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But Mudrin got no farther than the threshold when she stopped abruptly as though some enchantment had frozen her heart. The basket she carried as a gift for the medicine woman slid from her hands; honeyed hazelnuts, baked apples and dried plums rolled out onto the earthen floor.

Hertha gave her a pitiless look. “Mudrin, you shy at your own footfall. What is it?”

Then Hertha noticed what she had not before. The whole of the homestead was oddly still, and it was the unholy quiet of the burial ground. The field thralls had not yet come forth from their huts, though she knew they had risen as usual with the mournful baying of the hound-keeper’s horn. Even the wild things of the forest hushed their twitterings and rustlings. The wind ceased its keening and seemed to listen. From the yard she heard a dog’s growl give way to a fearful whine.

Hertha rose. “Mudrin. Speak. What do you gape at?”

Hertha made her way to the door, her spine stiff with disdain. She was dressed scarcely differently from the thralls—all wore a shift of fine wool woven into a plaid of many hues of brown; the loose garment was girded with a hemp rope and draped with a heavy cloak of rough undyed wool. The sole sign of Hertha’s rank was the silver fibula inset with garnets that secured her cloak; the thralls’ cloaks were fastened with thorns. Yet anyone could have seen at once that Hertha was the one who was noble and free. Her black eyes were harsh with pride, betraying a ferocious soul too large for her withered body. She had the look of one who would be transfixed by a spear before she allowed an enemy to come near the stores, or perish of starvation before she would consent to share meat with one who failed to avenge a murdered kinsman. “Speak, or I’ll have your tongue.”

Mudrin was still silent. Fredemund, one of the loom-women, came grumbling up behind the younger woman, moving minimally, painfully; her middle was thick as a barrel.

“Mother of the gods,” Fredemund exclaimed softly. “Mudrin, what mischief have you done?”

“No sacrilege…” Mudrin took an ill-planned step backward and stepped on a chicken that flapped noisily into the air, then crashed into a willow-withy screen. Her voice was a whelp’s whine. “…I committed no sacrilege…”

Hertha swept past them and looked out.

Where forest gave way to field, before the broken stone wall, she saw the solitary form of a woman. No horse, no snapped branch, no stirring of sparrows announced this traveler’s coming; she might have materialized there from another world. Her hooded cloak was strikingly white against the forest gloom. With grave steps the woman began to move toward them, swaying slightly like some image of the gods carried in a procession. At her back a raven erupted from the forest, arced upward and gave a raw cry, as though in attendance upon her.

“Ramis,”
Hertha exclaimed softly.

“Fredemund,” Mudrin whispered, “draw the door.”

“Be still,” Hertha commanded. “You’ll not keep her out. She sees straight into your bones.”

No common seeress or priestess of the settlements could have evoked in them such dread. The multitudes of Holy Ones whom they saw every day, crowded about the village sanctuaries or attending the divine springs and hallowed groves scattered over their lands, inspired respect but not terror, for these mingled often with the people, and no tales were spread of their awesome gifts. But Ramis was one of a dark, reclusive sisterhood called the Holy Nine, the most feared seeresses of all the northern tribes. It was said they could raise their own from the dead and foretell the fall of nations. They conversed with the elder Fates as familiarly as they spoke with their own kin. Their veins ran not with blood but with the blue ichor of deathless beings. Ramis was answerable only to their highest one, a prophetess called the Veleda, whose title meant “the One Who Sees.” The Veleda dwelled hidden away from all humanity in a lofty wooden tower on the River Lippe and handed down her oracles through servants. As the Veleda’s counsel could sway tribal assemblies and ignite wars, the Roman Governor always demanded she be present when he made treaties with the tribes.

“She cannot be here,” Mudrin muttered to Fredemund. “She is with Baldemar and the army.”

“It’s not difficult to travel so far so quickly when you lope through the wood in the shape of a black wolf,” Fredemund answered darkly.

