Druids (26 page)

But I am not ready! I wanted to protest. Things are happening too fast, this is not what I expected, you do not understand how ill-prepared I am… .

Suddenly I had a mental image of Rix at the moment the Arvemians shouted that he should lead them. Was that what he had felt, that terrible sense of being pulled into deep and swirling waters?

My mouth did not open; I said nothing. I let someone escort me beyond the trees, and there I sat down on a rock and gazed at the vault of me sky, trying to be quiet inside myself.

Is this your desire? I asked the Source.

The sky stared back at me, one fierce blue eye, watching.

Occasionally the wind brought me the sound of raised voices. Sometimes Aere was shouting. The decision was not being made easily.

In my lifetime no Keeper of the Grove had been elected; I did not know what form the day might take. Each tribe’s druids elected their own chief, of course, but he who was Keeper of the Sacred Grove of the Camutes was principal druid of Gaul. I found it hard to believe they would give the responsibility to a man who had not survived at least thirty winters.,

I heard more shouting. For one wild moment I imagined sneak-ing back and spying on me druidic deliberations as I had once spied on the secret ritual for killing winter. No! my head chided me. Such behavior would be unseemly in a man being considered as Keeper of the Grove.

Keeper of the Grove, A sense of unreality swept over me, and I sat weaving my fingers into shapes, uncertain what I should think or feel. Was it like this for you, Menua, I wondered, when it came to you?

Why did I never think to ask you?

A final shout, men silence. A long, long silence.

“We are ready for you,” a familiar voice whispered harshly in my ear. I looked up into the face of the sacrificer.

Aberth led me back to the grove. The waiting druids had raised their hoods; their faces were hidden from me. No one spoke, or even acknowledged my presence. Aberth guided me to the stone of sacrifice. There Dian Cet met me and moved to stand behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders.

The druids threw back their hoods. “Hear us!” cried Narios

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the exhorter to That Which Watched. “See us! Inhale our breath and know us for a part of you! We have chosen this man to keep your grove and open himself to your secrets. Fill him, strengthen him. He is yours.”

The strong, sure hands of Dian Cet turned me around to face the altar. Aberth beckoned me to lie down. I stretched full length on the cold stone and looked up into the pattern made by the leafless branches, reaching for the sky.

“He is yours!” the assembled druids cried with one voice. They made the signs of summoning, they sang the words of power.

I had been empty; I was filled. Filled with strengths and abilities bequeathed by the generations who had lain there before me. Their residue hummed through me. The day was cold, the stone was cold, yet my soul burned with ancient fire.

When I rose I no longer felt young.

That night a feast was served to the Order in the assembly hall and overflowing into the nearby lodges. I have never been more uncomfortable. It seemed that every druid who had ever met me wanted to discuss my gifts and shortcomings publicly, in agonizing detail. Since I was presumptive chief druid, the gifts were exaggerated beyond credence and the shortcomings slighted until I rose to remind the others that everything must be kept in balance.

This elicited another round of praise. “Wise head!” many applauded.

I sat down and stared into my cup. At the conclusion of the feast, we offered the remnants to fire and water and the four winds.

After a sleepless night, I went to my inauguration in the dawn light. No time could be wasted, the Order must not be left headless.

The rite that would make me chief druid of the Camutes as well as Keeper of the Sacred Grove of Gaul was, as the most important things are, very simple. Using sacred woods of ash and rowan and hazel, Aberth kindled a small fire in the clearing at the heart of the grove. Grannus escorted me to the fire and rolled the sleeves of my robe above my elbows.

“Cross your wrists, Ainvar, and lower your arms to the fire. Slowly,” Aberth instructed.

I obeyed. Slowly, slowly, bending my knees for I was tall. And

slowly the assembled druids encircling us and standing among the trees began to chant,” You will enter the light but never suffer the flame.”

Grannus pressed on my shoulders, pushing me down. I

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crouched closer to the fire, feeling its heat envelop me. Red-gold tongues of flame licked my arms; I could smell the short hairs on my forearms scorching.

“You will enter the light but never suffer the flame!”

