I pulled open the loose neck of my tunica and grinned at the two bright eyes that gleamed up at me, then draped my cloak loosely around me once more.
The mist was growing thicker, lying in dense skeins across the water as if not only earth but air were dissolving back into the primal watery womb. Of the Pythagorean elements of which Corinthius had told me, that left only fire. I took a deep breath, at once unsettled and oddly reassured, as if something within me recognized this protean admixture and welcomed it.
We were well out upon the Lake by now, and the boatmen were paddling. As the barge moved forwards the stilt village faded into the mist behind us. The Tor was disappearing too. For the first time I felt a quiver of fear.
But Eldri warmed my heart, and in the prow, the young priestess sat quietly, her face serene. Suona was a plain-looking girl, but for the first time, I understood what my nurse had meant when she told me to sit like a queen.
Though I saw no signal, abruptly the boatmen lifted their paddles and rested them on their laps. The barge floated quietly, the last ripples of its passage widening away to either side. I felt a pressure in my ears and shook my head to relieve it.
Then, at last, the priestess stirred, casting back her hood as she rose. Feet braced, she stood, seeming to grow taller as she lifted her arms in invocation. She drew in her breath, and her ordinary features grew radiant with beauty. The gods look like this … I thought as Suona gave voice to a string of musical syllables in a language I had never heard before.
Then that too was forgotten, for the mists began to move. The boatmen had covered their eyes, but I kept mine open, staring as the grey clouds began to sparkle with a rainbow of colour. The light spun sunwise around them, colours blending, wrenching reality out of Time. For an impossible eternity we hung between the worlds. Then, with a final burst of radiance, the mists became a haze of light.
The priestess sank back to her seat, perspiration beading her brow. The boatmen picked up their paddles and began to stroke forwards as if this had been no more than a pause to rest their arms. I let out a breath I had not known I was holding. They must be accustomed to this… phenomenon … I thought numbly, and then, How could anyone get used to this wonder!
For a few moments, though the paddles dipped, we did not seem to move. Then the bright mist suddenly wisped away, and the Tor was rushing towards us, and I clapped my hands, recognizing the fair green island.
But there was more to it than I had seen in my dream. I had half-expected to see the huddle of wooden huts I had glimpsed from the Lake people’s village, but that was Inis Witrin, the isle of the monks. Where the huts had stood, on the other isle on Avalon there were edifices of stone. I had seen Roman buildings that were larger, but none that were at once so massive and so graceful, columned with smooth shafts of tapered stone. Blessed by the spring sunlight, they seemed to glow from within.
If I had been capable of speech, I would have begged the men to stop the boat, to tell me what each house was, now when I could comprehend their harmony. But the land was coming at us too swiftly. In another moment the bottom of the barge grated on sand and it slid up onto the shore.
For the first time, the young priestess smiled. She got to her feet and offered me her hand.
“Be welcome to Avalon.”
“Look, it is Rian’s daughter—” the whispers ran. I could hear them clearly as I came into the hall.
“It cannot be. She is too tall, and Rian died only ten years ago.”
“She must take after her father’s people—”
“That will not endear her to the Lady,” came the reply, with a little laugh.
I swallowed. It was hard to pretend I did not hear, harder still to walk with the proud carriage of a daughter of a noble house as my nurse had taught me, when I wanted to gawk at the hall of the priestesses like a peasant passing for the first time beneath the great gate of Camulodunum.