Lady of Avalon (19 page)

“This place is only a threshold,” said her mother; “soon it will disappear. Gawen must go on, and you must return to the human world.”

“Avalon is safe,” she exclaimed. “Why should I go back now?”

“If you have no care for the life you have not yet lived, then go back for the sake of the child you bear…”

Sianna’s eyes widened even more, and Caillean felt her own spirit leap with a hope she had not known she had lost. But it was Gawen whose radiance was growing, as if with each moment the conventions of the flesh became of less importance.

“Live, my beloved, live, and raise our child, so that something of me will remain in the world.”

“Live, Sianna,” cried Caillean, “for you are young and strong, and I will need your help badly in the time to come.”

Gawen took her in his arms, so bright now that his light shone through Sianna as well. “It will not seem so long. And when your time is done, we will walk together once more!”

“Do you promise?”

Gawen laughed. “Only truth can be spoken here…” And with those words, the light became blinding.

Caillean shut her eyes, but she heard him say,
“I love you…”
And though those words might have been said to Sianna, it was her soul that heard them, and she realized that they had been meant for her as well.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing at the broad, muddy shore of the wetlands where the waters of the Sabrina were returned in a brackish backflow by the tide. Beside her stood the Faerie Queen, arrayed once more in her woodland guise, though a hint of the glamour of the Overworld clung about her still. Night was done, and from moment to moment the air was brightening. About their heads gulls swooped, calling, and the damp air was heavy with the tang of the distant sea.

“Is it done?” Caillean whispered.

“Look behind you,” came the answer. Caillean turned. For a moment she thought that nothing had changed. Then she saw that the ringstones on the Tor were whole and straight, as if they had never been desecrated, and the slope beyond the holy well where the beehive huts of Father Josephus and his monks had stood was empty and green.

“The mists will protect you-call them now…”

Once more Caillean looked westward. A faint mist swirled off the waters, deepening the farther she looked until it merged into the solid wall of sea-fog that had come in with the dawn.

“By what spell shall I summon them?”

The Lady took from her belt pouch something wrapped in yellowed linen. It was a small golden tablet inscribed with strange characters, and at the sight of them far-memory awakened and Caillean knew that they had been written by the men who came from the mighty lands that now lie drowned beneath the sea. And when she touched it, though she had never heard that language with her mortal ears, she knew what words she must say.

In the distance the thick mists curdled and began to flow. As she continued to call they came billowing in, rolling across tree and reed and water to the mud flats on the shore, swirling around her in a cool embrace that soothed away the last of her pain.

She gestured, sending the mist away to either side.
Enfold us, surround us, draw us farther into the mist where no fanatic can shout his curses or cast his spells and only the gods can find us. Surround Avalon with mist where we will be forever and eternally secure!

Presently she began to feel cold. At the edge of vision, mist hung heavy above the water, and she sensed that the familiar landscape through which she had once traveled from Deva no longer lay beyond it but, rather, a strangeness, something uncanny and only partly visible to mortal eyes.

Had she been here for minutes, or hours? She felt cramped and stiff, as if she had carried all Avalon upon her back and shoulders for a long and weary way.

“It is done.” The Queen’s voice wavered. She seemed smaller, as if she too had exhausted herself in this night’s working. “Your isle lies between the world of men and Faerie. If any would now seek Avalon, it will be the holy isle of the Nazarenes they will find, unless they have been taught the ancient magic. You may teach the spell to some of the marsh folk, if they are worthy, but otherwise the way can be passed only by your initiates.”

Caillean nodded. The damp air felt fresh and new. Henceforth they would dwell in a clean land, owing no service to prince or emperor, guided only by the gods…

As I grow older, I find my thoughts turning inward. The maidens tend me carefully, and pretend not to notice when I call one of them by her mother’s name. I am not in pain, but it is true that things past are often more vivid to me than those of the present day. They say that it is given to a high priestess to know her time, and I think that I will not remain in this body long.

From time to time new girls come to us for training, brought by the marsh men, who know the spell, or found by our priestesses when they go out into the world. Some stay for a year or two, and others remain and take vows as priestesses. Still, the changes here are slight, compared with events beyond our Vale. Three years after Gawen died, the Emperor Hadrianus himself came to Britannia and set his armies to building a great wall across the northlands. But will it keep the wild tribes penned in their moors and mountains forever more?

