The Hallowed Isle Book Three

by Diana L. Paxson

  “Lady of the moon’s red tide,

  Lady of the flowing breast,

  Ever-changing, you abide,

  Grant us motion, give us rest.”

  As each woman passed the stone, she bent, touched fingertip to the water and blessed herself, belly and breast and brow. Igierne felt her knee joints complain as she took her turn, and her sight darkened for a moment as she straightened again, but she kept her balance and moved on. She shook her head in self-mockery, knowing that if Morgause had not been there she would have stopped a moment to catch her breath at the top of the hill.

  Eastward, the hills fell away in long folds to a dim haze that hid the more settled lands. And there, at the limit of vision, a luminous pallor was beginning to suffuse the sky. The priestesses waited, humming softly. The air brightened suddenly as the sun hung for an instant on the rim of the hills behind them. Then it was gone, and the world was lit by a gentle afterglow. Silently Igierne began to count, knowing that beyond the mountain the sun was still sinking towards the distant sea. The colors of the sky above deepened, the clouds catching the light in bands of gold and rose. She heard her own indrawn breath repeated around the semicircle, and they began to sing once more.

  “Radiant Lady, bless the night,

  Bless the waters and the skies,

  Bless the world with silver light,

  We summon you—arise, arise!”

  Every month they honored the full moon, on the Isle when the weather was cloudy, and on the heights when the sky was clear, yet the hair lifted on Igierne’s neck as a growing glow silhouetted the shape of a distant hill. And then, as if in answer to the compulsion of the song’s final line, they saw the hill edged by a rim of blinding silver, and the huge, wonderful disc of the moon rose suddenly into the eastern sky.

  Without thought she found her own arms rising with those of the others, as if to lift that bright orb into the sky. Swiftly the moon mounted the heavens, until the women stood with arms stretched high in adoration, hailing the Goddess with a wordless ululation of pure sound.

  Gradually the human song faded until only the jubilant chirring of crickets could be heard. Some of the priestesses remained standing with uplifted arms to pray silently while others sank to the earth, sitting cross-legged with their hands open upon their knees. Igierne stayed where she was, staring at the moon’s brightness until vision was overwhelmed by light.

  Lady, hear and help me! her heart cried. Here stands the child of my body—why do I find it so hard to love her? She is my daughter, not my enemy! She heard the harsh rasp of her breath and stopped, willing the inner babble to still, remembering the many times she had told young priestesses that it did no good to ask the gods questions if you were not willing to listen for the answer.

  She could hear Morgause breathing beside her. After a time, she realized they had found the same rhythm. She felt ashamed that she should be so surprised.

  Is that Your answer? She stopped the thought, concentrating on her breathing, waiting. The moon was halfway up the sky, its color changing from the warm pearl glow of the horizon to a pure silver light. Listening, she heard Morgause’s steady breathing grow ragged, as if she were trying to hold back tears.

  What does she have to cry about? was Igierne’s first, swiftly suppressed response. If this woman whose arrogance had irritated her so this afternoon was weeping, her sorrow must be all the greater for being hidden. There were those who must have thought the same of Igierne herself, in the days when she mourned secretly for her lost son while all men hailed her as Uthir’s queen.

  Ah, child, there was a time you would have brought your trouble to me and wept in my arms. How have we become such strangers? She turned to her daughter, intending to offer comfort. As she met Morgause’s eyes, the younger woman’s gaze grew stony and she turned away, but not before Igierne had seen upon her cheeks the silver track of tears.

  Igierne stared at her back, feeling the tears start in her own eyes. Sweet Lady, help her! Help us all! came her heart’s silent cry.

  In the next moment a breath of wind stirred the grass and gently touched her hair. As it dried her cheeks, she thought that with it came a whisper, “I am with you, even in your pain.. . .”

  As the harvest moon waned the north lay at peace. The grain was ripening, and on both sides of the Bodotria estuary, men labored to reap the golden sheaves. Braced against the side of the boat that was carrying her over the water, Morgause turned her face to the sea wind and breathed in freedom.

  Leudonus was still in the south with Artor, and when Morgause announced her intention to visit the lady Tulach in Fodreu, there was no one in Dun Eidyn with the power to say her nay. Medraut had screamed when she detached his little hands from her gown and handed him to his nurse, but even his cries had no power against the imperative that ever since her visit to the Lake had beat like a drum in her brain—

  My mother still loves Artor more! She will never share her secrets. Whatever magic I wield must be my own!

  The land on the Pictish shore of the estuary was much the same as the country around Dun Eidyn. Why, she wondered, did the air seem fresher, and the colors more intense, on the other side? It was not only the change of scene that excited her, thought Morgause, for the Lake Country that surrounded the Isle of Maidens was a different land entirely, and she had only felt more constricted there. Perhaps it was because among the Picts she was bound by no ties of love or duty, only by whatever mutual obligations she should agree to in her search for power.

  Tulach was waiting for her on the shore, accompanied by a half dozen tribesmen wrapped in tattered plaids and two older women in dusty black robes. They had enough ponies for the Votadini as well.

