The Eye of Night

by Pauline J. Alama

  Anlaf broke in, “Are we certain that these changes really do follow Hwyn?”

  “Nothing is certain,” Halred said, “but—”

  “Forgive me,” Hwyn cut in, “but—”

  “Hwyn,” Halred said in a tone of warning, “let me speak. As I was saying, we have no certain knowledge of what caused these wonders, or whether they will continue in the same manner. But it takes no extraordinary penetration to see Hwyn's movements at the heart of the pattern. The cows that give double milk and the hens that lay eggs in abundance are those she helped care for. As for the sheep and goats, all those that were driven together to the common pasture where Hwyn spent two nights showed signs of increase. The lake has thrived since she swam in it. If it were only the sheep and goats, I would say their part in the ritual gained them this favor. If it were just the cows and hens, I would say the Red Oak Clan had been peculiarly blessed. But Hwyn links all these things—and more: the wild herbs she gathered with me have grown back overnight.”

  There was a murmur in the crowd, and at this interruption, Hwyn tried again to speak, and Halred again signaled her to be silent. “Hwyn, I know it troubles you to be singled out so. I am not saying you caused all these wonders; the hands of the Bright and Hidden Goddesses are behind them. I know you did not expect this blessing, do not control it, and cannot promise it will last. But whatever the reason the goddesses have chosen to work through you, it little matters. What does matter is that the Folc must not quarrel over you or put more demands on you than it is fair to ask of a guest.”

  Hwyn said nothing, but bit her lip.

  Halred continued: “Let me propose a solution, and then all of you can say whether it seems fair to you. While these wonders continue, let the ritual nights among the flocks continue too. Let all clans bring their flocks to a common paddock by night for the blessing.

  “Let us hold the grainfields in common, and let Hwyn work in the fields by morning. And if the blessing she carries is needed on any other thing, let the holder of it agree that whatever is blessed shall be held in common.

  “But let her be given time as well to study and pray with me and my acolytes, to better understand the gift that has been entrusted to her.

  “My neighbors and cousins, does this seem fair to you? What say you?” Halred called.

  Paddon stood to respond. “Does Hwyn agree to all that she's asked to do? We should not portion her out like a quartered loaf, without her consent.”

  Hwyn smiled. “Thank you, Paddon. I am well willing to do what has been asked of me while I remain here, in gratitude for the welcome of the Folc. But I ask you all to remember that I was on a journey when I came here, and in time I must go.”

  “We remember,” said Anlaf. “I would add, too, that anything we Folc agree to now should not be taken as standing for all time; we do not know what may come to light about these marvels we have seen. But for the time being, Halred,” he said, “whatever our reputation for quarreling, I can see no reason to oppose your plan.”

  And so it was accepted; all that remained was the ritual agreement of the Voices of the Folc, and the chants of thanksgiving that had been prepared for the Assembly. Hwyn sang her part with the priestess and her acolytes, in counterpart to Anlaf and his acolyte, a young man called Tarvas whose rich baritone voice I recognized from the singing at the feast.

  When the chants were done and Halred settled down to guard the embers of the fire, Hwyn whispered to me, “Don't go. I need to speak to Halred apart from the Folc, and I'd like you to be with me.”

  Unsurprised, I pressed her hand in answer, and waited with Trenara a little distance from those who kept vigil by the fire. Halred's eyes were alight with triumph; Day and Night, on either side of her, watched the embers solemnly, lips moving in prayer. When the red glow died and a crescent moon shed the only light, Halred at last looked up at me. “Jereth, are you going to join us with the flocks?”

  I shook my head. “I will need to be at the Red Oak house for the early milking; I can only linger a little while with Hwyn—fit-ting as it would seem to re-create the eve of the rite. But before I was one of the Red Oak Clan, I was Hwyn's follower on a great journey. And we need to speak to you on matters of that journey.”

  Halred nodded as if she had been expecting this. Turning to Day and Night, she said, “Go on ahead. I will follow you soon.” With many glances back, they went.

