Priestess of Avalon

  The path led to a copse of hazel, like those that I had been trimming—only this morning—when Becca almost drowned. With a pang I realized that I had nearly forgotten why I had come here. Time ran differently in Faerie, I had heard, and it was easy to lose one's memory as well as one's way.

  But these hazels had never known the touch of iron. And yet, though untrimmed they might be, surely some mind had guided their luxuriance into this interlace of supple branches in which there was only one opening, through which Eldri had disappeared. For a moment I hesitated, but if I could not find Dierna, I might just as well lose myself in Faerie, for I would surely never dare to return to Avalon. Only the thought of Aelia, anxiously waiting, kept me going forwards.

  As I passed through the opening, there came a sudden singing, as if the branches hid a chorus of birds, and yet I knew, and I had been trained to notice such things, that these were no birds I had ever heard on Avalon. I looked up in delight, hoping to see the secret singers. When I lowered my gaze, a strange woman was standing there.

  I blinked, finding it curiously hard to focus, for in the lady's mantle were all the shifting pale golds of the leaves of the willow when autumn comes. Red berries were strung like a diadem upon, her dark hair and across her brow.

  She looks like Heron, I thought in wonder, or like one of the little dark folk of the Lake village! But no woman of the Lake people had ever stood as if her surroundings had only been created to be her setting, stately as a priestess, noble as a queen. Eldri had run to her, and was leaping up against her skirts as she did to me when I had been away.

  Stifling a pang of jealousy, for Eldri had never shown such affection to anyone else before, I sank down in the obeisance due to an empress.

  "You bow to me, and that is well, but others will bow to you one day."

  "When I become High Priestess?"

  "When you fulfil your destiny," came the answer. The Lady's voice held the sweetness of bee-song on a summer's day, but I remembered how swiftly that music could turn to fury if one threatened the hive, and I did not know what might anger this queen.

  "What is my destiny?" heart pounding, at last I dared to ask.

  "That will depend on what you choose…"

  "What do you mean?"

  "You saw three roads when you came here, did you not?"

  The Lady's voice remained sweet and low, but there was a compulsion in it that turned my memory to the scene, and at once it was before me—the path that led back through the mists, the rocky road, but the middle way was broad and fair, bordered with pale lilies.

  "The choice that you must make lies in the future—to seek the world of the Romans, or the Hidden Country, or Avalon," the Faerie Queen continued as if I had answered her.

  "But I have already chosen," I answered in surprise. "I will be a priestess of Avalon."

  "So says your head, but what does your heart say?" the Lady laughed softly, and I felt a prickle of heat flush my skin.

  "I suppose that when I am old enough to think about such things I will know," I said defiantly. "But I am sworn to give myself to no man save as the Goddess wills, and I will not break my vow!"

  "Ah, daughter—" the Lady laughed once more, "be not so certain that you understand what your vows mean, and where they will lead you! This much I will tell you: only when you understand who you truly are will you know your way—"

  From somewhere, words came to me. "Eilan I am, and Elen shall guide me…"

  The Faerie Queen looked at me and suddenly, unexpectedly, smiled.

  "Just so. And if you know that much, then you have set your feet already upon the path. But enough of such serious matters—for now, you are here, and that is a thing not given to many mortals. Come, my little one, and feast with us in my hall!" Gazing at me with a sweetness that touched the heart like pain, she held out her hand.

  "If I go with you… will I be able to return to Avalon?" I asked hesitantly.

  "If you wish it," came the reply.

  "And will I find Dierna?"

  "Is that what you truly wish?" the Lady asked.

  "With all my heart!" I exclaimed.

  The Faerie Queen sighed. "The heart, again! I tell you now that if you find her, you will lose her, but I suppose you cannot understand. Come and be happy for a little while, if that is the only gift that you will accept from me…"

  Then the Lady took me by the hand, and led me by ways winding and unknown, and we came presently to a hall all built from wood, not cut and pegged, as I had seen in the lands of men, but woven and grown all together, so that the beams were of living wood, roofed with branch and leaf of living green. Jutting branches held torches along the walls, their pale flickering light dancing in the bright eyes of the folk who sat at the high table there.

