THE WISE WOMEN

Chapter 3

p>The newcomer was not looking at Lean at all. Her eyes, which were dark and clear, were fastened on Awen. Lean wondered suddenly why she had thought the strange woman little, for she herself was a tall woman, and now the other seemed taller still. Her hair, which was dark and long, was fastened in the same way as that of the priestesses, in a single braid at her back, but she was clad in a garment of deerskin, and about her temples a narrow garland of scarlet berries was strung.

She looked at Awen, and then she bowed down to the ground.

“Son of a Hundred Kings,” she said, “be welcome to Valon….”

Awen looked at her in astonishment.

Lean cleared her throat, fighting for words. “Who are you and what do you want from me?” she asked brusquely.

“With you, nothing, now,” the woman said, just as shortly, “and you do not need to know my name. My business is with Awen. But you have long known me, Blackbird, although you do not remember.”

Blackbird…“Lon-dubh” in the Hibernian tongue. At the sound of the name which had been hers as a child, about which she had not even thought for almost forty years, Lean fell abruptly silent.

Once more she could feel the ache of bruises and the pain between her thighs, and worse still the sense of filth, and shame. The man who took advantage of her had threatened to kill her if she told what he had done. It had seemed to her then that only the sea could make her clean once more. She had pushed through the brambles at the cliff edge, heedless of the thorns that tore her skin, intending to throw herself into the waves that frothed around the fanged rocks below.

And suddenly the shadow between the briars had become a woman, no taller than herself but incomparably stronger, who had held her, murmuring, with a tenderness her own mother had never had the energy to show, and called her by her childhood name. She must have fallen asleep at last, still cradled in the Lady’s arms. When she awoke, her body had been cleansed, the worst of her hurts become a distant ache and the memory of terror an evil dream.

Lady—” she whispered. Years later, her studies with the Druids had enabled her to give the being who had saved her a name. But the fairy woman’s attention was fixed on Awen.

“My Lord, I will guide you to your destiny. Wait for me at the water’s edge, and one day soon I will come for you.” She bowed again, not quite so deeply this time, and suddenly, as if she had never been there at all, was gone.

Lean closed her eyes. The instinct which had guided her to bring Awen to Valon had been a good one. If the Lady of the Fairy Folk honored him, he must indeed have a purpose here. Ilan had met the Merlin once in vision. What had he promised her? Roman though he was, this boy’s father had died as a Year-King, to save the people. What did that mean? For a moment she nearly understood Ilan’s sacrifice.

choked sound from Awen brought her back to the present. He was white as chalk.

“Who was she? Why did she speak to me?”

Marged looked from Lean to the boy, brows lifting, and the priestess wondered suddenly if the others had seen anything at all.

Lean said, “She is the Lady of the Elder Folk—those who are called Faerie. She saved my life once, long ago. In these days the Elder Folk come not often among humankind, and she would not have appeared here without reason. But as for why—I do not know.”

“She bowed to me.” He swallowed, then asked in a quenched whisper,

“Will you permit me to go, foster-mother?”

“Permit you? I would not dare to prevent it. You must be ready when she comes for you.”

He looked up at her, a glint in those clear grey eyes that reminded her suddenly of Ilan. “I have no choice, then. But I will not go with her unless she answers me!”

“Lady, I would never question your judgment,” said Eiluned, “but what possessed you to bring a man-child that age here?”

Lean took a swallow of water from her hornwood beaker and set it down on the dining table with a sigh. In the six moons since the priestesses had first come to Avalon, it sometimes seemed to her that the younger woman had done nothing but question her decisions. She wondered if Eiluned deceived even herself with her show of humility. She was only thirty, but she seemed older, thin and frowning and always busy about everyone else’s affairs. Still, she was conscientious, and had become a useful deputy.

The other women, recognizing the tone, looked away and went back to their meal. The long hall at the foot of the Tor had seemed ample when the Druids built it for them at the beginning of the summer. But once word of the new House of Maidens had spread, more girls had come to them, and Lean thought they might have to extend the hall before another summer went by.

“The Druids take boys for training at an even younger age,” she said evenly. Firelight flickered on the smooth planes of Awen’s face, making him look momentarily older.

“Then let them take him! He does not belong here….” She glared at the boy, who glanced at Lean for reassurance before taking another spoonful of millet and beans. Dica and Lysanda, the youngest of her maidens, giggled until Awen grew red and looked away.

“For the present I have arranged with Cunomaglos for him to lodge with old Brannos, the bard. Will that content you?” she asked acidly.

“An excellent idea!” Eiluned nodded. “The old man is doddering. I live in fear that one night he will fall into his hearthfire or wander into the lake….”

What the other woman said was true, though it was the old man’s kindness, not his weakness, that had led Marged to choose him.

“Who is the child?” asked Riannon, on her other side, her red curls bouncing. “Was he not one of the foster-