Teleri saw the wicked point slam through the woman’s breast, heard her scream as she was knocked backward into Dierna’s arms. As their terrified horses reared, both women went down. Teleri lashed out with her whip again; a man swore, and her mare came to a plunging halt as he grabbed for the reins. When Teleri tried to pull back, the reins were wrenched from her hand. She fumbled beneath her cloak for her belt knife and struck at the first man who reached for her, but in another moment someone grabbed her from behind and dragged her from the saddle.
She yelled, still struggling, but a blow dazed her. When she could think again, she was lying in the woods and both her hands and feet were bound. Through the trees she saw their horses disappearing up the road. The raiders who rode them had pulled cloaks over their heads. She wondered if the gate guards would even notice that the riders had changed. But the two men who had been left to guard the prisoners had no need to hide their flaxen hair.
Pirates! she thought grimly. Saxons, or perhaps renegade Frisians from Belgica. The conversations which she had considered so boring at her father’s dinner table abruptly acquired a brutal significance. Blinking back tears of rage, she turned her face away.
Dierna lay beside her. For a moment Teleri thought the High Priestess was dead; then she saw that, like herself, the older woman was bound. They would not have troubled to tie a corpse. But Dierna lay far too still. Her fair skin was pale, and Teleri could see an ugly bruise forming on her brow. In her throat a pulse was still beating, however, and ever so slowly, her breast rose and fell.
Beyond the priestess other bodies lay sprawled where they had fallen when they were dragged from the road. The young Druid was there, and the freedmen, and with a sinking heart Teleri recognized Erdufylla as well. She told herself that she should not be surprised—no one could survive such a wound. Besides herself and Dierna, of all their party only the Healer, Lewal, had survived.
Teleri whispered his name. For a moment she thought he had not heard; then his head turned.
“Did they hit her?” She nodded toward the priestess.
He shook his head. “I think one of the horses kicked her as she fell, but they wouldn’t let me examine her.”
“Will she live?” Teleri whispered more softly still.
For a moment Lewal closed his eyes. “If the gods are kind. With a blow to the head we can only wait. Even if I were free there would be little I could do except to keep her warm.”
Teleri shivered. It was not raining, but the sky was still raw and grey.
“Roll this way, and I will do the same,” she said softly. “Perhaps the heat of our bodies will help.”
“I should have thought of that….” A little light came back into his eyes. Carefully, pausing whenever one of their captors looked their way, they began to wriggle toward Dierna.
The time that followed seemed endless, but in fact scarcely two hours passed before they heard the main force of the raiders returning. Teleri remembered that it was the way of these animals to strike swiftly and then run, carrying off what booty they could, before their victims could gather enough force to resist them.
A warrior jerked Teleri to her feet and fingered the fine wool of her gown. When he began to squeeze the breast beneath, she spat at him; he laughed and let her go, saying something incomprehensible.
“I told them that you are rich and will bring a good ransom. I have learned some of their tongue so I can trade for herbs,” Lewal told Teleri.
One of the pirates bent over Dierna, clearly uncertain how to reconcile her white hands and rough traveling clothes. After a moment he shrugged and began to draw his dagger.
“No!” cried Teleri. “She is sacerdos, opulenta. A priestess! Very rich!” Some of these men must understand Latin. She looked desperately at Lewal.
“Gytha! Rica!” he echoed her.
The Saxon looked disbelieving, but he put away his blade, lifted Dierna’s limp body, and heaved her over his shoulder. The men who held Teleri and Lewal shoved them along after, and in another moment all three of them were slung across the backs of stolen horses and tied.
By the time they finally came to a halt, Teleri was wishing herself as unconscious as the priestess.
The raiders’ ships had been drawn up in a secluded inlet, and they had made a temporary camp on the shore. Rude tents sheltered the perishable booty; the rest of it lay heaped near the fires. The captives were dumped beside a pile of grain sacks and then apparently forgotten as men began to build up the fires and share out the foodstuffs they had captured, especially the wine.
“If we are lucky they will forget us,” said Lewal when Teleri wondered if they would be fed, “at least until tomorrow, when they have slept off their wine.” He squirmed upright and laid the back of his hand against Dierna’s brow. She had moaned a little when she was taken off the horse, but though consciousness might be closer, the priestess had not yet opened her eyes.
Darkness fell. The camp began to assume a semblance of order as men settled beside the fires. Among the fair heads of the Saxons and Frisians were a goodly scattering of black and brown, snatches of rude Latin mixed with the gutturals of the Germanic tongues. Deserters from the Army and fugitive slaves had made common cause with the barbarians. The only requirement for acceptance here seemed to be brutality and a strong arm for an oar or a sword. The scent of roast pig made Teleri’s mouth water; she turned her face away and tried to remember how to pray.
She had fallen into an uncomfortable doze when the crunch of a footstep nearby brought her to shuddering wakefulness. She was already beginning to turn over when a kick in the ribs brought her upright, glaring. The pirate who had kicked her laughed. He was no cleaner than the others, but the gold he was wearing above his fur vest suggested that he was a chieftain among them. He grasped Teleri’s shoulders and pulled her up to face him and, when she struggled, held her hard against his chest with one arm, immobilizing her bound hands. His other hand closed in her hair. For a moment more he grinned down at her; then he set his mouth against hers.
