Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  “Daughter of a whore!” He drew his double-edged cavalry sword.

  Auriane shot up and seized the guardsman by his dangling, hobnail-booted foot.

  “Sheath it, or I pull you from your horse.”

  “Miserable hogspawn!” But alarm showed in the guardsman’s eyes. A horse soldier possessed many advantages, and one great disadvantage—the ease with which he could be pulled from his mount.

  This awkward stalemate lasted for a heartbeat or two while the guardsman leaned precariously from the saddle with Auriane fastened to his leg, his sword useless because he couldn’t effectively position himself.

  “Stop this, now,” came a bell-clear voice behind them. “Auriane. Let him go.”

  Ramis spoke from behind old dreams.

  Auriane let the guardsman’s leg drop.

  “No brawling in my presence,” Ramis spoke on. “Young man, cease battering these two. Ride off and behave yourself.”

  The guardsman righted himself on his horse, anger put out like a doused fire, eyes hazed with mild befuddlement. Auriane, too, felt pleasantly disoriented, as if the air were warm, liquid amber, and she were gently seeping out into a sentient sea of souls, into which flowed all who were present—for an instant, she even felt she flitted about the prickly passages of the guardsman’s mind—and was aware, suddenly, that this was some glamour worked by Ramis.

  “Go now,” Ramis prompted the newly released horseman. He kicked his mount and trotted briskly off, leaving Auriane to wonder: Had some blood-cooling spell travelled on Ramis’s voice? Or had she just compellingly awakened some image of this guardsman’s own mother, hovering huge from dim days before the gods put language into his mouth—a mother who, like Ramis, would be an aged native woman?

  Their decurion cantered close, shouting, waving Auriane and Brico off with his vine stick. But this man recognized Auriane; hesitation showed in his face. The native woman Marcus Julianus had taken into his household would need to be treated with greater diplomacy.

  Behind her, Auriane heard Ramis laughing, in beautiful, clear notes.

  “Auriane. Turn round and give me greeting. I’d forgotten how amusing you can be.”

  Brico got to her feet, legs splayed like a foal’s. Auriane whispered, “Stay still here, hold the cloth like this, to staunch the bleeding.” Then she turned to face Ramis. The prophetess’s litter rested on the shoulders of eight tall men; Ramis’s face was poised above her like some watchful moon. Auriane felt the gaze of those hooded eyes penetrating straight through to the back of her skull.

  “Lady, we must move on,” the Guards’ decurion said to Ramis. “You shouldn’t keep His Eminence waiting.”

  Ramis’s laugh was husky, earthy. “My good man, his waiting doesn’t cease when I arrive. Tell him I can’t come so quickly these days. I’m too old. Anyway, I’d miss the fine scenery along the way.”

  “You’re a quarter-hour late by the water-clock already and it would not do to offend—”

  “Young man! You’re quite sure what’s important here? Beware. Life’s a confusing play, after all, with its trifles praised, its heroes disguised, its grand moments unknown.” Ramis added in a tone of command, “I will have words with this woman and you will keep silent.”

  The decurion spat a curse, but said, “Be swift about it.” Not about to let them forget his presence, he positioned his horse so the beast’s head and clanking bit were thrust between Auriane and Ramis.

  “My Lady,” Auriane said, inclining her head, “I give you greeting in the name of the Ancestresses—”

  “Yes, stop trying to join them every chance you get, would you? They don’t want you yet. Given your nature, though, it’s well to keep on good terms with them.”

  “Please, I’ve come to beg your help in finding—”

  “Many years ago, I told you to go out and play in the world,” Ramis smoothly interrupted, her voice cold and inflexible as a steel blade. “And so you did. But you forgot to come back. Rest is life, when it’s needed. Rest is poison, when it’s not.”

  Auriane stood numbed and speechless, feeling she’d been expertly disarmed somehow. Ramis pointed a bony finger at her. “Giving my amulet to Avenahar—that was pitiful. Being apprenticed to me is not something you retire from, like a cobbler from his trade.”

