She felt her fingers warm as she wound the thread around the shaft and hooked the rest over the end, pulled out the wool with one hand and with the other gave it a spin, letting the spindle’s weight pull the loose mass of fiber through her fingers into a twisting strand until it neared the floor and she repeated the process once more.
As she worked she began to hum, shutting out everything but the hypnotic twirl of the spindle, the flicker of the fire. Twirling and winding, feeding in new wool and beginning again, vision blurred until it seemed to her that she was spinning flame. The Three Queens were sometimes called spinners. What did they spin? The image of the barrow formed among the coals, and she glimpsed three shapes that bent and hummed, spinning glistening threads from the flowing streams of light that swirled across the land.
“I spin out all the deeds that have been . . .”
sang one.
“I spin what is happening . . .”
sang the next,
“my thread has no end . . .”
“From your threads I twist what shall be,”
came the voice of the third queen.
“And I break it, and twine it into the past once more,”
the first replied.
“Each life a strand, across the land, I take in hand . . .”
together they sang.
“If you would see, whatever must be, hark unto me . . .”
Lives . . .
thought Tirilan, watching those clever fingers.
“Whose lives are you spinning now?”
her spirit cried.
“Would you join us?”
called the third queen.
“Can you see the lifelines of those who struggle through the storm?”
As she stared, Tirilan realized that lines of light were twisting through the glowing landscape before her. Some were bright, some fading. Some of them flickered away as she touched them while others came easily to her hand. One by one she gathered them, smoothing and straightening, drawing them in. “Come—” she whispered. “This is the way home—”
She never knew how much time had passed when the sound of shouting broke through the howling of the wind. A gust set the ashes swirling as the door flap was unpegged and thrust aside. She rose to her feet, shocked back to the present with a suddenness that set her temples to pounding. Mikantor stood in the doorway, eyes as wide as her own. She looked down and saw her spindle abandoned on the floor. But her fingers were still moving, still twining the lines of light that streamed into her hands from the remains of the fire.
Only the discipline of long training kept her from falling. She drew a deep breath. “Are all returned?”
Mikantor nodded.
Tirilan let out her breath in a long sigh, then bent and very carefully released the fire.
“We found them,” Mikantor said hoarsely. “Romen had stepped in a hole and broken his leg, and Pelicar was trying to carry him. He kept falling. By the time Beniharen stumbled over them, he couldn’t get up again. . . . He’s a long lad to carry, is Pelicar, but we managed. Banur’s bones, it was cold!”
“Get those clothes off. You’re wet through—” Tirilan interrupted him. Except for two spots of red on his cheekbones his skin was corpse pale. She tugged off his cape and the sheepskin coat, wrapped a blanket around him, and pushed him down on the edge of the sleeping ledge, resisting the compulsion to throw her arms around him and force her warmth into him. She had to keep moving or she would faint with the relief of having him safe and be no use to anyone at all.
“We made a litter with our spears, but the snow—” He shook his head. “It was blowing from every direction. No stars, no paths, no shelter. . . . And we could hear a howling that was not the wind. Curlew said the Hound was on our track—I swear Guayota was out in that storm.” He shuddered and winced as he took the beaker of ale she had kept warming by the fire. “Oh gods, I can feel my feet again—” he exclaimed as she pulled off the hide boots stuffed with straw, and the woolen leg wrappings that held them.
They felt like ice. She pulled a sheepskin with the fleece still on from the bed and set it beneath them. Only now could she allow herself to admit how deeply she had been afraid. Was this weakness what came of love? Was this why her mother had denied her own feelings so long and well?
“We were lost. I thought I would never see you again—” He took another gulp of ale and his shudders began to ease. “And then I felt a heat at my breast . . . I felt you calling me. . . .” His eyes moved from the fire to her face in desperate question.
“Ssh . . . ssh . . . you must thank the Three Queens, not me. . . .” Refusing to meet his gaze, she turned away to build up the fire. “Where are Pelicar and Romen now?”
