But no excuses could change the fact that Eilan had died because Caillean had failed to reach Vernemeton ten years ago. And now Eilan’s son, whom she had learned to love, lay dying because she had not been there when he most needed her.
“Can he be moved?” asked Riannon.
“Perhaps,” answered Marged, the closest thing they had to a healer. “But not far. It would be better to build a shelter above him. If we cut through the spearshaft we can lay him on his back. He will be easier then.”
“Can’t you pull it out?” Ambios said thinly.
“If we do, he will die now.”
Swiftly, and without knowing what is happening to him, thought Caillean, instead of later, with greater pain. She knew how men struck through the lungs died. It would be far kinder to draw out the pilum immediately. But, however short the time, Gawen had been the Pendragon, and the deaths of kings, like those of High Priestesses, are not like those of other men.
Sianna must be allowed to say farewell, she told herself, but in her heart Caillean knew that it was her own need for one last word from her fosterling that compelled her decision.
“Lift the shelter of branches you built for him this morning and bring it here. We will cut the shaft of the pilum and tend him as best we can.”
Slowly, Caillean walked around the circle. While Gawen fought the Romans, the Nazarene monks had continued their work of destruction. Both pillars were cast down, along with three of the lesser stones, and there was a great crack in the altar stone. Out of long habit she moved sunwise, but the power which should have awakened as she passed, flowing smoothly from stone to stone, now welled sluggishly without force or direction. Like Gawen, the Tor had been wounded, and its power was bleeding away through the shattered stones.
Caillean’s steps slowed, as if her heart no longer had the strength to pump the blood through her veins. She could feel its erratic fluttering. Perhaps I will die too. At the moment, the thought was welcome.
Outside the circle, Gawen lay cleansed and bandaged on his makeshift bed, with Sianna watching beside him. They had stopped his other wounds from bleeding, but the spearhead was still in his chest, and his spirit still wandered in the borderland between death and dream. Caillean forbade herself to turn to see if anything had changed. If he woke, someone would call her; she would not take from Sianna whatever comfort the girl might find in being alone with him now.
The last of the daylight veiled the land in gold, glowing in the mists that were beginning to gather around the lower hills. Caillean could see no movement in the reeds or open water, or on the wooden trackways that crossed them. Nothing stirred in the water meadows or on the tree-clad island hills. Everywhere she looked, the countryside was peaceful. It is an illusion, she told herself. The land should be erupting in storm and fire on such a day!
The surge of hatred that shook her as her gaze moved to the wattled huts that circled Father Joseph’s beehive church took her by surprise. Paulus had killed the old man’s dream of two communities living side by side, following their separate paths toward the goal that she and Joseph had shared. But even there, she could see no one. The marsh folk said that they had run away when the darkness came, praying desperately for deliverance from the demons that they themselves had raised.
Beyond the church, the Aquae Sulis road ran away to the north. It was white and empty now, but how long would it be, she wondered, before old Macellius would begin to worry about his soldiers and send another detachment to find out what had become of them?
Gawen had killed five, and when the darkness fell, the wicked little knives of the marsh men had disposed of the remainder. Afterward they had dragged the bodies away and sunk them in the bogs, lest they further pollute the Tor. But the monks were no doubt even now on their way to tell the Romans that the soldiers had come here, and the Army would exact a heavy reckoning.
They will come, and they will finish what was begun with the massacre on the Isle of Mona when I was a child. The Order of Druids and the service of our Goddess will be obliterated at last…, Caillean thought grimly. At this moment she found it hard to care. She stayed where she was, gazing out across the land as the sun set and the light ebbed out of the world.
It was full dark when a touch on her arm brought Caillean back to awareness. She was no more hopeful, but her abstraction had at least given her a little peace.
“What is it? Is Gawen—”
Riannon shook her head. “He still sleeps. It is the rest of us who need you. Lady, all of the Druids and the initiated priestesses are here. They are frightened; some want to flee before the Romans come again, others to stay and fight. Speak to them—tell us what we must do!”
“Tell you?” Caillean shook her head. “Do you think my magic so great that I have only to whisper an invocation and all will be well? I could not save Gawen—what makes you think I can save you?” In the dim light she saw the hurt in Riannon’s face and bit off any further words.
“You are the Lady of Avalon! You cannot simply withdraw because you have lost hope. We feel the same despair you do, but you have always taught us that we must not allow our feelings to determine our actions, but to seek calm and allow the eternal spirit within us to decide….”
Caillean sighed. She felt as if her own spirit had died when Paulus thrust down the sacred stones, but the actions of the woman she had been still bound her. It is true, she thought, that the strongest chains are those we forge for ourselves.
“Very well,” she said at last. “This decision will affect all our lives. I cannot make it for you, but I will come, and we will talk about what to do.”
One by one, the Druids limped into the shattered circle. Ambios brought Caillean’s chair, and she sank into it, realizing painfully just how long she had been standing. She had learned to ignore the body’s demands, but now she felt every one of her sixty years.
Several oil lamps had been set on the ground. In the flickering light, Caillean saw a reflection of her own anguish and fear.
