Woodpecker glared. Boys were supposed to do that sort of thing to make the girls squeal. But Tirilan feared nothing living.
“Do you know that when you stand like that you look exactly like a grouse ruffling up?” she said cheerfully.
He felt his skin heating, but could think of no reply. Turning his back he challenged Rouikhed to another bout with the staves. He could hear Tiri laughing with the other girls as they strode away.
THE NEXT TIME WOODPECKER saw Tiri she was weeding the little garden in the lee of the dining hall, where Ellet had been trying to get some of the wild herbs they used for healing to grow. When he realized who it was he hesitated, but she was already getting to her feet and holding out her hand. It had rained earlier in the day, and she had a smear of mud across her nose.
“Please, don’t go—I’m sorry I teased you this morning, but you did look funny standing there and I was mad because you hurt Larel.”
“Do you like him?” Woodpecker wondered why that thought should disturb him. He fixed his eyes on the row of chamomile daisies, avoiding her gaze. In the next row they had planted sunwort, and beyond it clumps of yarrow. Bees hummed happily as they moved from flower to flower.
“Of course—” she began, then laughed. “But I don’t have a passion for him, if that’s what you meant—”
It was, but he was not about to say so. “Of course not—” he echoed, careful to use the dialect of the Tor. “You’re too young to be thinking about such things.”
“I am as old as you are!” she replied.
“No, you’re not. I am thirteen, and you are a year younger than me,” he said stoutly, though he could not deny that in the past few months she had been changing. There were small but definite breasts beneath her undyed woolen gown.
“Really?” she said sweetly. “I heard my mother say that when I was born you were three months old, and you had bright red hair.”
Reflexively he ran his hand over the hair he kept close cropped even though they had stopped putting medicine on it every month once he came to Avalon. When he let it grow it turned into a mop of auburn curls.
“There’s nothing wrong with my hair!” A bee buzzed toward him and he waved it away.
“I know that—”She looked troubled. “It doesn’t matter. It was something I heard my mother say to old Kiri one day.”
Woodpecker blinked, then grabbed her arm as she started to turn away. “Tirilan! You can’t come out with something like that and then just stop! What else did she say?”
Tiri looked at him and then at his hand on her arm until, flushing, he let go.
She frowned thoughtfully. “I didn’t understand. She said they had to dye your hair because you looked so different from the other babies. Your enemies would have found you if you hadn’t been disguised.”
The medicine Redfern had used was a dye? For a few moments Woodpecker could only stare. “You must have misunderstood,” he said at last. “My father isn’t even the headman. How could I have enemies?”
“Perhaps I did,” she said softly. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? Although you don’t look very much like Grebe . . .”
“Lots of people don’t look like their families. You don’t look like your mother at all.”
“Yes, but—Oh, never mind. I shouldn’t have spoken. Kiri always says that people who eavesdrop never hear anything good of themselves, or anyone else, I suppose.” Her eyes glittered, and he realized that she was on the verge of tears.
“It’s all right,” he said gruffly. “It doesn’t matter.” But both of them knew that he lied.
ANDERLE HAD MADE A point of spending time with her daughter every day. Perhaps having lost her own mother so early had led her to idealize the relationship, but she was determined not to leave her child entirely to the care of those who might treat her with too much reverence because of her parentage, or for the same reason, resent her. And so, except when there was an evening ritual, the hour after the priests and priestesses had their communal meal she spent with Tirilan in the small chamber just off the dining hall that she had claimed as her own.
They sat now by the little fire, hands busy with needlework. Tirilan had inherited her mother’s clever fingers, and when there were no ritual garments to be embroidered, someone always had a tunic in need of mending. Tonight, Tiri was fixing a three-cornered tear in a shapeless mass of gray wool. Anderle smiled a little, appreciating the picture the girl made with the firelight glinting on her fair hair. She was still a child, but she was growing fast, and every now and then one glimpsed the young woman, long boned and fine featured, that she would become.