  “Are you taking me to Fodreu?” asked Morgause as she mounted the shaggy little mare they had brought for her. Her own escort eyed the Pictish warriors uneasily, but with or without the consent of kinfolk, there had been marriages enough across the border that half of them had relations on the other side. As they moved out, their suspicions began to submerge in a murmur of genealogical comparison.

  Tulach shook her head. “The place for the ritual I have in mind for you lies farther up the coast. We should reach it before nightfall.”

  “What is it?”

  “A place of the old ones, who were here before Roman or Briton. The Picts are partly of that blood. You have such circles in the south as well, but you have forgotten how to use their magic. The old powers are still there, if you know how to call them. You will see.”

  Merlin knows how to call them, thought Morgause, remembering stories she had heard. Did she truly want to wield that magic, so ancient it seemed alien to her kind? But she had come too far to turn back now.

  Her mother would never dream of challenging Merlin. Her mother, she reflected bitterly, was content to follow a woman’s traditional path, supporting, encouraging, waiting in the shadows. Did Artor even bother to read the advice she sent him?

  She took a deep breath of the damp sea-wind. Her older boys were already moving into Leudonus’ world, but Medraut was still hers alone. It is not advice I will give him, but commands, she thought grimly, when I come into my power. The princes of Britannia dream of bringing back the old days before they went under the yoke of Rome. I will bring back a time that is older still, the time of the queens!

  The rough-coated ponies made surprisingly swift progress on the uneven ground. By the afternoon they had travelled a fair distance north and eastward along the shore. They passed a village of fishermen, their overturned coracles sprouting like mushrooms from the stony strand, and paused for a meal of barley cakes baked on the hearthstone and washed down with heather beer. When they mounted once more, they took a new trail that wound upward through the shelving cliffs to a band of woodland below the moor. One of the warriors was now carrying a bag before him, with something inside it that jerked and struggled as they began to climb.

  Just as dusk was falling they passed through a tangle of ash and alder where a small burn
trickled towards the sea. Beyond it, an area roughly the size of Leudonus’ hall had been roughly cleared. In the last of the light she could see that it was bordered by a circle of stones, the largest no more than waist-high. They were too choked by undergrowth to count, but the grass around the three in the center, one upright and the others tumbled, had been cut so that they stood clear.

  As the priestesses dismounted, some of the warriors bound torches to the poles that had been set into the ground, and the bag was laid beside a tree. Then the men saluted Tulach and led the ponies back down the hill.

  “They know better than to be near when women work magic!” the Pictish woman laughed. From her bag she took two black mantles, one of which she handed to Morgause. “Take off your clothes and put this on. Then wait here until we call.”

  True, the wind was growing cold, but Morgause suspected it was the touch of the garment itself that had set her to shivering. To change one’s semblance was to change the soul; as the black wool replaced the garments of the queen of the Votadini, she became someone else, someone she did not know.

  The other women had already lit the torches and suspended a bronze kettle above a fire. The water inside it was beginning to steam. Morgause felt her lips twist in bitter amusement—it appeared that she was going to learn the mysteries of the cauldron after all.

  Tulach moved sunwise around the inside of the circle, scattering herbs and chanting something in the old tongue. Morgause blinked, wondering if it were the gathering dusk that suddenly made it so hard to see.

  Through the gloom she glimpsed Tulach coming towards her.

  “Who are you, and why have you come here?”

  “I am Morgause daughter of Igierne,” she heard herself answering, “and I come to offer my service to the old powers.”

  “That is well. Take up the offering—” she indicated the bag “—and enter.”

  What happened after that was hard to remember. There was more chanting in the strange language as the three old women cast herbs and mushrooms and other nameless things into the cauldron. The aromatic steam made Morgause dizzy, so that sometimes she thought she saw a host of shapes around them and at others it was only the three.

  “We stand upon the graves of old ones,” Tulach told her. “Do not be surprised if they are drawn to the ceremony.”

  Shortly thereafter the singing reached a climax. It was full dark now; in the circle the flickering torches chased shadows around the fire.

  “Take up the bag,” said Tulach, “and carefully bring out what you find there.”

  Morgause had already concluded it must be an animal, and was not surprised to find she had hold of a large hare. Everyone knew that the hare was a creature of great magic. A fisherman who saw one on his way to the boats would turn back and stay home that day. It was never hunted, never eaten except when it was offered to the Goddess. At first the beast struggled, but when she made it breathe the steam, it abruptly went still. Tulach grasped it by the ears and handed her a flint knife.

  “Kill it—” she said, “and give the blood to the stones.”

  The stone knife was sharper than she had expected, but it was still a messy business. Then Morgause got the big vein open, and held the body so that blood spurted over the rock, pooling in the hollows and running down the sides. One of the other women took the victim and began to skin it, and in a few minutes the disjointed body was simmering in the cauldron with the herbs.

  The head sat dripping on the largest stone, and Morgause blinked, for the rock was surrounded by a pale glow. She looked around her and saw that the other stones were glowing as well with a light that owed nothing to the fire. With every movement, Tulach and the three priestesses trailed a glimmering radiance. Morgause felt her head swim and knew that she was already deep in trance. The tiny spark within that could still think yammered frantically. Why should they stop with the hare, when they could sacrifice a Votadini queen?

