Lady of Avalon (40 page)

“Even your life?” Elen stepped forward, and Vortimer swallowed, but he nodded. The old woman’s laughter was dry as bone. “Your blood may one day be demanded, but not today…”

Now it was Viviane’s turn. “It is not your blood that I ask of you,” she said softly, “but your soul.”

He turned, staring as if his burning eyes could pierce her veil.

“It belongs to you…” He blinked suddenly. “It has always belonged to you. I remember…I have made this offering before.”

“Body and spirit must both be given,” Ana said sternly. “If you are truly willing, then offer yourself upon the altar stone.”

Vortimer pulled off his white garment and lay back, naked and shivering, upon the cold stone.
He thinks we are going to kill him,
thought Viviane,
despite my words.
He looked younger lying there, and she realized that he could not be more than a year or two older than she.

Elen and Nectan moved to the north and the south, while she took her place in the east and Taliesin moved westward. Humming softly, the High Priestess came to the edge of the circle and, turning sunwise, began to dance in and out among the stones. Once, twice, and thrice, she wove the circle, and as she passed, Viviane felt her own awareness shifting, and saw with altered sight a flicker of radiance pass through the standing stones that seemed to hang in the air. When she had finished, she returned to the center.

Viviane straightened to her full height, setting her feet firmly as she reached out to heaven, and the circle filled with the scent of apple blossom as she called on the powers that guarded the Eastern Gate by their ancient and secret names.

Old Elen’s voice grew resonant as the warmth of the south filled the circle; then Taliesin called the west in a voice of music, and Viviane was lifted by a tide of power. Only when Nectan’s invocation summoned the guardians of the north did she feel herself rooted once more. But the circle to which she returned was no longer entirely in the world. Even Vortimer had ceased to shiver; indeed, it was quite warm within the circle now.

Ana had unstoppered the glass phial that hung at her girdle, and the scent of the oil hung heavy on the air. Elen poured oil on her fingers and bent to Vortimer’s feet to draw the sigil of power.

“To the holy earth I bind you,” she whispered. “Living or dying, you belong to this land.”

The High Priestess took the oil, and gently anointed his phallus, and he blushed as it stiffened beneath her hand. “I claim the seed of life you carry, that you may serve the Lady with all your power.”

She offered the phial to Viviane, who moved to his head and began to draw the third sigil on his brow. She blinked, memories that were not of this lifetime showing her a fair-haired man with eyes as blue as the sea, and then another boy, with the dragons of kingship newly emblazoned on his arms.

“All your dreams and aspirations, the sacred spirit within you, I consecrate to Her now…” she said softly, and was astonished to find her own voice so sweet in her ears. She wondered if, in those other lives, she had loved him. Lifting her veil, she bent and kissed his lips, and for a moment saw a goddess reflected in his eyes.

She moved to join her mother and old Elen at Vortimer’s feet. As they linked arms, she felt the dizzying shift and a moment’s panic as her former self fell away, and began to tremble. She had seen this, but had never experienced it before.

Then her own consciousness was replaced by that Other, focused in the three figures that stood in the circle but were not contained by them, whose being embraced the world. She was aware of the other faces of Her triple nature, and yet she was One; though she spoke through three pairs of lips, it was in one voice that Her words came to the man who lay below.

“You who seek the Goddess and believe you know what you have asked for-know now that I shall never be what you have expected, but always something other, and something more…”

Vortimer had gotten himself upright, and was kneeling on the stone. How small he looked, and how frail.

“You listen for My voice, but it is in silence that you will hear Me; You desire My love, but when you receive it, then shall you know fear. You beg Me for victory, but it is in defeat that you will understand My power.

“Knowing these things, will you still make the offering? Will you give yourself to Me?”

“I come from You-” His voice wavered, but he went on, “I can only give You back Your own… It is not for myself I ask this, but for the people of Britannia.” As Vortimer answered, the radiance within the circle grew.