I held my arms in the fire for a measureless time until the chanting rose to a triumphant shriek, then stopped abruptly. I stood up, dizzily. Aberth and Grannus each took one of my arms and lifted them above my head for all to see. I looked up, too.

The flesh was unbumed.

A collective gasp of relief sounded through the grove. “The spirits accept you!” cried Dian Cet. The druids clustered around me then, exclaiming over the burned hair and white, undamaged flesh. Someone asked if I had felt any pain.

“No,” I answered truthfully. No pain. Nothing but an intense inner quietness like the silence of snow.

“Show the trees,” said Aberth.

I raised my arms again and turned in a slow circle, sunwise.

After we had extinguished the fire and smeared ourselves with its ashes, we returned to the fort. The Order of the Wise was complete again. The other druids walked behind me; none with me now.

The Head is alone.

f IT DIDN ‘ T VOTE for you,’ * Sulis told me. \| “That’s all right. I probably wouldn’t have voted for

I

Ame, either.”

She had come to me with one of the many problems that must be decided by a chief druid: whether one form of dried mushroom could be substituted for another. The fungi were used in making a smoke for alleviating pains in the back of the head. Sulis was

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healer and herbalist, but formality demanded that any change in ritual must be sanctioned by the chief druid.

Until these endless chores devolved on me, I did not fully appreciate just how demanding the profession was. Menua had made it look easy. I had been chief druid for four nights and gotten hardly any sleep, never mind the luxury of a meal eaten at a leisurely pace.

Everyone had problems. Everyone needed me.

“You can use these,” I told Sulis, indicating a selection of dried and blackened fungus.

“Are you certain? I would have preferred the …”

If you don’t establish your authority with this woman now you never will, my head warned me. “Use these!” I cried in a cred-itable imitation of Menua’s thunder. I turned on my heel and strode away.

A woman cannot argue with you if you do not stand and argue.

I moved about the fort, answering questions, giving opinions, instructing and advismg. Whispers followed me, but I pretended to be unaware of them. There was speculation about the propriety of my being chief druid, of course; my very age invited it.

But most of the whispers concerned Lakutu.

I understood Sulis. She prized her independence not so much for the sake of her healing powers as for the sake of her rank. As a druidic healer, she was the equal of anyone; as a wife, she would have been subservient to a man. Sulis could not bear to be subservient. Even forcing from her the obedience due to a chief druid would be hard, I foresaw. I wondered how Menua had dealt with the problem.

But at least I could see into Sulis’s spirit. Lakutu’s very simplicity rendered her opaque to me. Or perhaps it was the barrier of language. Though she was eager to tend to my needs, she refused to leam my language. She communicated only with her body-If I had invited guests to the lodge, she would not haVe spoken to them but would have undoubtedly danced for them.

I did not invite guests to the lodge.

A chief druid should be above embarrassment, but I was still growing into my office. Lakutu’s presence was a source of acute embarrassment to me. I made no attempt to explain her—as chief druid I did not have to—but I promised myself that as soon as I had the time, I would resolve the problem.

How, I did not know. Menua had trained me to resolve problems for the tribe, not for myself.

The sun had been dead a long time when at last I was able to

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return to my lodge. Fire and food awaited me; Lakutu had kept the fire alive and had quietly taken over my food preparation from Damona, who raised her eyebrows but did not say anything—at least not to me.

When I entered me lodge, Lakutu was sitting by my bedbox. She turned her dank eyes toward me, smiled shyly, dropped her eyes. No word of greeting.

Perhaps, my head speculated, her refusal to speak is the one way left to her to retain some sovereignty over herself.

I was too tired to eat. I sank gratefully onto a bed made fragrant with freshly gathered pine needles, and I closed my eyes.

The door creaked on its iron hinges. I would have to show Lakutu how to grease them with melted fat.

“Ainvar?”

I sighed. “Come, Tarvos,”

He had fallen into the habit of looking in on me every night, to see if I required anything before he took his own rest. It was not customary for a chief druid to have a warrior as an attendant-but neither had a chief druid ever had a female slave in his lodge before.

I could only trust that these breaks with tradition were in accordance with an aspect of the pattern I did not yet understand.

