"Could they have taken the child to the Forest House? Would your kinswomen know?"

"I could ask," answered Cynric.

I would rather ask her myself, thought Gaius, but he did not know how to say so. And how did he know that Eilan even wanted to see him again? If she was happy in the Forest House, would he be only breaking her peace to try and see her there? He had done his duty to Valerius. Should he make some excuse and disappear again?

He realized that he had been silent too long when Cynric refilled his cup from the jug of wine and shoved it back at him.

"There's more to this than a lost child," said the Briton. "What did you really want to say?"

"I must see Eilan again," Gaius burst out suddenly. "I swear I mean her no harm. I only want to know she is happy there."

For a moment Cynric stared at him, then threw back his head with a roar of laughter that turned heads all over the room. "You're in love!" he laughed again. "I should have recognized the symptoms. Isn't my own girl locked away behind those very walls?"

"But you're a kinsman," said Gaius seriously. "They'll let you talk to her. Can you arrange something for me?"

"Why not?" Cynric grinned. "I've never seen any reason to keep the priestesses all penned up. That's like something you Romans would do. Dieda won't see or speak to me since she went in there, but my foster sister is not a prisoner. I will see what I can arrange for you." He drained his wine cup. "Be at the edge of the path leading to the Forest House three days from now, an hour after noon."

As Eilan waited in the woods near the Sacred Grove in the unusual brightness of the early summer sunlight she was surprised to find that she was trembling. At first, when Cynric had spoken to her of a meeting with Gaius, it had seemed like the answer to an unusually fervent prayer. But she soon realized that the most dangerous thing in the world is an answered prayer. Her chances of keeping the meeting a secret were slim indeed. And no one would believe her if they were discovered.

In the end she had gone to Caillean for advice.

"There is nothing that you can do, since you have bidden him here, but to meet him as has been arranged," Caillean had replied. "But I am going to be within earshot every moment; so that if I am later asked I can swear that the two of you have exchanged no word that could not be spoken in the presence of the parents of either of you. Do you accept that?"

Eilan had bowed her head, then turned to go. In truth, she was even a little relieved. If she must speak to him in the presence of the priestess; there would then be no question of his asking of her anything . . .dangerous.

"Wait," Caillean had said. "Why did you bring this to me? Surely you could not imagine that I would approve!"

"I am doing nothing that betrays my vows." Eilan faced the other woman directly. "But I know how idle tongues can embroider a tale. I believe that you would advise me as you thought right, whatever you might feel!" And then she had turned once more, and gone. But she remembered with some satisfaction the flush of color that had stained the other woman's cheeks.

And so she waited, knowing that with the implacable watcher she had nothing to fear. If she had earlier been asked whether she was afraid of Gaius she would have unhesitatingly answered no; but as the shadows shortened, she became frightened, then terrified.

"Oh, Caillean." She turned to the other woman, who sat upon a stone at the edge of the clearing, working on a piece of embroidery. "What am I going to say to him?"

"Why should you ask me? I am hardly the person to advise a maiden on her dealings with a man," Caillean replied with a sardonic smile.

Eilan sighed. As time passed she realized that it would take a while for him to come all the way from Deva. But as she waited, she found her hand stealing into Caillean's.

Was she meddling in an affair which was, after all, none of her concern? No, she told herself firmly. It was clearly her duty to find out all she could about the child's surviving relatives. Thus fortified, she waited; and her heart began to pound when at last she saw his shadow upon the path.

It was the first time she had seen Gaius in the uniform and helmet of the Roman Legion; she was struck by how well it became him. He seemed taller under the crimson crested helmet, and the color set off his dark eyes. He came into the clearing and stopped short. If he was surprised to see two women instead of one, it showed only in the momentary flicker of his eyes. Saluting them, he lifted the helmet from his head and tucked it under one arm.

Eilan found herself staring. She had never before had more than a momentary look at a Roman officer in full uniform; and it emphasized the differences between them. And yet, she thought, by their laws we are all Romans. It was like a revelation to her.

He looked at her and smiled, and suddenly all the things she had meant to say to him vanished from her mind.

Gaius shifted his gaze from Eilan to the older priestess, wondering what on earth he should say. He had never once envisioned that their meeting would be attended by a third party. He had not chanced angering his father and risking the wrath of hers, to exchange a few guarded remarks in the presence of a veritable dragon.

But as he met Caillean's amused glance his anger cooled. If Eilan was a Vestal Virgin or the nearest thing to one to be found within the British Isles, he could hardly blame her for wanting a witness who could attest to her unbroken vows. He wondered how he could make it clear, she was as sacrosanct to him as a Virgin in the temple of Vesta. He remembered how overwhelmed he had been by her trust when she sat beside him at the Beltane fire, how touched by her innocence.

Caillean, of course, was another matter; he could tell at once that the older woman would not have trusted him - or both of them - out of her sight, and for Eilan's sake he was indignant. But he guessed that the priestess had been brought up on tales of Roman outrages. To the women of the Forest House the very fact that he was a Roman and a man was enough.

And the truth was that if Caillean had not been there, he might have kissed Eilan; she looked very enticing in the pale linen dress that set off the gold of her hair. He thought the garb must be some kind of standard dress among the priestesses, for Caillean was wearing the same kind of draperies, though hers were dark blue and unbecoming. Both had little curved daggers hanging from their girdles.

After a moment Eilan began to tell him about the girl in the house of the priestesses, not very coherently, but he knew at once that this must be the child of Valerius's sister. "But this is amazing," he exclaimed. "I think this must be the same girl I came here to speak about to you, the niece of my father's secretary. How old is she?"

"The Goddess must be guiding us indeed," said Eilan. "I do not think she has passed her tenth year."

"Oh, well, she is not old enough to be marriageable," he said, for Roman law did not permit the marriage of a girl under twelve. He added lightly, "That's good; otherwise Valerius would probably feel in honor bound to make some arrangement. Now he'll just have to marry someone else to have a home for her."

"That is not necessary," said Eilan. "The girl is well and happy where she is, and you may tell him so."

Gaius frowned; he knew that for Valerius, who came of a good old family, it would not be considered suitable that a kinswoman should live away from the family's protection. But Valerius had no other family to take care of the girl now, and perhaps Eilan's insistence that she would personally watch over the child's health and safety would be enough for him.

After all, in Rome, it was the greatest possible honor for a little girl to be taken into the temple of Vesta. For as long as she retained her ritual position she was treated like a queen, or an empress at least. Somehow he would make Valerius understand.

He realized that he was still making ineffectual remarks about the little girl, whom he had not even seen, when he saw Caillean glaring at him. They had already said everything they could legitimately say to one another, and were beginning to repeat themselves. It was time to say goodbye.

He paused, eyeing Eilan wistfully. He supposed he would never have another opportunity to speak with her in even this much privacy. He would have liked to bid her a proper goodbye, but he could certainly not do that under Caillean's eyes. And he should probably not expose himself to that kind of temptation anyhow. But Eilan was still looking at him, a question in her eyes.

"Eilan —" he stammered, for Caillean was watching as well. "You know what I would say to you . . ." He held out his hand, not daring to touch her, and then, as Caillean coughed, turned it to a formal salute of farewell. But he read Eilan's answer in her smile.

When he had withdrawn, Eilan ran to Caillean.

"So that is the Roman who has had you daydreaming to the point where you can hardly be trusted to stuff a mattress with bracken. I cannot understand it; he does not seem in any way special to me."

"Well, I did not suppose that you would particularly like him," Eilan protested, "but he is well favored, is he not?"

"I cannot see that he is any more so than any other Roman," Caillean remarked. "Or for that matter any other man. To me your foster brother Cynric is much better looking. He has a gentler face and does not appear to think the world must revolve about his comings and goings."

Eilan supposed there was no accounting for taste; she herself did not think Cynric was particularly attractive, but Dieda certainly did. But Gaius was something different; to her he did not seem typically Roman, not in any way. Nor did Gaius himself appear to think of his Roman lineage as anything very special. Certainly he could not if he was for a time thinking of abandoning it for marriage with me, she told herself then.

She had never for an instant considered marrying anyone else; and as for men, the world was full of them. She hardly realized how much thinking of Gaius had come between her old life and what now seemed natural to her.

"Eilan, you are daydreaming again," Caillean remarked sharply. "Go and find Senara and tell her what you have discovered; and then go to Latis for your lesson. If you can manage to pay attention, some day you may be as skilled in the lore of herbs as Miellyn."

Thus admonished, Eilan went about her duties; but she could not resist going obsessively over and over every word she had said to Gaius and every word he had said to her. She could not believe she would never see or speak with him again; he seemed too much a part of her life even after their formal goodbye.

That night when she went in her turn to wait upon Lhiannon, the older woman looked at her with dismay.

"What is this I have heard? That you have been out of the temple to meet with a man? This is not the behavior expected of a priestess of the Forest House. I am disappointed in you," she chided.

Eilan colored angrily. But this was why she had asked Caillean to witness their meeting, after all. "I said not one word to him that could not have been spoken in the presence of all of you."

Lhiannon sighed. "I did not say you did, but the fact of the matter is that it was not spoken in the presence of all of us, and

there will be talk. The Goddess be thanked, Caillean was there; but she should have known that we cannot afford to have even the suspicion of scandal, so it is she and not you who will be punished for it. But I beseech you before you do anything of this kind again, think that you have brought punishment down on the head of another. You are young, Eilan, and the young are always thoughtless."

"Punished? But that is not fair! What will you do to her?" Eilan asked apprehensively.

"I will not beat her, if that is what you are thinking," Lhiannon said smiling. "Even when she was a small child, I never beat her; perhaps I should have done. As for her punishment, that is for her to tell if she wishes."

"But, Mother," Eilan protested, "it was you who told me to find out if the child had any family."

"I did not say that you should inquire among the Romans," Lhiannon said irritably. Eilan wondered how in the world she could have been expected to find out about the relatives of a Roman child in any other way.

Later, among the priestesses, Eilan found an opportunity to speak to Caillean. "Lhiannon told me she had to punish you. Can you forgive me? Will it be too bad? She said she would not beat you."

"She will not," Caillean said. "There is a house in the forest where she will probably send me to spend time meditating on my sins while I clear away the brushwood and weeds with which it is surrounded and put the place in order. It's not much of a punishment; Lhiannon probably does not realize that it is actually a luxury to me to be alone with my music and my thoughts. So you must not think I am being ill treated."

"Alone in the forest? But won't you be frightened?"

"What should frighten me? Bears? Wolves? Wandering men? The last bears in this part of the world were trapped over thirty years ago. How long is it since you have seen so much as a wolfskin rug in the market? And as for men, you have good cause to know that I could frighten away any man alive. No, I am not afraid."

"I should be terrified," Eilan said somberly.

"I am sure of it; but I am not afraid of my own company. And I can think of my music as much as I wish, without a lesson or a duty interfering. So I shall be quite content," Caillean assured her. "There is nothing in this punishment - if she will call it so - to trouble me."

Eilan said no more, and she knew that at least when it came to waiting upon Lhiannon, she and Dieda would willingly share Caillean's duties between them. Well, that was no hardship; she loved Lhiannon in spite of her flaws, and she knew that her kinswoman loved her too. She would miss Caillean, though.

Now it occurred to her that if Lhiannon had been a different type of person she herself might have been beaten or severely punished. Whatever Caillean made of this penalty, it was Eilan who had brought it upon the older woman. For that she felt guilty, but not enough to regret her meeting with Gaius. She only wished she had been able to say half of what she wanted to, though what that was she could not have named.

When Caillean departed from the Forest House, Eilan realized that the older woman was really not much of a favorite with the other women there. Only Miellyn and Eilidh seemed to be truly her friends — and of course Lhiannon.

The weather changed as summer moved towards autumn. As the equinox approached there was rain, and late one evening, while the women in the House of Maidens were seated around the fire, Eilan found herself thinking of Caillean in her exile. Was the roof of the hut leaky? How did she react to the solitude and the silence of the forest?

