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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)
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“My life is my own, no part of it is yours, shapechanger,” she told him emphatically, fighting back an emotion very like fear.
Kernunnos smiled with his mouth but his eyes were flat and cold. “You are mistaken. Whatever gifts you have been given belong to the tribe. If you refuse to share them you will suffer. Look!” He stretched one long arm in the direction of the trading road. “Men are coming even now, but not merchants. These are men of the people from a tribe on a muddy river, and they are bringing gifts for the parents of marriageable girls. You will find one of these men very desirable, Epona. But if you go with him you will live a hard life and have a painful transition, dying with blood in your mouth beside a muddy river. Yet you will not be able to resist going. It is your punishment for refusing me, and you will suffer. You will suffer!”
His voice was the singsong of
druii
prophecy. It turned Epona’s bones cold. Spinning away from the priest, she hurried toward the chief’s lodge and the protection of four strong walls. Kernunnos’ voice followed her. “One or the other, Epona! He who comes will take you, or I will! You cannot escape.”
“I can,” she whispered under her breath, running.
She had no doubt that the men he had foreseen were coming, but she did not intend to be available when they arrived. As the oldest daughter in the chief’s lodge she should be on hand to offer food and wine to travelers, but if she left the village before they arrived there was a chance she could change the pattern; it need not happen as Kernunnos had prophesied.
The lodge was temporarily empty except for Brydda’s baby slumbering in its fur-lined bedbox. Okelos had returned early from the Salt Mountain, as he so often did, and he and Brydda had gone someplace together. Rigantona, angered at being left alone to mind the baby, had gone after them, but she would not leave the hearth untended for long.
The warm clothes Okelos wore in the mine lay carelessly tossed on his bedshelf, his leather knapsack of pine twigs beside them. Without stopping to think, Epona pulled her brother’s tunic over her head, though it was much too large for her, and belted it as tightly as she could. She snatched up the mittens and knapsack and eased out the door. The rest of the miners were just reaching the village, and there were shouts of welcome, suddenly interrupted by the strong clear voice of Vallanos the sentry, announcing that someone was coming along the trade road. At such a time, no one noticed Epona as she slipped from her family’s lodge.
The trail to the Salt Mountain was steep and unfamiliar, for children were forbidden to use it. Epona felt certain no one would seek her there. She could take care of herself easily, she thought, sheltering in the mine and feeding herself from berries and the small animals she knew how to snare, until the visitors had arranged marriages with other women and gone on their way.
She would have an adventure, such as boys had on the first hunt of their manhood.
Above the village stretched the narrow valley for which the tribe was named, the valley of the Kelti, sloping steeply upward toward the high peaks. Here Poel came at each change of the moon to recite the occurrences of the community to the spirits of the ancestors, and to take back any messages they might send to that part of the tribe currently in the world of the living.
Beyond lay the entrance to the Salt Mountain. It appeared innocuous enough for a gateway to unlimited wealth, just a gaping hole braced with timbers and leading down into darkness. The core of rock salt stretched for an unknown distance beneath the valley; no man had explored its farthest reaches.
Epona hesitated. The blue of the sky had melted into the lake, and a bank of soft clouds, indistinguishable from mist, was moving up the valley toward her, swallowing the light. Mountain rain could be sudden and hard.
Better get inside; the clouds were sweeping closer and Epona could smell the rain now. From the leather knapsack
she took pine twigs to make a torch and a pair of firestones given to Okelos by Tena. She struck the stones together, calling on the fire spirit but nothing happened.
A gust of cold wind hit her. It would be much more comfortable inside the mountain, in the tunnel that now seemed inviting compared to the approaching storm. She struggled with the firestones and at last ignited a spark and lit her torch. Holding it aloft, feeling confident once more, she went down into the Salt Mountain.
No, it is not safe,
the spirit within warned, but she chose not to listen.
At first there was nothing but a dark tunnel burrowing into the earth, its walls hacked out with bronze axes and shored up with timbers. There was no sign of the salt, though the air had a salty tang, a dry, nose-tickling feel to it. The tunnel narrowed as it dropped, and where the slant became steeper sections of tree trunks had been jammed horizontally into the earth to provide crude steps. Soon it was impossible to see back to the tunnel mouth. The darkness closed around Epona, and her torchlight seemed feeble by contrast.
Go back,
urged the spirit within.
No! she told it. I am not afraid. I am safe here, my lord Toutorix is chief of the Salt Mountain, and I can go where I please.