I wonder. Walls are only as strong as the men who man them.

Of course, the same is true of Avalon.

By day I think of the past, but last night I dreamed I was leading the full-moon rites atop the Tor. I looked into the silver bowl, and saw visions of the future reflected there. I saw an emperor they called Antoninus marching north from Hadrian’s Wall to build another in Alba. But the Romans could not hold it, and only a few years later they pulled down their forts and marched back. In the future I saw in the bowl, times of peace were succeeded by seasons of war. A new confederation of northern tribes overran the Wall, and another emperor, Severus, came to Britannia to quell them and returned to Eburacum to die.

In my visions, almost two hundred years passed, and in all that time, the mists guarded Avalon. In southern Britannia, British and Roman were becoming one people. A new emperor arose, called Diocletian, and set about healing the Empire from its latest civil wars.

Mixed with the glimpses of Roman conflicts I saw my priestesses, generation after generation worshipping the Goddess on the Holy Tor or going out to become the wives of princes and keep a little of the old wisdom alive in the world. And sometimes it seemed to me that one had the look of Gawen, and at others there would be a maiden with the beauty of Eilan, or a little dark girl who looked like the Faerie Queen.

But I did not see myself reborn in Avalon. According to the Druid teachings, there are some whose holiness is such that when death releases them from the body they go forever beyond the circles of the world. I do not think that I am such a shining soul. Perhaps, if the Goddess is merciful, She will allow my spirit to watch over my children until it is needful for me to live in the flesh once more.

And when I do, it may be that Gawen and Sianna will also come again. Will we know each other? I wonder. Perhaps not, but I think we will carry into those new lives some memory of our former love. Perhaps it will be Sianna’s turn to be the teacher next time, and mine to learn. But as for Gawen, he will always be the Sacred King.

Dierna sighed, wishing she could do the same, but her grandmother had told her too many times that the High Priestess of Avalon must set an example, and had herself ridden straight-backed till the day she died. Even had she wished to, Dierna could not have ignored that discipline. There were times, she thought, when being able to trace her descent through seven generations, most of them priestesses, from the Lady Sianna was an honor she did not need. But she would not have to endure the weather much longer. Already the ground was rising, and there was more traffic on the road. They would be in Durnovaria before night fell. She hoped that the maiden they had come here to fetch would be worth the ride.

Conec, the younger of the Druids, pointed, and she saw the graceful curve of the aqueduct cutting through the trees.

“Indeed, it is a wonder,” she agreed, “especially when there is no reason the people of Durnovaria could not get their water from wells in the town. The Roman magnates win fame by building magnificent structures for their towns. I suppose the Durotrige princes wanted to imitate them.”

“Prince Eiddin Mynoc is more interested in improving the defenses,” said Lewal, the older Druid, a stocky, sandy-haired man who was their Healer, and had come along to buy herbs they could not grow on Avalon.

“Well, he has need to be,” put in one of the freedmen. “With the Channel pirates hitting us more often every year.”

“The Navy should do something,” said the other. “Or why do we pay those taxes to Rome every year?”

Young Erdufylla nudged her horse closer to Dierna’s, as if she expected a band of pirates to jump out from the next clump of trees.

As they came up over the rise, Dierna could see the town, set on a chalk headland above the river. The ditch and rampart were as she remembered, but now they were partially fronted by a new masonry wall. The river ran brown and silent below the bluff, edged with black mud. The tide must be out, she thought then, peering through the drizzle toward the deeper greyness where sky merged into sea. Gulls yammered a greeting, sweeping over their heads and then away. The Druids straightened, and even the horses, sensing the end of the journey, began to step out more briskly.

Dierna let her breath out on a sigh, only then admitting her own anxiety. Tonight, at least, they would be safe and warm within Eiddin Mynoc’s new walls. Now she could allow herself to wonder about the girl who was the reason for this journey through the rain.

“Teleri, are you listening? The High Priestess will dine with us this evening.” Eiddin Mynoc’s voice rumbled like distant thunder.

Teleri blinked, wrenching her mind back from that rapidly approaching future in which the priestesses were already bearing her away with them to Avalon. The present was her father’s study in Durnovaria, where she was twitching her gown straight like a nervous child.

“Yes, Father,” she answered in the cultivated Latin which the Prince had required all his children to learn.

