He gave a snort of laughter. “Is not for gold we serve Avalon. I call the Lady, but this night they have ceremonies. She cannot come before morn.”
In my dreams, it was Ganeda who came to me, with Cigfolla and Wren and the other priestesses and Aelia whom I had loved. I knew this must be a dream, because Ganeda was smiling, her arm around the waist of another woman with dark hair whom I recognized, without knowing how, as my own mother, Rian. They were robed in priestess blue, garlanded as if for a festival, and they held out their arms in welcome. I knew then that it was my own belief, not Ganeda’s word, which had exiled me from Avalon.
Laughing, I started towards them. But as I was about to touch Aelia’s hand, someone called my name. Annoyed, I reached for the dream image, but the call was repeated, in a voice I could not deny.
I opened my eyes to light that streamed through the open door of the roundhouse in which we had been sleeping, glowing in Crispa’s bright hair and on Leviyah’s golden hide, outlining Lena and Cunoarda as they helped me to sit up, and falling full upon the blue robe of the woman who stood before me.
I do not know why I had expected that Dierna would still be a young girl. The body of the woman who had called me had thickened with time, and her flaming hair was now the colour of sunset on snow. But I, who had known so many emperors, had not encountered anyone with such an aura of authority. Next to her, the man and the woman who attended her looked frail. Did Dierna remember how I had loved and protected her, I wondered then, or had she, like my son, been warped by the temptations of power?
“Eilan…” Her voice trembled, and suddenly I saw looking out of her eyes the little cousin I used to know.
I motioned to Cunoarda to help me up, wincing as stiffened muscles took the strain.
Dierna embraced me, one priestess to another, then her gaze grew stern. “I will use that name, but I know who you were, in that other world. You have been used to position and power, and you are heir to the elder line of Avalon. Have you come to claim rule here?”
I looked at her in amazement. Then I remembered that she had been trained by Ganeda. Had the old woman taught her to fear that I would return to challenge her one day?
“It is true that I have had power, and all the glory the world can bestow,” I answered stiffly, “and for that very reason I need them no more. Now it will be enough if I may find peace, and safety for those I love.”
“Come,” Dierna gestured towards the open door. “Walk with me—”
We all followed her outside into a misty autumn morning that veiled the marshes as if we were already between the worlds.
“Forgive me, but it was my duty to ask,” Dierna said as we started along the path around the edge of the mound that kept the village above the floods.
I was still not quite steady, and Lena took my arm.
“I have known the fulfilment of prophecy and its deceptions. Through the child I bore, the world has indeed been changed, and if I do not like the results, I have only my own pride to blame.”
“Do not judge yourself too harshly,” Dierna replied. “I myself tried to shape the fate of Britannia, and I tell you that though our choices may determine the manner of its working, it is the Goddess who decides our ultimate destiny.”
It is not only the Christians who sometimes need absolution, I thought, blinking back tears.
For a little while we walked in silence. The morning sun was burning the fog away. Silver ripples gleamed as a heron stalked among the reeds. Beyond them I saw the green slope of the Tor, and the huts of the monks clustering around Joseph’s round church.
A gesture summoned Dierna’s companions. “Do you remember Haggaia?” The silver-haired Druid gave me a smile, and I recognized in his face an echo of the laughing boy who had loved to play ball with Eldri so long ago. “And this is Teleri, whom I have been training.”