Besides, I’m here now. I want to see the salt.
A blast of cold air whistled down the tunnel, making her shiver.
After an interminable time, her torchlight caused something to sparkle ahead of her and her heartbeat quickened. The tunnel branched into galleries and there was the salt. All-around her, above, beside, beneath, was a world of crystalline beauty. It crunched under her feet. The torchlight reflected as from walls of ice, but when she pulled off her mitten and ran her hand over the surface it was not cold, just rough and grainy. She licked her fingers, tasting the salt.
She had entered a magic world, and she wandered through it with delight, her worries temporarily forgotten as she went down one tunnel after another, lured on by new beauties of
light and color as the torch illumined the changing surfaces of the rock salt.
She did not know how deep she was, but all at once she became aware of the mass of the mountain above her, and herself beneath it, so small. So fragile by comparison.
Now she could hear the spirit within with dreadful clarity, telling her she had done a stupid thing, urging her feet to leave the Salt Mountain. She looked around uncertainly. Which way had she come? All the tunnels were so similar. She had not noticed the identifying marks notched in the salt, nor would she have known how to use them to find her way.
She was very far underground and she was lost.
She started to run. The salt crunched and slid beneath her and she heard an ominous rumble behind her. Looking back, she saw that her movements had dislodged a small slide, like a rockslide, and a heap of salt had fallen into the tunnel, partially blocking it. She ran back, fearful the tunnel would be blocked altogether, trapping her. She scrambled over the slide and went on more slowly, her breath rasping in her throat.
A turn and then a turn again … surely she had come this way. Was it familiar? Did it look like this? No, all the tunnels seemed the same, nothing but gleaming rock salt. All alike, all alike … she was too panicked now to listen for the spirit within, to trust it to guide her feet. She came to another salt slide, much larger than the first, big enough to trap a man beneath and kill him. She knew then that she had not come this way before. She retraced her steps, watching for any slight rise in the footing that might indicate she was going toward the surface. The air was thick and hard to breathe; her heart hammered in her chest. She was so intent on the lift of the salt underfoot she did not notice the largest slide of all until it came rumbling down on her.
E
sus, the Silver Bull, chief of the Marcomanni, had accompanied his sons and the sons of his kinsmen to the territory of the Kelti in search of wives. “If you are ready for women to tend your wifefires, be sure you choose them from among the daughters of the Salt Mountain,” he had counseled them. “We will arrive just after snowmelt, so as to have the pick of the ripening women, but don’t be too particular. The important thing here is to establish more alliances with Toutorix and the Kelti and get a better trading arrangement than we have had. If you find Kelti women of lifemaking age who are willing to marry, take them.”
The Marcomanni arrived in the village driving richly carved carts of polished wood and leading pack animals laden with gifts. No mention would be made of wives, not at first; their gifts were merely unworthy tokens of the respect in which Toutorix was held by their tribe.
A banquet of hospitality was quickly arranged and Tena built a great fire in the feasting pit at the edge of the commonground. Soon dusk would fall, and more meat was needed
to supply the guests; Toutorix went to the magic house to speak to Kernunnos, and hunters were dispatched around the perimeter of the lake. Meanwhile, the women of the village prepared to serve the available food; Rigantona contributing a haunch of venison roasted with honey that she had intended for her husband’s meal.
Toutorix’s eyes followed the departing treat with mild regret; it was truly a chieftain’s portion, and he had not intended to share it.
“We don’t want the Marcomanni to think we are poor,” Rigantona reminded him.
“Poor! They will hardly think that. Just look at our people. They’re so weighted down by jewelry they clank when they walk, and as for you, I could support a whole tribe by bartering off your collection of ornaments.”
Rigantona’s eyes flashed. “It’s mine, not yours to barter! If I were widowed it would go with me, as much of it came with me.”
“Not that bronze buckle with the blue stones,” Toutorix commented. “For one example. I seem to remember your getting that in exchange for honey gathered in my hills.”
“Honey gathered from my bees.”
“Honey the children gathered for you from wild bees; you did not risk any stings to get it.”
“Those bees are not wild,” she told him, unwilling to let any point escape her. “I can command them as the shape-changer commands the game.”
“There is a fine distinction there, but for once I’m not in the mood to fight over it. These Marcomanni have brought a lot of gifts to exchange for the privilege of courting wives, and I want them to have a look at our Epona. Where is she?”
