Her last visit was to the home of an elderly man with deep belly pain. She found he was dying of a cancer that had burrowed its way throughout his now frail body. It was too advanced for her to heal, but she took away the man’s pain, then drew his wife aside and told her of his impending death. Though the woman took it stoically, and thanked her for her efforts, Vorna could see the torment in her eyes.
As she was returning to Meria’s home a vision struck her. At first it was as though she had gone blind. A terrible darkness descended over her eyes, and she staggered. This was followed by a blinding light, and she saw, in her mind’s eye, a tree oozing blood. A young lion, its back scaled with silver armour, was attacking an old bear. As they were fighting, a white dove flew by. The lion slashed its claws through the air. The dove was smashed to the ground. Back in the undergrowth six wolves were waiting. The wolves were large,
their eyes red and gleaming. Like the lion their upper backs were of silver scales. As the blood flowed from the tree it sank into the earth, which began to writhe and twist. The earth parted, and newborn calves struggled from the blood-covered mud, to stand quivering in the clearing. Vorna watched as the wolves licked their lips and eyed the calves. Then the vision passed, and her sight returned.
Vorna sat down below Eldest Tree and tried to analyse the vision. She knew, with dread certainty, that it was a prophecy, and was anxious to unravel its secrets. The bear was a symbol linked with Connavar. Yet Connavar was not old. It could not be him. She remembered her first dream. Blood becoming coin. Blood coin. Weregild. The payment made by the transgressor to the victim’s family in order to halt a feud.
It still made no sense. Instead of walking to Meria’s house Vorna went to her own home, and sat quietly by the fire.
An old bear.
Could it be the Long Laird? She dismissed the thought. The Laird was more likely to be represented in a vision as a bull, the king of the herd. And who were the armoured wolves? Soldiers of Stone perhaps, or Sea Raiders? Perhaps the bear was merely a representation of the land itself under attack. Vorna didn’t think so. It didn’t feel right. The two visions were linked in some way, and she focused her memory on the first – the young man with the bow of blood. She did not recognize his face, nor the faces of the other six men.
Six men. Six wolves. She knew she was inching closer to an answer. Sitting very quietly Vorna relaxed her mind. The bow was dripping blood which became weregild, blood payment. Then she remembered Ruathain, riding to the land of the Pannones, to offer such payment to end a blood feud.
Ruathain. The old bear.
It was then that she realized the wolves were not armoured at all. They were scaled like fishes. The Fisher People of Shining Water. And then it all fell into place. The Pannones of that region had suffered terribly during the winter. A young warrior had therefore been primed to fight Ruathain. In this way a new blood feud would be established, and Ruathain might once again offer cattle and ponies to halt it. Hence the calves born in the blood-drenched mud.
Vorna recalled that the Fisher Laird had five grown sons. Together they were the six wolves of her vision. And these wolves had sent one of their own out to die, not for glory or for justice, but for gain. She shivered.
Ruathain was not at Three Streams. He had ridden out to the Long Laird’s fortress settlement to sell cattle. There was no way to reach him.
This in itself made the prophecy baffling. Vorna knew that it did not depict some distant event, but was waiting even now to unfold. Therefore what was the purpose of the vision, since she could do nothing to alter the events it foresaw? Visions did not come to torment a seer. They always, in her experience, had some purpose.