Once a day a petitioner would be rowed to the island and taken before Ramis. From the talk about her she realized there was no readily determined pattern by which they were called; often a newer arrival would be taken before those who languished here as long as four moons. It was said Ramis made the wealthy travelers wait longer. But Auriane thought Ramis’ reasonings more obscure than that; she saw a British chieftain, his hair matted with lime paste, his neck and arms heavily laden with gold—a man possessed of a solemn, quiet intensity—be admitted after only fourteen days.
When Auriane had been in this place but five days, Helgrune roused her from her bed of rushes at midnight. Startled awake and blinded by the torch thrust into her face, she forgot where she was.
Where is Decius? Tears sprang to her eyes as she remembered.
Helgrune said only, “It is time.” She nodded toward the island.
“Now?” Auriane whispered. “In the grimmest part of night?”
Helgrune would not answer; her manner suggested Auriane purposefully feigned ignorance. Brusquely she gave Auriane a long dress of white linen weighted at the hem with stones of amber, and told her to take off her shoes, though the ground was cold. Then, moving with ceremonial care, she laid a white cat-skin over Auriane’s shoulders.
Auriane and Helgrune then walked to the lake, flanked by two torch-bearing apprentices; two more stood ready by a coracle tied at the bank. What was the meaning of this? Night journeys were fraught with evils; they exposed you to spell-workings and all the unholy things that seeped up from deep in the earth when darkness hugged the land.
Her terror would have grown unmanageable except that she sensed the others awakening about her counted this some unusual honor. Those who were roused to investigate this nighttime procession excitedly awakened others.
“She has been here only five days,” Auriane heard one exclaim in furtive whispers. But what intrigued them more was that she was brought to the island by night. Apparently this had not happened in anyone’s memory. Who was this war-loving daughter of a distant chief who was garbed in the holiest of garments, and allowed to see the great Holy One after a wait of but five days?
Nearly the whole population was awake; they pressed close, watching with great curiosity. Several came forward, shouting or stammering their cases to Auriane in tongues she half understood, thinking she could intercede so they would be heard more quickly. Helgrune drove them off.
The coracle’s prow was carved into the shape of a dragon’s head; a lamp was concealed in the hollow head so that its eyes glowed and smoked, and an ancient consciousness, terrifying but benign, seemed to dwell there. As Auriane stepped unsteadily into the small craft, the smoking head dipped and rose with her weight. She was followed by the two torch-bearers who took their places at bow and stern. A single oarsman bore them off with sweeping strokes. The twin fires of the torches were reflected on the perfectly still waters as if in a mirror of moonstone. Rising like vapor from the dark island came the sound of birdbone flutes playing for a dance of ghosts. The sound of the gentle dipping of oars into water added a slightly askew percussion accompaniment to the wild, roaming plaint of the flutes. Auriane was in one moment faint at the strangeness of it all and in the next roused to sharp attention, in spite of the fact that they appeared to honor her. Who truly knew Ramis’ mind?
She is dark and unpredictable, and she knows I despise her.
The coracle bumped softly against the bank of the island. Helgrune and the two torchbearers led her up a flight of stone steps. Many tame serpents lived here with Ramis; their patterned backs caught Auriane’s eye as they rippled like running water just beyond the circle of torchlight.
They walked beneath a stone arch on which was mounted a shield painted with a crescent moon and a tree; it symbolized the protective powers of the Veleda, preserver of all the tribes in battle. Just beyond was a wood image of Fria, a plain, polished staff of oak fashioned only minimally by human hands; its voluptuous curves were nature’s work alone. Helgrune halted, and Auriane knew she was meant to kiss the image. Briefly she knelt and did so—and started, near certain she felt living flesh quiver beneath her lips.
The small procession moved toward the central lodge called the temple-house, with its ritual fire never allowed to go out.
As they moved closer to the fire, Auriane saw the solemn form of a woman seated before it with her back to them, proud and erect in regal silence. She seemed vastly solitary on her island in a lake, as though she were the first-created of all human creatures. The night was oppressive and heavy about her, but she seemed to hold it at bay as she gently emanated dark power. Masses of silver and gold hair fanned about her; firelight played on it like moonlight on a fall of water. The island’s serpents knew this woman was their mistress; here they swarmed thickly as if drawn to her, testing tongues flicking out at the night.
Helgrune stopped and spoke the ritual words meant to calm a petitioner’s fears: “She is a mortal woman.” Then the haughty serving-woman and the torchbearers departed into the night, leaving Auriane alone with the Veleda.
For long moments that formidable figure froze Auriane in place. She saw that Ramis sat within a circle of skulls dyed red with ocher. A bolt of primitive fear flashed through her.
Those skulls belong to the poor fools she lured here at night. But it seemed that long, tangled roots held her to the earth; she could no more run off than could the alder trees about the lake. The image persisted, as if Ramis imposed it on her mind: Her arms were spreading leafy branches, sheltering her people, nourishing them, even now in exile. If she fled, they would be exposed, unprotected.