Rigantona glanced around the lodge. Three small boys played by the firepit, three little girls played by the loom. Of the older children, Alator and Okelos were working together on cutting up a leather hide, but Epona was nowhere to be seen.
Rigantona shrugged. “Out, I suppose.”
“Don’t you know?”
“I haven’t had time to watch her all day, no! She is a woman now; she comes and goes as she pleases.”
“I expected to see her on the commonground, staring at the strangers, for the girl is usually as curious as a raven, but she was not there,” Toutorix said. “And now she is not here. She should be at the guest lodge right now, serving red wine to the Marcomanni and heating cauldrons of water for their bathing. When another tribe of the people visits, our hospitality must be beyond any they could offer us in their own village.”
He opened the door of the lodge and gazed out, watching the women scurrying to prepare for the feast. Perhaps they would have to eat in the lodges; the sky was already darker than it should be, the wind had turned colder, and the clouds were beginning to pelt the earth with stinging particles of ice. “Where is that girl?” Toutorix muttered. The spirit within had an uneasy feeling.
He went for the second time that day to the magic house. The black birds in the pine trees made derisive noises as he approached; the air was thick with blue smoke. He found the priest stretched naked on his bedshelf, forearm across his eyes. Toutorix wrinkled his nose at the smell of the lodge but said nothing; it was shapechangers’ business, after all.
“The hunting is going well?” he asked to open the conversation.
“A great stag appeared and led a whole herd of deer to the lake,” Kernunnos reported with satisfaction. “There is more than enough meat now to feed your guests for many nights, and when they leave, the women will have meat to salt.”
“Surely we haven’t killed more than we need?” Toutorix asked with concern. Waste offended the spirits. To kill game unnecessarily would result in famine, the animals disappearing just when they were most needed.
“Of course not,” Kernunnos replied, insulted. He sat up, looking at the chief through slitted eyes. “You are worried, but not about meat. You know we do not overkill.”
Toutorix held his face immobile. It was unseemly for a chief of the Kelti to express excessive concern over one
daughter, but Epona was his special favorite. He empathized with her reckless spirit and was touched by her occasional bouts of doelike shyness. Rigantona was all muscle and hard edges; Epona was the blaze of the fire and the soft sound of rain on thatch.
“My eldest daughter does not seem to be in the village, and I have asked everyone,” he said. “A storm is coming. And the Marcomanni are looking for wives.”
“Ah. Epona.” Kernunnos rolled off his bedshelf and walked, still naked, to the open door of his lodge. The wind was blowing harder now and raised the hackles on his skin; the cold shriveled his scrotum but he paid no notice. He stared out, his eyes filmed over.
The priest was already exhausted from his exertions in a way that only a shapechanger could understand, but his life belonged to his tribe. When his art was needed, there could be no hesitation, no limit to the giving. His obligations had been set forth many generations ago by the great
druii
who had first come to understand the ordered rhythms of life, death, and rebirth.
All forms of existence were subject to complex, immutable laws, even in the otherworlds. Everything was maintained in a delicate state of balance requiring absolute harmony. There were things that could not be changed; actions that, once taken, must always bring certain reactions. The
druii
were the gifted ones, born with a greater innate understanding of these laws than the rest of the people. With that understanding came the ability to manipulate some of the lesser forces of nature, but those powers must always be used for the benefit of the people.
Power misused made the practitioner vulnerable to the rage of the great fire of life and could mean the fragmentation of his own small spark from that fire. His individuality might be torn apart and scattered on the winds between the worlds, left to howl in baffled hunger in the darkness, never to be whole again.
“The girl is not in the village,” Kernunnos said at last. “I can feel her … far off. Very far,” he added, surprised. He
turned back to Toutorix. “And something is wrong.”
“Find her!” roared the chief of the Kelti.
“Leave me,” said Kernunnos. “When I know, I will come and tell you.”
Toutorix returned, halfheartedly, to his guests and the preparations for feasting. Already the boasts and the contests had begun. Soon Bellenos, the most aggressive of Esus’ men, would be wrestling Okelos—or Goibban, if the smith could be talked into taking part—for the hero’s portion of first meat served. A boisterous gaiety had replaced the energetic industry of the community, and kin-fights were breaking out, wagers were being placed, dogs were barking, women were laughing. The first festival of the new sunseason had begun, ignoring the last icy blast of winter driving down from the peaks.