“Lady Dierna is coming all this way to see you, daughter. Is your mind still set on going with her? I will not press you to this decision, but there is no going back once it is made.”

“Yes, Father,” Teleri said again, and then, seeing he expected some elaboration, “Yes, I want to go.”

No wonder if he thought her fearful, standing before him tongue-tied as a kitchen slave. The Prince was an indulgent father-most girls her age had already been married off without anyone’s considering their wishes at all. But the priestesses did not marry. If they wished they took lovers in the holy rites and bore children, but they answered to no man. The priestesses of Avalon had powerful magic. It was not fear that held Teleri silent, but the strength of the wild joy that surged through her at the thought of the holy hill.

She wanted it too much-she would sing, shout, whirl about her father’s study like a madwoman if she once began telling him how she really felt today. And so she cast down her eyes as a modest maiden should and murmured monosyllabic answers to his exasperated questioning.

They will be here tonight!
she thought when the Prince dismissed her at last and she was free to return to her rooms. The house, Roman in structure, looked inward to the atrium, its potted flowers glowing in the falling rain. Her whole life had been like that, she thought as she leaned against one of the pillars of the colonnade, protected and nurtured, but turned inward.

But there was a ladder that led to the rooftop. Her father had set it there so that he could watch the building of his new walls. Hitching up her skirts, Teleri climbed it, opened the trapdoor, and turned to face the wind. Rain stung her cheeks; in a few moments her hair was wet and water was running down her neck to soak her gown. She did not care. Her father’s walls gleamed pale through the rain, but above them she could see the grey blur of the hills.

“Soon I will see what lies beyond you,” she whispered. “And then I will be free!”

The town house in which the Prince of the Durotriges stayed when he was in his tribal city was Roman in design, decorated by native craftsmen who had attempted to interpret their own mythology in a Roman style, and furnished with a careless disregard for consistency and an eye to comfort. Thick native rugs of striped wool covered the cold tiles; a coverlet of pieced fox pelts lay across the couch. Dierna eyed it wistfully, but she knew that if she once sank into its softness she would find it hard to get up again.

At least the Prince’s slaves had brought warm water for them to wash in, and she had gratefully stripped off the breeches and tunic in which she had made the journey and put on the loose-sleeved blue robe of a priestess of Avalon. She wore no ornaments, but her garments were of finely woven wool dyed that particularly rich and subtle blue whose production was a secret of the holy isle.

She picked up the bronze mirror and twitched a stray tendril back under the coronet of braids into which she had twisted her abundant hair, then pulled the edge of the stola up over her head and drew its folds across her breast so that the free end hung down her back. Both garb and hairstyle were severe, but the soft wool molded itself to the generous curve of her breasts and hips, and against the deep blue her hair, curling ever more rebelliously in the damp air, blazed like fire.

She looked at Erdufylla, who was still trying to adjust the folds of her own stola, and smiled.

“We had best go. The Prince will not be happy if we keep him waiting for his dinner…”

The younger priestess sighed. “I know. But the other women will be wearing embroidered tunicas and golden necklaces, and I feel so
plain
in this garb.”

“I understand-when I first attended my grandmother on her journeys away from Avalon, I felt the same. She told me not to envy them-their finery signifies only that they have menfolk who can indulge them. You yourself have earned the garb you wear. When you go among them, carry yourself with such pride that it is they who will feel overdressed, and envy you.”

With her narrow features and mouse-fair hair, Erdufylla would never be beautiful, but as Dierna spoke the younger woman straightened, and when the High Priestess moved toward the door she followed with the graceful, gliding gait that was the gift of Avalon.

The town house was a large one, with four wings surrounding a courtyard. The Prince and his guests had gathered in a large room in the wing farthest from the road. One wall was painted with scenes of the marriage of the Young God with the Flower Maiden against a burnt-orange background, and a mosaic patterned with knotwork covered the floor. But shields and spears were mounted on the other walls, and a wolfskin covered the chair on which Prince Eiddin Mynoc awaited them.

He was a man of middle years, with a great deal of silver in his dark hair and beard. What had been a powerful physique was going to fat, and only an occasional gleam in his eye revealed the wit he had inherited from his mother, who had been a daughter of Avalon. None of his sisters had shown any talent worth training, but according to Eiddin Mynoc’s message, his youngest girl, though pretty enough, was “so filled with odd fits and fancies she might as well go to Avalon.”

