Lady of Avalon Read online

  “An excellent idea!” Eiluned nodded. “The old man is doddering. I live in fear that one night he will fall into his hearthfire or wander into the lake….”

  What the other woman said was true, though it was the old man’s kindness, not his weakness, that had led Marged to choose him.

  “Who is the child?” asked Riannon, on her other side, her red curls bouncing. “Was he not one of the foster-lings at Vernemeton? And what happened when you went back to visit? The most amazing rumors have been flying about the countryside….” She eyed her High Priestess expectantly.

  “He is an orphan.” Caillean sighed. “I do not know what you may have heard, but it is true that the Lady of Vernemeton is dead. There was a rebellion. The Druid priesthood in the north have scattered, and several of the senior priestesses are dead as well. Dieda was one of them. In truth, I do not know if the Forest House will survive, and if it does not, we here will be the only ones left to guard the old wisdom and pass it on.” Had Eilan had foreknowledge of her fate, and known that only the new community on Avalon would survive?

  The other priestesses sat back, eyes widening. If they assumed it was the Romans who had killed Eilan and the others, so much the better. She had no love for Bendeigid, who was now Arch-Druid, but though he might be mad, he was still one of their own.

  “Dieda is dead?” Kea’s sweet voice thinned, and she grasped Riannon’s arm. “But I was to have gone to her this winter for more training. How will I teach the young ones the sacred songs? This is a heavy loss!” She sat back, tears welling in her grave grey eyes.

  A great loss indeed, thought Caillean grimly, not only of Dieda’s knowledge and skill, but of the priestess she might have been if she had not chosen hatred over love. That was a lesson to her also, and one she should remember when bitterness threatened to overwhelm her.

  “I will train you…” she said quietly. “I never studied the secrets of the bards of Eriu, but the holy songs and sacred offices of the Druid priestesses came from Vernemeton, and I know all of them well.”

  “Oh! I did not mean—” Kea broke off, blushing furiously. “I know you sing, and play the harp as well. Play for us now, Caillean. It seems so long since you have made music for us around the fire!”

  “It is a creuth, not a harp—” Caillean began automatically. Then she sighed. “Not tonight, my child. I am too weary. It is you who should sing for us, and ease our sorrow.”

  She forced a smile and saw Kea brighten. The younger priestess had not the inspired skill of Dieda, but her voice, though light, was sweet and true, and she loved the old songs.

  Riannon patted her friend’s shoulder. “Tonight we will all sing for the Goddess, and She will comfort us. At least you have come back to us.” She turned to Caillean. “We were afraid you would not return in time for the full moon.”

  “Surely I have trained you better than that!” exclaimed Caillean. “You do not need me to do the ritual.”

  “Perhaps not.” Riannon grinned. “But without you it would not be the same.”

  When they left the hall it was full dark, and cold, but the wind that had come up with nightfall had swept the mists away. Behind the black bulk of the Tor, the night sky blazed with stars. Caillean glanced eastward, and noticed the heavens growing luminous with the rising of the moon, though it was still invisible behind the hill.

  “Let us make haste,” she told the others, fastening her warm mantle securely. “Already our Lady seeks the skies.” She started up the path, and the others fell into place behind her, their breath making little puffs of white in the chill air.

  Only when she reached the first turning did she look back. The door to the hall was still open, and she could see Gawen’s dark shape against the lamplight. Even in silhouette, there was a wrenching loneliness in the way he stood, watching the women leave him. For a moment Caillean wanted to call out and bid him to join them. But that would have scandalized Eiluned indeed. At least he was here, on the holy isle. Then the door closed and the boy disappeared. Caillean took a deep breath and set herself to climb the rest of the way up the hill.

  She had been gone for a moon, and was out of condition for such exertions. When she reached the top she stood panting while the others joined her, resisting the impulse to hold on to one of the standing stones. Gradually her head ceased to spin, and she took her place by the altar stone. One by one priestesses entered the circle, moving sunwise around the altar. The little mirrors of polished silver that hung from their belts glinted as they settled into place. Kea set the silver basin upon the stone, and Beryan, who had just taken her vows at Midsummer, filled it with water from the sacred well.

