Tag: historical fantasy

William pummeled his forehead in frustration. "I’m never going to remember all this!"

"Bards have remembered it for a thousand and a thousand years," Mathilda said, gently implacable, "and a thousand times more than this besides."

"Bards have years to learn," he shot back. "You’re giving me days."

"Months," she said….

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 8

He found Master Ibrahim by the prickling of his nape, by the shifting of a shadow, by a whisper in the air. The magus sat in a room gone dim with evening, lamplit and quiet. He wore his wonted black, but he had laid aside his turban. A cap covered his shaven skull; a jewel glowed in his ear, a moonstone waxing with its mistress the moon.

Gerbert bowed as had become his custom, and sat at the mage’s feet. He had learned not to speak until Ibrahim gave him leave. He was allowed to fidget, judiciously.

Tonight he was not moved to. His head was full to bursting with names; he was tired. He did not know if, after all, he wanted to see magic. Had he not seen it already, just in coming here?

Effects only, Hatto would have said. Of causes he had seen nothing.

What use, if he could not do it himself?

He swallowed a yawn. Ibrahim seemed lost in contemplation. The lamp flickered. It globed them both in light; it made all the world without, a featureless darkness.

Gerbert did not know why he moved. He wanted to, that was all. He reached, and the light was in his hands. It was cool, like fishes’ breath. It rested pulsing in his palms. There was something that one could do with it, could will, could wish…

It quivered and went out.

Ibrahim’s voice came soft in the darkness. “Bring it back.”

“But I don’t—” Gerbert broke off, began again. “I don’t know how.”

I can name every one of the Jinn, he wanted to say. I can recite the rolls of all the orders of angels. You never taught me to make a light that sleeps in my hands.

He did not say it. “You know how,” said Ibrahim.

How? With names? None of them seemed to fit, except for Lucifer, and Gerbert was not minded to invoke that one. Not quite yet.

With will? He strained until the sweat broke out on his brow. He willed until his ears buzzed and his eyes went dark. Nothing.

With words? Which ones? They ran through his head, all tangled, all useless.

He slumped, exhausted, growing angry. This was all nonsense, all of it. “Fiat,” he said, “damn it. Fiat lux.“

Inside him, something shifted. Something swelled; something bloomed. He stared dumbfounded at his fingertips. To every one clung a spark of light.

The moment he thought about them, they flickered. He pulled his mind away from them, and they flared up. They coalesced; they settled, round and cool and blinding-bright, in his trembling palm.

Master Ibrahim’s smile gleamed out of the night. Gerbert blinked at him, half dazzled, half bewildered. “Was that an incantation?”

Ibrahim laughed. “Hardly! And yet it served its purpose. Now do you see?”

“I see…” Gerbert found that he could close his fingers about the light, and it would shrink; then it would swell again, if he not quite willed it to. It was delicately improbable, like walking a tightrope with an egg balanced on one’s nose. “But if this is what it is, what are all the rites and rituals?“

“Guides,” the magus answered. “Protections. Defenses against the ignorant.“

Gerbert’s head had begun to ache. The light pulsed. It wanted to float free. He did not want to know what it would do if it escaped. He willed it to go out.

It only swelled larger.

His brows knit. “Words and will are simple. This is hard.”

“It is,” said Ibrahim.

Gerbert glared at the magic he had made. It had grown again. The ache in his head was fiercer. He had lost the way of it; he could not do it.

Half out of temper, half out of despair, he willed it to grow larger still. It quivered and sighed and dwindled to nothing.

Somehow Gerbert had lain down on the carpet. Perhaps he had fallen over. He was not interested, much. “I know children like that,” he said. “Contrary.“

“It is a child,” said Ibrahim, “but it will grow.” He seemed pleased; God knew why. He cradled Gerbert’s head with serene and physicianly competence, and poured into him something cool and bitter-sweet.

Gerbert was too far gone to be wary. He merely blinked at the magus and tried to decide whether he liked the taste. He thought that perhaps he did.

“Here is the secret,” Ibrahim said, “and the price. Magic is not wrought without consequence. The greater the working, the greater the cost.”

“This was great?”

“For you, yes. Were letters easy, when first you learned them?”

“Arabic isn’t,” Gerbert muttered.

“Surely,” said Ibrahim. “Now, sleep, and be content. You have power; you have it in you to master it. I shall take joy in teaching you.”

You haven’t till now? Gerbert would have asked. But his body was far away, and sleep was near, and sweet. He fell into its arms.

— Ars Magica, Chapter 4

Author’s emphases in italic. Mine are in bold.

