“It is all of those things, for it contains them, as it both is and contains the holy water of the well. And yet, if you were to look upon them unprepared, they might seem no different from any other such gear—and that is to teach us that there can be great holiness even in the things of everyday. But if you touched them”—he shook his head—“that would be another matter, for it is death to touch the Mysteries unprepared. And that is why we keep them hidden away.”
“Where?” asked Viviane, her gaze sharpening. With what, wondered her mother—curiosity, or reverence, or desire for power?
“That also is one of the Mysteries,” Taliesin answered, “that only those initiates know who are called to be their guardians.”
Viviane sat back, her eyes narrowing, as he went on.
“For you, it is enough to know what the Treasures are, and what they mean. We are taught that the Symbol is nothing and the Reality is all—and the reality that these symbols contain is that of the four elements from which all things are made—Earth, and Water, and Air, and Fire.”
“But haven’t you told us symbols are important?” said Viviane. “We talk about the elements but we can’t really understand them. Symbols are what our minds use to make magic—”
Taliesin looked at the girl with a smile of peculiar sweetness, and Ana felt an unexpected pang. She is too eager, she told herself. She must be tested!
She saw Viviane shiver, and then turn, and, despite the glamour, the girl saw her mother standing there. Ana returned her gaze coldly; and after a moment Viviane flushed and looked away.
The Lady turned then herself and passed swiftly back through the trees. I am in my thirty-sixth year, she thought, and still fertile. I can make more daughters. But until I do, that girl is my only child, and the hope of Avalon.
Viviane sat on her heels, rubbing the small of her back. Behind her the scrubbed stones of the path steamed gently; before her the dry stones lay waiting. Her knees hurt too, and her hands were red and chapped from constant immersion. As they dried, the stones she had finished looked just like the ones ahead of her, which was not surprising, since this was the third time they had been washed.
The first time was understandable, since the cows had strayed from their pasture and fouled the path. And there had been justice in assigning Viviane to do the cleaning, since she had been herding the cows at the time.
But the second and third scrubbings were unnecessary. She was not afraid of hard work—she had been accustomed to work on her foster-father’s farm—but what was the spiritual significance of repeating a job she had done carefully and well? Or of herding cattle, for that matter, which she could have done at home?
They would have her believe that Avalon was now her home, she thought sullenly as she dipped the brush into the pail and made a careless swipe across the next stone. But a home was where you were loved and welcome…. The Lady had made it perfectly clear that she had brought her daughter to Avalon not out of love but from necessity. And Viviane reacted by doing what was asked of her sullenly and without joy.
It might have been different, she told herself as she went on to another stone, if she had been learning magic. But that was for the senior students. The novices got only children’s tales and the privilege of acting as serving maids for the community. And she couldn’t even run away! Occasionally one of the older maidens would attend upon the Lady when she traveled, but the younger girls never left Avalon. If Viviane tried, she would only lose herself in the mists, to wander until she drowned in the marshes as her sister had done.
Perhaps, if she begged him, Taliesin would take her away. She believed that he loved her. But he was the Lady’s creature—would he risk her wrath for a daughter who might not even be his own? In the year and three-quarters since she had been here, Viviane had seen her mother truly angry only once, when Ana learned that the High King had put aside his wife, a woman trained in Avalon, and taken the daughter of the Saxon Hengest as his bride. With the true target out of reach in Londinium, there had been no outlet for the Lady’s fury at the insult to Avalon, and the atmosphere of the isle had throbbed with such tension Viviane had been astonished to look up and see the sky still blue. Clearly what her teachers said about the necessity for an adept to control his or her emotions was true.
I will just have to outwait her, Viviane told herself as she inched forward. I have time. And when I reach the age for initiation and they send me through the mists, I will simply walk away from here….
The sun was setting, turning the clouds to banners of gold, and the air had the hush that comes when the world is poised between night and day. Viviane realized that she would have to hurry to be done before dinnertime. And the water was almost gone. She pushed herself to her feet and started down the path, the pail clanking by her side, to get more.
An ancient stone chamber surrounded the well shaft, which was only uncovered for certain ceremonies. A channel led the water to the Mirror Pool, into which the priestesses looked when they wished to see the future, and from there the overflow was diverted around through the trees to a trough from which it might be drawn for drinking or for other purposes, such as scrubbing the stones.
When Viviane passed the Mirror Pool, she found her steps lagging. As Taliesin had taught her, it was the Reality, not the symbol, that mattered, and the reality was that the water in the trough was exactly the same as the water in the Pool. She looked around her.
Time was passing, and there was no one to see…. Viviane took a quick step sideways and bent to dip her bucket in.
The Pool was full of fire.
The bucket slipped from her grasp and clattered over the stones, but Viviane sank to her knees, staring. She clung to the rim of the Pool, whimpering at the images she saw there, unable to look away.
A city was burning. Red flames licked at the houses, shooting up in tongues of gold when they seized some new source of fuel, and a great pillar of black smoke stained the sky. Figures were moving, black against the brightness, carrying goods out of the burning houses. For a moment she thought the people were trying to save their possessions; then she saw the flare of a sword. A man fell, blood spouting from his neck, and his murderer laughed and tossed the casket he had been carrying onto a blanket where more such fragments of people’s lives were already piled.
