“Ten thousand thanks,” I told him again, and I strode down to where my father and the Gwyneda waited, strode arrogantly, insanely certain that they would honor the custom that had brought me here. For surely there was no use in uncertainty, after all that had happened.
The eldest of the Gwyneda faced me first, her watery eyes unblinking in her gray face. “The goddess has smiled on you and taken you into the palm of her hand,” she said to me. “You are highly favored, and free of the land forever, and whoever thinks to emperil you will bear our curse.”
A murmur of accord sounded from the other Gwyneda, and with only small astonishment I realized that they willingly now embraced me and my cause, they who some few minutes earlier would just as willingly have killed me.
“Arlen?” I demanded.
“He is your consort. Your protection extends to him.”
I nodded curtly, not wishing to speak overlong with them. “And Erta?”
“She died quickly,” the eldest said, with no unease in her gaze. Killing Erta had been a minor matter at the time. Fervor grew in me to be gone from that place.
I wheeled on my father. He stood—if I had not felt such good reason to hate him I would have pitied him, his pallid face so mottled with emotion—he stood choking on wrath and frustration. One of his men was riding Bucca, I noted. “My horse,” I told him.
He complied with a gesture that ordered the man to bring the steed to me, and his hands curled into white-knuckled fists.
“My gold,” I said when I held Bucca’s reins in my hand.
He drew the chains out of his pouch, fingered them a moment—and turned and flung them full force into the depths of the lake. “Go dive for them,” he told me, with hatred grating in his voice.
“Thank you, but nay. I have had enough of swimming for today.” I mounted Bucca. It would have been too much to expect, I suppose, that Rahv would have handed the gold to me or even hurled it at my feet. Indeed, if a horse could have been thrown so far, I think Bucca also would have been in the water.
“Slut,” he muttered.
I said farewell only to Ophid, then swam Bucca across the lake to the eastern shore. The water lay quiet, very still; not even birds were calling. I remember that quiet. The sun was setting, dusk coming on, and thin wraiths of mist rising as I turned northward again toward the Adder’s Head. I was on my own again, quite alone, with only the sodden frock on my back, no supplies or wherewithal either. I hoped the goddess who held me in the palm of her hand would somehow favor me with a bit of food.
EIGHTEEN
Food was fish, mostly, as it turned out. Almost at once I found someone’s lost net, snagged in the lakeside trees. I mended it with tough hairs plucked from Bucca’s tail and netted fish in plenty, as well as a few snakes, which slithered away. Bucca’s gear contained flint and steel for the making of a cooking fire and a knife for the gutting, so I was content. It was midsummer; there were strawberries growing in the meadow grass and currants coming ripe in the bogs. On fish and berries I could live.
And so I did, and I traveled northward along the Blackwater, up the Naga past the Isle of Elders all in white bloom, past the four small linked tarns called the Lakes of the Winds, Lausta, Faris, Hirta, and Bora, four forms of the goddess. Then along the Naga again. The land had grown steep and high and rocky; presently I rode along the top of a gorge, and the water far below foamed and hissed between boulders with a sound as of a thousand serpents. There was a waterfall, and a rocky ait, and a waterfall again, and when I came to Adder’s Head I looked down on it from far above, the water deepest greenish black, the eyot of rounded water-worn rock, wet and unblinking. No human had ever lived here, I could feel it, not since primal times. Only by hasty travelers like myself, uneasy in the stare of that shining eye, had this place been named. At the far end of the Adder’s Head, at its blunt apex, the forked tongue of water came whitely down the surrounding rock, and between the cataracts I could see the dark entry, the passageway, the serpent’s burrow.
I left Bucca in the best place I could find for him, a glade where the grass grew thick within a grove of alder, took off his gear and patted him, and went down the rocks afoot to seek the realm of the dead.
