From somewhere came a desolate screech that could have been human or cat. They passed a divergent path; a short distance down it was a gnarled oakwood gate that hung open as if inviting them in. And beyond the gate, mounted on an elmwood pole, was a richly carved wheel with thirteen spokes, the number of moon-cycles in a year; surely in the dark of night this baleful thing turned moonwise on command and caused the dead to speak prophecies from their graves. It was a certain sign some great seeress had settled in this wood.
Witgern and the pathfinder lashed their mounts with switches, anxious to get beyond this place, but the terrified beasts managed no more than a nervous, high-headed canter hardly faster than a walk.
Then the horses behind began to collide with those in front; Auriane could not see round the bend in the path but guessed the two lead animals had been brought to a halt by some dread thing barring their way. For the first time she felt a fear that was immediate and sharp.
Witgern and Maragin fought to turn their mounts about, but their horses were wedged among others and soon it was impossible for anyone to move. Maragin, the roughened veteran of a hundred battles, was in a position to see whatever was there. When Auriane saw badly concealed terror in his face, she felt all her muscles tense for flight.
Then a voice called out from beyond the bend in the path; it was strong and supple as vines, masculine and feminine at once.
“Halt and be at peace! Come forward, Auriane.”
Auriane was numbed by the sound of her name. All gazes turned to her. She found she could not move.
All at once she recognized that voice. Ramis.
It cannot be. So I’m to be taken by Ramis, rather than Wido’s men or the Governor’s soldiers. This is a menace no one counted on. It’s hardly better. At least the world of day is one I know; I know nothing of the world of night.
The next voice she heard was Witgern’s. “Auriane, stay still!”
There was dark silence. Then Ramis spoke again.
“Choose, child. You cannot obey both of us.”
She has many apprentices to serve her—why can’t she let me be? Have I not troubles enough? Why is this wretched woman so greedy for me? Mother knows her well; she is not to be trusted.
Auriane dropped to the ground, her fire-hardened spear upright in her hand.
I could run. But then she might do harm to us all. Better to threaten to kill her if she does not let us pass. Kill her? With this miserable weapon? She probably reads these thoughts as I think them.
Slowly Auriane threaded her way through closely packed horses, coming round the crook in the path; she halted beside Witgern. At the sight of Ramis, the last of her courage drained out of her. She felt she faced a powerful blast of wind.
Ramis was astride a milky white mare; the beast was turned broadside to them so that she blocked the path. The sorceress regarded her with a look that was faintly amused, cool and intimate at once. The passing years had changed her little; the bones of her face asserted themselves more boldly through the flesh, emphasizing the curve of her brow, the commanding arch of her mouth, the cold passion in those eyes, those wells of thought a hundred lives deep. She had the look of some serene androgyne, a creature all mind that preserved just enough flesh to keep alive. The very air about her seemed to ignite and shiver with unseen fire.
That bright, brazen aliveness about her—what is its cause? Auriane wondered. Can one person be more alive than another?
The spear slid from Auriane’s hand.
Ramis’ mare half reared, snapping at the air, a horse-serpent with snaking neck and lashing tail, fighting the control of expertly held reins. Auriane moved back a step, realizing this was one of the sacred mares of the horse-groves, whose neighs and snorts were used for divination. They were said to be flesh-eaters. Disgraced warriors occasionally mounted one as an act of suicide. The hooves of the mares of the grove leave little of a man left to burn, it was said. Yet this one submitted, if barely, to the touch of those strong white fingers on the reins. “If the Mare does not kill you when you venture close,” Thrusnelda had once told her, “it is the surest sign you are destined to become one of the Holy Ones, and of high degree.”
Witgern seized Auriane’s shoulder in a powerful grip.
“No closer,” he said sharply, staying very still so he would not incite the viper to strike. Many of the men shielded their eyes, while others traced in the air the runic sign that gave protection against sorcery.
“Witgern, let her be.” Ramis’ voice was lilting, yet cold with warning.