  There was no need here to cast a circle. The place was already sacred, not to be looked upon by uninitiated eyes, but as the circle of women was completed, the air within it seemed to become heavier, and utterly still. Even the wind that had made her shiver was gone.

  “We hail the glorious heavens, blazing with light.” Caillean lifted her hands, and the others followed. “We hail the holy earth from which we were sprung.” She bent and touched the frosty grass. “Guardians of the Four Quarters, we salute you.” Together, they turned in each direction, gazing until they seemed to see the Powers whose names and forms were hidden in the hearts of the wise ones shimmering before them.

  She turned once more to face westward. “We honor our ancestors who have gone before. Watch over our children, holy ones.” Eilan, my beloved, watch over me…. Watch over your child. She closed her eyes, and for a moment it seemed to her that she felt something, like a gentle touch on her hair.

  Caillean turned to face the east, where the stars were fading into the glow of the moon. The air around her grew tense with anticipation as the others did the same, waiting for the first bright edge to lift above the hills. There was a flicker; her breath went out of her on a long sigh as the tall pine on the far summit appeared suddenly in stark silhouette. And all at once the moon was there, huge and tinged with gold. With each succeeding moment she rose higher, and as she left earth behind her she grew ever more pale and bright, until she floated free in unsullied purity. As one, the priestesses lifted their hands in adoration.

  With an effort Caillean steadied her voice, willing herself to sink into the familiar rhythm of the ritual.

  “In the east our Lady Moon is rising,” she sang.

  “Jewel of guidance, jewel of the night,” the others chorused in return.

  “Holy be each thing on which Thy light shines….” As Caillean’s voice grew stronger, so did the chorus that supported her, her energy amplified by that of the other priestesses, theirs rising as her inspiration grew.

  “Jewel of guidance, jewel of the night…”

  “Fair be each deed Thy light reveals….” Each line came more easily, power reflecting back from the other women’s response to her own. As the energy rose she found herself growing warmer as well.

  “Fair be Thy light upon the hilltops….” Now, as Caillean ended a line, she found the strength to hold the note through the answer, and the others, holding their last note, supported hers in sweet harmony.

  “Fair be Thy light upon field and forest….” Now the moon was well above the treetops. She saw the Vale of Avalon laid out before her with its seven holy isles, and as she gazed, the vision seemed to expand until it was the entirety of Britannia that she saw.

  “Fair be Thy light upon all roads and all wanderers….” Caillean opened her arms in blessing, and heard Kea’s clear soprano soar suddenly in descant above the chorus.

  “Fair be Thy light on the waves of the sea….” Her sight sped across the waters. She was losing awareness of her body now.

  “Fair be Thy light among the stars of heaven.” The radiance of the moonlight filled her, the music lifted her. She floated between earth and heaven, seeing everything, soul outpoured in an ecstasy of blessing.

  “Mother of Light, fair moon of the seasons…” Caillean felt her perception narrowing until the glowing moon was all she c
ould see.

  “Come to us, Lady! Let us be Thy mirror!”

  “Jewel of guidance, jewel of the night…”

  Caillean held her final note through the chorus and after, and the others, sensing the energy building, upheld it with their own harmonies. The great chord pulsed as the singers drew breath, but was sustained.

  The priestesses rode the power, sensing without need for signal the moment to bring out their mirrors. Now, still singing, the women moved closer together until they formed a semicircle facing the moon. Caillean, still standing on the eastern side of the altar, turned toward them. The music had become a low hum.

  “Lady, come down to us! Lady, be with us! Lady, come to us now!” She brought down her hands.