“What are you working on?” she asked, gesturing with the bone needle with which she was setting a hem in a linen veil.
“Woodpecker’s tunic—” Tiri shook it out and held it up for her mother to see. It had already been mended in several places, and was going to need work in several more. “I wish he was not so hard on his clothes, although if he would give them to me before they got torn so badly, they would last longer.”
“You shouldn’t have to work on the boys’ tunics—” objected Anderle.
“I know. I only do it for Woodpecker. I thought I might as well get used to it. I expect I’ll marry him someday.”
“Has he been bothering you?” Anderle asked in sudden alarm. Of all the problems she had foreseen in preparing the boy to take his place in the world, this had not been one of them. And really, the child was at that awkward stage, all legs and elbows, when he was not likely to be attractive to anybody. “I would have thought him too young, but—”
“Woodpecker? Of course not. He still thinks of me as a nuisance.” She looked down at the tunic with a secret smile. “When the time comes I’ll have to tell him.”
Anderle shook her head. “That won’t be necessary. You may take him as your lover in the rites, but priestesses do not marry.”
“What if I don’t become a priestess?” challenged the girl.
“Nonsense!” her mother exclaimed. “You are priestess-born—it is in your blood. If you had no talent it would be another matter, but I have felt your energy rise in the rituals. You cannot deny that you feel the power. The potential is there. Your formal training will begin soon.”
“Woodpecker has the potential too—will you make him a priest?”
Anderle stopped short, staring at her daughter. “Woodpecker . . . must follow another path.” How quickly the time was passing. Soon, she supposed, she would have to find a way to tell him about that destiny.
“And I?” Tirilan had grown very still.
“You will be Lady of Avalon after me.”
“Just like that?” asked the girl. “The council of priests will choose me because you have willed it? You may be Lady of Avalon, but who made you queen of the world? I don’t see you having much luck in stopping the rain from falling or the tribes from fighting. I think the world has other plans, and so do I!”
“You have no idea what you are saying!” exclaimed Anderle, stung to an unaccustomed fury, not least because so much of what the girl had said was true. “You are a child who dreams of playing house. Have you seen how those women live who are so proud to be called wives? My cousin Irnana was the wife of the king of the Ai-Zir, and even she—” Anderle stopped abruptly, realizing she had almost let out the whole tale. One day Tirilan would have to know, but not now, when her head was full of foolish fantasies about the boy. “It does not matter—” With an effort she restored her voice to calm. “You are still a child and so is he. The time for choices is far away.”
THE COMMUNITY AT AVALON had done their best to provide a well-rounded training for the children with whom they had been entrusted. In addition to their own genealogies, they were taught the stories and great deeds of every tribe. They learned to take pride in the achievements of those who had raised the barrows and stone circles, and to sense and tap the power that those monuments channeled through the land. They learned the names and stories of the gods and spirits worship
ped in each region, how to calculate the turnings of the seasons by the movements of sun and stars, and the rituals for each festival, though with the weather so disordered the ceremonies no longer seemed to match their dates as well as they had in the past. The students were taught herb lore and divination and meditation, and lest all this mind work leave them feeble, they learned to spar with the staff, to paddle a boat, and to swim.
After that disturbing conversation with her daughter, for a time Anderle kept a closer eye on the students than she had done before. But whatever Tirilan might dream, there did not seem to be anything but friendship between her and Woodpecker, and the priestess began to think it had all been no more than a childish fancy after all. Still, she was beginning to worry about the boy. He, who had always been eager to speak up in the teaching sessions, now replied in monosyllables if he answered at all. He had been a leader in the games, but now played without enthusiasm. He had taken to long walks and sullen silences.
“It is only youth,” said Belkacem. “Boys have these phases, and this one will pass.” But Larel, who remembered his own youth more clearly, was not so sure. “Something is bothering the child,” he told her one day toward the end of summer. “Even his friends have noticed it. But I cannot get him to talk to me.”
