Highland Raven (19 page)

She shook her head dismissively. “It’s all right. I understand you. Come,” she said, then led me into the temple.

We walked through the crumbling hall into the main shrine. Here, a massive statue of the Dark Goddess lay on the floor. Her nose and arm had been broken in the fall. I remembered the statue of the Goddess as it had been before the earthquake. It had been made from crystal dragged from the sea and polished to shimmer with sparkling white light. At its base, offering platters and vases were heaped with flowers, blood, and bones.

“This is the eternal flame of the Morrigu,” Nimue said then, motioning to a large chalice nearly five feet in height that burned with flickering orange and blue flames. The room smelled strongly of lamp oil. Nimue then led me down a hallway in the back of the shrine.

“Here is your room,” Nimue said, extending her hand toward a hall on the left, and then we emerged onto the cauldron courtyard where the older woman, Andraste, as Nimue had called her, rested on a stone bench.

Thora wagged her tail and went over to her.

“Well, Graymalkin, up to no good?” the old woman said to Thora, gently setting her hand on Thora’s head.

I stood in silence.

The older woman rose, leaning heavily against her cane, then came to look at me. To my surprise, she pulled herself upright so she could look me in the eye. Her face was lined, and those lines had lines. But she smiled softly, and her eyes, which seemed very gray, crinkled. “I’m Andraste,” she said.

Where had I heard the name before?

“Oh, it rings in your memory, doesn’t it? Your face rung in my memory too. Always the queen, are you? Come, Cerridwen, sit,” she said, then led me back to the stone bench.

“Do you remember anything?” she asked.

I frowned, not sure I understood her question. “I remember this place through the images your cauldron gave me.”

Andraste grinned. “But do you
remember
this place?”

She was talking about soul magic. “I…I’m not sure.”

“Cerridwen, when you drank the potion of knowledge, what did you see?” Nimue asked.

“This place as it had been and its fall.”

“This place was once the most beautiful and magical of all places. Our people were strong. My father would go off to battle on the Morrigu’s red-sailed ships. I remember how my mother, dressed in black and purple, would stand by the ocean and let drops of blood fall into the water to protect him. We did not fear death. Death was a passage.

“We worshiped the Dark Goddess in each of her aspects: battle goddesses, death goddesses, and goddesses of magic. Yet our lady destroyed us much as she destroyed others. She shook the earth. The people fled. When it was over, the island was empty and cluttered with dead bodies. And I, a small child, had hidden in a trunk. It was the goddess of this land, the same who plucked you from Epona’s grasp, who opened the trunk and bade me crawl out.

“She told me, ‘I have changed what had to be changed. Now you are the only one left. You will age and grow old as one grows old in the otherworld. I will give you the ability to look into the world of man, and I shall counsel you on what must be done. You will do my bidding.’

“And I, a child of ten, became mistress of this island. And while I was a child, the Morrigu taught me what I should know. And now, I will teach you.”

“But what is your…our…purpose?” I asked.

“We are the Wyrds. And now, finally, we are three. Now we will change the course of history.”

Later, and I am not sure
if it was day or night since the sun never rose, Nimue took me to explore the city, Thora trotting along beside us.

“Why only darkness?” I asked Nimue.

“When she drew this island into the abyss, the Dark Lady cast out the sun. She permitted only her colors to rule in this place.”

I looked around then said, “Black, gray, silver, purple, and red.”

“White as well. All colors of the Dark Goddess. Silver is the color of the spirit of this world and of the Crone. Black and gray are the colors of magic. Purple is the color of the soul. Red is the color of war. White has many meanings; it is the color of divination, visions, anything involving power and consciousness. This is why the moon is sacred to all aspects of the Goddess. Its light is all-powerful.”

It seemed to me that the Morrigu was like a petty child. She was capricious, killing and taking what she believed to be hers. When she’d grown weary of her people, she’d simply snapped her city into the otherworld, painted it with her colors, then went to play somewhere else. While I had no love for the White Christ, his priests—other than Father Edwin—sometimes counseled love and justice. Their Savior was said to have been a kind man. The Morrigu, on the other hand, seemed vicious.

