The Forest House (28 page)

Truly it was as her teachers had told her; the Land of the Living and the world of men lay like the folds in a cloak, and where they touched, one could pass easily from one to the other. Or perhaps it was only sometimes that the worlds came thus closely together - at times like this, when the priestesses had sung the sacred songs.

The wood she had entered was filled with oak and hazel and thorn like any other. Now some of the trees she saw were familiar, but others were of no race she knew. Next to a thriving oak she glimpsed a tree with silver bark and little flowers of gold. A rowan tree bore white blossoms and red berries at the same time, though in the human world the flowering time had passed and the berries were not yet ripening on the bough.

Blossoms filled the air with a heady perfume. Now that she could see her way she walked with more confidence, her delight almost making her forget why she had come. Dimly she realized that this seduction of the senses might be the greatest danger, and tried to remember her goal. A lingering sense of duty,
Page 191

more than any other emotion, drew her to a halt in a small clearing where silver birches and rowans rustled in the fragrant breeze like maidens watching a festival. She closed her eyes.

"Lady, help me! Powers that dwell in this place, I honor you — " she said softly. "Of your favor, show me where I need to go . . ."

When she looked again, she glimpsed through the trees an avenue edged with rough stones. She moved along it, walking with the graceful pacing gait the maidens had been taught to use in the ceremonies.

Presently the road passed between two great uprights carved with spirals and chevrons. Beyond them Eilan saw a pool whose waters glimmered as if reflecting the light of the hidden moon.

Hardly daring to breathe, Eilan moved between the great stones, and looked down into the pool. This at least had been part of her training, for one of her first skills was to see in the scrying bowl. A sudden wind ruffled the waters, and as they cleared she realized that the bowl had been like a candle to the sun beside the power of the pool.

In its depths Eilan saw the sea, glittering emerald and sapphire beneath a sky like translucent blue glass.

As she stared, pool and forest and stones all disappeared and she floated like a bird on the wing above the waves. Embraced by those waters was an island girt with cliffs of red sandstone, crowned by white temples set among groves of dark trees. On the highest hill stood a temple greater than all the others, whose roof gleamed with gold.

Eilan swooped lower, and saw a white-robed woman pacing along the parapet, gazing out to sea. There was gold on the woman's neck and wrists, gold bound her brow, and her hair was like flame, but she had Caillean's eyes. A young man emerged from the temple and knelt before her, pressing his head against her belly. As the priestess blessed him, Eilan saw the tattooed dragons coiling up his arms. And it seemed to her that a voice like falling raindrops sang -

"Alas for the land beyond the wave — Alas for the land that none could save — The knowledge lost that gods once gave . . ."

Even as the singing faded, the scene changed. She had the sense that many years had passed. Suddenly the center of the island exploded in a great gout of ruddy flame, and the waters rose like a wall of green glass and swallowed trees and temples and all. Even as the island fell, a fleet of ships sped away from it, leaping through the water like frightened gulls. One with a dragon painted on its sail she followed as it arrowed through the water, faring northward until silver mists blotted out the sun's radiance, and the sea grew gray and green as the waters she knew.

Page 192

Now she saw land once more, white cliffs and high grassy downs. Over hill and dale she soared, and came to a high, broad plain where long lines of men toiled with ropes, dragging great blocks of stone.

Part of the henge was in place already and she could envision the rest of it. She had heard the Giants'

Dance described often enough to recognize the great circle of stones. The man who was directing the work looked like her father, but he deferred to another who reminded her of Gaius, shorter and dark as a Silure tribesman, but vibrant with power. The second man gestured towards the henge, and she saw the dragons that had been tattooed upon his forearms ripple as the muscles moved.

A wind stroked the high grass of the plain, and when it passed, the scene had changed once more.

Fascinated, Eilan watched as one image followed another. Coloring and cast of feature changed as each new people came into the land. But again and again she recognized an expression or gesture that was familiar — her grandfather's touch on a harp; Lhiannon's regal grace; and even herself, riding in a chariot like a queen. A tall man rode beside her, and she knew that it was he whose touch had given her access to her own power.