The women had been inventing riddles, and at last, tired of this pastime, they asked Dieda to sing or to tell them a story.

Dieda acquiesced. "What would you like me to tell you?"

"Tell us a tale of the Otherworld," said Miellyn. "Tell us how Bran son of Febal voyaged to the western land. All the bards learn that one."

And so Dieda half told, half chanted, the tale of Bran and his encounter with the sea god Manannan, Lord of Illusion, who turned the sea into a flowering grove of trees, the fish into birds flying in the air, the waves into flowering bushes, and the sea creatures into sheep; so it seemed as if they sailed through a flowering grove. And when Manannan fell out of the boat, the waves rushed in, so that the sea god was cast upon the shore and all the other men drowned.

When she had finished they called for another tale, like little children sitting spellbound.

"Tell the story of the King and the Three Hags," suggested one of the women, and Dieda began as all tales were begun.

"A long time ago, times were better than now, and there were more gates between the Otherworld and this, and if I had been there, I should not now be here . . .well then, in a longer time ago than the oldest grandfather can tell, in a house on the borders of the Underworld, there lived a king and his queen . . .

"And it was on the eve of Samaine, when the gates between the world are open, and at the time between times, between the midnight of one year and the dawn of the next, there came to the door three hags. The first had a snout like a pig, and her lower lip hung down to her knees and concealed her garment; the second had lips both on one side of her head and a beard which hung down concealing her breasts; and the third was a hideous creature with one arm and one leg. Under her arm she carried a pig which was so much better looking than she was that it was as if the pig were a princess."

By this time all the women were laughing. Dieda herself smiled a little and went on. "The three hags came in and took three seats by the fire so that there were no seats by the fire for the King and his queen, who were forced to take seats by the door.

"Then the first of them, the one with the long lower lip, said, 'I am hungry; what have you to eat?' And they hastened to make her a pot of porridge; and she ate up the pot of porridge, and it was enough for a dozen men, and she cried out, 'You are stingy; I hunger still.'

"Now on this night no request of a guest can be denied; and so the Queen set herself and her serving maids to make more porridge for her guests and put some oatcakes on the hearth to bake. But no matter how much food they set before the guest, she growled, 'I am still hungry.'

"Then the second, the bearded one, complained, 'I am thirsty.' When they brought out a barrel of beer, she drank it all down at one draft and complained that she was still dry. And when they began to fear that the hags would eat all the provision for the winter to come, the Queen and the King went out and consulted together what they should do with their guests. And then one of the fairy folk appeared to them from out of a mound and gave the Queen good-day.

" 'All the gods preserve you, good lady; why are you weeping?' And the Queen told them of the three hideous hags and their fear that the creatures meant to eat them out of house and home, and then to eat the King and the Queen. And the Fairy Woman told her what she should do.

"So the Queen went in and sat down to her knitting; and finally the first hag asked, 'What are you making, Granny?'

"And the Queen replied, 'Knitting a shroud, dear Aunty.'

"And the second hag asked through her beard. 'Who is the shroud for, Granny?'

" 'Oh, for anyone I can find who is homeless this night, dear Aunty.'

"And after a while the third asked, kissing her pig, 'And when will you be using the shroud, Granny?'

"And just then the King rushed in and cried out, 'The black mountain and the sky over it are all on fire!'

"And when they heard that, the three hags cried out, 'Alas, alas, our father is gone,' and rushed out of the door, and they were never seen again in that country by any living man; or if they were, then I have not heard of it."

Dieda fell silent. After a long pause, while the wind wailed loudly around the building, Miellyn said, "I heard Caillean tell a story very like that, long ago; did you learn it from her?"

"I did not," said Dieda. "I heard my father tell it once when I was a very small girl."

"I suppose it is very old," said Miellyn, "and of course he is one of the greatest bards. But you told it as well as any Druid. You or Caillean could head the College as well as he."

"Oh, no doubt," Dieda scoffed. "And why not make us judges as well?"

Why not, indeed? Eilan wondered. Caillean would have had an answer to that, but Caillean was not here.

Thirteen

Once Gaius had reassured Valerius that his kinswoman was safe in Eilan's care in the Forest House, he made plans to leave again before his father could begin nagging him again about marriage. Since seeing Eilan, he was even more determined not to be married off to some Roman girl. Ever since the death of the Emperor Titus and the accession of Domitian everything had been unsettled, and Gaius knew that his father was looking about for alliances.

After a time he went out into the town. The morning had been warm and muggy, but now great clouds were building in the west, and he felt his hair ruffled by a cool wind. An old centurion had told him once that in this country there were two ways to tell the weather: if you could see the hills, it was about to rain; if not, it was already raining. The man had sighed then, homesick for the flat blue skies of Italia, but Gaius took a grateful breath of the damp wind. As the first drop of rain fell, the Romans began to scurry for shelter. But there was one man who stood still, as he did, turning his face to the sky.

Without much surprise, Gaius recognized Cynric.

"Join me for a cup of wine?" He gestured towards the wine shop where they had met before.

Cynric shook his head. "Thank you; I think I had better not. I'd rather that you could say that you haven't seen me. As a matter of fact it would be much better for you if you could say that you don't know too much about my comings and goings. That way I won't have to ask you to lie."

Gaius lifted one eyebrow. "Are you joking?"

"I wish I were. I shouldn't even stand about talking to you like this; though you can honestly say you encountered me by chance."

"Don't worry," said Gaius, looking around him. A gust of wind sent raindrops spattering across the road, sending up little puffs of dust as they fell. "All the good Romans are safe under cover, and won't care about two fools standing out in the rain! Listen, Cynric, I need to talk to you about Eilan . . ."

Cynric grimaced. "I beg of you, don't speak of that. That was quite the biggest mistake I've made this year; Lhiannon was furious with me. No real harm was done, but don't try to see my foster sister again." He looked nervously around him. "Even if you can afford it, I should not be seen talking to an officer of the Legions in full uniform. In fact, you'd better pretend you don't know me if we meet by accident again."

He added, "I won't be offended. Somebody finally figured out that I was still working for the Ravens, and it occurred to them that serving with the auxiliaries put me in a prime position to make trouble when the time comes. So they've proscribed me, and if I'm spotted within twenty miles of the Roman town, I could be sentenced to the mines - or to something worse - if there is anything worse. Farewell!" Cynric turned away.

Gaius blinked, realizing suddenly that Cynric no longer wore the insignia of Rome. .That must be why he was willing to speak so plainly. He was still trying to think of something to say as his friend slid into a side street and disappeared, leaving him alone with the rain. Gaius checked the impulse to follow him. If Cynric were truly an enemy of Rome, even a quick death would be better than sending him to the Mendip lead mines.

"Don't try to see my foster sister again."

Cynric's words echoed in his head. Was this, then, the end to his hope of contact with Eilan? No doubt Cynric and his father were right. But as he pulled the garnet-colored folds of his military cloak over his head and started down the street, the moisture on his cheeks was not entirely from the rain.

Caillean paused in the doorway of the main hall, wincing as the cackle smote her ears. After more then two moons alone, she had forgotten how much noise women could make when they were all cooped up together. For a moment she wanted to turn and flee back to the solitude of her hut in the forest.

"So, you're back," commented Dieda, finally noticing her. "I wonder why, after the way Lhiannon has treated you. Having got free of us, I should think you would have kept going!"

"And why are you still here?" stung, Caillean replied. "The man you loved is away in the North with the Eagles after him. Is your place then not by his side?"

For a moment anger flared in the younger woman's face, to be replaced in a moment by something closer to despair.

"Don't you think I would have been away in a moment if he had asked me?" she said bitterly. "But his loyalty is given to the Lady of Ravens, and if I cannot be first with the man I love I will take the final vows of a priestess and not have one at all!" Her voice faltered as the other women turned, and Caillean gazed at her with reluctant pity, grateful that she had never been tempted to love.

"Caillean —" Eilidh hurried towards her. "I was hoping you would return today. Lhiannon is in her rooms. Go to her now. She never complains, but I know that she has missed you."

And well she might, thought Caillean wryly as she crossed the courtyard, pulling her shawl over her head to keep off the rain, since it was she who sent me away!

As always after an absence, Caillean was struck by Lhiannon's fragility. She will not make old bones, she thought now, looking at her. There was no obvious sign of illness, only an increasing translucence, but an instinct honed by years as a priestess told her that the older woman was being consumed from within.

"Mother, I am here," she said softly. "Were you wanting to see me?"

Lhiannon turned, and Caillean saw that her faded eyes were glistening with tears. "I have been waiting for you," she said softly. "Will you forgive me for sending you away?"

Caillean shook her head, feeling her own throat tighten, and crossed the room swiftly to kneel beside the High Priestess's chair.

"What is there to forgive?" she asked brokenly, laying her head on the older woman's knees. She felt her own tears begin to fall as Lhiannon touched her hair. "I should never have become a priestess, such a trouble to you I have been!" Suddenly, by that tender touch on her brow, a barrier that had begun to crack when she poured out her heart to Eilan so long ago was swept away.

"I never could tell you," she whispered, "at first I did not understand, and then I was ashamed. I am no pure maiden. In Eriu, before you found me, I was used by a man —" Her voice choked. There was a silence, and then the thin fingers began once more to stroke her hair.

"Ah, little one, is that what has troubled you? I thought there was something, but did not want to ask. You were not even a

woman yet when I took you from Eriu. How could you sin? It is only that we do not speak of such things, because there are those who would not understand. We must preserve appearances. That is why I punished you for helping Eilan. But listen, Caillean, my dear one - whatever befell you before you came here is of no importance, not to the Goddess, and certainly not to me, so long as while you dwell in Her House you serve Her faithfully and well!"

Still weeping, Caillean reached up to clasp the older woman's arms. Despite occasional exasperation, she realized then that what she felt for Lhiannon was surely as deep as any love she might have had for a man, though it was different in kind. And she loved Eilan, whose sympathy had first enabled her to face these memories. But at least neither of these loves would ever conflict with her vows as priestess.

There had been moments, during the days of Caillean's exile, when the raindrops that fell from the eaves of the Forest House had seemed to strike Eilan's heart. Gaius was gone, and she would not see him again, that much had been made clear. It was a relief to have those thoughts interrupted when Caillean summoned her.

"You're back!" she exclaimed as she pushed through the woolen hangings at the door of Caillean's chamber. "No one told me! How long have you been here?"

"A day only," said the priestess. "I was with Lhiannon."

Eilan embraced her and stood back to look Caillean up and down. "It's done you no harm, anyway." She looked brown and healthy, and the little line that sometimes marred the blue crescent tattooed between her brows had smoothed away. "Have they quite forgiven you for my crime?"

Caillean smiled. "It is forgotten. And that, child, is why I sent for you. You have been here for three years now and done well in your studies. The time has come for you to decide if you wish to become truly one of us and take your vows."

"Has it been so long?" It was hard to believe that Mairi's daughter was already a thriving toddler three years old, and her older child nearly five. And yet at the same time it seemed to Eilan that she had always been here. Her old life was forgotten, and when she dreamed of Gaius it was always of his arms around her and his voice murmuring in her ear. She could not imagine living with him in the Roman world.

"Is Dieda to take her vows now too?" They were all aware of Dieda's bitterness over what she saw as Cynric's defection, and now that he was proscribed, who could say when it would be safe for him to return? His commitment to the training of a warrior and his vengeance still commanded his first loyalty. Like the loyalty that holds Gains to his father's world, Eilan thought.

"That is between her and the Goddess," Caillean said sternly. "Now we are speaking of you. Is it still your wish to persevere among us, little one?"

Dieda will make her vows, and so shall I, Eilan thought. Why not, when neither of us can ever have the man we love?

"Yes, it is. At least —" she hesitated - "if the Goddess still wants me, knowing that my love was first given to a man."

"That does not matter," Caillean smiled radiantly. "The Goddess no longer regards anything that happened to you before you made your vows. I have finally told Lhiannon what happened to me, and she has assured me that is so. I owe that blessing to you, my dear, and I am glad to be able to pass it on!"

