That was the vow that had been most discussed among the students. It was, if you thought about it, a terrifying commitment. And yet this was the promise that troubled Tirilan least of all. Perhaps I have been a priestess in some other time, she thought then, for she found it hard to understand why anyone sworn to serve the Goddess would not seek to share Her love.
“Do you swear to obey all lawful commands given in the Lady’s name?”
Tirilan suppressed a shiver, knowing her mother was watching her from beneath that veil, for surely any “lawful command” she might be given would come from the Lady of Avalon. I have no choice now, having agreed to all the rest, she thought numbly, and swore.
And now Anderle was rising from her throne, coming forward to take the place of the hierophant between the priest and priestess.
“Daughter of the Goddess, you have proven your fitness to stand as priestess before us, and you have taken your vows, but know that consecration comes not from us, but from the gods. If the Goddess does not accept you, then no human power can do so. Go forth, then, to face your ordeal, and return to us as a priestess of Avalon.”
Tirilan made her obeisance. It is a dance. We bend and sway and play our parts, and so I will play mine . . . Sometimes people were lost during their testing. Perhaps she would die, and it wouldn’t matter after all, except, of course, that she had just promised to fulfill the initiate’s oath in another life if she failed in this one. But the next time around, she would not be mourning Mikantor.
THE TOR LOOKED AS it always did, a pointed hill covered with green turf, its long slope notched where the spiral path had been carved out generations before. To climb it did not seem much of a challenge, thought Tirilan as she gazed upward. She had been scampering up and down that hill since she could walk. She had hoped for a day of sunshine like yesterday, but what she had was swirling clouds, as if the mists off the marshes had decided to complete their conquest of the Vale by overwhelming the Tor. Just so the waves rose up to cover the kingdoms of the sea, she thought then. No doubt the image was a memory of the frescoes in the Hall of the Sun. She closed the gate behind her and started up the path.
Once, when she was about ten, she had vowed to count the steps on the spiral path, and been insulted when the priestesses laughed at her. Later she had heard that it had been tried many times before. It made sense that the number should vary with different lengths of stride, but it was said that even for the same person, pacing carefully, the distance would never be twice the same.
“In the name of the Goddess I shall ascend the holy mountain,” she began the ancient prayer. “In the name of the Lady of Wisdom, in the name of the Lady of Darkness. In the name of the Lady of Sovereignty I shall walk, and in the name of the Lady of Ravens. . .” The names of those who ruled light and love, mind and emotion, and the solid, supporting strength of earth itself, all these she called, and if a male initiate climbing this hill had called upon the same powers in the name of the God, it was only the images, not the essence, that would have changed. Or one might pick and choose, or call both together. Another watchword of the Temple came to her—“The symbol is nothing, the reality all . . .”
Now I understand, Tirilan thought in amusement. The purpose of this climb is to make me review everything they tried so hard to stuff into my skull!
The prayer brought her to the first turning of the path, and she paused and bent to dig her fingers into the soil. The scent of moist earth and green grass rose around her, more heady than incense. This! she thought. This, not some priestly abstraction, is what I serve. While we are in bodies, this is where it begins. The priests forget that sometimes, with their meditations and austerities. Earth is holy. Our bodies are holy. We must learn to live in that harmony.
For a moment, then, kneeling on the green turf, she glimpsed a truth that, if it had been part of her training, she had never recognized. If she must be a priestess, she would not stay safe at Avalon. Anderle had plenty of people to say the prayers and perform the ceremonies. Tirilan would go where the need was, to teach and heal if she could and where she could not, to bear witness and offer comfort. The decision released a surge of warmth—or perhaps the sun was coming out. She looked up and saw the clouds thicker than ever, but they held a golden glow, and it was warmer, as if the sun was trying to break through. That was a good omen, she thought, as she started walking once more.
Exercise had lifted her mood as well as warming her body. As she continued to climb, she found herself humming the prayer. She had brought down the power; it was only sensible to follow its path upward, even if she must first forgive her mother in order to receive the blessing of the Lady of the Moon. Why, she wondered, were they so often at odds? She had heard that mothers and daughters were often so, and she supposed it must be harder when her mother was responsible for her as a priestess as well.
But the result is that she tries to rule me body and soul, she thought resentfully. She made the next turn, and a playful wind stirred her hair and stroked across the long grass. She sensed that she had entered into the presence of the Lady of Craft and Song, and surely this was where she would find the words to make her mother understand her need.
She laughed, her spirits unexpectedly lifting. Anderle had to let me take this journey alone. No one else can live my life. No one else can give it meaning, not my mother, and not—the thought came to her suddenly—even if he had lived, not Mikantor.
Tirilan strode out more strongly as the path curved around to the right and across the long axis of the Tor. Wind swirled the mists around her, carrying the scent of flowers. Was that perfume borne up from some protected meadow in the marshes? Certainly there was no such garden on the Tor. She felt soft turf beneath her feet and looked down. Could she have strayed from the path? In this mist, anything was possible, but she had gone neither up nor down. More slowly, she continued, striving to see.
