Ravens of Avalon: Avalon

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Boudica knew the speaker must be Lhiannon, but she sounded . . .

  strange.

  “Come!”

  Shivering, Boudica let her cloak fall. Stones cut her knees and the

  pointed needles of the yew scored her back as she crawled through

  the gap. She crouched lower to avoid being flayed.

  The sun was still hidden behind the hill, but as she emerged, she

  found that she could see. The hedge extended on either side to join

  the orchard hill. The sacred spring flowed from somewhere above them,

  trickling down to fill a wide pool, edged and lined with stone dyed

  rusty red by the iron in the water.

  On the other side stood the cloaked figure that she knew—she

  hoped—must be Lhiannon. She wondered what this rite was like when it

  was done by a full complement of priestesses, and could not decide

  whether to feel disappointed or glad that she would receive this initiation

  only from Lhiannon, who was the one she most trusted of them all.

  “You have come into the temple of the Great Goddess, who though

  she wears many shapes is formless and nameless though she is called by

  many names. She is Maiden, forever untouched and pure. She is Mother,

  the Source of All. She is the Lady of Wisdom that endures beyond the

  grave. And She answers to all the names She is given in all the tribes of

  humankind. The Goddess is in all women and all women are faces of the

  Goddess. All that She is, you shall be. Creating and destroying, She births

  all transformations. Are you willing to accept Her in every guise?”

  Boudica cleared her throat. “I am . . .”

  “Behold the Cauldron of the Mighty Ones.” The priestess gestured

  toward the pool. “Whosoever enters it unworthy shall die; the dead that

  are put into it shall live. Will you dare the Mystery?”

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  The sky was brighter now. Boudica wondered if the faintly gleam-

  ing water it showed her was as cold as it looked, but her voice was steady

  as she answered. “I will . . .”

  “Then descend into the pool.”

  At the first step, the water’s icy touch shocked through her. She

  shook with the effort it took not to leap out screaming. But though

  Helve might scorn her abilities, Boudica had mastered some of the Druid

  disciplines. She took a deep breath, seeking the fire within. She could

  feel it beneath her breastbone, pulsing like a tiny sun. With another

  breath she willed it outward into each limb.

  She stepped downward without hesitation, skin tingling as the ice

  without met the fire within, and looking up saw another fi gure de-

  scending the steps on the other side, its movements mirroring her own.

  It was Lhiannon, she told herself, but against the glowing sky she saw

  only a silhouette. In the posture she recognized something of Mearan,

  in the grace, her own mother, and the turn of the head was one she had

  seen in herself when she bent over a refl ecting pool.

  Ripples broke their images into myriad reflections as they sank

  breast- high into the water. Red and fair, leanly muscled and slender,

  they moved toward one another through the pool.

  “By water that is the Lady’s blood may you be cleansed,” whispered

  that Other who both was and was not Lhiannon. “From this womb may

  you be reborn . . .” Their breasts brushed as Lhiannon moved closer,

  then she set her hands on Boudica’s shoulders and pressed her down.

  As the water closed over her, the wounds where the hedge had

  scratched Boudica’s back stung fi ercely, then began to tingle with a sen-

  sation that spread across her entire body, as if she were indeed being

  created anew. She could feel the hands of all those who had been initated

  in this pool blessing her. The pulse of blood in her ears was like the

  beating of mighty wings; she bathed in light and did not know whether

  it came from without or within.

  “Beloved daughter . . .” from the depths of her awareness came a

  voice. At first she thought it was the Morrigan’s, but this was far

  greater—it resonated in her bones. “In blood and in spirit you are My own

  true child. I give you to the world, and the world to you. Whatever may befall I

  shall never be far from you, if only you will look within. Go forth and live!”

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  Then strong hands drew her upward. Skin slid smoothly across skin

  as she emerged into the circle of Lhiannon’s arms. From the water light

  flared and glanced around them, a multitude of bright spirits rejoicing.

  During those moments when she lay in the water the sun had risen, and

  they stood in a lake of fi re.

  W as the womanhood rite like this for you?”

  At Boudica’s diffident question Lhiannon finished tying the strings

  of her shoe and looked up. Two days had passed since the initiation. Last

  night had been cloudy, but the mists were clearing from the marshes,

  and beyond the apple trees the Tor rose smooth and green against a smil-

  ing sky.

  “It is always the same, and always different,” she said smiling. “The

  structure of the ritual has not altered much, I suppose, since the People

  of Wisdom first initiated their daughters in this pool. But the power it

  invokes, the internal transformation, must be different for each maiden

  it blesses.”

