Apollo's Raven

by Linnea Tanner

  “With all his heart,” Agrona interjected. “And that is why your father adopted your bastard sisters. The ugly truth is your mother deeply wounded your father. He wanted a child with her. I fulfilled his desire by giving your mother a love potion, so she would accept your father’s advances. That is why she despises me so. She believes you are a curse that will join Marrock in his quest to overthrow the king. The only daughters she can embrace are those fathered by Trystan—the only man she ever loved. She never loved your father.”

  Agrona’s words discomfited Catrin. “Why are you saying these things?”

  “So you understand love is an illusion. You gave little thought to endangering our kingdom by placing your trust in the Roman.” Agrona again waved her hand over the candle. “Whose reflection do you now see in the flame?”

  When the raven’s reflection suddenly appeared, Catrin blinked hard, but she could not obliterate the image.

  Agrona walked behind Catrin and leaned next to her face. “Yes … I see it, too. You and the raven are one and the same. A raven’s true nature is to feed on hate, war, and carnage. That, my love, is your true essence. Do you truly believe Marrock took your innocence?”

  The wolf raised its head and snarled, making Catrin jump. Rapid breaths grated in her throat as the creature’s feral eyes consumed her. Catrin shifted her eyes toward Agrona. “I have good reason to hate Marrock for what he did to me!”

  “What do you think he did?”

  “He tried to rape me … kill me!”

  Ominously lowering her voice, Agrona asked, “Did he? Or is this in your mind? Can you distinguish between reality and fantasy?”

  Though Catrin was beginning to question her own sanity, she said, “Yes, I know the difference.”

  Agrona uncapped a jar in her hand and smelled. “Do you recognize the odor?”

  Catrin whiffed the pungent odors of clover, rotting meat, and blood. “It smells like what Marrock gave me to drink on that day we searched for the white raven in the forest.”

  “I thought so.” Agrona lowered the jar for the wolf to smell, then set the container on the table and sprinkled some green powders into the bowl. “This magical herb can merge two souls together into one.” She sliced her palm with the knife tip and allowed the blood to drip into the mixture. “Did Marrock cut his hand before he gave you the potion?”

  Catrin shuddered. “No … I can’t remember.”

  Agrona pinched some dried lavender into the concoction. “Your father’s favorite aphrodisiac. He gave this to your mother before he seeded you in her belly.”

  Catrin recognized the fragrance as one of the scents from the wolf pelt on which she and Marcellus had made love. Doubts began to gnaw at her that her love for Marcellus was real.

  The Druidess added other dark powders into the bowl and stirred the mixture with a feathered quill. “Ahh! Now I must put in the most important ingredient—a beating heart.” She pulled out a limp chickadee from a bag, sliced the bird’s breast with a knife and pulled its ribs apart to cut the arteries away from the heart. She marbled the greenish mixture with the blood pulsating from the still-beating heart.

  Repulsed, Catrin asked with a shaky voice, “What are you planning to do with that?”

  Agrona fingered the bowl’s edge. “My love, you already know. You must take this, so I can also travel with you to the inner depths of your raven’s mind. Together, we will discover the powerful forces from the Otherworld.”

  You mean powers that you can use! Catrin puckered her lips. “I will not drink that!”

  Agrona’s eyes seemed to dance with delight. “I thought you might say that. You still defy me, even though your father ordered you to train with me. Tell me, Catrin, what were you doing with Marcellus before Apollo cursed you with the falling sickness?”

  Catrin wiped her clammy hands on her woolen breeches. “I don’t remember.”

  The raven hopped onto the table, flapped its wings, and knocked the candle off the table, extinguishing the hissing flame on the earthen floor.

  “Look at what you made your raven do!” Agrona scolded. “It knows the truth. You are a sexual creature that no man can get enough of.”

  Catrin gripped the table’s edge. “You are wrong!”

  The Druidess gave a wry smile and mixed the solution with a quill. “Of course, you were not always like that. You were once as pure as the white raven—unblemished, innocent. Your father treasured you as such, believing he could hide you from all predators. He was mistaken.” Agrona stopped stirring the solution and stared at Catrin. “Do you know why a white raven cannot survive in the wild?”