  The other women had stripped off their black robes. For a moment she thought that beneath they were wearing blue-embroidered garments. Then she realized that she was seeing skin, tattooed in intricate patterns with woad. She was too dazed to prevent them from removing her black mantle as well, but within the circle the air was warm.

  Tulach began to speak, her voice blurred as if it came through water. “We will make no permanent mark upon your skin, but the sacred signs we paint upon your body will mark your spirit shape so that the powers can see . . .”

  She dipped a small brush into a bowl in which hare’s blood had been mixed with something else and began to draw upon Morgause’s breast and belly the same spirals that marked her own. The brush tickled as it passed, and left a tingling behind it. By the time the priestesses had finished painting her front and back, upper arms and thighs, her entire body was throbbing with a pleasant, almost sexual pain.

  The soft heartbeat of a drum brought Morgause to her feet again.

  “Now you are ready . . . now we call Her.. . .”

  The drum beat faster, and Morgause found herself dancing as she had not danced since before her first child. Sweat sheened her body, adding its own meanders to the painted designs; she could smell her own female musk mingling with the scent of the herbs. It was very late; the distorted husk of the waning moon hung in the eastern sky.

  The priestesses were singing. Presently Morgause recognized goddess-names within the murmur of incantation. She began to listen more carefully, understanding without knowing whether she was hearing with the ears or the heart.

  The goddesses they were calling were older and wilder than any face of the Lady she had heard of on the Isle, names that resonated in earth and fire, in the stone of the circle and the whisper of the distant sea.

  “Call Her!” sang Tulach as she whirled by. “Call Her by the name of your deepest desire!”

  For a moment Morgause faltered. Then the drumming drew from her belly a moan, a shout, a cry of rage she had not known she held within.

  She spun in place, light and shadow whirling around her. And then it was not shadow, but ravens, a cloud of black birds whose hoarse cries echoed her own.

  “Cathubodva! Cathubodva! Come!”

  Was she still moving, or was it the birds who swept her up to the heart of the maelstrom, where it was suddenly, shockingly, still?

  “You have called Me, and I have come . . . what do you need?”

  “I want what my mother had, what my brother has! I have as much right as he does to rule—I want to be Tigernissa—I want to be queen!”

  “The power of the Black Raven, not the White, is Mine. I am the Dark Face of the Moon . . .” came the answer. “I madden the complacent and destroy that which is outworn. I drink red blood and feast upon the slain.. . .”

  “My mother clings to a power she can no longer wield! My brother fights for a dream that died with Rome! Let me be your priestess, Lady, and do your will!”

  “What will you sacrifice?”

  “I have a young son, who is also the son of the king! Help me, and I will raise him to be your champion!”

  Abruptly sound returned in a cacophony that whirled her with it into a chaos of fire and shadow until she knew no more.

  III

  FIRST BLOOD

  A.D. 494

  BUSHES BLURRED BY IN A HAZE OF GREEN AS GUENDIVAR BEAT her heels against the white pony’s sides. Then they burst out onto the sunny ridge, and the mare, seeing a clear trail before her, stretched out her neck and responded with a new burst of speed. Guendivar tightened her long legs around the blanket and whooped in delight. She was flying, lifting like a bird into the blue.

  Then the road dipped, and the pony began to slow. Guendivar dug in her heels, but the mare snorted, shaking her head, and her canter became a jarring trot that compelled the girl to rein her in.

  “Oh, very well—” she said crossly. “I suppose you deserve a rest. But you liked it too, didn’t you, my swan? I wish you could really fly!”

  Guendivar had gotten the pony for her sev
enth birthday. Now she was thirteen; too old, said her mother, to spend her days careering about the countryside. The dark shadow of adulthood was creeping towards her. Only on Cygnet’s back could she be free.

  A gull’s cry brought her head up; she followed its flight, shading her eyes against the sunlight, as it wheeled above the ridge and away over the Vale. It had been a beautiful summer, especially after last year, when there was so much rain. Through the mist she glimpsed the distant glitter of the Sabrina estuary. Closer, golden haze lay across the lowlands, reminding her of the waters that in the winter turned it into an inland sea. A few hillocks poked through like islands, dominated by a pointed cone in the middle of the Vale. In this light, even the Tor seemed luminous; she wondered if that was why some folk called it the Isle of Glass.

  The pony had halted and was tugging at the rein as she tried to reach the grass. Guendivar hauled the beast’s head up and got her going again, frowning as she became aware of a dull ache across her lower back. In a canter, Cygnet was as graceful as the bird from which she took her name, but her trot was torture.

  Suddenly the bag of apples and bread and cheese tied to her belt seemed very attractive. Guendivar gave the pony a kick and reined her down the hill towards the spring.

  It was little more than a seep in the side of the hill, but the constant trickle of water had hollowed out a small pool, fringed with fern and stone-crop and shaded by a willow tree. On the sunny slopes, the grass was ripening, but near the spring the spreading moisture had kept it a vivid green. Cygnet tugged at the rein, eager to be at it, and laughing, Guendivar swung her right foot over the pony’s neck and slid down.