“We cannot stay here. I do not know much of the Romans,” said Ambios, “but everyone has heard how they punish those who attack their soldiers. If it is in war, their prisoners are sold as slaves, but when members of the civilian population rebel and strike back at their masters, they are crucified….”
“We Britons are not allowed to bear arms, lest they be used against them,” said another.
“Are you surprised?” Riannon asked with bitter pride. “Look how much damage Gawen did with his!” They all turned to gaze for a moment at the still figures in the leafy shelter.
“It is certain that on us they will have no mercy, in any case,” said Eiluned. “I heard the tales of what they did to the women of Mona. The Forest House was founded to protect those who remained. We should never have left it.”
“Vernemeton is in ruins,” said Caillean wearily. “It was only because the old Arch-Druid, Ardanos, had become a personal friend to several prominent Romans that it lasted as long as it did. We have lived in peace since then because the authorities did not realize we were here.”
“If we stay here we will be massacred, or worse. But where can we go?” asked Marged. “Even the mountains of Demetia would not hide us. Shall we ask the folk of the marshes to build us coracles and set sail for the isles beyond the western sea?”
“Alas,” said Riannon, “poor Gawen is likely to reach those isles before we do.”
“We could flee to the north,” said Ambios. “The Caledonians do not bow to Rome.”
“They did in Agricola’s day,” answered Brannos. “Who’s to say that some ambitious emperor might not try it again? And the folk of the north have their own priests. They might not welcome us.”
“Then the Order of Druids in Britannia is ended,” said Riannon heavily. “We must send the children we have taken for training back to their families, and we ourselves must flee separately to make our way as best we can.”
Brannos shook his head. “I am too old for such jaunterings. I wil
l stay here. The Romans are welcome to such sport as they may get from my old bones.”
“And I will stay as well,” said Caillean. “The Lady Eilan set me to serve the Goddess on this holy hill, and I will not betray my oath to her.”
“Mother Caillean!” Lysanda began. “We cannot leave—” But another sound interrupted her. Sianna had half risen and was calling to them.
“Gawen is awake!” she cried. “You must come!”
Strange, thought Caillean, how her weariness had suddenly not gone but become unimportant. She was the first to reach Gawen, kneeling on his other side, moving her hands above his body to sense the life force there. It was steadier than she expected, and she remembered that he had been in the prime of his youth and in good physical condition as well. This body would not easily relinquish the spirit it bore.
“I have told him what happened after he lost consciousness,” Sianna said softly as the others joined them. “But what have you decided to do?”
“There is no refuge for the order,” said Ambios. He looked at Gawen’s white face and quickly away. “We must scatter and hope the Romans will not think us all worth the trouble to hunt down.”
“Gawen cannot be moved and I will not leave him!” Sianna exclaimed.
Caillean saw his convulsive movement and laid her hand over his. “Be still! You must save your strength!”
“For what?” Gawen mouthed the words. Amazingly, there was a spark of humor in his eye. Then his gaze moved to Sianna. “She must not risk danger…for me….”
“You did not desert the sacred stones,” said Caillean.
He tried to take a deep breath and winced. “Then, there was something…to defend. Now I…am done.”
“And what will this world hold for me if you are not in it?” cried Sianna, bending over him again. Her bright hair veiled his wounded body and her shoulders shook with the force of her weeping. Gawen’s face contorted as he realized he had not even the strength to lift his unhurt arm and comfort her.
Caillean, her eyes stinging with tears, lifted his hand and laid it on Sianna’s shoulder. Suddenly she felt her flesh prickle. She looked up and saw the shimmer of displaced air and within it the slim shape of the Faerie Queen.
“If the priestesses cannot protect you, my daughter, then you must return to Faerie, and the man also. He will not die if he is in my keeping in the Otherworld.”
Sianna sat up, hope and despair warring in her eyes. “And will he be healed?”
The fairy woman’s dark gaze turned to Gawen, with an infinite compassion and an infinite sorrow. “I do not know. Perhaps in time—a very long time, as you count such things among men.”
“Ah, Lady,” whispered Gawen, “you have been good to me, but you do not understand what it is you ask. You would offer me the immortality of the Elder kin, but what would it bring me? Unending suffering for my broken body, and suffering for my spirit when I thought of the people of Avalon and the desecrated stones. Sianna, my dear one, our love is great, but it would not survive that. Would you ask it of me?” He coughed, and on the bandaging around his chest the red stain deepened.
Sobbing, she shook her head.
“I could take from you even those memories,” her mother said then.
Gawen stretched out his arm, where the royal dragon spiraled, its sinuous lines shockingly dark against his bloodless skin. “Could you take these?” he asked. “Then I would be dead, for what you would have would no longer be me. I will accept no rescue that does not include the Druids and the sacred stones.”
Did his father have this wisdom at the end? wondered Caillean. If so, then Eilan saw more clearly than I did, and I have wronged her judgment all these years. It was ironic that she should only come to this understanding now.
