Lady of the Light

by Donna Gillespie

  There was no joy in their return for Hagbard, however. When Ragnhild saw his condition, she sent a runner to fetch a seeress from Ramis’s Summer Sanctuary. Avenahar was alarmed to learn that Ragnhild thought Hagbard’s affliction so beyond her own powers.

  “I’ve no strength to tell it again, let me pass,” Avenahar protested as she finally escaped the band’s aggressive adoration. As she fought her way to Ragnhild’s shelter, others began to tell the tale for her, and she heard small blurrings of the truth. She supposed that within a year she wouldn’t recognize the story as her own.

  “The roan . . . you don’t like him?” Avenahar asked Ragnhild.

  Ragnhild just stared into her fire, in a way that saddened Avenahar. “He’s fine enough,” she responded finally, her features seeming to sag more than usual. Avenahar realized then that Ragnhild had prayed she would fail—but somehow still return alive and well.

  “How is Hagbard?” Avenahar asked, frowning. “Has he improved at all?”

  “He worsens. It is a mystery. He’s got the best of care on its way now, the very best. The Holy Nine are staying at the Summer Sanctuary.”

  “Why now, almost in winter? Would one of them actually come here?”

  “There’s to be a convening, you know, because Ramis was taken from us. And no, they wouldn’t, not just for poor Hagbard—they’ll send an apprentice.”

  “Why are you so certain you can’t help him?”

  “I suspect a potent poison. The Nine are more learned in these arts than anyone in the land.”

  Avenahar nodded slowly, absorbing these words, then crawled dispiritedly to the back of the hut where Ragnhild kept a small food store.

  “Avenahar, what is wrong?”

  “The whole of the world,” Avenahar muttered as she pawed through Ragnhild’s food baskets, “and every stupid blade of grass, every cursed rock and tree in this beastly world. I’ve been to a place so vile I want to bury the memory under a mountain. But I can’t.”

  “What’s this jabber? Why are you taking my food? Avenahar, look at me. You are blessed, many times over. You have the fate you wished for. Now they’ll initiate you as a Wolf. What sort of fool cries and complains after something so glorious?”

  “It’s glorious as mud. I’ve proved myself the world’s best horse thief, maybe.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you are your mother’s daughter.”

  “I won’t be a Wolf.”

  “Have you lost all sense?” Ragnhild wedged herself between Avenahar and the stores. “What is wrong with you?”

  “Ragnhild, please! I need to go off for a time, and I need a bit of food.”

  “Running away—again? Always running away.”

  Avenahar glared at her.

  Ragnhild laughed, unimpressed. “If you sat in one place long enough, maybe things would sort themselves out.”

  Fast as a fox, Avenahar snatched a loaf of hard bread, then nimbly scuttled backward, out of the shelter.

  “Avenahar!”

  But Avenahar was already making light, quick progress down the trail.

  THE ENCAMPMENT DROPPED into quiet when word was given out that Witgern would address his Wolves.

  After a leisurely paean to Avenahar’s victory, Witgern concluded by saying, “Friends. The spirits are signing that they will open a way for us. The Fates mean to give us victories now. As a lone Wolf scattered and destroyed the Four, so we, though weakened and small, are now strong enough to take back our land from the Cheruscans. Now we can unite our warring chiefs. Next year’s raiding season—we go out, full and strong, against Chariomer!”

  “The mountain cat slays the hart!” came a stray shout.

  “Then finally, Rome.” Witgern’s mild voice floated out serenely. “Once Chariomer’s driven off, we’ll reclaim every scrap of land stolen from us by the Scourge of the South.”

  The clatter of spears struck against shields sent a cloud of starlings gusting from the boughs above, thick as dust shaken from a blanket. When all had quietened somewhat, Witgern signaled to Ragnhild. “Bring Avenahar to us.”

  Ragnhild glowered at him. “That would be a fine trick. She’s run away.”

  THE APPRENTICE SENT by the Holy Nine sat in silence astride her small ghost-pale horse. The beast’s bridle shivered with amulets of silver. Ragnhild found herself puzzled by the woman’s garb; Ramis’s followers spurned wealth, and this apprentice was attired as a chieftain’s daughter. A cloak of reed-dyed green that draped to the pony’s knees was fastened with a falcon’s-head brooch inset with gemstones worth more than Ragnhild’s new horse.

