Druids (40 page)

Time was our enemy.

We dmids contemplate the nature of time. As part of our training, we develop an intensity of imaginative will that is capable of manipulating any element that conforms to natural law. As I had observed before, time could clench or sprawl, so it must be mal-leable to some extent.

With an incalculable mental effort I reached out, grasped time, held it. I clamped down with all the strength I possessed, pouring the full power of my will into the attempt. I envisioned the Ro-mans moving slowly, then more slowly still, as if they were in deep, deep water. I imagined time stopping for them.

What my mind was creating and what my eyes were watching

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began to blend together. The Roman century, frozen in one mo-ment held locked by my mind, ceased moving.

The effort was beyond anything I had ever attempted. I knew I could not sustain it; my body felt as if every fiber were being sundered. I managed to gasp out to Tarvos, “Go get the women. Bring them back across the river.”

I never had to tell Tarvos anything twice. He sped past me, up the bank, slid from his faltering horse, and began collecting our people like a hen gathering her chicks. My influence was concentrated on the space occupied by the Romans; the Camutians were not affected by it, except for two or three who had already been overrun by the warriors and were trapped inside the ranks.

I did not know who was alive, dead, injured. I dare not break my concentration enough to look … to look for Briga’s face.

My strength was weakest at the rear of the Roman column, and those warriors were still capable of action. They fought their way into me frozen mass of their companions until they too were caught by stilled time. Then they stopped and stood like the others, often with one foot lifted in a step, mouths ajar with yelling, arms raised, weapons brandished.

Waves of nausea swept over me. I was vaguely aware of Tarvos coming back toward me with others around him, splashing through the river… .

I faltered. I saw the Romans begin to move again; I clamped down again savagely. But my concentration had been broken finally and irrevocably by the sound of shouting and the whirr of spears in the air above my head, coming from our side of the river.

Warriors had arrived from the Port of the Grove.

As soon as I let myself hear them, the spell was shattered. The

Romans leaped into furious action, hurling a rain of spears in our direction. The Camutian warriors plunged into the river, meeting the fleeing women midstream. There were glad cries of recogni-tion, and then the women hurried on to safety while the men rushed ahead to attack the Romans.

Dizzily, I slid from my horse and leaned against his heaving flank. The cold water of the shallow Autura swiried around my legs, reviving me somewhat. Looking up, I saw that the battle had been joined in the vineyard. Although the Romans still outnumbered us, our men were so angry that each fought like ten, and me century was suffering casualties.

The centurion had probably been told to find and destroy Gaulish vineyards and kill any stray resistors, but not to put his entire

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company at risk. After fighting long enough to satisfy honor, he barked a final order and the invaders wheeled about like a school of fish, setting off at double time toward the southeast. Our warriors raced along behind them, howling as they picked off the rear guard.

When I looked back to see how the women were, more men were still arriving to fight, most of them farmers and local smallholders who had grabbed up their tools to serve as weapons. They stood on the riverbank, brandishing forks and sickles and shouting imprecations at the departing Romans.

I caught my horse by the bridle and started leading him toward them. It felt as if I had been in the river for days, and I wanted to assure myself that Briga and the others were all right.

At first, thanks to the exhaustion that follows an excess of magic, I did not recognize the thing that lay before me in the shallow water. Then my horse arched his neck and snorted.

Tarvos drifted face downward on the sluggish current, with a spear through his neck.

“N THE MIDRIVER collision between the retreating women and the advancing warriors, Tarvos must have lost his footing, I

I

.insisted to myself. He is not hurt, the breath is merely knocked out of him. There is no spear through his throat; it only looks that way.

“Tarvos,” I heard myself say foolishly, “Tarvos, get up! Did you find Briga? Speak to me, Tarvos!”

Dropping my horse’s reins, I gently turned him over and lifted his head and shoulders clear of the water. His head lolled-Instead of eyes I saw two white half-moons beneath partially closed lids. His face was the color of clay.

