Lady of Avalon (49 page)

“Ana, it is enough!” Nectan spoke sharply. “Let the vision pass; let darkness sweep it away!”

She sobbed as his voice grew softer, calling her name, soothing her fears, guiding her home. At last she opened her eyes, and collapsed, shivering, into his arms.

“You should have known better than to ask her that last question,” said someone.

“Should I?” she heard Viviane reply. “This is no more than what she did to me…”

Viviane lingered by the Mirror Pool as the others assisted her mother back down to the fire. She was tempted to look into it herself, but the Pool rarely revealed its secrets to more than one seer at a time, and in any case, she dared not risk her child. Vortimer’s child. Into what kind of world would it be born?

He had begged her to bury him on the Saxon Shore, but they had not allowed her to take him there. And even in extremity Vortimer had not believed that his spirit could ward more than one small part of Britannia. On the Watch Hill, she thought, his power would be amplified, and he could watch over all. But if she was wrong, then she had betrayed him even in his burying.

Five years…If Ana had seen truly, Vortimer’s great victory had bought them no more than that in which to set Britannia right again. But Viviane had no heart for more fighting; all she wanted was to crawl into a soft nest and wait to bear her child.

When she returned to the fire circle, she saw that her mother had begun to recover from her trance and was sitting on her throne once more.
She should be in bed,
Viviane thought sourly. Ana looked exhausted, but the marsh folk bustled around her like bees, and moment by moment she was reviving.
Why does she need reassurance?
Viviane wondered.
For more than twenty years she has been queen of this hive… But at least I can go to bed if I want to,
she thought then.
No one will even notice I am gone!

She turned to take the path through the orchard and stopped short. Someone, or something, was watching, standing among the trees just on the flickering boundary between the firelight and the dark.
It is a shadow,
she told herself, but it was not altered by changes in the light.
It is a tree.
But she knew every tree in the orchard, and there should be nothing there. Heart pounding, she extended priestess-trained senses outward, and felt:
Fire…darkness…a predator’s lust and the terror of its prey…

Viviane whimpered, and as if it had heard her, the Other stirred. Branching horns emerged from among the branches, wreathed round with crimson autumn leaves. Below, firelight glowed on a patchwork of hides and gleamed from ornaments of copper and bone, and then on muscular legs as He stepped from among the shadowed trees. The antlered head turned; from shadowed sockets came a red glow. Viviane stilled, eyes widening, and an ancient wisdom warned her not to run.

Someone saw her reaction and pointed. Once more, all that great gathering grew silent. With deadly grace, the Horned One moved forward, carrying a spear that she had last seen leaning against the wall beside the Grail. He paused before Viviane, and His swinging ornaments tinkled a moment and were still.

“Are you afraid of Me?” His voice was harsh, and cold. He did not sound like anyone she knew.

“Yes…” she whispered. The point of the spear drifted idly from her throat toward her womb.

“There is no need to be…yet…” The spears wung away. Abruptly He seemed to lose interest and paced on.

The strength went out of Viviane’s limbs, and she sank shaking to the ground. The Horned One passed among the people, ignoring some and brushing others with His spear. She saw strong men tremble; one woman fainted away. But others stood straighter when He had spoken to them, with the light of battle in their eyes. At length He came to stand before the Lady’s throne.

“While the sun shone high and strong,

Earth our Mother labored long;

Soul and body She has blessed,

Comes now the time for Her to rest.

“Lady of Summer,” He continued, “the season of Light is ending. Resign to Me your sovereignty.” The fire had burned low; his shadow, monstrously magnified by the angle, reached toward her chair.

The priestess faced him without flinching, white and proud. “For six moons all that lives has rejoiced in my radiance; by my power the earth bore fruit and the cattle grew fat upon the hills.”

“Bounteous was Summer’s reign:

Harvested the golden grain,

Ripened fruits are gathered in,

Winter’s food is stored within.”

She too spoke the words of ritual, but she spoke as a priestess, while the Being beneath the Horned One’s mask was something more. His reply was not unkind, but it was implacable.

“The autumn wind plucks leaf from tree,

From barren fields the chaff blows free.

From summer’s warmth to winter’s cold

Now you are changing, growing old.

While leaf and branch prepare to sleep,

The red stags through the woods do leap.

When wind makes blood sing in the vein,

The time has come for Me to reign.

“Your harvest is gathered, your children grown. It is time for the darkness to triumph, and Winter to rule the world.”

“I will not let You have it…”

“I will take it…”

Ana stood up, and if she was not the Goddess, still she clothed herself in the glamour of the priestess, and seemed as tall as he.

“Dark Hunter, with You I will make a bargain…” There was a murmur of surprise. “For now we have peace, but I have Seen that the enemies of Britannia will come once more against her. I offer You myself, now, in this sacred hour when our powers are equal, that we may make a child who will save her from her foes…”

For a moment He looked at her. Then He tipped back his head with a growl of laughter.

“Woman, I am as inevitable as the falling leaves or the failing breath. You cannot bargain with Me. I will take what you give Me, but as for the outcome, that is already written in the stars, and cannot be altered.” The spear swung forward to hover above her breast.

As He moved, the firelight fell full upon her body, and Viviane saw with pity how her full breasts had fallen, and the silver scoring of childbirth upon the soft skin of her belly.

“Mother”-she forced the words past the ache in her throat-“why are you doing this? This is not part of the ritual-”

For a moment Ana looked at her, and Viviane heard, as if in memory,
“I never give reasons for what I do…”
Then her lips twisted in self-mockery and she turned back to face the Horned God.

