The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) by Kit Maples Read Free Book Online Page A

taught her but the making of war and the feeding of her narrow belly?”
    The prince thumped my flat stomach and reminded me of my hunger for food and everything else.
    “This half-woman-thing is not fit to have my sword.  Take her away!  Find another and start over again, you fool.”
    “You know I can’t do that,” said Galabes.  “I won’t do it.”
    I said, “Show him the coin again, Father.”
    “Ah, the voice of knightly arrogance,” Llew said.  “Yes, this is Arthur’s brat.  But tell me, brat, now you’ve had my dreaming season to make something of yourself, what is it you’ve made?  Another killing monster like Galabes ready to slake Morrigu with more blood of innocents?”
    He touched my training scars.
    “Are these trophies from some gentle soldier rite?  The guarantee you will free more souls to feed greedy Death?”
    Llew spat.  Sudden wind carried his mess away out of the castle.
    “Show me more than the coin,” he said to Galabes, fiercely, “or this slave from Carbonek Castle gets none of my swords.”
    “I’ll send her to Armenia, Prince, to bring back the prize iron ore you want for all your swords.  Will that do?”
    Sunlight flashed on the thin white covering over Prince Llew’s eyes, picking out the spots of blue, and he said, with fierce glee, “Oh, that may solve the problem.  Yes, yes!  She may die on the road and free us both of her.  Let’s hope so.”
    I began to shout my anger but the hound demanded silence.
    Llew said to me, “You, brat, may find the holy ore.  Some do.  You may have the strength to haul it on your back out of the mountains all the weary distance back to me.  Some do.  You may have the skill to fight your way here through all that dying Roman world out there.  Occasionally one or two manage.  But will you choose the right ore from the black rock?”
    “Could there be so many black gems in a mine filled with ore that I would miss any of them, Lord Prince, or do you mean to make me laugh?” I said.
    The dog wanted me silent again but I ignored him.
    Llew said to Galabes, “Oh, yes, she’s Arthur-arrogant enough to try.  But did you tell her it’s only in the soul that a man or woman may identify the ore I want for my swords?”
    I cut in, saying, “I need a special kind of soul for digging out filthy rock?”
    I wanted to laugh, it so absurd, and I did.
    Galabes and the silent hound watched me.  Llew watched them.
    Surprise came into Llew’s cataracted eyes.  I almost saw the blue pupils burst out.
    “So there’s love in you still, Old Thief,” he said to Galabes, “that you’d put this raw child to such a test.  Or do you really think, after one hundred and forty-four of your failures, this wretched creature is the one to bring us back our king?”
    “I’m old and weary,” said Galabes.  “Old enough and weary enough to be allowed to die and let my ashes scatter to the old battlefield.  To let the world find Arthur without me.  She must be the one because she’s my last.  I can try no more, amen!”
    Galabes began to weep in his self-fury.
    The startled and unhappy prince said to me, “Then I’ll make your sword, Brynn-daughter-of-Arthur.  You’ll make it with me because you and the sword must become more than you both are.  Do you understand me?”
    I was as rattled as the prince by Galabes’ distress but managed to say, “Of course I do.  I think I do.  I’ll try!”
    “We begin the making when you bring me the ore.  Not bog iron.  Not the trash you find in British fields and holes.  Iron from the mountains of Armenia.  The good iron…”
    “It’ll take me a year to tramp there and back!” I cried, horrified.
    “Only if you survive,” said Galabes, a sudden sorrow in his voice, as of a father sending his daughter on a hideous quest.
    The prince said, “We’ll make the sword in its roughness with your raw iron.  We’ll let it rest in the Earth to leach out its imperfections and absorb the