  Catrin watched her raven cock its head and gawk at the bowl. Not wanting to hear the answer to the riddle, she shook her head.

  Agrona twisted her upper lip into a half-smile. “A white raven cannot hide from predators in the forest. When Marrock lured you into the woods, your raven spirit had to be scorched black, so you could fight back. I wonder …” Agrona squinted. “Was it your raven that attacked Marrock? Or was it you who slashed and sculpted his hideous face?”

  The raven’s flapping wings startled Catrin as the bird darted over her head and flew to an upper ceiling beam. Looking up, she watched the bird bounce back and forth. She lowered her eyes to Agrona and proclaimed, “The ravens attacked Marrock!”

  Agrona dipped a finger in the mixture and lowered it to the wolf’s muzzle. The creature sniffed and licked her finger, then staggered to a back corner and curled into a ball. The gigantic animal appeared to sleep, its chest steadily rising and lowering.

  “See, no harm came to the wolf,” Agrona said, which gave Catrin scant reassurance. “The elixir will help you sleep and dredge out dark memories from the recesses of your mind.” The Druidess paused. “You are faced with a conundrum. You can blindly follow Marcellus to your destruction, or you can heed your raven’s omens. What visions has the raven shown you? You must tell me the truth, or your raven will punish you.”

  Catrin glanced at the raven overhead, wondering if Agrona had taken control of it. Quivering, she finally revealed, “A fire-breathing eagle will destroy our village. Marcellus will descend in a horse-driven chariot from the heavens and save me from the firestorm.”

  Agrona smiled. “What meaning did you take from this?”

  Catrin blurted, “I am destined to be with him.”

  Rising from the table, Agrona fixed her eyes on Catrin. “Listen to yourself. You foresee our kingdom being destroyed, yet you conjure up an image of Marcellus as a god who will save you.”

  Catrin hesitated. “You are trying to trick me.”

  Agrona slowly walked around the table. “You have joined your thoughts with Marcellus, haven’t you? You pulled him into your mind. Is that how he gained secrets about our kingdom?”

  Catrin could feel Agrona’s dark aura spinning around her like a web, entrapping her as the Druidess spoke in a hypnotic, monotone voice. “Ahh … your silence answers my question. You are a soul traveler who can enter minds of other living beings. Your body is solid, your soul fluid. Only a few are chosen by the gods to be soul travelers. Are you one of them? Did your soul enter the Roman’s head, so you could escape my thoughts?”

  Agrona pressed both hands down on Catrin’s head. “You have more mystical abilities than I first realized. Not only can you see the past from the raven’s perspective, but you can also see the future—the destruction of our village. That is why you must allow me to enter your mind, so we can travel to the Wall of Lives. Together, we can uncover hidden mysteries from the past, present, and future.”

  Catrin swallowed hard. “At what cost to me?”

  Agrona pulled her hands away, leaned over and poured some of the mixture from the bowl into a brass goblet. “If you drink this, the truth of what Marrock did to you that day will be revealed. Then you will no longer be afraid of the wolf in your nightmares.”<
br />
  Catrin hesitated.

  I could lose my soul and humanity.

  Yet, if she continued resisting, Agrona would again call upon the guard outside to force the potion down her throat. The previous day, Catrin passed out when the slimy mixture went down her windpipe, denying her lungs of air. When she awoke, she was facedown in vomit, her throat raw. This could happen again. With no chance to escape, she only wanted relief from nightmares and hallucinations driving her mad. She finally capitulated. “If I take you into my mind, you must stop tormenting me with these potions.”

  Grinning, Agrona offered the large goblet to Catrin. “Enlightenment only comes after you confront the past to face the future.”

  Taking the goblet, Catrin gagged from the pungent smell. She tilted her head back and drank the metallic-tasting potion, forcing it down. Her stomach revolted and ejected some of the acrid contents, but she forced it back down with a hard swallow.

  Agrona chanted, pressing her hands harder on Catrin’s head:

  Let our souls join,

  Raven and wolf together.

  Searching for dark portals,

  To shine truth’s bright light.

