house lies near. A feast awaits you. Afterward—” She swayed close. Her eyelids drooped.

“This is no accident,” he insisted. “I expected Morgan would track us. When we passed by this lake, she arranged everything. I don’t believe my own actions were free, even.”

“Oh, fear not that. No mortal of good character can be touched by enchantment, unless he himself wishes.”

“Well, I know what my character was like at the time, and I suspect I was prodded into the right frame of mind, if not forced. Very well. Begone, you!” Holger drew the sign of the cross.

The nixie smiled her slumbrous smile. She shook her head, slow weaving back and forth with billows running through the loose hair. “Nay, too late. While you are here, whither your own desires have brought you, you may not escape so cheaply. Aye, why should I not own the truth, that her majesty of Avalon commanded me to lurk by the shore and abide my opportunity? I am to keep you here until she sends for you, which will be after the war that is almost begun.” She drifted upward till she lay horizontally before his face. Her thin wire-strong fingers reached out to stroke his hair. “Yet ’tis also truth, how glad of your questing Rusel is, and how cunningly she will strive to make your stay joyous.”

Holger wrenched away and kicked against the sand. He shot up. His limbs caught the water and he swam toward the unseen surface. The nixie glided alongside, effortlessly, still smiling. She didn’t oppose him herself, but beckoned.

Lean shapes hurtled into sight. Jaws snapped before Holger’s nose. He looked into the blank eyes and needle-toothed beak of the biggest pike he had ever seen. Others closed in, a dozen, a hundred. One ripped his hand. Pain jabbed; his blood came out like red smoke. He stopped. The pike circled on every side. Rusel made another gesture. They swam off, but slowly, and remained on the edge of vision.

Holger bobbed back down to the sand. He needed a few minutes to get his breath and pulse under control.

The nixie took his hand and kissed the wound. It closed as if it had never been made. “Nay, you must stay, Sir ’Olger,” she purred. “’Twould be a deadly disappointment for me did you seek so discourteously to leave.”

“Deadlier for me,” he managed to say.

She laughed and took his arm. “Far too soon will Queen Morgan claim you. Meanwhile, come, consider yourself a prisoner of war, honorably taken in an honorable captivity. Which I shall seek to lighten for you.”

“But my friends—”

“Fear not, my sweeting. By themselves they’re no menace to the great purpose. They can be suffered to return home unscathed.” With a flick of malice: “From a distance, after the sun that is fatal to me had sunk, I espied certain attitudes struck in yonder camp. Meseems the swan maiden will soon let herself be consoled for you. If not this very eventide, then surely within a sennight.”

Holger clenched his fists. He felt strangled. That worthless Saracen—

But Alianora had fallen all over herself to heed Carahue’s flatteries. The little bird-brain!

Rusel laid one hand on Holger’s neck. Her lips were close to his. He saw how they swelled. “All right,” he said thickly. “Let’s go to your house, at least.”

“How you gladden me, gallant sir! You shall see what dainties have been prepared. And what pleasures undreamed of by the oafish land dwellers there may be in these depths, where no weight hinders, the freedom of the body.”

Holger could well imagine. If he was caught, why not enjoy it? “Let’s go,” he repeated.

Rusel fluttered her lashes. “Will you not first remove that ugly sack?”

He looked at his water-logged garments and back at her. His hands fell to his belt.

But instead he clapped hold on Duke Alfric’s dagger. Memory flashed in him. For a moment he stood rigid. Then he shook his head, violently, and said, “Later, at the house. I expect I’ll want them again sometime.”

“Nay, Morgan will garb you in silk and vain. But let us not anticipate my sorrow when you must depart. Come!” The nixie arrowed off. Holger followed, threshing by comparison like a paddle-wheel steamer. She returned and laughed as she swam circles around him. Often she darted in to touch his mouth with her own, but slipped free before he could grab her. “Soon, soon,” she promised. The pike trailed after. Their eyes were dull lanterns behind the jaws.

