Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  “I won’t be alone. I’ve already asked Hagbard to come as witness.”

  “You should wait a few years before you start feeding the ravens.”

  “The women of my family come into their fate young.”

  “Indeed . . . it gets younger with each generation! Doesn’t the test require three witnesses?”

  “If this goes as I’ve planned it, I’ll have everyone in the village as witnesses.” She hesitated, then went on, “I have to declare my intention to two more. Who else can I trust with this?”

  Ragnhild considered for a moment, then named two young members of the band who were loyal to her because she had recommended them to Witgern. Then she put down the cloak she was stitching.

  “If you really mean to do this thing, Avenahar, you must do it right. You’ll need the Wolf herbs. Can you listen well when I tell you how to take them? They are sacred, and dangerous. You must sing the right words over them. Men have died from not taking them as they were told.”

  “I’ll listen well,” Avenahar said softly. “Can I have the dun for two days, so I can catch up to my quarry?”

  “So I have to lose a horse to get one.”

  “I swear on Fria’s brightness I’ll fetch you a new beast without losing the old one.”

  After Ragnhild reluctantly agreed, she was silent so long, Avenahar thought the old woman would speak of the matter no more. Avenahar watched the sun climb higher, alternately struggling for peace and assailing herself for being harsh. She wondered how long she would need to endure this bitter misery knotted painfully in her chest. Flies began to buzz around the leavings from last night’s soup pot.

  When Ragnhild said finally, “I have a gift,” Avenahar was startled by her voice. Ragnhild began rooting about in her medicine bags, muttering steadily beneath her breath as she was nearly defeated by the disorderly profusion of chipped clay pots half-filled with greasy ointments, worn shoes, broken glass, and other oddments she’d collected for barter. “Ah!” she said at last, and offered to Avenahar something unidentifiable dangling from a leather thong. “Keep this on. Like this, let it fall near the heart. It’s a wolf’s paw. It was given me by my mother. She’ll think you’re one of us and she’ll protect you.”

  “But this is for a daughter. Your mother will know.”

  “I’ve lost both my daughters and I’m a barren field. If you won’t wear it, who will?”

  “I thank you, Ragnhild. I dedicate my victory to you.”

  “Never lose your dread of the powers.”

  Avenahar nodded, unable to speak.

  Ragnhild leaned forward and whispered right in Avenahar’s ear. “And tell Ermenhild where you want to be burned.”

  “Yes . . . of course,” Avenahar said as if she’d already thought of this—but Ragnhild saw the furtive start of terror in her eyes.

  “If you don’t plan for your pyre, you’re not showing respect for the Fates. Tell her, so she can tell the priestess. The Boar Village would be a good place, since your mother was born there.”

  “You are right,” Avenahar said, still battling against the horror of this, striving to think only of the better life to be won.

  Avenahar then sought out Ermenhild, who gave her a cattle horn and a skin of mead for mixing the battle draughts, and the pelt of a black wolf. Ermenhild also gave her food for the journey—several flat, brittle loaves baked of einkorn wheat, slightly burnt as always, and goat cheese wrapped in cloth.

  Later, when Ragnhild gave her the sacred herbs, Avenahar was surprised to discover that the celebrated “raven’s bread” used in so many Wolf rituals was a pretty, spotted mushroom. She had often seen clusters of them as bright, bloody sprinkles scattered through the autumn woods, never suspecting they were the secret thing that called up wolf storms within. When fresh picked, they had beautiful red caps with white warts; seeresses claimed they were colored so by the red-flecked foam of Wodan’s horse as the god’s eight-legged steed plunged through the night clouds in midwinter. Ragnhild carefully explained the power of each herb. More than once, Ragnhild cautioned Avenahar to take no more than the common dose for a child, as this was her first time.

  AVENAHAR AND HAGBARD set out separately for the Raven’s Nest, then met on the traders’ track, across the valley. Too many questions might be raised, were they seen journeying off together. Ragnhild let it be known that she’d dispatched Avenahar to the root cave. So she might better pass through the country in safety, Avenahar garbed herself in a village priestess’s gray hooded robe. She and Hagbard took turns riding Ragnhild’s stocky dun horse.

