3
I gasped as I heard her words and held my breath for a few moments.
A child.
I wanted to look at her, to see her belly, to see how she had grown with child, but my vision followed Alienora’s sight as she prayed upward to the black Madonna. Her face was imperious, and in her hands was a small, dark chest made of wood. In it, as Alienora’s small white hands opened it, a dried human heart. The relic of the Magdalen.
Alienora leaned over, kissing the dried heart. “Hear my prayer. Save my beloved. Save his soul. Bring him to me. Cleanse me of my sins.”
Another vision came up: Alienora, daily and nightly, at the foot of the Dark Madonna, praying for both her child and my soul. “I will do anything to protect him,” she said. “Anything. Please bless him. Please protect him from the forces of Hell. Please bring him home to see his child.” Her belly grew, and her weeping increased.
Then I saw the night of the birth.
Beyond the Magdalen’s home, an enormous storm raged upon the marshes. Lightning flashed among the trees, and a great fire grew from among the oaks that stood sentry beyond the grotto.
Within the cave, at its mouth, I saw the flickering of candles and the shadowy figures of the Sisters as they tended my beloved’s night of pain and birth. I felt my heart beating hard in my chest, and my mouth went dry as I watched the silhouette of my child’s birth.
Just as Alienora screamed, nuns cried out with delight when they saw the baby’s head.
The lightning flashed and, for a moment, I saw them all—several nuns gathered around as Alienora clutched at them, screeching at the pain. I saw a bloodied newborn in the arms of one of the Sisters. One of the Sisters shouted, “She still has not done. She still has not!”
Alienora screamed as if to rip the night.
The vision turned to white, and a new one came. I saw the trees of the Great Forest. A spear of sunlight broke through the thick branches and spread golden light upon the yellow and red wildflowers that carpeted the ground, surrounded with bursts of fern. I knew this place. It was near Mere Morwenna’s cottage, near a brook.
Alienora, in her nun’s garb, rode upon one of her father’s white horses, swiftly across the Forest floor. My vision followed her as she went. She had no child with her, and I was sore afraid that my child might not have survived the night of storms at its own birth.
She dismounted near the grassy path that led to Mere Morwenna’s humble home. She tied her horse to a birch just to the edge of the path. The house, a hovel really, seemed to be tucked into the arm of a low oak branch, sprayed with mistletoe across its roof, like a crown.
Mere Morwenna, her back stooped and the veil across her face drawn down revealing a woman who looked to be a hundred or more, leaned against her rough-hewn walking staff as she stood by the deerskin-covered doorway.
“I saw you, child,” the old woman said, brushing the strands of long gray hair back from her forehead. “I heard you were coming from the birds. Why are you alone?”
“I seek your help, Mere,” Alienora said. “I’ve left the order. I cannot abide them.”
“And you seek me out because you can abide me? I thought you were afraid of those of us who practice the Old Ways.”
“I would not be here if I was. I was told you can help me.”
“Help? How?”
“My dreams,” Alienora said. “I have had them for months now. Even after the birth of...after everything. I have seen Aleric die and return from the dead. A darkness whispers to me, and will not let me sleep.”
“You have come for the Craft. But you believe we are wives of demons, as well.”
“I do not,” Alienora said. She fell to her knees before the old woman. She clutched at her skirt with her hands, weeping. “I begin to see these things in daylight. The Sisters cannot help me. I have turned to God, but God does not speak to me or answer my prayers. I have turned to the Madonna of the Caves, and she is silent as well.”
“It was your family that has murdered friends of mine,” Mere Morwenna said. “How do I know this is not a trick?”
“You have my word,” Alienora said. “My father would have me imprisoned just for speaking with you. I would not risk taking a horse through the Forest alone if I did not think that my soul and the soul of my beloved rested upon your guidance. You know him. You have love for him.”
