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.”