  They hadn’t travelled far when Avenahar saw the old she-wolf again, on an escarpment above. Avenahar marveled that the horse was not frightened, then realized the beast must have become somewhat accustomed to wolf scent, from often being made to carry the pelts on its back. The she-wolf, colored like stone and earth, moved low over the ground in her swinging trot. Then she halted and regarded them kindly with her keen, white-gold eyes, set at an angle that lent her a look of wise discernment. With her tufted cheeks, she resembled a whiskered man.

  Eyes of the moon. Eyes of her mother. Avenahar felt a new warmth, a fresh gush of certainty.

  “The wolf spirit knows we are here,” Hagbard said with more reverence than she’d ever heard from him. “This is good.”

  The she-wolf broke into a slinky gallop, a wolf-stream rippling, flowing over the broken ground, following them for a time for reasons of her own before vanishing back into her world.

  Chapter 22

  The horse’s jolting trot made Avenahar feel like dice shaken in a cup. By the time she and Hagbard reached the valley they sought, the shadows stretched long, and a chill moon five days off full watched them with a cold, neutral eye. The village called the Raven’s Nest lay in the gray-blue shade of a fold in a valley thick with tall pines. It was home to ten families; their longhouses were arranged like spokes in a wheel about an oasthouse for fermenting mead and a small wooden temple of Wodan. Dotted about the yard were several squat, lumpish dome-shaped clay ovens that glowed eerily but invitingly in the gathering dark; a village potter was still hard at work. Somewhere within, a babe howled. Suspended from a pole projecting above the settlement’s palisade was a horsehide, with the skull and flayed flesh from the legs still attached, a forlorn thing making a ragged outline against the sky. From the look of it, Avenahar judged, it was an old sacrifice; who could offer something so dear, today?

  Two torches by the settlement’s gate gusted tauntingly in an evening wind.

  Avenahar found a place in the forest where she was concealed by wild briar shrubs, but had a view of the village’s sagging wooden gate. She hid the robes in which she’d disguised herself, then drew the black wolf pelt about her shoulders and fastened it with a thorn.

  Hagbard pulled on a battered bronze bell that hung from the gate, and soon a man with a strong crop of gray hair and a hunter’s horn slung across his chest emerged from a longhouse and exchanged words with him. Hagbard, as they had planned, claimed to be a traveller seeking a night’s shelter. Among the northern tribes, to refuse a night’s hospitality was unthinkable—openhandedness to strangers was considered a sign of nobility, and it was unmannerly to closely question a traveller’s purpose. So Hagbard was taken into one of the longhouses and given a place round the fire, and their dun horse was given hay. The family offered him porridge and mead, then afterward he was given a comfortable bed of straw among the cattle and sheep stabled at the thatched dwelling’s east end. All through the eve Hagbard listened with close attention to the family’s talk, asking discreet questions about the Four. The cavalrymen had been put up more lavishly in the longhouse of the village’s brewer, across the walkway from his own lodging. Later, Hagbard managed a strategic trip to the cess trench just beyond the back gate, which took him past the enclosure where the Four’s horses were penned, and the shed where they kept their tack and armor.

  The night was clear and still, and Avenahar from her place beyond
the village’s surrounding hawthorn hedge could hear the sounds of loud, careless carousing, cries of despair over a dice game.

  Hagbard stole from his straw bed in the still-time before dawn. Avenahar followed his shadowed, spindle-legged form as he moved stealthily through the yard, tossed a scrap to a hound to keep it from barking, then shimmied beneath the gate, flexible as a sapling, careful not to sound the bell.

  “All four are here, in the brewer’s house,” Hagbard whispered, eyes shining with what he’d learned. His oddly gentle face, scant beard growth, and fumbling manner made him seem he would ever be a boy, but there was a firm determination beneath his acts. “They’re armed as regulars, not auxiliaries. They’re not wearing the solid cuirasses. They wear the metal-like-cloth, you know, that’s open at the sides, and it falls to here—”

  “Slitted mail armor,” Avenahar said, nodding encouragingly.

  “Yes, that’s it, and from what I saw of their scabbards, they’ve got the regular-issue, long cavalry swords. And such horses! You’ve got to see these strapping beasts. They make ours look like skinny ponies.”