“He was like a grandson to me, that boy, though I saw the destiny of clouds upon his face even as a baby,” Mere Morwenna said. She closed her eyes and began to cough. “I can feel him sometimes, though he is thousands of leagues away. His mother was special to me. They were of the old clans.” She opened her eyes again, a harsh gaze. “What do you want?”
“I want to learn the Old Ways,” Alienora said.
“For power.” Mere Morwenna’s voice cracked as she said this. “As your father seeks power by slaughtering others, so you seek power. It is in your corrupt blood. You want to become one of us, do you? To save his soul?”
“I know that the Christian God will not protect him. Will not save him. But I had a nurse as a child named Nolwen. She was of the Forest.”
“I knew her.”
“She taught me about the goddess. About Cerne, as well. She showed me how to put the grain beneath the pillow to ensure the birth of a boy.”
“It is a blessing that your father didn’t have her tortured,” Mere Morwenna said. “Go on your way, you Magdalen imposter. Return to your safe little cave or your father’s household. Your dreams may not even be true.”
Alienora’s face darkened. She turned about and walked a few steps away from the old woman. Then she turned again, raising her fist to the sky as if cursing the gods. Mere Morwenna had never stopped watching her. “Grant me what I ask! I have seen such terrible shadows in my dreams that I cannot pretend they are born of fever.”
Mere Morwenna lifted her walking staff as if it were a wand. She shook it with some violence in Alienora’s direction. “Do you think that you can come here and demand to become an initiate in the rites of the goddess? That you can just decide one day that your beliefs do not bring you enough bounty? That you can avert destiny only by magick? And when you are done, when you have fixed your problem, will you not return to your safe sisterhood of ignorance and prejudice and live in a grotto that was once sacred to a great spiritual leader of our people but now has been usurped by a conquering god? Do you think that statue you worship is of your religion? That is an ancient statue, a black stone, and though you believe it is one of your many Marys, it is truly something altogether different. Something that would make your skin crawl, my sweet, misguided child!”
Alienora stepped back two or three paces among the tall grasses, shocked by the anger in the crone’s voice.
But from the deerskin doorway, someone emerged. It was the changeling child, Calyx, grown to maidenhood, the one I had once looked at by pulling up the veil of a baby. She still wore a cloak and veil, and only her eyes could be seen. She limped slightly as she went to Mere Morwenna.
“Grandmother,” Calyx said, her voice mature beyond her years. “Listen to her. I, too, have had dreams like these. It is a sign. The time of shadows is near.”
“A sign of destruction,” Mere Morwenna said.
The girl ignored her grandmother and went past her to Alienora. She took her hand up in hers and brought it up to her face. “You are on the path,” the girl said. “You dream of the Falconer?”
Alienora nodded.
“He is lost,” Calyx said. Then, to Mere Morwenna, “She’s meant to be among us. It’s her journey. You know you cannot interrupt what must be, no matter how you wish or it will come to you with threefold vengeance.”
Then her voice softened as she dropped Alienora’s hand. “You will join us on the night you call Lammas Eve, although it is a special night of Lugh, lord of the first harvest. One will come to you within the grove of trees beyond the grotto. He will wear a mask, and you must not speak to him. He will blindfold you and raise
you onto his mount, and you will ride with him to our festivities.”
Calyx reached up and touched Alienora’s forehead. She kept her hand there for a while, pressing her fingers about her scalp. “Your dreams haunt you. Shadows are upon you. You were meant to come to us, lady. You were meant to follow this path. You do not believe in what you have been raised to believe. You are full of dread and fear, and yet you still possess love. That is good. Love for children, love for yourself, love for the man called the Falconer, love for your father and brother and sisters, and love even for the Magdalens with their bitter darkness. Before you come to us, before you begin to understand the wisdom of the Old Ways, you must give up all that you love. For life is endless pain if we are too attached to things that pass and are lost. You will come to an understanding of what life is, and what is beyond it, in the Wisdom.”