But as much as I loathed her viciousness, I felt her within me. I knew she was right; I had belonged to her all along. I had been hers the night I took on my raven wings and killed Alister. I had always been hers, whether I knew it or not.

“Here we are,” Nimue said as we stood outside the smaller temple at the base of the main temple stairs.

I looked up at the face of the building. Stone skeletal figures had been carved all over the walls. They fought with swords and carried shields. Whole legions of the undead were depicted fighting the living. Similar images existed throughout the city. Stone skeletons seemed to be a common decorative fixture.

“The priests were much like the Druids of my time,” Nimue continued. “They were acolytes, and bards, and warriors. They had an understanding of music and the power of resonance. Sound, they discovered, was a fabulous killer,” Nimue told me as she pushed open the door. “But unlike my people, and yours, they also knew necromancy,” she added, glancing back at me.

A shiver went down my spine. Necromancy. Just beside the door was one of the stone skeletons. Carefully, I reached out to touch it. It had a stain of blood on its head.

Nimue slapped my hand away. “Careful. This place is not quite as dead as it seems.”

I stared into the empty eye sockets of the statue and got the eerie feeling that it was looking at me. I could feel its…disappointment. “Is it…what is it?”

“Sleeping,” Nimue said. “You’ve heard the stories, I am sure, of how the standing stones that dot our beloved isle were once giants dancing with ladies. The truth of that story is not far off. You are looking at a hint.”

I looked from Nimue to the skeleton and back to Nimue again. “Come on,” she said, leading me within. “I’ll explain later.”

We stepped over broken stones as we made our way inside. The left side of the building was completely burnt. Nimue led us down a hall on the right and into a large room. The front of the room near the widows had a raised stone platform. Stone benches, most of which had fallen over, faced the platform.

“This is where they used to perform music. See how the wall is open there?” she asked, pointing to the far right. “The townspeople, though not permitted to enter the temple, were allowed to come to the courtyard to hear the priests play and sing.”

Carefully, Nimue led me up some crumbling stone stairs to the second floor, where we found the priest’s chambers. Some of the bedrooms contained elaborately carved furniture that had begun to decay.

“You can’t reach the third floor anymore,” Nimue told me. “The stairwell was destroyed, but you can just spy the space from here,” she said, pointing to a hole in the ceiling.

I gazed upward to see an overturned trunk. Plaster and stone loosened from the third floor ceiling and dropped to the floor overhead. It stirred up a swirl of ash, making both me and Nimue cough.

“We’d better go. The building is not stable.” Nimue said, turning quickly.

As I turned to join her, I spotted something on the floor overhead. It was sitting just at the edge of the hole in the second floor ceiling.

“Wait,” I said. “There, do you see that?” I asked her. I took a few steps to the side to get a better look. There, at the very edge of the hole, was a small silver box. “A box.”

“Probably just an old stone, part of the wall or ceiling.”

“No, no. It’s silver. It glows. There, do you see it?” I asked, pointing.

She stood beside me and looked up. “It
is
a box.”

I spotted a bench toward the side of the room, just tall enough to help me reach the hole in the ceiling. The temple groaned in protest as I slid the bench across the floor. From below, I heard stones clatter to the ground.

“Easy,” Nimue cautioned, her eyes darting about nervously.

Nimue steadied the bench as I crawled up. I had to stand on my toes to reach the very corner of the box with the tips of my fingers. But working slowly, I was able to scoot it to the edge. It tumbled into my waiting arms. I crawled down and set the box on the bench. Nimue stood beside me as I opened the lid.

Inside was a pair of silver wrist torcs capped with raven’s heads and a matching raven amulet. The ravens held glimmering purple stones in their beaks. Their eyes had been crafted with the same sparkling purple gems. The amulet was adorned with three silver ravens twisting around a large purple stone. The stone glowed. I had never seen anything like it before. The jewels were tarnished but in no other way damaged.