"There are some who would not see it that way," Eilan said bitterly.

"You must not let them trouble you." Caillean set her hands on Eilan's shoulders and stared into her eyes, and it seemed to Eilan that the dark eyes of the priestess were like the sacred pool, in which past and future could be seen.

"Listen, little sister, and I will tell you the truth at the heart of the Mysteries. All the gods, and all the goddesses too, are one, whether we call her Arianrhod or Cathubodva or Don. The Light of Truth is One, but we see it as light reflects through crystals or prisms, in many colors. Each of the ways in which men and women see their gods - or their goddesses - has a part of that truth. We who live in the Forest House are privileged to see the Goddess in many ways, and to call Her by many names, but we know this first and greatest of all secrets, that the gods, whatever they are called, are all one."

"Then does this mean that the gods of the Romans are the same gods and goddesses we serve?"

"Indeed — that is why they carve their images with the attributes of both when they build their votive altars here. But it is true that while we in the Forest House know the identity of all gods by whatever name we may call them, we believe that we serve the Goddess in perhaps Her purest form, as the divinity in all women. And so we pledge ourselves to serve Her as Mother, Sister and Daughter. This is why we sometimes speak of seeing the Face of the Goddess in the face of every woman."

For a moment the exaltation in Caillean's words held her, then Eilan felt a sudden spurt of anger. Why had they all been so angry at her interest in a Roman if their gods were all the same? Caillean had been present when she spoke with Gaius and knew how she felt about him. How could she say that those feelings would no longer matter once she had taken her vows? They were a part of her, as holy as the ecstasy she had felt sometimes when the presence of the Goddess filled her like moonlight glimmering on the sacred pool.

"What will be required of me?"

"You will take a vow to remain forever chaste unless you should be chosen by the god. And you will pledge that you will not speak foolishly of temple secrets to the unsworn, and that you will strive always to do the will of the Goddess and of anyone who shall command you lawfully in any of Her names."

Caillean paused, watching her and Eilan reflected on how much she loved her, and had come to love the other women and the life they had there. She met the priestess's dark gaze. "To all this I will willingly swear . . ."

"And you will demonstrate that you are mistress of the skills we have taught you, and that the Goddess is willing to accept you? You will understand that I cannot describe it - indeed they say that for each candidate the ordeal is different, so even if my oath did not forbid it I could tell you nothing more."

Eilan suppressed a shiver of anxiety. Living in the House of Maidens she had heard rumors of candidates who had failed and been sent away, or worse still, disappeared. "I understand, and I am willing," she said quietly.

"So be it, then," said Caillean, In Her name I now welcome you as a candidate priestess." She kissed Eilan on the cheek; and Eilan remembered that one of the younger priestesses had done this when first she came to the Forest House. For a moment the two kisses blurred; she blinked, dizzied by the sense that she was repeating a moment she had lived many times before.

"At the full moon before Samaine, then, you shall speak your vows in the presence of the priestesses. Lhiannon and your grandfather will be greatly pleased."

Eilan stared at her. She was certainly not doing this for their sake! Caillean had asked her to choose, but had her decision in fact

been molded by her family's expectations and perhaps other forces dimly hovering in the shadows beyond perception.

"Caillean —" she whispered, reaching out to the priestess. "If I vow myself to the Goddess, it will not be because I am the daughter and granddaughter of Druids, or even because I will never see Gaius again. There has to be something more."

Caillean looked at her. "When we first met it seemed to me you had a destiny among us," she said slowly. "I feel it even more strongly now. But I cannot guarantee that you will be happy, child."

"I do not expect to be —" Eilan caught her breath on a sob. "So long as there is some reason, some purpose, in it all!"

Caillean sighed and held out her arms, and Eilan leaned against her, feeling the tightness in her throat ease as the other woman stroked her hair.

"There is always a reason, my dear, though it may be long before we understand it - that is all the comfort I can offer you. If the Goddess does not know what She is doing, what meaning is there in the world?"

"It is enough," whispered Eilan, hearing the other woman's heart beating, steady and slow, beneath her ear. "If I also have your love."

"You do . . ." Caillean's voice was almost too low to be heard. "I love you as Lhiannon has loved me . . ."

The full moon looked down from the heavens like a watchful eye, as if Arianrhod had personally decided to observe the ceremonies. As the chanting of the priestesses who had brought her here faded to silence, an inner chill pebbled Eilan's arms, though the night was warm. Had she been hoping for rain? It would have made no difference; if the Druids had allowed the weather to affect their rituals they would not have had much of a religion. She knew she should be glad that the skies had chosen to bless her initiation, but the moonlight made her uneasy.

At least the brightness should make it easier to follow the path, and all the priestesses had asked was that she walk through the forest back to the temple, which did not seem a great ordeal. Eager for it to be done, Eilan hurried into the shadows beneath the trees, away from the moon's implacable gaze.

She had been walking for scarcely the time it takes to spin a yard of thread when she realized that she was lost.

Controlling her breathing, Eilan turned. This, she supposed, must be the first test of her training, to see if she could use her inner senses to find her way. She drew on the steady power of the earth beneath her - that, at least, had not changed. The energies of moon and stars sang above, and as she opened herself to become the pillar that linked them, breathing out and in regular rhythm until she knew herself to be at the center of the universe, the fear went away.

She opened her eyes once more. The panic was gone, but the moonlight that filtered through the leaves seemed to be coming from all quarters at once, and she had no idea in which direction the temple lay. Still, if she chose a direction and walked in it she should eventually get through the forest. Once, she had been told, all this island had been covered by trees, but now the land was dotted with roads and pastures and fields. Surely she could not walk for long without finding someone who could show her the way.

Humming softly, Eilan made her way forward, and only later realized that what she had been singing was the song the priestesses chanted at the rising of the moon.

As she walked, the dappled radiance of the moon transformed the world, and she understood why it had made her afraid. Each twig was outlined in silver; the leaves glittered, and light danced and flickered from every stone . . .but now Eilan realized that she was seeing something more than moonlight. Every living thing in the forest had its own glow — a radiance that increased until she could see almost as well as in the light of day. But it was not day, for this light was shadowless, a diffuse illumination in which the colors of the forest glowed like muted jewels. With a little shiver she understood that somehow she had passed the boundary that separates the fields of men from the Otherworld.

Truly it was as her teachers had told her; the Land of the Living and the world of men lay like the folds in a cloak, and where they touched, one could pass easily from one to the other. Or perhaps it was only sometimes that the worlds came thus closely together - at times like this, when the priestesses had sung the sacred songs.

The wood she had entered was filled with oak and hazel and thorn like any other. Now some of the trees she saw were familiar, but others were of no race she knew. Next to a thriving oak she glimpsed a tree with silver bark and little flowers of gold. A rowan tree bore white blossoms and red berries at the same time, though in the human world the flowering time had passed and the berries were not yet ripening on the bough.

Blossoms filled the air with a heady perfume. Now that she could see her way she walked with more confidence, her delight almost making her forget why she had come. Dimly she realized that this seduction of the senses might be the greatest danger, and tried to remember her goal. A lingering sense of duty, more than any other emotion, drew her to a halt in a small clearing where silver birches and rowans rustled in the fragrant breeze like maidens watching a festival. She closed her eyes.

"Lady, help me! Powers that dwell in this place, I honor you — " she said softly. "Of your favor, show me where I need to go . . ."

When she looked again, she glimpsed through the trees an avenue edged with rough stones. She moved along it, walking with the graceful pacing gait the maidens had been taught to use in the ceremonies. Presently the road passed between two great uprights carved with spirals and chevrons. Beyond them Eilan saw a pool whose waters glimmered as if reflecting the light of the hidden moon.

Hardly daring to breathe, Eilan moved between the great stones, and looked down into the pool. This at least had been part of her training, for one of her first skills was to see in the scrying bowl. A sudden wind ruffled the waters, and as they cleared she realized that the bowl had been like a candle to the sun beside the power of the pool.

In its depths Eilan saw the sea, glittering emerald and sapphire beneath a sky like translucent blue glass. As she stared, pool and forest and stones all disappeared and she floated like a bird on the wing above the waves. Embraced by those waters was an island girt with cliffs of red sandstone, crowned by white temples set among groves of dark trees. On the highest hill stood a temple greater than all the others, whose roof gleamed with gold.

Eilan swooped lower, and saw a white-robed woman pacing along the parapet, gazing out to sea. There was gold on the woman's neck and wrists, gold bound her brow, and her hair was like flame, but she had Caillean's eyes. A young man emerged from the temple and knelt before her, pressing his head against her belly. As the priestess blessed him, Eilan saw the tattooed dragons coiling up his arms. And it seemed to her that a voice like falling raindrops sang -

"Alas for the land beyond the wave — Alas for the land that none could save — The knowledge lost that gods once gave . . ."

Even as the singing faded, the scene changed. She had the sense that many years had passed. Suddenly the center of the island exploded in a great gout of ruddy flame, and the waters rose like a wall of green glass and swallowed trees and temples and all. Even as the island fell, a fleet of ships sped away from it, leaping through the water like frightened gulls. One with a dragon painted on its sail she followed as it arrowed through the water, faring northward until silver mists blotted out the sun's radiance, and the sea grew gray and green as the waters she knew.

Now she saw land once more, white cliffs and high grassy downs. Over hill and dale she soared, and came to a high, broad plain where long lines of men toiled with ropes, dragging great blocks of stone. Part of the henge was in place already and she could envision the rest of it. She had heard the Giants' Dance described often enough to recognize the great circle of stones. The man who was directing the work looked like her father, but he deferred to another who reminded her of Gaius, shorter and dark as a Silure tribesman, but vibrant with power. The second man gestured towards the henge, and she saw the dragons that had been tattooed upon his forearms ripple as the muscles moved.

A wind stroked the high grass of the plain, and when it passed, the scene had changed once more. Fascinated, Eilan watched as one image followed another. Coloring and cast of feature changed as each new people came into the land. But again and again she recognized an expression or gesture that was familiar — her grandfather's touch on a harp; Lhiannon's regal grace; and even herself, riding in a chariot like a queen. A tall man rode beside her, and she knew that it was he whose touch had given her access to her own power.

"All that has been will ever be;

The dragon rises from the sea;

Only the wise are truly free -"

came that clear voice from beyond the world.

The last image was of a hill of knobbed granite where the purple heather grew. Chill winds swept eastward from the sea, scouring the rolling fields. In this windswept place real trees grew only along the strait where the island fronted the grim bulk of the mainland. Even as she realized that she was seeing Mona, the scene changed, and Eilan saw men of her own race clad in white, and women in robes of midnight blue, their faces grim as they piled wood into great pyres.

For a moment she did not understand. Then a shiver of light rippled along the opposite shore. She blinked, recognizing Roman armor. The people of Mona saw it too, and suddenly the pyres were blazing. The priestesses danced forward, their shadows contorting as they screamed their spells. For a time the Romans hung back and their leaders harangued them, then the first rank went splashing into the water. The strait frothed as the Legion pushed across it. They came out dripping, but their swords gleamed red in the firelight. With grim precision they pursued the Druids, and their swords dripped with a brighter crimson as they slew all those they found.

For a time then all was silent. The fading firelight gave way to the cold grey of dawn. Ravens were already busy at the bodies. As Eilan watched, they rose suddenly upward, screaming, their wings darkening the sky.

"While Eagles gorge, the Dragon sleeps,

When Ravens fly, the Lady weeps,

What hate has sown compassion reaps . . ."

As she heard the song Eilan felt her heart pierced by sorrow, and the vision blurred as tears filled her eyes.

When she could see again, she was standing beside the pool once more. But she was no longer alone. Mirrored in the water she saw a figure, and looking up she realized that it was a man wrapped in a spotted bull's hide with a headdress framed by hawk's wings and crowned by the antlers of a great stag. Her eyes widened, for this was a costume the Druids wore only for their most sacred ceremonies.