  She remembered her own initiation as a slow unfolding of aware-

  ness, level upon level, like the opening of a flower, until at the end she

  had glimpsed the core of light. An entire lifetime, she thought, might

  be too short to comprehend what she had touched as she stood in the

  pool.

  She did not think that what Boudica had experienced was the same,

  but clearly something had happened to the girl. And as always in ritual,

  the giver was as blessed as the one who received. Lhiannon still bore

  grief for Britannia’s slaughtered warriors, but she had been reminded

  that the Great Mother who weeps for her children also gives birth to

  them anew.

  “I am still trying to digest all the wise words you gave me after-

  ward, when we broke our fast beside the pool,” Boudica said.

  Lhiannon frowned. In the euphoria that followed the blessing, their

  bare bodies still warmed by the sacred fire, she had found herself telling

  Boudica things she had scarcely admitted to herself. Not even when she

  walked with Ardanos could she share so deeply. Their souls had been as

  naked as their bodies, no longer teacher and student, but two women

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  together in an intimacy of the spirit that would have been impossible if

  they had not been alone. Now she was beginning to suspect that a bond

  had been forged between them that she had not anticipated.

  There is potential in this girl that in four years we never suspected, she

  thought wistfully . Yet that missed chance is not what will give me sorrow if she

  decides to go back to her people, but the loss of the first soul I have found who

  might be a true friend.

  “If you understood everything already, that would have been no

  true initiation,” Lhiannon answered, trying to hide her
emotion. “This

  is a beginning. You will have the rest of your life to learn what it

  means.”

  “I suppose so . . . Do I have to decide about staying with the Druids

  today?”

  Lhiannon took a deep breath. No, thank the gods . . . Aloud she said,

  “We have some days yet before you must choose. Allow each day its les-

  son. Today, I propose that we climb the Tor.” She picked up her staff .

  She could see Boudica biting back another question, and smiled.

  They could talk more later. They still had time.

  Their way led around the base of the orchard hill and past the yew

  hedge that hid the sacred pool. Beyond it the waters of the Milk Spring

  seeped slowly down to join the overflow, leaving their own pale fi lm on

  the stones. Red and white, blood and milk, they nourished the land.

  Here the women stopped to fill their flasks. After the iron tang of the

  Blood Spring, the waters of the Milk Spring tasted of stone.

  Around the base of the Tor trees clustered thickly, but in some pre-

  vious age they had been cleared from the slopes, and sheep had kept

  the hill free of them thereafter. As the women emerged from beneath

  the branches the long spine of the Tor rose up before them.

  “Are we going to climb straight up?” asked Boudica. From here the

  first steep slope hid the more gentle incline that followed it, and the stone

  circle at the summit could not be seen.

  “We could—or we could circle around to the back and take a way

  that is shorter and steeper still, if all we wanted was to reach the top and

  enjoy the view . . .”

  She waited, watching as Boudica considered the undulating expanse

  of turf above her. The base of the Tor was roughly oval, lying on a

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  northeast-southwest axis. From afar, it appeared as a perfect cone, but its

  summit was at the northern end. From a distance it also seemed smooth,

  but here one could see clearly that it was ringed by terraced paths.

  “Those are not natural, are they?” Boudica pointed. “Is this one of

  the Druid mysteries?”

  Lhiannon shook her head. “The paths were here when our people

  first came to these isles. The People of Wisdom made them. They are

  not rings, but a maze. One walks in silence, as a meditation, to reach the

  crown.”

  Boudica looked at the path before them, its beginning marked by an

  ancient stone. “And when one has threaded the maze,” she asked care-

  fully, “where will one arrive?”

  Unexpectedly, Lhiannon laughed. “At the top of the Tor—usually.

  But sometimes, they say, the path leads inward to the Otherworld.”

  Beneath the broad straw hat Boudica’s face lit with an answering

  smile. “I think that you are more likely to find that path than I. But take

  care that you remember the way back again.”

  “We’ll arrive nowhere if we don’t begin.” Lhiannon stepped past the

  stone and started around the hill.

  For the first circuit, she was very much aware of Boudica following

  her. The path led along the middle of the northern side of the Tor and

  sunwise around on the south until they neared the stone, then dipped

  downward and turned back widdershins all the way around, looped

  down once more, and skirted the base of the Tor. Here the going was

  easy. Lhiannon strode along, enjoying the sun on her back and the way

  the wind fluttered the skirts of her gown. She had been this way before,

  and the exercise was welcome on such a beautiful summer day.

  Only when the path neared the entrance again did it lead up the

  spine of the hill and around in a long widdershins loop, reversing half-

  way up the slope to angle upward toward the standing stones. That was

  when Lhiannon began to suspect that this time might be diff erent. The

  light seemed paler, though no cloud covered the sun. Each step seemed

  more deliberate. She did not feel heavier, but rather as if some force

  were pulling her toward the Tor.

