Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  We’ve not the means. Auriane needed to force back a smile. This was Avenahar’s recently forged new self, afire with brash confidence since the blood-of-life had come. Avenahar now carried a set of keys to the house. She went alone to the wooden image of Fria by the river, to make her own offerings. And she’d begun questioning her mother’s judgment with all the insouciance of a favorite pupil who trusts her teacher will see it not as combativeness but as an admirable willingness to ride full-tilt at a problem.

  “It is not so simple, Avenahar. Well as I know and love him, still I cannot guess what he’ll do when he learns this. I need time to warn those who still need to be warned. If there is a way I can avoid burdening him, let it be so. And just perhaps, if the Fates are decently kind—I’ve terrified Victorinus into silence.”

  Auriane found she did not believe it as she said it.

  Chapter 10

  The old chief sat still as a wooden idol on his high seat. In his right hand he held an iron standard topped with an image of a stag in flight.

  This was the same spring day, but far to the north of Julianus’s villa, in a valley civilization did not know. Lost in Germania Libera’s rolling oceans of forests, this pine-rimmed river valley was a destination that would have been, had passable roads existed, fourteen days’ ride past the Roman frontier. The chief was called Chariomer, and he was lord over the Cheruscans, a north Germanic people who had been enemies of Auriane’s Chattian tribe for one hundred raiding seasons and more. He had assembled his war companions in a freshly captured longhouse that had become his seat only yesterday, when his army surprised and seized this Chattian settlement. The bodies of the village’s folk lay unmourned and unburned, scattered across the emmer fields, or abandoned to the gloom of the forest where his men had fallen upon them as they tried to flee. Rome called him “King” Chariomer because he sought hereditary rule, but he bore no more resemblance to what literate southern peoples called a king than a dozen other skin-draped battle chiefs struggling for overlordship in the turbulent north. An untrimmed beard of sandy brown threaded with gray trailed down to a massive, gold-plated belt. Eyes the color of dirty snow stared out from great, bony sockets. A long and haggard face was broken by jutting cheekbones; beneath them graying skin slack as overstretched cloth caved in to form cadaverous hollows. The ermine skins wrapped about him concealed a body more wasted than battle-trim, after the steady erosion of sixty winters. Behind him hung a tapestry woven in shades of ocher, russet, and moss green, depicting himself blessing a stag to be offered to the god; eleven skilled weaving-women directed by his now-dead wife had labored two years in its creation.

  The two hundred young warriors seated before him on benches running the length of the hearth fire waited in solemn anticipation for the brother-making ceremony to begin—a rite that would transform these new-won companions into war-brothers, bound to die for one another. The old chief knew well he hadn’t won these warriors’ devotion in the traditional way, through displays of prowess in battle. These fierce hawks jostled for place in his hall only because the Roman Great King called Trajan, lord over lands Chariomer would never know, had begun pouring gold into his coffers again—his reward for harrying the Chattian dogs and not letting them rest. The Roman gold had come by muleback a quarter-moon ago, and it was enough to keep hundreds of war companions sworn to him for many seasons to come.

  Now, the Fates stood ready to make good for all the troubles they’d given him—exile by his own people, a wife who’d birthed only daughters, the mysterious ten-year-old slaying of the young man who had been his sworn-son by a shield maid called Auriane, daughter of the Chattian chief Baldemar. Through the years he’d lived in hiding, seeress after seeress had warned him the elder gods were punishing him for imitating Roman customs—drinking wine until he fell down; conspiring to pass on his ancestral lands in the Hart country to a son instead of a daughter; assembling his bewildered companions on a parade ground and inspecting their weapons, as though he were some centurion over soldiers rather than a chief over free men. But his victories over the Chattians told the truth of it—he was a hero who brought gifts hitherto unknown to the people, one greatly loved of Wodan, to whom he’d regularly offered his best horse, his finest haunch of meat.

  Chariomer nodded to his songmaker and silvery music began shivering off the strings of a harp, falling on the company like a soft, trickling rain. Chariomer detested the music of harpists, which sounded to him like tears. He preferred horns and drums and instruments that made the blood rush, and thought the whole race of harpists parasites on others’ goodwill. But harpists made stories and the grandness of this occasion demanded one.

