The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

by Llywelyn, Morgan

  The magic house. Condemned to a life of swirling mists and chanting. Instead of Goibban’s manly grace to companion all the days of thislife, there would be only Kernunnos … The image of the wolf’s face flashed before her eyes again, recalling the intense dislike she had felt for the shapechanger as far back as she could remember.

  “Don’t do that to me. I would hate it!”

  Rigantona’s face was set and unyielding. “You are being very foolish; you are lucky we still have authority over you in this matter. To be drui is to be granted access to the secrets of the earth, Epona; it is more power than you would ever have otherwise. I would have given up a husband and children myself, gladly, for such an opportunity.”

  “But I want a husband more than anything else in thisworld.”

  “I assure you, you will be happier without one. The gutuiters are spared all that, spared the discomfort and inconvenience of childbearing and raising so they may give their full attention to the spirits, and I think they are better for it. Look at Tena, or Uiska. Their breasts are still high, they look seasons younger than they are. I’ve always secretly suspected they use their magic to keep themselves strong and beautiful past a woman’s usual time; wouldn’t you like that?”

  “No! I just want the life I’ve always expected to have.”

  “No one gets the life they expect,” Rigantona told her with a trace of bitterness in her voice. “That is why we barter with the spirits to try to get the best deal we can.” She looked pointedly at the girl’s bandaged arm. “What man will want you now? The people do not take disfigured wives.”

  “I won’t be disfigured.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “I just … know.”

  “Hai,” said Rigantona. “Is that another gift you have, the gift of healing? Can you heal yourself?”

  “No. I don’t have any gifts, I tell you. I don’t have them and I don’t want them.” Epona backed away from her mother.

  “You don’t seem to realize I’m doing this for your own good, Epona,” Rigantona insisted, following her. “You have no say in this; it’s not like accepting or rejecting a particular man as husband. Quit sulking and try to appreciate your good fortune. We will have such a ceremony, such games and feasting …”

  As Epona was listening horrified to her mother’s glowing plans, Toutorix was receiving his own bad news. For the first time, his position as lord of the tribe was being seriously questioned by the tribal council. Even his younger brother Taranis, who had always been his strongest supporter and warrior-of-the-shoulder, came forward to testify he felt the reign of the Invincible Boar was nearing its end.

  In his abnormally deep voice, Taranis said to his brother, “Lately you have been giving away our wealth to the traders in return for shoddy merchandise and inequitable terms.” The members of the council nodded agreement. “This season you have not demanded the highest price as you did in the past. You have let their oiled tongues beguile you into accepting their sixth or seventh offer instead of really bargaining. Your skills are failing you, Toutorix.”

  The chieftain turned on his brother in white-lipped anger. “How can you say these things to me? Since I became lord of the tribe, have I not expanded our trade until we now live here as luxuriously as the princes live in Etruria? Who else could have done that?”

  “You speak the truth. You have been sunshine driving out cold shadows, Toutorix, but your light is dimming now. Your evening has come. If there were a battle to be fought, I do not think you would be able to manage your sword and shield.”

  Okelos was standing just outside the council ring, his eyes shining hotly. Toutorix, glancing up, saw the expression on his face and was reminded of young wolves, waiting to bring down an old stag. Life passes on to life; so says the spirit within.

  Toutorix got to his feet, forcing himself to rise as if there were still some spring in his legs, but the effort cost him. He had aged mightily this sunseason and he knew it; he had spent more of himself than he could spare. “There may be some wisdom in what you say,” he acknowledged, “but I will have to think on it. Perhaps in the snowseason, when there is time for long conversation and deliberation, we will consider choosing a new chief. But in the meantime I am still strong enough to care for my people!” He slammed his staff against the earth for emphasis and strode away from the circle.

  Once out of their sight, however, his shoulders slumped with fatigue. He realized there was little time left. The tusks of the Invincible Boar were drawn. With or without his acquiescence a new chief must be chosen all too soon, and his spirit would have nothing left to do in thisworld.