  Thirteen silver mirrors flashed white fire as the priestesses angled them to catch the moonlight. Pale moon-circles danced across the grass as they were turned toward the altar. Light gleamed from the silver surface of the bowl, sending bright flickers across the still forms of the priestesses and the standing stones. Then, as the mirrors were focused, the reflected moonbeams met suddenly on the surface of the water within. Thirteen trembling moonlets ran together like quicksilver and became one.

  “Lady, Thou who art nameless yet called by many names,” murmured Caillean, “Thou who art without form and yet hath many faces, as the moons reflected in our mirrors become a single image, so may it be with Thy reflection in our hearts. Lady, we call to Thee! Come down to us, be with us here!”

  She let out her breath in a long sigh. The humming faded to silence that throbbed with expectation. Vision, attention, all existence were focused on the blaze of light within the bowl. She felt the familiar shift of awareness as her trance deepened, as if her flesh were dissolving away, and no sense but sight remained.

  Now even that blurred, obscuring the moon’s reflection in the water of the silver bowl. Or perhaps it was not the image but the radiance it reflected that was changing, brightening, until the moon and its image were linked by a shaft of light. Particles of brightness moved in the moonbeam, shaped a figure, softly luminous, that gazed back at her with shining eyes.

  “Lady,” her heart called, “I have lost my beloved. How shall I survive alone?”

  “Hardly alone—you have sisters and daughters,” came the reply, tart and a little, perhaps, amused. “You have as on…and you have Me….”

  Caillean was dimly aware that her legs had given way and that now she was on her knees. It did not matter. Her soul went out to the Goddess who smiled down at her, and in the next moment the love she had offered flowed back in such measure that for a little while she knew nothing more.

  The moon was past the midpoint of heaven by the time Caillean came to herself. The Presence that had blessed them was gone, and the air was cold. Around her, the other women were beginning to stir. She forced stiffened muscles to work and got to her feet, shivering. Fragments of vision still flickered in her memory. The Lady had spoken to her, had told her things she needed to know, but with each moment they were fading.

  “Lady, as Thou hast blessed us we thank Thee…” she murmured. “Let us carry forth that blessing into the world.”

  Together they murmured their thanks to the Guardians. Kea came forward to take up the silver bowl and poured its water in a bright stream over the stone. Then, going against the way of the sun, they circled the altar and moved toward the path. Only Caillean remained beside the altar stone.

  “Caillean, are you coming? It has grown cold here!” Eiluned, at the end of the line, stood waiting.

  “Not yet. There are things I must think on. I will stay here for a little while. Do not worry, my mantle will keep me warm,” she added, though in truth she was shivering. “You go on.”

  “Very well.” The other woman sounded dubious, but there had been command in Caillean’s tone. After a moment she too turned and disappeared over the lip of the hill.

  When they had gone, Caillean knelt beside the altar, embracing it as if she could thereby grasp the Goddess who had stood there.

  “Lady, speak! Tell me clearly what you want me to do!”

  But nothing answered her. There was power in the stone, a subtle tingle that she felt in her bones, but the Lady was gone, and the rock was cold. After a time she sat back with a sigh.

  As the moon moved, the circle was barred by the shadows of the standing stones. Caillean, her attention still inward, noticed the stones without really seeing them. It was only when she stood up that she realized her gaze had fixed on one of the larger stones.

  The ring atop the Tor was moderate in size, most of the rocks reaching somewhere between Caillean’s waist and shoulder. But this one had grown taller by a head. As she noticed that, it moved, and a dark figure seemed to emerge from the stone.

  “Who—” the priestess began, but even as she spoke she knew with the same certainty that had come to her that afternoon who it must be. She heard a low ripple of laughter and the fairy woman came fully into the moonlight, dressed, as before, in her deerskin wrap and wreath of berries, seeming not to feel the cold.

  “Lady of Faerie, I salute you—” Caillean said softly.

  “Greetings, Blackbird,” said the fairy woman, laughing once more. “But no, it is a swan you have become, floating on the lake with your cygnets around you.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Where else should I be, child? The Otherworld touches yours at many places, though there are not so many now as formerly. The stone circles are gateways, at certain times, as are all earths edges—mountain tops, caverns, the shore where sea meets land…. But there are some spots which exist always in both worlds, and of those, this Tor is one of the most powerful.”

