The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

“And you, Hidden Goddess, secret of the earth's inner depths, well of life, join hands across the Wheel with the Bright Goddess, and come among us with your silent call to the hidden sources of life.

  “We need you both, for it is not sun alone nor rain alone, not leaf alone nor root alone, not earth alone nor air alone, not day alone nor night alone that brings forth life, but both together.

  “But my people, cast your eyes down! The Four Great Ones bring life to the land, but we have wearied this land with our greed. We have plucked its fruits, fished its waters, hunted its wild beasts, cleared its fields for plowing and filled them with grain only to empty them at harvest. We have slain the tame beasts that trusted us, and eaten their flesh. All this we have done to live, but we ask pardon for it. We ask pardon for the times when we have taken too much, slaughtered lambs we could have bred, plucked fruit and let it spoil, cleared land we might have left in the gods' hands and not labored hard enough to make it fruitful.”

  I could not think offhand of any people I had met that wasted less or labored more than the Folc, but the herders and farmers around me bowed their heads and I bowed mine, ashamed in truth, for I had been rich once, and in my youth I had probably squandered more than all these good folk, taken together, had in their whole lives.

  As we stood in silence, Day ascended the stone and began to sing the Lament of the Bright Goddess for the Felled Wheat:

  “Tall to the sun you were,

  Gracious and golden as sunlight

  Tall to the sun you were

  Till reapers cut you low.

  Skyward you stretched your head

  Skyward you yearned to light

  Ruthless the reaper's blade

  That laid you low.

  Glad to my touch you grew

  Glad to my light you rose

  Barren the fields again

  Your beauty shorn.”

  Her voice was warm and bright, its pitch steady and true, its tone strong and full. And yet, I thought, Hwyn could have given that song a fire beyond anything this girl could find inside her, and I wondered why the part had not been given to Hwyn. And then from somewhere out of sight came another song in answer, the Hidden Goddess's Lament for the Slain Lambs:

  “In the dark of the womb I knew you,

  Stirred your limbs, taught you life,

  Dear was your stirring to me,

  Dear was the rush in your veins to me,

  The rush of life in your limbs.

  Dark was the passage I showed you,

  Dire was your journey to birth,

  Dear was your warm breath to me

  When first you drew milk of my breasts

  Fair was the life in you,

  Your body lithe in motion,

  Your eyes soft as twilight,

  As the night I wrapped around you.

  Fair was your body, sacrificed

  To nourish other lives.

  Deep in the dark I know you,

  Deep in the stillness of death,

  Still in the darkness I know you.”

  It was Hwyn's voice, and it seemed to come from the mountain itself, echoing everywhere. The downcast faces of the Folc lifted in wonder, and for all the solemnity of the moment I could not help smiling. Of course they'd had no idea what to expect; they had never heard her, perhaps never heard any singer better than Day. Of course Hwyn's voice must dazzle them: it dazzled me, who had heard it often before. Its heights were nightingale-song, its depths were the sighing of the sea, and it filled the valley as the voice of the sea fills the world of the sailor. To those who did not know her, the unseen voice might have been the voice of the whole world's longing.

  When the last heart-tearing echoes had died away, Halred spoke again. “We seek pardon for the life we have taken from the land. Let us not give in sacrifice what is not truly ours. All we have to give is ourselves. Oh Great Ones, four men among the Folc place themselves in your hands, offering blood of their bodies to feed your earth in prayer that it may feed us. We pray you accept this offering in token of all our hearts. Take pity on us in our weakness, and heal the land touched by their blood.”

  Halred took from the stone a knife and a bundle of vines and descended to the ground; Night came after her, carrying a clay bowl. Together they processed toward us, as Day lit a small candle and stuck it on the stone next to a larger urn. At the priestess's sign, we turned to face the people; all eyes were on us.

  Halred went first to Edwach, bound his arm tightly with a length of vine, and stood a while looking him in the eye. “Edwach, have you freely consented to give your blood to the land?”

