Part 2 (1/2)

With my heart thumping so hard I feared it would wake Eldri, I started towards her. Ganeda opened her arms.She is scarcely bigger than me ! I thought in surprise as I moved into the older woman's reluctant embrace. The High Priestess had seemed so tall and stately before.

Then Ganeda gripped my shoulders and drew me hard against her breast. Eldri, crushed between us, woke with a sudden squirm and a yip of surprise. The priestess released me as if I had been a hot coal, and I felt the betraying colour flood into my face as the little dog poked her head up through the loose neck of my gown.

Someone stifled a giggle, but my own impulse to laugh died at Ganeda's frown.

”What is this? Do you think to mock us here?” There was an undertone in the voice of the priestess like distant thunder.

”She is a faerie dog!” I exclaimed, my eyes filling with tears. ”The Lake people gave her to me!”

”A rare and wonderful creature,” Cigfolla put in before Ganeda could speak again. ”Such gifts are not bestowed lightly.”

From the other priestesses came a murmur of agreement. For a moment longer that mental thunder echoed in the air, then, as it became clear that most of the priestesses were viewing me with sympathy, Ganeda clamped down on her anger and managed a tight smile.

”A fine gift indeed,” she said thinly, ”but the Hall of the Priestesses is not the place for her.”

”I am sorry, my lady,” I stammered, ”I did not know where-”

”It makes no difference,” Ganeda cut me off. ”The community is waiting. Go, greet the rest of your sisters now.”

With the puppy still peering out of my tunica, I went gratefully into Cigfolla's arms, breathing in the lavender that scented her gown. The woman who stood next to her had the look of a paler copy of Ganeda. In her arms she held a little daughter whose hair blazed like a fire.

”I haveseen your face in vision, little one, and I am glad to make you welcome! I am your cousin Sian, and this is Dierna,” she said softly. The little girl grinned toothily, as fair and fat a child as one might hope to find. Next to that flaming hair, her mother seemed even more pallid, as if she had given all her strength to her offspring. Or perhaps, I thought, it was growing up in the shadow of Ganeda that had sapped the strength from her.

”h.e.l.lo, Dierna.” I squeezed the plump hand.

”I'm two!” proclaimed the little girl.

”You certainly are!” I answered after a moment's confusion. Apparently that was the right answer, for Sian also smiled.

”You are very welcome to Avalon,” she said then, bending to kiss me on the brow.

At least one member of my mother's family was glad to see me, I thought as I turned to the next woman in the line.

As I moved around the circle, some of the women had a pat for the puppy as well, and others a word of praise for my dead mother. The girls who were currently being trained on the holy isle received me with delighted awe, as if I had intended to play a trick on the High Priestess all along. Roud and Gwenna had the ruddy-fair colouring of the royal Celts, and Heron, the dark, narrow build of the people of the Lake.

Aelia was almost as tall as I, though her hair was a lighter brown. Tuli, who surveyed them from the eminence of her approaching initiation, and her younger sister Wren, had fair hair, cut short like that of the others, and grey eyes. This was not the way that I had intended to impress them, but for good or ill, the little dog seemed to be a powerful talisman.

And then the formality of greeting was over, and the solemn row became a crowd of chattering women.

But as the girls swept me away to the safety of the House of Maidens, I saw Ganeda watching me and realized that if my aunt had disliked me before, she would hate me now. I had grown up in a prince's court, and I knew that no ruler can afford to be mocked in her own hall.

CHAPTER TWO.

AD 262-263.

”But where do people go when they visit Faerie? Does the spirit journey only, as in a dream, or does the body really move between the worlds?”

I was lying on my belly with the sunlight soaking into my back, and Wren's words seemed indeed to come from another world. A part of my mind was aware that I lay on the earth of the holy isle with the other maidens, listening to Suona's teaching, but my essence was floating in some strange in-between state from which it would be very easy to travel entirely away.

”You are here, are you not?” asked Suona tartly.

”Not all here-” whispered Aelia, giggling. As usual, she had claimed a place next to me.

