One man pulled away the skin so that another could reach in and draw out the offal to leave for the scavengers of the wild. While the hunters bound the stag’s legs and passed spears between them for transport, Badger sluiced and bound up the gash on Mikantor’s thigh. He could feel it aching, but as a distant thing. Some of the power that had borne him through the hunt remained. One of the hunters unslung a cow’s horn and blew three long blasts. In a moment the call of another horn echoed from the distance. From hill to hill his triumph was proclaimed—“The king is dead. . . the king returns. . . .”
That same serenity bore Mikantor back along paths he did not remember having seen before, back to the clearing where the people waited to hail a new king. There the women set the King Stag’s head upon a pole and swiftly stripped off the hide. The heart and other choice portions were grilled above the coals while the rest was disjointed and cast into cauldrons to boil.
The king feeds his people, thought Mikantor as they draped the wet hide across his shoulders and led him to a seat before the fire. The priestess was waiting to crown his antlers with a wreath of red berries like her own. They brought her a platter with the roasted meat and she cut off pieces to feed him, beginning with the heart. With it came a beaker of honey mead.
Mikantor felt dizzy and did not know whether it was the drink, or the shock of eating meat after so long, or the presence of the woman beside him that made his head swim. Most of her body was hidden by her own deerskin robe. He could see one bare leg and a round arm. Her hair was done into a multiplicity of tiny braids. His flesh stirred at the thought that beneath the deerskin she must be as naked as he. Through the eyeslits he caught the gleam of eyes. Her hand brushed his as she handed him another piece of meat and he felt the pulse of power between them.
This was not quite like the morning’s dissociation, when the spirit of the deer had overwhelmed his humanity. Once more his consciousness was being pushed into the background, but this time what was replacing it was a power at once fierce and benign, the power of a god. As his awareness shifted, his perception of the woman by his side was changing as well. Overlaid upon her mask he saw a multiplicity of images, human and animal, fresh maiden and opulent mother. He desired them all. Even the deathly hag called to him to pour out his life in her embrace.
As folk finished eating, the drumming began once more, supporting a bone flute whose shrilling touched the nerves with sweet pain. The hunters circled the fire, the deer hooves strung around their ankles clicking out the rhythm as they danced the story of the running of the deer. More drums added to the thunder as others joined the dancing. Women bent and swayed before him, loosening their garments to reveal a round breast or a flash of bare thigh. On this night he could have any woman he asked for. He was the king.
But Mikantor had eyes only for the one who sat beside him. The need to possess her was becoming a torment. He grasped her wrist and stood, pulling her against him.
Around him, the people were laughing. “This way,” said someone. “A bed has been prepared for you.”
He found his balance again as he followed the priestess along a path where the bones of the earth reared up through the soil. Beside a dark gash in the hillside a torch was burning. The priestess slipped from his grasp and disappeared into the opening. His escort unlaced the antler crown. Light-headed, he let the stag’s hide slip from his shoulders and followed her.
In the flickering light of an oil lamp set on a ledge he had an impression of a womblike space just large enough for two. A bed of hides and furs covered most of the floor. The priestess had paused at the edge, as if for the first time uncertain. A step brought him up behind her, gripping her shoulders, pressing his body against hers. Her deerskin robe was in the way; he reached around to pull out the pin and drag it aside, hands closing upon her breasts before she could move. He strained against her, felt her nipples harden beneath his fingers, heard her sigh.
She twisted within his arms and slid free to face him, her swift breathing an echo of his own. She had pulled off her mask, but the lamp was behind her, and her face was in shadow. His eyes fed on a landscape of rounded white breast and swelling hips, painted as he was painted, with sacred signs. Seeing her beauty, the frantic lust that had consumed him a moment before vanished though his whole body was still one ache of desire, and he remembered that he had been trained at Avalon.
“Blessed be your lips, that speak Her holy words.” he whispered, and leaning forward, gently set his lips to hers. They were soft, and sweet, with the taste of honey. He could spend an hour worshipping her lips alone. But the ritual carried him on. “Blessed be your hands, that do Her work . . .” He took first one, then the other, and set a kiss upon each palm. “Blessed be your breasts, that feed Her children . . .” He cradled them in his hands, felt her shiver at the touch of his lips. He kept his hands upon her, sliding them down her silken sides and legs as he knelt to bless her feet that walked in the Lady’s ways. He remained kneeling, reaching up again to clasp her hips. “Blessed be your womb, the source of Life . . .” he whispered, drawing her against him. “You are the Goddess,” he said hoarsely. “Let me serve You.”
Her hands closed hard on his shoulders. He felt a tremor pass through the warm flesh between his hands.
“You are my Beloved . . .” Her voice held more than mortal sweetness. “Be welcome to my arms!”
TIRILAN WOKE FROM A dream in which she had fallen asleep with Mikantor cradled against her breast. For a moment she thought she was still dreaming, for the furs on which she lay had never covered any bed in Avalon. A little gray light flitered through what must be a doorway, and from outside she could hear a bird’s first tentative morning song. From somewhere closer came a snort and a sigh. She jerked upright, reached out to touch tousled hair, and then the smoothly muscled shoulder of a man, stilled as he muttered and then subsided into sleep again.