Tarvos sauntered into the lodge, peering into the pot and helping himself to some food before sitting down cross-legged by the fire. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“No. Yes.” Images flitted behind my closed eyes-Sulis. Lak-utu. Aloud I said, “Tarvos, have you seen Crom Daral’s new woman since we’ve been back?”

He chuckled. “The one who was waiting for you?”

I raised on one elbow to look at him. * ‘You know about that?”

“Everyone knows about it. She made herself a storm center when she found out you were going to be a druid, they say. She yelled, she threw things. Apparently everyone was concerned; she was making us look bad. When one tribe takes a nobly born woman from another and then cannot find a home for her, it reflects badly on the tribe.”

“But Crom Daral took her.”

“He did. I pity him, a woman who yells.” Tarvos devoted his attention to a hunk of stewed meat.

“Have you seen her?”

“I’m not certain, I don’t know what she looks like. IVe heard him boasting, of course.”

I sat up on my bed. ‘ ‘Boasting of what?”

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“She turned out to be something of a surprise. During the harvest festival, that little blind boy who is always wandering away from his mother stumbled into Briga and she picked him up. When she realized he could not see, she began to cry. Her tears fell on the boy’s upturned face, and the next day he began to see light. Now they say he can recognize faces.”

“Briga?”

“Briga me Sequanian. Crom Daral’s woman. Suits was so mi-pressed she wanted to take her as an apprentice, but the woman will have nothing to do with druidry. Crom boasts of her, though. Probably the first thing in his life he’s ever had to boast about.”

Tarvos rose, stretched, helped himself to another piece of meat without waiting for Lakutu to hand it to him. The Bull took a bite, then said, grease running into his beard, “I don’t know what she does to this, but meat tastes better the way Lakutu cooks it.’ * He then consumed my untouched bread, a pot of curds, a bowl of honeyed nuts, drank three cups of wine, belched with satisfaction, and said, “If there isn’t anything else I’ll go now.”

“There isn’t any more food, if that’s what you mean.”

“Any messages you want delivered?”

*‘I don’t think so-Pemaps tomorrow … no, I’ll take care of it myself.”

“If you need me …” Tarvos said from the door in parting.

When I emerged from the lodge next morning to lead the song for the sun, I walked into a pelting rain. I sang anyway, full-throated, eliciting halfhearted responses from people sheltering in their doorways and peering out into the wintry gloom.

When the song was over, I went to find Sulis. We had druidic matters to discuss. A person with a gift such as that reported of the Sequanian woman could not be allowed to lie fallow. We must talk to her … / must talk to her about her gift. For the sake of the tribe, I told myself.

Since she was an unmarried woman, the healer still lived in the lodge of her father. As I approached the lodge from one direction, I saw her brother, the Goban Saor, coming from another.

“Ho, Ainvar!” he shouted and waved. Then he hesitated. When I drew nearer, he said, “I’m sorry, I’m not used to thinking of you as the chief druid.” His tone was suddenly deferential.

“Neither am I,” I admitted, smiling. “Nothing has changed between us, we’re still friends.”

He relaxed visibly. “I was afraid you were angry with me.”

“Angry with you? Why should I be?”

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“For not having already given you that gift you asked me to

make for someone.”

Memory leaped in me. “The person I wanted to give it to is dead now,” I said softly.

“Ah. That’s too bad. It turned out very well, really. It just took a long time because I had to find exactly the right stone—you understand about that—and then the carving was more difficult than I anticipated. It was as if the stone came to life and insisted on taking its own form. I would like you to see the result, Ainvar, even if you don’t want it anymore. It’s complete except for the final polishing.”

“Who said I don’t want it? Show me.”

He led me to his shed. There, crowded among scores of other items of his making, an object as high as a man’s thigh sheltered beneath blankets of calfskin. With a proud flourish, the Goban Saor whipped the covering aside.

The Two-Faced One stared at me from blind stone eyes.

They were not the inhuman faces of my first vision, nor the all-too-human ones of my second. A third set of faces was revealed to me: highly stylized, mysterious, yet as recognizably Celtic in form and line as Menua’s iron firedogs. No one would ever mistake them for the empty perfection of Rome’s statuary deities. Under the hands of the Goban Saor, the stone had come to life.