Whether it is youth or some deeper cause, he is growing, thought Anderle as she watched him sitting in the circle listening to Belkacem lecture on the history of Avalon. If he is to challenge Galid and rule the Ai-Zir, there are things he will need to learn. Despite his sulks, Woodpecker had gotten bigger over the summer. He was taller than Tirilan once more. His hair had darkened from its baby brightness, but as he sat with his head bent, arms around his knees, the sun kindled fiery glints in his auburn curls.
“You all know that our community here comes from the fusion of two peoples,” said Belkacem, “the ancient tribes of this land and the adepts that came here from the lost lands across the sea. It is said that one of them was not only a priest, but the prince of an island called Ahtarrath, the heir of a hundred kings. Micail was the leader of the adepts whose singing lifted into place the great stones of the Henge, and the husband of the first Lady of Avalon.”
If there were a man of that stature among us, I might reconsider my position on marriage, Anderle thought wryly. Durrin had been a wonderful singer and a charming man, but she wondered sometimes if her love for him would have lasted once she had grown into her own power. The truth is, I need a man whose strength will match mine. But as leader of their community, she must be supreme, and although the Lady might lie with a tribal king in ritual, that role was generally taken by the high priestess of his tribe. To take a man of the tribes as a permanent partner in the rituals would upset the balance of power. There was always a Morgan to serve as Lady of Avalon, but a soul worthy to assume the title of the Merlin appeared among them rarely.
And so, she concluded with a sigh, I seem fated to lie in an empty bed. To be sure, for the most part she did not regret it. There had not been a man who could stir her blood since Durrin died. It was only on days like this, when the sun had broken through the clouds and every leaf and blade of grass seemed to shimmer with life, that she remembered that she was a woman, and still young, and alone.
Belkacem seemed to be droning to a conclusion at last. Anderle left the birch trees in whose dappled shade she had been standing and started down the hill to speak with the boy.
“Lady!” the old priest called, and the children who had been gathered around him made the gesture of reverence and stood aside. “Were you here when I was questioning them? They are doing well, very well indeed. So well I think we might give them some role in the Harvest ceremony.”
“Yes, yes, we should do that—” Anderle answered, her eyes on Woodpecker, who had said something to Grebe that made the other boy frown and was now striding up the lower slope of the Tor. By the time she was able to detach herself, he had disappeared into the tangle of oak and hawthorn that girdled the base of the hill.
ANDERLE CAME TO A halt by the westernmost of standing stones that crowned the Tor and paused to catch her breath. She had intentionally kept to a moderate pace, for to greet Woodpecker windblown and sweaty would be equally undignified. But the boy was barely halfway up the hill. He walked with bent head, pausing now and again to examine a stone or detour around a flower. Sometimes he followed the wandering path the first priests had carved into the hill, but then he would gather his forces and charge straight on once more.
Her lips quirked as she looked down the grassy slope. She had rolled all the way from the summit once when she was a child. Kiri had smacked her bottom until it hurt as much as the rest of the bumps she had acquired on the way down, but it had been worth the pain. She still remembered the dizzy excitement when all direction disappeared in a whirl of sensation, as if she were about to spin bodily into the Otherworld. That was what she had hoped to do. It was said that from the Tor one could pass into that other realm that lay upon this one like an invisible veil.
Now, of course, she knew how to shift her awareness between dimensions as she had done at the Henge when she midwifed the souls. But it would be a fine thing to walk in her own flesh in that realm where there was neither sun nor moon, but only a perpetual luminous twilight, and to meet its ageless queen.
Her shadow lengthened as the sun sank toward the bank of cloud that usually hung above the sea. Its light gleamed on Woodpecker’s burnished head as the boy made his way over the rim of the hill.
