Druids (27 page)

“Is that what you wanted?” he inquired softly. A large and powerfully built man, stronger than any I knew save for Vercingetorix, the Goban Saor was exceptionally gentle, as if choosing to deny his own strength. Two aspects of one person.

I looked again at his carving. The thing was both compelling and disturbing. For no perceptible reason, a cold snake of fear began to uncoil in my belly-Attempting to have an Otherworid vision embodied was a mistake- Something had been trapped in the stone, lured perhaps by the eneigy of the artisan as he woriked all unaware. Now whatever it was crouched and waited, its time not yet come.

The Goban Saor was looking at me. “Is something wrong, Ainvar? I know I couldn’t capture exactly what you described, but…”

“It’s fine, it’s extraordinary, you have exceeded my expectations,” I told him hurriedly. “Cover it up now, will you?”

Puzzled, he did as I asked. “What is to be done with it?”

“I promised you an arm ring of my father’s for making it;

Tarvos will bring the ring to you before the sun sets. But I want

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the image left here, covered, just as it is. Don’t show it to anyone, don’t move it, don’t polish it. Don’t even touch it again, do you

understand?”

He was protective of his creation; I could tell he wanted to argue, but I pulled my authority around me like a mantle and stared him down.

The Goban Saor dropped his eyes. “As you say.”

I could not tell him what I had sensed in the image. He had made it of inspiration and innocence; he was not at fault.

I left the master craftsman at his shed and went to talk to Sulis, but part of my mind continued to be aware of die stone figure under its covering, waiting.

Once I could have entered any lodge in the fort without ceremony, but now I was chief druid. The sight of me appearing unexpectedly in her doorway flustered Sulis’s old mother badly. She stammered, coughed, glanced wildly around for her daughters to help her, then retreated with many mumbled apologies, asking me to be patient only a few moments until she could prepare some wine and honeycakes.

I was more embarrassed man she.

Sulis rescued me. “I believe the chief druid has come to talk to me. Mother, not to be entertained,” she said, reading my eyes.

Gratefully I took her by the elbow and led her from the lodge into the smohe-stained air. The rain had abated—for a little while—and the wind had died. In me lee of the lodge we were comfortable enough, wrapped in our heavy woolen cloaks.

“Tell me what you know of Briga, the Sequanian woman, and some incident involving a blind child while I was away.”

Sulis obliged with a recounting that matched the story Tarvos had heard in every particular. She concluded by saying, “It was the talk of me fort for many nights, as you can imagine. But it must have frightened Briga. She retired into Crom DaraTs lodge and has hardly put her nose through the doorway since unless she must.”

“Is she happy with Crom Daral?” I asked before thinking. Becoming chief druid does not make one all-wise, I was discovering, to my regret.

“What business is dial of yours, Ainvar?” Suddenly Sulis’s voice had a waspish sting. “Is this another woman you’re interested in—though you already have a slave for your bed?”

It had never occurred to me that Sulis could be jealous. She was a druid.

Yet, thinking of Crom and Briga, I was jealous.

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“And what business is it of yours if I am interested in a woman or not?” I retorted, taking a spiteful pleasure in watching her try

to frame an answer. “As I recall, Sulis, you refused to be my wife a long time ago.”

“That was …” She clamped her lips.

“Yes? That was before I was made chief druid?”

Sulis turned bright red, an unbecoming color. It made the webbing of lines around her eyes appear white by contrast, accentu-ating her age.

Perversely this sign of mortality made me feel more tender toward her than I had in a long time, and I regretted my peevish-ness. “I apologize, I should not have made such an accusation.”

She was horrified. “The chief druid never apologizes!”

“I seem to be doing a lot of things chief druids never do.” I almost added, “Perhaps I am too young for the office,” but I choked back the words. I must not reveal to anyone the vulnerability I was feeling, my head reminded me. It was enough of a mistake to have apologized.

Once I had relished me idea of being alone, being singular, special, beyond the ordinary. Until I was forever thrust beyond the ordinary and realized there was no way back.

“We will speak of the Sequanian woman and her gift,” I said in Menua’s most stem and formal voice.