Dierna looked around the room, acknowledging the Prince’s welcome with a gracious, and precisely equivalent, nod. That was another thing her grandmother had taught her. In her own sphere, the Lady of Avalon was the equal of an emperor. The other guests-several matrons dressed in the Roman style, a portly man wearing the toga of the equestrian class, and three beefy young men who she supposed were Eiddin Mynoc’s sons-eyed her with mingled respect and curiosity. Was the girl she had come here to meet still primping, or too shy to face the company?

One of the women rather pointedly avoided her gaze. When the priestess saw that she wore a silver fish on a slender chain, she realized the woman must be a Christian. Dierna had heard there were many of them in the eastern parts of the Empire, but although a company of monks lived on the isle of Inis Witrin, the counterpart of Avalon that still remained part of the world, in the rest of the province their numbers were relatively few. They seemed to be so given to quarrels and disputations that they were likely to destroy themselves soon enough without any assistance from the Emperor.

“Your walls, lord, are rising quickly,” said the man in the toga. “They have grown halfway around the city since I was here last.”

“By the next time you come here they will be finished,” Eiddin Mynoc said proudly. “Let those sea wolves howl elsewhere for their dinners, they’ll get nothing in Durotrige lands.”

“They are a magnificent gift to your people,” said the man in the toga, ignoring him. Dierna realized that she had met him once before-he was Gnaeus Claudius Pollio, one of the senior magistrates here.

“It is the only gift the Romans will allow us to give,” muttered one of the sons. “They do not let us arm our people, and they take the troops that should protect us back across the Channel to fight their wars.”

His brother nodded vigorously. “It is not justice, to take our taxes and give us nothing. Before the Romans came at least we could defend ourselves!”

“If the Emperor Maximian will not help us, we need an emperor of our own!” said the third boy.

He had not spoken loudly, but Pollio fixed him with a disapproving glare. “And who would you elect, cockerel? Yourself?”

“Nay, nay,” his father put in quickly, “we speak no treason here. It is only the blood of his ancestors, who have defended the Durotriges since before Julius Caesar came over from Gallia, that burns in his veins. It’s true that when the Empire is troubled Britannia sometimes seems the last province they care for, but we are still better off within its boundaries than squabbling among ourselves…”

“The Navy ought to protect us. What are Maximian and Constantius doing with the money we send them? They swore they would put the pirates down,” one of the older men muttered, shaking his head. “Have they no admirals who can command a fleet against such men?”

Dierna, who had been listening with interest, turned in annoyance at a pull on her sleeve. It was the most richly dressed of the women, Vitruvia, who was married to Pollio.

“Lady, I am told that you know much of herbs and medicines…” Her voice dropped to a whisper as she began to describe the palpitations of the heart that had frightened her. Dierna, looking beneath the careful cosmetics and the jewels, recognized the woman’s very real anxiety and forced herself to listen.

“Has there been a change in your monthly courses?” she asked. The men, still arguing politics, did not notice as they moved aside.

“I am still fertile!” Vitruvia exclaimed, the color in her painted cheeks intensifying.

“For now,” Dierna said gently, “but you are passing from the governance of the Mother to that of the Wise One. To complete that transformation will take some years. In the meantime, you must make a preparation of motherwort. Take a few drops when your heart troubles you, and you will be eased.”

From the other room came an enticing scent of roasted meat, and she was suddenly acutely aware of how long it had been since the morning meal. She had thought the Prince’s daughter would be joining them for dinner, but perhaps Eiddin Mynoc was an old-fashioned parent who believed that unmarried girls should be kept in seclusion. A slave appeared in the doorway to announce that dinner awaited them.

As they moved out into the corridor, Dierna felt something, a breath of air, perhaps, as if a door to the outside had been opened farther along the hall, and turned. In the shadows at the far end of the hallway something pale was moving; she saw a woman’s figure, coming with a quick, light step as if blown by the wind. The High Priestess stopped so suddenly that Erdufylla bumped into her.

“What is it?”

Dierna could not answer. A part of her mind identified the newcomer as a woman just emerging from girl-hood, tall and slender as a bending willow, with pale skin and dark hair and a hint of Eiddin Mynoc’s strong bones in the line of cheek and brow. But it was another feeling that had silenced her, which she could only characterize as
recognition.