The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  Divined by ritual sacrifice, the spirit quest was well-known to involve some variant of climbing to the top of a mountain, reciting incantations calling on a spirit guide (usually an animal or a bird) to reveal itself to him in a dream, and then going to sleep in order to have the dream. While the quest was a test of the apprentice-priest’s endurance and a sacred rite of passage intended to bring him to a higher level of spirituality, it was also privately understood to be a last chance for adventure before settling down into another six years of demanding discipleship.

  Already the acknowledged apprentice of both the shrine’s master bard and their chief healer, Caelym had been eager to hear what task Ossiam would divine for him. He’d had his bow and quiver and fishing spears packed, along with his ritual paraphernalia. But his excitement had turned to despair as the oracle raised his head after staring into the entrails of the sacrificial goat long after it gave its last dying bleat. The oracle couldn’t have been said to be looking at Caelym, as his eyes were rolled upwards and only their whites showed beneath his half-drooped lids. His lips, though moving, had been oddly out of pace with the shrill, eerie voice of the female spirit from the other world who spoke through Ossiam on portentous occasions.

  “You must go now, at once, into the mountains to seek your animal spirit guide! You must go on this journey as animals go, without human clothes or weapons! You may not return until you have learned to speak the language of your animal spirit’s tribe and to sing their songs and tell their stories!”

  Born a day before the spring equinox, the weather on Caelym’s birthday could be anything from cold and harsh to warm and balmy.

  That year, it wasn’t warm and balmy.

  Even in the relative shelter of the sacred grove, hail was pelting down through the branches of the towering oaks and a cutting wind was tearing at the opening of his ceremonial robes. It almost didn’t matter that the task of learning to speak an animal’s language was impossible, since that skill had been lost forever in the irrevocable feud between men and beasts. Going into the mountains in this weather without clothes or tools or a flint was not a quest—it was a death sentence.

  He could not, of course, refuse to go, and was only taking a breath to keep his voice from quivering as he accepted his fate when Olyrrwd, who’d been standing just off to one side of the altar, spoke.

  “But as animals have hide and fur, you will go in leather clothes and a fur cloak,” he said, the ordinariness of his gruff and grumbly voice sounding strange after Ossiam’s spine-chilling decree. “And as animals have fangs and claws, you will go armed with a knife and spear. And as you are my disciple, not even the spirit of she who speaks through the lips of our highest oracle will object to your going forth bearing a token of our sacred order.”

  That token, it turned out, was the healer’s satchel that Caelym carried now, and it contained all the practical implements he needed to survive.

  Momentarily overtaken by his memories, it startled Caelym to hear Aleswina ask, “What happened then?” and to find himself in a sunny meadow with a Saxon princess waiting for him to tell her the story of his first quest.

  He blinked his eyes, cleared his throat, and began again.

  On the day of my sixteenth birthday—having completed my first and second levels of study—I embarked on the quest divined for me by our chief oracle to seek my animal spirit guide and learn to speak the language of its tribe and to sing their songs and tell their stories.

  Aleswina’s thrilled whisper—“Oh, Caelym, is your animal spirit guide a wolf?”—was gratifying, to say the least, and he plunged into his story, strumming the strings of his harp in accompaniment.

  I journeyed far up into the mountains, climbing the highest peak to chant the sacred incantations calling for the spirit of the animal that was to be my guide to come into my dreams. Buffeted by freezing winds, I heard the howls of wolves calling to each other from the peaks below me, and when I lay down to sleep, I dreamed I was a wolf myself, running swift and wild at the head of a fierce pack.

  The next day, I traveled in the direction of the closest howls. After a long search, I came to the rise above a high valley and saw seven gray wolves racing after a herd of deer, cutting out the hindmost and bringing it down.

  Oblivious to Aleswina’s shudder, he went on to say how he’d followed the pack determined to fulfill the task he’d been given.

  Keeping downwind and creeping as close as I dared, I came to understand that they spoke not only with their voices—high growls and low ones, barks and whines and sweet-sounding mewls—and with their expressions—snarling and smiling, frowning and yawning—but also with their bodies. The great gray leader of the pack stood tall and paced boldly; the lesser wolves backed out of his way and crouched down if he looked at them. For some it might have been enough to learn as much as I had, and yet I could not feel in my heart that I had fulfilled my quest, for I had not yet learned their stories or joined in their singing. But how could I do that without coming closer, and how could I come closer without being torn apart?

  Aleswina held her breath, her eyes wide and wondering.

  Caelym strummed a rising crescendo on his harp strings.

  Then, on the day of the summer solstice, as I was peering down from a rocky overlook, I saw a light brown wolf I’d never seen before come out of the bushes and trot toward the place where the pack was resting in the shade after their most recent kill.

  The new wolf was a female. She was smaller by half than any of the gray wolves, and her ribs were showing through her coat. My guess—which is probably correct—is that she was the lost or orphaned cub of some other pack who was searching for her family, too young to fend for herself and too weak to run when the entire enemy pack rose up as one and stalked toward her.