  They gave me a sweet, yeasty drink in a cup that was neither silver nor gold, and as I drank, I found my weariness dissolving away. There were baskets of strange fruits, and pies with roots and mushrooms in a rich sauce, and bread with honey.

  The food refreshed my body, although, as I remembered tales I had heard about the Faerie country, I wondered if it were illusion. But the harping fed something in my spirit that I did not even know had been hungering. A young man with merry eyes and a wreath of golden wheat upon his dark curls took my hand and swept me into the dance. At first I stumbled, for this was nothing like the stately measures that were thought suitable for the maidens being trained on Avalon. The rhythm was like the drumbeat that came from the Tor when the initiated priestesses danced with the Druids at the Beltane fires and the girls in the House of Maidens lay in the darkness listening, their blood pulsing to a beat they did not yet understand.

  I laughed and let the music lift me, but when my partner would have drawn me away from the dancing into a leafy bower, I knew it for another temptation and slipped from his embrace and back to the feasting table once more.

  "Was not the young man to your liking?" asked the queen.

  "I liked him well enough," said I, and felt my cheeks grow hot with a betraying flush, for though his beauty struck no answering chord in my heart, his touch had stirred my senses in a way I did not entirely understand. "But I have stayed here too long. I hold you to your promise, Lady, to lead me to Dierna and thence back to my home."

  "There is time and enough for that. Wait just a little: the greatest of our bards is about to sing…"

  But I shook my head. "I must go. I will go—Eldri! Eldri, come to me!" I looked around in sudden terror lest the little dog, who had after all brought me to this place, should have abandoned me. But in the next moment I felt the drag on my skirts as the dog pawed at them. I bent to scoop her into my arms and hugged her fiercely.

  "Yes… your will is very strong," said the Lady thoughtfully. "What if I were to tell you that by returning to Avalon you will take the first steps on the path that leads away from it, and in doing so, you will set events in motion that will end by forever separating it from the world of men?"

  "I will never do so!" I cried angrily.

  "The wind that is stirred by a butterfly's wing may cause a tempest half the world away… in the Hidden Country we do not think on the passing of time, and so for us it runs slowly, or not at all. But when I look into the world of men, I can observe the results of actions that you swift-living mortals will never see. Learn from my wisdom, daughter, and stay!"

  I shook my head. "I belong to Avalon!"

  "Be it so," the Faerie Queen said then. "This much comfort I will grant you: that however far you may wander, so long as you have your hounds you will find your way home… Go then, with the blessing of the Elder Folk, and perhaps, from time to time, you will remember me—"

  "I will remember you…" said I, tears pricking my eyes. I set Eldri on the ground once more, and the dog, after looking back to make sure that I was following, trotted towards the door.

  We passed into the leaf-filtered light of the faerie wood, and then, between one step and another, into a darkness in which the glimmering white
shape of the dog ahead of me was the only thing I could see. And then I felt the cold touch of mist upon my skin and slowed, shivering, testing each step before I trusted my weight to it to be sure of keeping to the path.

  I could not be certain how long I continued in this way, but gradually I became aware that the mist was brightening, and then it thinned, and I passed through the last of it and onto the grass of the Tor. The moon still rode high—as high, nearly, as it had been when I set forth. I stared at it in amazement, for surely in Faerie the feasting, and the dancing had gone on for hours. But here I was back again, and it was the same time of night as when I had gone. But was it the same night, I wondered in sudden fear? Or the same month, or year? Did Aelia wait for me still?

  I started forwards, looking anxiously about me to see if anything had changed, and sighed in relief to see before me the hazel hedge, still half-pruned as I had left it. Something pale stirred in its shadow—Eldri, sitting beside a curled heap of clothing that on closer inspection proved to be the sleeping child.