“She is mine to protect in the name of Baldemar,” Witgern protested.
“To protect? Now you amuse me. Can you protect her from misfortune? Or from her inevitable day of death? Stand aside, Witgern, these matters are not of your world.”
Still he did not release his grip on Auriane. And Auriane all the while felt her terror ebbing away, while an obscure excitement took its place. Some questing part of her rose up of its own will to sense and taste that cool fire about Ramis. It seemed then that Ramis’ very presence was a strengthening draught. Do the others feel this? Auriane wondered. Has she bewitched only me?
Ramis took a pinch of some black powder from a leather pouch at her belt. “You know not yourself from another, Witgern,” she said. “Nor day from night. How can you know truly who is your enemy?” She flung the powder at Witgern. “Sleep,” she called out in a silky whisper.
Auriane felt Witgern’s hand ease from her shoulder. Had she cast a sleeping spell on him or merely made him think she had? Witgern slumped forward on his horse as though his bones had become soft, his one good eye glassy and sightless.
Murmurs and moans came from behind. Auriane wondered what Decius thought of this. Did he mock, or was he terrified as well?
Now she will drag me off to the dark caverns where she animates the dead. I will never again set eyes on my mother and father.
“Come,” Ramis said to her softly. “You wear your mother’s fear, not your own. Now bare your feet, and unbind your hair.”
“I will not.” It was a feeble protest, the last kick of a dying animal.
“As you delay, a party of Wido’s men approaches this place. Do as I command!”
Auriane pulled out the bone pin and a heavy mass of chestnut hair shuddered down. Then she unlaced the leather thongs that bound her calfskin shoes and shook them off. She had a sense that the earth was flesh, that her bare feet stood on the hide of a great beast.
“Never forget the power of hair. It is both a shield and a birth-string, binding you to earth. Now, my mare has taken a stone. Take it out!” Ramis held out a bronze hoof pick.
Slowly Auriane shook her head. “If you want to murder me, use spells to stop my heart, not that mare. I will not have my mother forced to look on what is left of me.”
Ramis smiled. “Perhaps you will not be so fortunate. The smoothest of lives is still more difficult than death, and yours is set to be anything but smooth.” Then her voice rose up like a gale.
“In you dwells a spirit old as mine. I command you, give it voice!”
Auriane’s mind was erratic and wild as a cornered stag.
Bolt into the forest. Pick up that spear. Kill the horse. Kill her.
No, it is no use. She will not let us be until I obey her. Do it. Make yourself walk. Trust that she is not evil enough to make Athelinda a gift of your mangled body.
She moved toward the mare. The beast’s head came up sharply, ears flattened.
Then there settled over Auriane a strange luminous calm, a certainty that all that passed and all that had ever passed was, at its core, benign. Fear seemed to gently float out of her, leaving rich emptiness in its wake. Every sense feasted and knew contentment, as she had not thought possible in life; she swayed in an ocean of souls, feeling the close comfort of every being she had ever known, living or dead. The worm in the earth was beautiful as the lily; the weed by the path as necessary as the stalk of wheat. The sense lasted but a moment as she stroked
the silken neck and felt the bunched muscles of the mare’s shoulders relax at her touch. It encompassed every sort of love. The thought—the mare is not my enemy—came to her, and she realized that the word enemy had been stripped of meaning—she groped for it but it was not there.
Swiftly she took the pick from Ramis, lifted an enormous hoof, and pried out the stone. The mare’s charcoal muzzle grazed her neck and agile horse lips pulled at her hair.
Then the enchantment was gone, leaving her with a fierce, bottomless hunger for its return, a lust deeper than any desire for an earthly lover.
Fears crowded back in. She looked, alarmed, at the stone. She heard several soft voices behind her cry, “ganna, ganna…”—a seeress’s apprentice.
She looked at Ramis. “Let me be. I am not one of yours. This is base trickery. You have given the mare some draught.”
“Then why are her eyes so fiery? One of you!” Ramis called out to the company of warriors. “Come forward and stroke her neck. She is drugged.” Not one of them moved.