  As the pack surrounded her, the great gray wolf in the lead, the little brown wolf dropped down and rolled over on her back, exposing her neck and belly, as if surrendering to her death. The great gray wolf drew back his lips in a fearsome snarl and closed his teeth on the pup’s throat. The pup made no move save for a small wag at the tip of her tail. I watched with tears welling up in my eyes for the poor doomed pup—but instead of biting down, great gray wolf released his grip and walked away. The rest of the pack followed him, and little brown wolf got back to her feet and crept along after them with her tail now wagging happily, even tucked as tightly as it was between her legs. Seeing this, I thought that I, too, might persuade the pack’s leader to let me join their fellowship.

  That night, the great gray wolf led his pack up the side of the valley to a low ridge not so far from where I was hiding. They circled into a ring to sing their songs to the moon, which was close to full. Imitating their howls, I began to sing their songs, joining in the chorus with them. And as we sang back and forth together, they came closer to me and I to them until I and the great gray wolf faced each other, no farther apart than you and I are now. The others circled and watched. Following the example of the little brown wolf, I rolled over on my back, exposing my neck and my belly. The great gray wolf put his teeth on my throat. I could feel the tips pressing sharp against my skin, and thought that, perhaps, instead of my animal spirit guide entering into me, I was about to enter into him. But the great gray wolf opened his mouth again and walked away. The rest of the pack followed and I, still in imitation of the little brown wolf, got back to my feet and joined them, keeping my head very low and wagging my hindquarters as if I too had a tail.

  For months I lived together with them, adding the fish I caught with my spear to the game they brought down with their teeth, until, at the beginning of autumn, some ancestral yearning called them to leave their summer abode and journey southward. I might have gone along with them except that I too felt a yearning, equally compelling, to return to my human kin and learn to live again as a man.

  “And now I say to you, who have shown such daring in our travels together”—Caelym moved on to the point he meant to make—“that if I at the age of only
sixteen was able to use my wiles to survive among a pack of wild wolves, then you, who are three years older than I was then, will easily be able to learn what you must do if ever your wicked cousin or any of his evil guards should find you.”

  Aleswina had been listening to Caelym’s story with her mouth open. At this unexpected change of subject, she closed it, biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood.

  Caelym had expected that he would have to carry on both sides of this discourse, and he continued without pausing, “I know what you are thinking, but I fear it would not work so well for you to take up your gardening trowel, giving out a battle cry, and charge against these enemies, for while it is possible they should all be so surprised at this that they would faint dead away, it is more likely that it would only serve to annoy them and make matters yet worse for you. Instead, I think you must be like the little brown wolf, pretending to be frightened and helpless.”

  There was no question at all that Aleswina would be able to portray being frightened and helpless, as she was doing an excellent enactment of those qualities at that moment. Pleased to see this early success, Caelym praised her lavishly before going on.

  “The skills that I will be teaching you require guile and courage, both of which I know you possess in abundance. They also require that you have only a single opponent.”

  Aleswina had no idea what to say to this, but it didn’t matter since the only sound she was able to make was a small, strangled squeak.

  “Yet, as we both know, men, like wolves, often travel in packs and, like wolves, will have a pack leader.”

  Aleswina was about to squeak again but, remembering Olfrick and his men and dogs pursuing them through the woods, she swallowed and nodded.

  “So, to begin this lesson, let us say that a pack of your evil cousin’s guards have come upon you—what must you do first?”

  “Run.”

  “As the deer ran from the wolves?”

  “Yes”—but even as she said it, Aleswina remembered what happened to the deer being chased by Caelym’s wolves. “No, hide!”

  “But it is too late for that, you are surrounded by them!”

  Aleswina stammered, “I . . . you,” meaning to say, I don’t know! You have to tell me.

  Before she could form all those words, Caelym broke in, “Yes! That is exactly right! You must do as I did—observing them carefully, as I did the real wolves, then determining who is their leader—and among men you will know who that leader is because he will strut boldly, while the others will do as he commands them—only remember to be careful that you do not look at them too directly, but instead let your eyes shift slyly as you glance about.”

  Hypervigilance was nothing new to Aleswina, and she again showed some natural talent—looking down at her toes, she kept Caelym within her peripheral vision.

  Caelym nodded his approval. “Ah, that is excellent! So then you must hide any distress you may feel and instead glance up at this man with desire and invitation in your eyes.”

  At this point, Aleswina’s natural talents, as well as her training and experience, failed her entirely. Although quite explicit in its condemnation of women as seductresses, the Bible, at least in the versions used for the readings at the Abbey of Saint Edeth, had said nothing specific about of what being a seductress entailed.

  Since seduction, practiced under approved circumstances, was considered within the Shrine of the Great Mother Goddess as a skill to be learned along with other useful arts, Annwr would have been able to fill this gap in Aleswina’s education. The experience of being gang-raped, however, had left Annwr soured on men as a group, and she had done nothing to encourage her timid foster daughter in this field of endeavor.

  Totally out of her depth, Aleswina did her best to look at Caelym with desire and invitation but the result only suggested some embarrassing internal discomfort.

  “That will not do. Watch me and I will show you.”