The Queen surveyed them with a rueful sorrow. “Since before the tall folk came over the sea, I have watched and studied humankind. But still I do not understand you. I sent my daughter to learn your wisdom, and with it she has assumed your frailties. But I see that you are determined, and so I will tell you of a way in which the priestesses and Druids of Avalon might be saved. It will be difficult, even dangerous, and I cannot guarantee what will happen, for I have only ever heard of such a thing being attempted once or twice in my long existence, and then it was not always successful.”
“One other way to do what? Mother, what do you mean?”
Caillean sat back on her heels, eyes narrowing, for it seemed to her that this was something of which she too had once heard tales.
“A way to separate this Avalon in which you dwell from the rest of the human world. The Romans will see only the isle of Inis Witrin, where the Nazarenes have their church. But for you there will be a second Avalon, shifted just sufficiently so that its time will move along a different track, neither wholly in Faerie nor in the human world. To mortal sight, a mist will enfold it, which can only be passed by those who have been trained to shape the power.” Her shadowed gaze moved to Caillean. “Do you understand, Lady of Avalon? Are you willing to dare this working for the sake of those you love?”
“I am,” she said hoarsely, “even if it consumes me. I would dare more than this for the sake of the trust to which I am sworn.”
“This can only be done when the tides of power are cresting. If you wait until Midsummer, your enemies may come upon you, and I do not think that Gawen can last so long.”
“But the tides of Beltane are just beginning to ebb, and the rite that was celebrated here last night raised great power,” Caillean said swiftly. “We will do it now.”
It was very late before they were ready to begin. It would not be possible for them to transport the entire Vale of Avalon; even to affect the seven sacred islands was a task almost beyond imagining. Caillean had sent her people out in pairs, priest and priestess, to mark the points with fires kindled from the embers of the Beltane blaze. The others were gathered on the Tor.
At the moment when the stars stood still for midnight, Brannos stepped to the brow of the Tor, set his horn to his lips, and blew. His fingers might be too gnarled for the harp, but there was nothing wrong with his lungs. Softly at first, the horncall drifted out upon the shadowed air, gathering volume as if it were drawing strength from the night itself, filling the darkness with a music so profound that she thought an answering vibration must be echoing from the stars. Caillean felt her skin shiver with the chill of impending trance, and knew that what she was hearing was not entirely physical, for what sound produced by a human frame could fill the world? And by what senses of the flesh could it be perceived? What her spirit heard was the manifestation of the old Druid’s trained will.
She looked around the circle. They had repaired it as best they might, propping up the stones that were fallen and binding shattered pieces together, but tonight the real circle was built from human flesh and human spirit. The people of Avalon had been positioned around it, one circle inside and the other out, living extensions of the points of power that were the stones. The dance they had not had time for in the afternoon they would do now. Caillean signaled to Riannon to begin the music.
What she played was a stately, sprightly air, like a heron stalking through reeds, that had been old when the Druids came to this isle. The two lines of dancers began to move sunwise around the circle, separating to pass the stones, crossing between them, and, separating around the next, so that the stones were framed in meanders of light. Inward and out again, outward and in wove the dancers, the melody quickening with each circuit.
Caillean felt the flow of energy growing stronger, the visible light a manifestation of the power that was swirling around the perimeter of the circle. It wavered a little when it touched the broken stones, like water meeting a blockage in the bed of a stream. But water was mindless, following the path of least resistance. The determination of the dancers would carry this flow of force through.
As the dance moved faster, energy spun off from the circumference, thinning as it radiated outward. But the power that moved inward
was contained, borne on by its own momentum in its own, slower swirl, a little uneven where the stones had been damaged, but strong.
The High Priestess sent a tendril of spirit downward, anchoring herself in the earth of the Tor. As many times as she had done this, there was always a moment of surprise when the power began to really flow.
The air within the circle was thickening. She blinked; stones and dancers were veiled by a rippling golden haze. Caillean lifted her hands to gather the light in. In a dimension just a breath away from this one, the Faerie Queen was waiting. If the Druids could raise enough power, and if Caillean was strong enough to focus it, the fairy woman could use it to draw Avalon between the worlds.
The energy rose in dizzying waves, the distortion from the broken stones increasing as it grew. Caillean struggled for balance, remembering a night when she had returned to the Tor across the waters during a storm, the boat leaping beneath them as Waterwalker struggled to bring her in. Friendly hands were waiting to pull them to shelter if only Caillean could toss the rope to shore. She had strained to do so, heaving the rope until she almost went over the side. But it had been a momentary easing of the wind that had saved them.
It was like that now. She staggered, buffeted by the surging energy, and could not regain her balance; she could gather the power, but she could not direct it away.
“Let go!”
Caillean did not know if the voice came from without or within. But she could not in any case have continued much longer. As the will that had sustained her faltered, the energy burst outward, and she fell.
“I’m sorry…. I wasn’t strong enough….” Caillean knew she was babbling. She blinked, unsure whether she was conscious or this was all some dream. Gradually the world steadied. She was sitting with her back to the altar stone, pale faces swimming in and out of focus around her. “I’m sorry,” she said again, more strongly. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Help me to stand.”