“I am the Great Mother of all things living,”
came Her answer,
“I have many children. Do you think that by any act of men this land can be lost, or that you can be separated from Me?”

Vortimer bowed his head.

“You are great of heart, my child, and so, for a time, you shall have your desire. I accept your service, as I have accepted it before. Sacred King you have been, and Emperor. Yet again you shall preserve Britannia. What one man may do, your arm shall accomplish, but it is not yet time for the Saxons to be conquered. It is another name that the ages will remember. Your labors in this life will but prepare the way… Will that content you?”

“It must. Lady, I accept Your will…” he said in a low voice.

“Rest, then, for as you have served Me, I will keep faith with you, and when Britannia has need, you shall return…”

His face grew radiant as the Goddess reached out to enfold him, and when Her embrace was ended, laid him curled on the altar stone, sleeping like a little child.

Viviane’s hair had grown out a little from its yearly shearing, but a good shake was enough to get rid of the moisture. By now she had become accustomed to having it short, and on such a day as this, the lack of weight was very welcome. She spread out her tunic on the grass and lay down, letting the sun toast the rest of her body to the brown that arms and legs had already acquired. Her mother was sitting on a tree stump, her body in shadow but her head tipped back to catch the sun as Julia combed out her hair.

The Lady’s hair was usually worn coiled on her head and held with pins, but it fell past her hips when unbound. As the comb lifted each dark strand, auburn highlights ran down it in waves of flame. Through slitted eyes Viviane watched the other woman stretch with pleasure like a cat. She had been used to thinking of her mother as little and ugly, all frowns and angles, except, of course, when she wore the beauty of the Goddess in ritual. But Ana was not ugly now.

Sitting there, she was a goddess in miniature, her body carved from old ivory, with a smooth belly etched with the silver scars of childbearing and breasts high and firm. She even looked happy. Curious, Viviane let her eyes unfocus as she had been taught, and saw Ana’s aura ablaze with rosy light. It was brightest over the belly. No wonder if even to normal sight she seemed to glow.

Her skin chilling with a sudden, outraged suspicion, Viviane sat up. Trailing her tunic behind her, she made her way to her mother’s side.

“Your hair is beautiful,” she said evenly. Ana’s eyes opened, but she was still smiling. Definitely, something had changed. “But, then, you have had a long time to grow it. You were made priestess when you were fifteen, were you not? And had your first child the next year,” she added thoughtfully. “I am turned nineteen. Do not you think it is time for my initiation, mother, so that I may begin to grow my hair out too?”

“No.” Ana had not changed position, but there was a new tension in her body.

“Why not? I am already the oldest novice in the House of Maidens. Am I destined to become the oldest virgin in the history of Avalon?”

Ana did sit up then, though anger had not yet quite overcome her benevolent mood. “I am the Lady of Avalon, and it is for me to say when you are ready!”

“In what lesson am I unlearned? In what task have I failed?” cried Viviane.

“Obedience!” The dark eyes flashed, and Viviane felt, like the blast of a hot wind, her mother’s power.

“Is it so?” Viviane reached for the only weapon left to her. “Or are you simply waiting for me to become expendable, when you have been delivered of the child you now bear?”

She saw her mother’s face flush, and knew it was true. It had happened, she supposed, at Midsummer. She wondered who the father was, or if he even knew.

“You ought to be ashamed, at an age when I should be making you a grandmother, to be pregnant yourself once more!”

She had meant to sound defiant, but even she could hear the petulance, and now it was her own face that was aflame. As Ana began to laugh, Viviane turned, pulling on her tunic, and her mother’s laughter followed her like a curse as she ran away.

After an active summer, Viviane was hard and fit. She did not care where she went, but her feet chose a safe path around the edge of the lake, away from the Tor. The summer had dried much of the marshland, and soon she found herself farther from Avalon than she had been since the day she arrived. But she kept on running.

