The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn) (14 page)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

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Epona managed to be out of the lodge early so she did not have to accompany her mother to the ceremony. She did not want to be with Rigantona at all. She hovered instead on the fringes of the crowd, impressed in spite of herself by the splendor of the occasion, the first such inauguration in her lifetime. All the people wore their best clothing, their most ostentatious ornaments. Nematona had ordered swags of greenery draped around the stone, the bone of the mother where Taranis would stand to receive the acclaim of his people. Sacred fires had been lit around the perimeter of the commonground, and the people were chanting the song of thanksgiving; a new lord would protect the tribe.
While Epona’s attention was fixed on the festivities, Kernunnos sidled up behind her. He grabbed her elbow before she was even aware of him and whispered, “Your training will begin at the next full moon, Epona. We will send for you. Or you can come to us on your own feet. But you will come.”
He was gone like smoke, before she had time to do more than shudder.
She saw her friend Mahka standing with Alator and went over to her. Mahka seemed so solid, so self-confident, and Epona now felt unsubstantial and vulnerable. She was being blown by a shifting wind; she longed to be sturdy and sure, like Mahka.
In this one sunseason Mahka had grown half a head taller. She looked like a woman now, with powerful shoulders and a strongboned face. But the familiar childish grin broke through when she saw Epona.
“Sunshine on your head! Come and stand with us for the
ceremony, will you? It’s about to begin; soon Taranis will walk naked from our lodge, and Poel will bathe him and wrap him in the chieftain’s cloak. You can see the whole thing from right here.”
There were congratulations to offer; Mahka now was a member of the family of the chief. But the other girl shrugged off Epona’s sincerely felt happiness for her. “What difference does it matter if ours is the chief’s lodge or not? I don’t care about that.”
“You certainly should,” Alator told her. “Taranis will distribute the trade goods now, and that means your family will get first choice of the best things. You can have almost anything you want in return for his taking responsibility for us all.”
Mahka’s gray eyes glinted. “All I want is to be a warrior. I want to learn to drive a war cart, like the two-wheeled ones painted on the Hellene pottery. I would swing my sword and lead hundreds of men in battle; I would die a hero’s death.”
Epona was used to Mahka’s dreams. Once she had entered into them gladly, wrestling and fighting with stick swords, playing army to Mahka’s general, but now these seemed childish amusements. Mahka would soon be a woman; she would forget such things.
“There are no battles to be fought here,” she reminded her friend.
“Haven’t you been listening to your own brother? Okelos has been talking to some of the other young men of taking an expeditionary force into the lands of the Hellenes. There’s a lot of interest in it beyond the council fires. Men speak of the shortage of women and land, they say they will have to go outside anyway to find enough space to raise more families. You must admit the village has grown very crowded. With a band of warriors, Okelos claims he could establish new settlements and offer everyone better lives.”
“Okelos just wants to go and rob the Hellenes,” Epona told her.
Mahka made a negligent gesture. “If he is strong enough to take their treasures in battle, why shouldn’t he? The strongest
man should always have the best, so he can support his family well and raise more and stronger children. How else is the tribe to prosper?
“As for myself, I intend to persuade them to take me along. I can fight as well as any of them; you know that, Epona. I can do much more for the tribe by winning new lands than I can by marrying some stupid farmer in another tribe and raising a litter of puking children.”
“Have your parents given consent?” Epona asked.
“They will. And if they don’t, I’ll run away and do it anyway.”
“You would disobey them like that?”
“Of course. I’ve heard them say that you are pledged to the
druii
by Rigantona, and that you don’t want to go. You should run away too, Epona. You have to fight for yourself in this life.”
How easy it is for Mahka to say that,
Epona thought. Her body and her family were intact, her future was certain. Too many unsettling things had happened to Epona in too short a span of nights. She felt she stood on shifting salt instead of solid earth, and without that firm base it was not so easy to talk of fighting back.
But there was Goibban. At least she had that, and that was all she needed. With the remaining shreds of her childhood’s faith she believed Goibban would be willing to marry her.
“I’m not going to go to the magic house,” she told Mahka. “You’ll see; you’ll all be very surprised.” She smiled a secret smile and turned back to watch Taranis become the new lord of the tribe.
Once he was bathed and properly attired in the cloak of a chieftain, with all the colors of all the families mingled in its weaving, Taranis followed the
druii
to the sacred stone. He watched impassively as the spirits of fire and water, earth and air, were offered their due sacrifice, and he promised them his people would continue to work in harmony with nature, that the bounty of the land might never be diminished nor its essential spirits insulted.
At the high point of the ritual Rigantona came pacing
slowly through the massed crowd, the staff of authority in her hand. She gave it to Poel, who in turn offered it to Taranis.
Tall, heavily bearded, with a neck like a bull’s and a voice like thunder, Taranis cried out three times to the assembled tribe, “I challenge any man who is stronger to take this from me!” At his first call Okelos made a slight movement as if he would step forward and everyone turned to look at him, but then he subsided, face red with angry fire.
When no one answered the challenge, Poel pressed the staff into the hands of Taranis. The
drui
then turned to face the Kelti, his arms flung wide. “All that lives, dies and lives again! So the old lord of the tribe goes on to new life. Now is come the season of Taranis the Thunderer, and all our loyalty belongs to him. As long as he leads us we shall share in his strength and his prosperity, for he is ours, and that which is his is ours. Sing with me the song of the people. Sing of all that is good and harmonious and life sustaining.”