  The apprentice’s maiden attendants spoke her needs; Ragnhild never even learned the woman’s name. Within the shadowed recesses of the lambskin hood of her cloak, Ragnhild discerned the smooth, bold features of a woman of perhaps twenty, with a narrow, handsome face, waxen skin, great, exploring eyes. Those eyes pulled all into them and held them there, like stilled whirlpools. Something about her put Ragnhild in mind of a thing both deftly curved and sharp, like the silver-mounted horn at her belt.

  The maiden attendants drove the well-wishers from Hagbard’s shelter, and even commanded Ragnhild to go, claiming the spell their silent mistress needed to perform for Hagbard required her to be alone with him.

  The apprentice dismounted and entered Hagbard’s shelter, while her attendants stood guard, allowing no one to stray too close. She examined Hagbard with a sharp, professional gaze, turning his damp body once, noting the lividity of his skin, his lusterless eyes, then prying open his mouth and studying the color of his tongue. Finally, she nodded, satisfied, as if all were as she expected, then she seated herself beside him, watching him with detachment.

  Hagbard had lost the ability to speak. He stared at her, eyes silently begging help.

  Alarm began to show in his face as he realized she meant to do nothing.

  “Hagbard,” she said finally, her voice clear, bored. “Did you, perchance, out there in the wood with Avenahar, eat an apple?”

  Slowly, he nodded, his beseeching eyes beginning to fog with fright.

  “Your tongue burns? You’ve voided all you’ve eaten?”

  He mewled in assent, then moaned something that matched the intonation of, Help me.

  “Ah, there’s nothing to be done. There’s enough akony root in you to fell three men, really—I’m surprised you’re still living. I am Elza, daughter of Chariomer, apprentice to Sawitha. When I make my kill potions, they kill.”

  He emitted a higher-pitched moan of protest.

  “It wasn’t for you; it was meant for Avenahar.”

  Hagbard struggled to sit up, his eyes sparking like a fire sputtering a final time before it surrenders to darkness.

  She pushed him firmly back onto the straw bed.

  “You two scamps forgot to consider that some among Ermenhild’s sisters answer to me. I’m sorry about your death, Hagbard, but you’re of little matter; you were but a fallen log in Sawitha’s path. You’re dying in the place of one whose fate is, evidently, much stronger than yours.”

  His moan said, more with the eyes than the voice, Why?

  She leaned closer, smoothing back his wet hair with a gesture Hagbard found repellent, void as it was of affection. “To show the people that Auriane’s line has no power and no luck. Only Sawitha is blessed enough to put her hand upon Ramis’s staff.” She shook her head, and smiled. “It was your misfortune to have had anything to do with Auriane’s wretched spawn. Sawitha warned Witgern not to give that brat meat and mead. He disobeyed. Sawitha gives measure for measure.”

  Still Elza tarried, puzzled by how tenaciously Hagbard clung to life. The Raven’s Nest villager who’d also partaken of her poison fruit had died more quickly. She inspected the amulets he wore, wondering if he were under the protection of some spirit unknown to her, but found nothing unusual. Then his breaths quickened, in the way that signified dying. “Have a good journey, Hagbard,” came her sibilant whisper. “Tell Hel you know me, and she’ll treat yo
u well.”

  Elza then rose and lifted her hands above him in blessing. She was unconcerned by the fact that her intended victim still lived; alone among the women of Ramis’s sanctuary, Elza had no fear of Sawitha. Her voice tolled out strongly—“Hagbard, I commend you to the immortal Fates, older than all the gods. Hagbard, lie in Fria’s fields. All glory to Sun and Moon.”

  “AVENAHAR. I WANT to hear the tale from your own mouth,” Witgern said. Avenahar had wandered back into camp after two days of sitting out in the forest. She stood in Witgern’s tent, gaze fastened firmly to the ground.

