“Cynric, Cynric, now do we call you!” his strong, bard-trained voice rang out suddenly, and Eilan blinked, for suddenly the room seemed to have become darker, and Ardanos — his whole body, not just his white robes – seemed to glow. “Strong son, beloved boy, your kindred call you . . .Warrior, Raven-son, we summon you by the powers of earth and oak and fire!”
As the echoes of his calling faded, Dieda’s breathing, growing harsher as she drew in great lungfuls of scented smoke, was the only sound in the room. Eilan stifled a cough. Even the small amount of the smoke she had breathed in had made her dizzy; she could imagine what it was doing to Dieda, who gazed into the water unmoving.
Only now did Eilan notice Dieda’s long hair hanging loosely to either side so that it framed the bowl. They had all moved into a loose circle. From where she stood Eilan could see the surface of the water. Her skin prickled a little as Dieda swayed, or was it she herself? Perhaps it was the world that was moving; she blinked as the shapes around her dimmed and flowed until the only thing on which she could focus was the surface of the bowl.
As she stared, it slowly clouded over, and after a moment there was a gray swirling that first darkened; then cleared. Eilan gasped; a face, a well-known face — that face of her foster brother Cynric -peered from the water.
Dieda stifled a cry; then said quietly but clearly, as if she spoke to someone a long way off, “Cynric, you must come. This time it is not a Roman outrage but the people of the North who have burned your house and have killed your mother and sister. Return to the Ordovici lands. Your foster father is alive and has need of you.”
After a time the face disappeared, the water swirled darkly in the bowl, and Dieda stood up, clutching a little dizzily at the edge of the table. “He will come,” she said. “The keeper of the college of priestesses there will give him supplies. With good roads and good weather he should be here in a few days.”
Bendeigid said, “But what of the barbarians who burnt our house? If you are not too wearied, child, we must see them and know whence we go to punish them —”
“I will not,” said Dieda. Her hair was still hanging about her face. “Always you can bend me to your will, but let Caillean do this; it is her will that we work with the Romans in this, not mine. I will find it hard to forgive you.”
“My child —”
“Oh, I well know the necessity; but to use me to draw Cynric here, how could you?”
Caillean took the bowl and flung the water out through the door, letting in a welcome blast of fresh air. Yet in spite of the warmth of the summer night after a few moments Eilan began to feel cold. Caillean refilled the bowl and bent over it, motionless.
This time it seemed that the picture took longer to form, and the swirling clouds in the water lasted longer. Caillean’s intent face grew paler, pale as death; then she spoke, softly still, and with a deathly weariness in her voice: “Behold, if you will.”
Eilan never knew what the others saw, but as the surface of the water cleared, before her eyes a small picture formed: the raiders as they had been when they burst into Mairi’s house, arrested, frozen on the doorstep; men clad in multicolored and ragged fabric. Some bore swords, which she had not seen at the time, and some bore spears. The picture was so clear that she could see the raindrops glittering on their ragged blond or reddish beards and long streaming hair. The men crowded around the bowl, blocking the image that Eilan saw still in memory and knew she would be able to call up at will until the day she died.
In her memory she saw Caillean rush forward, scooping up handfuls of live coals and scattering them towards the strange men. She supposed that her father and grandfather must have seen something like this, for her father’s face was clenched and drawn tight. “Red Rian,” he said between his teeth. “A curse on his sword and his shadow! And they are on the seashore still —”