It was not exhaustion that stopped her, but mist, which rose up suddenly to blot out the light. Viviane slowed, her heart pounding. She told herself it was only a land-fog, drawn up from the boggy ground by the heat of the day. But such fogs were normally released when night began to cool the air, and when she last saw the sun it had only been midafternoon. The light she saw now was all silver, and had no direction that she could see.

Viviane came to a halt and looked around her. It was said that Avalon had been withdrawn to a place partway between the world of humankind and Faerie. Those who knew the spell passed through the mists to reach the human shore. But from time to time something would go wrong, and a man or a woman would be lost in the other realm.

My mother would have been wiser,
she thought as the sweat dried clammy on her skin,
to let me try the mists from the direction of the mortal world.

The veil was thinning; she took another step, then stopped short, for the hillside it revealed was lush and green and starred with unfamiliar flowers. It was beautiful, but it was no land she knew.

On the other side of the rise, someone was singing. Viviane frowned, for the voice, though pleasant enough, was having some trouble maintaining the tune. Carefully she parted the bracken, and looked over the rim of the hill.

An old man sat singing among the flowers. He was tonsured across the forehead like a Druid, but he wore a nondescript tunic of dark wool, and at his breast hung a wooden cross. In her astonishment she must have made some sound, for he saw her, and smiled.

“A blessing on you, fair one,” he said softly, as if he feared she would vanish away.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, coming down the hill.

“I might ask the same of you,” he said as he took in her scratched legs and the perspiration on her brow. “For, though indeed you have the look of the folk of Faerie, I see that you are a mortal maid.”

“You can
see
them?” she exclaimed.

“That gift has been given me, and though my brothers in the faith warn me that these creatures are demons or delusions, I cannot believe evil of anything so fair.”

“Then you are a very unusual monk, from all I have heard,” said Viviane, sitting down beside him.

“I fear it is so, for I cannot help feeling that our own Pelagius had it right when he preached that a man might by living virtuously and in peace with all gain heaven. I was made priest by Bishop Agricola, and took the name of Fortunatus. He considered the doctrine of Augustine, that all are born sinners and can hope for salvation only at the whim of God, to be heresy. But they think otherwise in Rome, and so we in Britannia are persecuted. The brothers at Inis Witrin took me in and set me to keep the chapel on the Isle of Birds.”

He smiled; then his gaze sharpened and he pointed past her. “Ssh-there she is, the pretty, do you see?”

Slowly, Viviane turned her head, just as the iridescent shimmer which was emerging from the elder tree resolved itself into a slender form crowned with white blooms and clad in glossy blue-black draperies.

“Good mother, I greet you,” murmured the girl with bowed head, her hands moving in the ritual salutation.

“Here’s a maiden of the old blood, sisters-let us welcome her!” As the sprite spoke, suddenly the air was aswarm with bright beings, clad in a hundred hues. For a few moments they swirled around her; her skin tingled to the caress of insubstantial hands. Then, with a chime of laughter, they whirled away.

“Ah-now I understand. You are from the
other
island, from Avalon.” Father Fortunatus nodded.

She nodded. “I am called Viviane.”

“They say it is a very blessed isle,” he said simply. “How came you to wander away?”

She stared at him suspiciously, and he looked back at her with a transparent innocence that was disarming. He would never use anything she said against her, she sensed, or against her mother-it was because he cared about her that he had asked.

“I was angry. My mother is pregnant-at
her
age-but still she tries to keep me a child!” Viviane shook her head; it was hard to remember now why that had made her so furious.

Father Fortunatus opened his eyes. “I have no right to advise you, for indeed I know little of womankind, but surely a new life is cause for rejoicing, and all the more if its coming is a kind of miracle. She will need your help to tend it, surely. Will not the sweet weight of a child in your arms bring you joy?”

Now it was Viviane’s turn to wonder, for, in her resentment, she had not really thought about the child. Poor little mite, how much time would the Lady have to mother it? The baby would need her, even if Ana did not. Father Fortunatus was a funny old thing, but talking with him had eased her.