  Lhiannon looked back along the path. She could see Boudica half-

  way down the slope below her, moving slowly, pausing sometimes to

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  gaze toward the range of hills to the north and the distant sea. The vale

  of Avalon lay between two such ranges, a sheltered land with the Tor at

  its secret heart. The girl—no, the younger woman—would come to no

  harm. With a sigh of release Lhiannon returned to the path.

  She could see the sacred stones above her now. The air overhead

  was shimmering. She circled behind them, started forward once more,

  so close she could almost touch them, but by now she did not need to

  see the path. A current of power bore her past as if she walked in a

  flowing stream. The path turned back upon itself and downward, made

  a wide loop back and a longer one forward, taking her farther from the

  peak. But now the sun had disappeared. She walked through a lumi-

  nous twilight as she swept back and around and up again at last to the

  point of power within the circle of stones. The land fell away to every

  side as it had before, but now every tree was radiant and every reed

  shone, and the hillock-islands were glowing points that marked the fl ow

  of power.

  Lhiannon stood, skin tingling as it had in the sacred pool. Every

  Druid priest and priestess had made this ascent, and scarcely one in a

  hundred found the way between the worlds. How many had never no-

  ticed the moment of potential transformation? How many had sensed it,

  and drawn back in fear? She wondered why she had been given this gift,

  and wished that she could have shared it with Boudica.

  “Only when the soul is ready can it find the way.”

  It took a moment to realize that this was not her own spirit speak-

  ing. Heart pounding, she turned.

  At first she thought she saw Lady Mearan standing there, but even as

  she flushed with joy she realized that this woman was as small as one of

  the folk of the Lake Village, clad in a deerskin wrap and crowned with

  summer flowers. And yet the joy remained, for the wisdom and power

  she read in the woman’s face were the same. Instinctively she bent as she

  would have bowed to a high priestess of her own kind, for surely the

  queen of the faerie folk was of equal degree. And she was far older.

  “The Oak priests have trained you well,” the woman said, smiling.

  “But your people do not come to visit me so often as in times past. Have

  you come here for refuge, now that your people are at war?”

  “It is true that an alien people have invaded us, but most of our wise

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  ones are safe on the isle of Mona. I cannot think they will ever come

  there,” Lhiannon answered with a spurt of pride.

  “Time runs diff erently here, and I have seen many peoples come and

  go in this land. But you, at least, may stay in safety.” The faerie woman

  gestured, and Lhiannon saw that a cloth had been spread upon the grass

  within the circle, and food and drink laid there. Her stomach gurgled as

&
nbsp; she looked at the fair white breads and roasted waterfowl and the bowls

  of berries and nuts of every kind. It had been a long time since the morn-

  ing meal.

  At the thought she had a sudden memory of Boudica stirring the

  porridge with the early light kindling her bright hair. Lhiannon had

  known the younger woman faced a choice, but she had not expected to

  be off ered one, too.

  “Lady, I would not insult your hospitality, but I cannot leave my

  friend.”

  The woman looked at her thoughtfully. “Friendship is one of the

  great virtues of your kind. But she is not yet ready to understand. If your

  friendship endures, perhaps a time will come when together you may

  return to me . . .”

  “Can you see the future, then?” Lhiannon asked eagerly. “Will we

  expel these Romans from Britannia?”

  For a moment the woman simply looked at her. “I forget how young

  you are . . . Your human life is a river, and you are all part of it, like the

  streams and the clouds and the rain, each thing moving according to its

  own nature, one current flowing strongly, then giving way to another

  in its turn. The Romans are very strong, but it is only here that I can tell

  you the future, for only my realm is without change.”

  “Does that mean it’s useless to resist the Romans?” Lhiannon fi xed

  on the only part of this she could understand.

  “Useless? No deed of a brave heart is lost. If your kings fail you, look

  to your queens. Your love and your courage will be a mighty current in

  that stream. But you will know pain, and one day you will die.”

  “But I will grow,” said Lhiannon slowly, “and here I could become

  no greater than I am at this hour.”

  “Perhaps you are not a child after all,” the faerie woman said then.

  “Go now with my blessing. Daylight will be fading in the world of men.”

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  “Thank you,” said Lhiannon, but both the woman and the faerie

  food were gone. Still wondering, she took the first step, and found her-

  self once more in the world of humankind.

  Though the skies above the vale were clear, out to sea a storm was

  building. The setting sun kindled the distant clouds to banners of flame.

  Boudica drank the last of the water in her skin and thought about going

  down the hill. It was very still. Even the raven that soared above the vale

  did so silently.