Above me stood the immense stretch of the Hunter, which the common folk still call Beal-o-the-Oaks. He climbed up from the horizon, seeming from this angle to occupy half the sky. Centuries ago, all men invoked him as the god of the Bealtan holiday, called to him with the wildness that is part of every man’s nature, offered up that wildness to feed the magic that would renew the land for another year. Now it is only the wizards, the righthe, and men who hold to the old ways in little villages that escape the notice of the druids who make that offering. That’s very sad, Tru had said. I shouldn’t agree, but I did. It was just one of the growing number of ways I was straying from the true path.
Eventually I noticed Amien standing beside me, eyes on the sky. He smiled and met my gaze, then looked up again. Gratefully I turned my glance skyward as well.
“Ah, I love the Bealtans of the lunisolar adjustment years,” Amien mused, gaze still on the sky. “He looks so big and bright with the moons still below the divide.”
If anyone but Amien had said that, every other man sworn to the true gods would have had to weigh the statement for blasphemy: to celebrate Bealtan without Telliyn presiding over the night is inauspicious. It smacks of a failure of balance. But I felt the same way. Something perilously close to my surface loved the idea of giving myself over to the wildness the Hunter, or Beal-o-the-Oaks, symbolizes, and following my own wild nature without feeling that She watched the things I did.
That was almost certainly a blasphemous thought. But it clearly didn’t trouble Amien to think it. And I remembered how little my own blasphemy had troubled me, back in the days when I knew I stood with my feet on the path of the gods. With Lady Tella ever at my shoulder, I had known I could do no wrong.
If only it were possible to return to that.
“It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?” Amien said thoughtfully. “Quite the month. Strange how different everything looked just a month ago.”
I nodded. It had been a month, more or less, since Amien turned up at Irisa, doubtless full of anxious hope for a long-overdue reconciliation with the woman he had secretly loved for so long. Instead he got her daughter, and Básghilae—and me. I couldn’t imagine which had been the greatest blow.
Once again I choked down a need to beg forgiveness. I must hold myself together until after the Moot.
“We’ve made good progress,” Amien continued. A strange laugh escaped him. “Not that any of it has gone according to plan. But we got Letitia here alive, and she’s begun learning to master her power…”
Finally I understood. His apparent capitulation and crafting a plan for her to do no more than carry the Shadow of the Sun while the wizards around her handled the arcane work: that had been the sort of tale one tells a child who is frightened of a surgery that must be performed. He still intended to train her into a simulacrum of Carina, oblivious to the fact that like Carina she would fail in the objective. I couldn’t explain why his plan was worse than useless: I had promised Letitia silence.
But it sharpened my resolve: whatever strategies and offensives the righthe and the wizards planned tomorrow, my focus must be her. No one else could be allowed to grasp how defenseless she really was. Nechton could not be allowed to do her harm.
“But that isn’t half the blessing finding you has been,” Amien continued. Something terrible burst in my chest, tried to claw its way out through my throat. “For a long time I feared I’d never work with you again—and gods, how I missed you.”
“Ah, my lord, I’ve missed you, too.” I had to force the words through a throat far too small to admit them. “After all the things I’ve done, all the mistakes I’ve made—”
Amien waved my words away. “That’s in the past. Tonight we begin again. Do you realize tonight marks eleven years since your initiation? An auspicious number, that.”
Eleven years. It seemed a lifetime ago, and yet the memory raced in too powerfully to turn aside: standing in Amien’s workshop in the Presence of the gods with Sanglin, Dandem, and Oregen completing the circle around me; Lady Tella’s sudden inexplicable manifestation in that space, Her heady scent wrecking what little sanity remained to me and Her cool soft hand on my cheek. How fitting that you have come this night to stand before Me.
Doubt not that we will meet again.
“Come with me tonight,” Amien said softly. “We will call the fires together. You can renew your vows.”
For a moment I couldn’t breathe; then, just as suddenly, the breath beat painfully in my chest. If we called the Bealtan fires together, here at the Moot, he would be publicly designating me his heir.
“Afterwards, we’ll take a few minutes and rechannel this damned spell. We’ll have to talk about the best time for me to step down…”
“Oh, gods,” I croaked. “My lord—I can’t—”
He wrapped an arm around me. “I’m not abandoning you. I know you’ll need to consider who you’ll take as nasclethéan, but—”
“My lord,” I said again. My voice still sounded hideous. “I can’t.”
Terrible disappointment swept across his face; just as swiftly he shook it off.
“Great Lord Ilesan, all you do is prove my point. I have never seen a man hold to a more terrible vow.”
“All I do is figure out all the ways in which it might be stretched!”
“You need to make your peace with Her,” he said, in a tone of patient understanding. “Bealtan seems like a time for that, too.”