  Avenahar nodded gratefully.

  “And they do leave today,” he continued, “sometime this coming morn.”

  “‘Sometime in the morn’ is near as you could get it?”

  “I could hardly ask them outright, could I? And I saw bulging leather sacks, that buckled on—full, no doubt, with what they’ve thieved from these people.”

  “Very good, that will slow them.” After putting several questions to him about the horses’ harness, she asked, “Did you see the maid they seized?”

  “No, I suppose they’re keeping her close and secure, in the house where they’re lodged.”

  “I thank you, Hagbard. You’ve helped me greatly. If I live through this I’ll praise you everywhere.”

  She cracked open the hard bread and divided the goat cheese, and they ate. Almost reverently, Hagbard brought forth a delicacy and offered it to her—a withered, yellow apple stuffed with honeyed nuts, which had been roasted in a clay oven. Another guest at last night’s meal, a traveller like himself, had passed a basket of them around. She found it sorely tempting, but knew he was unaccustomed to such treats, while she thought she’d probably had more than her share, in her life at Julianus’s villa. “You have it all, Hagbard. I can’t eat more.”

  Hagbard carefully returned the roast apple to his sack to save for later; neither knew how long they would need to wait. Then Avenahar clasped her hands tightly about his, and whispered, “Go in strength.” Hagbard then set out for an old beech tree he’d chosen earlier, and took a position on a comfortable lower branch that afforded him a broad view of the overland trackway and the valley.

  Avenahar began the ritual that would transform her into a wolf.

  In a soft voice that never rose above the soughing of the trees, she began singing the one simple wolf chant that she knew. The musical syllables invoked the living qualities of the wolf. Interspersed between the memorized verses, she reminded the Wolf-spirit who she was, of the deeds of her mother, of her grandfather Baldemar. Gradually the repetitive sound eased her gracefully into another world. It was a wordless place of smell and touch, of flight and flowing; it had no roads leading up to it, no roads leading away.

  Then she poured mead into the horn and added the contents of the first pouch, an herbal mix of which wild rosemary was the principal part. This was the drink called frenzy mead. Ragnhild had claimed it could turn a gentle farm wife into a grinning ogress, and warned that too much of it could bring on vicious cramps. Avenahar took one timid swallow.

  She poured more mead into the horn and broke in the smallest amount of the raven’s bread, which had the power to bring sharp, clear knowing, and the senses of a wolf. She raised the horn to the field of stars while singing the Wolf words Ragnhild taught her, and asked for the protection of Wodan, guardian god of Witgern’s band. Ragnhild had instructed her to take three swallows. Avenahar took two cautious ones, then poured out the rest in a circle about her, as she’d seen Ragnhild do once, to ward off hungry spirits that might come in the night.

  Last, she took from her leather sack a shining black berry Ragnhild called “wolf cherry.” She felt its dark strength as she held it in her palm. These were grown by the female battle spirits called the Choosers, who harvested the bravest dead from the battlefield. Wolf cherry was said to fill you with the mettle of a god. It was famous everywhere and had many names. Some called it “rage berry,” others, “eye of the wolf.” In the east, they called it Lady of the Forest. In the south, belladonna. A man might eat three or four before a raid. She ate one.

  She resumed the wolf chant, relishing the sounds of the odd, knotted words, which Ragnhild had told her were from a tongue passed down from the Time of Ice. Avenahar was skeptical of this, unsure how anyone could know such a thing, but she struggled to believe, lest the Wolf-spirit think her a profane, town-bred child. If her doubts offended the Wolf, it might refuse to come.

  No. Something was here.

  There was an attentive stillness all about, an intelligent quiet, as something tall as the pines examined her with keen, golden eyes. The very air pricked its ears and sniffed. She heard the soft snap of branches from the light, furtive pressure of invisible paws. The scent of damp fur was a night perfume, warming her, welcoming her.