We fought silently. I had won the war of wills with Vercingetorix; I would not be defeated by Sulis. As me rain began to fall again, coldly, insistently, she dropped her head. “What do you wish in the matter?” she asked in a voice gone dull.

I was sorry for my small victory, but the pattern is inexorable.

“I shall speak to her myself, Sulis, and try to make her understand about her gift-She has certain resentments against the Order that must be overcome, but with so few new druids developing, we need every one we can get. If I can win her for the Order, we shall have a valuable healer, and I shall want you to take her and train her.”

“What of Crom Daral?”

“They are not yet married, not until Beltaine, which is five moons in the future. Until then, she is her own person, she can leave his lodge if she chooses-”

“And where would she live?” Sulis’s lips were tight as she asked the question.

“With you,” I told her. “Are you agreed?”

“As you say.” She turned from me and went back into the lodge.

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Icy rain was running down the back of my neck. I raised my hood.

Crom Daral’s door was tightly closed. I rapped once, twice, with the ash wand of my office-No answer. But smoke was seep-ing from the hole in the center of the thatch.

I kicked the door.

It swung inward and Briga stood facing me with a flesh-fork in her hand. I had forgotten she was so small, but as soon as I saw her my arms and my lap recalled the exact warmth and weight and measure of her.

Her fair hair was plaited into a sort of ring atop her head. A few strands had pulled loose and clung to her damp, fire-flushed cheeks-Beyond her I could hear roasting meat hissing on me spit over the firepit.

Recognizing me, her eyes widened. I thought she might close the door in my face, so I stepped quickly forward. She became very still, like a deer surprised in the forest. “You,” she said.

She made it sound like an accusation.

“I can hardly deny it,” I agreed. Her eyes were on my hood. I threw it back, but her eyes followed it and would not meet mine.

“Chief druid,” she said.

“I am mat, too.”

Now she looked into my face. “And I thought you were kind,” she said with a faint, distant regret, as if speaking of some incident in the far past. She started to turn from me, but I caught her by the shoulders and held her.

“I’m not a monster, Briga. We are not monsters, we druids. We protect the tribe, don’t you understand that? You must have known it once. How could you let your brother’s death so blind you?”

Before she could answer I realized someone had entered the lodge behind me, and turned in time to meet Crom Daral’s blazing eyes. “What are you doing here!” His fists were doubled.

I held my voice very steady—but I kept one hand on Briga’s shoulder, and on some level was aware that she had not pulled away from my touch. “I am here as chief druid,” I replied. “This woman may have a gift of the spirit. If so, we need her.”

“She’s not of our tribe,” he shot back. I had not expected Crom to think so fast. “At least, not until I marry her. And I would never allow her to join the Order with you, Ainvar.’ *

“No matter what tribe she belongs to she can be allowed to study in the groves of the Camutes with the permission of me

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chief druid,” I told him. “We might find she really has no gift. But until we know, we want her to have a chance.”

“Why don’t you ask her what she wants?” Crom was looking not at me, but at Briga. ‘ ‘And take your hand off her while you’re asking,” he added. “Now you tell him, Briga. Tell him what you want to do.” He kept his eyes on her, as if he would bum holes in her.

Suddenly I wondered if he would hurt her. Was he holding her out of fear?

“Leave us alone, Crom Daral,” I commanded in the chief druid’s voice, with a confidence I did not totally feel. “If she tells me in private that she wants to stay with you, 1*11 believe her, but I don’t want you standing there trying to intimidate her.”

“Hah,” His laugh was without humor. “I’m not trying to intimidate her. She’s not scared of me, she’s scared of you. Of you and all your kind. You’ve made a mistake coming here, Ainvar, so you might as well leave.”

“You leave,” I repeated.

His lips skinned back from his teeth. “As you say. But I think you’re in for a disappointment.” He swung round and sauntered from the lodge, whistling to himself with maddening arrogance.

I pushed the door closed behind him, shutting out the dark man and the dark day. “Now, Briga. You tell me. Are you willing to take instruction from Suits, our healer, just to see if you really have a gift? Remember that healers don’t sacrifice, they help peo-ple, they save lives, they ease pain.”