Now, now I ached for the strength to manipulate time again,

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to make it run backward! But my strength was spent. The arms that held Tarvos were trembling.

The people on the bank waded in to help me. “Can someone get that spear out of his neck?” I requested.

Hands touched us, guided us, helped carry him from the river and lay him on the bank. Sulis bent over us. I had not noticed her before; she must have been with the other women who had come to sing to the vines.

Giving me one sharp look, she then turned her attention to Tarvos. I watched helplessly as she listened for his heart, felt the bloodrivers in his neck, sniffed for his breathing. Then she shook her head. “The life has gone out of him, Ainvar.” She made a signal to two of our men and between them they worked the spear out of my friend’s neck as gendy as if he could feel what they did.

Blood seeped sluggishly from the wound.

Someone pushed through the crowd around us and wrested Tarvos from my arms. Lakutu was making a weird moaning sound that rose and fell in awful ululation. Clutching Tarvos against her chest, she squatted on her heels and rocked back and forth, never ceasing that ghastly sound.

I had to turn away from them.

And there was Briga.

Without a word, she opened her arms to me and I stumbled into them.

“Tarvos is dead,” I muttered into her hair.

“I know. He died saving us.”

“But he isn’t ready to be dead. He’s too young. And he has Lakutu. So much life left to be lived … he isn’t ready to be dead.”

“I know,” she repeated soothingly.

But she did not know. I knew. I knew that my friend still enjoyed warm sun and red wine and a good fight and a devoted woman. He was not ready to leave those things behind. Death was for the old, the ill, not for a man who was eagerly hurrying home because Lakutu was waiting for him.

Turning to the watching warriors, I said, “Take him to the grove.”

One, a member of my own bodyguard so shaken by his captain’s death that he dare argue with the chief druid, objected. “We should take him to the fort so the women can prepare him.”

I whirled on the man. “Take him to the grove!” I commanded.

They cringed from me. They rolled their eyes and exchanged furtive glances. But they lifted Tarvos’s body, extricating it from

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Lakutu’s embrace with great difficulty, and we started on the way back. The long, long way back.

Tarvos was not our only casualty. Our warriors retrieved the body of the girl I had seen hit in the head, and found an older woman lying crumpled amid the vines, slain by a sword thrust. Several others were injured, a few seriously.

And the vineyard was destroyed.

I could not think of the vineyard yet; I could think only of Tarvos.

Sulis went back to the fort with the injured, but I insisted that the other dead be carried with Tarvos to the grove.

The time that I had locked and held now seemed to slow of its own accord, so that we spent years trudging toward the ridge, years of weariness and pain. I had been injured myself, as I discovered when a sharp stabbing sensation warned me of some damage to my side. A rib, perhaps. Nothing Sulis could not mend. Had spears been buried at me there at the end? Had I stood in the deadly rain that killed Tarvos?

It did not matter. I walked on, watching my feet to avoid looking at Tarvos. Someone had relieved me of my poor horse and no doubt taken it, too, back to the fort for healing. The horse Tarvos had been riding still carried him, however, slung across its back, with Lakutu walking beside it, her arms around as much of the body as she could reach. She never stopped wailing.

With a sense of ineffable relief I saw the grove rising before me. The naked oaks stood with their arms upraised against obliv-ion.

I led the way to the central clearing where the stone of sacrifice waited. But I would not put Tarvos’s body on the altar; he was not a sacrifice.

I ordered the three who had been killed to be laid in a row together, their heads to the sunrise. What was done for Tarvos must be done for all. By command of head and heart, the warriors arranged them tenderly. Then they stepped back and everyone watched me, waiting.

Even Lakutu finally fell silent—or perhaps the presence of the trees silenced her. She stood with her dark eyes fixed on me, and m them I read the same anguished, inarticulate pleading I had seen there once before—when she stood on the auction block.

How I wished I were not so tired! I had already strained my powers to the utmost and I was left drained, leaden with fatigue.