And then, between one breath and another, the mists were gone.
She stood in a world of green—turf whose color was so intense it seemed to glow from within, verdant hedges, a rowan tree whose leaves burned with green fire, and beneath it a woman dressed in a floating garment of the color of sunlight through new leaves, crowned with white flowers. For a moment Tirilan thought it was her mother, for this Lady had the same dark hair and eyes. But Anderle had never allowed her hair to flow so freely, had never considered her with such a luminous gaze. This was the Lady Mikantor had seen.
“And yet I will call you daughter,” said the Lady, as if Tirilan had spoken aloud, “for you are all like children to me. Be welcome, Eilantha, to my realm.”
“Why do you call me by that name?”
“It was your name, when first we met upon this hill.” The Lady smiled. “You do not remember, but I remember each face you have worn when you found your way between the worlds. I offer you now the choice that I have offered before—stay with me, and you need fear no loss again.”
Tirilan blinked as she realized that faces were appearing and disappearing among the leaves. Beyond the trees deer were grazing in the meadow. She smiled, remembering how she had danced with them on the Wild God’s Isle. She had sensed the life in the earth before, but here that spirit could be seen. The hedge encircled a grassy dell, and there a cloth was laid, covered with all manner of good things. And somewhere a lyre was being played, and fair-faced people beckoned to her to join them as they danced. The Mikantor she remembered was no more than a clumsy boy. Any man of this realm was far more beautiful.
The Lady had known how to tempt her, she thought then. But though this might be the soul of the land, it was not the gritty reality she had just sworn to serve.
“I cannot—” she stammered, and the Lady sighed.
“Each time I hope that one day you will decide to stay here, but that oath of yours always draws you back again.”
Well, that answered the question about whether she had been a priestess before, thought Tirilan. She made the reverence she would have offered to the Lady
of Avalon.
“Do you have some wisdom to offer me?”
Tirilan trembled as the Lady laughed. That merriment was not unkind, but it pierced the heart and set the blood pulsing in her veins. She could not tell whether she wanted to scream or to sing, but suddenly she knew that the measured existence that had been hers was enough no longer.
“Heart fire or hearth fire—you will seek both, my child. You will burn with passion, though now you believe yourself so cold. Your mother would make of you a priestess, and so you shall be, though not in the way that she foresees. You have vowed yourself to the earth, and you shall be a priestess to this land. You have vowed yourself to the people, and you shall hallow the Lord who will lead them.”
Tirilan took a deep breath. Those words carried their own intoxication, but she sensed that here she must be very careful to avoid illusion, or self-delusion . . .
“What do you mean?”
“Behold, and remember . . . and one day you will understand. . . .” The Lady gestured, and the air between them began to shimmer. Within that radiant sphere images stirred and shifted—a woman who was also a deer, a woman who stood bathed in moonlight upon a snowy hill, a woman standing before the great henge, holding a sheathed sword. There were other images beyond them, but she could not see them. Her vision was focused on the three. And as she gazed, words vibrated in her awareness—“Without Me . . . no life shall come to birth,
Without Me . . . no night shall see the morn,
Without Me . . . no lord shall save the land,
Without Me . . . no hope shall be reborn.”
MIKANTOR TIPPED BACK the beaker and took another long swallow of thin ale. The shape of the houses, the language, even the wind off the marshes teased at his memory. But he could not fault their hospitality. When the party from the ship trudged up the road, the farm family had welcomed them and made space in the storage sheds for those who would not fit under the round roof.
Traveling with Velantos, he had grown accustomed to new places, but here it was he and the smith who were the foreigners. Buda had begun helping the women, and Aelfrix, with his usual sunny good nature, had already started to make friends with the children. Aelfrix, he suspected, was the kind of youth who would land on his feet anywhere. Velantos, on the other hand, glowered from his place by the hearth. Even a winter in the north had not faded a skin clearly bronzed by a warmer sun, and scrapes and bruises only emphasized the strength of the swelling muscles of his chest and arms. With several cracked ribs, he had found the climb from the shore quite taxing, and even if the farm folk had dared to approach him he could not say much, for the farmer was the only one who had any of the traders’ tongue.
He’ll have to learn, Mikantor thought with anxious amusement, just as I did when I came to his land.
Mikantor himself, on the other hand, seemed to fascinate them. The farm wife was hovering before him now, a pitcher in her hand. Her words made sense to him, though the dialect was strange, but he was not quite sure what language would come out if he tried to answer. He held out his beaker with a smile. He had managed to remember enough to tell them his lineage, in hopes of gaining help for his band of refugees, salt stained and exhausted by three days of tossing on the sea, but not much more.
Do they think I have come to help them? Do I? he thought then, remembering his vision of the Tor. He was beginning to have the uncomfortable suspicion that it was the gods who had arranged this unexpected homecoming. And in that case, had the gods also arranged for him to be enslaved? If gods would do that to a boy, he did not think much of them.