  Witgern found her altered in some small but significant way, and wondered if his knowledge of her confounding battle-feat was acting as a sorcerer’s glass that warps and enlarges what the eyes see. She was young enough to be growing still, and he would have laid down coin that she’d grown taller in the last two months. Her dark, shining hair was smoothed sleekly back and captured into a short braid—it was finally long enough—and this somehow lent her a calm, self-possessed look; he doubted she was aware of it. She was a nimble young version of her mother, a supple she-wolf, proud and gentle, glossy black fur shining under the sun. It is odd, he thought, to see, all at once, how a maid will look in full womanhood.

  “I don’t want to tell it any more,” she said, meeting his gaze. “And I won’t be a Wolf.”

  “Now that you’ve turned my mind, yours turns the other way! You’ve been given powerful signs, strong as the shining sun. You cannot spurn them.”

  “What really happened to poor Hagbard?”

  “The seeress said he drank water poisoned by elves.”

  “I drank the same water he did. It makes no sense. He was cursed because my deed was cursed. I shall wither next.”

  “Nonsense. Yours, Avenahar, was the most glorious battle-test any among us has carried out in the seven years since I gathered this band together. And the seizure of these swords . . .” He looked at the three cavalry swords, their long, thin blades blankly reflecting light from the opening of the tent. “These are things of great power, because of the way you won them. We have a weapon direct from their hands, which we can turn against them. You’ve given us a measure of hope. Where do you see evil in this?”

  “They murdered one of the cavalrymen,” she whispered, looking away. “The villagers. They savaged him while he lay wounded on the road. He gestured to me for help.”

  “But Avenahar—”

  “I know. I despise them, too. I think I hate them more than anyone does . . . but when this man lay defenseless at my feet, begging for help, somehow he became something else . . . I don’t know why that made it different, but it did. And I cannot pluck the picture from my eyes.”

  “This part was not unknown to me. The villagers sought vengeance, Avenahar. And they carried it out under the sun. Vengeance isn’t murder.”

  “What, then, of the rightful shame all should feel at striking one who has fallen? It is like feasting on the dead.”

  “Life with your mother has confused you. In ancient days, when enemies were honorable . . . those were less confusing times. Living apart from our people has taught you different notions of where clan lines are drawn.”

  “Witgern, when it was over, I saw . . . an evil Ancestress. She was somehow captive, and I set her free.”

  “Avenahar, the raven’s bread can trick you into seeing what’s not there, if it’s your first time. Battle is what you saw. When songmakers sing of battle, they show us a . . . a serene and noble skeleton, washed clean of blood, empty of cries. You saw it as it is, and many say this is somewhat like a first sip of a poisonous draught. You sip a little more, the body strengthens itself—and it sickens you less. Sip still more—and you kill like a wolf.”

  Avenahar said nothing, emptied of every desire except to go home.

  “Trust my will, Avenahar. Begin your initiation into the band.”

  Witgern took her hand in a strong grip. “Do you know the ways of wolves, Avenahar? I watch them. Like men in a war band, they have different tasks. One is the boldest of the pack, and leaps first on the prey. Another stands guard. One, always a she-wolf, decides where the den will be. One clearly commands, with pricked ears and raised tail. And one lays strategy.

  “You will be such a one that lays strategy. When you are fully grown, and steadier, and have performed all the tests, I will take you in as one of my inner council.”

  At this, Avenahar felt such a bolt of joy—and was so genuinely amazed—that the memory of the horror grew softer and dimmer. She felt she fluttered in confusion between two worlds.

  “Witgern. Before, you said to me, ‘You are not your mother.’ Do you now . . . think you were wrong?”

  “Your nature’s a puzzle. I see you still think that to be unlike her is to be somehow less! Whatever you are, the Fates are making you a place. And they so clearly have given you the powers of the Wolf.”

  “I don’t know,” she said uneasily.

  “Well, there’s no hurry.” He smiled, and let her hand go. “What is that?” Witgern pointed to the dully-gleaming serpent brooch securing her short cloak.

  She covered Decius’s fibula with her hand. “A thing of magic,” she said. “It just appeared in my sack. Ragnhild says it was put there by the moss folk. I know it gave me protection yesterday.”

