Part 6 (2/2)
”That's stupid! You couldn't know when-” Dierna exclaimed, then paused, eyeing me suspiciously.
”We both feel guilty,” I said then. ”Perhaps we always will. But I will try to live with it if you will. Perhaps we can forgive each other, even if we cannot forgive ourselves...”
For a moment longer she stared at me, her blue eyes filling with tears. Then, with a sob, she threw herself into my arms.
We stayed that way, weeping, while the white sickle of the moon swung across the sky. It was only when Eldri growled and pushed her way out from between us that I realized how much time had pa.s.sed, and that we were not alone. For a little while I had felt peace, holding the child, but now my belly tensed once more. The cloaked shape confronting us was that of the Lady of Avalon.
”Dierna-” I said softly. ”It is late, and you should be in your bed.” She stiffened as she saw her grandmother, but I was already pus.h.i.+ng her to her feet. ”Run along now, and may the G.o.ddess bless your dreams.”
For a moment I thought she would insist on staying to defend me. But perhaps Dierna realized that to do so would only increase Ganeda's wrath, for although she glanced backwards several times, she left us without arguing. I confess that as I sensed the menace in the Lady's silence I almost called her back again, but this confrontation had been a long time coming, and I knew I must face it alone.
I got to my feet. ”If you have something to say to me, let us walk out along the sh.o.r.e, where our voices will disturb no one.” I was surprised to hear my own voice sounding so steady, for beneath the shawl I was trembling. I led the way down to the path that edged the Lake, Eldri trotting at my heels.
”Why are you angry?” I asked when the silence had grown unbearable, like the stillness before a storm.
”Do you begrudge your grand-daughter a little comfort just because it comes from me?”
”You killed my sister when you were born...” hissed Ganeda, ”you ill-wished Becca, and now you are trying to steal the last child of my blood away.”
I stared at her, anger replacing my fear. ”Old woman, you are mad! I loved that little girl, and surely my mother's death was a greater loss to me than to you. But have our choices no part to play in all this, or has all the teaching of Avalon been a lie? My mother chose to act as priestess in the Great Rite, and when she knew she had conceived, to keep the child, understanding the risk she ran. And Becca had been told not to follow her sister and chose to do otherwise.”
”She was too young to know-”
”And youchose to keep me away from both girls!” I raged on. ”Don't you know I would have watched them like a mother bear with two cubs to stop what I had seen from coming to pa.s.s? From the moment I first set foot on Avalon you have hated me! What have I ever done to deserve that? Can you tell me why?”
Ganeda gripped my arm, and as she jerked me around to face her, I sensed her energy expanding, and before the wrath of the Lady of Avalon, my anger seemed suddenly the petulance of a child.
”You dare to speak so, to me? With a single Word, I could obliterate you where you stand!” Her arm swung up in a sweep of dark draperies like the wing of the Lady of Ravens, and I cowered. For a moment the lapping of wavelets against the sh.o.r.eline was the only sound.
And then, from the rich scent of wet earth and the whisper of water another kind of power began to flow into me, a steady, enduring strength that could absorb whatever lightnings Ganeda's majestic fury might call down. For a moment then I touched something fundamental within, although whether it was the G.o.ddess or my own eternal soul I could not tell. Slowly I straightened, and as she met my gaze, the power ebbed from Ganeda's body until she was no more than an old, bent woman, shorter than me.
”You are Lady of Avalon,” I said with a sigh, ”but we are both daughters of the Lady who rules over all.
In everything that concerns the good of Avalon I will obey you, but it is because I choose to do so.”
She looked up at me, her seamed features carved in lines of light and shadow by the moon.
”You are young,” she said in a low voice, ”young and proud. Refuse to fear me if you will-life itself will teach you to be afraid, aye, and the meaning of compromise!” She began to make her way back along the sh.o.r.e.
”Dierna is my kinswoman too,” I called after her, ”and I will not let you keep me from being with her!”
At that Ganeda turned once more. ”Have it your own way,” she said tiredly, ”but when I was younger, I too had visions. I have looked into the Sacred Well, and seen that it is Dierna who will be my heir. You do well to make a friend of her, for I tell you now that it isshe , not you, who will be the next Lady of Avalon!”
Slowly, the terrible summer of Becca's death faded into memory. I knew what that tragedy had done to her sister, but as time pa.s.sed it became clear that Ganeda had also been affected, more deeply than we, or perhaps she herself, knew. In body she was still vigorous-indeed, I do not believe that anyone without superior stamina could do the work required of the Lady of Avalon. But the edge that could cut friend and foe alike, was gone.
I found it hard to be sorry, and being young, I did not understand how life's buffets can wear down the spirit. Nor did I care enough to try. Strong in body and delighting in my own rapidly maturing powers, I went eagerly to my testing, and, certain of my decision, bestowed the bag of gold aureii with which I had been provided upon the family of the boy who had given me Eldri ten years before.