Sarissa left her tent in the early morning, just as the first grey light touched the reeds along the river’s edge. This country was so rich, so wet—water welling out of the ground and flowing in great slow rivers, pooling in lakes or sinking into marshes. Here where the Frankish king was building his city—did he know what power was in this place? Tenscore springs bubbled from the mountain’s foot, feeding a river that fed a greater river.

Water in its softness could wear away stone. Water was great magic. Evil could not cross it. Dark things were washed clean in it.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Chapter 3

The sky paled to silver and rose as [Sarissa] came down to the river. She bent to lave her face, to drink of the cold clean water. When she had had her fill, she knelt there for a while, breathing damp cool air, watching the sun spread light across the horizon.

The river caught the flame of it. She trailed her fingers in water as bright as fire. It was clear here, and filling with light. Fishes darted; weeds swayed in the current. Farther out, where the river was deeper, the water darkened to black beneath the sun’s brilliance.

Sarissa pulled off her boots and waded out into the icy river. The shock of the cold made her gasp, but she steeled herself to bear it. The current tugged at her. She rooted herself in the earth. The water flowed over her but could not move her. When it lapped her chin, she filled her lungs with every scrap of air that they could hold, and slipped into a strange dark-bright world.

She swam as a fish swims, supple and swift, down and down into that realm of dim green shapes and rippling weeds, lit with sudden flashes of light: sun rising, fish leaping. She passed out of the sun’s light, but there was light below her, a gleam in the river’s darkness.

Just as she knew that her breath must fail her, her outstretched hand touched the thing that lay on the river’s bottom. It was hard, colder than the water, and caught fast in a tangle of weeds and clay. She grasped the end of it and thrust against the current. Her lungs had begun to burn. But she would not let go.

The earth fought for the victory, but the water in its current caught Sarissa and swirled her suddenly upward. Blind, half-unconscious, lungs afire, she burst into the light.

She fell on the green bank with her prize caught beneath her. Out of the water it was a massive, icy-cold thing, but its heart was fire.

She lifted herself to her knees. A sword lay in the grass. It gleamed as if it had come new from the forge, grey rippled steel like the water that had begotten it. Its hilt was plain silver without adornment, but for a white stone set in the pommel.

As she knelt in front of it. Tarik flowed out of the river, licking cat-whiskers, flicking a fish’s tail that flowed and stretched and transmuted into a cat’s. He inspected the sword with approval. The water had done well, his glance said, and the sun’s fire, forging a blade for a champion’s hand. If indeed there was a champion in the world, and if, once chosen, he would do what he had been sought out to do.

Tarik, when he was a cat, had a cat’s irony. But it was a fine sword, as solid as earth, and as palpably real. Sarissa trusted that the same would be true of the man for whom it had been wrought.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Chapter 3

That morning as they rode past a town, a grey-striped cat made his way through the stream of people coming to market. There were animals enough on that road in that hour: horses and mules of course, and donkeys, and dogs, and pigs and cattle and sheep being driven to market, and here and there a quick-witted cat. But this one came direct to King Malcolm’s riding, lofted weightlessly to Edith’s saddlebow, and yawned in her face.

The puca seemed quite as much at ease in this world as in the other. What he was doing here, she did not know, but from the way he curled on the pommel of her saddle, he was not about to leave.

Some of Alain’s Bretons slid eyes at him. So did a few of Malcolm’s Gaels. They knew what they were looking at.

The puca met their glances. They looked away in haste. It was never wise to question the whims of the Old Things.

Edith took comfort in this one’s presence. There were folk of air enough, some of whom had followed her from the abbey, but a puca was a stronger power by far. A power for mischief, yes—but also a faithful ally who had sworn to her his service.

— King’s Blood, Chapter 24

Emphasis mine.

There was a person in front of her. He was neither as tall as the fair ones who crossed the land in their ridings nor as small as the fey and lesser folk who populated both this world and the other. He looked quite human actually, if one disregarded the sharply pointed tips of his ears and the sharply pointed teeth, or the eyes as green and slit-pupiled as a cat’s. His hair was as brown as oak-bark, and he was dressed in green and brown.

“Puca,” she acknowledged him by name and kind.

He grinned and bowed. “At your service, lady,” he said.

She was very careful not to twitch. No word spoken in this world was heedless, and service promised was service given. “Indeed?” she asked. “Have I earned it?”

“Your destiny has,” said the puca, “and your magic. You’re blossoming into it, lady.”

“Like a nettle,” she said.

He laughed. He was not mocking her, she did not think. But then he sobered. “We’re not at ease with all of magic, either. Some of what’s been breeding and growing in Britain is frightening. Even the great ones walk wary of it.”

