“This is the greater joy,” Odoune said. “One that they will never know. Sexual desire is powerful but fleeting. It produces individual life, a single eddy in the river. The connection you feel now is a deeper one that brings insight into the wider stream.”
Aradma nodded. “I understand.” Then she pushed deeper. She felt the tree’s roots, and it touched other roots, other trees. Her eyes filled with tears, and she sighed in contentment. She sank to her knees as she became aware of the immediacy of the life force in every plant, bush, tree, and blade of grass within a hundred miles.
She finally released the tree and the awareness faded. All thoughts of animal desire had been purged and cleansed from her by the purity of the trees’ spirits.
“This is how lust no longer tempts us,” Odoune said. “Right now, you are in clarity. That will fade, and when desire returns, the jungle will clear you again. It is by this that we keep our vision pure, a perspective that all the priestesses of Rin will never understand.”
“Odoune, why did you want to find me and bring me here?” Aradma asked. “You said it was to join the Vemnai, and the Matriarch was skeptical of your purpose until she saw me. But it seems you are also mistrustful of the Vemnai.”
“Something is wrong with our people,” Odoune said. “I feel it in the jungle. I don’t know if it is the Matriarch herself, or the ossified rituals that have encrusted the cloister. Men lose more with every generation. There is a growing discomfort in the heart of our people, and all druids sense this. Women should rule, of this I am sure, but something is out of balance. Our hope is that your people will bring us the balance we need, having come from the Dragon herself.”
“What if the Matriarch is right?”
“Then maybe it is us druids who need balance restored, and you will reconcile us with the Vemnai.”
Two weeks later, Aradma returned to the cloister. The Matriarch rose to greet her when she entered the obsidian room.
“I did not expect you back so soon,” the Matriarch said. There was a spring in her step as she crossed the black floor to meet the elf.
“I am not finished,” Aradma said, almost bouncing with excitement to see her. She embraced the Matriarch. “But I could not bear to be apart. My training will continue, but I wish to return to you each night.”
The Matriarch thought for a moment, and then smiled. “Unorthodox perhaps, but I cannot complain too much. If the Matriarch cannot take an indulgence, then who can?”
“Odoune is not pleased with my choice.”
“I am the Matriarch. Odoune will honor my will.”
That night they sat in the chapel in meditation in front of the image of the conjoined goddesses. Aradma knelt in supplication.
Speak to me, goddess, she prayed. Help me know which path you have laid out for me.
There was no answer, and the Fae voices remained strangely quiet in her head.
The Matriarch rocked back and forth on her knees, eyes closed. Her lips moved, silently repeating prayers at not even a whisper. Only a hint of breath uttered from her mouth, a syllable here, a phrase there, as she inhaled and exhaled.
Help me to be worthy of you, Aradma continued her prayer. Help me to understand your will for me that I might be worthy of her who sits beside me.
She sat in silence, receiving no answer. The Fae King within her hissed in mocking laughter but said nothing.
The Matriarch’s eyes shot open, but she stared beyond the walls of the room.
“Yes, Mother, I see you!” the Matriarch said. Her entire body trembled, and tears fell from her face. Her breasts heaved with deep breaths and she kept repeating, “I see you, I see you, I see you!”
The Matriarch fell to the floor, drenched in sweat. After a few moments, her eyes refocused and turned to the elf.
“Rin has revealed her will to me. We will gather your people together with the Vemnai. Once we have done this, you and I will be the first to bear children, without need for men. Your people too will be blessed with the goddesses’ power of the creative womb; we shall be sisters, and no men shall pollute our race.”
Aradma stared at her for a moment, and then helped her to her feet. Her heart fluttered with conflicting emotions. Confusion. Love. Desire. Revulsion. Anger. Joy.
“Her first commandment to me,” the Matriarch said, “is to release my husbands. I will disavow them and keep myself for you alone. I will send out more search parties to bring your people here. Go finish your time with the Archdruid. Learn what remains to be learned from him, and then return to me.”