  “Mother Halred, I see you have kept my secrets well,” Hwyn began. “You haven't told even them, have you?” She gestured with her head at the retreating forms of Day and Night. “But why did you silence me in the Assembly? I was ready to speak openly.”

  “I knew you were about to speak of the Eye of Night,” said Halred. “When you first came here, you told me you had strong reasons to keep it secret. I have come to believe you were right. Why have you now changed your mind?”

  “When I came here, I did not know whether we would be welcomed, or left to starve, or stoned to death as bringers of bad fortune,” Hwyn said. “All that has changed. They call us neighbor, cousin, sister, brother. They are beginning to call us bringers of good luck; at this rate, it will be saint or hero before long. Don't they have the right to know what I am and what I bring among them? What right have I to distrust the Folc now?”

  “If you have no right to distrust them, I do. I know them better,” said Halred. “Anlaf and Tarvas are not to be underestimated. If they believe the more ominous prophecies about the Raven's Egg, they might take it to destroy it.”

  “It is not so easily destroyed as all that,” said Hwyn.

  “Nonetheless,” said Halred, “they might throw it in the lake or drop it in a crevice in the mountains, where you could not get it. And if the elders knew this luck you carry is a physical talisman, they might steal it to wield for themselves rather than leave it for the good of all. You have already seen the envy and rivalry among them.”

  Hwyn weighed these words carefully before she answered. “True enough. And there would be a terrible price on any who tried to wield it thus—not at once, but in the long run, when it was too late for warnings. I suppose you are right. Still, it troubles me to have the Folc hold me in awe, as if I were working these wonders of myself.”

  “Remember this, and you will not become too proud,” Halred said. “I can keep your secret because I trust you to remember where this power comes from, even if no one else does.”

  In the days that followed, I saw little of Hwyn. She no longer came to the Red Oak Clan's cow-byre for milking, but busied herself in the common fields and in study, while I became immersed in the herding life, chasing stray sheep up and down the high pastures of Summerbride, venturing out farther every day as the summer progressed. Sometimes I would linger at the common paddock at day's end to speak to Hwyn as she came to bed down among the beasts; at other times, Guthlac would send me for a day's labor in the fields by Hwyn's side.

  As the oats had grown unnaturally, so had the weeds; though women did most of the Folc's farming, I was not the only man helping out with the harrowing in this season of increase. It was back-breaking labor under a high sun, but no amount of toil could dim Hwyn's glow as she spoke of the things she was learning from Halred, the powers of herbs, the long festival chants, the lore of saints.

  How things had changed for her! Everyone was glad to see her; she was greeted, courted constantly. Even her meals had to be portioned among the four clans' halls to prevent envy, or eaten in Halred's round hut as the priestess and her acolytes debated questions of theology. As a one-time priest of the Tarvon Order, I might have tried to insinuate myself into these discussions, but that part of my life was past, and I had not left one Order to find another.

  One evening as I sat in the Red Oak Hall, disconsolately eating without Hwyn or Trenara, Ethwin came by. Invited in hastily by Guthlac, he sat gloomily near me and picked at a bowl of fresh curds. When the others about us were engaged in a tale from Paddon's outlaw days, Ethwin said to me quietly, “I thought your friends w
ould be here.”

  “They're with the priestess,” I said. “I see so little of them since the wonders began.”

  “At least you will be with them when you go,” he said. “As for me, they'll leave me behind without a thought, on to foreign places, wonderful places. I was born here and I've never been farther than a day's hunt away from here and I'll probably die without going any farther.”

  “I don't at all know that the places we're going will be wonderful. We may find ourselves in quite terrible places,” I said, though I realized as soon as the words were out of my mouth that they would only make our travels more intriguing to him.

  “You are going, though? There's no chance you'll stay here?” he asked forlornly.

  I shrugged. “I don't know. They seem so content here, as if this were the place they'd been meant all along to find,” I said, voicing aloud for the first time what had been troubling me. “Sometimes I wonder whether we will leave at all.”

  “That displeases you,” the boy said. “Have we been such poor company?”