There were the guardians just within the entry, as I had expected. And they were black, the glossy black of lacquer, and sizable, their uplifted heads standing as high as mine, and their eyes amber gold, and on their backs patterns like chains of shining gold. How lovely they were, for all that they were serpents; I could not be very afraid of them. “May I pass?” I asked. “My name is Rae—”
Before I could tell them more they turned and flanked me, as if to assist me or provide me with a guard of honor, and as I walked they slipped along beside me, keeping me to the center of the way.
It was very dark at first, and damp-smelling, and rocky underfoot, another cave or a large tomb, the largest of tombs. I felt my way downward, shuffling along in the dark. Once one of the serpents put its head up to my outstretched hand—to guide me, I think. But the touch startled me badly, and I leaped back, stood and sweated until I gathered courage to go on again.
Soon, though, a dim light began to show, and it grew, a white and spectral light. Then the stony passage leveled off into a floor of polished marble, and I saw that I was in a place such as had never been on earth, a place a world and a life apart from the river and trees I had just left behind.
Jeweled pillars and, spiraled around them, great serpents of fire. It was from them that the light glowed; they shone white with the soundless, motionless fire that is hotter than any flame, fire as of white embers, fine as thistledown. The jewels beneath their coils took their light and splintered it into shards, sent it darting off the water—for there was water, snake-loop meanders of water as smooth as the marble floor; I scarcely could tell where stone stopped and water began save for milky lilies floating and the white fish beneath them. The water formed still black pools, and amidst the pools a silver serpent the girth of a man lifted its head and sang. Nor have I ever been able to remember what melody the serpent sang, or whether there were words. But the feeling that song gave me haunts my dreams.
On the waterways floated a boat shaped like a silver harp, and an old hunchbacked boatman poled it toward me. His robes were of velvet twinkling with brooches and clasps of precious gold. I remembered that I had not gold to pay him with, and the black serpents, my retinue, had left me.
I spread wide my hands as he came up to me. “I have nothing,” I told him. “They have taken it all from me.”
He gestured me on board, and by the merry glance of his old eye I saw that he was not at all perturbed.
I seated myself. “Thank you,” I said. “They told me I would have to pay you.”
He said nothing, but poled us smoothly to the far marble shore, and with one hand he helped me out. A cluster of maidens awaited me there, lovely maidens but strange, and in a moment I saw that they were elementals. Sylphs, clad in airy, floating garments, themselves so pale as to seem nearly transparent; and the nagini, the snake women, very slender, very beautiful; and nymphs—I was wary of the nymphs, though perhaps they did not, like undines, have razor-sharp teeth. The brown earth maidens were most like me, they in their peasant frocks, though there was a glow about them as of polished wood, whereas I—
“But she cannot go before the Presence like that!” one of them exclaimed.
“My baby,” I started to ask them. “Lonn—”
They hushed me gently and hurried me off. I was to have audience, they told me. Ask it of the mighty one at that time. We walked through splendor. Past gardens walled with chalcedony, where fountains bloomed into motes of gold and trees stood leafed in jade, where birds bright as jewels flew—I blinked. They spread feathered wings, but they were small plump serpents flitting past me, red as rubies or lapis blue, as lovely as any songbird of the world I had left behind.
I do not know when we came inside. Perhaps we had always been inside. But presently there were cham
bers filled with the rustle of silk, a bedchamber and antechamber with walls draped in spiral-patterned silk and cloth of gold. I was seated on a couch, and a basin of water for washing was brought to me, and a white linen towel, and when I had cleaned my hands the cup of the house was presented to me by a nagini on bended knee. And when I had drunk it down, a meal was set before me. Three sorts of meats, and more sauces and pastries and sweets than I can remember or tell. Long-starved as I was, I ate without thought, immediately. Only when I came to a small bowl of fresh elderberries—and it was not yet the season for elderberries—did I remember Briony’s warning. I pushed it aside and sat, my hunger and my pleasure abruptly gone.
“It will not hurt you,” said one of the sylphs, and she laughed at me softly, not unkindly. “Go ahead, eat! The dead do not eat nearly so heartily.”
“I might as well be dead,” I muttered.