She looked up, wondering if she could find her way out of here, and realized that the directionless silvery light was darkening to a purple gloaming shot with glimmers of fairy light.

“You are right-it is time to go back to the world,” said the priest.

“How do you find the way?”

“Do you see that stone? It is so old it stands also on the Isle of Birds, and when I step upon it I can come a little ways into Faerie. There are many such places of power, I think, where the veils are thin between the worlds. I come after I have said Mass on a Sunday, to praise God in His creation, for if He is Maker of All, surely He created this place too, and I know of none more fair. You are welcome to come back with me, maiden. There are holy women on Briga’s isle who would shelter you…”

It is the chance I was longing for,
thought Viviane,
to escape and make my own way in the world.
But she shook her head.

“I must go back to my own home. Perhaps I will find another such place where the veils grow thin.”

“Very well, but remember the stone. You will always be welcome if you have need of me.” The old man got to his feet and extended his hands in blessing, and Viviane, as if he had been one of the elder Druids, bent to receive it.

Goddess, guide me,
she thought as he disappeared into the dusk.
I spoke bravely, but I have no idea where to go.

She stood up and closed her eyes, picturing in her mind the Isle of Avalon at rest in the purple twilight with the last rosy glow from the western sky gleaming in the waters below. And as she stilled her thoughts, the first notes of music began to fall into her silence like a silver rain. Their beauty was almost unearthly. But now and again the music would falter, and in those moments of human imperfection she knew it was not elven music she was hearing, but the song of a harper great almost beyond the measure of humankind.

If the sky of Faerie was never completely bright, it never reached utter darkness either. The purple dusk allowed her to see her way, and slowly Viviane moved toward the music. Now it was louder, calling so plaintively she wanted to weep. It was not only the harmonies that wrenched the soul, but the longing that throbbed through them. The harper sang sorrow, he sang longing, across the hills and waters he called the wanderer home…

“The winter snow is white and fair-

Lost, ’tis lost, and I sit mourning-

It melts and leaves earth moist and bare.

Oh, it may come again,

but never twice the same.”

And Viviane, following that music, found herself finally walking across a meadow where the evening mist was just beginning to drift from the damp ground. In the distance, the familiar silhouette of the Tor stood stark against the sky. But her gaze was fixed on something nearer, on the figure of Taliesin, who sat, playing his harp, upon a worn grey stone.

“The flower that blooms proclaims the spring-

Lost, ’tis lost, and I sit mourning-

For it must fall, the fruits to bring.

Oh, it may come again,

but never twice the same.”

Sometimes when he played, the visions Taliesin conjured with his music became so vivid he was sure he could have touched them if he had lifted his fingers from the strings. At first, the girl who was coming toward him, her slim form wreathed in the mists of Faerie, seemed one of its people, her head high and her step so light he could not tell if she touched the ground. But if she were a vision, it was of Avalon, for that gliding step was the gait of a priestess.

“The summer fields with grain blaze gold-”

Dazed, he watched her, and his fingers continued to move upon the strings. He knew her, but she was a stranger, for his heart had called out to the child he loved, and this was a woman, and beautiful.

“Cut down for bread ere winter’s cold.”

Then she called his name, and that broke the spell. He had only time to set down the harp before she was sobbing in his arms.

“Viviane, my dear-” He patted her back, aware that it was not a child’s body in his arms. “I have been anxious for you.”

She pulled away, looking up at him. “You have been terrified-I could hear it in your song. And my mother, was she terrified too? I wondered if they would be dragging the marsh for me by now.”

Taliesin thought back. The Lady had said little, but he had recognized the sick fear in her eyes.

“She was frightened. Why did you run away?”

“I was angry,” said Viviane. “Do not be afraid. I will not do it again…even when the child is born. Did you know?” she added suddenly.

She deserved the truth, he thought, and nodded.

“It happened at the Midsummer fires.” He saw comprehension dawn in her eyes, and wondered why he should feel ashamed.