At least, she thought grimly as she looked around her, she had retained enough of her old discipline to ground the backlash of power herself instead of allowing it to devastate the circle. The others looked shaken, but they were all on their feet. She herself felt rather as if she had been trampled by a herd of horses, but the painful thumping of her heart was beginning to ease.
A stir from beyond the circle caught her attention. What were they doing? Four of the younger folk had gotten Gawen up on a litter and were bringing him into the circle of stones.
“It was his will, Lady,” said Ambios, with an intonation that added, Even dying, he is the King…. They brought benches and laid the litter across them. The taut muscles of Gawen’s cheeks unclenched as the jolting stopped, and after a moment he opened his eyes.
Caillean looked down at him. “Why…?”
“To give you what help I may when you try again…” Gawen replied.
“Again?” Caillean shook her head. “I did all I knew….”
“We must try another way,” Sianna said then. “Did you not teach us the power of a triad in working such as this one? Three points are always much better balanced than one alone.”
“Do you mean myself and Gawen and you? Even to remain within the circle would be a danger to him. It would kill him to channel such power!”
“I will die anyway, of my wounds, or when the Romans come,” Gawen said quietly. “I have heard there is great magic in the death of a king. I think that, dying, I will yet have more power than I would have had in full health a week ago. You see, I now remember what I am, and who I have been. What life remains to me is a small price to pay for such a victory.”
“Does Sianna think so?” Caillean asked bitterly.
“This is the man I love….” Sianna’s voice wavered only a little. “How can I deny him? He has always been a king to me.”
“We will find each other again.” He looked up at her, and then at Caillean. “Did you yourself not teach us that this life is not all?”
Caillean met his gaze, feeling as if her very heart would crack. In this moment it was not only Gawen whom she was seeing clearly, but Sianna as well, and she knew that the spirit that shone through the girl’s eyes was one that she had sometimes loved, and sometimes fought, before.
“Be it so,” she said heavily. “We will take our risks together, then, for I think that we are all three bound into the same chain.” She straightened and looked at the others.
“If you also are still determined to dare this, then you must resume your places and stand with linked hands around the stones. But we will not dance this time. The damaged stones cannot anchor the energy. You must send it sunwise through your linked hands as we sing….”
Once more, silence fell upon the Tor. Taking a deep breath, Caillean rooted her being in the earth and began to vibrate the first note in the sacred chord. Softly at first it began, intensifying as more and more voices joined in, until Caillean began to see the vibrations as a haze in the air. After the note was established, she ceased to sing. Sianna and Gawen were silent also, but she could feel them using the sound to center and focus their energy.
That was encouraging, or perhaps it was only that she herself was now beginning to slide into a deeper state in which she could view all that occurred with a dispassionate eye. She deepened her focus, and began the second note in the chord.
As the harmony grew more complex, the hazy luminescence grew brighter. If the energy raised by the dancing had been more vigorous, this light appeared more stable. The more experienced Druids had taken their positions by the damaged stones, and their strength was balancing that of the others.
Once more Caillean gathered her own forces, and released the third note into the heavy air.
Surely, she thought as the higher voices of the younger women completed the chord, it must be working, for now she could discern in the glow a rainbow shimmer, which was gradually beginning its sunwise swirl. This was a power not to control but to ride, lifted gently by its strengthening flow. It only needed direction now.
“I sing the sacred stones of Avalon,” she intoned on a fourth note that was supported by the chord.
“I sing the circle of light and song…” Sianna echoed her.
“I sing the spirit that past pain is soaring….” Gawen’s voice was surprisingly strong.
“Holy the high place that holds us—”
“Grass on its slopes green growing—”
“Blossoms that blow on the wind—”
Voices chiming in sequence, they continued the incantation. In the rainbow light Caillean saw images of Avalon: mist veiling the pink gleam of the lake at sunrise, the silver-bright glitter of light at noon, shards of flame among the reedbeds at the close of day. They invoked the beauty of the Tor in the springtime, garlanded with apple blossom, in the green strength of summer, and veiled in the quiet grey mists of the fall. The song turned to green islands, to oak trees reaching skyward and the sweetness of berries guarded by briars.
There was none of the excitement of the first attempt, only a growing certainty that they were being lifted by the music. Steadily the power contained within the circle intensified, raying outward gradually to the perimeter of the territory the Druids had claimed. But the axis of the entire great and slowly turning wheel was the triad stationed at the altar stone. Caillean was aware of Sianna’s loving heart and Gawen’s brave soul, and of herself, moving beyond male or female to a wisdom that was both and neither, passing the focus from one to another as they sang.
And presently it began to seem to her that she could hear another voice, sweet with distance, a voice from the Otherworld. Its song was also of Avalon, but the beauties of which it sang were transcendent and eternal, belonging to that Avalon of the heart which exists between the worlds.
Nothing mortal could have resisted that calling. Caillean’s spirit fluttered like a fledgling seeking the skies. A tremor shook the ground; she swayed forward, clutching at the altar stone. The earth beneath her feet was no longer stable, but her link to the other two was a lifeline to which she clung as waves of vibration lifted her farther and farther from ordinary reality.