A flood of images overwhelmed memory. A knowledge deeper than thought told her that this was indeed Mikantor. She had held him in her arms and more, to judge from the unaccustomed soreness between her thighs. And yet it was not she, but the Goddess, who had given herself to the God. As a priestess she rejoiced in the success of the ritual. As a woman she could weep that she recalled so little of its joy. How much, she wondered, would Mikantor remember of their joining? Anderle had told her whose rite she would be blessing, but he would not have known she was to be his priestess.
Soon someone would come to escort her back to her mother, who waited to return with her to Avalon. She fought the temptation to throw herself on Mikantor and cling so that they could not pry her away—she would not so profane the rite. And yet she refused to let this become no more than a shining memory. The Goddess had Her due, but what was there for Tirilan?
This was a gift, and a great one . . . but it is not enough, she thought, bending to breathe in the scent of the man, mingled with the scent of the herbs. I can expect no more help from others. Tirilan herself will have to act to achieve her desire.
From outside came the sound of a footstep on stone. She began to feel around for her deerskin cloak. Her hand brushed stiff fur, and then something harder, a knife in a leather sheath. That was all Mikantor had been wearing when he entered the cave.
“My lady—” came a soft whisper, “my lady, you must wake—it is time for you to go. . . .”
Tirilan pulled the deerskin cloak around her and fastened it with the bone pin, then reached down once more to draw the flint knife and take the sheath. Holding the cloak closed with her other hand she got to her feet and eased out through the passageway.
ANDERLE WAS WAITING BY the fire outside the hut where Tirilan had undergone her preparation. The girl still shivered from the scrubbing that had washed away most of the ritual paint as well as the scent Mikantor had left on her body, for at this season the water of the sacred spring was bitter cold. They had taken away her deerhide cape and restored her thick cloak of natural gray wool and her robe of priestess blue. But she had managed to
retain the sheath of the knife, hanging from a thong between her breasts beneath the gown.
“You are glowing, my child—I take it that you passed a pleasant night?” Tirilan’s gaze flicked to her mother’s face and then back to the fire, showing, she hoped, a confusion that was at least modest if no longer maidenly.
“I have reason to believe that the Goddess was pleased,” Tirilan said softly. “As for me, I feel like the slave who carries the steaming meat to the master. He can smell its savor, but his belly is still empty.”
“Do not try to tell me that your body still aches for the man,” Anderle said tartly. “I know the effects of such rituals. The power rushes through mind and body and leaves a great peace behind.”
“And what of my heart?” asked Tirilan. “I want to hear Mikantor’s voice and see his face. I want to make sure that he has enough to eat and clean clothes to wear. And I want him to take me in his arms and know that it is me he holds.”
The two women had kept their voices low, but one of the clanswomen, coming back to the fire, received a glare from Anderle that sent her scuttling away. The priestess turned back to her daughter.
“He has a band of men to take care of him! As for your heart—the Goddess has first claim on that. At Avalon we are spared the burdens that make a woman of the tribes old before her time. In return we give up the daily companionship over which you are sighing. What makes you think that he would want you? I don’t recall him seeking you out when he was at Avalon. You will come home with me and be grateful for what you have had.”
Tirilan felt herself flush and then go pale as her mother’s words hit home.
“You may be right—” she said in a low voice. She had always believed that her mother knew everything. Anderle had ruled Avalon for twenty years, after all. “You usually are. But I don’t believe you know anything about love.”
Anderle shook her head in exasperation. “I arranged this for Mikantor, but also for you, knowing that you were lusting for him like a doe in season. I gave you this opportunity to get it out of your system and be done.”
“Is that all the act of love means to you?” Tirilan exclaimed. “You scratch the itch, and then you both go your ways until next year? Was my father no more than a means to get you with child?”
“Of course not—” said Anderle, but her rejoinder lacked conviction.
“I don’t believe you,” Tirilan said flatly. “I am not going back to Avalon.” And if I am making a mistake, at least it will be my own . . .
“And your vows?”
“I will not tell him any temple secrets,” she said sweetly. “As for my other vows, I gave myself to the king as the Goddess required. If he desires me, I will lie with him again. If he does not, still I will serve him, and unless you have been lying about Mikantor’s destiny for all these years, thus I will serve the gods.”
“You will serve as a drudge, in camp with all those men—” Anderle began, but Tirilan interrupted her.
“If you try to stop me you will put the validity of the rite in question, and I think you want to secure Mikantor’s future even more than you want to impose your will on me. There have been many who were called Lady of Avalon, after all, but there is only one Son of a Hundred Kings.”
Others were gathering now. Tirilan faced her mother defiantly and saw the other woman shut her mouth with a snap, eyes glittering.
“Do not ask my blessing. You are my child no longer.”
“My Lady, I have not been a child since you sent me out from the chamber of initiation to climb the holy Tor,” Tirilan said softly. As her mother turned away, she bent in the full obeisance due to the Lady of Avalon, wondering whether she would ever do so again.
“MIKANTOR, YOU NEED TO go back into the hut. Someone is waiting for you.”
