Ravens of Avalon (24 page)

It was a measure of her preoccupation, or perhaps her desolation, thought Lhiannon, that it had not occurred to her to try. She closed her eyes, reaching out with senses too long unused, allowing awareness to sink to a depth that was not entirely physical until she felt a kind of vibration like the thrum of the current beneath the timbers of a boat on the sea, and with it came a vivid memory of the Otherworld into which she had fared on the Tor of Avalon. If she had stayed there, how much grief she could have forgone—
and how much joy …

The faerie woman had told her that all the worlds were connected. Rianor had just reminded her that power flowed from Avalon to this dun. Could that power be used? Was it the faerie woman or the Goddess who was filling her mind with images now?

I am a priestess,
she told herself,
and subject to no man’s command. While I had Ardanos, I followed him, but I must make my own choices now.

“Rianor … for the past weeks you and I have labored till our backs cracked and our hands bled, doing no more than any laborer could do, and in my case at least, not half so well. We have forgotten who we are.”

He blinked, and she knew that he had also been too focused on the next log and the next stone to think any further.

“If the Romans attack us here, in the end they will take this place as they took the Dun of Stones. Don’t you think it would be better if they never came here at all?”

“It would be better, my lady, if they had never sailed across the Narrow Sea.” He sobered as he saw she was not laughing. “What do you mean?”

“We have cloud.” She pointed toward the billowing masses to the west. “Cloud and rain and the mist that so often covers the fens around Avalon. If we draw it down the line of power we can wrap it around this hill.”

Now, she sensed, was the time to set the power in motion. With a dreamlike certainty she wrapped her cloak tightly around her and lay down next to the palisade, covering her face and closing her eyes to retain the image of the clouds she had seen.

“Guard me. Let no one disturb me until I come back to you. Lend me what power you can …”

It would have been easier if Ardanos had been beside her, balancing her energy with his own, but as Lhiannon sank deeper into trance she could feel Rianor’s young strength supporting her. She slowed her breathing, calling on disciplines long-mastered to detach mind from body and let it wing free. For a moment, she touched someone’s anguish. But the pain was unlocking her nightmares of the war. She thrust the awareness away, turning desperately to the untouched west.

And there, like a caress, she found another mind. “So,
my sister, you have returned … in your world, has it been long?
”

“But I haven’t! I am not on the Tor!”
With a sense deeper than sight she recognized the Lady she had spoken to when she was in the Faerie realm, but how could she be here?

“Nor am I,”
came the answer.
“We are between the worlds, where all worlds have their meeting and all powers join in the great dance. Sing the spell, sister, make the music that will serve your need …”

Why had she never reached out to this power before? She had not been sufficiently desperate, she realized then, and she had believed in Ardanos’s wisdom and depended on him for direction.
I must trust my own wisdom now …

Mist and fog, cloud and rain … hear my calling, come again …
Once more, it seemed to her that someone was calling, but she dared admit no distraction. In the world of men she was silent, but she made a mighty music within. With inner vision she could see the layers of warm and cool air thronging with spirits.
Heat and cold mix in the skies … where they meet, the mist will rise …
Laughing, she beckoned to the air sprites, drawing them into the dance.

In the far distant place where her flesh lay it was growing dark and cold, but time had a different meaning where she was now. Her inner senses rejoiced when the cloud sprites began to release a light cool rain; she called to the warm air and the rain turned to fog before it could fall.

It was mist, not rain, that precipitated from the damp air, wraiths of mist that floated over hill and valley, thickening as night drew on. Fog covered Camadunon, jeweling the thick wool in which Lhiannon lay shrouded and beading on Rianor’s curling beard. Mist shimmered around the torches that lit the Roman marching camp and condensed on armor and spears.

ometime in the past hour it had stopped raining. The stream had begun to go down. A cold wind was whipping at the clouds, and a full moon struggled to break free. Its watery illumination showed Boudica the shape of the land. Her thighs were slick with blood. Too much? She could not tell. If she had been at home, she could rest now, her labor done, but it was not enough to bear her son alive.

If I die, you die …
she told the child at her breast.
We must have shelter, and soon …

For just a little longer Boudica lay where she was, but she was beginning to shiver now. With a final effort of will she got herself upright, wrapped the cloak around her, and clambered down from the mound.

Saplings grew at its base; as she grabbed for balance, one came loose in her hand. With the help of the stick she was able to feel her way forward and cross the stream. From there it was a little over a mile across the fields to the dun.

“Not far … not far …” she whispered. “When I am old, you shall carry me. Shall we surprise your father, sweet child? How pleased he will be …”

Murmuring, she staggered onward. If it had not been for the child, she would have collapsed halfway there and made no effort to rise. As it was, after each fall she found the dun a little nearer when she levered herself upright once more.

The gate, of course, was closed. Had the guard sought shelter inside as well? It would be a great irony, observed a small voice within, to expire at her own gate after having come so far. With her last strength, Boudica drew breath as the Druids had taught her and in a great voice cried to be let in. And then it was all a confusion of voices and firelight and blessed, blessed warmth.