She could no longer see the stone or the circle, only her two companions, floating in a haze of light. She knew then that they were no longer in the body, for Gawen stood radiantly whole as he had been the night before, with Sianna by his side. Caillean reached out and they joined hands, and at the contact felt a momentary searing flare of power and then a great peace.
“It is accomplished…” said a voice above them. They looked up, and saw the Queen of Faerie as she is on the other side, shining with a splendor for which the beauty she sometimes wears among men is only a hint and a disguise.
“You have done well. There remains only the task of calling the clouds to hide the Isle of Avalon from the world. You, my children, should return to your bodies. It will be sufficient for the Lady of Avalon, who is accustomed to faring out of her body for longer, to bear witness, and learn the spell by which one may pass through those mists to the outer world.”
Caillean stepped away from the others. Sianna, smiling, began to turn, but Gawen shook his head.
“The cord that bound me to that form is broken.”
Sianna’s eyes widened. “You’re dead?”
Surprisingly, Gawen grinned. “Do I look dead? It’s only my body that has given up. Now I am free.”
And lost to me…, thought Caillean. Oh, my sweet boy, my son! She started to reach out to him, then let her hands fall. He had gone beyond her now.
“Then I will stay here with you!” Sianna gripped him fiercely.
“This place is only a threshold,” said her mother; “soon it will disappear. Gawen must go on, and you must return to the human world.”
“Avalon is safe,” she exclaimed. “Why should I go back now?”
“If you have no care for the life you have not yet lived, then go back for the sake of the child you bear….”
S
ianna’s eyes widened even more, and Caillean felt her own spirit leap with a hope she had not known she had lost. But it was Gawen whose radiance was growing, as if with each moment the conventions of the flesh became of less importance.
“Live, my beloved, live, and raise our child, so that something of me will remain in the world.”
“Live, Sianna,” cried Caillean, “for you are young and strong, and I will need your help badly in the time to come.”
Gawen took her in his arms, so bright now that his light shone through Sianna as well. “It will not seem so long. And when your time is done, we will walk together once more!”
“Do you promise?”
Gawen laughed. “Only truth can be spoken here….” And with those words, the light became blinding.
Caillean shut her eyes, but she heard him say, “I love you….” And though those words might have been said to Sianna, it was her soul that heard them, and she realized that they had been meant for her as well.
When she opened her eyes, she was standing at the broad, muddy shore of the wetlands where the waters of the Sabrina were returned in a brackish backflow by the tide. Beside her stood the Faerie Queen, arrayed once more in her woodland guise, though a hint of the glamour of the Overworld clung about her still. Night was done, and from moment to moment the air was brightening. About their heads gulls swooped, calling, and the damp air was heavy with the tang of the distant sea.
“Is it done?” Caillean whispered.
“Look behind you,” came the answer. Caillean turned. For a moment she thought that nothing had changed. Then she saw that the ringstones on the Tor were whole and straight, as if they had never been desecrated, and the slope beyond the holy well where the beehive huts of Father Josephus and his monks had stood was empty and green.
“The mists will protect you—call them now….”
Once more Caillean looked westward. A faint mist swirled off the waters, deepening the farther she looked until it merged into the solid wall of sea-fog that had come in with the dawn.
“By what spell shall I summon them?”
The Lady took from her belt pouch something wrapped in yellowed linen. It was a small golden tablet inscribed with strange characters, and at the sight of them far-memory awakened and Caillean knew that they had been written by the men who came from the mighty lands that now lie drowned beneath the sea. And when she touched it, though she had never heard that language with her mortal ears, she knew what words she must say.
In the distance the thick mists curdled and began to flow. As she continued to call they came billowing in, rolling across tree and reed and water to the mud flats on the shore, swirling around her in a cool embrace that soothed away the last of her pain.
She gestured, sending the mist away to either side. Enfold us, surround us, draw us farther into the mist where no fanatic can shout his curses or cast his spells and only the gods can find us. Surround Avalon with mist where we will be forever and eternally secure!
Presently she began to feel cold. At the edge of vision, mist hung heavy above the water, and she sensed that the familiar landscape through which she had once traveled from Deva no longer lay beyond it but, rather, a strangeness, something uncanny and only partly visible to mortal eyes.
Had she been here for minutes, or hours? She felt cramped and stiff, as if she had carried all Avalon upon her back and shoulders for a long and weary way.
“It is done.” The Queen’s voice wavered. She seemed smaller, as if she too had exhausted herself in this night’s working. “Your isle lies between the world of men and Faerie. If any would now seek Avalon, it will be the holy isle of the Nazarenes they will find, unless they have been taught the ancient magic. You may teach the spell to some of the marsh folk, if they are worthy, but otherwise the way can be passed only by your initiates.”
Caillean nodded. The damp air felt fresh and new. Henceforth they would dwell in a clean land, owing no service to prince or emperor, guided only by the gods….