  Sister and brother, I thought in wonder, wishing I could see the look that passed between the gray eyes and the blue. “Yes,” was all he said, but the fierce pride in his voice made the word a gauntlet thrown down before battle. Halred cocked her head to one side for an instant, as if trying to see something else in him—the little boy she had played and fought with, perhaps? But at last she took his arm firmly and scored a small, precise cut below the pressure-line where she had bound it.

  Night held the bowl to catch the blood that spurted forth. When it was full, Halred unbound the vine and stanched the flow of blood with a leaf. Then the two women returned to the stone, where Halred cleansed the knife in the candle flame and Night poured the blood into the urn.

  As she did so, the Lament for Slain Lambs began again, the two voices blended together, Hwyn's and the acolyte's, though only Day was visible atop the great stone.

  I watched Halred bind and bleed Drict's muscular arm, while another part of my mind wondered at my own calmness—not because of the cut, which would be quick and clean, but simply for the strangeness of the blood-rite I had propelled myself into. I remembered how, after my hasty speech, Halred had said she could not refuse me—I was already given to the gods, the decision already made. Perhaps that is the way with all our decisions: made in a moment, unconscious of their full weight, they are already given to the gods before we know them. After that, there is no use wavering, nothing to do but accept what you have chosen with whatever grace you can muster, and pray that if you chose badly, the gods may still make of it more than it is. My old order may have been right, and this blood unnecessary; yet as I watched Paddon next to me offering his arm for bleeding, I prayed: take this slight thing, this impulse of mine, impure though my motives were; take what was best in it, and make of it more than it was. I was ready.

  I watched Halred and Night retreat to the urn and the flame, then return to me with the same measured pace. Halred's gray eyes searched my face as if to see whether I were truly prepared for the loss of blood, still seeing me as an invalid under her charge. Without wanting to disturb the solemnity of the rite, I managed a half-smile to reassure her. She answered with a quizzical look, but proceeded.

  “Jereth, have you freely consented to give your blood to the land?”

  “Yes,” I said levelly.

  The same dry fingers that had poulticed my head now bound my left arm tightly with thick, coarse vines. I felt the blood pooling below the knotted vine until it felt like the pent-up force of water just before the ice breaks, freeing the cascade. Halred looked up at me shrewdly once more, and I thrust my arm toward her. She grasped it with her left hand and held it over Night's bowl. A quick flash of the knife freed a bright stream of blood.

  The bowl seemed to fill slowly. I was suddenly aware that the sun had burned away the cool mist, that I had not drunk anything all morning, that my mouth was dry as the inside of the old wooden chests in Halred's hut. Darkness floated before my eyes, and I swayed. A hard-boned hand gripped me under the right arm; dragging my eyes open, I saw Halred supporting me. “Breathe,” she hissed.

  Remembering Brother Beylor's first lesson in singing, I drew in air slowly, starting with the abdomen till my whole body seemed filled with it. That cleared my head, so I was able to stand still and straight as the blood reached its measure in the catch-bowl. Halred untied the vine and stanched the flow. She
reached up to touch my face—a motherly sort of gesture—before returning to the flame with the knife. Then she and Night brought before the people the urn of blood.

  “Blood of four men is one in this vessel, and no man can divide one from the others,” she said. “In this we are all one, our hearts bleeding with them in fellowship. Let us be one with the land that nourishes us, and with all those nourished by the land, grass and grain, beast and bird, Folc of all clans and folk of no clan. May the hands of the Bright and Hidden Goddesses work as one to give life to the land we share: the land that feeds us, houses us, holds us, buries us. Give life to the land; give life to us in the land. We commit the blood of our brave ones to the land in token of our love for it.”

  Night slowly poured the blood into the earth, beginning in front of the Assembly Stone and continuing a long way into the crowd, which parted around her. Darkness once again rose before my eyes; I heard Halred pronounce another prayer, but my slow-moving brain did not decipher the words.

  Then a sound broke through the darkness in my head: Hwyn's voice, at first as meaningless as birdsong. At length words and meaning returned to me, and I heard the Call of the Hidden Goddess to the buried seed:

  “Deep in the dark I know you

  Deep in the night I name you

  In the silent earth I call you

  In the womb of earth, I call you

  In the grave of earth, you answer.