“Take him,” she murmured as they laid her on the bed. “Take care of my son …” Someone exclaimed, but she could not make out the words. There was only the heat and the comfort of the dark.

t Camadunon, there was no sun to be seen at the next day’s dawning, only the thick gray blanket of the fog. The Roman army, setting out in its usual precise array, took the road that seemed most open, and came at nightfall to a hill where an old barrow was surrounded by eroded ramparts half choked by trees. Here were no screaming Celtic savages, only the ghosts of ancient wars. The rumors, decided the general, must have been mistaken. The next morning he gave the order to march southwestward toward the Dumnoni lands, never suspecting the existence of the dun that waited in mist-shrouded silence barely five miles away.

oudica lifted her hand, surprised at how hard it was to move. Her memory was a confusion of alternating nightmare and oblivion. Pra-sutagos was a part of those memories, his usually calm features wracked by anguish. She could even remember the scalding touch of his tears. That must have been one of the times when she was cold.

I have been ill,
she thought.
But I’m never sick. How odd …

“She wakes!” said someone. She could hear all the familiar sounds of the dun—the complaint of a cow, someone whistling, clucking chickens at the door.

“Drink this, my lady.” A strong arm went around her shoulders, raising her. Obediently she swallowed the liquid they held to her lips. It was warm milk, with an undertaste of white willow bark. She could vaguely remember having tasted it before.

At the thought of milk her breasts began to throb. Her flaccid belly was sore; all her limbs ached with the sensitivity that comes after a fever. Her eyes flew open as she realized what she had not heard. There had been no baby’s cry.

She tried to speak, swallowed, and tried again. “Where is my son?”

The silence that followed lasted too long. Old Nessa’s face wavered above her, cheeks furrowed with tears.

“He was too little, my darling, and too cold. He only lived one day.”

“Praise be to Brigantia that you survived,” one of the maids added brightly. “We thought we were going to lose you as well.”

“Prasutagos?” she asked weakly.

“He named the child Cunomaglos after his brother. The babe lies in the grave-field with his kin.”

“Where is the king now?” she managed.

This silence was not quite so long. “When we knew you would live, lady, he took two men and rode off to see who else needed help.”

Leaving me in an even greater silence than usual,
thought Boudica. But it no longer mattered. What could they have to say to one another now?

y lady—for you—”

Lhiannon turned in time to see a small hand offering a bunch of rather wilted asters. As she peered around the doorpost to smile at the bearer, the child blushed, dropped the bouquet, and darted away.

“Why will they never stay and let me thank them?” she sighed, looking around her for some vessel in which she could put the flowers.

“Let me!” Rianor plucked the bouquet from her hand, took yesterday’s offering from the clay beaker, and settled the asters in their place. He was not meeting her eyes, either, she realized suddenly.

After the magical working that had saved Camadunon she had roused only to eat before falling once more into a sleep without dreams.

By the time she was able to take notice once more, weeks had passed. But every morning since then the offerings had appeared, and perhaps before then, for all she knew. Yesterday, it had been a spray of bronze and ocher leaves. While she lay in what the farm-folk clearly considered an enchanted sleep, the summer had passed away.

She herself diagnosed her collapse as the cumulative effect of the hunger and fear she had experienced at the Dun of Stones. And sorrow … she had not known that grief could become an illness that sapped strength from body and soul. The pain of losing Ardanos was still there, but if she was careful she could go for as much as half a day without tears.

“Tell the children that I am grateful.” As she gained strength, she found herself focusing on simple pleasures—the taste of new milk, the colors of the turning leaves. “If they wish to visit me, they will be welcome.”

“They respect you too greatly, lady …” he said softly. “To them, you are the white lady who turned herself into a cloud to save us from the Romans, and they are afraid.”

“Well, you should reassure them,” she said tartly. “We Druids are servants, not gods!”

“Of course, Lady Lhiannon,” he replied, flushing as he met her eyes. In his, she caught the same look of awe with which they had regarded the High Priestess when she bore the power of the Goddess in ritual at Lys Deru.

Oh dear.
She had assumed there would be rumors about the magical mist that had saved the dun, but she had not realized that her long recovery would allow them to become so well rooted here.

“The farmers hereabouts have come to me,” he said then. “They wish to build you a house on the slopes of the dun, near Cama’s spring. They would be honored if you would make your home here …”

As their local goddess and tutelary spirit,
Lhiannon thought wryly,
with Rianor as chief priest of my cult!

She shook her head. She needed peace, not worship. To stay here would be ludicrous. But even the thought of returning to Mona, where she would be reminded of Ardanos at every turning of the way, made her spirit bleed anew.

“I cannot stay here,” she said gently. “We send those in need of healing to the Tor. I would like to spend the winter in retreat on Ava-lon, and then we shall see …”

“We will need to gather provisions. The house will need repair. But it is not so far.” His face brightened. “I will arrange it, lady, in your name.”

he days passed, and Boudica’s strength returned to her, though her breasts continued to leak and her tears to fall. Had the mound-spirit stolen the life of her baby? Or had it simply been an evil chance? As everyone was so eager to remind her, in any family more children died than lived to bear children of their own. To be told that she was young and would have others hurt even more. She would rather have blamed someone, or something, than accept that the loss of her child had no meaning at all.

She thought of sending for Lhiannon, but somehow it seemed to her that she
had
called, and the priestess had failed her, and in any case, to call would have required her to abandon her lethargy. Her husband coped by staying at the dun he was building near the shore, as if, having lost his son, earthen banks would be his immortality.

Perhaps the child had been taken as a sacrifice, she thought grimly, for as the season progressed, it seemed as if the spirits of the sky had been appeased. The clouds moved onward and the muddy ground dried. On a few fortunate hilltops there was even a little grain. Boudica’s spirits, however, did not improve, and Nessa began to suggest that she should pay a visit to the sacred spring.