Then the veiled maiden withdrew her hand. For just a moment, she reminded me of a statue as she stood there—where had I seen that statue before? Some small figurine, perhaps, maybe among my mother’s things. She was cloaked from head to toe, with one hand up, palm out, and the other also outstretched as if offering passage to someone. I reached out into the Glass, feeling as if I could touch the vision and longing to feel just once Alienora’s skin beneath my fingers.
I had interrupted the vision—it rippled and swirled again, and I saw further into Alienora’s days.
I watched as she appeared before a great gathering of the believers of the Old Ways. Though many wore masks on their faces, some did not. They had formed a great circle within a clearing of the Forest. All were naked, and Mere Morwenna herself was the priestess of these folk. I watched as Alienora became an initiate in the Old Ways, then followed her as she worked with the midwives and learned the lore of the Forest and field. It all had happened in a short span of time.
Winter approached, and I saw her again, but this time, she had begun screaming at Mere Morwenna’s granddaughter. “You lied! Your goddess and gods cannot help me! Your power is useless! You are as damned to Hell as any in creation! My prayers are not answered, my dreams do not go away! I live among the Sisters and pretend with them, then come to your gatherings and speak your secret words, but it is as fruitless as the God of the Church!” Her face had taken on a strange aspect, as if she had not slept in weeks. I wondered about my child but had no sight of him.
When Alienora reined in her fury, Calyx crossed her hands, palms out to Alienora. “You have stolen our secrets. It was foretold that you would come, but I did not know what guided you. You do not love your offspring, nor the man you have lost. You have let your dreams rule you, and your fears are your master. That is not the path, and it is not the way of the Forest. You are bound, herewith, to keep the secrets of Bran and Cerne, and of the Old Ways.”
“You witches have no power,” Alienora spat. I had never seen her so angry, so bitter. “You are weak and deal in potions and spells and pointless ritual. I need more. I want more.”
And then the Glass began to fade in and out, as the sun might when clouds cross before it. I saw glimpses of things, of people, and a boy of two who might have been the son I had never met, although I did not know from the vision.
Finally, winter had come to the Forest, and there was my beloved standing amid the ice and snow. Her face was ashen, and her hair had grown wild and untended. She stood at the edge of a dark bog that was ringed by brambles and vines.
She spoke into the water as if it could hear her. Gradually, as I watched, her voice came to me in whispers, “You are more ancient than any in the Forest,” she said to her reflection in the bog. “The shadows bring me here to call you from the deep. You are the one of shadows and darkness, upon whom I gaze among the Magdalen caves. You are the one carved in rock there, and I have heard from the great ceremonies that you were vanquished and live now in dark places. I have heard of a man who once came to you to beg for power, and you gave it to him that he might drive the invaders from our land. I call to you now, though it is forbidden of the Old Ways to do so. I call to you to come from the depths, to come from the darkness of your abode. I ask for your aid for I have seen terrible things in my mind, and I cannot rid myself of them. If there is power to save one who is damned, then I must have it, for I will not live upon this Earth without my beloved’s safe return.”
Then she began to chant in another tongue, which I could not comprehend, though my mind began to try to understand the words. It was some secret language that was impenetrable. Perhaps she had learned of it in the rituals of the Old Ways. Perhaps she had found it elsewhere, for there were always rumored to be books and grimoires of deviltry among the rich and noble.
Again, the vision dissolved, and another one came.
She stood holding the child in her arms. My son. A boy of perhaps two years. She wept as she held him aloft, and then she went to the edge of the bog, stepping into the water. The boy clutched her about the neck with fear. Tears ran from her cheek across his scalp.
In her left hand, she clutched a small blade that seemed to be made of a translucent stone. A ritual knife of some kind.
She raised it, and brought it down.
4
The vision turned to red.
I cried out, reaching for her, and yet tangled myself into an invisible force that had the consistency of thick, cold mud.