  Stir at the sound of my calling

  Break the shell that binds you

  Reach down your roots to my waters

  Drink of me, deep in the darkness

  Draw your life from my darkness

  Draw yourself from my wellsprings

  Drink of my secret depths.

  Deep in the dark I know you

  Drink of my secret knowing.

  Drink your own name from my darkness;

  Rise, knowing your way.”

  The song twined around me, over me, under me, bearing me safely through the darkness behind my eyes, holding out to me a lifeline no thicker than a taproot—but this lifeline led down into the darkness.

  I let go and sank to my knees, feeling the weight of earth, feeling the blessed coolness of dewy grass under my palms. In the darkness, water. I raised a trembling hand to my lips to moisten them—whether sacrilege or sacred gift-exchange, tasting the blood of the land that had tasted mine, I was unsure.

  Hwyn's voice was joined by the acolyte's, and as they sang again the call to the buried seed, I heard soft sobbing and felt hands struggling to lift me. There was Trenara, gathering me in her arms as she had done to Aldworth's sick sheep. I said nothing, inwardly praying this breach of decorum wouldn't be seen as sacrilege. I found her hand and pressed it softly to reassure her I was all right, but she did not leave me, keeping a hand on my arm, making soft sounds of encouragement.

  The two voices lifted into the other hymn, the one Hwyn had sung to me on the mountain, “Arise, arise, my earthly love,” the Bright Goddess's call to the grain, calling me out of the darkness, singing me up and out of my grave, singing the sun up the mountainside toward the noon, singing my heart into rapture. If there were no other sign the gods lived, that song would have convinced me. Breathing deep into my abdomen the sweet breaths of linden and meadow flowers, I struggled to my feet. Trenara twirled away like a dancer, her movements matched to the swooping and soaring of the two voices calling to the grain, calling to the waking life in all things.

  The song ended, and Halred pronounced some final blessing, but I scarcely heard it, savoring the echoes of song in my memory. I was aware that the rite had ended less by Halred's words than by the sudden rush of people offering assistance they had not dared give while the ceremony continued. Paddon took me by the arm to lead me into the shade, Halred felt my pulse and produced a welcome flask from her pocket, and Hwyn came running out of the mouth of the cave where she had been hidden, calling, “Jereth! Are you all right?”

  “I'll be fine,” I said. “I just need to sit down—and drink some more, if I can. I've never been so thirsty.” I sank to the ground and sat with my back to a linden tree. Godrun of the Red Oak came with a bucket of water and handed the dipper to me, first of all the men who had bled.

  “Why this flood of kindness?” I said, smiling. “Didn't I fail?”

  “What do you mean?” Halred said. “Oh—your fall? That's quite usual. Typically one in four men will fall.” She paused to feel my pulse, frowned a little, then handed me her flask again. “You didn't by any chance have a vision?”

  “A vision? Not exactly,” I said, taking a quick swallow of the unknown liquid, some sort of herb brew with a faint taste of mead. “And yet—something happened.” I fixed my eyes on Hwyn. “The sound of the singing was like a revelation. I was dreaming in the sound. Hwyn, when you sang of the water deep in the darkness, I seemed to fall into it, falling on the dewy grass. Whether that might betoken anything—I mean, for anyone but myself—I don't know.”

  “I dreamed,” Hwyn said so softly that I was at first not sure she meant anyone to hear. “In the cave.”

  Halred seized on her words. “You saw something?”

  “I heard something. Mother Halred, that cave—what is it? Is it a tomb?”

  “You didn't know?” Halred said. “It is the Hall of the Dead, the home of our ancestors' ashes. Have you nothing like it in the lowlands?”

  “No. That is, of course we have tombs, but I never heard of anyone singing out of one,” said Hwyn. “It was like nothing else. There are ghosts on this mountain.”

  “Did they speak to you?” Halred asked.

  “I heard a babble of voices. Only a few words came clear through the confusion. ‘I am nearer than you think. The time will not be long.’ I don't know whether the message is for me and my companions or for the Folc.”