Where would I begin? Could it even be possible? Her interventions for me said that, against all reason, She still had some interest in me; but the farther I stretched the limits of my vow, the more I opened myself, the more gods and powers and terrible thoughts I allowed inside: none of which a man of the gods should ever admit. If I had held back from full Union with Goibniu the smith-god and Laverna of the Ruillin, still I had allowed Them to infiltrate me. I had done far more with Aerona and Esus. At Bealtan, when I should see nothing but Lady Tella, I trembled at the thought of returning to Uisneach, of confronting the Beings I’d glimpsed there this afternoon. Already I suspected I might know Their names. How could I be Prince and yet have such ties to so many illicit gods? How would I choose between upholding the teaching that only the gods of Aballo’s religion are true—and speaking the truth as I now understood it: there are far more gods in the world than most of us like to admit, and Lady Tella did things in the name of war that would send a human righ before an executioner.
It is one thing for a man who may already be doomed to the Abyss to consider these things. It would be quite another for the Aballo Prince to drag all the world along.
“My lord… listen.” Fear of what I must say stormed through me; I struggled to push it aside. “There are… things I’m trying to work out. You said… This afternoon, you said that this spell has made you see things that are not of the gods. I see those things, too.”
Amien’s breath caught audibly, but he didn’t speak.
“I am—My lord, I will try—to come to peace with the goddess. But I don’t—” I swallowed. “I’m afraid if we did that tonight, it would be an offense to the gods. That Their affront would be justified.”
“And yet I still sense Her hand on you,” Amien said.
I nodded, throat tight. “I have no idea what value She sees in me.”
Amien laughed: a soft, regretful sound. “Well, not yet, then. For this year, you will be ard-righ.”
“What?” I blurted.
Amien smiled. “It’s been a long time since the Prince has invoked the privilege; it would have been simpler if you still held a throne. But in the end none of them have anything to say. It is my choice. This year, maybe, after the Moot ends the buildings will remain. Certainly the palace, if nothing else.”
A delicate, phantom weight settled around my neck. Abu al-righ. But it didn’t feel at all the way I expected: it was ungrounded and temporary, like the one place over which my reign would be undisputed. For all its importance during the Moot season, Teamair is b
arely a real city. What would it mean to rule a place in which no one lived? How would I feel when all my subjects packed up a few days from now and went home?
The surprising answer came to me: it would be a relief. Until Nechton was defeated, the responsibility of ruling a nation would only be a distraction. I could only be effective if the war were my entire focus. Still it felt strange and incomplete.
“My lord—I’m not sure…”
Amien laughed. “You’re not sure? Well, I was on the summit of the Temple Mount on Ilunmore, when a certain wizard stepped into the circle—and the Tuaoh damn near shook the place apart! How many gods must speak before you’re sure?”
If any more gods spoke to me I might finally go stark mad. I couldn’t be the sort of righ Coran was: catering to the small minds and fearful hearts of people who lacked understanding of the things that mattered; fixing my mind on politics and allowing someone to dye my horse’s mane. Let expectations of the ard-righ’s role define me, let myself to get caught up in the mundane aspects of the war, which would be only a rear-guard action, while Letitia went forward without me—and the value I could offer her and the gods would be wasted. Especially since I knew what Nechton would do to the people who must face him in my stead.
In my stead. Oh, dear gods, there was the problem. Something inside me knew what I must do, and it was none of the things anyone else would admit to wanting: accept the fact that I was doomed to the Abyss, cast aside my vows and my morals, and lead the charge against Nechton. There would be a certain symmetry in a Prince tied to dark power and a demon, damned before he was born, as the Prince’s War-Lord.
Was that what the gods intended? Had They thrown me away before I was ever conceived? I pushed aside a sudden sense of betrayal.
I looked at Amien. I realized it had been a very long time since I’d spoken, that he’d been waiting with his usual infinite patience for an answer.
“My lord… I’m lost. I need to see if I can hear Her Voice.”
Amien nodded gravely. “Go to Uisneach. The sacred grove is yours. You should take Letitia.”
I found myself staring without planning it; he offered me a quizzical smile.
“It’s Bealtan. Tomorrow you will be ard-righ. There’s a sacred marriage to be made.”
Desire roared through me; I tried to dismiss it as reflex and failed. From the ard-righ’s throne I could meet Letitia on more than equal terms, shift everything that lay broken and twisted between us into the natural fate of the world. Finally I would transform myself from a creature barely worthy of being her lover into her proper and fated mate.
But that was wishful thinking: even would Letitia allow me to come to her for the sacred marriage, it would resolve nothing. No matter what torc I might put on, I had no rights to her. If there were bonds both personal and arcane between us now, older and deeper bonds lay on her as well. It would take more than Bealtan to sever those.
And to celebrate Bealtan with her would be to miss the point: at long last, I understood. There is a reason why the priestess is masked: because it is better if the priest does not know her at all, if he sees only her role.
Most humans have forgotten, but it is incumbent on the wizards and the righthe to remember: Bealtan is for the goddess. On this night the priest or righ must stand before Her, offer Her everything he is, and hope She judges him worthy. Please Her, and She will bless his rule, receive him as Her consort for a year and a day. The small, human part of me who was ruled by emotions and other irrelevancies wanted desperately to come to Letitia for the sacred marriage, but the part of me who knew better saw it would only be a distraction. It was the goddess Whose Blessing I needed; there would be no resolving the insane tangle between Letitia and me, no sense in asking Letitia for the privilege of her Bealtan love, until I understood the goddess’s Will and my fate. Until I defeated Nechton. How I might ever do that without violating my vow, how I would overcome the black lust that swept through me at the thought of it, how I would fit the things I’d seen and the gods I’d met this month into what had once been a well-defined relationship with Her: these were problems beyond my reach. My head whirled with unanswered questions and unconquerable need.