Bodies lay in the streets; in an upper window she saw a face, its mouth opening in a silent scream. But the fair-haired barbarians were everywhere, laughing as they slew. Vision recoiled, expanded to take in a wider scene; on the roads that led out of the city people were fleeing, some of them with animals to draw the carts that held their possessions, others pulling the carts themselves, or dragging bundles, or, worse still, staggering onward with nothing, even their eyes emptied of sense by the horrors they had seen.
She had seen the name “Venta” on an overturned stone, but the broad lands that surrounded the city were flat and marshy; this was not the Venta of the Silures. What she was seeing must lie far to the east—the capital of the old Iceni lands. Her mind clung to such calculations, seeking to distance itself from what she had seen.
But the vision would not release her. She saw the great city of Camulodunum with its gate in flames, and many another Roman town shattered and burning. Saxon rams battered down walls and smashed gateways. Ravens hopped aside as bands of plunderers swaggered down deserted streets, then returned to feast on the unburied bodies once more. A mangy dog, grinning triumphantly, trotted across the forum with a severed human hand in its jaws.
In the countryside the destruction was less complete, but terror swept the land clean with its dark wing. She saw the folk of isolated villas bury their silver and make their way westward, trampling the ripening grain. The whole world, it seemed, was fleeing the Saxon wolves.
Fire and blood ran together in crimson swirls as her eyes filled; she sobbed, but she could not look away. And gradually she became aware that someone was speaking, had been speaking for a long time.
“Breathe deeply….
That is well…. What you see is distant, it cannot harm you…. Breathe in and out, and calm yourself, and tell me what you see….”
Viviane released her breath in a shuddering sigh, took the next more easily, and blinked away the tears. The vision still held her, but now it was as if she were seeing pictures in a dream. Her consciousness floated somewhere outside her body; she was aware, without much caring, that someone was asking her questions and her own voice was answering.
“I suppose the girl is truthful? There is no possibility that she was hysterical or making this up to get attention?” asked old Nectan, Arch-Druid and chief of the Druids of Avalon.
Ana smiled sardonically. “Do not comfort yourself with the thought that I am protecting my daughter. The priestesses will tell you I have shown her no favor, and I would kill her with my own hands if I thought she had profaned the Mysteries. But what purpose in inventing such a tale unless she had an audience? Viviane was alone until her friend wondered why she had not come in to dinner and went to look for her. By the time I was called, she was deep in trance, and I think you will admit that I must know the difference between true vision and playacting.”
“Deep in trance,” echoed Taliesin, “but she does not yet have the training!”
“True. And it took all of mine to bring her back again!”
“And after that, you continued to question her?” asked the bard.
“When the Goddess sends a vision so sudden and overwhelming, it must be accepted. We dared not refuse the warning,” said the Lady, repressing her own unease. “In any case, the damage was done. All we could do was to learn as much as possible, and tend the girl after—”
“Will she be all right?” asked Taliesin. His face had lost all color, and Ana frowned. She had not realized he was so fond of the girl.
“Viviane is resting. I do not think you need to worry—she comes of a tough breed,” Ana said dryly. “She will be sore when she awakens, but if she remembers anything it will seem distant as a dream.”
Nectan coughed. “Very well. If this was a true vision, then what must we do?”
“The first thing I have done already, which is to send a messenger to Vortigern. It is now high summer, and the girl saw fields ready for harvest. If the warning comes now, he will have a little time.”
“If he will use it,” Julia, one of the senior priestesses, said dubiously. “But that Saxon witch leads him about by his—” At Ana’s expression she fell silent.
“Even if Vortigern mustered his whole houseguard and rode against Hengest he could do little,” Taliesin put in quickly. “The barbarian numbers are now too great. What are the words you have told us Viviane cried out at the end?”
“The Eagles have flown forever. Now the White Dragon arises and devours the land…” whispered Ana, shivering.
“It is the disaster we feared,” said Talenos, a younger Druid, heavily, “the doom we hoped would never come to be!”
“And what, besides wailing and beating our breasts like the Christians, do you suggest we do?” Ana asked acidly. It was as bad as he had said and more, she thought, remembering the horror in Viviane’s words—and her belly had been too tense for her to eat since she had heard them. But she must not let them see that she was sick with fear.
“What can we do?” asked Elen, oldest of the priestesses. “Avalon was set apart to be a refuge; since the time of Carausius we have kept it secret. We must wait until the fire burns itself out around us. At least we will be safe here….” The others looked at her in scornand, confused, she fell silent.
“We must pray to the Goddess to help us,” said Julia.
“It is not enough.” Taliesin shook his head. “If the King is unable, or unwilling, to sacrifice himself for the people, then it is for the Merlin of Britannia to do so.”
“But we don’t have—” started Nectan, his ruddy cheeks paling, and Ana, despite the first twinge of alarm as she guessed where Taliesin was heading, felt a bitter amusement at the old priest’s obvious fear that they would expect him to take on the role.