“The black places?” Edith asked. Even out of the body, the thought made her cold. “The places where it’s all rotted and dead?”

The puca nodded. “It scares us. It’s all wrong—and what ever it touches, it twists. It’s caught the Hunt; they’re ever turning on their own, and feeding on magic.”

“Won’t the rites of Beltane and Midsummer help?” said Edith. “Aren’t they supposed to feed the magic?”

“They do,” said the puca.

“You want me to do something,” Edith said.

The puca grinned. “Everyone said you had clear sight. Yes, we want something. We’re not sure what, yet. Just… something. Because you have so much magic, and your blood is what it is.”

“You want my blood,” Edith said. She was very calm. “Do you think it will help?”

“Maybe not that kind of blood,” said the puca. “We don’t know. Fate swirls around you—time comes to a center in you. But we can’t see how. Not yet.”

Well, Edith thought. She was born to matter: king’s daughter and descendant of kings. That she mattered to England came as no surprise.

“Britain,” said the puca. “You matter to Britain.”

“But England is—”

“England is a shadow. Britain was there before it and will be there long after it is gone.”

“I was born to England,” Edith said a little stiffly.

“Your mother was born to England. You are half a Gael, and all the magic is in you.”

Edith set her lips together. She did not know that she was angry. He was saying things she had thought for herself. But part of her was still her mother’s child, however little she loved the life her mother had meant for her. She had to defend it somehow.

“I won’t destroy England,” she said. “I’ll never agree to that.”

“We won’t ask it,” said the puca. Still smiling at her, he shrank and dwindled and shifted, until a sleek striped cat stood where he had been. His eyes were still the same, and his teeth not so different. He was purring loudly; his whole body shook with it.

Edith blinked. She had not expected that, even knowing he was a puca and therefore a shapeshifter. He crouched; she was prepared, somewhat, when he sprang to her shoulder.

His claws dug in, but gently. His purr was raucous. She caught herself smiling and stroking his fur. He was seducing her; but she did not mind.

— King’s Blood, Chapter 16

Emphasis mine.

…[Red William] did not look back to see if the rest of them followed. A king learned to expect it.

— King’s Blood, Chapter 8

William’s mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. She was also the most wonderful. She could bring down the moon and make the sun dance with her singing. Flocks of spirits followed her wherever she went; when she worked her magic, so many of them crowded about her that one would think she could barely move.

He loved to watch her work magic. He would sit in a corner, safely out of the way, and fold his arms on his knees and rest his chin on them, and watch while she made the world more beautiful. Sometimes she made medicines, filling them full of light and laughter as well as herbs and simples. Other times she sat at her loom and wove light and shadow into the threads of linen and wool, so that the cloth carried blessing and goodwill, and a little beauty, when it was made into a cloak or a shirt or a gown. And sometimes, though that was not often, she called on the great powers for some purpose that he was too young to understand, summoning the whirlwind and bringing down the lightning.

When he was very small, he had only watched, but as he grew older, she called him to her in the middle of the working, and showed him how to do what she was doing. Once in a while she would even let him do the working. She would tell him what she wanted, and he would do as she had taught him, and brew a medicine or summon a spirit or scry in the silver bowl that she kept, wrapped with great care in a scrap of silk, in her chest to which no one else had the key—because the key was made of magic.

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 6

There were things that Merlin had taught him. Defenses against dark things. Walls of air. Their like had imprisoned the enchanter in the wood; but in lesser strength they could protect a man—or a woman—beset by ill magic.

…[Roland did not need] to go into the tent for this. He had simply to know what the boundaries were….

True magic was quiet, a thing of the spirit. It had no need for extravagant displays. He spoke the words softly, without drums or trumpets, magic gestures or sleights of the magician’s art. He raised the walls as Merlin had taught him, secured them with bars of light, and bound them with the chains of the earth. He delved deep in his strength for that, but there was enough. He even kept his feet after, bowed to Sarissa without falling over, and walked away.

— Kingdom of the Grail, Chapter 8

The prior of Bec…waved away her honest respect. “I’m a man like any other, lady.”

She arched a brow. “Truly?”

“Truly,” he said.

“There is the matter of…” She flicked her hand. The lamps went out. In the sudden dimness she bade a light grow, shimmering over her fingers, unfolding from them like a strange flower.

He quelled her working with a gesture. That same gesture, completed, restored the lamps to their former condition. “This too is God’s gift,” he said.

“Surely,” she said, “but it’s given to few, and to precious few in such measure as yours.”

“Or yours, lady. You will be stronger than I.”