“In Ganath’s hut.” He moved his feet on the fleece, wincing as returning circulation began to turn them from white to red.
“I will go to them—” She reached for her cloak, fighting back the hysterical laughter.
Yes, I found you. I think I saved you.Yes, I love you . . .
her heart cried, but if once she gave way she would be undone. “Get the rest of your clothes off and into bed. I will be back soon.” She dared to drop a kiss on the top of his head, then slipped through the door.
Ganath’s hut was warmer, rank with the smells of male bodies and wet wool. Most of the men had crowded into it, but they stepped back to give her room. The two rescued men lay on the sleeping ledge, wrapped in blankets. Ganath had set and splinted Romen’s leg. She ought not to have worried—he had received the same training as she. She nodded as he described what he had done for them, passing her hands above the men to sense their energy.
“Romen is doing well,” she murmured when she was done. “He is weak from pain, but Pelicar seems more depleted.”
“That makes sense. He was using more energy—” said Ganath.
“Do we have any broth left? Get some into him,” she answered. She turned back to Pelicar, held her hands over his head and breast, willing power out through her palms. In a few moments he seemed to breathe more easily and she stood back, flushing as she realized that the rest of them were staring at her.
“Did your prayers save us, Lady?” asked Acaimor.
“Thank the gods,” she said quickly, “and the spirits of this land.” She put on her cloak once more. “Ganath has done well. Go to bed, all of you, and stay warm. I must get back now. I left Mikantor sitting by the fire—I’d best make sure he has not fallen into it.”
She made her escape then, but could not ignore the gestures of reverence they made as she went by. Had she saved them? If so, the way of it was like nothing she had learned at Avalon. What else might she learn from the spirits of this land?
When she got back to the house she shared with Mikantor, she found that he had crawled into his blankets still half dressed, and the fire had died down. She set in two more slabs of peat, angling them to burn more efficiently, and banked ash around them. Then she knelt on the sleeping ledge and shook Mikantor by the shoulder.
“Wake up—we’ve got to get these wet things off you—just for a moment, my love—please!”
He mumbled something and half sat without really waking. It was enough for her to pull the tunic over his head and snug the blanket around him as he subsided again, half curled on his side. His flesh was very white, and still cold, despite the blankets and the warmth of the hut. Too cold, she thought, chafing his long limbs. She could call for some of the other men to come and lie beside him, or she could share her own warmth, skin to skin.
Just until he was warmer . . . Tirilan shook her head as she realized that even now she was trying to deny her desire to hold him in her arms. But whatever came after, she had been too frightened by his danger to let this opportunity go by. Swiftly she laid her own sheepskins next to his, then stripped off her garments and slid into the bed behind him, pulling the blankets over them both and tucking them in.
I spun fire,
she thought, feeling how chill his skin was against hers,
surely I can call fire to warm him now. . . .
She tightened her arms around him and sought inward for the core of light, with each breath willing the fire to rise within her, through her, and enclose them both in a cocoon of warmth. And it was working. . . . That deathly chill was fading from his skin, the shivers easing. The strong muscles of his back moved against her breast as he breathed. His arms lay loose beneath hers. He was warm now, warm and safe at last. With a sigh she turned her cheek against his shoulder and slid into sleep.
TIRILAN KNEW THAT SHE was dreaming of the night in the cave, for her body was flushed and throbbing. She sighed, striving to remember past the moment when the Goddess had overwhelmed consciousness, and heard Mikantor whisper her name.
That
had never been in her dream. She opened her eyes and saw his features half lit by the glow of the fire. He had turned to face her, and she could feel his body trembling against hers.
“Tirilan—” he said again, “I love you. I always have, I think, even when you were a wretched little brat teasing me. Will you let me love you? I swore I would never trouble you, but—”
“I am not the Goddess . . .” she whispered.
“You are a goddess to me. You carry light. I have always seen you that way. And you are a priestess, which is almost the same thing.” He shook his head with a groan.
“Priestesses are women . . .”