  “Not at all,” I said, “but I'm so unneeded here. It's hard not to be needed.”

  “It's hard to be needed, sometimes,” he replied, and I agreed with him, thinking of Hwyn, before it dawned on me that he might mean himself. “I'd best go,” he added, “or they'll be looking for me at home.”

  “You know where you can always find them, don't you,” I said.

  “The common paddock at night, of course,” he said.

  “I'll be there too,” I said.

  But the evening was like to turn me into a liar. As darkness gathered in the sapphire sky, Hwyn interrupted me along the winding path, Trenara trailing after her. “Will you come with me to the cave beyond the Assembly Stone?” she said. “I know it seems foolhardy to go into a grave at night, but with your Gift of Naming, I'll have less fear of the ghosts.”

  “I'll go with you,” I said. “But why this hurry and secrecy? Don't you want to bring the priestess?”

  “No,” said Hwyn. “I have learned wonderful things from her, and yet I need to remember how to hear for myself. That voice that spoke to me in the darkness dwells there. Tonight there is no rite to prompt its speech, yet in a sense I have been living in the Rite of Increase ever since I first heard it, sleeping among the beasts, working the earth, studying the wild herbs of the mountain. Perhaps it is still waiting to speak to me again.” She sighed. “And besides, that cave is the only private place in the valley.”

  “I'll come,” I said. “But could we not leave Trenara in a safer place?”

  “Where?” Hwyn said.

  “With Ethwin,” I said. “He is coming to the paddock in the hope of meeting her, and I think if we can slip away while they're together, he at least will ask no questions.”

  As luck would have it, Ethwin chose that moment to come bounding up the mountain path with Seeker at his side. When Trenara was sufficiently distracted—less by poor Ethwin than by the dog—we slipped away to the cave together.

  Hwyn took my hand at the threshold of the cave and went in first, pulling me after. I skinned an elbow on the rough cool stone of the passageway, following her to a more open space. I smelled moisture, a buried stream somewhere deep in the mountain, but I saw nothing, the stubborn grip of Hwyn's four-fingered hand becoming all I perceived of the world.

  Though I saw nothing, I knew plainly where the dead were: their ashes lay ahead of us in great clay urns, and their spirits hovered all around us, not all of them at peace. Nonetheless, I felt strangely in my element, holding Hwyn's hand in the dark, the turbulent spirits around us like the sea through which our boat was bound. “Peace to all here,” I said softly, “and may the Hidden Goddess be gentle to all the dead of the Folc. But forgive me if I speak to one of the living in this holy place. Hwyn, has something happened to drive you to seek a sign?”

  “No sudden calamity,” she said, “and yet I am troubled. The grain and the flocks are not all that has increased. The Eye of Night has grown.” She drew it out of its hiding place, and its light went out across the dim underground chamber.

  I gasped and for some moments was distracted by my first sight of the chamber. Intricate carvings covered almost all the walls: a tall, graceful tree with the moon in its branches, which snaked and spiraled everywhere like reaching fingers. Its roots too became a fantastic tangle of branching paths over the whole lower half of the chamber. Only a row of fine clay urns broke the endless spirals of root and branch, and these too were painted with the Tree of the Moon. “Hidden Goddess!”

  “May she be gentle with us,” Hwyn completed the ritual invocation. “But yes: what splendor!” She touched the wall, her thin fingers following the carvings. “And how much I see of it! I swear I see better by the light of this stone than by daylight.”

  “That's not unlikely,” I said. “It has a voice for you: why not a light as well?”

  “Yes, its voice is much with me now,” she said, “and I have come to love it, like a creature I have fed from my hand. I could not let it come to harm. I have come to love the Folc as well, but the time may be coming when I must choose between them and the Eye of Night.”

  “It's hatching?” I asked.

  “Not yet. But it has swelled with life, and I think we have far to go to reach its proper place. The time will not be long, the voice said. We must not delay much longer. Or so I think; Halred has her own interpretation. I thought if I returned here, I might hear some clearer message. I could not come with Halred: she wants too badly for all signs to tell me to stay.”