Hearing an odd tone in Ganath’s voice, Mikantor turned. His friend’s expression was strange as well, a mingling of consternation and amusement. But at least it was not the superstitious awe with which everyone, even his Companions, had looked at him yesterday.
All around them, the folk of the old blood who had gathered for the ritual were packing to return to their homes. The space beside the firepit was heaped with gifts they had left for him. Mikantor was still trying to understand what their allegiance would mean. Three clansmen were packing the gifts onto the sturdy ponies that roamed the moors. They had promised guides and supplies and a dry place to shelter over the winter for him and his band.
He started to say that he had no time, but the look in his friend’s eyes deterred him. Yesterday he had been limp with exhaustion from the hunt and the night that followed. But he could afford no more self-indulgence, and especially no more time trying to remember exactly what had happened in the cave. Few men received such a blessing even once, much less remembered or repeated it. The cure was to keep busy until the longing went away.
“All right, but you will have to keep at the men to get ready. Our guides must not be kept waiting.”
Limping a little from the wound in his thigh, he crossed the clearing and ducked through the door of the hut they had built for him. A woman was sitting beside the fire, wrapped in a cloak with a woolen scarf over her hair. He stopped short, eyes widening, as she rose to her feet and the scarf fell away to reveal a pale face and curling golden hair.
“Tirilan? What are you doing here? Did you come to see the ceremony? I did not see you there. . . .” His babble failed as she unwrapped the thing she had been holding and held it out to him.
“I came to return something to you. . . .”
A leather sheath. The sheath for the flint knife that they had not been able to find when the elders came to take him from the cave. He took a step toward her and staggered as his stiffened leg lagged.
“Does the wound trouble you?” she said swiftly. “Have they tended it properly? Let me see—”
“No, no. It’s fine, just stiff—Tirilan!” He caught her hands and held them, trying to sense truth through the contact of skin to skin as he was trying to hear in her voice the sweetness that he half remembered. “Does Anderle know you are here?”
“She knows. . . .”
“Did she send you?”
“She did not send me here.” said Tirilan.
“It was you, in the cave?” he breathed, beginning to understand, though he was not yet quite ready to believe.
“In the cave it was the Goddess and Her Chosen,” Tirilan said softly. “I believe that it is Her will that I stay with you. You said I might pray for your protection. I will do that better where I can see you.”
Mikantor shook his head, exasperation, pity, and an odd excitement struggling for mastery.
“You don’t understand. I am only a man.”
She shrugged. “I know that—I remember when you were a snot-nosed brat. But I also remember how you called the thunder. When you do not believe in yourself, I will believe for you. When I look at you, I still see the god.”
An unwelcome thought came to him. “Has your mother cast you out?”
Tiri grimaced. “She was not pleased. You do not have to take me—” she went on, “but I promise I can walk as far and sleep as rough as any of your men. And I am trained as a healer.”
He looked down at her and did not know what he felt, except that despite her brave words, just now she needed his protection.
“So . . . so . . .” He put an arm around her and drew her against him, simultaneously disappointed and relieved that at this moment his chief response was a rueful affection. “You shall come with me, then, and may the gods help any who would stand against us!”
TWENTY
Tirilan had turned her back on Avalon, but the lee of another tor had become her new home. She still found that strange. The moors northeast of Belerion were studded with rounded granite outcrops that thrust up from the soil. Best of all, they were solid ground, unlike so much of the moorland, which was a mix of peat bog and mire that could suck down a sheep, or a man. Today the land was covered with the white
of last night’s snowfall. Tirilan squinted against the blaze of sunlight on that glistening white blanket, and pulled her faithful gray cloak tightly around her to keep out the wind.
Mikantor was out there somewhere, on his way back from the next village, where he had taken some of their extra food. Winter had bit deeply on the moors, and while some of the men muttered that the supplies they had brought with them were for their own survival, Mikantor stood firm. The moor clans had welcomed them and helped them to rebuild their dwellings. The only way for all of them to prosper was to share.
Tirilan did not begrudge the food, but the moors were doubly treacherous when covered with snow. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, taking the shape of a swan to send her spirit out in protection. This, at least, was something she could do for him. Their blankets were laid on the raised platform to the right of the hearth, but they did not share them. She had not expected to do so when they were traveling, but by the time they reached the moors the habit of separation had become a barrier that he apparently did not wish to break. He never touched her. Did he know how she longed for some small sign of affection? She would never have believed that two people could live side by side in such silence. If nothing had changed by spring, she might just as well admit that her mother was right and go home to Avalon.
The wind had come up, swirling the light snow as if to give form to the spirits she sensed dancing across the land. Once, these highlands had been a patchwork of field and pasture, with many villages built from the abundant native stone. But the place where the moor folk had settled Mikantor and his Companions had been long abandoned. They had rebuilt some of the house circles and called it Gorsefield, from the amount of prickly brush they had to clear. From the tor she could see the shimmer of smoke that filtered through their thatched roofs. When the climate worsened, most of the people had been driven down to the coasts. Now, only a few clans of the elder folk stayed here, herding their sheep across the hills.
Sword of Avalon: Avalon Page 32