I blinked, and when I looked up, Con was standing before me, saying something about the horses, and the old man was gone.
“The horses are waiting down by the gate,” the young Druid repeated, “and the day is wearing on.”
Still wondering, I allowed him to help me to my feet. I knew better than to speak of what I had seen, but I knew that I would be thinking about it for a long time to come.
Dusk was drawing its cloak across the Vale of Avalon, covering marsh and meadow alike with the same dim purple-grey. From my post by the Mendip road I could see from the higher ground in the east almost all the way to the Sabrina estuary, where the sun was setting into the sea. Now all but the Tor lay in shadow, with a gleam of water below. For ten years I had said farewell to the sun from within that scene; it was fascinating to observe it from outside. Indeed, it was in all ways strange and fearful and oddly exciting to be back in the world of humankind, even if only for a little while.
Con touched my elbow. “It is almost dark. The Roman should be coming soon.”
“Thank you,” I nodded, glancing up at the clouds that loomed to the north. Even the folk of Avalon could not call rain from an empty sky, and we had had to wait for a weather pattern that would serve my purpose. I had held the clouds at bay throughout the afternoon. Now I released some of the energies that bound them, and felt on my cheek the chill damp breath of the storm.
To learn that Heron’s vision of the death of the Emperor had been a true Seeing was encouraging. The men who drank at the taverna near the lead mines were full of gossip. It was said that Claudius had willed the Empire to another general called Aurelian, by-passing his own brother, Quintillus, who, after an abortive attempt at a coup, had died by his own hand.
“He will come, never fear,” said the Druid who had been waiting for us. “These Romans are creatures of habit, and every evening for the past week he has come this way.”
“He is fair-haired?” I asked once again.
“As fair as bleached flax, with the mark of Mithras between his brows.”
I reached up beneath my veil to touch the blue crescent tattoed on my own forehead. He is an initiate, I reminded myself, and may see more than an ordinary man. I will have to be careful.
From beyond the curve of the road came a curlew’s piping call, an unlikely sound for the high moors, but the Roman whose coming it signalled would not know that. I took a deep breath, lifted my arms to the heavens, and released the clouds.
In moments I felt the first spatterings. By the time the figure on the red mule came into view the rain was driving down in sheets, as several storm fronts that would have passed over one at a time simultaneously released all their stored rain.
Our quarry had pulled up in the tenuous shelter of an elder bush, holding his sagum cloak half over his head in a vain attempt to protect it. For a little longer I watched him.
“Stay out of sight,” I told the two Druids, wrapping my mantle more securely, “but when I move, follow me.” I gave my mount a kick and reined it across the slope below the road.
“Help—oh, please, help me!” I called in the Roman tongue, pitching my voice to carry above the storm and hauling on the reins of the pony, who had started to plunge as if to make my plight a reality. For a moment nothing happened, and I let the pony move forwards, clutching its mane. “Can anyone hear me?” I cried again, and saw the red mule at the rim of the hill.
I was wearing a white mantle so that the Roman should be able to see it even through the storm. I screamed and gave the pony a good kick, hanging on desperately as it galloped down the hill. I heard a Roman oath and the crashing of brush as the mule scrambled after me, but we were all the way down the hill and well into the tangle of oak and alder beyond before the Roman caught up with me.