And why didn’t you receive a vision? the Fae whispered in her mind.
Aradma buried her doubts and kissed the sweat from the Matriarch’s chin. “I will do this,” she said.
Arm in arm, they retired to the Matriarch’s bedchamber for the night.
The days passed, and Aradma’s doubts resurfaced. One morning, instead of rejoining the Archdruid, she assumed the form of the bird and flew alone through the sky. The tension between Odoune and the Matriarch had proved impossible to balance. She exulted in all of Odoune’s lessons, and she loved running through the jungle as the white leopard. Every night spent with the Matriarch made her feel increasingly sure that Odoune was wrong to doubt her. Her heart swayed depending on whom she was with at the time. Odoune’s words were wise and the jungle brought clarity. The Matriarch loved her, and she desired the troll in return.
…desired…
But did she love the Matriarch? She wasn’t sure, now that she was away. From their lovemaking, Aradma knew the Matriarch delighted in her touch. Aradma herself liked pleasing the troll woman, but it became clear to her over time that they did not have the shared experience that the Matriarch believed they had. Aradma enjoyed the physical sensations of her lover’s touch, but the Matriarch came away with a deeper fulfillment. Every time they were intimate, Aradma felt the song in the Matriarch’s soul reverberate loudly. She knew the chords and tones of fulfillment the troll felt, and that she did not share that same depth of emotional completion. Something was missing, something more… masculine.
She realized where her thoughts led her and was troubled. For one who was initiated into the Vemnai’s secret mysteries, such thoughts were blasphemy. She knew she must bury them deep within lest they come between her and the Matriarch to sabotage any hope for building love.
Aradma flew a hundred miles to the north, and a few hours later reached the shore of the sea. To her amazement, she saw trolls—men and women together—lying naked on the beach sands and wading unclothed in the crashing waves.
She landed and shifted into elven form. Two of them, a man and a woman, stood when they noticed her. The woman had been lying on her stomach and brushed sand from her nude body. They each seemed completely unaware of the other’s nudity.
The troll man grinned. “Hello, Aradma,” he said. “My name is Courineaux. She is Rienne.”
“You know me?” Aradma said, astonished.
“Of course. Odoune has told us much about you. Funny you are not with him today.”
“I needed to get away and think on my own,” she said. “Oh!” she exclaimed when realization hit her. “You are druids!”
They grinned. “Yes. This is where we come to get away. The sun and sand and water are refreshing. We need time to relax, too.”
“We may be druids,” Rienne said, “but we are still mortal. We spend so much time in the jungle tending to its ways, we sometimes forget there is more to nature. There is the sea! Isn’t it beautiful?”
Aradma shook her head. “But you have lost all modesty!”
“Are not the animals of the jungle clad in this way?” Courineaux asked.
“The Matriarch would be furious!” Aradma exclaimed.
Rienne chuckled. “The Matriarch fears what she does not understand. She would look at us and assume something different.”
“This is why we retreat far away from the Vemnai clans,” he said.
“Have I been told lies?” Aradma asked.
“Have you not forsaken your sex?”
“Oh, we have,” Rienne laughed. “We live embraced by the serenity of the jungle. We stand naked together, yet there is no desire between us. It is pure.”
“It is liberating,” Rienne said. “Simple joy—for its own sake—in connecting with the sand beneath our feet, the skies over our heads, and the waters around our bodies. This offers our greatest connection with Ahmbren, the garden in which Rin’s life takes root.”
“Graelyn is the Lady of Life,” Aradma stated. She wasn’t sure what prompted her to say that.
“Rin is the source of life,” Courineaux corrected her. “But Graelyn did teach us how to care for it. And you carry her spirit within you. Look around, do you not see how wonderful this is?”
Aradma looked around. Men and women sat together, eating and conversing. Some played in the water, splashing each other and laughing. Some sat in silent meditation. Yet something was missing. With all this open display, there should have been some charge of sexual energy, some vigorous zest for life. She did not expect them to be in open congress with each other—they weren’t animals—but there was still something in the air that was out of place. There were no sly glances, no scent of excitement. The happiness seemed absent of joy, as if they were going through the motions of happiness and only achieving contentment.
