Ravens of Avalon (15 page)

There is potential in this girl that in four years we never suspected,
she thought wistfully.
Yet that missed chance is not what will give me sorrow if she decides to go back to her people, but the loss of the first soul I have found who might be a true friend.

“If you understood everything already, that would have been no true initiation,” Lhiannon answered, trying to hide her emotion. “This is a beginning. You will have the rest of your life to learn what it means.”

“I suppose so … Do I have to decide about staying with the Druids today?”

Lhiannon took a deep breath.
No, thank the gods …
Aloud she said, “We have some days yet before you must choose. Allow each day its lesson. Today, I propose that we climb the Tor.” She picked up her staff.

She could see Boudica biting back another question, and smiled. They could talk more later. They still had time.

Their way led around the base of the orchard hill and past the yew hedge that hid the sacred pool. Beyond it the waters of the Milk Spring seeped slowly down to join the overflow, leaving their own pale film on the stones. Red and white, blood and milk, they nourished the land. Here the women stopped to fill their flasks. After the iron tang of the Blood Spring, the waters of the Milk Spring tasted of stone.

Around the base of the Tor trees clustered thickly, but in some previous age they had been cleared from the slopes, and sheep had kept the hill free of them thereafter. As the women emerged from beneath the branches the long spine of the Tor rose up before them.

“Are we going to climb straight up?” asked Boudica. From here the first steep slope hid the more gentle incline that followed it, and the stone circle at the summit could not be seen.

“We could—or we could circle around to the back and take a way that is shorter and steeper still, if all we wanted was to reach the top and enjoy the view …”

She waited, watching as Boudica considered the undulating expanse of turf above her. The base of the Tor was roughly oval, lying on a northeast-southwest axis. From afar, it appeared as a perfect cone, but its summit was at the northern end. From a distance it also seemed smooth, but here one could see clearly that it was ringed by terraced paths.

“Those are not natural, are they?” Boudica pointed. “Is this one of the Druid mysteries?”

Lhiannon shook her head. “The paths were here when our people first came to these isles. The People of Wisdom made them. They are not rings, but a maze. One walks in silence, as a meditation, to reach the crown.”

Boudica looked at the path before them, its beginning marked by an ancient stone. “And when one has threaded the maze,” she asked carefully, “where will one arrive?”

Unexpectedly, Lhiannon laughed. “At the top of the Tor—usually. But sometimes, they say, the path leads inward to the Otherworld.”

Beneath the broad straw hat Boudica’s face lit with an answering smile. “I think that you are more likely to find that path than I. But take care that you remember the way back again.”

“We’ll arrive nowhere if we don’t begin.” Lhiannon stepped past the stone and started around the hill.

For the first circuit, she was very much aware of Boudica following her. The path led along the middle of the northern side of the Tor and sunwise around on the south until they neared the stone, then dipped downward and turned back widdershins all the way around, looped down once more, and skirted the base of the Tor. Here the going was easy. Lhiannon strode along, enjoying the sun on her back and the way the wind fluttered the skirts of her gown. She had been this way before, and the exercise was welcome on such a beautiful summer day.

Only when the path neared the entrance again did it lead up the spine of the hill and around in a long widdershins loop, reversing halfway up the slope to angle upward toward the standing stones. That was when Lhiannon began to suspect that this time might be different. The light seemed paler, though no cloud covered the sun. Each step seemed more deliberate. She did not feel heavier, but rather as if some force were pulling her toward the Tor.

Lhiannon looked back along the path. She could see Boudica halfway down the slope below her, moving slowly, pausing sometimes to gaze toward the range of hills to the north and the distant sea. The vale of Avalon lay between two such ranges, a sheltered land with the Tor at its secret heart. The girl—no, the younger woman—would come to no harm. With a sigh of release Lhiannon returned to the path.

She could see the sacred stones above her now. The air overhead was shimmering. She circled behind them, started forward once more, so close she could almost touch them, but by now she did not need to see the path. A current of power bore her past as if she walked in a flowing stream. The path turned back upon itself and downward, made a wide loop back and a longer one forward, taking her farther from the peak. But now the sun had disappeared. She walked through a luminous twilight as she swept back and around and up again at last to the point of power within the circle of stones. The land fell away to every side as it had before, but now every tree was radiant and every reed shone, and the hillock-islands were glowing points that marked the flow of power.

Lhiannon stood, skin tingling as it had in the sacred pool. Every Druid priest and priestess had made this ascent, and scarcely one in a hundred found the way between the worlds. How many had never noticed the moment of potential transformation? How many had sensed it, and drawn back in fear? She wondered why she had been given this gift, and wished that she could have shared it with Boudica.

“Only when the soul is ready can it find the way.”

It took a moment to realize that this was not her own spirit speaking. Heart pounding, she turned.

At first she thought she saw Lady Mearan standing there, but even as she flushed with joy she realized that this woman was as small as one of the folk of the Lake Village, clad in a deerskin wrap and crowned with summer flowers. And yet the joy remained, for the wisdom and power she read in the woman’s face were the same. Instinctively she bent as she would have bowed to a high priestess of her own kind, for surely the queen of the faerie folk was of equal degree. And she was far older.

“The Oak priests have trained you well,” the woman said, smiling. “But your people do not come to visit me so often as in times past. Have you come here for refuge, now that your people are at war?”

“It is true that an alien people have invaded us, but most of our wise ones are safe on the isle of Mona. I cannot think they will ever come there,” Lhiannon answered with a spurt of pride.

