Read The Hallowed Isle Book Three Online
Authors: Diana L. Paxson
The Hallowed Isle Book Three
MAP
In Memoriam Paul Edwin Zimmer
My special thanks to Heather Rose Jones, who took time off from her doctoral studies in Welsh philology to advise me on the mysteries of fifth-century British spelling. For those who would like an excellent historical overview of the Arthurian period, I recommend
The Age of Arthur
by John Morris, recently reprinted by Barnes & Noble. I must also thank Caitlin and John Matthews for some of the insights in their book
Ladies of the Lake
.
Through the fields of European literature, the Matter of Britain flows as a broad and noble stream. In relation to this book especially, a major branch is Marion Zimmer Bradley's
The Mists of Avalon
. Therefore I offer this tributary with thanks and recognition to her and to all those who have gone before.
IV ⢠LADY OF THE EASTERN GATE
L
IFE CAME FIRST FROM THE SEA.
Cradle of creation and sheltering womb, it contained all elements. Dissolved and coalescing, joining, growing, the elements combined to become beings of ascending complexity
.
Water is transformation
.
Rising and falling, dying and rebirthing, it nourishes the world. Perpetually moving, it obeys the laws of moon and tide. Constrained, it grows stagnant and dies; free flowing, it renews the world
.
Water is the blood of the Goddess, flowing through the streams and rivers that vein the land. In the lakes and pools, fed from the depths by bubbling springs, She pours out her blessings
.
Water is woman's magic
.
As the sea floods in answer to the moon so does her womb; each month she bleeds and is renewed. In blood she creates a child and bloody, she bears it; from her breasts springs sweet milk to be its food. Women seek the sacred spring and make offerings to the Goddess whose name means the power that wells up from the depths to the heights, knowing that her magic and theirs is the same.. .Â
.
On an island in the ocean, nine priestesses serve a sacred shrine. As each moon waxes and wanes they praise the Goddess in Her times and seasons. But often, when the moon is full, the priestess who is their leader walks by the shore of the sea. Moonlight glitters silver on the waters. She stretches out her arms to embrace that splendor, but it flows through her fingers. She aches with yearning to hold the power by which she herself is held, and slowly, within the womb of her head a vision grows
.
When the chieftains of her people come to make their offerings she requires of them silver. Piece by piece, she melts it together, beats it out into flat sheets, molded with images of the Goddess. Ready for love or armed for war, healing the sick or giving songs to the bard, milking a cow or hunting a deer or bringing a ship safe to land, nursing her child or bearing the soul of a dead man across the sea, the Goddess appears in all Her guises, blessing humankind
.
Section by section the pieces are shaped, riveted and soldered until they are one. From hand and heart a great cauldron is born, silver as the moon. River pearls are set into its rim, gleaming softly. Then, singing, the priestesses bear it to the sacred spring. One by one, each priestess fills her chalice. She lifts it high to catch the radiance of the moon. Then she pours it into the cauldron, shimmering with silver light
.
The song grows deeper, becomes a wordless humming, a vibration that shivers the surface of the water. From beyond this world come overtones and harmonies. A mist of radiance glows above the water, twines upward, shapes itself into the form of a woman. Turning, She opens her arms, Her voice joins in the singing, and shapes it into words. She dips liquid from the cauldron; into each chalice She pours Her blessings, and all are filled
.
And when at last, the priestesses return to awareness of who and where they are, the Cauldron is empty. But every full moon when they fill it with water from the sacred spring, that water glows, and all who drink of it are renewed
.
BIRTH PANGS
A.D.
487
J
UST BEFORE SUNSET, A WIND CAME DOWN FROM THE HEIGHTS
to ruffle the water. The Lady of the Lake breathed it in gratefully, for the day had been warm, a promise of the summer season that Beltain would usher in. In the lands of men, the young folk would be going out into the woods to gather greenery for the festival, and if they took rather longer than was strictly necessary to cut the branches, and came back with their clothing awry, even the Christians would hardly dare chastise them on this eve. But on the Isle of Maidens there was no need to bring in the wilderness, for it was all around them. And while man and maid performed the old earth magic, she and her priestesses would invoke the magic of the waters whose power enabled all these green and growing things to survive.
Beyond the screen of willow and the silver sheen of the water, the mountain crouched like an old woman, cloaked and hooded in misty blue, hunched against the dimming sky. Igierne had seen it so when, as a girl, she first claimed this spot as her private bathing place. Now she was an old woman herself. But the mountain remained the same.