“—a Merlin,” finished Taliesin. “Nor have we had a priest to hold that title since the Romans first invaded Britannia, when he died so that Caractacus could fight on.”
“The Merlin is one of the masters, a radiant soul who has refused to ascend beyond this sphere so that he can continue to watch over us,” said Nectan, settling back onto his bench. “To incarnate again would diminish him. We may pray for his guidance, but we must not ask him to walk among us once more.”
“Even if that is the only thing that might save us?” asked Taliesin. “If he is so enlightened, then he will know whether it is right to refuse. But it is certain he will not come unless we ask!”
Julia leaned forward. “It did not work in the time of Caractacus. The King for whom the Merlin died was captured, and the Romans slew the Druids on the holy isle.”
Nectan nodded. “And though that was a disaster, the Romans who conquered are the very people whose destruction we are lamenting now! Is it not possible that one day we will live as peacefully with these Saxons as we have lived with Rome?”
The others all looked at him, and he in turn became silent.
The Romans, thought Ana, had possessed a civilization as well as an army. The Saxons were little better than the wild wolves of the hills.
“Even if he were born tomorrow,” she said aloud, “it might be too late by the time he became a man.”
“There is another way that I have heard of,” said Taliesin in a low voice, “when a living man opens his soul to let the Other in—”
“No!” Fear made her voice a lash to strike him. “In the name of the Goddess I forbid it! I don’t want the Merlin—I want you, yourself, here!” She held his gaze with her own, summoning all her power, and after an agonizing interval that seemed to go on forever, saw the hero-light in his grey eyes dim.
“The Lady of Avalon has spoken, and I obey,” he murmured. “But I will tell you this.” He looked up at her. “In the end, there will be a sacrifice.”
Viviane lay in her bed in the House of Maidens, watching dust motes dance in a last ray of sun that slanted past the curtain across the door. She felt bruised inside and out. The older priestesses had told her this was because she had been unprepared for her vision. Her body, tensing in resistance, had set one muscle against another until it was a wonder she had no broken bones. Her mind had been drawn into that other reality. If her mother had not opened her own mind and reached out to find her, she could have been lost.
To Viviane, that was the greatest wonder, that her mother had been willing to run such a risk, and that her own spirit had accepted the other woman’s touch without fear. Perhaps the Lady had only wanted to hear the vision, said the other part of Viviane’s mind that was always doubting. Nonetheless, there was something in Ana’s mind that her daughter’s had apparently recognized. Viviane suspected they were more alike than either would have liked to admit. Perhaps, she thought smiling, this was why it was so hard for them to get along.
But the Lady of Avalon was a trained priestess. Viviane might have all her mother’s talent and more, but unless she learned to use it she would be a danger to herself and everyone around her.
This experience had sobered her more effectively than any punishment her mother might impose. And she had to admit that she deserved it. True, the winter after she arrived had been one of the hardest in memory; the ice that had been an illusion at Samhain had frozen the lake by midwinter, and the marsh folk had brought food to them on sledges pulled across the ice and snow. For a time, they had all been too concerned with survival to think much about training. But since then, Viviane had been mostly going through the motions, almost daring her mother to make her learn.
The door curtain moved, and she smelled something that made her mouth water. Rowan made her way past the beds and set the covered tray she was carrying on a bench with a smile.
“You have slept a whole night and all the day again. You must be hung
ry!”
“I am,” answered Viviane, wincing as she pulled herself up on one elbow. Rowan pulled back the cloth, revealing a bowl of stew, and Viviane spooned it up eagerly. There were bits of meat in it, which surprised her, for the priestesses in training were mostly kept on a light diet to purify their bodies and increase their sensitivity. No doubt her seniors felt that more sensitivity was the last thing she needed just now.
But, hungry as she was, she found that her stomach refused to accept any more than half the bowl. She lay back with a sigh.
“Will you sleep now?” asked Rowan. “I must say, you look as if you had been beaten all over with sticks.”
“I feel like it too, and I want to rest, but I am afraid I will have nightmares.”
Rowan’s gaze became avid, and she leaned closer. “In the hall they would only say you had seen some disaster. What was it? What did you see?”
Viviane stared up at her, shuddering, even the simple question conjuring back the images of horror. They heard voices outside the door, and the other girl straightened. Viviane sighed in relief as the curtain was pushed aside and the Lady of Avalon came in.
“I see that you have been cared for,” Ana said coolly as Rowan made a quick reverence and scurried away.
“Thank you…for bringing me back,” said Viviane. There was an uncomfortable silence, but it seemed to her there was a little more color in her mother’s cheeks than there had been before.
“I am not…a maternal woman,” Ana said with some difficulty, “which is probably just as well, since I must put the obligations of the priestess ahead of those of the mother. As your priestess, I would have done the same. But I am pleased to see you recovering.”
Viviane blinked. It was not much—certainly not the kind of speech she had dreamed of when as a child she had wondered about her mother. But Ana had given her more kindness just now than in the almost two years she had been here. Dared she ask for just a little more?