“I can feel that—” he said wryly, trying to laugh. “That’s why I dared—Tirilan, finding you in my arms, I thought I had died out there in the snow and gone to the Blessed Isles. But this is real, isn’t it?” His grip tightened. “You could not still be lying here if you did not mean to be merciful . . .” His voice failed.
“Merciful!” She tipped back her head, trying to make out his features. “Is that what you think this is? Why in the name of all the gods would I have followed you into this wilderness if not that I love—”
Her words were cut off by his kiss. Her arm went around his neck, and she laid her leg across his and welcomed him to her fire.
THE CHARCOAL IN THE firebox pulsed with a fitful light that flickered across the smithy and the wicker screen Velantos had pulled across its open end. With strips of hide covering the gaps at the edges, it held the heat well enough so that beneath his broad apron of bullhide the smith was wearing only two woolen tunics instead of a mantle over three. Anderle wore a shawl over her long-sleeved tunic of fine blue wool.
With winter, the tension between them had eased, perhaps because with cold weather the woman kept her clothes on. A shapeless mass of wrappings was less disturbing than the glimpse of arm or breast the pinned garments of summer revealed. Since Mikantor had taken Tirilan with him to the moors the priestess had visited Velantos more often. At first he had thought it was to bedevil him, but lately he was beginning to suspect that she was lonely.
Velantos tightened the thongs that bound the pipe from the firebox to the hoses for the bellows, frowning as Anderle paced past him, and sat back to pump them once more.
“If you cannot be still, woman, take a turn at the bellows and be useful!” he snapped.
Anderle stopped, as if surprised to find she had been moving. “That is right, the boy Aelfrix usually helps you. Ellet told me that she has confined him to the healer’s house until he recovers from his cough. What must I do?”
Velantos stood up, surprised in turn to hear her agree. “Sit there and take the handles for each bag. Alternate pushing them up and down, letting the sticks separate a little as you lift them again. You have seen me do it often enough. Force air through the tube. Air makes coals burn hotter, and melts the bronze.”
The crucible that nestled among the coals in the firebox was filled with pieces of scrap metal from the bin. They had already begun to lose their outlines when Anderle arrived. Now they looked like blurred lumps in a molten stew. He grinned as she took a rather tentative grip on the handles and the bellows gave an asthmatic wheeze.
“Did Mikantor do this for you?” she asked, panting.
“How do you think he got those shoulders?” Velantos grinned. “He learns quick, that lad. I think he’s good at any craft he tries, but metal does not sing to him . . .”
“He was born to be a king. . . . Do you miss him?” she asked then.
Do you miss your daughter?
He did not say those words aloud.
She paused, wiped her forehead, then unwound her shawl. As she settled back into the rhythm, he saw how the movement alternately tightened and released the fabric across her breasts, and felt his flesh stir.
Work was the solution, for both him and her. He fixed his gaze on the coals whose brightness pulsed with each wheeze of the bellows. It was good oak charcoal, well able to reach a temperature that would melt the metal, although that also depended on the proportion of copper to tin.
“I miss him . . .” he said at last, still watching the fire. “I was the son of the king of Tiryns, but not of the queen. They apprenticed me early. I was never one of the warriors, and most folk find smiths uncanny anyway.” He paused to bank the coals more securely around the crucible. The bronze had been heating since noon, and the sun was now descending. It would be ready soon. “I had no companion, until the boy . . .”
“But he was a slave—”
“Maybe at first, but then—” He shook his head, unable to explain the link between them. “When they enslaved me after my city fell, I thought death better than to be some man’s property. Woodpecker made me live, treated me the same as ever, until I knew who I was again. When the king of Korinthos set us free, I felt no different. Some men are slaves to fear, or to love, some to the will of the gods. We choose our chains.”
“Am I the slave of the goddess, then?” She shook her head. “It must make a difference that I willingly took oath to serve Her. That is why I could not understand when Tirilan—” She broke off, glaring as if he had forced her to that revelation.