“Well met—” she said softly. He started, eyes widening, and began a bow whose depth lessened as his vision adjusted and he realized that it was Anderle. “I know who you were expecting. I am not She, but I am the Lady of Avalon, and you are in my care. Woodpecker, we have all seen that you are troubled. What is it, my child? We are alone here—you can speak freely to me.”
“ ‘ Woodpecker,’ you call me!” he blurted. “Who gave me that name, and when? Who am I?”
He knows! thought Anderle, mind racing in speculation. Had someone told him of the prophecy that the son of Uldan would return to save his people?
“Has someone said that you have another name?” she asked, playing for time to let her speeded heartbeat slow, and like an echo heard, “I know the name you had before you were born,” a phrase from the Mysteries. And was not the purpose of one’s life the manifestation of that primal identity?
“No one had to tell me,” he said quickly, but his flush told her that something that started him down this path. “I don’t know if I have another name, but I have only to look in the reflecting pool to see that I am no child of the Village. They should have called me ‘Cuckoo,’ ” he added bitterly. “Where did you find the chick you put into Redfern’s nest?”
Anderle sighed. At least she could stop wondering how to tell the boy about his heritage. She should tell him to sit, but she was not sure he could bend without falling down.
“I suppose that we should have told you before, but you must understand—you are still a child. We did not think you would understand.”
Try me—said his answering glare, and for a moment someone much older looked out of his deep-set eyes.
“You do have another name,” the priestess said then. “It is Mikantor.”
He blinked, trying to process that information. “That is not a name from the Tribes,” he said at last.
“Your mother was my cousin Irnana. Like me, she came of the sacred line of Avalon that goes back to the People of Wisdom who came here from across the sea.”
“Then why pretend I was a child of the Lake?” he exclaimed. “Why—” He stopped short, staring. “The lady Irnana was married to the king of the Ai-Zir,” he said slowly. “I have heard that tale. He died when Galid opened the gates to the Ai-Ushen, and his lady burned with their child. . . .”
“So it is said,” Anderle agreed. “But I got you away. Galid knows that you lived, but not what became of you afterward.”
“Then it is because of him that my parents died.�
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What, she wondered, had the boy heard? “It is, indeed. So we must keep you hidden as long as we can.” That would not be long, she thought, seeing already beneath the soft contours of childhood a hint of the stronger features he would have as a man. Though they had been refined by mixing with the blood of Avalon, he was still going to have the look of old Uldan. “It’s as well that you know now. There are things you will need to learn if you are to defeat him. Your cousin Cimara has no brothers. As her closest kin, you have the best right to lead the Ai-Zir.”
“What if that’s not what I want to do?” he said mutinously. “It seems to me that you have all made very free with my destiny.”
“You are the Son of a Hundred Kings!” she cried, temper snapping at last. “Azan is only the beginning. In times to come a Defender will be needed to lead all the tribes. The gods tormented me with visions until I went to Azan-Ylir to save you. It is they who have given you a hero’s destiny. All I have done since then has been to make sure you live long enough to claim it!”
She saw him recoil and took a deep breath, fighting for calm. He could not know how she had suffered on that journey. It must be hard enough for him to assimilate the facts—it was far too soon to expect him to show gratitude.
“You are overwhelmed,” she said, “and you have reason. I will leave you here to think about it. You are excused from lessons for the rest of the day.”
WOODPECKER OPENED HIS EYES to a misty twilight. He was leaning against something hard. A dozen paces away he saw an upright stone about half his height that seemed to glow from within. Others stood to either side. It was the stone circle on top of the Tor.
He remembered climbing the hill and speaking with Lady Anderle, and then she had left and he had sat down because his legs would not support him anymore. Images from that encounter surfaced, dim and confused as memories from a dream. Once more he heard the Lady of Avalon calling him the “Son of a Hundred Kings . . .” Certainly that memory had come from a dream. Perhaps he was dreaming still. The top of the Tor was always a little uncanny, but this did not look quite like the world he knew.
Sword of Avalon: Avalon Page 10