  “Ah. Good.” He smiled, satisfied. “Be ready in the morn. Tomorrow, we go on a short journey together. Bring your battle prizes with you.”

  WITGERN HALTED BEFORE a low hill covered with goosegrass, an uninteresting nob in the earth Avenahar never would have noticed, had she been a traveller passing by. He lit a mullein stem dipped in resin, pulled aside some thistles, and motioned for her to follow. Crouching, they made their way through a passage not unlike the vestibule of a Roman house, for soon it opened out into a spacious chamber.

  The earthen floor was covered over with straw, back as far as the torchlight penetrated darkness, and she was uncertain what Witgern meant to show her. She started to step farther inside. Witgern roughly caught her shoulder and pulled her back.

  “Do not step there.”

  He dropped to one knee and lifted a bit of straw. Avenahar dropped down beside him.

  In a vast pit dug into the earth was a treasure-hoard of swords, laid out neatly by the hundreds. Most were the gem-studded and unique products of tribal forges, but there, too, were short swords of the Roman army. The torchlight infused the iron blades with cold life; it seemed many stern, watchful serpent eyes peered out at them. So alive. Here, dark power thickly swarmed, stored in earth as a steel seed that would sprout and break the earth one day like an oak—an oak of iron. Words of Ramis’s wended their way into Avenahar’s mind: Iron and sorrow . . . they came into the world together. Did Ramis mean there was once a race of men who didn’t know war? That did not seem possible. Or was vengeance the “sorrow” she spoke of? Because there was no end to it?

  “It is a marvel,” she whispered.

  “Here are more swords than we have ever possessed,” Witgern said. “The Roman patrols pass this way every day and they do not know. These are waiting for the day, coming soon, when we will take back our land from the Cheruscan carrion. This is what your mother has done for us.”

  “These are the swords she—?” A nurturant warmth underlaid with biting sorrow overtook Avenahar. Her mother had, to the end of her days, dared what others would not, and Auriane seemed, just then, not a woman but a force, noble and flowing, some wind-horse of gods or pivot of hopes, her lifetime of deeds an endless song artfully sung—and when she was snuffed out, all she truly was would be unknown except to a pitiful few.

  “Yes,” Witgern continued. “She gave us this, and now, it seems, must give her life. This is why I will not hear people revile her.”

  Iron’s “sorrow” is my mother, Avenahar thought then, who again and again gave up her own hopes of peace to give shelter to those she loves.

  Avenahar’s tears burnt a course down her face, hot as Greek fire. My r
unning off was a monstrous cruelty. How could I have struck her such a blow?

  The amulet of earth Auriane had given her—Ramis’s amulet—seemed, then, to quicken at her breast; she caught it up in her hand. And in that moment, though the mechanism of the means remained veiled, Avenahar forgave her mother for Decius.

  But not herself. His poison blood was still in her, blighting her hopes.

  Witgern took the heavy cavalry swords she had brought and deposited them in the shallow pit. “The power in your deed flows into us all. You add your strength to ours. Come with me, I’ll show you something greater still.”

  He guided her to a natural ledge at one side of the chamber, where some prize wrapped in a length of wool had been set aside. Witgern unwound it just far enough to show her the gem-studded hilt of a sword.

  “Do you know this sword, Avenahar? You should. It holds the ghost of your line. It is your own grandfather’s—the sword of Baldemar.”

  “How in the name of the gods—?”

  “That fort we took last spring—Baldemar’s sword was being kept there as a war trophy. This is why I still live on—I, an old man blind in one eye, who should be ending his days huddled comfortably before a hearthfire. This is why I am a Wolf. To heal us all by putting this sword back into the hands of our living shield—”

  “My mother,” she whispered.

  “—who, one last time, must lead us out.”

  Fool with an impossible wish, came a harsh thought that Avenahar forced back before it was fully formed.

  “Of course it cannot be, now,” he said as if in response to her thought. “Only the moon could make it so. Yet, it waits here for her.”

  If I don’t strive to live out her fate, I’m abandoning her . . . and all she did with her devotion. It might be as if she were not born.