  He made his way back toward his lodge, feeling neither the wind at his back nor the earth mother beneath his feet. He did not even see Epona until she flung herself on him, throwing her arms around him and shouting, “Stop her, stop her! Don’t let my mother ruin my life!”

  He staggered under the weight of her assault. “Do what? What are you yelling about?”

  “Rigantona means to give me to the druii to be trained as a gutuiter, even though I don’t want to do it. I would much rather burn in a cage and escape thisworld,” Epona cried, her words tumbling over one another in their eagerness to escape her mouth. She flung her arms wide, then clutched Toutorix again; she expressed all her youthful horror and indignation almost incoherently, but gradually Toutorix understood. Rigantona had found a way to be sure of getting something for the girl now, instead of waiting and gambling on her desirability as a wife.

  He gently disentangled himself from Epona, surprised that her embrace had caused such numbness in his arms. “Rigantona can be greedy,” he said, “but you need not worry. I am still lord of the tribe—for a little while—and I can command. I will tell your mother that you are not to be forced into the priesthood. You wait here; it will be all right.” He patted her hand.

  Rigantona was striding toward him, hot on her daughter’s heels. Seeing her, Toutorix set his face in the stern, implacable mask of his warrior days. He called her name in an angry voice. Rigantona hesitated.

  Watching the two of them, Epona clenched her fists by her sides and hated her feeling of helplessness. I have a right to shape my own life, she thought, not for the first time.

  Toutorix faltered. Six paces away from him, Rigantona saw his face take on a strange bluish color and his eyes widen. He opened his mouth as if to say something but no word came out, only a croak like that of a trampled frog. His cup arm clamped convulsively against his side and his knife arm made a wild circle in the air, then canted forward with the rest of his body, falling like a toppled tree, out of the world of now.

  Chapter 7

  Epona was the first to reach him. As soon as he stumbled she darted forward, and by the time he hit the ground she was already calling for help. She threw herself to her knees beside the fallen chieftain and cradled his head in her arms, willing him to open his eyes and look at her. But the eyes remained closed, buried in deep purple shadows. The face of Toutorix looked like a skull, the skin as pallid and lifeless as beeswax.

  Rigantona bent over them. “What happened? Is he all right? Get up, Toutorix; don’t lie there on the ground making a fool of me.”

  Epona tried to shut out her mother’s words. She needed to concentrate on Toutorix in this very special moment, for she needed no gutuiter to tell her his spirit was leaving his body. She looked up at her mother imploringly and pursed her lips to ask for silence.

  Rigantona understood at last. She knelt on his other side, her face almost as pale as his. Both women heard the death rattle in his throat as his spirit forced its way upward, and watched in silence as his lips gaped open to release it.

  People were forming a circle around them now, jostling and asking questions, but their voices died away as soon as they realized what was happening. One must be silent during the passing of a spirit. They had been silent after Brydda’s last wild shriek.

  Poel pushed his way through the crowd and knelt next to Epona. She glanced
up quickly, grateful for the swift arrival of a drui at the moment of transition. Poel laid his fingers against the side of Toutorix’s neck, feeling for the throb of lifeblood, but there was no response. He waited long enough to be certain, then passed his hand over his eyes, signaling Rigantona that her husband’s life was over.

  Still they waited. Life, and the end of life, has its own rhythm.

  In the silence they heard the faintest sigh. It might have been wind in the pine trees but it was not. The crowd fell back so as not to impede the passing of the spirit. Epona felt the weight in her arms grow heavier.

  “Gone,” she said softly. Her eyes and her throat were burning.

  All lesser matters must be set aside now. The lord of the tribe was dead, and no other business could be conducted until the ceremonies of his transition were completed. Vallanos and some of the nobles went to the passes to intercept approaching traders and demand they make camp until Toutorix rested with the ancestors.