"Lord —" she gave him the salutation due his rank, "who are you?" For a moment he had reminded her of her grandfather, but she realized now that he was younger, despite the silver in his beard, and in his eyes shone a wisdom and power she had no more than glimpsed in any mortal man.

This is what Ardanos was meant to be! she thought then, like the great priestess she had glimpsed sometimes shining through Lhiannon in the rituals. This was the reality.

He smiled, and it seemed to her that the light brightened around them until the pool shone. "I have been in many shapes, and had many names. I have been the Hawk of the Sun, and the White Stallion, the Golden Stag, and the Black Boar. But here and now I am the Merlin of Britannia."

Eilan swallowed. She had heard something of this in her studies, for the Merlin was a title that had been borne by the Arch-Druid in previous years. But the soul to whom it belonged did not take flesh in every generation, and it was said that only the greatest of the Druids met him in the Otherworld.

She licked her lips. "What do you want of me?"

"Daughter of the Holy Isle, will you serve your people, and your gods?"

"I serve the Lady of Life," answered Eilan steadily. "And I would do Her will."

"This is an hour of omen, when many paths may meet, but only with your consent, for the way that opens before you will require that you give everything, and if you follow it you will find scant understanding or reward." He moved around the edge of the pool.

"And what do the omens say this hour is propitious for?" Close to, the reality of his presence was overpowering. Eilan was glad the old tales had taught her how to reply.

"It is propitious for the making of a priestess in the ancient way," he said gently. "They have told you that a priestess must be physically a virgin, but it is not so. A priestess of the Goddess gives herself at her own time and season, and when the power has passed through her, resumes her sovereignty. She gives, but is never taken. She is the initiator who sanctifies the Sacred King, that he may bestow the blessing on his queen, and life may be renewed in the land."

"And that is what you want of me?" Eilan realized that she was trembling. "How can I do it? I do not know how!"

"Not you, but the Goddess within you —" Eilan's breath stopped as he smiled. "And it is my office to awaken Her."

He released the hide, and as its stiff folds fell away she saw that he was naked, his body the image of the potent god. He smoothed the hair that curled away from her temples, and it seemed to her she would have fallen without the support of those strong hands. Then he bent to kiss her upon the brow.

Goddess! her spirit cried, and felt consciousness ignited by a white flame that surged downward as he kissed her lips, her

breasts, and knelt to bless her womb. In that moment she was aware of her own essence as she had never been before, and yet at the same time, all selfhood was subsumed in Another, and whether that Presence was a part of her or she of it, or Her, Eilan could not say. What she knew beyond question was that in a sense that surpassed even the comfort of Gaius's arms around her, she was no longer alone.

Eilan burned and was not consumed, and it seemed to her that the voice she had heard sang in tones of flame —

"The enemy you would conquer, you must love . . .The law you would fulfill, you must defy . . .The thing that you would keep, you must now

give . . .

Thus will you have the victory . . .Daughter of Druids, through you the Dragon will

be reborn."

Her awareness flared with images of blood and splendor, battles and stone cities and a green tor above an inland sea, fire and sword and finally a fair-haired man with Gaius's eyes who rode to battle with the image of the Lady on his shield.

"I will!" came her reply. "But do not leave me alone—"

"Daughter, I am always here" came the reply. "Thou art Mine, from age to age, while Time endures."

She knew that she had heard those words before, that this was only the renewing of an ancient bond, but the love that lapped her was becoming a sea in which she drowned, a light in which all awareness was consumed.

Eilan's next conscious thought was of floating in cool water. She sensed dark trees around her, and moonlight, and in the next moment many hands had hold of her and were lifting her to the shore. She blinked in amazement as she realized that she was lying beside the bathing pool in the stream below the House of Maidens.

Eilan tried to speak and found she could not. She realized then that what had happened to her was a mystery too deep for telling, even here. And yet she wondered that they could not see it, for the Divine Heat still blazed within her so that her skin dried as soon as they helped her rise from the pool. In silence the other women clad her in a robe of new linen dyed the deep blue that the consecrated priestesses wore.

"You have journeyed between the worlds; you have seen the light that is without shadow; you have been purified . . ." said a voice Eilan recognized as Caillean's. She looked up, but it was the woman she had seen on the parapet in her vision who seemed to be standing there. "Daughter of the Goddess, arise, that your sisters may welcome you —"

The priestesses helped her to her feet and fell in behind her as she followed Caillean along the path that led to the Sacred Grove.

By the light of the torches that flickered among the trees Eilan saw that Lhiannon was waiting, attended by Eilidh. Beside her stood Dieda, her eyes as huge and dazzled as Eilan knew her own must be, and her hair clinging to her brow in damp tendrils. What, Eilan wondered, happened to her? Their eyes met, and all the barriers that the past years had built between them vanished; they remembered only that they were sisters now.

I am glad that we will be making our vows together . . .she thought. The testing was always the same, but each priestess received the vision the gods willed. Dieda, she supposed, would have found music. She looked at the other girl, and it seemed to her that the Goddess smiled back at her from Dieda's eyes.

Eilan looked around her and saw that they were all here — Miellyn and Eilidh and the others who had taught her for the past three years. But in each woman's face she saw a reflection of the light of the Otherworld, and in some of them, something more, a hint of faces she had seen in her visions, constantly changing and yet always the same.

Why do men fear death when we will live again? Eilan wondered then. The Druids taught that the soul could take many forms through the circling years, and she had always thought she believed it, but now she knew that it was true.

At last she understood Caillean's serenity, and the holiness that despite her fragility and fallibility, she sensed in Lhiannon. They too had been where she had gone, and no mortal accidents could change the truth of it.

She heard the words of the ceremony as if in a dream, and made her vows without hesitation, for the most important promise, the one that included and commanded all others, had already been made to the Goddess in the Otherworld. With the blood still singing in her veins, and the light of the Lady in her eyes, she scarcely felt the prick of the thorn as the blue crescent that proclaimed her priestess was drawn between her brows.

Fourteen

It was the tradition in the Forest House that after the priestesses took their vows they should undergo a period of seclusion. Eilan was grateful. During the days that followed her initiation she lay as exhausted as Lhiannon after giving an Oracle, and even when she recovered physically, she found her attention focused inward as she tried to understand what had occurred.

Sometimes the Druid's words to her seemed impossible — a demented dream born of her frustrated love for Gaius. But when the priestesses gathered in the frosty darkness to salute the winter moon, Eilan would find her spirit lifted as the women's voices soared. At such times, when the moonlight filled her like a silver flame, she knew that what she had experienced was no dream.

Sometimes she found Caillean watching her rather curiously, but not even when the older priestess taught them the secrets of the Wise Ones who had come over the sea — the lore that only the sworn priestesses were allowed to learn — did Eilan feel free to speak of the Merlin and the destiny she believed he had offered her. For gradually she had realized that whatever ecstasies the other priestesses experienced in their initiations, this mystery had been for her alone. And so the dark days of winter passed and lengthened into spring, and the mark of the Goddess healed upon Eilan's brow.

Gaius lounged on the bench in his father's office at Deva, breathing deeply of the breeze that came through the open window and wondering how soon he could get away. For a year he had been attached to his father's staff, and he was tired of fortress walls. Spring was overwhelming the fields and woodlands. He could smell apple blossom on that breeze, and it made him think of Eilan.

"Most of the men will be taking leave for the Floralia, but I don't want too many of my officers away at one time." His father's voice seemed to come from far away. "When you're up for leave where will you go?"

"I hadn't thought about it," Gaius blurted out. Some of the officers used their free time to go hunting, but killing things for sport no longer particularly interested him. Really, there was nowhere he wanted to be.

"You might go and see the Procurator," his father suggested. "You haven't met his daughter yet."

"And if the gods are kind to me I never will," Gaius returned abruptly to the present and sat up. His father looked pained.

"Now, how could it possibly hurt you," Macellius inquired, obviously holding on to his temper, "just to see the girl? I think she's already fifteen years old."

"Father, I know she's marriageable. How stupid do you think I am, anyway?"

His father only smiled. "I haven't said a word about marrying her."

"You don't have to," Gaius said sullenly. If he could not have Eilan, he was damned if he would marry any woman in Britain -let alone one his father suggested.

"You don't have to be rude," his father said. "As a matter of fact, I was thinking of spending the holidays in Londinium, and -"

"Well, I wasn't," Gaius said, no longer caring what his father thought of his manners. He did not know where he would go but it would be as far away from Londinium as he could possibly get.

"I hope you're not thinking of that British girl again," Macellius commented, almost, Gaius thought, as if his father were reading his mind. If only he had left it at that. But Macellius went on to say, "I'm sure you've had the sense to put her out of your mind for good and all."

And that decided him. "As a matter of fact," he said deliberately, "I was thinking of going to see Clotinus." It had been after staying with the British lord, after all, that he had first met Eilan, and he could at least enjoy the memories.

Gaius enjoyed the trip southward, thinking of Eilan, and of Cynric who might have been his friend and was lost to him, through no fault of their own. Spring was advancing like a conquering army, and the weather was beautiful; mornings clear and cold, making him glad to be warmly clad, and days warm, bright and almost dry except for a sprinkle of soft rain late in the day.

Clotinus greeted him gladly and welcomed him, and although Gaius knew it was mostly that Clotinus wished to keep on the best of terms with the powerful Romans, he enjoyed it anyway. Gwenna had gone away to be married, so there was no one to trouble him.

The household of Clotinus, he realized, was not at all a bad place to spend a vacation. The food was good, and even Clotinus's remaining daughter, only twelve or so, was good company, and sympathetic enough when he told her that his father had tried to arrange a marriage for him with an unknown. She might well have been offering to console him on some subtle level but Gaius remembered - not before time, he thought - what his father had said about entangling himself with native women. If the girl was sending him any wordless signals, he pretended not to notice them.

But except for prayers dimly directed at Venus, he could think of no way to approach Eilan. In sleep he ground himself against his blankets, moaning, and waking, knew that it was of Eilan that he had dreamed.

I love her, he thought in self-pity, when the hopelessness of his situation overwhelmed him. It isn't as if I meant to seduce and abandon the girl. I'd be happy to marry her if I could get the permission of all the people who seem to have made it their business to control our lives. After all, he was twenty-three, and an officer — though a very minor one - in his Legion. If that did not make him old enough to marry at his own will, how old would he have to be?

One day when he was riding out under the excuse of hunting, he found himself traveling past the burned-out walls that once had been the house of Bendeigid, and he realized he must be somewhere in the vicinity of the Forest House. His leg ached a bit as he remembered the boar pit — it seemed to him very long ago - and the first time he had ever laid eyes on Eilan.

I cannot stay here . . . he thought suddenly. Every tree and stone will bring back painful memories. He had thought he could bear it. Certainly seeing old Ardanos from time to time in Deva had not troubled his peace. Perhaps he should ride south to visit his mother's people. It would not please Macellius, but he did not much care to please his father just now.

That night before the fire he spoke of it to Clotinus, who urged him to remain another day or two.

"There will be too many folk on the road till the festival," Clotinus pointed out. "You should stay until that is past at least and then you can travel in comfort."

"People won't bother me, but perhaps I should not travel in full uniform," said Gaius. "I will make better time and attract less attention if I wear the common dress of a Briton."

"That's true," Clotinus grinned sourly. "You are, in a sense, one of us. I daresay I can come up with something that will serve."

The next morning his steward produced clothing which fitted Gaius well enough: tan breeches and a tunic dyed green, in new cloth, clean and decent but not particularly luxurious, and with them a voluminous dark brown cloak of heavy wool. "The nights are still chilly, lad," Clotinus said. "You will need this when darkness falls."

When Gaius put it on his Roman identity seemed to fall away.

"You are no longer Gaius Macellius Severus in this garb." The old man eyed him oddly. Gaius grinned. "As I think I told you, my mother called me Gawen while she lived; now I look nothing else and I should use only that name."