  Chariomer lifted the iron stag-standard and beat it loudly, twice, on the planked floor. Four thralls stepped into the smoky twilight of the hall, their backs bent beneath the weight of a linden shield heaped with red-gold coins—Trajan’s gold, sent in gratitude for the services Chariomer performed for Rome. The company of warriors watched as if they witnessed some prodigy—the torches affixed to the longhouse’s walls infused the treasure with a living light; it seemed some dragon’s hoard, emitting balefire.

  Those nearest Chariomer heard him grunt in irritation. Something about the treasure-procession displeased him.

  Or someone, as it proved—a fifth thrall had fallen in behind the shield-bearers, ambling along with a jaunty step. The bearded, ring-girded company along the fire watched his progress with eyes narrowed in bafflement. The interloper grinned a grin that suggested the world might prosper, if only it followed his advice. He was a man obviously not bred in the north: Mediterranean-dark eyes glimmered with cynical good humor. His face was carefully clean-shaven, exposing a strong, square chin. He was short in stature, and close-cropped black hair flecked with silver was trained forward in the Roman fashion. As the four treasure-bearers set the shield on the floor with a resonant thud next to Chariomer’s booted feet, the brazen fellow strode right up to their king and gave a bow like some actor in a farce, seeming so untouched by the solemnity of the rite, he might have just helped haul a sack of turnips to market.

  This man was Decius, once a Roman legionary soldier—that same Decius who was the blood-father of Avenahar.

  Chariomer’s frown deepened as Decius leaned close, employing a broken Germanic that lapsed into Latin at his convenience.

  “There’s a bit of a problem here, O august and kingly one.”

  Chariomer just stared at him, disoriented by the interruption.

  “Can’t trust a Vestal these days,” Decius continued. “I’m afraid a few of these aurei aren’t full weight.”

  Chariomer gave a grunt of discontent, trapped between a fierce interest in all matters that touched on his payment, and a need to maintain dignity.

  “Some jokester stashed a few sham coins at the bottom,” Decius spoke on, “and, I’ll own, they’re a fiendishly good copy of the real thing. You can’t let them use you this way, old friend. I’d be no chief advisor worth keeping if I didn’t press you to send an embassy back to the Aquae Mattiaci fort at once to tell them just how strongly—”

  Chariomer brought the standard down smartly on the wooden planking while roaring, “Begone, Hel-cursed nithling.” It mortified everyone but Decius.

  Decius bowed deeply. “Ever wanting to please,” he said lightly, then gave a shrug that expressed tolerance for a cranky child. As he moved off he placed one of the offending coins on the whetstone by the king’s seat. This was too much for the old chief, whose gaze was drawn to it as if pulled by a cord; he greedily examined it before he caught himself and angrily tossed the sham coin back with the others heaped at his feet.

  Decius cheerfully took himself out, his free and easy strides contrasting oddly with the quiet shuffle of his fellow thralls, trailing after him. The company of warriors followed this exit with blank looks, as if Decius had been a winged dragon dropped into their midst. What spell had this foreign wretch put on their testy chief, that Chariomer allowed a thrall such liberties
?

  When Decius was gone Chariomer called out the name of his daughter, Elza.

  The solemn office of handing round the mead horn to the companions was always performed by a woman, most often the chief ’s wedded wife. Only women knew the spells that called down the gods into the mead and could make it stand for blood, so that warriors who were not kin became brothers. But since Chariomer’s wife had died nine winters ago and negotiations for a new wife were not yet complete, the rite would need to be performed by Elza, the last living woman of his family.