  “It’s Avenahar I must ask you of,” Auriane rushed on, too unnerved to wonder how Ramis knew she’d rid herself of the amulet. “She’s run off. If you’ve any love left for my family, can you help me—”

  “That’s most unmannerly, young man,” Ramis said sharply to the decurion. “Can you manage it so your horse’s whiskers aren’t tickling our faces?”

  The guardsman muttered some half-audible insulting description of them both, but he did rein his horse back two steps.

  Her baleful gaze swept back to Auriane. “You thought, when you settled in your fine villa, your sorrows were done.” Auriane had all but forgotten Ramis’s unnerving habit of penetrating without preamble into the mind’s most private chambers. “You paid a great debt, you believed,” Ramis continued, “and now, surely, you owe no one. And should be able to dwell peacefully on your mountaintop forever. Like a rock. But remember, Auriane, Fria does not collect, or pay, in a coin we recognize.”

  “I—I don’t know of such things anymore . . . You were midwife to Avenahar’s birth, can you help me!”

  Just ahead, a portion of the crowd broke into riot as shouted insults between people of the Mattiacans and the Chattians erupted into blows. It did not take much drink to bring out these neighboring peoples’ traditional hatred of one another: The Mattiacans counted the Chattians brigands who thieved from their neighbors; the Chattians called the Mattiacans lap dogs of Rome. The Guards’ decurion left them, trotting off briskly in that direction, almost feeling he’d been rescued—here was a proper excuse for this ridiculous delay, one less likely to get him demoted in rank.

  Ramis waved a hand after him. “He won’t be missed.” Then, as an eagle seizes prey, she said to Auriane, “I want you to cease dictating those books of my life.”

  This is madness, there is no time, this is not what I came here to speak of . . .

  But Auriane found herself lulled, immobilized as some fly enmeshed in spider’s silk; that strange stillness shed by Ramis scrambled the proper order of the world, dissolved the stratagems of reason.

  “But your name will be dust,” Auriane found herself replying.

  “Less than dust. Dust can be seen.”

  “You want to vanish from the earth?”

  “Because a thing is not seen doesn’t mean it has vanished. There’s no need to assemble a word-picture of me for their world. There is another world in which my image will be clear as a full moon reflected in a pool.”

  “Very well, whatever you wish . . . but please,” Auriane said, grasping tightly to the extravagant ornamentation on the side of the litter, “do you know if Avenahar lives!”

  “Oh, she lives. It’s you I worry over. You scurry off to a cozy Roman farm and bury yourself in it—a living woman immured in a sarcophagus. You were meant to shelter thousands, not three, or four.”

  Auriane felt a stifling panic rising in her throat. The scuffle that barred their way was starting to run down; soon, the Horse Guards would have it quelled. This maddening woman will be be whisked off by the bearers before I get an answer.

  “Where must I go then, to bring her home?”

  Avenahar lives. Auriane’s relief was like a plunge into hot water on a frigid day. Her mind frog-jumped ahead through the days; she half forgot where she was. I will fetch her myself. What a homecoming we will have! But she’ll get a stern talking-to over this that she won’t soon forget . . .

  “You can’t bring her home,” Ramis said, “for she is in no place.”

  “I don’t understand . . . You said she was living.”

  “Oh, she’s most alive. And she’s right where she’s meant to be.”

  “Stop gaming with me!”

 
; “She has joined Witgern’s Wolf Coats.”

  Auriane had heard it said that when run through by a javelin, one feels nothing—the senses, the heart, the mind, are struck blind. It is almost merciful. Unfortunately, she felt that way but briefly; then a thousand worms of terror awakened and began boring relentlessly into her heart. Fria, no. A thousand deaths await her.

  “She has run off to school, Auriane,” Ramis said more gently. “She’s fled to her academy. It’s time. You did much the same, at her age. Have you forgotten?”

  “Have you no pity! Joining a hunted rebel and his draught-maddened pack of fugitives is not school!”

  “Oh, for her, it’s the best of schools. Her spirit’s much like yours at her age—only broken out in a rash. She must play out that inherited rage to its end.”

  “This is madness! You must give her sanctuary!”

  Ramis was silent a beat too long, as if to give Auriane time to listen to herself. There was no flicker of emotion in that enigmatic face. Then she whispered, “I won’t tear the fair web spun by one far greater than I.”