Clotinus was quick to exclaim how well the clothing became him, yet somehow Gaius knew the man regretted the disappearance of his important-looking Roman guest.

"If I attend the festival, I will be just another Briton," Gaius went on. "Maybe I should have you send a message to Macellius that I am traveling in disguise!" He suspected his father would not be pleased, and the excuse of gathering information might justify this escapade.

When Eilan woke on Beltane morning she had the oddest feeling that Gaius was somewhere near. Perhaps, she thought, he is thinking of me. It was Beltane, after all, and all their most significant meetings had been at that festival. It was natural, in any case, that her thoughts should turn to him on this day when, throughout the land, the hearts of men and maidens were turning to love.

Here in the chaste sanctuary of the House of Maidens she should not be thinking of such things, or if she did, she should view them with the detached benevolence of one who existed far beyond such fleshly cravings. During the winter that had been easy. It seemed to her that the passion with which the Druid of her vision had touched her had been refined to a radiance as pure as an altar flame, and her vows of chastity no great sacrifice.

But now, when the sap was rising in the trees and every bud was bursting into flower, she was beginning to wonder. When she thought about her vision, her body flamed, and at night she dreamed about lying with a lover who was sometimes the Druid and sometimes Gaius, and sometimes a stranger with the eyes of a king. My body is still untouched, she thought suddenly, but my spirit is virgin no longer. Goddess, how will I bear this sweet pain?

"Eilan, are you helping Lhiannon prepare for this evening's ritual?" Miellyn's voice brought her back to the world and she shook her head. "Then why not come out with the rest of us this morning and enjoy the festival? It will do you good to get some fresh air."

"The rest of us" turned out to include Senara, who was entirely delighted to be out of doors. It was a crisp bright day, and in the hedges the hawthorn glowed as if the light of the sun had settled on the boughs. The people were jammed together in a way that made Eilan, used to the peace and quiet after her months of seclusion, tremble. How quickly she had grown accustomed to silence and peace, or perhaps her initiation had altered her. She had always been a little uncomfortable in crowds, but she felt now as if she were walking about without her skin.

But Senara was in high spirits as she walked between them. She was fascinated by everything: a stall of round cheeses; a table where a seller of glass bangles had spread his glittering wares; and everywhere, the flowers.

Eilan had not seen so many people since last Beltane when she had met Gaius again. It seemed to her that everyone in Britain or the islands must be here, jostling, laughing, eating, drinking; and every craft from the making of cakes to rope-dancing.

"Will Lhiannon be here during the day?" Senara asked.

Miellyn nodded. "Ardanos will escort her. It is a part of her duty to show herself to the crowds at festivals." Miellyn paused, and added "And not the happier part. Between ourselves, I think she is very tired. Every year now, I wonder if it will be her last festival."

Seeing Eilan's face grow pale, she added, "Does it frighten you? Death is as much a part of life as birth; as a priestess you should know that."

But the crowds were so thick she could hardly hear what Miellyn was saying. A group of people were watching a man with a dancing bear; Senara cried out that she wanted to see, and they pressed forward for a better view. As people glimpsed the blue linen dresses of priestesses from the Forest House they parted before them till they stood at the ringside, watching the animal dance - or, at least, lumber heavily in a circle on its hind legs, which she supposed was as near as such a beast could come to dancing. The bear's muzzle was tightly wrapped with rope; she thought it looked miserable.

"Poor thing," she said, and Miellyn sighed.

"Sometimes it comes to me that Lhiannon is like that bear," the other priestess replied. "Always on display, never speaking her own words." Eilan gasped at the thought of comparing the High Priestess to a trained animal.

"And who leads her?" Senara giggled. "Miellyn, you should not say such things."

"Why not? Speaking the truth is usually considered to be a virtue," Miellyn said stoutly, and Eilan was reminded of Caillean. Her grandfather's treatment of the High Priestess seemed very different from the sovereignty that the Druid of her vision had proclaimed.

"I speak the truth as I see it; and when I see Lhiannon growing so feeble, I wonder —"

Miellyn did not finish her sentence, for at that moment the bear dropped to all fours and lumbered directly toward them. Senara shrieked and jumped away, but the crowd pressed in on every side. Eilan pulled back, stepping on a strange woman's dress, and hearing it rip.

"Watch where you are stepping!" the stranger said peevishly. Eilan apologized, trying to make herself smaller, and at that moment the bear surged forward again, his leading rope coming loose as someone cried out in alarm. The whole crowd pressed backward and when Eilan recovered her balance Miellyn and Senara had disappeared in the crushing crowd.

It was the first time in years that Eilan had been alone. She had grown accustomed to the constant chaperonage of the Forest House. Now it occurred to her that the supervision had another purpose than propriety; the presence of her sisters had helped to keep people away both physically and psychically. Alone, the tumult of alien thoughts and emotions buffeted her like a strong wind. She tried to draw strength from the earth for protection, but the strange faces surrounding her filled her with confusion. How did Lhiannon stand walking among the people when she was already half-tranced and opened to the power of the gods? So hemmed in by the crowd and the press of strangers was she that she could see nothing familiar; not even the avenue of trees that led towards the Forest House, nor the mound from which they gave the Oracles.

Once she glimpsed through the crowd what looked like a familiar blue gown; but when she neared it, it was the cloak of a complete stranger. Another time she thought she spotted a group of priestesses; but there were four of them, and by the time it occurred to her that her companions could have met with some others from the Forest House and that they could all be looking for her they had disappeared in the press of strangers again. The temporary landscape of the fair seemed as strange to her as the Otherworld. This is ridiculous — shielding myself from other people's emotions was the first thing they taught us! I should simply ask someone, she kept telling herself, but vulnerable as she was, she dared not speak to a stranger; for what would they think of a priestess who could not find the way back to her own dwelling place?

She moved through the crowds, trying to hold reasonless terror at bay. If she could just restore her defenses, she would ask someone in which direction the Forest House lay. Some day, no doubt, she would look back on this day with amusement, as an adventure. Only at the moment there could be no doubt that she was both lost and terrified.

A sudden movement of the crowd swept her almost off her feet; she lost her balance and collided with a man in a dark cloak. He murmured something, then started. "Eilan! Is it really you?" Strong hands seized her elbows and a familiar voice demanded, "Where did you come from?"

And Eilan looked up into the one face which of all the faces in the world she had least expected to see; the face of Gaius Macellius.

Wordless, she clung to him. He felt her trembling and pulled her closer. Abruptly the confusion around her was stilled by the circle of his arms.

"Eilan -" he repeated. "I did not dare dream I would find you here!"

But I did, thought Eilan dimly. When I woke this morning my first thought was that you were near; why did I not trust it?

His arms tightened around her; and in that moment she forgot all of Caillean's words of warning, all her own misgivings and fears. She knew only that she was happy.

She laughed a little shakily. "I'm afraid I lost myself; I was trying to return to the Forest House, or at least to the other priestesses who came to the festival, but I was not sure which way to go."

"The road is over there," he began, and then at her involuntary movement, broke out, "Must you really go back at once? I came to this - this part of the world, only in the hope of seeing you —"

She could hear, as clearly as if he had spoken, I cannot bear to let her go now!

"If you go we may never meet again," he burst out, his voice shaking as he spoke. "I think I could not bear it, to lose you again. Eilan . . ." His lips hesitated on the sound of her name like a caress; she felt it like a wash of cool fire across her skin. "You cannot leave me . . ." he murmured into her veil. "It is Fate that has brought you here, alone . . ."

Not precisely alone! she thought, smiling at the surging crowds around them. But it was true; only Fate, or the Goddess, could have brought her here, to his arms. Deliberately she set aside the training that had required a sworn priestess in the company of a man who was neither father, grandsire of brother to keep her eyes modestly cast down, and looked at him.

And what had she thought she would see? What could her eyes tell her, she wondered, seeing how strongly his hair still curled off his forehead, the stubborn jut of the jaw beneath the short beard he had grown on his last campaign, and the naked need in his dark eyes, that her heart did not already know? The inner and outer vision came abruptly together, and she saw at once the pinched face of the boy she had nursed four years ago, the strong features of the man he was becoming, and something else, a face battered by experience and discontent, its young promise being eroded by the years.

My poor love - she thought, is that what you will be?

"Must you really go?" he repeated, and she murmured "No."

Gaius swallowed, and lifted her veil back from her forehead. She felt him stiffen then, and realized that he had noticed for the first time the blue crescent drawn between her brows.

"I am a priestess," she said quietly and felt him flinch in understanding. But he did not let her go, and she did not pull away.

The very thought that she might not see him again was beginning to take the light from the sky. No doubt Caillean would have told her to leave him at once; but for once she would not do what the older priestess thought wiser, but what she wanted to do. And whatever came of it, this time, at least, Caillean could not be punished for it.

Two drovers blundered into them and backed away, eyeing them oddly as they caught sight of Eilan's blue robes. Gaius frowned and wrapped his brown cloak around her, pulling her veil back up to hide her bright hair.

"Let's get you out of this crowd, anyway," he muttered. His arm was still around her, strong and steadying, and as they walked on, neither knew quite where they were going, only that they were together, and it was away from the crowds.

"Tell me how came you here? I had no notion that you were in this part of the world."

"I think I came to see you," he began, and Eilan leaned against him, listening.

"It was Fate, or perhaps my father. At least I was heading the opposite way to where he wanted me to go! Is little Valeria well?"

"Senara - so we call her in the House of Maidens. Indeed, she is perfectly well and happy."

"I am glad to hear it," he answered, but she could tell that already Senara was forgotten. "Cynric is proscribed, did you know?" Gaius said then., "I met him before he left, and he told me to stay away from you . . ."

His voice faltered. What did he want to hear from her? wondered Eilan. Maybe only the sound of her voice, to know she was thinking of him. Couldn't he tell? She was aware of him with every sense in her body, every inch of her skin.

"Maybe he's right. My father has taken it into his head that I should marry some Roman girl, the Procurator's daughter in Londinium —"

"Will you obey him?" Eilan asked carefully, her blood pounding. Marriage! Why had he told her? She knew it changed nothing, but why should the thought give her such pain?

Somehow they had reached the edge of the fairgrounds. Another step would hide them in the shelter of the hazel trees. Last night, men and girls had wandered these woods to gather greenery and flowers and to lie with each other on the new grass. The forest still remembered; Eilan could feel the memory of their passion like an echo around her, conflicting with the tumult of the fair.

He turned to face her. "You know I will never marry anyone but you!"

"I cannot marry," she answered him. "My life is sworn to the gods. . ."

"Then I will never marry anyone," he said firmly.

But you will . . .Even as the irrational burst of happiness surged through her, foreknowledge tolled in Eilan's awareness. An image flickered in her mind of the woman who would be his wife. And why should Eilan resent her? Was she so selfish that she would

wish Gaius to be alone for ever? Or had she wanted him to carry her away, to move heaven and earth to have her released from her vows? What words of men could erase the crescent set between her brows?

She stumbled over a tree root, and Gaius reached out to steady her. Blinking, she realized that they had entered the forest. The noise of the crowds was suddenly faint with distance, as if they had traveled miles away, as if they had stepped into the Otherworld. Great trees hid them in a leaf-dappled shadow. The sun had gone behind a cloud and a chill wind was beginning to blow. Was it going to rain? As if in answer, a few drops blew down on them, the beginnings of rain or perhaps moisture from the upper leaves.

"Eilan . . ." he whispered, and his grip tightened. "Please — Eilan!"

Turning, she felt the force of his need for her, and the world seemed to stop. From the moment the crowd had swept her away from Miellyn until now, thought Eilan, she had wandered in a dream. But she was awake now, and she could see both past and future with a terrible clarity. Perhaps Fate had brought them here, but what she decided at this moment would determine his future and her own — and perhaps other lives as well. Awareness pulsed outward, embracing other times in an ever-widening circle until she saw once more the bright-haired warrior who had been in her vision, with the Dragons on his wrists and the eagle-look she had learned to love in Gaius in his eyes.