I ripped through the vision, and it swirled about my arms. I saw flashes of images, faces of creatures the like of which I’d never before witnessed—some with wolf faces but the bodies of beautiful women, others with the bodies of rounded men but with mouths clamping shut and opening all up and down their chests and bellies, with the heads and horns of a stag where their phalluses were meant to protrude; still other sights greeted me, each more fantastic and terrifying than the last.
But worse, figures like shades of blackness, tall and wearing the flowing robes of priests passed by, whispering to me the words, Maz-Sherah, we know you.
A blur of these creatures drew about me as if they were a gathering of sorts, or of a forest with moving branches, in a circle around me. And then I felt a crushing blow to my back, the like of which would have thrown me across the room had I not been within the Veil. An intense burning feeling ran the length of my spine, then caught fire along my shoulder blades. I felt as if my own geometry expanded in some way—backward from my shoulders. Up from my throat I felt a sucking at my breath, then my lungs filled with air again and seemed to be lifting me up.
I became aware of my wings before I ever saw them. They unfurled like twin flags upon my back—leathery wings, slick with some oil. They opened behind me with a crackling of blue lightning upon my form. Within the whiteness, I ascended slightly, wings spread while my arms moved into an outstretched position.
I felt I was floating above the world, beyond clouds, and yet the blurred dark creatures moved in mist all around me.
“When you, the Maz-Sherah, received the Sacred Kiss, these shades were loosed from the Medhya’s cloak. They seek all that protect you. They bring plague and fever with them. You must not let your desire blind you.” The priest, within my mind, whispered to me that I would be the Bringer of Light to all the dark ones, the fallen ones of Medhya, and the gods of the Veil blessed me, for I was the Maz-Sherah. “You have but one task to complete the Serpent’s circle.”
I felt his hands at my throat, as if to strangle me, although I did not see him.
“You must devour me,” he whispered.
Then, the juice of that strange flower in my eyes burned slightly as it diminished.
My sight returned.
The rip in the Veil had closed again into a white mist.
I lay on the floor of the tomb of Merod Al-Kamr.
5
I felt an enormous rage within my blood, and yet a surge of power in me threw me back to the floor of the temple. I looked up at the priest, who stood above me. “I have seen all that you have witnessed,” he said. “The mortal you loved has taken the path toward the end of days.”
“To save me!” I shouted. I did not notice how Kiya and Ewen watched me. “She went to God to save me. She went to the darkest pit of Hell to save me!”
“Perhaps,” he said, nodding slightly. “But she is mortal. You are not.”
He reached down to me, offering me his hand. I refused it, and instead rose on my own. My body still exhibited arousal, and I had returned from the vision with the wings of the priest. In my hand I still clutched the Nahhashim.
“She murdered my child,” I said. “To save me.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
I remembered Mere Morwenna’s telling me of the Sight. Of its unreliability. “Perhaps it has not yet come to pass.”
“She will pass the Threshold when she dies. Do not have sorrow. No mortal woman can love you. Your love would bring her death. Her love is darkening. You must not go to her. You must forget her. And any child that exists. I sense the shades around her, seeking the one who holds the heart of the Maz-Sherah.”
“I cannot forget her. Not after seeing this. And my son,” I said, as if I had forgotten a sacred vow, one of my former life. With it, the magnetic pull of my homeland, even there, in the underworld. “I must keep her from this fate.”
“You must think of the others,” he said in a nearly harsh tone.
“What others?”
“Mortal and immortal both. I was not a priest to the vampyres, Falconer, but of humankind. I performed the necessary rites to keep Medhya in darkness. The drinking of blood from mankind is sacred, and not to be abused as if we were wolves. Think of your life as a mortal man. You ran with the hunt, and you sought the boar and the stag. Did you not also leave them in spring and summer to mate and replenish their kind? So humankind must be allowed to sustain and grow. The Myrrydanai—who are the priests—”
The Priest of Blood Page 29