“Tell me, Auriane,” Ramis asked then, “how did you know which hoof?”
Auriane felt a jolt of unease. It was true. Ramis had not said which hoof.
“I…I do not know,” she said with bewilderment. Her voice hardened. “And I do not care. I’ll take my own life before I’ll go with you.”
“It is time you know it, Auriane—they come of their own will, or I do not want them. I have no use for captives. I want only what the thrall wants when he touches the fire of a living torch to a torch that is cold—to light the hall. I come to cast light upon what you will not know.”
“I know it then, and it means nothing to me. I’ve a choice then? I choose not to be a ganna. Am I free, then, to go on my way?”
“Free is an unfit word for it. Yes, you are free—to take up your bonds again. Or you can die now, and let me show you life. You have come to one of the times of turning, when a new path may be chosen. I was impelled to ask, though I guessed you would refuse.”
Then Ramis seemed to watch Auriane across a gulf of years, and her voice dropped low, becoming woeful music: “Oh, yes, I see you now in a necklace of bones…a cloak of human skin…with corpses strewn at your feet. At your side a bloody sword hangs—the more it drinks the more it thirsts.
“You flee catastrophe, but you cannot see…catastrophe is fertile—it brings forth worlds. You flee sorrow as you feed on sorrow, all the while strewing it in your bloody wake. War will not make you safe, nor will it save your mother. Listen well, little blind one—you strike at your enemy and you strike at yourself.”
Her voice rose up powerfully again. “Off with you now, priestess of death, go and play in the world. I do not want you and I sorrow for you. You’ve stepped into the mirror maze—now you’ll trick yourself for years.”
Ramis wheeled the horse about. Auriane felt a desperate need of her then that she did not understand.
“Why do you not help Baldemar!” Auriane called out, partly to bring her back.
Ramis pulled the horse to a halt and looked round at Auriane. “An empty question from one who knows not what help is.”
“Why did you let Hertha torment me?”
“It was not her torment that gave you sorrow, but your belief in it. If there is some shame lying about, how greedily you take it up and say, ‘It is mine.’”
“How could you allow Wido’s evil?”
“Whom do you take me for? I am a mortal woman, Auriane, not the Fates.” Again she started off down the path.
Auriane felt her rage rising dangerously, a thick soup coming to a precarious boil.
“Why do you torment me? You’ve haunted my whole life. You are a curse in the flesh!”
Ramis pulled the mare to a sharp halt.
“You started the tales I am cursed with the unholy blood of a water-nixe,” Auriane shouted. “You made my grandmother hate me. All that gives human comfort, you call folly. You come and tell me so—and then you abandon me!”
Those behind listened in stunned horror. Ramis would utter a single word of power and all of them would fall asleep for a thousand winters.
The soup flooded over the rim of the pot. “Yes, abandon me, casually as a bitch-dog walking off from her young. You speak of life. Where is Arnwulf’s life? How is he helped by your twisted, riddling words? You spew out words of confusion while everywhere we are dying of blows. Go and confuse the Romans. You would do us more good. Teach to others your utterings of no sense!”
Auriane stopped, feeling suddenly deflated, and the stark silence all about awakened her to what she had done. Exhilaration gave way to vertigo, as if she scrambled too high up a pine, then looked at the dizzingly distant ground and knew she could not climb back down.
What have I done? She will call down a bolt of lightning and we will all be cinders.
Gradually, through her fright, she realized Ramis was laughing—yes, laughing—with light clear notes.
The woman is incomprehensible. Perhaps she is simply mad. But no, madness is emptiness, and never was I so full as during that enchantment she sent, or awakened, in me.
“This is well,” Ramis said, softly as a mother now. “I am pleased with you. When I had about as many years as you, I spoke in that wise to my own teacher. Though I believe I called her a she-ass instead of a bitch-dog, if memory serves. Your spirit is great and you progress well, but it is not time. I must leave you. We will meet again at the next turning of the times.”