Caillean speaks:
From the moment when the fairy mists first swirled around us, the time of Avalon began to run on a different track from that of the outer world. From Beltane to Samhain, and from Samhain to Beltane again, the years have circled round, and from that day to this no unhallowed foot has trod the Tor. As I look back, it seems so short a time ago. But the daughter that Sianna bore to Gawen is now a woman grown and sworn to the Goddess in her turn. And Sianna herself is Lady of Avalon in all but name.
As I grow older, I find my thoughts turning inward. The maidens tend me carefully, and pretend not to notice when I call one of them by her mother’s name. I am not in pain, but it is true that things past are often more vivid to me than those of the present day. They say that it is given to a high priestess to know her time, and I think that I will not remain in this body long.
From time to time new girls come to us for training, brought by the marsh men, who know the spell, or found by our priestesses when they go out into the world. Some stay for a year or two, and others remain and take vows as priestesses. Still, the changes here are slight, compared with events beyond our Vale. Three years after Gawen died, the Emperor Hadrianus himself came to Britannia and set his armies to building a great wall across the northlands. But will it keep the wild tribes penned in their moors and mountains forever more?
I wonder. Walls are only as strong as the men who man them.
Of course, the same is true of Avalon.
By day I think of the past, but last night I dreamed I was leading the full-moon rites atop the Tor. I looked into the silver bowl, and saw visions of the future reflected there. I saw an emperor they called Antoninus marching north from Hadrian’s Wall to build another in Alba. But the Romans could not hold it, and only a few years later they pulled down their forts and marched back. In the future I saw in the bowl, times of peace were succeeded by seasons of war. A new confederation of northern tribes overran the Wall, and another emperor, Severus, came to Britannia to quell them and returned to Eburacum to die.
In my visions, almost two hundred years passed, and in all that time, the mists guarded Avalon. In southern Britannia, British and Roman were becoming one people. A new emperor arose, called Diocletian, and set about healing the Empire from its latest civil wars.
Mixed with the glimpses of Roman conflicts I saw my priestesses, generation after generation worshipping the Goddess on the Holy Tor or going out to become the wives of princes and keep a little of the old wisdom alive in the world. And sometimes it seemed to me that one had the look of Gawen, and at others there would be a maiden with the beauty of Eilan, or a little dark girl who looked like the Faerie Queen.
But I did not see myself reborn in Avalon. According to the Druid teachings, there are some whose holiness is such that when death releases them from the body they go forever beyond the circles of the world. I do not think that I am such a shining soul. Perhaps, if the Goddess is merciful, She will allow my spirit to watch over my children until it is needful for me to live in the flesh once more.
And when I do, it may be that Gawen and Sianna will also come again. Will we know each other? I wonder. Perhaps not, but I think we will carry into those new lives some memory of our former love. Perhaps it will be Sianna’s turn to be the teacher next time, and mine to learn. But as for Gawen, he will always be the Sacred King.
PART II
The High Priestess
A.D. 285–293
Chapter Nine
Since midmorning it had been raining, a thin, soaking drizzle that weighted the cloaks of the travelers and drew fine veils of mist across the hills. The four freedmen who had been hired to escort the Lady of Avalon to Durnovaria rode hunched in the saddle, water dripping from the stout oaken cudgels at their sides. Even the young priestess and the two Druids who attended her had pulled the hoods of their hairy wool cloaks down over their eyes.
Dierna sighed, wishing she could do the same, but her grandmother had told her too many times that the H
igh Priestess of Avalon must set an example, and had herself ridden straight-backed till the day she died. Even had she wished to, Dierna could not have ignored that discipline. There were times, she thought, when being able to trace her descent through seven generations, most of them priestesses, from the Lady Sianna was an honor she did not need. But she would not have to endure the weather much longer. Already the ground was rising, and there was more traffic on the road. They would be in Durnovaria before night fell. She hoped that the maiden they had come here to fetch would be worth the ride.
Conec, the younger of the Druids, pointed, and she saw the graceful curve of the aqueduct cutting through the trees.
“Indeed, it is a wonder,” she agreed, “especially when there is no reason the people of Durnovaria could not get their water from wells in the town. The Roman magnates win fame by building magnificent structures for their towns. I suppose the Durotrige princes wanted to imitate them.”
“Prince Eiddin Mynoc is more interested in improving the defenses,” said Lewal, the older Druid, a stocky, sandy-haired man who was their Healer, and had come along to buy herbs they could not grow on Avalon.
“Well, he has need to be,” put in one of the freedmen. “With the Channel pirates hitting us more often every year.”
“The Navy should do something,” said the other. “Or why do we pay those taxes to Rome every year?”
Young Erdufylla nudged her horse closer to Dierna’s, as if she expected a band of pirates to jump out from the next clump of trees.
As they came up over the rise, Dierna could see the town, set on a chalk headland above the river. The ditch and rampart were as she remembered, but now they were partially fronted by a new masonry wall. The river ran brown and silent below the bluff, edged with black mud. The tide must be out, she thought then, peering through the drizzle toward the deeper greyness where sky merged into sea. Gulls yammered a greeting, sweeping over their heads and then away. The Druids straightened, and even the horses, sensing the end of the journey, began to step out more briskly.