And so I entered the mists, and drew up from the depths of my being the Word of Power that would open the way, laughing because in the end it was so easy, as if I were simply remembering something I had learned long before. Heron and Aelia did likewise when their turn came, and like me were received back with rejoicing. But Roud never returned to us.
In the year of silence that followed, I was forced to look inward in a way that the myriad demands of my training had never before allowed. It was this, I think now, that was the true initiation, for it is not the adversaries outside oneself, that can be confronted and defied, that are most dangerous, but the more subtle antagonists that dwell within.
Regarding the oath with which that year ended, I must also keep silence, save that it was, as Ganeda had promised, an act of making sacred, ofsacrifice . But though I offered myself to the Lady to be used as She willed, I did not then understand the warning that we cannot predict or control what the G.o.ddess will do with us once that commitment has been made. Nonetheless, when my oath had been given, I pa.s.sed through the Mystery of the Cauldron, and the blue crescent of a priestess was placed upon my brow.
With my attention fixed upon my own struggles, I did not at first realize that things were not going so well in Avalon. During our year of silence, Aelia and I grew ever closer. I was surprised to find that wordless, I understood more of what was in her heart than ever I had when we concealed our thoughts in conversation, and knew she felt the same for me. Using our voices only to sing the offices of the G.o.ddess, words themselves took on a new and sacred meaning.
Thus, the deliberations at the first full meeting of the consecrated priests and priestesses to which I was admitted after my year of silence seemed charged with unusual significance. In truth, matters were serious enough. It had been several years since any new youths or maidens had come to be trained at Avalon, and Roud was not the only one who had gone out for her testing and never returned. In addition, the princes whose contributions helped to maintain the community on the isle had become increasingly unwilling to pay what was due.
”It is not that we have no money,” said Arganax, who had become chief among the Druids the previous year. ”Britannia has never been more prosperous. But the Emperor Claudius in Rome seems to have forgotten us, and with the death of Victorinus, the Imperium Galliarum has concerns more pressing than collecting taxes here.”
Cigfolla laughed. ”It is his mother, Victorina, who rules there now, despite those young cousins she has set up to warm the throne, and she is twice the man he was, from all I hear. Perhapsshe would welcome the a.s.sistance of Avalon!”
”The princes supported us gladly when the foot of Rome was on their necks,” said Suona. ”It is almost as if they feel they no longer need us-as if they can abandon the old ways of Britannia now that they are free of direct control by Rome.”
For a moment we stared at her in bemused silence. Then Ganeda cleared her throat.
”Are you proposing that we work magic to bring the emperors back again?”
Suona flushed and fell silent, but the others were babbling with speculation.
”We can decide nothing without knowing what we face,” Ganeda said finally, ”and we have exausted the knowledge available by any ordinary means...”
”What are you proposing?” asked Arganax.
Ganeda looked around the circle with the exasperated frown I remembered so well from my days as her student.
”Are we Greeks, to waste our lives debating the limits of our philosophy? If our skills are worth preserving, let us use them! The Turning of Spring is almost upon us-let us make use of this balance point between the two halves of the year to invoke the Oracle!”
CHAPTER FIVE.
AD 270.
”Seekers on the ancient ways, Seekers on the Path of Light, Now the Night gives way to Day, Now the Day has equalled Night...”
Singing, the line of dark-robed priestesses moved with gliding steps around the circle, matched by the Druids in their white garments marching in the opposite direction. Dark and light in perfect balance completed the circle and came to rest. Arganax stepped forwards, lifting his hands in blessing. Behind him another priest stood waiting with the gong.
The Arch-Druid was a vigorous man in his middle years, but Ganeda, who had moved out to face him, seemed ageless, empowered by the ritual. Her robe, of so dark a blue it was almost black in the lamplight, fell in straight folds to the polished stone of the floor and the moonstones in the silver ornaments of the High Priestess glowed unwinking from her breast and brow.
”Behold, the Sun rules in the House of the Ram, and the Moon rests in the arms of the Twins,” the Druid proclaimed. ”The winter is past, and herbs are pus.h.i.+ng their way towards the sunlight, birds return, proclaiming their readiness to mate, beasts emerge from their long sleep. Everywhere life arises, and ourselves with it, moved by the same tides, kindled to action by the same great energies... Keep silence, and behold the rebirth of the world, and as we are all One, behold the same great transformation within...”
I closed my eyes with the others, trembling to the vibrations of the gong that echoed from the pillars of the Great Hall of the Druids. It seemed to resonate in every atom of my being. Lost in the beauty of the moment, I forgot to feel envy that it would be Heron and not I who would be sitting on the three-legged stool and descending to the Well of Prophecy.
”Awake! Awake! Awake!” came another voice, high and clear.
”Companions of the Cosmic Light, The hidden splendour will appear!
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