The Protector's War (82 page)

“Lady Juniper?”

Juniper looked up; tears made runnels down the girl's face, melting a track through a spray of dried blood.

“Will Rudi be OK? Please, can't you, I don't know, make magic about it?”

“I have, girl. I don't know if he'll be all right. He's lost a very great deal of blood, and they're doing what they can. He may get well.”

“I'm so sorry. It's because of me.”

I should tell her it isn't, but I'm too tired,
the Chief of the Mackenzies thought.

“It's because I lent Rudi the book,” Mathilda sobbed. “I lent him the book and Baron Liu went to get it. Katrina didn't want him to but he wouldn't leave without the book!”

That
pierced the gray chill that swaddled her mind. “Your book, child?”

A shaking hand held a blue-tinted paperback. “I got it out of Baron Liu's belt pouch after he…when I could. It's not my copy. Kat said she got it at Castle Gervais, and the Baron got so angry, and he went for it—”

Memory stabbed her. Eddie Liu's face in that room at Sutterdown…
Goddess gentle and
strong,
was it only yesterday?

“Altendorf substitution codes,” she whispered, looking northward—to where Arminger brewed his plots.

She rose. Eilir was close, and she looked up sharply, a tentative wisp of smile curling her lips at the sight of her mother moving.

Get me Mike Havel,
she signed.
Now, girl! Run!

To herself:
The Protector wants war. He'll have it, and not only with the Mackenzies…but we'll need more than talk to do it. When his plans are laid bare…but we'll have to do it at the right time and place. A meeting of all the communities, yes, but not at Larsdalen or Dun Juniper or Mt. Angel. It will have to be a blow to the heart—the heart of the Valley. A meeting at Corvallis.

“Goddess of the raven wings,” she whispered, gathering herself. “Strong avenger, give me Your strength.”

T
he path that led upward from Dun Juniper to the mountainside
nemed
was steep; it wove back and forth beneath tall trees, turning on itself like a serpent in a bed of reeds or the words of an oracle. She had walked it in daylight under summer leaves, and when moonlight shone on snow white as salt beneath stars uncountable. Today gray skies pressed down like the grief of gods, hiding the mountain peaks eastward and the valley to the west alike, and sending drifts of mist through the tops of the great dark-green firs. A wet wind tossed their limbs with an edge of ice; the air soughed around them with the prickling smell of cold snow heavy in it, and the darkness was coming before the cusp of day and night.

Juniper shivered a little, despite the heavy wool of her black ritual robe; the hood was drawn forward shadowing her face and the crescent moon on her brows. It was her folk's custom to sing as they walked to the sacred Wood, but today…

She stilled her mind and raised her voice:

The Initiates and Dedicants were robed as she, though only the High Priests and Priestesses wore the tricolored cord belts. Many were masked on this day; some danced with spears flashing dully in the gray light, enacting the Wild Hunt. A harp played, and a flute, and the eerie sweetness of the Uilleann pipes; the beat of the bodhran was like the pulse of blood in her ears. Threescore voices rose in the chorus:

Leaves from oak and maple blew past in a cloud of old gold and dark crimson.

They came to the Wood, with its great circle of oaks. The trunks were closely placed on a nearly level knee that thrust out from the mountainside; each tree was forty feet and more to the first branch, candle-straight, thicker through than her body. Her great-uncle had planted many trees on his land, three generations ago. What had prompted him to plant
this
he had never said, but she could guess.

Iceplant still grew beside the spring that bubbled outside the circle. Juniper led the weaving passage around it, as the song went through heart and bone:

Then all together, gathering strength:

And one last great shout:

 

“
SAMHAIN!
”

 

Silence fell as she approached the opening in the northeast corner of the
nemed
to begin the ritual. Motion and word flowed through her as she cut with the sword to close the Circle. Leafless with new-come winter, twigs grated and squeaked as they swayed and rubbed eighty feet above; the fire that boomed and crackled in the stone-lined pit in the center of the sacred space seemed as if it were the only color and warmth left in the world. Winter was coming early to the high Cascades this year, and the edge of its cloak brushed them here.

Robed in black, the coven of the Singing Moon waited while the High Priestess turned at last to the black veil that today covered the Eastern gate. Behind her on the shaped boulder that made the Altar of Earth were the cauldron and sword, dish of salt, censer, incense…and today, a skull for the Aspect that was called.

The ceremony made its way, and as Juniper faced the Veil of Death she chanted:

“The Year dies, as all things must. The Moon Herself wanes—mourning—in the sign of the Sacrificial Bull. Samhain comes and we greet our beloved dead! Great One, I now call upon Thee to put on Thy dark cloak. I invoke the Utter Night!”

She raised the athame: “Akare Bal Krithe! The Circle is cast. The Altar is made. Way has been prepared for the coming of the Dark Lady and Dark Lord. In the name of our dead sent untimely to You, we invoke Your power as your people march to war…”

The world faded from around her, even as her body moved through ritual. She had experienced such before, as a communion with a universe of singing light, when all creation swirled around her and she was dancer and the dance, the singer and the song. Now she was…nowhere. Now she spoke, but not in words. Somehow she knew that later there would be words in her memories, but for now there was only Meaning, stripped of symbol.

Do you ask?
Something asked of her.
Beloved daughter, do you ask this of Us?

Her mind creaked beneath the weight of the contact, struggling to turn away from the task her will compelled; it was like gasping for breath at an effort beyond you yet utterly needful, or like the day when you first felt how tiny the span of your life was in the depths of time. She remembered that day, holding the lump of rock with the fossil shell, and
knowing
…

For if you ask, daughter, it will be given.

Why do You question me? Isn't this the road that You have laid before me, step by step, whether I will or no?

Images cascaded through her mind; a wheel of fire in darkness, like a galaxy turning through a billion years against a well of night; a man cloaked in blue; a spear, a horse and a single eye; a woman with many arms who danced creation and destruction across the dust of stars beneath her feet; the tormented birth of suns and the death of worlds that foundered in slow fire; ash leaves blowing across a heath; a ship built of bones and dead men's nails on a frozen sea.

There is Fate, and yet there is also Choice. We will not end untimely the tale We sing through you.

Like a flash of fire it went through her.

Then give me my desire, Victory-Father, Dreadful Bride! Be with me, become me now. Enter, where I have opened the Door, and do all Your will!

And as suddenly she was within the sunless circle again, her skin roughening beneath the coarse fabric of her robe. A raven flew about the tall trees, deasil, and departed northward, its voice a harsh
gruk-gruk-gruk
in the gathering night.

“So mote it be,” she whispered.