Now it was he who was trembling. With clumsy fingers Gaius put back her veil and his hand, falling, brushed her cheek, for a moment clung there, and then, as if an irresistible force had drawn it downward, slipped along the softness of her neck and came to rest upon the swell of her breast beneath the opening of her gown. The turf stretched soft and green before them. She heard, like an echo, "The Goddess is not worshiped in a temple made by human hands . . ."

But it was forbidden - not six months ago she had sworn to give her virginity only to the Sacred King. And like an answer, the certainty came to her. From this man of two bloods shall spring the King who is to be . . .For this, the Merlin had initiated her. This was her destiny.

When they first met, she must have seemed to Gaius a child, but she knew herself immeasurably older now. Like an echo, the voice of the Merlin came to her: "A priestess of the Goddess gives herself at her own time and season, and when the power has passed through her resumes her sovereignty."

"By the rites of men we cannot be married," she said softly. "Are you willing to take me as your wife in the old way, as the priestesses mated with the men of the royal kindred, before the gods?"

He groaned as his hand curved around her breast, and she felt her nipple hardening against his palm. "Till death and after, by Mithras and the Mother," he muttered. "Eilan, oh, Eilan!"

When the Merlin touched her, the fire had flared from the crown of her head to her heels; but this flame seemed to rise upward from the earth, burning all other thoughts away.

She touched his face and he reached for her. A clumsy hand tangled in her hair and her veil fell unheeded to the ground. Then his lips claimed hers, no longer gentle but demanding, like a starving man. For a moment surprise held her still in his grasp; then she became aware of an answering hunger, and her lips opened, welcoming him.

As they kissed her arms went around his neck; her hair, released from its careful coils, tumbled down her back as hairpins scattered across the grass. Gaius groaned and pulled her against him. Now she could feel the hard strength of his body, and his need. His hands moved from her shoulders down her back, molding her body to his.

Eilan felt the strength going out of her knees. She clung to him, and her weight drew them both downward to the green grass. His lips moved to her cheek, her eyelids, and the soft skin of her neck as if he would devour her, and she arched against him, trembling. Her skirts had ridden upwards as they fell; his exploring hand moved down her body, paused a moment as he touched soft skin, and then brushed upward again beneath the cloth until it came to rest in the sacred place between her thighs.

Gaius grew suddenly still, breathing hard. Then he pulled away, his eyes wide and dazed, as if they had looked into too much light.

"Lady," he whispered. She could see the tremors shaking him, but somehow he was finding the control to act deliberately, dealing with their clothing, worshiping her body with an authority that grew until the light filled him also and she realized that he was not entirely Gaius any more.

"My King!" she whispered as the flame he had kindled seared along every nerve. "Come to me!"

He sighed then, sinking into her embrace as the sun into the sea, yielding to her even as she gave herself to him. In the distance she could hear shouting, as if it came from another world, and knew that the priests had lit the Beltane fires.

But a greater fire was blazing within her, and by that time, even if Caillean and all the women in the Forest House had been standing in a row watching them, Eilan would neither have known nor cared.

The day was far advanced and the sun was setting when Gaius finally stirred. Eilan drew reluctantly away from him; he reached for her once more and kissed her hard.

"I must return to the Forest House," she said very gently. "They will be looking for me." Indeed, Miellyn would be beside herself with worry. But if Eilan could manage somehow to get back into the enclosure unseen, they might believe that the crowds had kept them apart and she had somehow found her way back alone.

Even now, when passion had ebbed and she could think clearly once more, Eilan did not regret breaking her vows; the Goddess had known and had not intervened, proof enough that she had served a higher law. Part of the secret doctrine that Caillean had revealed in the months since Eilan's initiation was that before the coming of the Romans, the priestesses had taken lovers as they chose, or even married. It was only since the coming of the Romans that men had had the arrogance to control the private lives of their women. Caillean had never met the man who would tempt her to break her vows, but perhaps she would understand. On the other hand, Caillean would not agree with Eilan's choice of a lover, so perhaps she had better not tell the older priestess after all.

"Eilan, don't go back." Gaius raised himself on one elbow to look down at her. "I am afraid for you."

"I am the Arch-Druid's granddaughter; what do you suppose they would do to me?" she replied.

Her father had once said he would kill her with his own hands if she allowed what Gaius had just done, but this was not the moment to mention that. She was a woman now, and a priestess sworn, accountable only to her sisters and the gods.

"If I were there to protect you, it wouldn't matter what they tried," he said darkly.

"And would I be so safe if we ran away? Where could we go? The wild tribes of the North might accept me, but you would be in danger, and where else could we run beyond the reach of Rome? You are a soldier, Gaius, as bound by oaths as I. I broke one vow to fulfill a greater one, but that does not release me. I still belong to the Goddess, and must trust her to take care of me . . ."

"That's more than I can do —" he said then, rubbing his eyes.

"Nonsense. If you go back on active service you will certainly be in greater danger than I." Eilan clung to him once more at the thought of cold iron piercing the heart that now beat against her own, and as he kissed her again, all thoughts of the future were forgotten. For a little while.

Fifteen

Lying with a man had not, despite the whispered speculations Eilan remembered from the House of Maidens, destroyed her magic. At least the shielding spell she murmured as she eased through the kitchen gate and along the path to the Hall of the Priestesses appeared to prevent the few people who were about from noticing her as she passed.

In her own room she slid out of her gown and washed herself, hiding her stained shift until she should have time to soak the smear of maiden blood away. That done, she put on her night-garment and built up the fire, realizing that she was half frozen with cold, and famished. It was past the hour of the sunset meal. She ought to go to the kitchens and find herself something to eat; but she needed time to think about what had happened to her and Gaius. Or perhaps, she thought with unaccustomed self-mockery, she simply wished to close her eyes and relive their lovemaking again.

She might have expected that Gaius would be eager, but not that he would be so tender, holding back until he quivered like a drawn bow lest he go too fast and hurt her. But virgin though her body might be, the pleasure that pulsed through her had more than matched his. And in the final moments, when the ecstasy became almost too great for mortal endurance, it had seemed to her that once more it was the Goddess who encompassed her and received the gift of the God.

She sighed, noting the unaccustomed soreness and the sweet lassitude that weighted her limbs. Will the Goddess strike me dead for breaking my oath, she wondered, or will my punishment be to weep in the night, remembering what I will never have again? Isn't that better than never having known it at all? She pitied Caillean, scarred since childhood from her only experience of what men call love.

As day followed day, a certain equilibrium began to assert itself. Eilan attended Lhiannon at the rite of the full moon, and no lightning struck. The advanced training that followed initiation continued, both in skills and in lore, and as the days grew longer, they met with the older priestesses when weather permitted in one of the gardens or in the holy grove.

There were thirteen sacred oak trees, twelve in a circle, and the oldest, in the center, shading the stone altar. To Eilan, looking up at them, it seemed that even in the drowsy warmth of afternoon the trees still held something of the magic with which the moon had vested them a few nights before. Caillean's voice receded to a background murmur as Eilan gazed upward. Surely the light that glowed in their leaves was more than sunshine. All her senses seemed heightened since Beltane.

The voice of the priestess came into focus again. "In the old days there was a sisterhood of nine high priestesses, one for each region of this land. They stood behind the queen of each tribe, advising and supporting her."

Eilan sat back against the sturdy trunk of the oak tree, linking into its steady strength, and tried to keep her eyes open.

"They were not queens themselves?" Dieda asked.

"Their role was a less public one, though they were often of the royal line. But they were the initiators of kings, for when a king came to his hallowing, it was the priestess who became the channel by which the Goddess accepted his service, conferring a power that he in turn passed on to his queen."

"They were not virgins," Miellyn said sourly, and Eilan found herself suddenly wide awake, remembering the Merlin's words. Had she been the Goddess for Gaius? What then was his destiny?

"The priestesses lay with men when the service of the Lady required it," responded Caillean in a neutral tone. "But they did not marry, and they bore children only when it was the only way to preserve a royal line. They remained free."

"In the Forest House we do not marry, but I would not call us free," Dieda observed, frowning. "Even though the Priestess of the Oracle chooses her successor, the Council of Druids must approve her choice."

"Why did things change?" Eilan asked, need adding intensity to her tone. "Was it because of Mona?"

"The Druids say that our present seclusion is for our own, protection," Caillean answered with the same careful neutrality.

"They say that only if we remain pure as Vestals will we be respected by Rome."

Eilan stared at her. Then what I did with Gains was not flouting the Law of the Lady, but only the Druids' rules!

"But will we always have to live like this?" Miellyn asked wistfully. "Is there no place where we can speak the truth and serve the Goddess without interference from men?"

Caillean's eyes closed. For a moment it seemed to Eilan that the very trees stilled, waiting to hear what the priestess would say.

"Only in a place outside time . . ." Caillean whispered. "Protected by a mist of magic from the world." And for a moment then Eilan seemed to see what the older woman was seeing - mist drifting like a veil across the silver waters, and white swans singing as they took the air.

Then Caillean started and opened her eyes, staring in confusion around her, and through the trees they heard the gong summoning them to the evening meal.

For a time Eilan's anxieties were eased, but as the days lengthened towards Midsummer, she began to guess why the Goddess had not stricken her at once. At first, when the usual time came to seclude herself for purification according to the customs of the Forest House and there was no bloodsign, she was unconcerned; she had never been regular. But when the second month had come and gone, she became certain that the fertile magic of Beltane had worked on her only too well.

Her first, instinctive joy soon yielded to terror. What would Bendeigid say? Or do? She wept then, wishing that she could go back in time and seek the comfort of her mother's arms. Then, as the days went by, she wondered if instead of pregnancy some serious illness had seized upon her as punishment for her sacrilege.

All her life she had been healthy and strong, but now she grew sick whenever she tried to eat or drink; shudders racked her every day and she had no appetite for her food. She longed for harvest and thought wistfully of its fruits, as if they would not make her so sick. About all she could swallow without retching was the thinnest and sourest of buttermilk. Surely her sister Mairi's pregnancies had not tormented her this way, so this could hardly be an early symptom. Even the waters of the Sacred Well, when the priestesses gathered on the longest day to drink of them and see the future, racked her with icy shudders.

From time to time she sensed Caillean watching her, but the older woman was sick too; Eilan, who was perhaps closer to her than any other, did not know what ailed her. When asked, Caillean said that her moon cycle was troubled, but the older woman's ill-health only filled Eilan with greater fear. Surely Caillean could not be pregnant! Eilan wondered sometimes if her sin had cursed the whole Forest House, if her illness would spread first to Caillean, and presently kill them all. She dared not ask.

Caillean plucked a few thyme leaves from the bed Lads had growing in the inner court and rubbed them between her fingers, breathing deeply as the sweet scent hung in the moist morning air. Thyme was good for headaches, and perhaps it would clear hers. Today, at least, her womb had ceased the painful intermittent bleeding that had plagued her all summer, and perhaps this contact with the earth could ease the nagging sense of dread that had haunted her as well.

From the privies on the other side of the wall she could hear someone retching. She waited, wondering who had been awakened at such an early hour. Presently she glimpsed a figure in a white shift slipping through the archway as if she feared to be seen. For the first time in weeks Caillean's inner senses awakened and she knew who it must be, and with a sudden certainty, what was wrong with her.

"Eilan, come here!" It was the priestess-voice of command, and the girl was too well trained not to obey. With lagging footsteps, Eilan returned, and Caillean noted the pinched cheeks and the new fullness in the girl's breasts. Her own troubles must have been more distracting than she realized, she thought bitterly.

"How long have you been this way? Since Beltane?" she asked. Eilan stared at her, her face contorting. "My poor child!" Caillean held out her arms and suddenly Eilan was clinging to her and sobbing.

"Oh, Caillean, Caillean! I thought I was ill . . . I thought I was going to die!"

Caillean stroked her hair. "Have you had your courses during this time?" Eilan shook her head. "Then it is life, not death, you are carrying," she said, and felt the betraying release of tension in the thin body beneath her hands.