“Indeed, my lady, no! When you are dead, you will need gold for the boatman. Now you come and go as you please.” She laughed again, a wafting, summery sound. “Are you truly finished eating?”
I looked at her, feeling the birthing of an unreasonable hope, but indeed I was no longer hungry. “I am done,” I said.
“Then you should bathe.”
In the antechamber a great silver basin of warm water awaited me, attended by the nymphs. I reclined in it and was bathed, and afterward they wrapped me in furs to dry, and when that was done they lightly rubbed me with scented oil, so that I glowed as they did and could not help but feel my own well-being.
“Now,” said one of the earth maidens, “we must properly attire you if you are to speak with the goddess. Or would you rather sleep first?”
Nervousness took hold of me at the mention of the goddess, and though I was tired, I knew I could not have slept. Best to brave the goddess and have it over with. “I am not sleepy,” I said.
“I thought those who lived were always sleepy after they had eaten heartily,” said my sylph, puzzled.
“Not always,” I told her.
So they clothed me in the colors most sacred to the goddess, in a gown of green samite, as green as new leaves, and over it a tabard of white trimmed with fringe of gold, and a girdle of linked gold around my waist, and on my feet slippers of red leather, and on my shoulders a cloak of red wool, as red as oxblood, lined with red satin and edged in ermine. My hair was braided and dressed with emeralds, rubies, and pearls.
“Green for birthing, growth, and dying,” the maidens chanted as they arrayed me.
“Green for birthing, growth, and dying,
Green for grass and red for blood,
White for the mystic moon.”
And they fastened my cloak with a silver brooch, the wheel brooch of twenty-eight spokes. Then, under golden archways molded in links as of chain, they escorted me into the great hall of that afterworld place.
A hall, with a smooth floor that shone like black water. But so vast I could see no walls—and above, where there must have been a roof of stone.… I shut my eyes for a moment, dazzled, then looked again at a sun and several moons. But the sun was a golden serpent of flame floating far above me, slowly wheeling, his mouth clinging to his tail. And the moons were serpents of silver fire, some of them biting their tails, some curved into crescents. And between them arched the serpent of seven colors, the rainbow.
There was no time for gazing. Many presences filled that place; I sensed them. But I saw only one Presence, the mighty one beneath a canopy of gems and golden chains resplendent in snakelight. The elementals led me before her, and it was she, deity, the goddess.
Her Presence needed no throne. She lay on the dais, on lavishings of fur, coverlets and pillows of fur. Naked she lay there, brown, deep-breasted as earth, and all about her on the dais or beside it the most regal of beasts crouched or sat or lay, wolves and leopards and golden-maned yaels and suckling bears, and by her right hand rested a whip as she reclined, a whip of nine black strands, and knotted on the strands were white knucklebones from human hands.
“Little daughter,” she said to me, “welcome. It has been a long time since one of my children came so boldly to visit me.”
She was larger than any mortal woman, thewed mightily and yet billowing with softness like brown hillsides, clad only in her own lush hair of head and elsewhere, and there was a golden chain around her loins which covered nothing. Left hand and forearm steadied her head, and she regarded me levelly out of wide-set dark eyes, a handsome and frightening face. On her brow lay a golden fillet in the shape of a snake, a small and delicate serpent—or at least I thought it to be made of gold until it lazily lifted its head and flickered its tongue at me.
“Kneel,” someone hissed in my ear.
“She need not kneel,” the goddess said. “Leave us, all of you.”
I heard rather than saw my retinue withdraw. I stood speechless, my eyes caught by the Great Mother’s eyes, my thoughts empty of everything except holy dread.
“So you have been unhappy, daughter,” she said in a voice that might have been intended to be soft, gentle; coming out of her it yet filled me with fear. “I had not meant it to be so for you.”
I moved my mouth with a great effort, wet my dry lips. “Lonn,” I whispered.
“Yes,” she agreed, “he is troublesome.”
“No.… Yes, but I mean Lonn, my baby.”
“You named him that?” Her head came up somewhat, and her brow creased in a puzzled frown. I quailed before that frown. But I had to ask her.