  “You care naught for any of us! Of what use are you!”

  “Your true enemy, Auriane, is the part of you that you fancy is most reasonable—that’s so certain it knows what’s right. You’re disappointing me. How, by the powers, did you lull yourself into thinking the world wouldn’t fall apart? Didn’t it, before? Doesn’t it always?”

  Auriane shrank back from the litter and dropped her head into her hands. Above her, Ramis was speaking words she scarce had ears for.

  “This is the last time of turning, Auriane, your final chance to die to this world, and follow me.”

  A subtle certainty settled into place, and Auriane said softly, “You knew I would be waiting for you here.”

  “Oh, I thought there was a good chance. You didn’t really think I came all this way just to be chastised by His Pomposity, did you?”

  The decurion of the Horse Guard cantered toward them on his lathered, wild-eyed mount; his leather knee-breeches and gilt cuirass were splattered with blood. Auriane doubted it was his own.

  “Forward!” With his lance, he indicated the cleared way ahead.

  “You’ve always sought refuge, Auriane. First, it drove you to war—only in battle did you find peace. Now it drives you to too much peace. You must want clear sight more than refuge. Listen to me. You are one of the fires of this land. Rarely do I see transcendent beauty in a will to fight, but it is so, in you. You must ignite again. You must prepare, now, to be what I am.”

  “You speak as if I were free as a maid. I would never desert my children.”

  “Ah. But you’ve done so already, by deserting your true nature.”

  “Move forward!” the guardsman shouted hoarsely.

  “The lily opens. Don’t try to close it by main force.” Ramis looked ahead. “A pity. I must go.”

  Ramis dropped the litter’s curtain.

  Auriane wanted to sink to the mud and sob until all the desolation was washed out of her, but was seized with a strong sense, then, of her father watching her from the Sky Hall; she could not shame him. So she stood stiffly, unable to move, while the throng buffeted her.

  Ramis’s silver-crowned head emerged a final time.

  “Auriane. Rivers are the borderlands between worlds. If you do nothing a river will decide.”

  “A curse on you! Speak words I can understand!” This brought quick, horrified looks from those standing near.

  But Ramis showed no sign of offense. She calmly signaled to the bearers, and the eight tall men straightened themselves as one, as though beneath the control of a single mechanism. With beautifully matched steps they moved up the slope. The litters of Ramis’s women broke into motion, too; the bearers carried them swiftly forward in a smooth then halting rhythm, just above the crowd, so it appeared as though the six litters were being rowed through a sea of heads.

  Auriane started off in pursuit. But masses of people flowed together in the litters’ wake, hindering her, and she was engulfed once more in her mind’s relentless night. The ground-shaking truth that Ramis still wished for her to one day carry the Veleda’s staff hovered somewhere beyond misery’s edge—what could that matter, now? Her family was to be torn apart like a loaf of bread at a feast. Marcus lay under fatal suspicion, and she, by her own hand, had destroyed herself.

  And Avenahar had leapt astride a dragon.

  RAMIS WALKED DOWN the central aisle of the Principia of Mogontiacum, the massive basilican-form structure that dominated the square of headquarters buildings within the Fortress. The mammoth stone hall served as court, place of assembly, and shrine for the legionary standards. Darkfall transformed its vaulted interior into a yawning cavern selectively illumined by small, regularly-spaced puddles of light cast by wall sconces. Ramis moved between a double row of monumental columns that were lost in darkness where they met the roof. Four maiden attendants walked before her, bearing pottery bowls of smoldering mullein. Soldiers of the Twenty-second Legion in parade dress were posted along the walls; coronas of firelight outlined their upright javelins.

  Many had heard tales of this greatest of northern sybils but few had looked upon her. Those assembled on benches below the tribunal strained to see as she approached amidst gusts of smoke, the music of the bronze implements that hung from her belt, the crisp tapping of her staff on stone. She presented a sight jarring to Roman eyes, with her bulky cloak and hairy calfskin boots, her adornments worn not to beautify but to confer authority: The heavy silver sickle-moon at her forehead flashed a quiet warning. An amulet of black leather strung from a thong seemed some dark leather heart at her throat. From her hide belt dangled pouches of herbs—potent poisons, they imagined, that would turn a man livid in less time than it took to haul water from a well.