“You chuttering hens, I warn you for the final time to silence,” Hertha cried out in a ringing voice that betrayed her own unease. Ramis could not be halted, frightened into obedience, bartered with, or understood. Hertha felt she faced an armed stranger in the dark. Had the great seeress come to curse them all, or to save Athelinda? Or had she been drawn by the destiny of the child? It was whispered in the village that Ramis sometimes stole babes from their cradles to raise as apprentices. What finer one to steal than the firstborn of Baldemar?

Now they could see her face, austere as bone, with its fine brow, smooth as the moon, and the grim hollows of her cheeks; Hertha could with disturbing ease imagine the skull beneath the skin. Ramis’ eyes were mild and gray-blue, opaque as river ice, but with a darkness underneath hinting at the black water surging beneath the ice. Her mouth was severe and neatly formed; on a gentler woman it might have been beautiful but on Ramis’ face it was a finely chiseled instrument. Though she was not much past middle years, she seemed never to have been young; envisioning her as a maid was as difficult as imagining the grand and gnarled oak as a sapling.

In her right hand was a staff of hazelwood; its brass knob was inset with glowing stones of amber. The thralls felt their hearts clutch at the sight of it, for this was the staff of condemnation; when Ramis broke it at the Law-Assembly, she sentenced the accused to death. But her staff was not more dreadful than those supple hands, adept at drawing ropes taut about human necks. To Ramis fell the sacred duty of offering a human life to the gods in the spring rites held at the edge of the hallowed lake. Though the one who gave his life always did so willingly, still to look on those hands was to gaze on a source of terrifying mystery. The hood of her cloak and her hairy calfskin boots were lined with white cat fur. White cats were sacred to the goddess she served, whose many names changed with the place and season but who was most often called Fria, the Lady. A circlet of silver lay on Ramis’ head; from it hung a delicately worked crescent moon.

Ramis halted before the door and inclined her head. Mudrin and Fredemund quietly panicked, not realizing what was wrong.

“The axhead,” Hertha reminded them. “Mudrin, quickly, dig it out.”

It was the custom of the people to bury an axhead in the earth of the doorway with the blade facing the sky, to give protection against lightning. But a tribal seeress could not come near any implement fashioned of iron, for this metal was too profane and new; its presence was jarring to the subtle powers of the Holy Ones, passed down from the age of giants when implements were fashioned only of living stone.

Mudrin dug it out with a broken potsherd. Ramis stepped gracefully through.

“Greetings to the noble Hertha and blessings on this house.” Ramis’ voice, at least, inspired no terror; it was womanly and kind, though with a hint of power held back.

“Greetings, High One.” Hertha smiled wanly. “Stay as long as we please you. Honor us by sharing our meat and mead.”

Ramis inclined her head in acknowledgment, then wordlessly she walked toward Athelinda. As she passed over the threshing floor, then down the long hearthfire, past the tall grain-storage jars and the brightly painted warriors’ shields mounted along the walls, Hertha followed at a respectful distance. Mudrin and Fredemund sought safety behind Athelinda’s warp-weight loom. From Ramis drifted the scent of fertile earth mingled with spikenard and thyme.

The only sounds in the hallowed silence were the flitting of birds in the thatch of the roof and the soft jingling of the many sickle-shaped tools of bronze that hung at Ramis’ belt. When she came to the bed of sheepskins on which Athelinda lay, she withdrew a leather pouch from her cloak and ordered the thralls to put the herbs it contained into a bronze vessel and boil them with goat’s milk. Then she drew back the hood of her cloak, revealing unbound hair of dark blond with long streaks of silver, and sat on the weaving stool next to Athelinda.

Hertha felt in one moment a burden fit for an ox had been taken from her shoulders. The Holy Nine were the best midwives in the land. Perhaps Ramis
had
come only to save Athelinda. How she knew she was needed here was known only by the ghosts.

At the sight of her, Athelinda made a mewling sound and struggled weakly to get away. But Ramis put a gentle palm on her forehead and intoned the words of a birth-charm in a voice full of powerful comfort. Terror eased from Athelinda’s pain-fogged eyes.