  “But I, too, have wants,” I said gently.

  “I know, Jereth. But you call your wants your wants, not the will of the gods or the good of the Folc. You can help me do the same.” She held the Eye of Night higher and called out, “Spirit that spoke to me in this place, whether you be ghost or god, we beg your friendship. If you have any more to say to me, I will listen.”

  We waited long in silence. All around me I seemed to feel the ghosts, too, awaiting an answer. But at length Hwyn shook her head. “It's no use. The moment of revelation is past: all that remains is the everyday confusion of thought and will and hope.”

  “Should we leave the cave, then?” I said.

  “I'm afraid so,” said Hwyn. “But thank you for coming with me.”

  As we emerged from the cave into the light of the waxing moon, I said, “What will we do now?”

  “I don't know,” Hwyn said. “I must wrestle with this.”

  “You don't want to leave, do you?”

  “In the end, I don't think what I want is the question.”

  “Does it always have to be that way?”

  She shrugged and said nothing.

  “Hwyn!” Trenara rushed to embrace her. Following her path backward with my eye, I saw Ethwin coming out of a thicket. “Where were you?” he said. “Trenara was frightened without Hwyn.”

  Again I found myself looking to Hwyn for permission to reveal our secrets, but she was swallowed up in Trenara's long arms. I shrugged; we had trusted Ethwin with every secret so far, and never been betrayed. “We went to the cave—the Hall of the Dead.”

  He smirked, and my puzzlement must have shown on my face, because he said, “Don't you know how we use that cave?”

  “For burials and rituals, I thought,” I said.

  “And for wedding nights, friend.” He grinned.

  I felt the blood rush to my face, but that would not be seen by moonlight. At any rate, we were coming to the paddock, where Halred stood waiting for us, Day and Night somewhere beyond her among the flocks. “There you are,” Halred said. “I was afraid you would not come, Hwyn. Are we taxing you too hard, between work and study and nights with the flocks?”

  “All the Folc work hard,” Hwyn said. “That is nothing. And to study is a great gift, not a burden. Ye t I need time to speak with Jereth about the journey we have postponed. And I think the journey must not be postponed much longer.”

  “Surely you will not l
eave now, when you have barely begun the good you could do in this land,” Halred said.

  “Not today or tomorrow,” Hwyn said, “but soon. The oats and barley have grown apace, the sheep have grown—and the Eye of Night has grown. If I do not leave soon, I will not reach the North before it hatches. As the voice in the cave told me, ‘The time will not be long.’ I now see the warning in those words.”

  “But you also heard, ‘I am nearer than you think,’ ” said Halred. “I have thought much of your prophecy, and I believe this valley is the goal of your journey, not some far-off land to the north. What you seek is nearer than you think. Surely the hand of one of the Four Great Ones steered you to the Hills of Penmorrin, and urged Ethwin to hunt on the mountain where he met you. What else could have brought you to this remote place where you had no thought to go? Why else would the thing you carry join so powerfully with our rites, rites you did not know, to heal our land? How else can you explain all that has happened?”

  “I don't know,” Hwyn said. “But I do hear the living creature inside the Eye of Night crying, urging me northward. I am nearer than you think, it says: nearer in time, I now believe. It says, I am nearer completion than you think: be ready for me. The time will not be long.”

  “That seems a finely cut quibble on near.” Halred frowned.

  Hwyn sighed. “I don't know. You may be right. I will ponder it and pray over it. I went just now to the Hall of the Dead to listen for any further message, but none came.”

  “If the gods meant you to leave, would not the voice have spoken again?” Halred said.

  “I don't know,” Hwyn said. “I don't know. It's not that I want to leave, you understand.” She sighed again. “Well, it will not be the decision of one night. I may as well sleep now. Perhaps there will be dreams.”

  The next morning, Halred surprised me on my way out of the cow-byre. “I need to speak to you, Jereth,” she said. “Where are you bound this morning?”

  “To the fields, for the harrowing,” I said.