When he straightened, some of the men were cheering while others frowned. Teleri gasped for air, not quite believing what he had done to her. Then his callused hand thrust beneath the neck of her gown, groping for her breast, and his intentions became quite clear.
“Please”—she could not pull away, but she could turn her head now—“if he harms me you’ll get no ransom! Please make him let me go!”
Some of them at least had understood her Latin. Two or three stood up, and one of them took a step toward her captor. She did not understand what he said, but it was clearly a challenge, for the chieftain stopped what he was doing and reached for his sword. For a moment no one moved. Teleri saw how his pale glare moved from one man to another, saw the fight go out of them until no one would meet his gaze, and heard her own doom sealed as he began to laugh.
Teleri kicked and twisted as he picked her up, but her captor only gripped her more tightly. As he carried her toward the pile of bedding on the other side of the fire, she could hear the other men laugh.
For a long time Dierna had been wandering in a dream world of mist and shadow. She wondered if this was the marshlands below Avalon—cloud always clung to the borders between the protected sphere around the Holy Tor and the outer world. At the thought, the scene grew clearer. She stood on one of the many islets where a few willows clung to a hummock above the reeds. Feathers lay on the muddy ground; she nodded, knowing the mallard’s nest must be near. And now she could see her own small bare feet and the soaked skirts of her gown. But there was something she ought to remember. She looked anxiously around her.
“D’rna…wait for me!”
The call came from behind her. She turned quickly, remembering now that she had forbidden her little sister to follow her when she went to gather birds’ eggs, and the child had disobeyed.
“Becca! I’m coming—don’t move!” At eleven, Dierna knew the wetlands well enough to make her way through them alone. She was looking for
fresh eggs for one of the priestesses, who was ill. Becca was only six, too small to jump from one tussock to the next; Dierna had not wanted the child to slow her down. But since their mother died the year before, the younger girl had been Dierna’s shadow. How had she gotten this far alone?
Dierna waded through the dark water, peering around her. A duck quacked in the distance, but here nothing moved.
“Becca—where are you? Splash the water and I’ll follow the sound!” she called. And when she had gotten her sister safe, she told herself then, she would paddle Becca’s bottom for disobeying her. It wasn’t fair! Couldn’t she have just these few hours to herself, without always having to be responsible for the child?
From the other side of the next hummock she heard a splash and stiffened, listening, until it came again. She tried to go faster, misjudged her step, and gasped as one foot sank into deep mud and continued to go down. She flailed wildly, grasped a trailing branch of willow, clung to it, bracing the foot that was on solid ground and working the other gently back and forth until the muck released its hold.
Dierna was wet to the waist now. Shivering, she called to her sister again. She heard a flurry of splashing from beyond the trees.
“D’rna, I can’t move,” came the reply. “Help me!”
Dierna had thought herself frightened before, but now terror shocked like ice through her veins. She grabbed at the reeds, not caring that they cut her hands, and pulled herself forward, clambered over tree roots, and, calling, pushed through the saw grass on the other side. The mist was heavy here, and she could see nothing. But she could hear Becca whimpering; she pushed off again, following the sound.
The way was blocked by a fallen willow. Dierna pulled herself into the branches, feet slipping on the rotting bark below. “Becca!” she shouted. “Where are you? Answer me!”
“Help me!” The call came again.
Firelight danced against Dierna’s closed eyelids, and she moaned. She had been in the marshes—why was there a fire? But that didn’t matter; her sister was calling, and she must go to her. She sucked in breath. She couldn’t move! Had the mud got her too? She twitched, struggling to remember her own body, and felt sensation returning with a rush of pain.
Someone was laughing…. Dierna stilled. Then her sister screamed.
Dierna sat up, her head spinning, and when she tried to steady herself found her hands bound and fell over again. Through slitted lids she saw the fire, leering faces, and the white body of the woman who was struggling with the man in the fur vest. His breeches were down; the muscles in his pink buttocks flexed as he tried to pin the girl against the ground.
The priestess stared. She did not know where she was, but she understood what was happening here, and in that moment it was her sister who was once more calling her to help. With a grunt of rage, she snapped the ropes on her wrists and sat up.
The reivers did not see her move. They were watching the struggle, making bets on how long it would last. Dierna took a deep breath, seeking not calm but the control that would let her channel her fury.
“Briga,” she breathed, “Great Mother, give me your magic to save this child!” What could she use? There was no weapon in reach, even if she could have fought against so many, but there was the fire. With another breath she projected her will into those leaping flames. Heat seared her soul, but after the chill of the water in her memory, it was welcome. She embraced the torment, became part of it, rising until she stood at her full height in the midst of the fire.
To those who watched, it was as if the flames had been whipped to fury by an invisible wind, whirling upward until they could all see a woman formed of fire. For a moment she floated, sparks streaming from her hair; then she began to move. The reivers were on their feet now. Some, fingers flickering in signs of warding, began to edge away. One man threw his dagger; it passed through the fiery figure and clattered on the ground.