Her own eyes filled with tears. This was a dreadful thing, certainly, and yet she could not help feeling a desperate envy, remembering how her own body was betraying her now and not knowing if what had come to her was only the end of the fertility she had never used or the end of her life indeed.

"Who has done this to you, my darling?" she murmured into the girl's soft hair. "No wonder you have been so quiet. Why didn't you tell me? You cannot have thought I would not understand!"

Eilan looked up with red-rimmed eyes, and Caillean remembered that this girl did not lie. "It was not rape -"

Caillean sighed. "Then I suppose it was that Roman boy." It was not a question and Eilan nodded mutely. Caillean sighed again and looked off into space. "Poor child," she said at last. "If I had known at once, something might have been contrived, but you are three months along. We will have to tell Lhiannon, you know."

"What will she do to me?" Eilan quavered.

"I don't know," Caillean said. "Nothing very much, I imagine." There was an ancient law that demanded death for a priestess who broke her vows, but surely they would never apply that to Eilan. "Probably you will only be sent away - you were prepared for that, I suppose. But I am sure that is the worst," she added.

And if they try to punish her more harshly, thought Caillean with a spurt of her old energy, they will have to reckon with me!

"You wretch, you dirty little animal!" cried Lhiannon. A sudden purple suffused the High Priestess's cheeks and Eilan recoiled. "Who did this to you?"

Eilan shook her head, her eyes burning.

"You did this on purpose - you did not scream? Traitor! Did you mean to shame us all, or did you simply not think? Rutting like an animal in heat, after all our care for you —" Lhiannon sucked in breath, gasping horribly.

Caillean had suspected there would be a scene when the High Priestess was told, but it was worse than she expected. Lhiannon's health and temper had become increasingly precarious, and Caillean could see this was one of her bad days. But by then it was too late. Suddenly she slapped the girl, shouting, "Do you think this was a holy passion? You are no better than a whore!

"Lhiannon —" Caillean got an arm around the old woman's shoulders and felt some of the tension ease. "This is not good for you. Calm yourself, Mother; let me get you some tea." She passed her hand across the older woman's brow and Lhiannon sagged in her arms. One-handed, Caillean poured tea from the flask into a beaker and held it to Lhiannon's lips. A minty fragrance spread through the room. The High Priestess drank, then let out her breath in a long, shuddering sigh.

Eilan still stood numb and tearless before her. It had taken all her strength to come here. What happened next was in the lap of the gods, and at this moment, still appalled by Lhiannon's fury, she obviously found it hard to care. When Lhiannon roused, she seemed to have forgotten her fury.

"Sit down!" she said querulously. "It hurts my neck to look up at you."

Caillean pointed to a three-legged stool, and Eilan, still hot-eyed and resentful, complied.

"Very well," Lhiannon said in something closer to her normal tone. "Now what's to be done? I'm sorry I slapped you, but this upsets plans . . ." She stopped, frowning. "Well, we must manage something. I suppose we had better tell Ardanos."

"For the life of me I cannot see what he has to do with it," said Caillean. Unless, she thought, it is his plans that have been upset by Eilan's disgrace! "It's not as if she were the first to kindle from the Beltane fires, nor will she be the last, I am sure. It would be easier if Eilan were any other man's daughter. But Ardanos and Bendeigid will just have to live with it! Surely the fate of a priestess of Vernemeton is our own affair. Do you mean to say we cannot find the right thing to do?"

"I did not say that," Lhiannon answered fretfully, "but Ardanos should be told."

"Why? What law requires it except the Roman law which makes women no more than chattels of their menfolk?" Caillean grew angry. "Do you really have such respect for his wisdom?"

Lhiannon passed her hand over her eyes. "Why must your voice be so sharp, Caillean? You will give me a headache. You must know by now that it is not a question of wisdom but of power. By the treaty that protects this place, everything to do with the Forest House is in his charge."

"Yes, more's the pity," said Caillean bitterly. "Tell me, who appointed him to be the god?"

Lhiannon rubbed her left arm as if it pained her. "In any case he is one of Eilan's few surviving kinsmen, and it is only right to tell him," she said tiredly.

Caillean felt an unwilling pang of pity. Obviously Lhiannon was only too eager to unload the problem on to someone else's shoulders. In view of her poor health, perhaps this was not altogether surprising.

Eilan was still silent, as if this confession had taken all her strength. Her gaze was turned inward, as if what they said had nothing at all to do with her, or she no longer cared.

Say something, child! Caillean glared at her. This is your fate we are deciding! Caillean knew that Ardanos could not do anything to her; he had tried, but Lhiannon was fond of her fosterling, and they had come to a certain accommodation by carefully pretending that Caillean did not exist. She, for her part, tried to avoid attracting his attention, or opposing him; but for Eilan's sake she felt she would even try to face the old Druid down.

"Very well then, send for Ardanos," she said aloud. "But think twice before you put her into his power."

"Well?" Ardanos frowned at the three women who awaited him in the High Priestess's dwelling. "What has happened that is so important that you had to send for me?" Lhiannon looked fragile and tired, and Caillean loomed like a shadow behind her. Was it her health? he wondered with a sudden stab of alarm as he noticed Eilan sitting beside the window. Had they sent for him because the High Priestess was dying? She did not look that ill, and surely they would not have already told Eilan . . .

"Be clear about this," said Caillean clearly. "I did not send for you. And if it were my dying breath I would still deny that you have authority over the priestesses."

"Woman!" Ardanos thundered. "What -?"

"And don't you say 'Woman!' to me in that tone, as if they had nothing to do with you, as if your own mother had not been one," Caillean retorted furiously. "Men who do not fear the Goddess -who are they to speak for Her?"

Ardanos grimaced and turned back to Lhiannon. "Well, you had better tell me what all this is about," he said, none too gently. "It is for sure that I will not hear it from Caillean."

This was not a good time for him to leave Deva, he thought in irritation. With the Governor away fighting in Caledonia, some of the local officials had begun to presume on their powers. He needed to be back where his agents could keep him informed, and if necessary he could use his contacts among the Romans to prevent trouble.

Lhiannon made an odd strangled sound, coughed, and tried again. "Eilan is pregnant by the Prefect's son, and we do not know what to do."

Ardanos looked at her in amazement, then his gaze traveled to Eilan. "Is this true?"

Eilan said in a low voice, "I always tell the truth."

"Aye," grunted Ardanos, his mind whirling with calculation. "I'll give you that; you're no liar, girl."

She looked as if she would much rather have told him nothing at all. Caillean moved to her side and took her hand protectively. He felt the anger rising. Do these silly hens have any idea how devastating this could be? The very survival of the Forest House depended on maintaining the myth of their purity! They must be made to understand!

"Why do you ask me?" His words rang with all the power of bardic training. "You know the penalty as well as I. It is death for a sworn priestess to lie with any man except the Sacred King."

Death. The word made a silence, even in the quiet of the room. Then Lhiannon moaned and Caillean moved quickly to catch her in her arms.

"You cruel, heartless old man!" she burst out. "And to think it is she who insisted on laying this before you!" She held the older woman against her, feeling for the pulse point at the neck. "Goddess! Her heart is leaping like a frightened horse! But you have not quite killed her, not this time." She straightened as Lhiannon moaned and stirred. "You know her heart is weak. Would you like to try again?"

Ardanos bent over her. He said quietly, "She has only fainted; she will recover." He felt more shaken than he had expected. "I did not know that it would upset her so."

He helped Caillean to lift the old woman, surprised at how light she was beneath the robes, and lay her on the bed, raised a little on pillows so that she could breathe. Caillean poured a few drops of some potion into a cup of water and set it to the High Priestess's lips. Ardanos saw the muscles of Lhiannon's throat constrict as she swallowed, and after a few moments her eyelids fluttered open once more.

Her eyes are still beautiful, Ardanos thought in surprise, even now, when they are clouded by pain. He would grieve when death took her, but that knowledge could not be allowed to interfere with what he had to do.

"Not death," she whispered. "Is there no other way?"

Ardanos glanced at Eilan, who sat huddled on her bench with her knuckles against her lips, staring at Lhiannon.

"I would say the same if it were my own daughter, Dieda. I thought at first that it was she —"

"Dieda doesn't matter —" Lhiannon said more strongly. "We cannot let them hurt Eilan!"

"Of course not," Caillean said soothingly. "Ardanos knows as well as you or I, that this penalty has never been exacted. After all, it is not as if this were an unknown thing."

"Well," Ardanos asked carefully, "what do you suggest we do?" It gave him a perverse satisfaction to see Caillean so subdued. Perhaps she would be less troublesome now.

"Miellyn's child was fathered by the Year-King, and in any case she miscarried, so the problem did not arise. But five or six years ago there was a case of this kind and the girl was quietly sent away."

"That is true," said Ardanos. "But the girl in question was not the daughter of an important Druid —"

"Nor the granddaughter of one," snapped Caillean. "So now we come to it; you are afraid that it will reflect upon you!"

"Be quiet, Caillean," said Lhiannon. "How can you sit here wrangling with Ardanos while this poor child" - she glanced over at Eilan — "is listening, not knowing whether she is to live or die."

Ardanos looked at his granddaughter; he could read nothing from her expression. Was she being stubborn or did she really not care? He shook his head in exasperation. The work they had done here must not be jeopardized by one silly girl. "Is this known among the others?" he asked, and Caillean shook her head. "Take care to keep it that way, and perhaps we can find a way —"

"Oh, that's kindness!" said Caillean sarcastically, "to do for your own granddaughter as much as you would for a stranger . . ."

"Be quiet, child," Lhiannon repeated tiredly. "You should not speak so to the Arch-Druid. He is trying, I am sure, to do the best he can for Eilan - and for us all."

Caillean looked skeptical, but she held her peace.

"In any case, you are not the only ones concerned here," Ardanos said grimly. The rape of a holy priestess, for that was what he would call it, whatever Eilan might say, was a torch that could set the whole of Britain aflame. He drew his cloak around him and looked down at them. There was one Roman, at least, who should be as anxious to see this handled discreetly as he. "I will go to Deva and speak with Macellius; maybe I will see the young Roman as

well."

During the next month, Eilan's sickness subsided and during much of the time she felt as well as ever. Her loose robes concealed the changes in her breasts, and with a first child it would be some time yet before any rounding was visible in her belly.

She wondered what Gaius had said when he learned of her pregnancy. She was not sorry that she had lain with him, but she saw now the power of the forces arrayed against her, and it seemed to her that she had been a fool to think that things might change. Her visions of being a great priestess in the old way were dimming. Now she wanted only to be the mother of Gaius's child. But even then, despite Ardanos's parting words, she did not dare to believe that they would let her marry him.

At least Caillean and Lhiannon did not seem to believe that her condition disqualified her from participating in the rituals. Most of the time she spent memorizing the full-moon ceremony along with the other sworn priestesses.

It had become a point of pride with her to prove that her loss of virginity had not affected her ability to function as a priestess, so she set herself to memorize the minutiae of the rituals. Of them all, Dieda was her closest match in intelligence. When they were children they had worked to produce the best spun wool or the neatest embroidery and win Rheis's praise. In those days Eilan had pitied her kinswoman because Dieda's mother had died whereas she herself had always had a mother's loving care and had drawn back from competition. Dieda needed to be first; Eilan did not. But now she had a reason to excel.

Eilan had a good mind and, put on her mettle by Dieda, she used it to the utmost. Dieda's memory was more precise, and of course no one could match her singing; but, of the two, Eilan often proved to have the better understanding.

As Lhiannon spoke to them, Eilan found herself hanging on every word. The High Priestess had grown so frail that she found it hard to remember that Lhiannon was only in her sixties now.

Eilan wondered sometimes who would succeed her. It ought to be Caillean, but the Irishwoman had said the priests would never accept her. Miellyn was too outspoken, and bitter since the loss of her child, and Eilidh too retiring. It might be Dieda, she thought then, and wondered what it would be like to live here under her kinswoman's rule.