“Crom Daral is in pain,” she said to my vast surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“His back. It grows worse each season, more twisted and awkward. Soon they won’t let him run with the warriors anymore, and he’s frightened of me future. Would you have me leave him, too?”

“Are you going to leave me, too?” she had once said to me, tearing my heart.

That was how he meant to hold her, then. With pity, the most cruel of chains.

But if she had that much sympathy for him, she must have a generous heart; a heart that would take pity on anything in pain and distress. ” If your gift is large enough perhaps you could heal him, after you are trained,” I suggested.

“Sulis has looked at him. She couldn’t help, though she made him walk along the star-paths.”

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“You may become a more powerful healer than Sulis. Think

about it, Briga.”

Her round little chin set itself firmly. “I want nothing to do with any of the druids, I swore to hate them forever.”

“Forever is a long time,” I told her. Then a memory rose in me unbidden, a knowledge I did not know I possessed. “Some emotions can last forever, but hatred is outworn, in one life or several.”

She stared at me. “What lasts?” she whispered in that soft, hoarse little voice I had never forgotten.

‘The fabric that holds the tender network together,” I replied.

Then wondered where the words came from.

BRIGA WOULD NOT leave the lodge with me; the best I could obtain from her was a promise to think about what I had said. As I hesitated in the doorway, unwilling to leave her, she gave me a look I could feel in my bones.

“Dolfenowyou, Ainvar?”

I met her eyes. “I think we know each other,” I replied.

The tender network …

At that moment I almost remembered … men Crom Daral’s voice severed my thoughts as a knife severs rope. “Going’so soon. Ainvar? Couldn’t you persuade her?” His eyes alight with triumph, he brushed past me into the lodge. Standing beside Briga, he put his arm around her possessively. “You see? She prefers to stay with me.”

I did not give him the satisfaction of an answer, nor did I dare let my eyes meet Briga’s again.

Returning to Sulis, I instructed her to begin intercepting Briga whenever she could, without Crom Daral, and urge her to train as a healer. “Tell her how many people you have helped, Sulis;

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stress the joy of your gift. Tel! her that with enough training she might even be able to help Crom Daral.”

“I don’t know if that’s possible, Ainvar. 1 tried; I made him align his spine with the paths of me stars as they stood in the sky on his conception day, but his back refused to assume its proper shape.

“Some people are damaged in the womb or at birth, some are damaged because their bodies respond to the form of the spirit within them. Perhaps Crom Daral has a malign spirit. I cannot promise Briga she could ever help him.”

“But she might. She cured the blind boy after you had given

up on him, remember?”

Sulis bowed her head.

“Persuade her to leave Crom Daral and join you as your apprentice for the sake of the tribe,” I urged one final time. “I command it, Sulis.” Silently, in my head, I added: Persuade her to leave him before Beltaine!

Thereafter, when I met Crom around the fort he would give me a secret, smirking look, reminding me without words that he had Briga. Once he murmured as we passed in the narrow space between lodges, “I know the taste of her tongue, Ainvar, and the dimples on her buttocks.”

Until then, I had not realized how much he hated me. Having acquired Briga was Crom’s one triumph over me, me one time he had ever bested me. I could not imagine what he might do if I succeeded in taking her from him.

Menua, I recalled, never seemed to suffer such problems. He floated on the surface like a wateroird, unentangled with the weeds beneath.

Or did he? In my youth, had I simply been unobservant?

Disquieting rumors were reaching the Fort of the Grove. Our new king, Tasgetius, had increased trade with the Romans. Without Menua to criticize such actions, he had invited more traders to establish residence at Cenabum. Those who recalled the former chief druid’s misgivings were troubled by this.

I had two options. I could travel to Cenabum myself—a com-mon enough thing for the chief druid to do—and openly attempt to persuade Tasgetius to reverse his policy. Or I could undertake a more subtle course of action.

Menua had made his objections embarrassingly public and paid the price. I would leam from his experience. At first my planning would take place only in the privacy of my own head, and what I