From Dieda came a small, strangled sound, but the rattle in Lhiannon’s throat was louder.
Then the High Priestess rasped, “Be it so. Maiden and Mother, I see the Goddess in you now . . .Tell Caillean —” She was silent a moment as if struggling for breath, and Eilan wondered if the old woman was delirious, or if it were she. She reached up once more to touch the heavy gold.
“Caillean is yonder, Mother; shall I summon her?” Dieda asked.
“Go,” whispered Lhiannon with more strength than she had before. “Tell her I love her . . .”
As Dieda hurried out, the gaze of the dying woman fixed on Eilan.
“I know now what Ardanos wanted when he bade me choose you, child, and instead the gods brought Dieda into my hand. He was wrong about you, and yet he did the Lady’s will all the same!” Her lips twisted with what Eilan realized was laughter. “Remember — it is important! Perhaps even the Goddess Herself could not tell you two one from the other. Nor the Romans — I see now —” and she was silent again. Eilan looked down at her, unable to move.
She was silent so long that Caillean, returning, asked, “Does she sleep? If she can sleep, then perhaps she may live another moon —” and then, tiptoeing to Lhiannon’s side, caught her breath on a gasp and whispered, “Ah, she will never sleep more -”
Caillean knelt beside the bed and kissed Lhiannon on the brow, and then, very tenderly, closed her eyes. With every moment that passed more expression was fading from the dead woman’s face, so that she no longer looked asleep; she did not even look like Lhiannon any more. Eilan hugged her arms, and winced as she felt the hard metal of the arm-ring. She felt dizzy, and cold.
Then Caillean stood, and as her gaze focused on the ornaments Eilan was wearing her eyes widened. Then she smiled.
“Lady of Vernemeton, I salute you in the name of the Mother of all!”
Ardanos, coming into the room behind Dieda, bent over the dead
and then stood back again. “She is gone,” he said in a strange, flat,
voice. He turned, and something flickered in his eyes as he, too,
saw the golden ornaments that Eilan wore.
The other priestesses were crowding around them, but it was old Lads the herb mistress who pushed forward and bowed, saying with a strange deference that terrified her, “I pray you, Voice of the Goddess, tell us everything the Holy Lady said with her last breath to you.”
“Lhiannon, may the Goddess rest her, chose an uncommonly awkward season for her dying,” Ardanos said sharply. “For we must have a priestess of the Oracle at the rites at Lughnasad, and obviously we cannot use Eilan!” He surveyed the two women before him grimly.
The three days of ritual mourning were past, and Lhiannon laid in her grave; Ardanos was surprised at how much it still hurt when he looked around this chamber where he had always met with her and remembered she was gone. He supposed he would continue to miss her for a long time, but he could not afford to show his grief now. Caillean sat frowning, but Eilan stared at him with wide, unreadable eyes. He glared back at her.
“You know as well as I do that it is superstition to believe that only a virgin can serve the shrine, but for Eilan to bear the power of the Goddess right now would be dangerous both for her and her child,” agreed Caillean.
Sexual abstinence was necessary during performance of the great magics – a magic such as the complete surrender of body and spirit necessary for the Goddess to speak through a mortal.
For the power to flow freely, the spirit must be detached from the senses. Thus it was forbidden to do those things that would increase their attraction and clog the pathways, such as eating the flesh of some animals, drinking mead or other liquors, or lying with a man.
“Lhiannon should have thought of that when she chose her,” the Arch-Druid replied. “It will not do, you know. It’s bad enough that she is still here. But a pregnant High Priestess? Impossible!”