  She gained the cross-hall of the nave and ascended the low platform that had been prepared for her. Few doubted, then, the charge that she had condemned a legionary soldier for looting treasure from one of her sacred lakes—this was the face of a woman who could pronounce a sentence of death. Her platform and chair had been set so that Ramis faced the Governor levelly—Ramis’s women had insisted on this during negotiations for this meeting. The maiden attendants took places flanking her. Unlike Ramis, who had made past journeys to this place, her women were bewildered by this hollow, man-made mountain, the wealth of gold on the legionaries’ helmets and breastplates, the bold geometry of the mosaic floor, and the whole of this vast, bustling city devoted to war that was the Fortress of Mogontiacum.

  Her three inquisitors were seated before her on cross-legged chairs atop a dais. In the center was the Governor, Maximus, whose normally sagging, affable features were hardened into a formal mask. At his left, one of the junior tribunes watched Ramis with bovine vacancy; he sat in for Camillus, who still lay between life and death after the goring dealt him by the aurochs. And to his right was Marcus Julianus, sitting poised and alert, if somewhat stiffly from the pain of his injuries; Julianus alone was not in military dress. Rising elegantly behind them was the sacellum, the marble shrine with peaked roof that housed the golden eagle standard of the Twenty-second Legion; a stone screen shielded it from view. Flanking the dais were rows of recorders skilled in short-hand writing. Ranked behind them was a detachment of the Governor’s Grooms, thirty stoutly-made men recruited from the provinces whose duties included requisitioning horses for the army, and making arrests.

  The symmetry of the scene of the tribunal was odd, to the women’s eyes—even the drape of the Governor’s heavy military cloak had not been left to chance; it fell too evenly from his shoulders, and was arranged with studied grace where it broke on contact with the floor. He sat as if a vise were clamped to his head as he gazed down an imaginary line bisecting the Principia.

  The audience was split into two parts, with the best benches given over to the staff of the legionary headquarters, Palace observers, and leading townsfolk from the native settlement that served the Fortress. On
more distant benches by the wall was the small party of Chattians with whom the Governor had been in parley throughout the day—rough-clad men with un-shorn beards, long hair, eyes intent as birds of prey, who looked uncultivated and wild in this polished hall, like some errant patch of bramble-ridden waste ground in the midst of a manicured garden. Chief over them was the rising young war-leader Sigibert, comely of aspect, with red-blond hair swept back from a commanding brow—that same Sigibert who was so desired by Elza as husband. For the delegation, it had been a day of onerous concessions: They’d been compelled to agree to leave five more miles of un-sown land between tribal lands and the frontier of the Empire, and to yield double last year’s number of young men to supply a new native auxiliary unit that was being formed. With Ramis’s arrival Sigibert felt like a soldier who sees the arrival of reinforcements at the end of a long day of bitter fighting.

  A herald sang out the names of the prophetess and the men on the tribunal, his voice fluid and muscular as the vaults and turns of an acrobat.

  “I greet you Ramis, prophetess of the Chattians, called the Veleda,” the Governor said without emotion.

  Ramis addressed each man in turn, ending with, “I greet you, Valerius Maximus, well esteemed among the lords of the known world.” Her bare stress on the word known seemed to shrink the Empire to the size of a barley field, while bringing unwelcome attention to the vastness of what lay beyond.

  Ramis watched the three men without expectation, and with infinite patience, her eyes still pools, active, awake, while she sat proud as a falcon. They saw a strange and elegant crone, her look lordly but quiet as she shed a tranquillity that was a rich balm on the air. The Governor began to believe this formidable woman would be content to meditate on his face for an hour, should he make no effort to speak. It was as if time, and the world, moved more slowly for her. He found her noble in a darkly foreign way, but felt no reverence. He held fast to attitudes instilled by a Greek education, certain she was no more than an inspired charlatan who played skillfully as a citharist on tribal superstitions.