  “The time will not be long,” Halred echoed. “Time for what, I wonder? Is that a threat or a reassurance?”

  “That I do not know,” Hwyn said. “But the voice did not sound unfriendly.”

  Halred gazed into the tomb's entrance. “St. Arin's ashes lie there. I wonder … But it is so little to judge by. At any rate, I thank you for your listening, as for your voice in this rite.” She turned to me. “And thank you, Jereth. Your gift was a great one.”

  I stared at my feet, remembering uncomfortably the motives that had driven me to this rite. “It was what I had to do to become less alien here, less of an intruder.”

  “You are one of us now,” Halred said, “one blood, one land.”

  “And what now?” I said. “What happens next?”

  “Now, the feast,” grinned Day. “Always, after the rite, the feast.”

  “Not much of a feast in these times,” said Godrun, handing me the water-dipper again as if she read my mind. “But we are putting out the last of the ale in the Red Oak stores. That will be the last till harvest, brother, so you'd better not miss it. Come along!” With a toss of her long braid, she dropped the dipper back into the nearly empty water-bucket, and grabbed me by the hand to pull me along after her. As I rose, helpless to resist, I glanced back at Hwyn to see her looking up at me anxiously. I stretched a hand toward her to add her to the chain, but could not catch her before I was swept away.

  They led me back to the great hall of the Red Oak Clan, which had assumed responsibility for the day's hospitality—a defiant gesture, as Paddon explained to me in an undertone when he followed us in. “Summer feasts should be Linden's responsibility. Guthlac is flaunting his generosity in Edwach's face. At least it will not decrease his flock, as this is a fleshless feast. Still, it's no small thing to lay out the last of the beer so early in summer.”

  The tables were spread with cheeses, smoked lake-fish, summer fruits, nuts carefully preserved since the past autumn, and fried cakes with honey. It was, as Godrun had warned, a limited feast—in my richer days, I would have taken such fare for granted—but after even a few days among the Folc, I could appreciate the recklessness of Red O
ak's generosity; the time till harvest might be lean and anxious after this display. I accepted almost with reverence a wedge of cheese and a cake with fresh cream and honey.

  True to her word, Godrun put one of the first mugs of dark ale in my hand, and another in Paddon's. “Those that spared blood should not be cheated of ale,” she said. Guthlac presided over the barrel of ale with a similar play of images, telling the feasters that “in the spirit of sacrifice, it seemed right to kill off the last barrel.” I appreciated the gesture, but light-headed as I was, ale was not what I most needed; a small amount was enough to set me spinning over the depths of half-dream I'd plumbed in the rite.

  Casting my eye about the crowded hall for a safe harbor, I saw Hwyn and Trenara with Halred and her acolytes. I crossed the room toward them unsteadily, almost upsetting the precious mug of ale. “Hwyn!” I plunked down the mug on the board before her. “You must share this. I think people are making a game of trying to make me drunk in this weakened state.”

  “Not a bit of it,” Hwyn said. “Surely you must see you're getting a hero's homecoming, with the Headman's daughter taking you by the hand to give you drink?”

  “Do you think so?” I said. “I was a public burden a few days ago. All I've done since then is to fall down. But you—” I shook my head, feeling too befuddled to say half of what I had wanted to tell her since the rite concluded. “Do you know how you startled me?”

  “I guess I shouldn't have reached out for you so suddenly. I was afraid of that, but I wanted you to know where I was,” she said.

  “No, I don't mean in the cave,” I said. “I mean your voice. Of course I knew you sing beautifully—you always have—but—” I stopped for breath. Somehow I'd had a better way of saying this in my head while they were pouring beer for me. “You were the Hidden Goddess. I thought you would sing the Bright Goddess's part again.”

  “Me? Stand and face the people as Beauty's Light? What a thought,” she said, looking down at her hands. “The people would laugh. Of course I would have to be Hidden.”

  “You could be both,” Halred cut in. “There is enough height and depth in your soul for both teachings, both devotions. Do you think the Bright Goddess's beauty is only a fair face and an easy smile? Then you have much to learn. But you could learn: you have the mind and heart for it.”