“It is beauteous, your freedom,” Aradma admitted, “but I see something else, too. Your bodies are also beautiful. You are the fruits of this land and of this life. You are the pinnacle of the line of your ancestors, and you seem to have blinded yourself to what brought you here. Rienne, when I look at you and see your nakedness, you inspire me to be free to desire and accept that it is good to be desired. I want to free myself of my own clothing and join in your dance knowing that I too am beautiful. Courineaux, when I see you like this, it makes me want to possess you and be possessed by you.”
“Touch the jungle,” he told her. “Be free of such individual desires and partake in the larger view. I once felt as you did, but the jungle changed me. To be a druid, you must shed such limitations. I’m grateful for it. So much violence and aggression is caused by lust and passion. Better to be clear and achieve contentment and serenity. We’ll leave the burden of lust to those who bear the burden of children.”
“And that’s why,” Rienne interjected, “the Vemnai are as disciplined as we are in our roles between male and female. Lust is a thing to be controlled, and desire between men and women must be channeled into continuing the flow of life. A too liberal approach would lead to the old days of men and women fighting each other over jealousies.”
“Why did you choose to become a druid?” Aradma asked.
“Because I did not wish to lie with a man,” she said. “Had I become a priestess, it would have been considered my duty to bear children. So instead of selecting breeding partners, I chose to embrace the serenity of the forest and transcend my animal passions.”
Aradma stared at her with pity as the lie of the Vemnai way revealed itself. These people, this way of life and culture, had climaxed to a sterile end. They were not druids and they couldn’t see it. They could bear no offspring to pass on their ways and arts, save for being provided children by the Matriarch’s Vemnai culture. They needed the Vemnai, and they were in absolute thrall of Rin’s religion. Druidry had fallen to become nothing more than the crusty husk on a culture of death.
A moment of clarity struck Aradma with a thunderclap and her knees sagged. She stumbled to the sand. It was not the clarity of the jungle alone, but the jungle as a projection of the earliest origins of life, emerging from the womb of the sea. The great waves that expanded from the beach, turquoise at first and darkening in shade to the distant deep blue of the horizon, spoke to her of a constant roiling of forces and elements that churned out life over millennia. Her mind reeled at the splendor of it, and she uttered one quiet whimper. “It’s so big…”
Rienne helped her to her feet. “What did you see?”
Aradma met her eyes with tears that glowed with the green light of the Dragon within her, seeing a woman before her who could be so much more but whose mind was as trapped as the Matriarch’s. She touched Rienne’s cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
She once more became the falcon, leaving Rienne and Courineaux behind with baffled faces.
15 - The Great Rite
Aradma flew back to the orange rock spire. The sun had set hours ago, and a waning crescent moon reached its apex in the northern sky. She landed and returned to her elven form to gaze up at the moon.
The feeling of clarity from the beach had faded. She did not know what it was she had experienced, only that she was conflicted now more than ever. She wanted to love the Matriarch, but the pit in her heart screamed that everything about this culture was wrong.
She was mortal. Her mind was limited in its understanding. It was arrogant to believe that her reason alone could interpret the signs and dismiss the will of the gods.
“Help me understand!” she prayed silently. Then aloud, she breathed in a voice of supplication, “Soorleyn!”
She stripped the skins and gold from her body and stood alone, sky-clad under the starry veil. The night sky caressed her skin as the breeze moved over the rocky spire.
She raised her arms to the moon, whispering fervently. “Soorleyn, if you hear me now, reveal your wisdom before I go down this path. Save me from denying you.”
Aradma’s awareness shifted. She sensed a great matrix of energy beneath and within the jungle, suffused in all parts of the world, but not of the world. Points of light, so faint and subtle, created a golden web of fine, luminous crystalline strands that coalesced around living creatures. It was brightest at the Vemnai village but it was everywhere.