Ramis then galloped off. Auriane for long moments did not trust herself to move, as though the horizon had suffered a slight tilt and she feared she might fall. The stone she had pried from the mare’s hoof rolled from her hand. Soon she was aware that the men were muttering in low voices while stealing baffled looks at her.
She chastised Ramis and was none the worse for it, as they would later tell the tale. And she was received gently by the Mare.
Witgern came up beside her and put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “You’re well and alive. You’ve much courage, Auriane.” She looked at him gratefully and numbly pulled herself back on her horse.
She saw one of the men dismount. To her surprise, he picked up the stone she’d pried from the hoof and kept it, probably to make an amulet. She knew then that no matter how much she tried to deny what occurred on this path, those who witnessed it would keep it alive.
She met Decius’ eyes before they set out again. He grinned at her—that rogue grin. Decius seemed maddeningly unmoved by all that had passed, as though Auriane had paused to ask directions of a farm wife. Were Romans incapable of any sort of reverence?
She felt a stirring in her loins then, for which she cursed the gods. Why now? And why Decius? Why cannot the senseless hungers of the body be controlled? The feast is laid out—and my eye strays to the dish that is poisoned.
Auriane lay awake most of that night, trying on and shrugging off Ramis’ words, and through all her fears for the future—or perhaps because of them?—she was sharply aware that somewhere nearby lay Decius. In one moment, her need to crawl through the grass and find him was so powerful it left her shivering. In the next, the pleasurable shudders brought in their wake a stark picture of what happened to her mother. Glimmers of knowledge of the pleasures of the body had come to her, gathered from dreams, from intuition, from dimly sensing the relations between her mother and father. To be joined in passionate embrace was love made flesh, a heart-warmth overflowing into the loins. She had been certain of that before, but now she wondered, could the same act also be one of hatred, of violence? Was it always a bit of both? Who might she ask? There was unknown danger here, a black shadow cast over desire. It fit well with all else she lately sensed—no place was safe, and nothing was purely the one thing it first seemed to be. Beware, beware, she heard in the cry of a low-flying nightjar.
That mocking smile—if I possess it once, will it stop tormenting me? Decius, you are a fiend. I will rejoice when you escape.
As night wore on she struggled to
quieten her mind but her body remained tense, as if it knew better and expected something.
In the most still time just before dawn she heard the sound of a leather-soled shoe scuffing against stone. At once she sat up.
Their camp was on a grassy treeless rise; the sentry positioned nearest the forest was not to be seen. She crouched and quietly moved toward his post. The barest beginnings of dawn lightened the sky to a cold iron gray. She stole past the dark sleeping forms on the ground and at last saw the sentry. He lay asleep in the grass.
Asleep. It was impossible. She felt a twist of sickness in her stomach as she reached out to shake him. He rolled to his back. Embedded deep in his chest was a Roman catapult bolt.
She leapt to her feet. A quick glance about proved the pathfinder was gone.
He led us to this place and deserted us.
She almost stumbled over Witgern. “Arise!” she whispered. “We are betrayed. The pathfinder was our enemy.”
Witgern got to his feet, instantly awake.
Their encampment was well disguised among the long grasses; it would have been difficult for an enemy to find without the pathfinder’s aid. Together they swiftly, quietly awakened everyone, ordering them to stay low and make no sound—Auriane feared their smallest movement might induce any enemy below to attack. Decius was alerted on his own, but at first he kept a respectful distance.
Auriane took Witgern’s arm. “Look.” Witgern followed her gaze and saw the dawn light reflected off something dully metallic in the furze bushes below. A helmet. No, more than one. At least twenty in that one place. “By now, for certain, we are surrounded,” she whispered. Slowly Witgern nodded.
Witgern motioned for them to form a ring, the best defensive position for an attack on all sides. He attempted to put Auriane in the center with Decius and the priestesses, but she pushed roughly past him and took a position in the outer circle, armed with nothing but her fire-hardened ash spear.
“You’ve no shield,” Witgern whispered angrily.
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