“Time runs differently here, and I have seen many peoples come and go in this land. But you, at least, may stay in safety.” The faerie woman gestured, and Lhiannon saw that a cloth had been spread upon the grass within the circle, and food and drink laid there. Her stomach gurgled as she looked at the fair white breads and roasted waterfowl and the bowls of berries and nuts of every kind. It had been a long time since the morning meal.

At the thought she had a sudden memory of Boudica stirring the porridge with the early light kindling her bright hair. Lhiannon had known the younger woman faced a choice, but she had not expected to be offered one, too.

“Lady, I would not insult your hospitality, but I cannot leave my friend.”

The woman looked at her thoughtfully. “Friendship is one of the great virtues of your kind. But she is not yet ready to understand. If your friendship endures, perhaps a time will come when together you may return to me …”

“Can you see the future, then?” Lhiannon asked eagerly. “Will we expel these Romans from Britannia?”

For a moment the woman simply looked at her. “I forget how young you are … Your human life is a river, and you are all part of it, like the streams and the clouds and the rain, each thing moving according to its own nature, one current flowing strongly, then giving way to another in its turn. The Romans are very strong, but it is only here that I can tell you the future, for only my realm is without change.”

“Does that mean it’s useless to resist the Romans?” Lhiannon fixed on the only part of this she could understand.

“Useless? No deed of a brave heart is lost. If your kings fail you, look to your queens. Your love and your courage will be a mighty current in that stream. But you will know pain, and one day you will die.”

“But I will grow,” said Lhiannon slowly, “and here I could become no greater than I am at this hour.”

“Perhaps you are not a child after all,” the faerie woman said then. “Go now with my blessing. Daylight will be fading in the world of men.”

“Thank you,” said Lhiannon, but both the woman and the faerie food were gone. Still wondering, she took the first step, and found herself once more in the world of humankind.

hough the skies above the vale were clear, out to sea a storm was building. The setting sun kindled the distant clouds to banners of flame. Boudica drank the last of the water in her skin and thought about going down the hill. It was very still. Even the raven that soared above the vale did so silently.

No doubt Lhiannon was already back at the roundhouse, getting dinner ready and wondering when Boudica would get there. The other woman had not passed her going down, but she must have done so, perhaps when Boudica was on the long loop on the other side of the hill. When she reached the top she had looked in every direction, and Lhian-non was nowhere to be seen. She was a little surprised—no, in truth, she was a little hurt—that her companion had not troubled to let her know she was leaving. They had seemed so close, after that morning in the pool. But Lhiannon had said this climb was supposed to be a solitary meditation. Perhaps she had left Boudica alone so that she could make up her mind.

“I don’t want to decide!” she observed rebelliously.

“What
do
you want?”

Boudica stared. A moment ago she had been looking across the circle at the stones, and now Lhiannon was in front of her. If it
was
Lhian-non. The priestess had always been fair, but now her face shone.

“Where have you been?” Boudica found herself on her feet without quite knowing how she got there.

“I found the other road … I found the way within,” the priestess said exultantly. “I found the way to Faerie …” She looked around her with mingled disappointment and wonder and Boudica believed her. “About halfway through the maze it began to change. Did you see nothing? I hoped that you would follow me …”

“I saw nothing but the green earth and the sky above.”

In Lhiannon’s eyes the light of the Otherworld still glowed. Boudica realized the gulf between them.
Lhiannon is half a spirit herself-—no wonder she found the way to their world,
she realized.
If I had gone it would only have been because she was there. She longs for the Unseen—but the sunset that gilds the green grass on this hill is magic enough for me.
With mingled relief and regret she realized that her decision had been made.

“I am not a priestess. This world is enough for me.”

Their eyes met, and in Lhiannon’s she saw sorrow that faded gradually to acceptance, and something else that she could only identify as love.

“Then I am glad that I am still in it …” said the priestess, and smiled.

Boudica’s heart lifted. If she was not to be a priestess, she must marry, but whatever the future might hold, the link between her and Lhiannon would remain.

EIGHT

n the name of all the powers of earth, sky, and sea, what is
that?”

Boudica turned at Lhiannon’s exclamation, eyes widening as she glimpsed what appeared to be a haystack on four stumpy gray legs, moving slowly across the field. As they watched, a snakelike appendage reached up and plucked some of the hay.

“I think … it’s some kind of animal.” She shaded her eyes with one hand.

As the wind shifted their ponies began to snort and plunge. “Definitely an animal,” Lhiannon agreed in a shaken voice. “This must be one of those strange creatures we heard about last night—the
elephanti
the Romans brought with them across the sea.”

They judged the animal to stand at least twice the height of a tall man. The brass caps on its ivory tusks glinted in the afternoon sunlight. Her mind boggled at the idea that such a thing could be carried on any kind of oceangoing craft. No doubt the emperor had brought the beasts to terrify the natives—it was certainly spooking the horses, but the sheer unlikeliness of the creature made Boudica want to laugh.

“It’s no concern of ours,” Leucu growled. “If we are to reach your father’s tent before the evening meal we must move on.”

He wrenched his horse’s head around and booted it forward along the track that led to what had once been Cunobelin’s dun. The Romans had burned the buildings in which the old king had taken so much pride— after first looting them, of course. The tribal leaders who had come to make peace with the emperor were camped in Camulodunon’s fields.

No doubt Leucu would be glad to relinquish responsibility for his chieftain’s daughter. He had spent much of their t hree-week journey across Britannia in a state of nerves that shortened both his sleep and his temper. But it was only in the previous days that they had encountered Roman patrols, the last of them at the gap in the dikes that had not, in the end, protected Camulodunon. Two women and an old man seemed unlikely to threaten the legions that surrounded the emperor, and they had been allowed to pass.