  A young woman slim and tentative as a deer paused in the longhouse’s wide doorway. She was clad in a cloak dyed forest-green with flowerheads of reeds; beneath was a madder-red dress with green embroidered hem. The men’s talk died off; even the harpist’s fingers stumbled and stopped as all turned round to gape. Elza seemed a spirit-girl, standing there. A sliver of sunlight breaking through thatch illumined her copper hair, just visible beneath the hood of her cloak, creating a nimbus of fuzzy light about the crown of her head. Her lucid eyes were wide and wondering, swift and sad; they drew one in with the steady force of a quiet compulsion, as to some game of guessing the depth of an uncannily clear spring. Though most would have counted Elza plain of feature, that face was mobile and expressive, reminding those who looked on her that there were qualities other than beauty that could bind a gaze to a woman’s face. In her right hand was a long, exquisitely curved aurochs horn with a gem-set silver mount. It had known the touch of her great-grandmother’s hands.

  Meaning to encourage her to approach, her father gave her a small, tight smile, motioning with an exaggerated gesture, as if to one who spoke a foreign tongue. He knew this daughter little. She was raised by his late wife’s women-thralls, and he’d never turned more than the most cursory attention to her. He interpreted her tautness, her hesitation, as maidenly timidness.

  It was not. It was anticipatory excitement.

  Elza began to walk with ceremonial slowness down the length of the hearthfire. Its flames swelled as she passed, as if in homage, and the men believed the ancestral spirits living in the hearth were greeting the daughter who loved them. Her eloquent eyes made her seem a doe among wolves, but the impression was untrue. The set of her small mouth, the tension in her jaw, revealed her nature better. She was one to see a matter through, no matter how it hurt her. From earliest girlhood Elza had learned she would get nothing in this harsh world unless she injured another to get it—she’d watched her poor mother do the same.

  On this day she had a fearsome deed to carry out.

  The small, shivering stones of amber in her pendant earrings and the silver sieve-spoons hung from her girdle made music as she walked—lulling sounds that contrasted with the tension in the hall, which steadily, inexorably grew, like the tautening of a rope with the turning of a winch. For this girl of nineteen summers held great power in her hands, if only for a fleeting moment. Elza was keenly aware of how these men feared her. Fatal violence might erupt if she handed the mead horn round in the wrong order. She might call a man a thief and this company would be bound to treat him as one. She could speak a charge of cowardice against any one of them, which might send him off on a quest that could kill him. Women knew how to speak the words that festered in the flesh and slowly destroyed a man. And this power was doubly potent when a woman carried out the brother-making ceremony, when so many denizens of the unseen world hovered close.

  Elza counted this power-of-the-word as her sword and shield. Her mother had taught her to be merciless with it.

  She halted before the mead-cask and with a practiced dip of her arm, filled the horn. She had brewed the mead herself using more than fifty herbs, some brought by expeditions to faraway lands. Each plant added its own subtle force; their powers fused to produce a brew so fearsome in its potency it could transform strangers into kin.

  Then she stood before the high seat, a supple young daughter facing a father who watched her like a gaunt, aging wolf.

  She began whispering words of an invocation old as the stones beneath the hall. By giving the horn to her father first, she confirmed him as war chief over this band. It was a sight that a man ignorant of the ways of the tribes might have found astonishing—a ruthless, battle-scarred old man placing the weight of his future days in the palm of a half-grown maid.

  Her invocation ceased. Within, she readied herself for vengeance.

  Elza did not want to be handed in marriage to any man of his band, for she despised them all as the murderers of her mother. One of them, with her father’s assistance, had poisoned her mother, Theudolind—Elza had long known it was no common childbed death. Her mother had just given birth to a third girl-child, inciting Chariomer to murderous wrath. Her mother had had no chance: Never trusted because she was Chattian, her marriage had been a torment, the result of one brief, long-ago attempt to make a Chattian alliance.

  And so Elza had made her own marriage plans in secret. She had seen the young Chattian war-chief Sigibert but once, and sought him in part because he seemed everything her father was not—noble even to the lowly, ready to risk wealth and freedom to aid his friends, and truly loved by his war companions. The match was impossible in these times; the two tribes were at war. A high-placed seeress might mandate it in an oracle, however, and Elza had managed to lure one into her camp—Sawitha, one of the seeresses of the Holy Nine, second in eminence only to Ramis herself. What Elza planned next would seal her alliance with Sawitha. In exchange, Sawitha had promised to open the way to the foreign marriage Elza so fervently wanted.

  Chariomer raised his hand to take the horn.