"All that has been will ever be;

The dragon rises from the sea;

Only the wise are truly free -"

came that clear voice from beyond the world.

The last image was of a hill of knobbed granite where the purple heather grew. Chill winds swept eastward from the sea, scouring the rolling fields. In this windswept place real trees grew only along the strait where the island fronted the grim bulk of the mainland. Even as she realized that she was seeing Mona, the scene changed, and Eilan saw men of her own race clad in white, and women in robes of midnight blue, their faces grim as they piled wood into great pyres.

For a moment she did not understand. Then a shiver of light rippled along the opposite shore. She blinked, recognizing Roman armor. The people of Mona saw it too, and suddenly the pyres were blazing.

The priestesses danced forward, their shadows contorting as they screamed their spells. For a time the Romans hung back and their leaders harangued them, then the first rank went splashing into the water.

The strait frothed as the Legion pushed across it. They came out dripping, but their swords gleamed red
Page 193

in the firelight. With grim precision they pursued the Druids, and their swords dripped with a brighter crimson as they slew all those they found.

For a time then all was silent. The fading firelight gave way to the cold grey of dawn. Ravens were already busy at the bodies. As Eilan watched, they rose suddenly upward, screaming, their wings darkening the sky.

"While Eagles gorge, the Dragon sleeps,

When Ravens fly, the Lady weeps,

What hate has sown compassion reaps. . ."

As she heard the song Eilan felt her heart pierced by sorrow, and the vision blurred as tears filled her eyes.

When she could see again, she was standing beside the pool once more. But she was no longer alone.

Mirrored in the water she saw a figure, and looking up she realized that it was a man wrapped in a spotted bull's hide with a headdress framed by hawk's wings and crowned by the antlers of a great stag.

Her eyes widened, for this was a costume the Druids wore only for their most sacred ceremonies.

"Lord —" she gave him the salutation due his rank, "who are you?" For a moment he had reminded her of her grandfather, but she realized now that he was younger, despite the silver in his beard, and in his eyes shone a wisdom and power she had no more than glimpsed in any mortal man.

This is what Ardanos was meant to be!she thought then, like the great priestess she had glimpsed sometimes shining through Lhiannon in the rituals. This was the reality.

He smiled, and it seemed to her that the light brightened around them until the pool shone. "I have been in many shapes, and had many names. I have been the Hawk of the Sun, and the White Stallion, the Golden Stag, and the Black Boar. But here and now I am the Merlin of Britannia."

Page 194

Eilan swallowed. She had heard something of this in her studies, for the Merlin was a title that had been borne by the Arch-Druid in previous years. But the soul to whom it belonged did not take flesh in every generation, and it was said that only the greatest of the Druids met him in the Otherworld.

She licked her lips. "What do you want of me?"

"Daughter of the Holy Isle, will you serve your people, and your gods?"

"I serve the Lady of Life," answered Eilan steadily. "And I would do Her will."

"This is an hour of omen, when many paths may meet, but only with your consent, for the way that opens before you will require that you give everything, and if you follow it you will find scant understanding or reward." He moved around the edge of the pool.

"And what do the omens say this hour is propitious for?" Close to, the reality of his presence was overpowering. Eilan was glad the old tales had taught her how to reply.

"It is propitious for the making of a priestess in the ancient way," he said gently. "They have told you that a priestess must be physically a virgin, but it is not so. A priestess of the Goddess gives herself at her own time and season, and when the power has passed through her, resumes her sovereignty. She gives, but is never taken. She is the initiator who sanctifies the Sacred King, that he may bestow the blessing on his queen, and life may be renewed in the land."

"And that is what you want of me?" Eilan realized that she was trembling. "How can I do it? I do not know how!"

"Not you, but the Goddess within you —" Eilan's breath stopped as he smiled. "And it is my office to awaken Her."