They sang, full throated and joyous. They belonged to the new chieftain and he to them, joined together in the splendid totality of the Kelti, each person an integral part of the whole. Part of something magnificent.
The traders waiting encamped beyond the palisade could hear the tremendous roar of unrestrained joy that rolled through the Blue Mountains.
At sundown, Epona stood in the doorway of her mother’s lodge, anxiously awaiting the appearance of the moon. It came as a silver crescent above the peaks, a thumbnail slice of white in a lavender sky. There was time, then; many nights to go before she was expected in the magic house. She would speak to Goibban immediately.
But in the morning her courage failed her, and she put it off until the next day, and then the next. The right words were somehow never on her tongue; the spirit within did not offer them. But there was time, the moon was not yet full.
The traders came and Taranis sat in the trading circle with them, listening to their offers and examining their goods with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. He drove hard bargains, and his deep voice and unfamiliarity seemed to intimidate some
of the merchants. Men began to say, around their lodgefires, “Taranis is going to make a fine chief. Hai, let’s drink another cup of wine to the Thunderer.”
The
druii
began seeking Epona out to have little conversations, each in turn, except for Kernunnos, who waited.
Nematona came into the lodge where she was working on the embroidered skirt of a gown. Daughter of the Trees sat beside her and pointed one long, tapering finger at the design Epona was struggling to master. The younger woman was gnawing on her lips and occasionally pushing damp hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist; embroidery was not one of her talents. “Be careful how you place each thread, Epona,” the
gutuiter
instructed. “It must conform to the pattern. Pattern is the structure that underlies all life, you know. The priesthood is not just a tribe within a tribe, assembled so that some might live off the efforts of others in return for offering sacrifices and dealing with spirits. No. The
druii
are those who are aware of and understand the pattern composed of all living things, beings which must act in harmony with one another in order to survive. The pattern is older than the people, and knowledge of it has been handed down through more generations than there are threads on the loom. The pattern is the magic of the stones—alas, we have forgotten most of that now!—and the song of the trees. All things must conform to the pattern or be broken.”
Conform to the pattern or be broken.
Epona thought of Kernunnos, waiting with his slitted yellow eyes in the magic house. She thought of living with scented smoke and chanting, going each night into otherworlds where mist swirled and things were not what they seemed.
Then she thought of the Blue Mountains and the sweet fresh open air, and the pattern of light and dark across the slopes she had loved all of thislife. She thought of Goibban, and the laughter of his children, clustered around her knees.
Uiska intercepted her while she was carrying water to refill the
hydria
in the family’s lodge. “Are you looking forward to the day you join us, Epona?”
Epona gave her a truthful answer. “I hope that day never comes.”
Uiska’s face wore the ghost of a smile. “All days come. And pass. Never fear one, because it is already part of the past and behind you.”
Epona set down her heavy leather bucket. “What does that mean?”
“Only that the past and future are one, and both exist now, thisday, as real and solid as the links of an iron chain. The present is the link that holds them all together.
“When you are initiated into the priesthood you will learn to move along that chain at will, because you will be fully aware of the solidity of the other links.”
“How can that be?” Unwillingly, Epona was intrigued.
Uiska instructed, “Stand still, Epona. Close your eyes. Feel. Reach out with your mind. Open the pores of your skin. Can you feel the village around you, and the mountains beyond the village? Feel those mountains. Feel their weight and substance. You can do it if you concentrate. Ah, yes, I see it in your face, just a little. Hai!
“If you are able to do that much, you can learn to feel the past and the future in much the same way, because they are as real as those mountains. As you could walk from this village up those slopes, so you can walk from thisday into lastday. It is no harder than visiting otherworlds.”
“Then why do you not do it more often? I’ve hardly ever heard of such a thing,” Epona said.
“It is frustrating,” Uiska told her, “to visit the past, for we can go as spectators only; we cannot change it. We move through it as ghosts; we see but do not touch.”
“And the future? What about the future? That is what I would like to change.”
The pale smile on Uiska’s face melted like snow. “The future can only be changed in the present, Epona. And it is even less wise to walk in that direction. It takes much courage to look into the future, and some of the things to be seen there would scorch your eyes. Better not to know, believe me. Learning to resist that temptation is part of the discipline of
the
druii.
To know the future is to try to change it in the present, and that throws everything out of harmony.”
“I do not understand.”
The smile returned as Uiska told her, “That is the beginning of wisdom: to admit that you do not understand. You will. You will learn and grow, for that is the purpose of all living.”
She drifted away, insubstantial as fog, leaving Epona tantalized. So much to learn, so many questions she could ask … but that would mean making a commitment to Kernunnos and the magic house, and she would not.
Would not, would not, would not!
Shortly after sunrise the next day, Vallanos the sentry blew a long blast on his ram’s horn and then ran down into the village, breathless with excitement.
“Strangers are coming,” he announced as the people of the Kelti crowded around him. “They are not like anything I have seen before.”
Taranis ran his fingers through the mingled bronze and copper hairs of his beard. “What’s so different about them? Are they warriors of some sort?”
“That’s the trouble, I don’t know what they are.” Poor Vallanos was obviously distressed. “They are not men like us at all. I only caught a glimpse of them from a distance and then I came straight here to tell you, so you can prepare for their arrival. If there is any way to prepare for such things, I mean.”
“What are they?” many voices demanded to know.
“They do not appear to be human. From what I could see they are half man and half horse; men’s bodies growing from horses’ backs. They are the monsters the Hellenes call
kentaurs
!”

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