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?”
86 D i ana L . Pax s on
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!”
M A RI O N Z I M M E R B RA D L E Y ’ S RAV E N S O F AVA L O N
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
88 D i ana L . Pax s on
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
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
M A RI O N Z I M M E R B RA D L E Y ’ S RAV E N S O F AVA L O N
89
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
90 D i ana L . Pax s on
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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91
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.”
92 D i ana L . Pax s on
“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.