  While all of Caelym’s experience in seduction had been within the sanctity of his union with Feywn, that experience was more extensive than the average man’s, and he was able to reproduce a smoldering look of lust that made Aleswina’s internal discomfort real. Her outward expression of this, regrettably, was to go completely blank.

  Caelym, who privately considered himself irresistible, was both hurt and frustrated. Still, he was not a man to give up easily, and they spent the next half-hour making faces at each other until Aleswina was able to affect something close enough to sexual awareness to pass for it in poor light. Aleswina’s best attempts were, frankly, little better than her archery, but Caelym didn’t want to discourage her, so he praised her efforts before he continued his instruction.

  “Now I can tell you that any man, seeing such a look as that, will certainly choose to send the others away. Once you are alone together, he will, no doubt, pull off his armor and his clothes underneath, and take you up in his arms. That is when you will swiftly pull out the sharp blade that I will give you and you will thrust it into his foul heart, and he will be too surprised to make any outcry.”

  Looking up at him, Aleswina chewed her lower lip—hopefully a sign that she was thoughtfully weighing his instructions.

  In keeping with Olyrrwd’s practice of always giving three reasons to take the remedy he was giving patients, Caelym concluded, “In this way you will have done three good things: First, you will have triumphed over your foe, bringing honor to your ancestors. Second, you will have given this foe a kind death—one that causes little discomfort and happens when he least expects it. Third, you will have done what is necessary to go on your way unharmed and in peace.”

  Aleswina nodded. It was a very small nod, but a nod nonetheless.

  Relieved, Caelym unrolled the leather packet of healer’s knives he’d brought with him. After selecting the sturdiest of the blades from his surgical kit, he began his practical instruction, both explaining and demonstrating how to plunge the point of the blade through the soft spot just below the point of the breastbone and thrust it upwards from there (“Not hesitating, and with all the force of your strong right arm!”), and cautioning Aleswina to be prepared to step back quickly to avoid the outpouring of blood.

  Once she pantomimed the hand movements precisely, Caelym declared her “as dangerous as any she-wolf” and fully ready to defend herself from her wicked cousin and all his evil guards.

  With a final strum of his harp strings, Caelym got to his feet, handed Aleswina her basket, and led the way back to camp, where Annwr had a pot of stew simmering—one which did not include any frogs, because, as Arddwn grumpily explained, “Lliem cried like a baby when Aunt Annwr said she’d show us how to break their necks, and we had to let them all go!”

  Chapter 65

  Parting Gifts

  Judging from Gothreg’s map, Caelym expected to get to Aleswina’s ancestral lodge (as he’d come to call it) in two or at most three days. The innkeeper, however, had been under the impression that they were going to be traveling on the road—so, as it turned out, it was Herrwn’s map with its three grim giants warning of unforeseen hazards that proved the more accurate.

  Finally, after weeks of backtracking out of dead-end canyons, searching out fords across rivers in flood, and detouring around cliff sides, the group came to the top of the last ridge before the spot that Gothreg had marked KL.

  The ridge, by comparison with some that they had crossed, was a low one. Looking over the edge, they could see the path switch back through scattered stands of beech and alder before it crossed a broad clearing and ran straight on to the front gate of a dilapidated fence that enclosed a cluster of rundown buildings. The largest and centermost was a long low structure with the smoke from its hearth fires rising up through a shabbily thatched roof.

  “What’s that?”

  In two words, Arddwn captured the sense of letdown Caelym was feeling, as he’d expected a residence belonging to a king— even a dead one—would be more impressive.

  “That,”
he said with forced enthusiasm, “is Ales—Ethelwen’s ancestral lodge.”

  “Which log is the ancestral one?” Lliem’s grasp of Celt was not yet complete, and he’d misconstrued what he’d overheard Caelym and Annwr saying to each other to mean that they were going to get some sort of magical piece of wood.

  This was neither the time nor the place to resolve all of the boys’ disappointments and misunderstandings, so Caelym temporized, “The earthly abodes of gods and goddesses must be kept veiled from human eyes.”

  Neither Annwr nor Aleswina said anything—either when they looked down at the lodge or when they went back to the hollow where they’d left the packs. There was something in their silence that silenced the boys, who whispered, “Yes, Aunt Annwr,” when she told them to play quietly for a while.

  With Aleswina sitting close beside her, Annwr sorted through their things, muttering, “You’ll keep to your disguise as a boy, revealing your true identity only to Millicent, and she can say you are her sister’s grandson come to visit. I’ve put your cross in with your habit, wimple, and veil for when you go on to the convent. The money Benyon gave you is in this pouch for your dowry. Remember the story you are to tell about being the daughter of a rich Briton—let’s say he was a merchant who disowned you when you ran off with the son of his rival, and then that lover, whose name you will never reveal, abandoned you, and so you have come to join them, renouncing both wealth and men forever.”

  Aleswina nodded, took the pouch, and pushed it down to the bottom of her pack.

  “This other pouch has the things for you to keep for remembrance, the gifts that the boys gave you and the seeds for your new garden, and . . .” Annwr had been busy rummaging and sorting, but now she turned to face Aleswina, holding a delicate golden brooch with a few stray threads hanging off it. “You had this when we first met. Do you remember it?”