But if she could not flee, neither could she go forward. She knew then that since last they met, her fears had altered, matured. Gone was that childhood terror of being spirited off and forced to live in darkness. Now she just did not want Ramis plucking at the torn, quivering mass that was her soul. Living was painful enough without that oversharp vision skewering all her hopes.
Then pride lent her strength, and Auriane moved about the fire, uncertain why she felt she had to prove her courage to Ramis if she so despised her. Now she saw the old sorceress in profile, that noble face stark, eternal as an outcropping of rock. Ramis seemed to command the fire; Auriane was certain it swelled and receded with her thoughts as she sat solemnly still, lids half-closed, those eyes seeming possessed of a potent emptiness. Her soul did not seem resident in her body.
Is she roaming the forest as a wolf?
Ramis’ words of long ago, “You wear your mother’s fear, not your own,” came to her then, and in that moment Auriane knew it was true. Athelinda had so feared for Baldemar that reason failed where Ramis was concerned, and her mother saw only the sorceress’s threatening aspect. Now it was too late to fear for Baldemar.
Fear caught us and consumed us, did it not? And yet we still live. Mother, now I can see this dread creature with my own eyes.
She knew Ramis wanted her to enter the circle of skulls and sit opposite her.
Hardly breathing, Auriane stepped over the skulls, strung like some frightful beaded necklace round the fire, and settled herself on the ground facing the Veleda.
The face of the greatest of the Holy Nine was a low moon poised just above the flames; her forehead shone from the heat. How taut that skin was over the simple elegance of her bones, Auriane thought; despite the fact that she was well into the age of grandmothers, Ramis’ face brought to mind the smooth stones polished by rivers, softly rounded into the shape of the eternal.
The hooded eyes focused on Auriane, flashing with a restless but disciplined intelligence. They were eyes that knew lake bottoms and what rested in the deeps of the night sky in back of the stars, that knew what stirred beneath the barrow, that illumined all shadowed places with their wan light. Auriane shivered, feeling stripped of clothes, of flesh.
When Ramis spoke, it was in an intimate voice that took no notice of the gulf of years separating this encounter from the last.
&n
bsp; “Tell me, child, why is there an egg within each skull?”
Auriane looked carefully at the red skulls and saw that within each pair of gaped eyes was indeed an egg, most probably that of a goose. She held in a breath. The eggs seemed to pulse, as if something living within struggled to burst out.
“Because…death holds always the seed of new life.” She was pleased she had a reasonable-sounding answer and waited expectantly for approval. But she got none.
Ramis’ retort was like the precise thrust of a weapon at a vital point. “Why, then, do you grieve?”
Auriane was startled by this shift in mood. “Because…of love. Perhaps I love too much.” She thought of Baldemar.
“No. You love not nearly enough. If you did, you would not grieve.”
Auriane said nothing, puzzled by this.
“You do not understand because you know only one kind of love, a sad, sickly one that ends in your abandonment. Truly, you are a miser with love. There are a hundred kinds. Love of this moment in time, for one. Do you remember when you were a girl of three summers, perhaps four? Then you knew love of this moment in time. That can be regained.”
“That…but that is for children.”
“But you felt something akin to it once, as a woman.”
Auriane knew she spoke of the luminous state that had come over her when she pried the stone from the hoof of the mare.
“But that was your magic.”
“No. It was yours. And it is the natural state of those who are not lost. Auriane, it is time for you to learn the ritual of fire.”
She felt herself drawing away. “I will learn no sorcerer’s rituals.”
“Good, because I do not know any. Sorcery is the word spewed out by the ignorant when their distorted vision is faced unavoidably with the divine. The fire ritual is nourishment, necessary if you are to survive the years in store for you, which I must tell you are going to be wretched, but glorious.”
“Glorious? I will have fame?”
“I would say… you will be a queen in death. Now, silence. I will explain no further.”
“Will this ritual bring me home?”
“You are home. Silence.”
This time Auriane obeyed, sensing that a heavy door dropped in place.
“Now narrow your vision until you see only the fire, yes, and know that this is all fires, for all have one united spirit—greedy, devouring, but trustworthy if tamed. Shed your skin, your heart; you are grasping flames, reaching ever upward, ever frustrated, wanting to flow up into the sky but unable.”
Auriane’s fingers were licking flames, her heart, a writhing mass of molten yellow. She panicked and her spirit pulled away.
“Do not do that. It cannot harm you.”
Some wiser instinct prevailed, and Auriane let the fire tug at her soul until she felt herself steadying, flickering, floating just above the ground.
“Now turn your mind upon the world before the time of the Giants, when all was frost and rime and fertile sea.” Ramis’ voice was lilting, low, and strangely seductive; Auriane felt herself enticed inward, step by step, edging dangerously toward what felt like nonexistence. Oblivion. A sweat born of terror moistened her brow.
“And now, before you is the Yawning Gap. The gods are not; they have not yet been created. All is pregnant emptiness. The Abyss is ready to bring forth.”