But, explaining to no one, I continued, preparing every step of me ritual meticulously. I arranged stones in an echo of the pattern

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of the stars in the winter sky; I asked Briga to bring water from the spring hidden in the grove; I kindled a fire. I made certain mat the bodies were properly aligned, then I arranged the spectators in the exact positions the druids had taken on that long-ago day with Rosmerta.

Magic depends, in part, upon the replication of procedures and incantations that have worked before: fixed ritual to produce predictable result. The Goban Saor could strike iron with a hammer me same way every time and make it take a given shape; so it is with magic.

Most of the time.

But I was very tired, and the magic I would attempt was beyond the ability of any known druid.

If I let myself, I would be afraid.

Though 1 had not summoned them, the druids had come. Be-yond the tight circle of my concentration I became aware of hooded figures silently filing into the glade. Grannus had been there from the beginning, limping up from me river with the rest of us. Now we were joined by Keryth, Narios, Dian Cet … Aberth … the rest of the Order who lived near the great grove. I was thankful; their additional strength would be needed.

Speaking to no one, I continued my tasks, following the silent intuition of my spirit, for no one had ever designed this ritual before. At some stage Briga laid her hand on my arm,

No one else would have dared question me, but she did. “Ain-var, what are you going to attempt?”

Her choice of words was unfortunate. I must not think of my-self as attempting, only as succeeding. Magic depends on the force of the mind and the druid’s absolute confidence in that power. I shook my head at her and said nothing,

When all was ready, I closed my eyes and opened myself to the Source,

The ears of my spirit strained to catch the faintest whisper of guidance. They heard only the creaking of the branches and the subdued breathing of the circle of people around me.

Tell me! I pleaded with That Which Watched. Tell me what to donow. Shall I throw myself across the bodies and shout, “Live!” as I did before? Is that command sufficient? Is more needed?

I realized the extent of my presumption. Who was I to dare dream of striking the spark of life? For preempting the prerogative of the Creator, I risked reprisals beyond human imagining.

Yet Tarvos, whom I loved, was not ready to be dead. He deserved more of living. And Lakutu was watching me with those

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dark, tragic eyes, silently pleading. I felt no fear for my self, merely a consuming need to give.

Please, I implored m the caverns of my skull. Send me inspiration,

Standing beside the bodies as they lay on the earth, I bowed my head and waited.

Something entered the grove.

A tremor nppled through the earth. Wind soughed among the oaks. An intense, oppressive stillness like the eye of a storm set-fled around me. A great distance seemed to open up between myself and the circle of watchers, as if I were moving away from them at incredible speed. The druids had begun chanting, but the sound reached my ears as the humming of a thousand bees. The light in the glade dimmed, brightened, dimmed again.

When I looked down at the bodies, all light seemed to be concentrated on them.

I started to bend over Tarvos. Something drove me to my knees and a force sickening in its power slammed through me, leaving me writhing on the ground like an insect crushed beneath a giant heel.

The trees watched and the druids chanted and the earth was ancient and the Creator was …

… and the Creator is …

While a terrible power rent and tore me, I struggled to forge a link with the Source that transcends flesh and leaps in flame across the cosmos.

A voice screamed in agony.

In ecstasy.

And the Creator is!

My human body failed me, failed me utterly. I was tying on my face amid dead leaves, crying tears of weakness, my outflung arm touching the dead arm of my friend.

How long I lay there I do not know. No one dared disturb me. I lay as helpless as if newbom, hollowed out like a log canoe.

Then I knew the limitations of my gifts. Menua was wrong. The spirit housed in me was not powerful enough to raise the dead.

A far greater druid than I might someday achieve what I could not.

But lying shocked and battered in the glade, I realized that a different gift had been vouchsafed to me. Because of my love for

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my friend, I had, for one searing moment out of time, seen the ultimate face of the Source.

I pulled myself to my feet like a crippled old man. The others approached diffidently, their eyes wild and staring.