  The force from Agrona’s fingertips made Catrin dizzy as the fluidic energy flowed into her head. A light flashed in her mind and she could sense Agrona’s soul entering. Together, they plunged into the light tunnel that led to the Wall of Lives. As they approached the transitional barrier, they decelerated and floated up the watery surface until they found the red life-thread to Marrock’s past.

  36

  Marrock’s Life-thread

  At the instant she was losing consciousness, she visualized moving Marrock’s life-thread aside with her forefinger. She inwardly beseeched her raven to help her.

  Agrona told Catrin to study Marrock’s life-thread’s crinkled juncture where he had led her as a girl into a forest glade. Catrin observed stacked rocks that encircled smoldering ashes. Based on the circumference of the stone barrier, a large fire had recently burnt there. Three altars, each covered with a different colored wolf pelt, formed the point of a triangle outside the perimeter of the rock containment.

  Catrin, then a nine-year-old girl, was waiting at one of the altars covered with a pristine white wolf pelt. Repressed memories began surfacing and piecing together as she studied Marrock’s life-thread. A chill ran down Catrin’s spine when Marrock appeared through some oak trees. His coppery hair was spiked into the horns of a ram. He told her to sit on the altar, so he could coax the white raven from the treetops. She trustingly climbed onto the altar top, and he handed her a gem-crusted goblet filled with what looked like blood. She took a couple of sips, but refused to take any more of the awful-tasting mixture. After a while, her eyelids became droopy, and she snuggled into the soft fur and fell into a twilight sleep.

  As the next moments unfolded on Marrock’s life-thread, Catrin realized she had slept through the original horror of what happened next. He placed a listless, freckled-face boy with wild chestnut hair on one altar and set a silver haired girl, about four years of age, on another alter. With a serrated knife, he sliced the girl’s neck. Her eyes were opened in sheer terror as he brutally cut away at her throat like a butchered animal.

  Catrin suddenly recalled the gut-wrenching gurgles of blood spurting out of the girl’s severed windpipe when she was in twilight sleep while this happened. Continuing to watch the events project on the life-thread, she felt nausea hit her like a fist when she saw Marrock yank the girl’s blood-soaked head off. He then desecrated the boy’s body like his female victim.

  But that was not the worst of it. The horror of what happened next numbed Catrin to her core.

  Marrock undressed himself and stretched his arms toward the setting sun. On his back were tattoos of interconnecting human skulls and wolves that encircled three flames. He ran and leapt into the air, his shadowy figure shape-shifting into the black outline of a wolf. When he pounced on the altar where the body of his young female victim lay, he had become a monstrous red wolf. He lustily lapped the blood from the girl’s severed head. With one crunch of his massive fangs, he cracked the skull open and gobbled the brain matter. As the girl’s headless body dissolved into the silvery fur, the wolf pelt jerked and the paws jutted out of it. Then Marrock’s fangs gripped the long nose of the pelted wolf’s head as though he was breathing new life into it. The pelt puffed out and transformed into a normal-sized wolf.

  Marrock licked the silver wolf’s face and let her up. The she-wolf jumped off and pressed her paws forward in a bow. Likewise, he transformed the boy into a coppery male wolf. Both of the resurrected wolves then scurried into the woods.

  When Marrock shape-shifted back to his human form, a foreboding dread crawled over Catrin’s skin as she watched herself as a little girl lie helplessly on the altar and relived the horror of the next moments as images projected on the life-thread. He raised the jagged-edge blade above her head with one hand while pinning her shoulder down with the other. “Be a good girl. Keep still,” he snarled. “Soon you will be my wolf queen.”

  The instinct to survive and the sheer terror that she could transform into one of Marrock’s wolves galvanized Catrin—or perhaps it was some unknown force that unlocked her muscles into action. She rapidly kneed Marrock in the jaw. His head jerked back and he released her shoulder. She curled her left arm under his elbow and snapped his wrist joint with her fist—a maneuver she had learned from her father.

  The knife dropped from Marrock’s fingers, his face flamed as red-hot embers. He slammed his shoulder into Catrin’s chest, knocking the air out of her lungs. The next instant, he towered over her like a bear and bared his teeth.