  Toutorix had had the bad timing to die before a new chieftain could be chosen to whom he would hand his staff; therefore, it became the property of his widow until the council elected his successor. But such an election could not be held until the funeral rites were completed, and until that time, Rigantona held the staff of the chieftain and none could dispute her authority.

  With considerable satisfaction, she propped the staff against her loom where all who came into the lodge could see it. She then sent her children from the lodge and summoned the elders of the tribe, as well as the five druii.

  She made a big show of offering her guests red wine and honeycakes, but they all knew they had been invited for a serious purpose. Rigantona began explaining almost at once.

  “Toutorix was an exceptional chieftain,” she reminded them, as if there was any chance his prestige might already be tarnishing while his body was still cooling in the house of the dead. “Perhaps the greatest leader in the history of our people. Under his guidance, the Kelti developed a trade network that crosses the earth like rivers and streams. Because of his reputation, Kelti daughters have married into every important tribe of the people; our blood is everywhere. We have more friends than enemies. Who else can make such a claim?”

  The elders nodded their heads. Rigantona had begun the meeting as the late Toutorix had always opened negotiations with traders, by talking on subjects where there was agreement and getting them accustomed to assent before the hard bargaining began.

  “I have stood at my husband’s back,” she went on, “and listened to the strangers who come here from other lands. I have heard how the dead are honored elsewhere, among the Makedonians and the fierce warriors of Sparta, among the Lydians and Phrygians and the Etruscans of Etruria. Especially among the Etruscans. The funerals they give their dead princes would do honor to the dying sun itself. Our paltry rituals are insulting by comparison, and the spirits we send into the otherworld must be embarrassed when they meet the spirits of the Etruscans.

  “Need I remind you, no member of the Kelti likes to be embarrassed? And Toutorix least of all?”

  She addressed Nematona directly. “You are senior gutuiter ; you preside over birth into thisworld as the priests preside over birth into the next. We honor your wisdom. Tell me, Daughter of the Trees, is it not true that the druii adapt each funeral ritual, its songs, its sacrifices, to the person in transition? Must not one’s way of death fit, even as clothes fit the body?”

  “You speak truly,” Nematona agreed.

  “Then should not a very special celebration be prepared for my very special husband, one that would cause his name to be remembered for all the generations to come?”

  Nematona paused before answering, trying to feel the thoughts of the other druii, but the lodge was filled with so many tensions she could not separate them from the general atmosphere.

  “What you say has merit,” Nematona replied at last, cautiously. Better not make a commitment until she could see where all this was leading and confer with her colleagues.

  Rigantona, however, smiled with satisfaction. It was enough agreement to begin the serious bartering; she had learned much, standing at her husband’s back. “Hai. Then I would like to have Toutorix buried unburned, as the princes of Etruria are buried, with enough symbols of wealth and prestige beside him to impress anyone he may meet in the otherworlds. And when I make my own transition, I want my body put with his, to share in all he has as I have done in thisworld.”

  There was a frozen hush in the lodge. Even the fire seemed to hold its breath, its omnipresent cheerful crackling muted to a hiss.

  The druii and elders looked at Rigantona incredulously; they were shocked by her suggestion. She gazed back at them with all the authority she could summon, determined not to be intimidated by the protests sure to come.

  Rigantona had been badly frightened recently. Although she had seen sacrifices before, Brydda’s death haunted her, filling her thoughts with fire and screaming, making her suddenly nervous of consigning her own body to the flames. Formerly she had given little thought to transition; the high, sweet air of the Blue Mountains did not foster the diseases that ravaged the riverlands from time to time, and death seemed far away, something that happened only to the old. Rigantona had never thought of herself as old. She felt the same inside as she always had. When she looked in her polished bronze mirror, she thought she saw the face she had seen when she and Toutorix were first married.