“Spring to Summer,” she said, taking a step toward him. “Summer to Fall-Life and Light I give to all…”

The spear wheeled and the point sheathed itself in the ground. “Autumn to Winter,” he answered, and people breathed more easily, recognizing the familiar words, “Winter to Spring-Night and rest the gifts I bring.”

“Your ascent is My decline”-they came together-“All that You shall lose is mine. Ever yearning, forever returning, in the Great Dance we are One…” His arm went around her and they embraced. When they parted, His garments shifted and one could see that beneath them He was very much a man.

Then the Horned One lifted the Lady in His arms and bore her away, and the night air trembled to His deep laughter. In another moment there was nothing but the spear, triumphantly upright before the empty throne.

Nectan looked at the shocked faces before him and cleared his throat, trying to retrieve the rhythm of the ritual.

“Summer’s golden time is done

With the waning of the sun;

After Winter’s snow and rain,

Summer’s joy will come again!

All that was prisoned is set free,

The season’s cycle circles on!

Now is the power of change released

As we have willed, so be it done.”

But what was it that Ana had willed? Viviane wondered as she gazed toward the shadows into which they had disappeared. And what would now be done?

As the year drew on to Midwinter, the sense of dread that had gripped the community on Avalon since Samhain began to lift, for the weather held mild for the season, and clear. People whispered that the Lady’s offering had been accepted and the disasters she had prophesied forestalled, for by the solstice Ana was sure that she was with child.

There was a great deal of speculation among the priests and priestesses. Children had been born often to those who went apart at the celebrations at the Beltane or Midsummer fires, but Samhain, despite the invitations to the ancestors, was not a festival of fertility. Some laughed and said there was no ritual reason to forbid it, only that at that season you would have to be in trance or truly inflamed by passion to enjoy lying with a man on the cold ground.

Only Viviane still worried. She remembered too vividly how Ana had labored with Igraine, and that had been five years ago. Could she survive another birthing now? Viviane went so far as to suggest that her mother use the herbs the priestesses knew of to cast the babe forth, but when Ana accused her of wanting all the attention for her own child, they quarreled more violently than they had in years, and Viviane said no more.

It was shortly before the feast of Briga, when the world ought to have been showing the first signs of spring, that the first storms blew in. For three days high winds lashed the treetops, driving the clouds before them like an attacking army, and when the winds at length began to withdraw, they left the land beaten and helpless before the rain.

For most of Briga’s month and into the month of Mars the rains continued, in downpours or misty drizzle, with scarcely a glimpse of the sun. Day by day the level of the lake crept upward, until it had passed its normal waterline and begun to reach for the high-water marks left by ancient floods.

The thatching of the roofs was saturated, and water slopped over the lintels to pool upon the floors. It seemed impossible to get any clothing dry. The air stayed so damp that even inside the temple moss grew upon the stones. Most days the clouds were so low they could not see across the lake. At those rare times when they lifted, the view from the top of the Tor showed them a world of pewter-colored water stretching all the way to the Sabrina estuary and the sea. Only the sacred islands and the ridge of the Poldens still lifted their heads above the flood, and, to the north, the distant Mendip Hills.

On the isle of Inis Witrin, the monks must be wondering if their God had decided to send a second Flood to wash humankind away. Even on Avalon there were whispers. But the time had passed when the Lady could have safely rid herself of the child, and in truth, though all others grew sallow and thin, the Lady of Avalon bloomed, as if this pregnancy had granted her youth once more.

It was Viviane who suffered, that damp and deadly spring. As always, by the equinox their stores were growing scanty, and this year it was worse, because water had ruined some of the food. She ate her share, mindful of the child, but though her belly grew, her legs and arms were like sticks, and she was always cold.

After Beltane, they said, it would be better. Viviane, gazing over the hard mound of her belly, could only agree, for it was in that month that she would be delivered of her child. But before the warming weather brought the sunshine, it brought sickness, a low fever with nausea and aching muscles that in the old or weak-and there were many of those-turned all too easily into the lung fever and carried them off.

Nectan died, and the Druids chose Taliesin to replace him. Old Elen went as well, and that was not unexpected, but all were shaken when Julia followed her. Little Igraine fell sick, and would have none but her sister to nurse her, and she was scarcely out of danger when Viviane began to feel the first symptoms herself.

She was sitting by a fire which seemed to have no power to warm her, wondering which of her herbal remedies she could use without endangering her child, when the door opened and her mother came in, drops of rain still glittering on her cloak and her hair. There were silver strands among its dark waves now, but on Ana they seemed an ornament, not a sign of age. She shook the water from her cloak and hung it on a hook, and turned to her daughter.

“How is it with you, my child?”

“My head aches,” Viviane said sourly, “and if there were any food worth eating, I would not be able to keep it down.”

Her mother, she thought, looked well nourished. Her sagging breasts had filled out again with pregnancy, and though her belly had rounded out, she had not yet reached the ungainly stage which Viviane, who felt like a cauldron on legs, was now enduring.

“We must see what we can do to help you-” Ana began, but Viviane shook her head.

“You had no time when Igraine was ailing. Why should you bother with me?”

Ana’s face flamed, but she replied evenly, “She asked for you, and I was nursing Julia. The Goddess knows there has been work enough for all of us, this dreadful spring.”

“Well, we cannot complain we had no warning. How gratifying it must be to know yourself a true oracle-” Viviane stopped short, appalled to hear her own venom, but exhaustion had sapped all her control.

“It is terrifying,” her mother snapped, “as you should know! But you are ill, and do not know what you say.”