From this web, a glimmer of light coalesced.
“I hear you, my child,” a voice said. It was not in Aradma’s mind—she physically heard it reverberate in the air around her.
The light solidified more into the body of a human woman of the palest skin. Her hair was corn-silk blond, folded and tucked neatly in a braided bun, and she wore a gown that covered her body, even to the tops of her breasts. The gown was as the night sky, with stars twinkling throughout. It was as if she had taken a piece of the night and wrapped it around herself. The goddess floated in the air over the treetops, stopping to hover beside the rock spire. She seemed confused, unfocused at first, but then she solidified and became aware of the elven woman.
Aradma fell to her knees.
“You must be patient with the gods, my child,” Soorleyn said. Her voice sounded like a thousand soft voices at once, and the texture of it penetrated Aradma’s spirit and elicited a sigh of pleasure from the elf. With every word, an extension of the golden light flowed along a crystalline lattice that started to form around the elf’s body. “I would have spoken to you sooner, but all the gods are diminished. To become Karanos, the Shadowlord took our power for himself. He is dead now, and our time is at hand. I was asleep, but the faith of my people, which you have rekindled, has awakened me.”
“My lady,” Aradma said reverently. “You know my heart. Is it true?”
“Ask your question, child.”
Another wave of pleasure, and the crystalline lattice grew stronger around Aradma’s body, penetrating into her core. Aradma steadied her breathing and found her center again. “Are the true Vemnai solely a race of women, mothered by you and Rin?”
“Yes,” Soorleyn answered. “You and the Matriarch are to join your peoples together and worship us. When you have completed your tasks, you will be blessed with the power of life, and you will no longer need men. It will be as it was intended to be on Vemnai.”
With every word, wave after wave of joy and giddiness shook Aradma’s body, and she fell to the ground, writhing in the thrill of the goddess’s voice.
The Fae court inside her hissed. Lies! She lies!
The goddess continued.
“I am Graelyn’s mother. I sent my daughter to
the Vemnai to teach the druids to serve Rin’s priestesses, paving the way that we might one day be rejoined.”
The green light within Aradma surged, cleaning the intoxicating effects of the goddess’s words like drawing poison from an addict. The golden web fell away from her. The illusion of truth shattered, and the goddess’s words rang like the clangoring of lies in the seelie’s long ears.
“Join with the Matriarch and restore the Vemnai,” the goddess commanded.
Aradma rose and confronted the vision.
“I am Graelyn’s daughter,” Aradma declared. “But Graelyn was no daughter of yours!”
“I do not lie!” the goddess reprimanded her, but the words held no more effect.
Aradma stared calmly at the vision. The goddess either lied and was not a goddess, or she was sincere in her beliefs and was wrong. Could a goddess be wrong? “Perhaps, but neither do you speak the truth.”
“I am a goddess. My will is Truth!”
The idea of serving such an irrational being repulsed the elf, no matter how powerful it was. Impossibilities could not exist—they were only illusions sustained over time.
“I deny you!” Aradma shouted defiantly. “I will not serve such a creature as you.” The green light in her soul reached down through the rock and into the core of Ahmbren. Hundreds of feet below, plant life erupted, and mosses and fern leaves rushed forth to cover the rock from the base to the pinnacle where Aradma stood. In an instant, flowers and grasses sprang up between her toes and around her feet, caressing her waist and back.
The goddess’s eyes flashed with rage. Her face contorted, losing all semblance of beauty, and venom dripped from her lips. Her wrath gathered and focused golden strands into a beam of pure brilliance. The plant-covered rock blazed a full green light, becoming a great well of life energy. The green light rushed upwards, using Aradma’s body as a conduit, and emerged from her outstretched fingertips. To the seelie’s amazement the golden light retreated, as oil from soap. The spear of wrath unraveled, and the vision of Soorleyn, so solid only a moment before, burst like a bubble into a fading mist.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 15
