“Show me the child.”
Cigfolla rose, flipping back the corner of the blanket. The Merlin stared down at the face of the infant, still closed in upon itself like the bud of a rose. The child was large for a newborn, big-boned like her father. No wonder her mother had fought such a grim battle to bear her.
“Who are you, little one?” he murmured. “Are you worth so great a sacrifice?”
“Before she died… the Lady… said she should be called Eilan,” Cigfolla answered him.
“Eilan—” the Merlin echoed her, and as if the infant had understood, she opened her eyes. They were still the opaque grey of infancy, but their expression, wide and grave, was far older. “Ah… this is not the first time for you,” he said then, saluting her like a traveller who meets an old friend upon the road and pauses for a moment’s greeting before they continue on their separate ways. He was aware of a pang of regret that he would not live to see this child grown.
“Welcome back, my dear one. Welcome to the world.”
For a moment the baby’s brows met. Then the tiny lips curved upward in a smile.
* * *
Part I
THE WAY TO LOVE
« ^ »
o CHAPTER ONE
o CHAPTER TWO
o CHAPTER THREE
o CHAPTER FOUR
o CHAPTER FIVE
o CHAPTER SIX
o CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
CHAPTER ONE
« ^ »
AD 259
“Oh! I can see water gleaming in the sun! Is it the sea?” I dug my heels into the pony’s round side to bring it alongside Corinthius’s big horse. The beast broke into a rough trot and I clutched at its mane.
“Ah, Helena, your young eyes are better than mine,” answered the old man who had been tutor to my half-brothers before being given the task of teaching the daughter Prince Coelius had inadvertently got upon a priestess of Avalon. “A blaze of light is all I can see. But I think that what lies before us must be the levels of the Summer Country, flooded by the spring rains.”
I brushed back a wisp of hair and peered out at the landscape. The waters were broken up by hummocks of higher ground like islands and divided by winding rows of trees. Beyond them I could make out a line of hills where Corinthius said there were lead mines, ending in a bright haze that must be the estuary of the Sabrina.
“Then we are almost there?” The pony tossed its head as I squeezed its sides and then pulled back on the rein.
“We are if the rains have not washed out the causeway, and we can locate the village of the Lake folk that my master told me to find.”
I looked up at him with swift pity, for he sounded very tired. I could see lines in the thin face beneath the broad straw hat, and he sat slumped in the saddle. My father should not have made the old man come all this way. But when the journey was over, Corinthius, a Greek who had sold himself into slavery as a youth in order to dower his sisters, would have his freedom. He had saved a nice little nest egg over the years, and meant to set up a school in Londinium.
“We will come to the Lake village in the afternoon,” said the guide who had joined my escort in Lindinis.
“When we get there, we will rest,” I said briskly.
“I thought you were eager to come to the Tor,” Corinthius said kindly. Perhaps he would be sorry to lose me, I thought, smiling up at him. After my two brothers, who cared for nothing but hunting, he had said he enjoyed teaching someone who actually wanted to learn.
“I will have the rest of my life to enjoy Avalon,” I answered him. “I can wait a day longer to arrive.”
“And start your studies once more!” Corinthius laughed. “They say that the priestesses of Avalon have preserved the old Druid wisdom. It consoles me a little for losing you to know that you will not spend your life running some fat magistrate’s household and bearing his children.”