In that moment I understood how, coming to the stones at sunset, I had opened a doorway between the worlds. Or perhaps it was Eldri who had led me here. Certainly she was gambolling about as if she had shed the years, ecstatic as one who, having been long exiled, returns at last to her home.
I saw her coming to rest at last at the feet of one of the fair folk who stood before the central pillar, and at last the dance cast me up in the same place. With the blood still racing in my veins from the swift motion, I halted, realizing that the person who waited there was the Faerie Queen.
This time she wore the colours of summer’s harvest, a crown of woven wheat and a gown of pale gold. Eldri was nestled in her arms.
“Lady, how come you here?” I stammered, straightening from my bow.
“Where else should I be?” Her low voice was honeyed with amusement.
“But we are far from Avalon—”
“And when you dreamed of it the other night, how far away were you then?” she asked.
“I was there… but it was only a dream.”
“Some dreams are more real than what men call reality,” the Lady said tartly. “The gateways to Faerie are fewer than the Doors of Dream, and yet there are more than most men believe. One has only to know the times and seasons to find the way.”
“Will I be able to find the way from the lands across the sea?” I asked then.
“Even from there, if you have need, though you may see us in another guise in those lands where men know us by other names. Indeed, unless you learn to honour the spirits that dwell in the other lands, you will not prosper there.”
And she began to tell me of the beings I should encounter, names and descriptions that dissolved into my awareness, not to be recalled until many months, or even years, had passed. In the timeless present of Faerie I had no sense of hunger or fatigue, but at last the Lady ceased her instructions, and it occurred to me that I ought to be returning to the human world.
“My thanks to you, Lady. I will endeavour to do as you say. Now let me take the dog, that she may show me the way home.”
The queen shook her head. “Eldri must stay. She is old, and her spirit is bound to this land. She would not survive your journey. Let her remain—she will be happy with me here.”
In that land where there is no weeping, nonetheless tears came to my eyes. But the gaze of the Faerie Queen was implacable, and it was true that Eldri looked very happy, nestled in her arms. For the last time, I scratched behind those silky ears. Then I let my hand fall.
“How shall I go back, then?” I asked.
“You have only to walk widdershins around the stone.”
I began to move, and with each step the light faded until I found myself standing in the meadow in the gathering darkness, alone.
When I reached the bridge I saw torches bobbing along the main road and found that Constantius had come out to look for me. I told him only that Eldri had run away, and I had been searching for her. He knew how I had loved the dog, and so my sorrow needed no explanation. And that night I found comfort in the shelter of his arms.
A week later, we were on one of Viducius’s ships, bound for the mouth of the Rhenus and Germania.
* * *
Part II
THE WAY TO POWER
« ^ »
o CHAPTER EIGHT
o CHAPTER NINE
o CHAPTER TEN
o CHAPTER ELEVEN
o CHAPTER TWELVE
o CHAPTER THIRTEEN
o CHAPTER FOURTEEN
* * *
CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ »
AD 271-2
To travel on the sea is to move outside time. One sits, with neither tasks nor duties, contemplating the dim grey ribbon of shoreline on the horizon, and the ever-changing, undulant landscape of the sea. The scene in the boat’s wake alters as swiftly as the view from the prow, so there is no way to recognize where one has been, and after a time the succession of ridges and valleys begins to repeat itself, so that one wonders if any progress has been made at all.