  A hot wind rushed through her, fusing the wolf pelt to her back. She felt a great ghost not in human shape wrestling within her, as though struggling to fit itself into her body. A bolt of frightful strength rushed in, as if powers above the human were forced into her like air from a bellows. If she wanted, she could skim light and fast over rocky ground, paws scarcely touching the earth. She could leap a palisade. She was suffused with . . . not rage so much as a lust for furious movement, a driving need to leap on quarry, as if all life were contained there. Blood would taste like wine. A different pair of eyes were fixed over hers. Eyes made of moon matter.

  She knew why the Wolf Coats performed this ritual before a raid—this “rage” drove fear before it as the sun drives the night.

  She lived in a blaze of day. She wanted to snap her jaws. The pack was with her.

  Her mind stretched broad and far as the sky; she felt firmly anchored to the four horizons; it was impossible to fall or die.

  She was not one wolf, but many.

  Then quite suddenly, she saw the beauty: The hills about were garbed exquisitely; strings of jewels lay on the land’s cloaks of living russet and mystic green, their hues luminous, even in darkness. The land breathed; she breathed with it. Greenness washed over her—green had a taste. All slyly glowed with hidden gold. Was this the gold of Fria she’d heard tales of, that most could not see? The purslane carpeting the forest floor was colored gloriously as the plumage of the peacocks she’d seen in villa gardens. The forest gently rose and fell with rolling waves of multicolored life. The beauty was painful; warmth flooded to her face, and her eyes watered with grateful tears. She believed this beauty was there always, but that most human creatures, drawn up in ever-narrowing circles of life, simply stopped seeing it.

  Now the somber avenues between the trees were crowded with mischievous, softly glowing elfin beings. The seeresses spoke truly, Avenahar realized—the forest teemed with hidden life.

  Malign presences were there as well. A frigid wind blew through her. She sensed sour ghosts gliding up through fissures in the ground. She heard the voices of the Choosers, arguing about her. A reverberating shriek sounded in her mind, and she felt Hel shifting, moving, deep in the earth.

  To banish her terror Avenahar pressed her mother’s earth amulet to her heart and struggled to conjure Auriane before her. For a moment, she succeeded. But her mother’s hands disintegrated into a flax field rifled by wind, her eyes into cornflowers. The despairing thought came, She has abandoned me again, as she did when I was a babe. Avenahar knew this old emptiness as a chamber deep below her in the earth, from which other passages branched off, to ulti
mately lead her to this place—where she was a Wolf in the forest, hungrily watching a village gate.

  In Auriane’s place was a hooded, black-cloaked Ancestress. Avenahar did not want her there. There was a foulness about her, part scent, part feeling. Her presence was suffocating. Avenahar felt life choked off, mortifying like a dead limb. The hooded one identified herself as Avenahar’s great-grandmother Hertha, who’d immolated herself by walking into a burning hall. The spectre’s mind clamped over hers. Avenahar was flushed with panic, sensing she had pried open a gate she could not close. Is her ghost here truly? Or have I dosed myself with too much wolf medicine?

  Avenahar, the spectre’s voiceless words came to her. Your mother abandoned the work of winning vengeance. You will take it up again.

  The presence’s pull was darkly seductive, and Avenahar felt herself fearfully yielding, as someone half starved might be pulled toward a steaming soup, despite knowing it was seasoned with water hemlock.

  The spirits want me, Avenahar thought. I am greater than my mother. Where she failed I will be victorious. Vengeance closes all wounds.

  MORNING WAS CLOSE. The sky was not soft black anymore; it was a deep charcoal that lightened to scallop-pink along the eastern horizon.

  A brief, hard rain came, as if a stopcock in the sky were opened then shut again. It left Avenahar’s wolf skin damp and wet.

  But she scarcely minded, for now she belonged as the wild briars belonged. She was growing hairs. And dog teeth. Her hearing embraced every leaf crackle. Her sense of smell was mighty; fingers of smell-sense rivered far out into the wood, hesitating over the odor of red deer droppings, a female, just a short lope away, then streaking off farther to explore the carcass of a badger. Somewhere close, a vein of water moved through the earth. The dankness of a stream lay heavily over everything—how intrusive and potent was the smell of life-giving water! Laden on the wind was a confusion of aromas carried from afar, too complex for an inexperienced wolf to sort out—of a traveller edging along on muleback, of burning moss, of venison roasting. The air was so rich with scent-messages, it was savory as a stew.