“Beautiful,” Nimue whispered. “You must show these to Andraste.”

I stared at the jewels. They were finer than any piece of jewel-work I had ever seen before. The silver looked very heavy, and the stones, well, I didn’t know what they were, but they looked like amethyst. “It seems so strange to find something so old. So…lost.”

“Just like us,” Nimue said, then set her hand on my shoulder.

I looked up at her. “Isn’t there a way out of here…a way back? Did you ever try?”

Nimue stared off into the distance. “Once. But I was…brought back. And not without consequences.”

I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth. Anger seethed in me, and for a brief moment, I swore I heard my raven wings.

“Let’s go,” I said then, closing the box lid. I followed Nimue out of the temple.

As we headed back up the main stairs of the temple of the Dark Goddess, I remembered the skeleton statue that had stood outside the priests’ temple. I turned and looked back toward the temple. My body trembled when I realized that the statue’s head had turned; its dead eyes were watching me.

Andraste was sitting at a table
on the cauldron terrace. Before her was a basket full of fresh bread and rolls, their crusts flakey and golden, ripe red apples, grapes, and wheels of pale yellow cheese. She was drinking a huge goblet of wine. I stared at the food. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.

“Well, curiosity sated?” she asked when we entered.

The bread’s yeasty scent filled the air around me. Even from this distance, I could tell it was still warm.

“Cerridwen found a treasure,” Nimue said.

When I didn’t move nor speak, Andraste laughed. “Sit, child. Eat. You are hungry, aren’t you? Didn’t Sidhe tell you to remember to eat?”

“Where does the food come from?” I asked as I joined her.

Andraste handed me a hunk of bread, and I slid the box across the table to her.

Thora trotted over and sat down beside me.

Andraste laughed. “Here, Graymalkin,” she said, then unwrapped a huge bone. It must have been lamb’s leg. It was thick with meat. Thora struggled to get a hold of it, but eventually found a grip. She trotted over to the fire where she lay down and began chewing her prize. “It comes from the market, of course,” Andraste finally answered me.

“What market?” The bread practically melted in my mouth. Nimue handed me a slice of cheese and a glass of red wine that I ate and drank greedily.

“Any market. I bought these in Glasgow.”

I set the bread down. “Glasgow?”

Andraste opened the box. She stopped chewing as she stared at the jewels. “Where did you find these?”

“How did you leave?”

“In the priest’s temple. Cerridwen spotted the box on the third floor,” Nimue answered.

Andraste set down her food and lifted one of the torcs. “Beautiful. No doubt they were a hero’s prize. Now they are yours. A gift from the goddess,” she said, then slid the box back across the table to me.

“Certainly, our lady owed her a gift,” Nimue said leadingly.

Andraste frowned at Nimue. She wiped her hands on a cloth napkin then looked at me. “Our lady is growing impatient and sloppy,” she said, tossing the napkin onto the table.

“Don’t let her hear you say so,” Nimue warned.

Andraste puffed air through her lips in disgust. “Her charms are naught to me.”

“She could curse you in the afterlife.”

“Aren’t I dead already?” Andraste answered with a laugh then turned to me. “What did you think of my city?”

“Strange.”

“Indeed, it is strange. It’s little more than a tomb now.”

“Andraste, what happened to all the bodies? I don’t mean to be insensitive, but…”

“But you felt them? They didn’t go anywhere. And until you are ready, I suggest you don’t creep far from the temple.”

“The skeleton outside the priest’s temple?” I asked, turning to Nimue.

“He refused to leave when the island shook, and he paid the ultimate price. Stubborn. Now he is like me, a relic,” Andraste said with a laugh.

I suddenly felt very frustrated. “Andraste, why am I here? Why did she bring me here?”

“You are here to learn.”

“As I did with Epona.”

Andraste laughed. “Writing? Herb lore? Poems about trees? No, girl. You are here to learn what has been lost,” Andraste said, then leaned toward me. “You are here to learn wizardry.”