Rusel’s house was not the coral palace he had half expected. Walls or roof were useless here. A ring of boulders bore weeds that streamed upward out of sight, forming curtains of green and brown which stirred, shifted, rippled. Fish darted in and out, minnows that fled at the nixie’s approach and trout with iridescent scales that nuzzled her fingers. As he passed through the weeds, Holger felt their touch cool and slimy on his skin.

Beyond, partitions of the same sort marked off a few large rooms. Rusel conducted him to a feasting chamber. Here stood ghostly frail chairs woven of fish bones, around a stone table inset with shell and nacre, laid with covered dishes of gold.

“Observe, my lord,” she said. “I’ve even gotten rare wines for you, by the help of Queen Morgan.” She handed him a spherical vessel with a stoppered tube, not unlike a South American bombilla. “You must drink from this, lest the lake water spoil the contents. But do drink, to our better acquaintance.”

Her own clinked against his. The wine was a noble vintage, full and heady. She leaned close. Her nostrils dilated, her lips invited him. “Welcome,” she repeated. “Would you dine at once? Or shall we first —”

I can afford one night here , he thought. His temples hammered. Of course I can. I’ve got to, even to disarm her suspicion before I try to make a break. “I’m not very hungry at the moment,” he said.

She made a purring noise and began to unlace his jerkin. He fumbled again with his own belt. As he took it off, her eye fell on the empty sheath and the filled one beside.

“But that can’t be steel!” she exclaimed. “I’d have sensed the nearness of cold iron. Ah, I see.”

She drew the blade and regarded it closely. “The Dagger of Burning,” she spelled out. “Strange name. Faerie workmanship, not so?”

“Yes, I won it from Duke Alfric, when I overcame him in battle,” Holger bragged.

“I’m not surprised, noble lord.” She rubbed her head against his breast. “No other man could have done so; but you are no other man.” Her attention wandered back to the dagger. “I’ve never seen that metal before,” she said. “All I have down here is gold and silver. I keep trying to tell the barbarian priests I want bronze, but they are so stupid even when conscious, let alone in a prophetic trance, that it never occurs to them the demon of the lake might have use for something with a good cutting edge. I have a few flint knives left from ancient times when such were offered me, but they’re worn down to nubbins.”

Holger wanted to grab her, when she curved and floated beside him. He needed his entire will to say, with such overdone casualness he was sure she would pounce on it, “Well then, keep this blade as a souvenir of myself.”

“I shall find many ways to thank you, bright lord,” she promised. She was about to continue unlacing him, with fingers that kept playfully straying, when he took the dagger back and tested the edge with his thumb.

“Pretty dull at the moment,“ he said. “Let me ashore and I’ll whet it for you.”

“Oh, no!” Her smile turned predatory. She wasn’t used to humans, wherefore his clumsy acting could fool her, but neither was she stupid. “Let’s talk of more likely things.”

“You can hold my feet, or tether me, or whatever,” he said. “I do have to get into the air to sharpen this knife. Such metal requires the heat of a fire, you see.”

She shook her head. With a wry grin, he relaxed. It had been a long shot anyway, and for the moment, with this supple creature beside him, he wasn’t sorry to have failed. “As you wish,” he said, dropped the knife and laid his hands on her flanks.

Perhaps his lack of insistence deceived her. Or perhaps, thought Holger, not without an inward exasperated curse, his destiny had too much momentum to end here. For she said, “I have a grindstone among my sacrifices. Will that not serve? I understand such a device will sharpen a blade.”

He fought down a shiver. “Tomorrow.”

She darted from his embrace. “Now, now,” she said. Her eyes glistened. He had noticed that lunatic capriciousness in the Faerie folk too. “Come, you should see my treasures.” She tugged his hand.

Reluctantly, he followed. The pike glided behind. His throat was almost too tight for speech, but he managed conversation: “Did you say the barbarians make you offerings?”

“Aye.” Her laughter jeered. “Each spring they troop hither to do worship and cast into the lake that which they think will please me. Some does.” She parted a living arras. “I bring the gifts here to my treasury. The foolish ones are always good for a jest, if naught else.”