  “I have felt that,” Caillean said softly. “It was like that sometimes at the Hill of the Maidens, near the Forest House, as well.”

  The fairy woman sighed. “That hill is a holy place, and now even more so, but the blood that was shed there has closed the gateway.”

  Caillean bit her lip, seeing once more dead ashes beneath a weeping sky. Would her grief for Eilan never end?

  “You did well to leave it,” the fairy woman went on. “And well to bring the boy.”

  “What do you want with him?” Fear for Gawen sharpened her tone.

  “To prepare him for his destiny…What do you want for him, priestess, can you say?”

  Caillean blinked, trying to regain control of the conversation. “What is his destiny? Will he lead us against the Romans and bring back the old ways?”

  “That is not the only kind of victory,” the Lady answered her. “Why do you think Eilan risked so much to bear the child and keep him in safety?”

  “She was his mother—” Caillean began, but her words were lost in the fairy woman’s reply.

  “She was High Priestess, and a great one. And she was a daughter of that blood that brought the highest human wisdom to these shores. To human eyes, she failed, and her Roman lover died in shame. But you know differently.”

  Caillean stared at her, scars from taunts she thought she had forgotten awakening to new pain in her memory. “I was not born in this land, nor do I come of noble kin,” she said tightly. “Are you telling me I have no right to stand here, or to raise the boy?”

  “Blackbird”—the other woman shook her head—“listen to what I say. What was Eilan’s by inheritance is yours by training and labor and the gift of the Lady of Life. Eilan herself entrusted you with this task. But Gawen is the last heir to the line of the Wise, and his father was a son of the Dragon on his mother’s side, bound by his blood to the land.”

  “That was what you meant, then, when you called him Son of a Hundred Kings…” breathed Caillean. “But what use is that to us now? The Romans rule.”

  “I cannot say. It has been given me to know only that he must be prepared. You and the Druid priesthood will show him the highest wisdom of humankind. And I, if you will pay my price, will show him the mysteries of this land you call Britannia.”

 
; “Your price,” Caillean repeated, swallowing.

  “It is a time for building bridges,” said the Queen. “I have a daughter, Sianna, begotten by a man of your kind. She is the same age as the boy. I wish you to take her into your House of Maidens as a fosterling. Teach her your ways and your wisdom, Lady of Avalon, and I will teach Gawen mine….”

  Chapter Two

  “Have you come, then, to join our order?” asked the old man.

  Gawen looked at him in surprise. When the priestess Kea had brought him to Brannos the night before, it had seemed to the boy that the ancient bard had outlived his wits as well as his music. His hair was white, his hands so palsied with age he could no longer pluck the harpstrings, and when Gawen was introduced, he had stirred from his own bed only long enough to point to a heap of sheepskins where the boy might lie and then gone back to sleep.

  The bard had not seemed very promising as a mentor in this strange place, but the sheepskins were warm and without fleas, and the boy was very tired. Before he had half finished thinking through all the strange things that had happened to him in the past moon, sleep carried him away. But Brannos in the morning was a very different being from the mazed creature of the night before. The rheumy eyes were surprisingly keen, and Gawen felt himself flushing under that grey stare.

  “I am not sure,” he answered cautiously. “My foster-mother has not told me what I am to do here. She asked if I would like to be a bard, but I have only learned the simplest songs that the children being fostered in the Forest House sang. I like to sing, but surely there is more to being a bard than that….”

  That was not quite the truth. Gawen loved to sing, but the Arch-Druid Ardanos, who was the most notable bard among the Druids of his time, had hated the sight of him and never even let him try. Now that he knew Ardanos had been his own great-grandfather, the one who wanted to kill Eilan when he knew she was with child, he understood why, but he was still wary of letting his interest show.

  “If I were called to that path,” he said carefully, “wouldn’t I know it by now?”