It will be soon now, she thought, and then, whatever comes of this night’s work, it will be done. For the first time in years she had mixed the most powerful trance herbs into the potion, afraid that without their help her own fears might keep the Goddess from coming through. She knew that Ardanos was anxious as well, though his face did not show it. He was like a carven image, she thought, a shell in which the spirit flickered ever more fitfully, and she had seen how much he needed the support of his oaken staff. One day, perhaps soon, he would be gone. There had been times when she hated him, but in the past years they had come to an unspoken understanding. And there was no telling who his successor would be.
But that was a fear she could face once this night was past. The procession was beginning to move now. Eilan allowed Caillean to assist her to her feet and started up the hill.
The Druids were chanting; their song pulsed through the warm air.
“Behold, the holy priestess comes,
Sacred herbs are in her crown;
The golden crescent in her hand . . .”
Even after five years, there was always that moment of surprise when Eilan felt the first wave of expectation from the assembled crowd. And she had certainly forgotten the nausea, and the sickening lurch in consciousness as the drugs began to take hold. She fought back the flicker of panic as the world whirled around her. She had sought this; whether out of faith or cowardice she was not sure, but this time she wanted the world to go away.
Lady of Life, to You I entrust my spirit. Mother, be merciful to all your children!
Years of practice had given her full control over the techniques of focus and breathing that loosed the spirit from the body. The herbs in the potion aided the process, as if her head had been shattered like a broken bowl so that Other could flood into her, tossing her consciousness aside like a leaf on a stream.
Eilan felt the priestesses assisting her into the chair, and the unsettling sensation of falling even though she knew they were lifting her. Her spirit swung between earth and heaven; there was a slight jerk as they set the chair atop the mound, and she was free. She was floating in a golden mist, and for a time it was enough simply to enjoy the sense of being safe, protected, and at home. Suspended in this certainty, the fears she had left behind her seemed transitory, even absurd. But the silver cord that still tied her to her body would not entirely release her, and presently, ever reluctantly, the mist thinned enough so that she could see, and hear.
She looked down upon the huddle of blue robes in the tall chair and knew it for her body, dimly illuminated by the embers of the great bonfires to either side. The priests and priestesses made a circle with the people behind them, pale robes on one side and dark on the other in two great curves of light and shadow. The great mass of folk who had come for the festival darkened the hillside; points of fire winked from the booths and tents of the encampment that had sprung up around it. Beyond stretched the patchwork of field and forest, with the pale glimmer of roads cutting through the trees. Without curiosity she noted a swirl of motion in one part of the crowd, and further off a more regular movement along the road from Deva, and the gleam as metal caught the light of the setting moon.
The Druids were invoking the Goddess, twining all the incoherent imaginings of the people into a single, mighty image which was at the same time as various as there were people to echo their call. Eilan saw the power they were raising as a swirl of multicolored light and pitied the fragile human form into which it was descending. Now her body was almost hidden; the energy was taking shape; she saw a female figure, heroic in stature and splendid in form, though the features could not yet be seen.