The world snapped into new shape. With a leap of joy Auriane realized it was a shape she knew, from that day long ago when Ramis halted her on the road. She was borne up on warm, nurturing water. All memories were washed and transformed—they were as they had been but with their coating of misery dissolved away so that they were harmonious, brilliant. As before, she recognized the world was made a little differently from what she had always supposed; it was one great seamless interweaving, and the weaver was infinitely benign. The crackle of flames was some natural instrument playing along with the rustle of branches above; the water all about was silk, her body a supple and stable form, fluidly balanced. Her attention to the fire was a solemn, rhythmless dance. She sensed tender light reaching into the grimmest parts of her soul, illumining everything evenly; there was no act of hers she thought it necessary to hide. There was, too, a peculiar sense that everyone she had known, the living and the dead, were present. Present and…not entirely separate beings.
She was distinctly aware that Ramis chanted words, that rich dark voice the beating heart of all this, and she felt a flash of despair: I want to be able to come here on my own—I do not want to need her.
And then, in one moment, she felt a third presence drawing very close, sensing its effect if not its form, like the disturbance on a lake when a large creature comes near to the surface, then dives. The ripples were all about.
“My lady,” Auriane said as if speaking in her sleep, “we are not alone.”
She realized Ramis perceived this already; the old woman was very still, feeling, listening.
Finally Ramis spoke. “Yes…another mind is drawn close…. Vast space separates us…but your soul touches his….” Her voice drifted, as if carried on the smoke of the fire, and Auriane had to grope for it; she was not certain she rightly heard the next words. “…because he wears the Sacred Mold.”
The sense persisted; the presence was a spirit so like her own she found herself playing with it, twining round it.
Ramis had said “he.” In some far country a man wore the aurr. Who was this? And how could that be? But then Ramis broke the enchantment. “Away from the fire now. Away, and look at me.”
Auriane felt she had outstretched wings that softly lowered her to earth. She felt the bite of cold air. Her hand went to her throat—she expected the pouch of earth Ramis had put round her neck as a babe to be there and was desolate when it was not. She frowned, not quite remembering what had happened.
“Do not neglect this ritual, Auriane,” Ramis was saying, pointing with a forefinger to emphasize the words; her eyes shone with a gentle protectiveness Auriane had not thought part of her nature. “Let it be your ship over black water. It may well be what enables you, in coming days, to keep that mortal body long enough to come into your fate. If you are in a place where you can build no fire, make fire in your mind.” Auriane could scarce believe this was the same Ramis of her childhood. Gone was the baffling demigoddess of their last meeting, who hurled down harsh teachings like a rain of spears; this Ramis was an amicable companion riding the same path to a village, offering advice because she had come this way before.
Ramis answered the unspoken thought. “It is not I who has changed, but you. Your spirit is readied for things now that before it was not. It sorrows me, though, that you came here not for yourself, but for the child.”
Auriane felt a quiet jolt. She had told no one in this place she was with child. A hand went protectively to her faintly swelling belly.
Necessity pressed in then, and she remembered the question she had come to ask. “My lady, will you…protect me here until my lying-in?”
“The gods cannot do that! Of course you may stay, but I desire a gift of you.” Ramis lifted her head and narrowed her eyes as if focusing on some future day; a measure of the old sternness returned. “The child you carry is a girl. I want her.”
“I—my child is mine.” Why was I so foolish as to be lulled into trusting this woman? “You cannot have her!”
“If you want that babe to live, Auriane, you must give her to me. You are destined to be led into places where no child can survive.”
Auriane felt her heart pause. Auguries of late had said she would not live long. And had not Ramis herself just made the bewildering—but decidedly sinister—prediction that she would be “a queen in death”?
This child would be damned among her own people. But with Ramis she would learn strength and wisdom and have status, though of a different sort. Decius might be captured or dead—she could not depend on his help. This island did seem a tranquil place in a world of raging storms.
“The chi
ld is half-foreign.”
“To me, none are foreign.”
Auriane felt desperate, sad, and trapped.
“No. I cannot give up my child.”
“As you say,” Ramis said gently. Auriane knew Ramis had not given up the fight; this was a tactical retreat. The old woman would bide her time, then try again.
“Can you tell me…is Decius safe?”
“Safe, but not content. But then he is content to be not content.”
“Will I…will I see him again?”
Ramis smiled and shook her head, like a mother with a precocious child who tries a trick to get something she cannot have. “Some fates are not set and cannot be known.”
“Why did you summon me at night?”
“Ah. If you knew the answer to that, you might dash your head against that rock. You’re not near ready to hear it. Later, much later, you will hear it and welcome the news.” Ramis paused; with a long, delicate forefinger she stroked the head of an adder that regarded her with needle-sharp eyes. Auriane knew that variety to be highly poisonous. Has she enchanted it, or does she consider death of so little account?
The next question welled up in her against her will, like sickness in the throat. “I must know it….” The words were barely audible. “I beg you…tell me…why was I led to commit the most horrible of crimes?”
Ramis regarded her in compassionate silence for a time. Then she deliberately teased the snake. After a moment the evil head flashed out, and the adder bit her. Bright droplets of blood appeared on the fleshy part of her palm.
Aghast, Auriane started to struggle to her feet. “You let it strike you! Why! Do you wish to die?”
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