  But Elza held it just beyond her father’s reach. Chariomer refused to humiliate himself by pitching his body forward and straining to take it. His anticipatory hand was left suspended there, half opened.

  “Elza!” he said in a whisper meant only for her. But those seated nearest heard him over the softly popping fire. “You’re not so old I can’t have you beaten!”

  Elza met his eyes calmly. His posture began to look ridiculous.

  “Do you see this brooch I wear, Father?” Her voice was clear and mild. She indicated the raven’s-head brooch that fastened the green cloak.

  His hand sank to his side. “No, I don’t. I see only the flicking of a she-serpent’s tongue. You Nixe’s daughter . . . give me that!”

  She took a half step farther from him.

  “It’s my dead brother’s brooch, Father. The brooch of your adopted son, Odberht.”

  She was gratified by the ember of fear that appeared in her father’s eyes, steadily growing brighter.

  “You clearly didn’t get enough thrashings as a girl. That’s impossible. Odberht died in a far-off land, felled by another woman’s treachery. No one ever recovered his brooch.”

  Her father’s words were true. Elza’s brooch was a fair copy of one she remembered. But it would not hinder her purpose.

  “Odberht gave it to me when I was little,” she smoothly lied, “before he marched south for you so long ago, to attack the Chattians at your command. Now your murdered son has only me to speak for him.”

  “He was no son of the blood!” Ceremonial dignity fled; his voice was wheezy and shrill. “He was a Roman son. It is not the same!” Because Chariomer’s wife had borne only daughters, he had adopted the young man called Odberht after the Roman fashion, using a modified version of his people’s blood-brother ceremony.

  “Ah. But Father, many saw you declare him a son, before the gods.”

  “Elza, stop this, I beg you,” he said, probing for a vein of sympathy in her, “and you’ve my word I’ll speak of this with you, later. I’ll find you whatever husband you want. Just give me that!” Spittle dribbled down his chin.

  She eased her eyes half closed. Her voice was ululating, high, like some seeress crying over the wind.

  “Chariomer. You bear the wolf’s head and your blood is poison. You have dishonored every brave man here.” The power in Elza’s voice was startling; it
carried all the hope-fueled ferocity of the tormented animal seeking one chance to break free. “I cannot look over our fields with gladness until my brother, Odberht, is avenged. His blood cries out from the ground. I charge you in the name of Wodan, avenge his death or be despised by all good men.”

  Elza pulled back the hood of her cloak and removed the bone comb that secured her hair. The men round the hearthfire murmured in alarm. Some shielded their eyes, or sputtered imprecations to the lesser gods. Chariomer looked like a corpse frozen in the snow—flesh gray, mouth gaped open, left hand curled like a claw.

  “Daughter of trolls . . . what have you done!”

  Elza’s thick copper hair had been hastily, crudely cropped off. She had cut it herself, without the aid of her looking-glass. It lay sadly on her head like some coverlet nibbled by rats, clipped so short that it curled about her ears. To the assembled men the sight was repugnant, obscene. A woman’s holiness resided in her hair; it bound the greater family to the gods. It was as if Elza had vandalized the village temple out of spite.

  “And, Father,” she finished, “as my brother, Odberht, was not slain with honorable weapons of war, but was strangled with an enemy woman’s hair—I have shorn mine off.”

  At this a few in the company of warriors exchanged questioning looks. But many knew this disturbing tale. During the Chattian War, Chariomer’s adopted son, Odberht, had been captured by the legions and dragged to Rome to be used as a fighting-slave, or gladiator, as some knew they were called. Auriane, daughter of the enemy chieftain Baldemar, had suffered the same fate. In the name of the Chattian tribe, Auriane had sworn vengeance against Odberht because the young man led a force of Cheruscans against her tribe’s back. The fragmented story had filtered back many seasons later: In that distant place Auriane met Chariomer’s sworn-son in single battle, in a sacred enclosure where fighting-slaves slew each other for the pleasure of their sun god. After a battle to a standstill in which he divested her of her sword, this shield maiden daughter of Baldemar used her long hair as rope and strangled him. Men touched talismans at the memory.