“They all say it wasn’t my fault, but I know what they’re thinking…” she sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
“I saw what happened, you know, in the scrying bowl,” I said finally. “But nobody believed me. I keep thinking that if I had only tried harder to convince them…”
“That’s stupid! You couldn’t know when—” Dierna exclaimed, then paused, eyeing me suspiciously.
“We both feel guilty,” I said then. “Perhaps we always will. But I will try to live with it if you will. Perhaps we can forgive each other, even if we cannot forgive ourselves…”
For a moment longer she stared at me, her blue eyes filling with tears. Then, with a sob, she threw herself into my arms.
We stayed that way, weeping, while the white sickle of the moon swung across the sky. It was only when Eldri growled and pushed her way out from between us that I realized how much time had passed, and that we were not alone. For a little while I had felt peace, holding the child, but now my belly tensed once more. The cloaked shape confronting us was that of the Lady of Avalon.
“Dierna—” I said softly. “It is late, and you should be in your bed.” She stiffened as she saw her grandmother, but I was already pushing her to her feet. “Run along now, and may the Goddess bless your dreams.”
For a moment I thought she would insist on staying to defend me. But perhaps Dierna realized that to do so would only increase Ganeda’s wrath, for although she glanced backwards several times, she left us without arguing. I confess that as I sensed the menace in the Lady’s silence I almost called her back again, but this confrontation had been a long time coming, and I knew I must face it alone.
I got to my feet. “If you have something to say to me, let us walk out along the shore, where our voices will disturb no one.” I was surprised to hear my own voice sounding so steady, for beneath the shawl I was trembling. I led the way down to the path that edged the Lake, Eldri trotting at my heels.
“Why are you angry?” I asked when the silence had grown unbearable, like the stillness before a storm. “Do you begrudge your grand-daughter a little comfort just because it comes from me?”
“You killed my sister when you were born…” hissed Ganeda, “you ill-wished Becca, and now you are trying to steal the last child of my blood away.”
I stared at her, anger replacing my fear. “Old woman, you are mad! I loved that little girl, and surely my mother’s death was a greater loss to me than to you. But have our choices no part to play in all this, or has all the teaching of Avalon been a lie? My mother chose to act as priestess in the Great Rite, and when she knew she had conceived, to keep the child, understanding the risk she ran. And Becca had been told not to follow her sister and chose to do otherwise.”
“She was too young to know—”
“And you chose to keep me away from both girls!” I raged on. “Don’t you know I would have watched them like a mother bear with two cubs to stop what I had seen from coming to pass? From the moment I first set foot on Avalon you have hated me! What have I ever done to deserve that? Can you tell me why?”
Ganeda gripped my arm, and as she jerked me around to face her, I sensed her energy expanding, and before the wrath of the Lady of Avalon, my anger seemed suddenly the petulance of a child.
“You dare to speak so, to me? With a single Word, I could obliterate you where you stand!” Her arm swung up in a sweep of dark draperies like the wing of the Lady of Ravens, and I cowered. For a moment the lapping of wavelets against the shoreline was the only sound.
And then, from the rich scent of wet earth and the whisper of water another kind of power began to flow into me, a steady, enduring strength that could absorb whatever lightnings Ganeda’s majestic fury might call down. For a moment then I touched something fundamental within, although whether it was the Goddess or my own eternal soul I could not tell. Slowly I straightened, and as she met my gaze, the power ebbed from Ganeda’s body until she was no more than an old, bent woman, shorter than me.