Ramis’ hands then traveled with brisk confidence over Athelinda’s swollen body, moving through a succession of tasks with light, swift grace. First she determined the position of the child, probing deftly for what was wrong. Then she massaged Athelinda’s belly with an ointment of hen’s grease, dittany, and hollyhock, stroking her hips, her back, beseeching her body to release the child. When the draught she had ordered the thralls to prepare was poured out into a clay vessel, she put it to Athelinda’s dry lips. Ramis’ presence seemed to reawaken Athelinda’s will, as though an extinguished torch were touched by one that burned brightly.

Then Ramis dragged the laboring woman to her feet while carefully supporting her weight, and forced her to take staggering steps. Athelinda’s copper-colored hair, soaked with her exertions, swung limply down. For long moments Ramis walked with her this way; Hertha guessed she was shifting the child’s position. When Ramis was satisfied she had done so, she helped Athelinda into a crouching position over a bed of straw. After a few more brisk, insistent manipulations of Ramis’ hands, the child came all at once.

Ramis caught the glistening, red creature in her strong hands. Mudrin’s eyes blurred with tears. Those hands that so skillfully took life at the edge of the lake now just as skillfully preserved it.

As Ramis raised the child up, Hertha saw something flickering in the prophetess’s eyes that she had not thought possible there—a vulnerable look, the look of a mother, helpless with love.

With gentle triumph Ramis proclaimed, “A girl child is born to the clan.” After saving aside the birth-string so it could later be ceremonially buried, she laid the small creature on her mother’s breast.

“You have blessed us,” Hertha said with exaggerated graciousness—she did not want to seem ungrateful by betraying her unease. A girl child was more likely to be stolen away for an apprentice. “Mudrin! Fredemund!” She clapped her hands. “Prepare for the oracle.”

A seeress was called to every birth to prophesy the future of the child; all counted it an honor they had one so august as Ramis to perform this common rite. Fredemund, moving stiffly as an old mare, spread a white linen cloth before the hearthfire. Mudrin found her birdbone flute and, with a child’s animal spirits, began to play while walking sunwise round the hearthfire, weaving an intricate net of notes through which harmful ghosts could not pass.

Ramis shook out her silver and bronze hair until it hung down like a second cloak, nearly as long, laid over the first. The prophetess then placed her staff at the edge of the white cloth and settled herself behind it, sitting cross-legged. She waited until she saw the babe take milk. No oracle would be given before a child was put to the breast, to protect the newborn in case the parents were terrified of its fate and wanted to cast it out. For once a child took food it became a member of the clan, and to kill it then would be the most grievous crime of all, the murder of kin.

“Tell us first,” Hertha ventured as she settled beside Athelinda, “what ancestor is born among us? Whose name shall she bear?”

Ramis watched approvingly as the babe began to suck. “There is but one name for her, my lady. She must be called Auriane.”

Hertha’s eyes flashed, but she stifled her fury. They had been betrayed. And a name, once given, could not be taken back. With cautious affront she protested: “But…that is not a name of our family. You have given her a seeress’s name.”

“I have given her the name that is hers.”

Athelinda spoke; in her exhaustion she feared nothing and no one. “It is the right of the mother and father to name the child.”

Hertha glared at Athelinda, astonished by her spirited rashness. If Ramis were goaded to wrath she might curse their cattle with disease or blast the fields for a generation.

But Ramis only answered Athelinda mildly, “I am her mother and father.”

Athelinda pressed the child’s cheek to hers and shut her eyes. Tears seeped from beneath her dark lashes. “You thief of children! You shall not have her.”

“Athelinda! Silence yourself or fall into darkness,” Hertha hissed.

“Hertha. Be at peace,” Ramis interrupted in her clear, commanding alto. “I do not hear those words. They are spoken not to me but to the specter of the evils she has known.” Ramis turned to Athelinda, her voice now soft as fleece, “Athelinda, take heed. The child is neither yours nor mine, truly, and these things are not to be feared. Life flows through this little one and carries her along, as it flows through you and me. Would you try and dam the springs of the gods? You cannot stop a name, no more than you can stop the night.”

With a quick gesture Ramis flung agaric onto the fire, causing it to jump. But it settled back at once as though it knew its master. Mudrin’s notes on the bone flute shifted in tone; now they were warm, low, and enticing as she lured the spirits of foreknowing.