Holger was first aware of the bones. Rusel must have whiled away many hours arranging the parts of skeletons in artistic patterns. The skulls which studded that lattice had jewels in their eyesockets. Elsewhere were stacked cups, plates, ornaments, looted from civilized lands by the heathen or not unskillfully made by their own smiths. In one corner was a disordered heap of miscellaneous objects that must also have been considered valuable by the tribesmen (if they were not simply sloughing their white elephants off on the demon)—water-ruined books from some monastery, a crystal globe, a dragon’s tooth, a broken statuette, a child’s sodden rag doll at which Holger found his eyes stinging a little, and junk less identifiable after long immersion. The nixie burrowed into the pile with both arms.

“So they give you humans,” said Holger, very softly.

“A youth and a maiden each year. I’ve really no use for them. I’m not a troll or a cannibal woman to enjoy such meat, but they seem to think so. And the sacrifices do wear the most beautiful costumes.” Rusel threw him a glance over her shoulder, as innocent as the look of a cat. She had no soul.

With a surge of strength under the white skin she hauled the grindstone forth. The wooden framework appeared rotten and the bronze fittings were badly corroded; but the wheel did still respond to the crank. “Aren’t my baubles pretty?” she asked, waving her hand around the room. “Choose what you wish. Anything, my lord, just so you include myself.”

In spite of the bones, Holger must force his words: “Let’s take care of the dagger first. Can you turn the wheel?”

“As fast as you like. Try me.” Her look suggested he was welcome to try anything. But she planted her feet on the sand and whirled the crank till he felt a vortex in the water. More loud than through air, the drone entered his ears, and the whine as he laid the knife to the wheel.

The pike crowded close, their gaunt heads aimed at him.

“Faster,” he said. “If you can.”

“Aye!” Metal screamed. The frame vibrated; green flakes drifted from the bolts. Christ, let this thing hold together long enough!

The pike flicked themselves closer. Rusel was taking no chances while he held a weapon. Her pets could strip him of flesh in three minutes. Holger rallied what courage remained to him and narrowed his attention to the dagger. He didn’t know if his scheme would work. But even here under the lake, the blade must be heating up, and he could see the fine cloud of metal dust grow thicker around its edge.

“Are you done?” panted Rusel. Her hair had plastered itself to shoulders and breasts and belly. The amber eyes smoldered at him.

“Not yet. Faster!” He leaned his mass against the knife.

The flare nearly blinded him. Magnesium will burn in water.

Rusel shrieked. Holger guarded his face with one hand and swung the knife at the fish. One of them slashed his calf. He kicked himself free, broke through the green curtains and upward.

The nixie circled beyond the blue-white glare, beyond the range of his own dazzled eyes. She yelled at her pike. One darted near. Holger waved the torch and it fled. Either the fish couldn’t stand the ultra-violet themselves or—more likely—Rusel’s influence over them was bounded by distance like all magic, and she couldn’t get near enough to Holger to set the water wolves on him.

He kicked with his legs and clawed with his free hand. Would he never reach the top? As if across light-years he heard the nixie’s tone change to softness. “’Olger, ’Olger, would you leave me? You’ll ride to your doom in a barren land. ’Olger, come back. You know not what pleasures we could have—”

He screwed his will power tight and plowed on. Her rage burst forth. “Die, then!” Suddenly he inhaled water. The spell was off him. He choked. His lungs seemed to catch fire. He almost dropped his magnesium torch. He saw Rusel dart near in a cloud of her pike. He thrust her back with the cruel light, closed his mouth and swam. Up, up, darkness roiled in his brain, strength drained from his muscles, but up.

He broke the surface, coughed, spat, and gulped his chest full of air. A gibbous moon touched the lake with broken light. He held the torch below while he floundered toward the gray shore. It burned out just as he waded into the reeds. He ran to get well inland before he collapsed.

The cold struck his wet clothes and went on through. He lay with clattering teeth and waited for enough energy to seek the camp. He didn’t feel victorious. He’d won this round, but there would be others. And... and... oh, damn everything, why did he have to escape so soon?