“But not yet.”

“You are young,” he said, “and while not foolish, perhaps not granted such judgment as will be yours with greater age and maturity.”

She had had enough of dancing around the point. “Yes, I made a mistake. Yes, I know what mistake I made. And what part do you play, Father Prior, in this game of arts and powers?”

“A small one,” he said, “by the grace of God.”

That was disingenuous. She swept it aside. “So. You’re a Guardian of Gaul. Have you come to impose sentence upon me for dereliction of duty?”

“If anyone is to do that, lady” he said, “it should be your father. No; I came to offer such aid as I could….”

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 10

He was all alone in the empty land, surrounded by people whose souls he could not sense at all. He was in hell, with no hope of earthly salvation.

He lashed out, still in a fit of panic—even knowing it was folly; knowing he hovered in delusion. Fire surged up out of the earth and poured down from the sky.

In the last instant he flung it away from the crowd, but he had neither the strength nor the speed to unmake it. It plummeted into the midst of the city. Blood-red flames roared to heaven, then sank down into mortal gold and blue and the black of smoke.

The crowd fled in a chorus of screams. The few with their wits about them surged toward the flames. The rest scattered in panic no less mindless than Henry’s, but far less perilous.

Only the monks were left with the king’s body, and Henry with the drawn and empty sensation of too much power expended too quickly….

— King’s Blood, Chapter 7

Emphases mine.

The Lady of the Lake had a secret. It was nothing mortifying or dangerous, but it might have caused difficulties if certain persons discovered that behind the veils was a maiden younger than Mathilda. Mortals, especially men, needed to see an aged face before they would believe in either power or wisdom.

Her name was Etaine. It was not something she shared with the world, any more than her face or her manifest youth. When she walked abroad from the lake of Avalon, she walked veiled, stately, and mantled in mystery.

Mathilda did not make the mistake of discrediting her wisdom because she had, at the most, fifteen summers on this side of the Otherworld. She remembered who she had been. Her knowledge passed from world to world, life to life, Lady to Lady, back beyond Morgaine and Rhiannon to lives so ancient that even bards had forgotten them.

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 29

Robin sank down where the shade had been sitting. With its passing the air was noticeably warmer, but Robin had begun to shudder. Even for one of his arts and powers, it was no easy thing to converse with the dead.

— King’s Blood, Chapter 12

Emphasis mine.

“…We are no friends to the prince below,” she said, “or any other force for the world’s destruction.”

“Including me?”

“You are no more or less dangerous than ignorance ever is.”

“That’s deadly.”

“It can be taught,” she said, “and will. I am bound to it….”

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 8

Emphasis mine.

“Tomorrow I will teach you how to undo what you have done.”

“That’s not possible.”

Her brow arched. He did not quite see what she did. It had something to do with a gesture of the hand, and some part of it was a slant of the eye and a turn of mind.

The charred branches stirred and cracked. Black scales fell; ash blew away in a sudden swirl of wind. Living branches unfolded, sprouting leaves as bright as the first morning of the world. They glowed in the night. Blossoms budded and bloomed, a cloud of white and palest rose. Their scent enveloped him in sweetness.

William’s mouth hung open. He could barely muster wits to shut it.

“You are meant for more and better than this,” she said, “but whatever you have done, you must know how to undo. It’s a law of our order.”

“‘Our’ order?”

“You are born to it, and reborn, for ages out of count.”

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 8

Emphasis mine.

Mathilda sat where she always sat, among the oldest students, young women who would be passing through the shadow and the fire come the dark of the year. A few would emerge as Ladies [of the Wood] of full power and learning. Many would die in the testing.

— Judith Tarr, Rite of Conquest, Chapter 17

Every year at Beltane, one or more of the young women in the acolytes’ house passed through darkness and fire. Then they were Ladies of the Isle; or they were gone.

— Judith Tarr, King’s Blood, Chapter 33

Emphases mine.

“You can’t leave me in this condition. What if I blast the king, or one of his courtiers?”

“You won’t,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“Magic costs,” she said. “Go to the kitchens first, before you sleep.”

“I’m not—”

“Do it.”

She had laid a binding on him. A fugitive memory told him what it was. Then the griping in his belly bound him more tightly still.

He was ravenous—starving. He was dizzy with hunger. If the cooks were not awake, he would raid and pillage on his own. Then he would sleep like the dead.

Not the worst battle he had ever fought, on the field or in lordly hall, had taxed his mind and body as this little bit of magic had. Small wonder wizards did not rule the world, if this was what it did to them to try.

— Rite of Conquest, Chapter 8

Emphasis mine.