“Fouzh,” I whispered. “I’ve got to go.”
“Gods grant you strength,” Amien said. “She has only been waiting for you to come back to Her. As we all have. Go: make your peace and renew your marriage. I’ll be waiting when you return.”
36. Bealtan
A wall of flames encircled the Uisneach summit. Of course: all the wizards were vitally occupied with Bealtan devotions; no one could be expected to set those aside for the mundane details of a watch, and on this night it would be inappropriate to raise wards and separate the summit from the skies. The fire would do nothing more than keep mundane assaults and interlopers at bay; a wizard could penetrate that boundary. But if Uisneach is off-limits to anyone outside the initiate except on certain well-controlled occasions, the gods are understood to welcome all of Their initiate who would devote themselves. Even, perhaps, men with one foot already in the Abyss. I climbed from the saddle, opened a portal in the wall, and led my horse across the smoking ground and inside.
“Well done,” I said, patting his neck. What a long way he had come from the horse who must be coaxed onto a boat. “Very well done indeed.”
He whickered and nudged me. I released the wall, and it closed in on itself again. I led him back to the stable and turned him out, and then I began to walk. No one had told me where the sacred grove lay, though I suspected I would find it in the woods behind the ridge of the summit. I didn’t feel ready to confront Whoever I might find there, anyway; I just walked through fields of asphodel and weedy flax, head whirling until the stars themselves seemed to reel overhead.
I didn’t know what was wrong with me, though it was clear that there was something gravely amiss. I had been offered things that would have made any sane man leap for joy, and much as my mind saw the reasons why I should want them, my instincts shouted for me to thrust those opportunities away. All I wanted were the things of the Abyss and a woman who would never be mine.
At the top of the ridge I stopped, eyes automatically sweeping the skies for the Lady’s Moon and coming up as empty as the saner part of my mind had expected. All I saw was the immense spread of the Hunter. Wind raced up the slope, sending my still-unbound hair fluttering behind me, carrying the scent of the Bealtan fires into my throat. I saw the dark power between the stars above me take shape, saw it fill in the spaces that men usually must complete with their imaginations if they would see the gods and heroes the constellations trace. Through that glimmer mundane eyes never see, I glimpsed the Face and Form of the Hunter, and put a name to Him.
Beal.
He was the One Who held the domain in which I stood, somehow reaching all the way from the Abyss to claim His due on the holiday that still bears His name. He looked at me across the void, and all the dark power that made up His ethereal form swirled through me, lighting me up until He seemed made of light, not dark; until pleasure raged like fire across my skin.
I knew Him. I had always known Him. He was the author of all the wildness I struggled to contain, all the insanity I had tried hopelessly to crush into a form that Lady Tella would approve. Ancient He was, older than any of the stars or the half-seen matter between them, older than thought; and yet, on this night, once again young, a Lover striving endlessly to woo the goddess Who occupied the center of everything: wagering everything He was on that one moment when He might give Her all of Himself, knowing before He began that He would never win Her.
I understood that, too.
I understood how He might find all the universe He created echoing with the scent of Her, especially on this night; might find it all but impossible to focus on anything else—and yet spare some relentless sector of His mind for the problem He now fixed to mine. Esus might want to free Himself from the Abyss, might promise me whatever He thought would move me to accomplish it; Beal th
ought much bigger than that. As the Lord of those gods imprisoned in the Abyss, Beal wanted to release all of Them, to restore freedom everywhere.
It was not for a bunch of young, upstart gods to usurp the place that should be His, to say what He might or might not do. Wasn’t He the One Who had invented the rules and the place They used to trap Him? Shouldn’t They all be free to follow Their Own consciences, to create as They chose? There was only one thing He and the gods He led needed: someone with sufficient fortitude to turn the key.
Hakaid the shadow of the Sun
And open the Abyss
I didn’t need to ask what my reward would be; I knew He would say whatever I didn’t even realize I was waiting to hear. What does One promise a man who has already been offered the titles of both ard-righ and Prince?
I couldn’t breathe for terror of the answer.
I launched myself down from the ridge, down the dark and hidden northern side of the hill, crashing through bracken and entangling gorse until I discovered myself on a narrow trail. I stopped; something that might be the mundane world reshaped itself around me. I heard nothing but the sounds of my own harsh breath, saw nothing but darkly-shadowed tree limbs above. The pounding of my heart slowed, but my head still whirled at the very edges of reason, and the memory of dark fire chased itself across my skin: I started walking again. I needed to find the sacred grove, needed to hear Her voice or admit to myself that I could not. Either would serve to show me the path I trod.
Hakaid the shadow of the Sun
And open the Abyss
The Shadow of the Sun (The Way of the Gods) Page 68