By the time the moon was at the full once more, Lhiannon seemed much better, but as the ritual progressed, they could hear her voice grow fainter. She completed the ceremony, but it was clear to all of them how much it had cost her. On the following day she collapsed, and this time, when she was put to bed, she could not find the strength to leave it again.

Sixteen

Ardanos might have found a certain satisfaction in telling Macellius Severus what his son had done, but, whatever he hoped for, in the Perfect he had met his equal. Macellius heard him out with great courtesy and then informed him quietly that Gaius had gone to Londinium to be married. And as soon as the Arch-Druid had gone away, he set about making it so.

Macellius had no doubt that Ardanos was telling him the truth. The only surprise was how he could have deluded himself about his son's passion. There was a stubborn streak in the boy that came from him, and a romantic streak that was his legacy from his mother. Macellius rubbed at his eyes. Moruadh had braved the displeasure of all her relations to marry him. He should not have underestimated the force of that wild, Celtic blood.

With so unruly a horse or slave he would have known to take sterner measures. Perhaps it was harder for him to discipline Gaius because so often he saw Moruadh looking out of her son's eyes. But marriage to a good Roman girl would settle the lad. As the Druid's footsteps receded along the tiled corridor, Macellius called for his secretary.

The sight of his employer's stormy face stopped young Valerius from making any of his customary jokes. He saluted smartly, and went in search of Gaius. He found him in the library, reading the account of Caesar's Gallic wars.

"I'll go at once." Gaius put down the scroll. "Do you have any idea what my father wants?"

"No. None. But I think he's angry," Valerius warned. "He had a visit this morning from the old Druid, Ardanos, and he came out looking like thunder, master Gaius."

"Oh? I wonder what the old fellow wanted?" Gaius asked, feeling a tiny shiver begin to work its way up his spine. Ardanos had been in and out of the place since he was a child about some native problem or other. People were always turning up with requests, legitimate and otherwise, and when they proved too unreasonable, it was likely to put his father out of temper. There was no reason for this summons to have anything to do with Ardanos being Eilan's grandfather, but as he strode down the tiled corridor, he could not help worrying.

The elder Severus was holding a set of military orders. "You are to set out for Londinium at once," he barked out.

Gaius looked at him, startled. He opened his mouth to ask why, and realized that his father was in a towering rage.

"I told you to leave that girl alone!"

Comprehension began to dawn. Ardanos must have told the Prefect that he had been with Eilan. Had someone seen them? Surely Eilan had told no one. Gaius would have been happy to proclaim his love from the housetops; it was she who had insisted on secrecy.

"With respect, sir, I don't think -"

"No, you don't think. That's half the trouble," Macellius snarled. "I suppose you do know that you could hardly have done anything worse if you had hunted all over Britain, unless you had raped their High Priestess in broad daylight on their High Altar, or cut down their Sacred Oak. Do you want to get us all massacred?"

Macellius did not wait for an answer. "The folk around here need no excuse for rioting. No, not a word," he said with a peremptory gesture as Gaius would have spoken, "I trusted once to your word - and never again. I don't think for a moment that you raped the girl, but I can believe, all too easily, that you got her pregnant. I have no doubt whatever she's a very good girl in her own way, and that she deserves better of you than this. A sworn virgin, and the Arch-Druid's granddaughter!"

Gaius's mouth slowly closed again. Eilan pregnant! Eilan, carrying his child! He remembered the sweetness of her mouth and the softness of her body beneath him and swallowed, scarcely hearing his father's next words.

"I will not soon forgive you for putting me in a position where we cannot even make honorable amends, but, as things are now around here, I cannot even order you to marry her."

"But I want to —" Gaius began.

Macellius shook his head. "The South would explode as it did twenty years ago if the people heard of it, a fact of which the old man is very well aware. He's already wrung a concession on the levies out of me, and I daresay it won't end there. But at least he shall not use you against me. I have told Ardanos you were in Londinium, and that, my lad, is where you shall go. I'll give you a letter to Licinius, and with luck not see you again until you are properly married."

Gaius heard him in disbelief. "Married? But that's impossible!"

"We'll see about that," snapped his father. "Can you think of any other way to undo your folly? Ardanos has promised they won't hurt the girl, provided you stay away from her, and I can't think of any better way to make certain you never go near her again. You know that Licinius and I have talked of this, and dowry and settlements will be no problem. If she will still have you after this, you will marry that girl."

Gaius shook his head, trying to find words to protest, and his father glared at him.

"You will." he commanded softly but with so much concealed anger that Gaius did not dare protest. "I've gone to too much trouble to save you from your own folly to let you destroy yourself now. You set out in half an hour." His father scribbled his signature on a roll of papyrus and looked up at Gaius. "If you refuse I don't know what they'll do to the girl. You might try thinking of her for a change."

Gaius stared at him, trying to remember the Roman penalty for a Vestal who broke her vows; as he recalled, they buried them alive. He realized abruptly that nothing he could say would be taken as anything but self-defense. Indeed, he could endanger Eilan's life. Fear for her dried up the words in his throat.

Macellius rolled up the letter, sealed it, and handed it to his son. "Take this to Licinius," he instructed. "My orderly Capellus will go with you," he added. "I have already sent word to him to pack your things."

Within the hour, Gaius found himself on the road to Londinium with the massive figure of old Capellus at his side. All his attempts to begin a conversation were politely, but firmly rebuffed. When, almost desperate, he offered the man a bribe - he had to stop, to get word somehow to Eilan - the big man only snorted.

"No offense, sir, but your father told me you'd probably try that, and he paid me well to see you didn't go nowhere but directly to Londinium. And I works for your father and I don't want to be out of a job, see? So you relax sir, and do like the Prefect says. When you think it over, sir, it'll all be for the best, see?"

The journey to Londinium took the best part of six days. By the third day Gaius's natural optimism had begun to reassert itself, and he watched with increasing interest the neat villas that were springing up across the land. He could see now how untamed the West Country was still. But this ordered landscape was what the Empire was meant to be. He admired it, but he was not sure he liked it.

It was nearing dark when they passed the city gates and drew up in front of the Procurator's mansion, set between the Forum, where the treasury offices were located, and the new palace that Agricola was building, with its ornamental pools. He had been to Londinium several times as a child, and when he assumed the toga and officially became a man, but never since Agricola had become governor there.

The city had a gracious glow in the summer dusk, and a cool wind off the river dispelled the mugginess of the day. The scars of Boudicca's burning were mostly hidden now, and the Governor's building plans suggested the noble proportions of the city that would one day be. Of course it would never rival Rome, but in comparison to Deva it was a metropolis.

Gaius handed his letter to an imposing freedman at the portico and was bidden to enter and take a seat in the central courtyard. Here it was still warm, and fragrant with shrubs and flowers set round in pots. From the fountain came a tinkle of falling water and, somewhere in the rooms beyond the courtyard the music of a young girl's laughter. After a time an old gardener came out and began to cut flowers, probably for the table, but he knew, or feigned to know, none of the languages in which Gaius addressed him. For a time Gaius wandered about, glad to stretch his legs after the long day in the saddle. Presently he took a seat on a stone bench, all the fatigue of the journey overtook him, and he fell asleep.

Somehow the sound of a girl's laughter wove itself into his dream . . .Gaius started awake, staring about him, but there was no one to be seen except a heavy-set, middle-aged man on crutches, draped in a formal toga. Gaius sprang to his feet, flushing with embarrassment.

"Gaius Macellius Severus?"

"Yes, sir -"

"I should have known it." The old man smiled, "My name is Licinius, and your father and I have been friends most of our lives. It is a real pleasure to welcome his son. Is your father well?"

"He was when I last saw him a few days ago, sir."

"Good. Good. Well, young man, I had of course hoped he could get away to pay me a visit, but you are most heartily welcome in his stead. Given our arrangement, you can imagine that I've been eager to meet you."

Gaius had been telling himself all the way from Deva that he would not be hurried into any such ill-considered wedding, but he could not burst out into protest before the eyes of his father's old friend. He had agreed to this because of the danger to Eilan and knew he ought to be grateful Licinius was so kindly.

"Yes, sir," he said, temporizing. "Father did say something of this . . ."

"Well, I should hope so," Licinius said gruffly. "As I say, we've had it in our minds since you were born. By Mithras, boy, if Macellius had said nothing of this, I'd have wondered what he was using for a head these days." Despite its gruffness, this was the first wholly friendly voice Gaius had heard for a good many days, and, almost against his will, he was warmed by it. It was good to be welcomed. The Procurator took it for granted that he should be treated as a valued friend and a prospective son-in-law, and it had been a long time since Gaius had been made to feel a part of a family. He realized with a pang that the last time he had been made to feel so had been in the house of Bendeigid. Eilan, Cynric, what would become of them? Would he ever know? He had worried about this all the way to Londinium - he had to stop now.

"Well then, son," said Licinius, "You must be longing to meet your bride."

Speak up, Gaius said to himself. But he could not bring himself to put out the light that glowed in the old man's eyes, and mumbled something noncommittal instead. They will punish Eilan if I try to see her again, he reminded himself sternly. The best thing he could do for her would be to go through this ceremony as expected of him. Or is that just an excuse to avoid a confrontation? he wondered.

But Licinius had already beckoned to a well-dressed upper servant. "Send for the Lady Julia," he ordered.

Gaius knew that now was the time to say that he would have nothing to do with this farce of an arranged marriage - but without waiting for him to reply, the Procurator had hauled himself to his feet.

"She'll be with you in a moment. I'll leave you young people alone to get acquainted." Before Gaius could find the words to stop him, he was limping away.

Julia Licinia had been keeping house for her father since her mother's death three years earlier. An only child, from girlhood she had assumed she would be married off to whatever man her father chose. He had told her that he had arranged a marriage with the son of Macellius; at least this meant she would not be given to some unknown patrician twice her age, as had happened to more than one of her friends. Trying to look unconcerned she plucked a ripening fig from one of the trees growing in the pots in the colonnaded atrium as her father came towards her.

He grinned broadly. "He is here now, my dear, Gaius Macellius the younger, your promised husband. Go and see what you think; it's you, after all, who is to marry him. But I think if you do not like the look of the young man, you'd be hard to please."

Julia stared at her father. She said, "I was not expecting this so soon."

And yet it occurred to her that there was no point in delay. She was eager to have something all her own; and certainly when she had borne this young tribune legionary a son, he would value her above all things. She was already used to running a household, but she wanted children who would love her. She was determined not to fail at giving her husband a son as her own mother had done.

"Nor was I," her father said good-naturedly. "I wanted to keep my little girl a bit longer. Now I'll probably have to marry some old widow to keep house for me. But the young man's evidently got himself entangled with some native woman, and Macellius feels that marriage will settle him. And so —"

A native girl? Julia's brows rose. She was aware that most fathers would not have spoken to a daughter so frankly, but she had always been as much a companion for Licinius as a child. "And so?"

"And so the young man's turned up on our doorstep, and it's time for you young folks to get acquainted with one another. I suppose you're eager to see him?"

"I must admit I'm curious." What sort of husband had she drawn? One escapade could be condoned, but if he was the type

who habitually went after women, she was not sure she wanted him.

"Then run along, daughter," her father said. "I must say, if he doesn't like you he too will be hard to please."

In sudden panic Julia remembered she was wearing an old tunica, and that she had combed her hair very sketchily.

"Like this?" she asked. Flustered, she tried to adjust the folds of her dress to hide a berry stain.

"I'm sure it's you he wants to see, not your taste in gowns," admonished her father fondly. "You look perfectly lovely. He knows that you're my daughter, and that's really what matters. Run along and see what you think of him. Don't be silly, child."

Julia knew there was no appeal. Licinius was a kind father, even indulgent, but when he had once made up his mind, she could not tease or coax him out of it.

Once more Gaius heard the soft sound of girlish laughter, and for some reason he thought of Odysseus surprised on the beach by Nausicaa and her maidens; he could only stare as the girl herself slipped out from behind one of the flowering trees and came towards him.