She hung the rough towel across a branch and slid the cloak from around her shoulders, shivering a little at the touch of the air. For a moment she hesitated to remove her shift as well, but it was not going to get any warmer. Lips twisting wryly, she dragged it over her head and made her way down to the waterside.
White and wavering as a birch trunk, she saw her body reflected there.
I am a waning moon . .Â
. she thought wryly. Even her hair, once golden, was faded now to silver-fair. As a girl, she had spied on the older priestesses at their bathing and been astonished to find their bodies still so smooth. It surprised her still, looking down, to see her own shape so much younger than the face in her mirror. True, her breasts lay pendant upon her ribcage, and her belly had been stretched by the weight of two children, but her buttocks were round with muscle from walking, and her arms were firm.
If Uthir had been living, she would have rejoiced in his delight in her body, but he slept now beside his brother in the mound before the Giant's Dance. No longer was she high queen and his lady. Now it was her son Artor who ruled. When the princes of Britannia chose him, Igierne had offered to stay and manage his household, but the lords of Britannia, having accepted her son's right to rule them, wanted no motherly meddling in the process of turning him into a king. Even Merlin had been tolerated only grudgingly as his tutor, perhaps because they feared him.
And so she had returned to the Isle of Maidens to reclaim the role for which she had been born. She wrote to Artor with some regularity, seeking to supply the guidance she had not been allowed to give before, but increasingly her counsel came from her meditations as a priestess, rather than her memories of life as Uthir's queen. On the rare occasions when she visited her son, his court seemed like another world. These days, the health of her body mattered only because it served her soul. And thatâshe smiled down at the woman who looked back at her from the waterâwas still that of the maiden who had first bathed in these waters so long ago.
Still smiling, she stepped down the shelving strand into the water.
“Blessed be my feet, that I may walk in Thy ways . . . blessed be my legs, that I may stand before Thee . . . blessed be my womb, that I may be Thy shrine . . .” She scooped up water, purifying each part of her body, murmuring the words that would make her a fit vessel for the power of the Goddess to fill.
The Isle of Maidens lay hidden within the double enclosure of the Lake and its encircling hills. The Romans had massacred the Druid priesthood on the isle of Mona, and driven them from Afallon that men now called the Isle of Glass, but this sanctuary they had never found. In time its huts of daubed withies had been replaced by stone, but in some things the priestesses still held by the old Druid ways, and the most sacred of their rituals took place beneath the open sky.
If the island was doubly warded, the hazelwood formed the innermost barrier around its center, where a fissure in the island's rocky core had created a cave. The Sword-God's shrine had been a temple built by men, tolerated, but never truly belonging to the isle. The cave was its most ancient and original sanctuary. Three fires burned now before it, but the entrance remained in shadow.
Igierne lay back against the carved wood of her chair, willing her breathing to remain steady, waiting for her heartbeat to slow. Her pale hair lay loose upon her shoulders. For this ceremony her maidens were robed in white. Only she wore the black of the midnight sky, though her ornaments were of silver, set with moonstone and river pearls.
Overhead, a scattering of stars glimmered in the river of night. Long practice had taught her to sense the slow turning of the skies. The moon was in its third quarter, and would not rise till the night was half gone. Imperceptibly her breathing began to deepen. She straightened, hearing her own heartbeat echoed by the soft beat of a drum. Anticipation tightened her skin as the women began to singâ
“
Thou art the source and the stream . .Â
.
Thou art the desire and the dream . .Â
.
that which is empty and that which fills
,
that which receives and that which wills
;
Thou art the part and Thou art the whole
,
Thou art the body and Thou, the soul
.. . .”
The mingled voices converged in a single note, sustained in a long vibration that thrummed in the still air. Elsewhere they called on the gods in other guises, and by other names, especially on this night, when the young God came forth from his leafy glades to couple with the Goddess in the fields. But here, at the heart of the isle, it was the Lady alone who ruled.
“Great Mother, be near usâ” intoned Igierne.
“Hear us, be near us . . .” came the reply.
“Gateway to birth and doorway to deathâ” Ceincair's sweet voice rose above the rest.
“Hear us. . . .”
“Lady of hope and healingâ” the litany went on, and with each salutation, the air seemed to thicken until it was difficult to breathe.
“Thou art the Cauldron of Changes, the Womb of Wisdomâ” said Igierne, and at her words, Morut and Nest moved to the dark opening of the cave and began to pull the stones away. Beneath them was a wooden chest carved with triple spirals, and within the chest, something swathed in white silk which they set in the hollow of the stone before Igierne's chair.