Lady of Avalon (14 page)

But Caillean was already in motion, stepping into her sheepskin boots with the fleece still inside and pulling on her warm cloak. When she opened the door she blinked at the brightness of the day, but the air, which a moment ago had felt so cold, seemed now as invigorating as wine.

They met on the path. Below, Waterwalker was already pushing his craft away from the muddy shore. Lunet and the other priestesses who had been awakened by her shouts hung back, staring at Gawen as if he were returning from the dead.

Examining him, Caillean understood their uncertainty. Gawen had changed. He seemed taller, and thinner, but there was hard muscle on that long frame, and the strong-boned face he turned to her was unmistakably that of a man. But wonder filled his eyes.

She shook her head and waved the others away. “Silly girls, this is not Samhain, when the dead return, and he is no ghost but a living man. Go get him something hot to drink and dry clothing if you can think of nothing else more useful-go on!”

Gawen stopped, looking around him. Softly, Caillean spoke his name.

“What has happened?” he asked, focusing on her at last. “There is so much water, but I saw no rain, and how can buds be coming on branches that were just losing their leaves?”

“It is the equinox,” she said, not understanding.

He nodded. “The battle was a moon before it, and then for some days I wandered…”

“Gawen,” she interrupted, “the great battle in the north was fought last harvest tide, half a year ago!”

He swayed, and for a moment she thought he would fall. “Over six moons? But since the Lady of Faerie saved me only six days have passed!”

Caillean took his arm, beginning to understand. “Time runs differently in the Otherworld. We knew you were in danger, but not what became of you. I see that we must thank the Lady of Faerie for preserving you. Don’t complain, child-you have missed the winter, and it was a hard one. But you are home now, and we must decide what is to be done with you!”

A little shakily, Gawen sighed, and then managed a smile. “Home…It was only after the battle that I understood I have no place in either Roman or British lands. Only here, on this isle that is not wholly in the world of men.”

“I will not force a choice upon you,” Caillean said carefully, suppressing her excitement. What a leader for the Druids he could be! “But if you have taken no other vows, the dedication you were going to make before you left us is still open to you.”

“In another week I would have made my oath of allegiance to the Emperor, but the Brigantes came, and we were sent out unsworn,” answered Gawen. “Brother Paulus will be livid.” He grinned suddenly. “I met him as I was coming up the hill and he begged me to join his brethren. I refused, and he shouted something-What has happened to the Nazarenes since Father Joseph died? Paulus seems even crazier than he was before!”

“He is Father Paulus now,” answered Caillean. “They have chosen him as their leader, and he seems determined to make the rest of them as fanatical as he. It is a pity, after the many years in which we lived side by side in peace upon this hill, but he will have nothing to do with a community where a woman rules. None of our folk have spoken to theirs for many moons. But he does not matter,” she went on. “It is you who must decide what you will do now.”

Gawen nodded. “I seem to have done six moons of thinking in the Otherworld, for all that the time seemed so short. I am ready”-he paused, gazing around him at the weathered huts and then up at the stone-crowned Tor-“to face whatever fate the gods will give me now.”

Caillean blinked. For a moment she had seen him ablaze with gold like a king, or was it fire?

“Your destiny may be greater than you suppose…,” she said in a voice that was not her own.

Then the moment of vision passed. She looked up to see his reaction, but he was staring past her, and from his face all the weariness had fallen away. Caillean did not need to turn to know that Sianna was standing there.

The new moon was setting. Through the entry to the low brush hut in which they had put him, Gawen could just see her fragile sickle brushing the edge of the hill. Poor baby moon, hurrying to her bed; in a few moments she would leave him in darkness. He shifted position uncomfortably and settled himself once more. It was the night before the Eve of Beltane. Since the setting of the sun, when the new moon was already high, he had been here. It was a time for him to meditate, they had told him, to prepare his soul. It was uncomfortably like those long hours when he and Arius had waited for the battle between the Romans and the Brigantes to begin.

Nothing but his own will held him here. It would be easy enough to slip away through the darkness. Not that the folk of Avalon would have cast him out if he changed his mind-they had asked if he sought initiation of his own will again and again. But if he had refused this, and stayed, he would always have seen the disappointment in Caillean’s eyes, and as for Sianna-he would have faced far more than whatever they planned to do to him for the right to claim her love.

He looked out again. The moon had disappeared. A practiced glance at the positions of the stars told him that midnight was near.
Soon they will come, and I will be waiting. Why?
Was it only his desire for Sianna that had held him, or some deeper compulsion of the soul?

Gawen had tried to run away, and found he could not evade his own divided nature. It seemed to him now that to choose something to serve, and give himself to it completely, was the only way to unity.

Something rustled outside; he looked up and saw that the stars had moved. The Druids, their white robes ghostly in the starshine, were gathering.

“Gawen, son of Eilan, I call you now, at the hour of nights high noon. Is it still your desire to be admitted to the sacred mysteries?” The voice was that of Brannos, and it warmed Gawen’s heart to hear it. The old man seemed ancient as the hills, his fingers were now so twisted by joint ache that he could no longer play the harp at all, but at need he could still act with the power of a priest at the rituals.

“It is.” His own voice was hoarse in his ears.

“Then come forth, and let the testing begin.”

They took him, still in darkness, to the sacred well. There was something different in the sound of the water. Peering down, Gawen realized that the flow had been diverted. He could see steps leading down into the well shaft, and the niche in its side.

“To be reborn in the spirit you must first be purified,” said Brannos. “Go down into the well.”