”You pa.s.sed through the mists to come to this place, otherwise you would have ended on Inis Witrin,”

the priestess continued. ”It is easier to journey in the spirit only, but indeed, the body may also be translated, by those who are trained in the ancient wisdom...”

I rolled over and sat up. It was an unusually warm day in the springtime, and Suona had brought her charges to sit in the apple orchard. Light fell in a s.h.i.+fting s.h.i.+mmer through the young leaves, dappling the undyed linen gowns of the girls with gold. Wren was thinking over the answer, head c.o.c.ked to one side like the bird from whom she took her name.

She could always be depended on to state the obvious, and as the youngest of the girls being trained on Avalon, she came in for a good deal of teasing. I had seen how it was when a new member was introduced to a pack of hounds, and had expected that they would gang up on me.

But even though Ganeda showed me no favour, I was a relation of the Lady of Avalon. Or perhaps it was my size, for at thirteen, Aelia and I were as tall as many of the grown priestesses, or because Wren was such an easy target, but it was the younger girl who got picked on and I who did my best to protect her.

”The Christians have a tale of a prophet called Elijah who went up to heaven in a chariot of fire,” I said brightly. As part of our education we had been taken to a service on the other isle. ”Was he an adept as well?”

Suona looked a little sour, and the other girls laughed. They had become accustomed to thinking of the Christians of Inis Witrin as foolish, if generally kindly, old men who mumbled prayers and had forgotten the ancient wisdom. And yet, if what I had heard of the holy Joseph who was their founder was true, they also had known something of the Mysteries at one time.

”Perhaps-” Suona said unwillingly. ”I suppose that the laws of the Spirit World are like the laws of the world of Nature, and do not operate much differently in other lands than they do here. But it is in Avalon that the old ways are practised and the truth remembered. To most men, this place is a dream and a rumour of magic. You are very fortunate to be dwelling here!”

The giggles subsided and the girls, recognizing that their teacher's patience was thinning, arranged their skirts decorously around them and sat up straight once more.

”I remember how it felt to go through the mists the first time,” said I, ”for I came here only three years ago. It was as if my mind was being turned inside out, and then the world changed.”

Only three years-and yet now it was the world outside that seemed a dream. Even my grief for my father, who had been slain fighting the Saxon raiders, had eased. My hostile great-aunt was now my closest relation, but the other priestesses were kind to me, and among the maidens, Aelia was my fast friend.

Suona smiled a little. ”I suppose that is as good a description as any. But that is not the only way to move from world to world. To travel from the life of the tribes to Londinium is to the spirit as great a journey, and some of those who make it fell ill and pine like trees transplanted to unfriendly soil because their minds cannot bear the change.”

I nodded. I had been to Londinium several times during my childhood, and though Prince Julius Coelius might have been Roman in name and taught his children to speak Latin as well as their mother tongue, I could still remember the shock as we pa.s.sed through the gate of the city and the noise of the capital rose around us, like jumping into the sea.

”But do our bodies go to Faerie?” said Wren, who could stick to a topic like a terrier when her interest was aroused.

Seeing Suona's frown, I stepped in once more. ”We know that our solid bodies are sitting here in the orchard below the Tor, but except that the weather is sometimes a little different, Avalon is not so unlike the outside world.”

”There are other differences,” said the priestess, ”which you will learn about when you are more advanced in your training. Certain kinds of magic work more easily here, because we are at a crossing of the lines of power, and because of the structure of the ”For... But for the most part what you say is true.”

”But Faerie is not the same,” put in Tuli. ”Time there runs slower, and its folk are magic.”

”That is so, and yet even there, a mortal who is willing to pay the price may dwell.”

”What is the price?” asked I.

”To lose the gradual sweet changes of the seasons, and all the gathered wisdom of mortality.”

”Is that so bad a thing?” asked Roud, her red hair glinting as her braid swung forwards. ”If you go when you are young?”

”Would you like to have stayed forever nine years old?” Suona asked.