Anderle would probably have said that the gods worked neither for men’s pleasure nor for their own, but for the greater good of all. She wants me to be a king . . . he thought grimly. And if I remember the vision correctly, there’s a goddess who wants me to be a hero. He didn’t feel much like either one, although the good meat of the sheep that the people here had killed to feed them was already making him stronger. Velantos had promised to repair the farmer’s plowshare, which seemed a fair exchange for their hospitality.
The sound of a new arrival brought Mikantor upright. He had his hand on the post where he’d hung his sword when a young man with light brown hair pushed aside the cowhide that curtained the door. Those snub-nosed features looked familiar. He was clothed in the pale tunic of a local priest with a healer’s green belt of woven cord. He stopped, gray eyes moving from one stranger to another, widening as they fixed on Mikantor.
“Woodpecker? Is it really you? I heard you’d been carried off, but there can’t be two men with a scar on the shin where I nicked you when my stave splintered one day. But the message from the farm gave another name—” he said with an odd, considering look, half hope and half suspicion.
“Mikantor”—he cleared his throat and felt the speech of Avalon coming back to him—“son of Uldan. It actually is my true name. The other was a disguise. You are Ganath, aren’t you? You have grown.”
“So have you, my friend,” said Ganath, looking him up and down. “And you are Uldan’s son, eh? Much becomes clear.”
“Then that is more than I can say,” Mikantor replied. “Sit down and tell me how the folk here get on. I saw the mark of fire on one of the sheds, but the farm seems prosperous. I can’t speak the local dialect well enough to ask more.”
“Oh, we’ve had enough trouble from raiders,” said Ganath, accepting a beaker from the farm wife with a smile.
“How do you deal with them?”asked Mikantor, remembering the campaigns into the countryside on which Bodovos had led the guard. “Can’t you get help from the king?”
“King Iftiken tries, but by the time word can reach him, the raiders are gone, and then when he is on the coast, Galid’s bandits attack the interior.”
“Galid!” Mikantor exclaimed, at the sound of the name aware of a sick roiling that he thought he’d outgrown. Why was he worrying about Anderle, he wondered then. Galid wanted to kill him; Anderle only wanted his soul.
“When enemy ships are sighted, the people drive their beasts to hidden pastures in the marshes and hide. They watched you for a day before sending the boy to lead you here, and they sent for me, though I don’t know what they expected me to do. I’m a healer, not a warrior, but they know I studied at Avalon.”
“And a pretty pathetic lot we must have looked,” Mikantor said ruefully. “Nice to know it was useful. Since we made contact, they have treated us like long-lost family.”
“They would, of course,” said Ganath thoughtfully, “because of the prophecy.”
Mikantor stared. “What prophecy is that?” he said at last.
“The lost prince . . . The child who was reborn from the flames and will return to heal all our ills and protect us from all our foes. Uldan’s lost son,” Ganath replied with an odd smile. “I thought that you would know.”
“Anderle said something once . . . but I did not understand,” Mikantor said numbly, fighting an impulse to make a dash for the shore and beg Captain Stavros to put to sea.
“I have to get to Avalon,” he said instead. “I’m glad you’re here. I doubt these folk have traveled more than a score of leagues in their lives, and I need information on the roads.”
“It is not quite that bad—they do go to the festivals at the king’s steading north of here, which reminds me that I must send a message to Lady Linne. As for the road, be easy. I’m coming with you to Avalon.”
NEXT TO THE HOUSE of the High Priestess there was a small garden where Anderle liked to sit on sunny days. This did not interfere much with her other duties, as the weather rarely made it a temptation, but it was sheltered from the wind, and today a few blossoms of sun’s-blood were opening, translucent red spots on the leaves glowing as five-petaled golden flowers opened to the light. It was unusual enough to see something bloom in advance of its season that she took it as an omen. Perhaps she would pick a stem and tie it over the door for a blessing, though few unfriendly spirits could penetrate the wards of Avalon.
The garden was also a good place for meditation. At their meeting the previous autumn, the Ti-Sahharin had agreed to go aside every day at noon and seek communication on the spirit roads. And if no one had any tidings, in these times, a period when Anderle could sit and relax was always welcome, especially if her people believed she was working.
She settled herself more comfortably, back straight, hands open upon her knees, and closed her eyes. Perhaps, she thought, she would nap, lulled by the singing of the bees. Students always thought they were the first to discover that one could sleep sitting up while appearing to meditate, but Anderle had learned that trick long ago. If she needed rest that badly, she did not think the Goddess would mind. But first she ought to see if any of the other priestesses had news.
The priestess took a deep breath and let it out slowly, drew breath once more, savoring the scents of life and growth as the garden basked in the sun. This was one of the first skills she had learned, more than thirty years ago, and it still took an effort of will to let the clamoring memories go. In . . . and out . . . the old disciplines took hold. Awareness of the bees, the garden, and Avalon itself faded, not forgotten, but no longer at the forefront of her attention. She waited, opening her soul.
Despite her preparations, the contact, when it came, nearly jolted her out of trance. Or perhaps it was the exultation, so intense she barely recognized the source as Linne. I am not accustomed to receiving good news! she thought, sending a mental plea to the other woman to calm down.
Sword of Avalon: Avalon Page 25