Shivering, Gawen stripped off his robe and clambered downward. Tuarim, who had taken his vows the previous year, followed him. He started as the young man knelt and snapped a pair of iron manacles around his ankles. He had been told to expect this, and knew that he could release himself if his courage failed him, but the cold weight of metal on his flesh filled him with an unexpected fear. Yet he said nothing as he heard the rush of water, released, beginning once more to fill the well.

The water rose swiftly. It was bitterly cold, and for a time he could think of nothing else. But every one of those priests whom he had remembered with scorn when he was being trained as a soldier must have been through this; he would not flee what they had endured. He tried to distract himself by wondering if the sacred vessel Father Joseph had spoken of was still here, or whether Caillean had taken it for safekeeping. If he tried, he thought he could sense something, an echo of joy beyond pain, but the waters were rising.

By the time the water reached his chest, Gawen could hardly feel the lower parts of his body at all. He wondered if his muscles would obey him well enough to escape if he tried. Had this all been a trick to make him go to his death unprotesting?
Remember!
he told himself.
Remember what Caillean taught you! Summon the inner fire!

Cold water embraced his neck; his teeth were chattering. Desperately he grasped for a memory of flame-a spark in the mind’s darkness that flared as he sucked in air and then exploded through every vein. Light! He refused to know anything other than that radiance. For a moment then, he seemed to see a tumult of shadow split by a single lightning stroke that divided light from darkness and in a chain reaction sent pattern, order, meaning, into the world.

Awareness of his body returned, but it was at a new level. Gawen found that he could see, for the darkness around him was lit by a radiance that shone from within. He was no longer cold-in another moment, he thought, his inner heat would turn the water to steam. When it touched his lips, he laughed.

It was at that moment that the level of the water began to sink once more. It did not take long for the well, its inflow blocked and exits freed, to draw in enough for the Druids to release him. Gawen hardly noticed. He was light! That new knowledge was the only thing that he could think of now.

Below the well a great fire had been kindled; if he had failed, perhaps it would have warmed him. They told him that he must go through it in order to continue, and Gawen laughed once more. He was fire-why should he fear the flame? And, naked as he was, he walked across the coals, and though the heat dried the water from his body, not a single toe of his foot was burned.

Brannos was waiting for him on the other side.

“Through fire and water you have passed, two of the elements from which, as we are taught by the ancient men of wisdom, the world is made. There remain earth and air. To complete your testing, you must find your way to the summit of the Tor-if you can…”

While the old man was speaking, others had brought up earthen pots in which herbs were smoking, and set them around him. Smoke billowed upward, sweet and choking; he recognized the acrid-sweet scent of the herbs they used to bring visions, but he had never encountered it in such concentration. He took an involuntary breath, coughed, and forced himself to breathe again, bracing himself against the wave of vertigo that came with it.

Accept it, ride it,
he reminded himself of old lessons. The smoke could be a great aid in detaching the mind from the body, but without discipline the spirit could be lost in evil dreams. But he, coming to it already filled with sacred fire, needed no help to transcend ordinary awareness. With each breath he felt the smoke pushing him further from ordinary consciousness; he looked at the Druids, and saw them haloed with light.

“Ascend the holy hill and receive the blessing of the gods…” Brannos’ voice resonated through all the worlds.

Gawen blinked at the slope above him. That should be easy enough, even when his spirit was flying. In seven years he had climbed the Tor so often, his feet must know the way by now. He took a step and felt his feet sinking into the soil. Another-it was like wading through deep water. He peered ahead of him; what he had thought was firelight on the ground mist seemed now to be a glow that was coming from the earth itself, and the hill had the luminous transparency of Roman glass. The stone that marked the beginning of the path was a pillar of fire.

It was like the light he had seen coming from his own body-like the auras that he saw surrounding the others.
It is not just me!
he knew then.
Everything is made of Light!

But the things revealed by that illumination were not the same as they appeared in the light of every day. It was clear now that the labyrinthine path he knew so well led not around the Tor but
into
it. He felt a moment’s fear-what if his vision deserted him and he found himself trapped beneath the earth? But this new perception was so
interesting;
he could not resist the desire to learn what lay within the holy hill.

Gawen took a deep breath, and this time the smoke, instead of disorienting him, only made his vision sharper. The way was clear. He strode boldly forward.

From the westernmost point of the Tor, the passageway led directly into the hill. He found himself moving in a long curve through some transparent medium that resisted like water and tingled like fire but was neither. It felt, he realized as he rounded the far curve and started back again, as if the substance of his body had become less solid; he flowed, rather than pushed, through the soil, and only his hold on his body of light allowed him to retain his identity.

Now he was nearing the point of entry, but rather than spiraling around, the way doubled back upon itself. Once more he swung back and around the hill. This curve was longer; he sensed that he was moving away from the center rather than closer to it. But the same compulsion drew him around once more, so close to the surface that he could see the outside world as if through a crystal haze. Around and back again he passed, and now at last the way led straight into the hill.

He was very deep now. Power throbbed from the heart of the hill so strongly that he could hardly stand. He pushed against the passageway, trying to reach it, and felt the first ecstatic disintegration of his being begin as he touched the barriers.
The way is barred,
came a voice from deep within;
you have not yet completed your transformation.

Gawen drew back. He could see that the only way out was to go forward, but the pain of moving away from the center was almost more than he could bear. But this turn of labyrinth was more tight than the others, and presently he rounded a sharp curve and staggered as the current of power that flowed through the Tor caught and swept him toward the heart of the hill.

From somewhere beyond the circles of the world a voice proclaimed,
“The Pendragon walks the Dragon Path…”