Only the man who was trying to rape Teleri failed to notice. He had the girl’s legs pinned now and was tugging at her breeches.
“Do you desire love’s fire? Receive my embrace, and burn!” the goddess cried.
Arms of flame reached forward; with a yell the chieftain jerked away from the girl. He yelled again as he saw what had burned him, and wrenched his body to one side. The fire hovered above him as he scrambled, hampered by his own unbelted breeches, to get away.
But when he had rolled away from his victim it flared down again, pinning him as he had pinned the girl. In an instant his vest was smoldering and his hair was aflame. Then he began to scream in earnest, but his cries did even less good than had hers, for his men were crashing through the trees, tripping over their gear and each other in their haste to get away.
It made no difference to the fire. As long as he moved it continued to burn, and only when his last twitchings had ceased did the flame flare outward in a shower of sparks and disappear.
“Dierna…”
With a gasp, the priestess fell back into her body. She felt her unbound hands burning with the return of circulation, and bit her lip against the pain. Lewal was sawing at the ropes around her ankles; in another moment they too had been cut, and she shuddered as sensation prickled through her lower limbs.
“Dierna—look at me!” Another face swam into view, pale, framed by tangled dark hair.
“Becca, you’re alive…” she whispered, then blinked, for this was a grown woman, her torn gown hanging off one shoulder, her eyes still dark with the memory of terror, her cheeks wet with tears.
“I’m Teleri, Lady—don’t you know me?”
Dierna’s gaze moved to the fire and the burned thing beyond it, then came back to Teleri’s face.
“I remember now. I thought you were my sister….” She shivered, seeing once more the ripples that had ridged the surface of the dark water, and something pale below. Dierna had jumped into the pool, reaching until her fingers closed on cloth, then on her sister’s arm. Her breath came faster as she remembered pulling, going under, getting her sister’s head up, and grabbing for a floating log. Her struggles had wedged it against a bank, and with that for purchase she could try to pull once more.
“She was caught in quicksand. I heard her screaming, but when I got there she had been pulled under, and I was not strong enough to drag her free.” Dierna closed her eyes. Even knowing it was hopeless, she had stayed where she was, one hand holding on to Becca and the other to the log, until the searchers found her when they came searching through the marshes with torches.
“My Lady, don’t weep!” Teleri bent over her. “You were in time to save me.”
“Yes—you must be my sister now.” Dierna looked up at her and managed a smile. She held out her arms and Teleri came into them. It felt right, somehow. This one I will keep safe, she thought. I will not lose her again!
“Lady, can you ride? We must get away before those beasts return!” said Lewal. “Look for food and waterskins. I’ll saddle three horses and set the others free.”
“Beasts…” Dierna echoed as Teleri helped her to stand. “Not so—no animal is so vicious to its own kind. This evil belongs to men.” Her head hurt, but she had long practice in conquering the body’s complaints. “Help me get on the horse and I will stay there,” she added, “but what about you, little one? How badly did he hurt you?”
Teleri glanced at the twisted lump of burned meat that had once been a man and swallowed. “I have bruises,” she whispered, “but I am still a maiden.”
In body, thought Dierna, but that demon has raped her soul. Holding on to Teleri’s shoulder, she straightened, and stretched out her hand.
“This one will rape no more women, but he was only one of many. May the Lady’s fire consume them all! By fire and water I curse them, by the winds of heaven and the holy earth on which we stand. Let the sea rise against them and no harbor give them shelter. As they have lived by the sword, may they find a foe whose sword shall strike them down!”
Dierna could feel power leaving her a
s the curse sped outward. With the certainty that came sometimes in magic, she knew that these words had been heard in the Otherworld, and though she might never know what happened to the raiders, their doom was sure. If the Goddess was kind, she would one day meet the hero who punished them, and clasp his hand. She swayed, and Teleri steadied her.
“Come now, my Lady,” said Lewal. “I will help you to mount, and we will be gone.”
Dierna nodded. “Let us go home, to Avalon….”
Chapter Ten
Teleri pulled another handful of wool from the basket and added it to the wisp clinging to the distaff in her left hand. With her right hand she lifted the thread that led to it, taking up the tension; a swift twitch set the dangling spindle turning, and her fingers began once more to guide the yarn. The strengthening sunlight of early spring was warm on her back and shoulders. This corner of the apple orchard was out of the wind, a favorite place for sitting in winter, but even lovelier now, when the sun was beginning to coax the first buds into bloom.
“Your thread is so even,” sighed little Lina, looking from the lumpy yarn twisted around her own spindle to Teleri’s smooth strand.
“Well, I have had a great deal of practice,” Teleri said, smiling back at her, “though I never expected to need that skill here. But I suppose that, so long as princes and priestesses both need clothing, someone will have to spin the thread for it as we are doing now. The women in my father’s hall could talk of nothing but men and babies. At least what is spoken of over the spindles here has some meaning.” She looked over at old Cigfolla, who had been telling them how the House of Priestesses had come to be established in Avalon.