“Yes. I—we—I thought he might be here.”
“But why?” Her strong left hand came down, and she sat almost upright in her astonishment. “I know nothing of this.”
“I—we—that is, the oracle said—” It seemed more horrible, more wrong than ever, and I could no longer meet her eyes. I felt myself shrinking into an earthen lump of shame.
“Speak,” she told me sharply.
“We cast him away upon the Naga.”
Her breath hissed between her teeth, she tore off the serpent from her brow and flung it away, and in one horrible moment I saw her crouched like an animal among her animals, her gruesome whip raised in her hand, and I thought she would use it on me. I shut my eyes and stood still for it; I felt I deserved it. But she did not.
“There must be at worst a mistake, at best a reason,” she said roughly. “Foolish child, I gave you everything, and you have thrown it away, cast it away, your blessedness! Tell me why.”
So I told her, not daring to look at her again, told her the tale of Lonn’s interference and our journeying in search of a remedy, and when I had finished she remained as angry as ever.
“Rae Cerilla Runaway of the Gwyneda!” So she really did know me, fully know me, my name and all about me. “Little fool, did you not know—could you not tell—look at me!”
I looked up, compelled by her command, and gasped: she was a skeletal serpent, huge, crawling toward me on the ends of her bleached ribs. But even as I gasped she was a hag, a wizened mandrake woman, hard and knotty as old roots in winter; and then the fierce mare, beast among beasts, rearing up with a mighty neigh; and the breasted serpent rising and swaying far above my head; and the wicca, the old wise woman of the woods, dressed as a peasant and laughing at me. And then she was standing naked as before, but her breasts were many, they hung like clustered fruit all around her. And she raised her whip, and she was the black aurochs with long white horns, and she was a raven stooping at me with a croaking scream. But before I could wince she was herself again in naked and motherly form, and she laid her whip aside and looked at me.
“You are brave,” she said.
Indeed, I was merely too stunned and miserable to run. I said nothing.
“And I know you are not stupid,” she went on, somewhat bitter but no longer angry. “You have all your father’s shrewdness, and none of his spleen.… I thought it was all so plain. Could you not tell that my special favor went with you? That I suspended the requirements of the ceremonial for you
r sake? That none of the usual strictures apply to you? You could leave the Sacred Isle by my good grace, find shelter, eat the elderberries, receive the aid of the most puissant of mandrakes when you needed it, eat the food of the oak elves without harm, pass the many guardians of the forbidden places, be they serpents, wolves, bears or wild bulls, or the odd folk who live under the swaying stones.… You should have known you bore my blessing. Ophid should have known as well. You could have named the babe whatever you wanted.”
Utter astonishment made me bold. “But why?” I cried. “Why have you so favored us?”
She shrugged one vast bare shoulder, whimsical. “Who knows? Arlen, his love for my creatures, his wonder—I have always held a special affection for him. And you, your yearnings, your daring—”
Heart broke into anger at the thought of the gift that had availed us naught. “But how were we to know?” I shouted, stamping. “Whatever your—gracious intentions for us, our way was hard enough!”
“Daring,” said the goddess coldly, “can be overdone.”
I froze, eyes lowered.
“That was Lonn’s doing,” she added more softly.
I ventured to glance at her again; she looked merely thoughtful. “But why?” I asked again, quietly this time.
“His reasons are his own.” She sounded mildly amused. “I am not privy to them.”
“Is he here, that I might ask him?”
“I think not. He is one who skulks about on the far side of the bourne, in the shadows, one who comes and goes. I have not heard of him lately, and I think he has not yet found the wherewithal to pay the boatman.” By my life, but she was callous, she! “But we shall see, if you like. Come here, sit.”
Warily I obeyed her, sitting at the feet of a leopard, on the edge of the dais. She still loomed above me; I did not dare turn my head to look at her, so close. Idly she clapped her hands, and tiny lights grew in the depths of the hall, as if stars somehow floated there, or white fireflies, reflecting faintly on the smooth, gleaming floor.
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