Alone in his lodge, Kernunnos crouched beside the firepit, speaking in the spirit language. He rocked back and forth on his haunches, reaching outward with his mind, exploring his psychic surround with invisible fingers. At last he nodded to himself and got to his feet. From his collection of animal hides he selected one of the most powerful and drew it over his shoulders as he began the song of incantation.
Epona woke. in absolute darkness. She knew a moment of disoriented terror, thinking she had gone blind. The darkness was so solid it was tangible, and she was alone in it with a monster that gasped and panted. Her head cleared a little and she recognized the sound as her own labored breathing.
She was alive, then; somewhere under the Salt Mountain.
She felt a tremendous weight pressing down upon her and tried to shift beneath it, only to be rewarded with a stab of pain. She gasped, inhaling air thick with particles of salt that made her choke and cough. Fire was running up her arm. Surely its light should enable her to see something …? No. It was not fire, but pain. The salt-fall had long since extinguished her torch, and she was partly buried under the slide,
one badly injured arm pinned beneath her body, her legs numbed by the weight of the salt.
She forced herself to go limp, trying to rest and gather strength. All her life she had heard stories of mine disasters resulting from some thoughtless insult paid to the earth mother, but she had never thought to apply such risks to herself. Now those memories rushed back, larger than life.
More than one man had carried his pick and mallet into the mine and never returned.
It was unthinkable that she meet the same fate. She would not just lie there and die meekly. She moved her body in various directions by infinitesimal degrees, trying to learn just how she was trapped. The wrong move could bring more salt down on her, burying her completely and ending any chance for escape. It took all her will power to lie calmly and try to think, as she should have thought earlier, before any of this happened. She wanted to scream and struggle, but that would mean a sure death.
If she wriggled one muscle at a time, like a snake shedding its skin, she was able to ease the weight on her torso slightly and begin to worm her way out from under the salt-fall. The worst part of the process was in trying to move her injured arm. The darkness was a kindness, for it kept her from seeing just how badly the bone was broken.
She was shocked at her lack of strength. The smallest movements left her breathless and exhausted. Once she got free of the salt-fall itself, how could she ever find her way to the surface when she had been unable to do so while uninjured?
Better not think about that,
urged the spirit within.
Get free first. One step, then one more.
Now she listened.
There was a distant sound. Epona froze, trying to lift her head and hear better. Was someone else in the mine with her? Usually all the miners returned home well before dark, and it must be night by now—or morning. How could she tell? She tried to call out but broke off in another fit of coughing. The salt-fall rumbled, threatening to move again.
Something was coming toward her through the tunnels. She
could hear it clearly now. But there was no sound of human voices. Something seemed to be shuffling … or maybe that was the roaring in her own ears that was rising, drowning out all other sounds. Her head spun dizzily, and she faded in and out of consciousness.
She seemed to see a strange blue light moving through the heart of the Salt Mountain. It glowed through the crystalline walls. A giant, shambling shape moved darkly at its center. Down one gallery and then another, turning as if in search of something, a shaggy beast prowled through the mine, its heavy head swinging from side to side. Sometimes it walked on all fours, but where there was room it reared erect, gesturing with immense clawed paws, then dropped down again and continued its prowling.
Epona awakened with a jolt. She could see; the blue glow was in the corridor with her, outlining a huge bear that stood not six paces from her. Her mouth was as dry as sand. There was no way she could escape the beast, which must have been driven into the caves by the storm without and its own hunger within. She lay immobilized, staring up at it, expecting to die but still not resigned.
Never resigned.
She groped with her free, uninjured hand and found a chunk of salt the size of a
kaman
ball. If the bear came toward her she would throw the chunk and try to hurt his sensitive nose. There was little chance it would discourage him, but she had to try, she had to do something …
The big head turned from side to side and she caught a glimpse of glinting yellow eyes. Narrow, slitted, yellow eyes. The bear ambled closer, grunting, its hot breath swirling around her and becoming one with the pain and the thick salty air.
Darkness closed over her.
Kernunnos came to the feast, dressed in one of his ceremonial robes. Recognizing a shapechanger, even the rowdiest of the
Marcomanni fell silent and concentrated on their food while the priest summoned Toutorix aside.
“The girl is trapped in the salt mine,” Kernunnos said simply.
“One of my family is lost in the mountains,” Toutorix cried to the feasters, his arms lifted in the sign of command. “Brave heroes that you are, prove your courage now. The priest tells me we must bring her back without waiting for the end of the storm or the daylight, or she will die. Come, warriors. Come, strong men. Show us your courage!”

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