  “You bitch!” he roared. “I will fuck you until you bleed to death.”

  With a wildcat’s fury, Catrin lunged at him and bit off the tip of his nose. She spat the bloody tissue at his face, then clawed at his face with sharp fingernails.

  Marrock bellowed, raising his hand, “You ugly witch!” He back-handed her across the face so hard, she was knocked off the altar, slamming her chin on the stone base.

  Momentarily dazed, she felt Marrock’s strong hands raise her naked hips to his wet tongue. Rage struck Catrin like a lightning bolt. She rammed her pelvic bone into his bleeding nose.

  Marrock howled, “Ahhooooooo,” and flipped her over, reaching for her throat.

  She pounded her fists on his hands, but to no avail. The choke-hold closed off her windpipe; her eyes felt ready to burst. Her chest seized struggling for air. At the instant she was losing consciousness, she visualized moving Marrock’s life-thread aside with her forefinger. She inwardly beseeched her raven to help her.

  Hundreds of ravens streamed out of a dark portal into a black waterfall of rippling wings falling onto Marrock’s face. His grip loosened around Catrin’s neck as demonic ravens dived into him, their black wings furiously flapping around his face and sword-beaks thrusting again and again. He flung himself back, screaming in agony.

  The forest echoed with the war cries of shrieking ravens.

  Panic-stricken, Catrin crawled away from the black wings batting his head, sharp beaks boring into his face, and curved talons shredding his skin. At the moment he writhed on the ground, trying to shield his face with bloody hands, she knew that was her chance to escape. She scooted herself out of his reach and staggered to her bare feet.

  Catrin’s eyes then turned to her life-thread that disconnected from Marrock’s. She saw that with renewed strength in her legs, she could dash like a doe through the dense trees. Thorny brambles tore at her shins as she sprinted deeper, deeper, and deeper into the darkening woods. Not able to find the pathway back home, she was lost, but nonetheless ran and ran under serpentine branches that hissed in the gale winds. She remembered her lungs burning as she continued scrambling aimlessly through the labyrinth of trees throughout the afternoon.

  By
nightfall, an owl’s yellow eyes blinked at her, and she collapsed on the ground. Weary, she glanced all around for any sign of Marrock. With no clothes to cover her body, she hid underneath a fallen tree’s hollow. The long night felt like weeks as she shivered against the knotty bark, the hairs erecting from goose bumps on her arm. She wrapped knees to chest like a newborn, struggling to get warm. Losing hope, she again prayed to the raven to show her the path to safety.

  Her raven protector appeared as a black ship sailing across the full moon. Silver beams magically streamed down and illuminated a pathway. Though her body ached from the horrible ordeal, she left the shelter of the fallen tree and walked a short time on the path. She stopped, noticing a skull embedded in red-hot stone. A woman’s voice emanating from the skull’s locked jaw said, “Only through cathos can you rise out of Apollo’s flames with the forbidden powers of the Ancient Druids.”

  Catrin could no longer bear to witness the past events unroll on the life-threads. She looked away, contemplating what the raven had shown her. Finally, it dawned on her why Marrock had appeared as a wolf in her nightmares. Not only could he shape-shift, but he could also transform children into wolves for his pack. When death almost claimed her, she had somehow unleashed the forces of ravens from the Otherworld. By doing so, she blocked her half-brother’s attempts to transform her into one of his wolves. She had indeed altered Rhan’s prophecy that she would join Marrock’s wolf pack and overthrow their father.

  Drifting into darkness, Catrin sensed Agrona’s rage toward Marrock. Realizing that Agrona was still in her mind, she expunged the Druidess from her mind and fell into oblivion.

  37

  Intercepted Message

  At first glance, he did not recognize the handwriting. Silently reading further, he could feel his jaw drop. The directive was not meant for the queen’s eyes. It was intended for Decimus.

  Marcellus rummaged through the shelves for an object he could use as a weapon. After being locked up for almost two weeks in the bolted bedchamber, he had to find a way to escape during one of his twice-daily excursions to the latrines. He knew the countryside well along the public pathways, but could he find his way to his father’s encampment about one hundred miles north?