He released the hide, and as its stiff folds fell away she saw that he was naked, his body the image of the potent god. He smoothed the hair that curled away from her temples, and it seemed to her she would have fallen without the support of those strong hands. Then he bent to kiss her upon the brow.

Page 195

Goddess!her spirit cried, and felt consciousness ignited by a white flame that surged downward as he kissed her lips, her

breasts, and knelt to bless her womb. In that moment she was aware of her own essence as she had never been before, and yet at the same time, all selfhood was subsumed in Another, and whether that Presence was a part of her or she of it, or
Her,
Eilan could not say. What she knew beyond question was that in a sense that surpassed even the comfort of Gaius's arms around her, she was no longer alone.

Eilan burned and was not consumed, and it seemed to her that the voice she had heard sang in tones of flame —

"The enemy you would conquer, you must love . . .The law you would fulfill, you must defy . . .The thing that you would keep, you must now

give . . .

Thus will you have the victory . . .Daughter of Druids, through you the Dragon will be reborn."

Her awareness flared with images of blood and splendor, battles and stone cities and a green tor above an inland sea, fire and sword and finally a fair-haired man with Gaius's eyes who rode to battle with the image of the Lady on his shield.

"I will!" came her reply. "But do not leave me alone—"

"Daughter, I am always here"came the reply.
"Thou art Mine, from age to age, while Time endures."

Page 196

She knew that she had heard those words before, that this was only the renewing of an ancient bond, but the love that lapped her was becoming a sea in which she drowned, a light in which all awareness was consumed.

Eilan's next conscious thought was of floating in cool water. She sensed dark trees around her, and moonlight, and in the next moment many hands had hold of her and were lifting her to the shore. She blinked in amazement as she realized that she was lying beside the bathing pool in the stream below the House of Maidens.

Eilan tried to speak and found she could not. She realized then that what had happened to her was a mystery too deep for telling, even here. And yet she wondered that they could not see it, for the Divine Heat still blazed within her so that her skin dried as soon as they helped her rise from the pool. In silence the other women clad her in a robe of new linen dyed the deep blue that the consecrated priestesses wore.

"You have journeyed between the worlds; you have seen the light that is without shadow; you have been purified . . ." said a voice Eilan recognized as Caillean's. She looked up, but it was the woman she had seen on the parapet in her vision who seemed to be standing there. "Daughter of the Goddess, arise, that your sisters may welcome you —"

The priestesses helped her to her feet and fell in behind her as she followed Caillean along the path that led to the Sacred Grove.

By the light of the torches that flickered among the trees Eilan saw that Lhiannon was waiting, attended by Eilidh. Beside her stood Dieda, her eyes as huge and dazzled as Eilan knew her own must be, and her hair clinging to her brow in damp tendrils.
What,
Eilan wondered,
happened to her?
Their eyes met, and all the barriers that the past years had built between them vanished; they remembered only that they were sisters now.

I
am glad that we will be making our vows together . . .
she thought. The testing was always the same, but each priestess received the vision the gods willed. Dieda, she supposed, would have found music. She looked at the other girl, and it seemed to her that the Goddess smiled back at her from Dieda's eyes.

Eilan looked around her and saw that they were all here — Miellyn and Eilidh and the others who had taught her for the past three years. But in each woman's face she saw a reflection of the light of the Otherworld, and in some of them, something more, a hint of faces she had seen in her visions, constantly
Page 197

changing and yet always the same.

Why do men fear death when we will live again?Eilan wondered then. The Druids taught that the soul could take many forms through the circling years, and she had always thought she believed it, but now she knew that it was true.

At last she understood Caillean's serenity, and the holiness that despite her fragility and fallibility, she sensed in Lhiannon. They too had been where she had gone, and no mortal accidents could change the truth of it.

She heard the words of the ceremony as if in a dream, and made her vows without hesitation, for the most important promise, the one that included and commanded all others, had already been made to the Goddess in the Otherworld. With the blood still singing in her veins, and the light of the Lady in her eyes, she scarcely felt the prick of the thorn as the blue crescent that proclaimed her priestess was drawn between her brows.