  I fell to my knees beside her, heart pounding in my breast. "Blessed Goddess!" I breathed, "never again will I doubt you!" And then, when my pulse had slowed nearly to its customary beat, I gathered the child into my arms.

  "Dierna, wake up, little one! You are such a great girl now, I cannot carry you!"

  The child stirred, burrowing sleepily against rny breast. "I can't go back there—I'm afraid…"

  "I will stay with you," said I, "and so will Eldri."

  "But she's so little," Dierna giggled, reaching out to ruffle the dog's curly hair.

  "Do not underestimate her. She is a magic dog," I answered her. In the shadow, it seemed to me that a little of the glamour of Faerie clung to that pale fur still. "Come now—" I got to my feet, and after a moment's hesitation, Dierna followed me.

  I told myself that I could sneak back to the House of Maidens before I was missed in the morning, but even if Ganeda learned how I had disobeyed, I found it hard to care. There was enough straw in the shed to make a bed, and when I had persuaded Dierna to lie down, I told the child tales of my adventures in Faerie until she slept once more.

  And at that, the fatigue of my own night's adventuring came fully upon me, and so it was that that when Suona came to release the child in the dawning, she found us curled up together, with Eldri beside us guarding the door.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOUR

  « ^ »

  AD 268-70

  In the year that I turned eighteen I left the House of Maidens to dwell in a separate enclosure with Heron and Aelia and Roud, for the time of initiation was approaching, and the disciplines which prepared us to receive the Mysteries required solitude. But though we three novice priestesses were to be kept apart from the rest of the community, we could not be isolated completely from the rumours that swept the isle.

  It was a time of death and omens, on Avalon as well as elsewhere. A network of connections kept the High Priestess informed of what was going on in the Empire, and from time to time one of the boatmen of the Lake village would bring a leather tube containing a message, or the messenger himself, who was led blindfolded to the house of the Lady to give his news. I always suspected that the High Priestess heard much that was never passed on to the rest of our community.

  However, the news that the self-made emperor Postumus had been assassinated by his own troops when he refused to hand over the spoils of a captured town was deemed essential knowledge, for it was he who had divided the West, including Britannia, from the remainder of the Empire. A man called Victorinus had assumed his title, but rumour held that he was a warrior of the bed-chamber whose adulteries were already eroding his support. It was his mother Victorina, said the reports, who really ruled the Imperium Galliarum now.

  But to those of us who dwelt on the holy isle these tales meant little, for at the end of the winter Sian, Ganeda's daughter and likely heir, lost her own battle with the illness that had come upon her after the birth of her second child, and the community of Avalon was plunged into mourning.

  The year that followed seemed to promise little improvement. We heard that the people of the Mediterranean, swept by plague and famine, were blaming their troubles on the Emperor, and Gallienus, like his western rival, fell to an assassin's blade. Of his successor, Claudius, little was known save that he came from somewhere on the Danu, and was said to be a good general. We worried more about the Saxon sea-raiders who were attacking the southern coasts of Britannia in ever greater numbers.

  Still, the Saxon shore was far away. As the year turned towards harvest, my own time of testing was approaching quickly, and that gave me a more immediate reason to fear. Our final lessons were the responsibility of the High Priestess, and now that Ganeda was once more forced to acknowledge my existence, it was clear that she had not learned to love me any better than before.

  Sometimes it seemed to me that she blamed me for being alive and healthy when her own child lay cold in the ground. I knew that she hoped I would fail the tests that determined who was worthy to be called a priestess of Avalon. But would she so far betray her own vows as to use her powers to make sure?

  I woke each morning with a knot in my belly, and approached the garden beside the house of the High Priestess where we had our lessons as if it were a battlefield.

  "Soon you will be sent out beyond the mists to the outer world, to bend time and space, if you can, to return to Avalon."