  She would grow old sometime, of course, but not yet. She would leave her flesh and her jewelry, her clothes and scented oils, sometime. When she and Toutorix were feeble and tired of their bodies. Many seasons from now.

  Then all at once Toutorix was gone, and when Rigantona looked in her mirror she saw a face she hardly recognized, an aging face with the sap dried out of it. She had nothing left but her wealth …

  She must hurry to make provisions to take it, all of it, with her, to enjoy in the otherworlds. And there was a way it could be done. Other peoples knew of it, practiced it, believed in it. She would, too.

  Old Dunatis cleared his throat and stood up. Everyone turned respectfully to watch him. Many seasons ago, when Dunatis was still a young miner without even a shortsword and throwing spear, his wife had borne two children by the old history singer of the tribe, Maponos. Both of those offspring had subsequently proved to be druii; the first was Poel, and later, Tena. Now Dunatis was revered by the Kelti, enriched by gifts given to him in honor of his offspring. He had built himself a lodge high on a steep slope where none but the eagle could approach him, and it was said the spirit of the mountain herself guarded him because he had been so favored.

  “We have burned the bodies for many generations, and we have prospered for many generations,” old Dunatis said in his phlegmy voice, fixing Rigantona with the stern eye of tradition.

  She replied, “Toutorix and I sometimes discussed this, as a man and woman discuss things on their bedshelf.” Or we might have, she thought to herself, if he had ever had time or inclination. “Does not the history singer tell us that in the morning of our race we lived far to the east on a great plain, and buried our dead unburned, in barrows in the earth?”

  The druii and the elders rolled their eyes toward Poel and the bard nodded assent.

  There was precedent, then.

  Rigantona’s eyes sparkled, as she sensed triumph. “I only ask that we consider a return to this good way of sending our dead to their nextlives. It is not appropriate for a lord of the tribe Kelti to have his discarded flesh burned and the ashes poured into a miserable urn better designed for storing melted fat, a few trinkets dropped in beside him like child’s toys. No! We can carry our debts over and pay them in the nextworld, so why not carry our wealth with us as well? As others do? Are we not at least as wise as the Etruscans?

  “Are we not wise enough to consider a ritual the chief himself desired?” She flung that last statement at them like a lump of gold thrown into the trade, knowing no one could contradict it. Who could guess what the
lord of the tribe had said to his wife on their bedshelf?

  It was a shrewd ploy. The councilors were reminded of the chief who might be watching them at this very moment from the otherworlds, assessing their reactions. It would be a foolhardy thing to anger the spirit of a man like Toutorix. In his youth, he had been the strongest warrior of the people, and once freed from his worn-out body he might be that strong again. It was well known that he never forgot an insult or set aside a grudge. If this new ritual was truly what he wanted …

  Dunatis stroked his scanty white beard. “There may be something to consider here,” he told Rigantona, watching as she closed her fingers around her husband’s staff and ran her hand up and down it, slowly, drawing all eyes, bringing the power of Toutorix to life once more in the lodge. The staff of ultimate authority.

  “The council cannot take responsibility for making such a decision,” Dunatis told her. “We can only advise. It is druii business, this making or changing of ritual.”

  “But you would not oppose it?”

  Dunatis looked around the room at the other elders, carrying on a quick consultation with his eyes. “No,” he said, turning back to Rigantona, “we would not oppose it if the druii say it can be allowed.”

  Rigantona turned to the five druii, sitting shoulder to shoulder. “How say the members of the priesthood?”

  Uiska murmured in her soft voice but no words could be understood. Her restless hands moved in her lap, her fingers rippling like water. Tena sat with the firelight burning in her red hair and said nothing. Nematona stared into some leafy distance no one else could see. Poel covered his face with his hands, lost in contemplation.

  Kernunnos stood, facing the wife of the dead chief. “You propose a very serious undertaking, Rigantona,” he told her sternly. “This would be a major change in the pattern and I am not certain it would be of benefit to the tribe.