  It was a fair day just after midsummer, and through the leaves of the hawthorn hedge I could glimpse the blue glitter of the Lake. Today the mists were only a thin haze on the horizon. It was hard to believe that beyond them lay a different world.

  It seemed to me that the gaze of the High Priestess rested on me a little longer than on the others. I glared back at her, but I retained a vivid memory of how it had felt to come through the mists the first time, when Suona opened the gateway between the isle of the priestesses and the world of men. At that moment, with no training whatsoever, it had seemed to me that I almost understood what was happening. If the test was a fair one, with all the training I had received I did not think that I would fail.

  "But you must understand," Ganeda continued, "that you are not only being given a challenge, but a choice. You will go forth in the dress of a woman of that world, with gold enough to take you wherever you might wish to go, and provide you with a dowry when you have got there. No vows will bind you, save only a geas against revealing the secrets of Avalon. You are young yet, for all our learning, and have barely begun to taste life's joys. To discipline the mind and the body, to go without food or sleep, to lie with a man only for the Lady's purposes, never your own, is to give up what the Goddess offers every woman born. You must consider whether you truly wish to return."

  There was a long silence. Then Aelia cleared her throat.

  "This is my home, and I want no other, but why must it be so hard? If those folk out there know nothing of Avalon, what is it that we are doing for them, and why?"

  "The princely families know," I ventured to reply. "When the crops in their lands are failing, they send for one of us to perform the Great Rite—that is how I came to be born. And they send their daughters to us for training in the old ways of our people."

  "But the Romans have temples, and tax the people to support them. Let them win favour from the gods with their offerings. Why must we give up so much, when we receive so little in return?"

  The High Priestess was watching with a sour smile, but she did not seem angry, so I dared to answer once more.

  "Because the Romans have forgotten what the rituals mean, if indeed they ever knew! My father used to say that they think that if every word and action of a ceremony is performed correctly, the deity must do their bidding, and that no amount of sincere belief will matter if one syllable is wrong."

  My tutor Corinthius, that kind and gentle man, had believed that rituals were only a means of holding society together, and the gods were some kind of philosophic i
deal.

  "The people of my village knew better than that!" exclaimed Heron. "Our festivals put us in harmony with the cycles and seasons of the world."

  "And the rituals of Avalon can change them," Ganeda put in at last. "We are halfway to the Otherworld already, and what we do here resonates on all the planes of existence. There have been times when we worked more openly within the world, and times when we have stayed behind our mists, invisible, but we work with the energies of the cosmos, according to the teachings that have come down to us from the land of Atlantis that lies now beneath the waves. It is real power, that would destroy the mind and body of any who tried to channel it unprepared or untrained…"

  Aelia's eyes dropped before the fervour in her gaze, and then Heron and Aelia looked away. Her gaze moved to me, and I realized I was looking not at my aunt, who hated me, but at the Lady of Avalon. I bowed my head in homage.

  "And that is why we offer ourselves to the Goddess, to do Her work within the world, not in pride, but because She has called us in a voice that compels an answer," she said softly. "Our lives are the sacrifice."

  After that day, the tension between Ganeda and myself seemed to ease a little, or perhaps it was only that I was beginning to understand her now. Indeed, each day seemed to bring new understanding, as we refined skills we thought we had mastered before.

  The vision was fading. Reluctantly I released the image of the Tor, ablaze with light, and willed myself to retrace my steps around and around and back again to the garden. The Voice of my Guide continued in its steady direction, keeping me from straying until the brilliant memory of my inner journey became the familiar scene I saw every day.

  I opened my eyes, blinking at the sunlight, and set my hands upon the earth to root myself once more in her power. The hawthorn hedge and the carefully-tended herbs were still beautiful, even though they had lost the glowing edges I saw in the Otherworld. Roud and Heron were beside me. I took a deep breath of the scented air and blessed the Goddess for bringing me safely back again.