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Mar. 24th, 2007 03:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bannion_sightAt the edge of Leinanwood itself, the forces gather, only to depart again and distribute themselves according to the plans laid by the High King of Brennin. Carrying his axe, Dave joins Kevin among Diarmuid's men as the Dalrei add their strength to the archers ringing the wood, in order to ensure that none escape. Shalhassan of Cathal rides with his men to the northeast, while Aileron, Arthur, and Diarmuid lead their companies from the southwest toward the center of the wood, following the deep belling howl of grey Cavall at the head of the hunting pack.
They encounter Galadan's wolves by the river Latham, deep within the forest where the leafless trees are still thick enough to block the sun. The reek of fur and blood is heavy in the air as the giant beasts surge to the attack, and the battle rapidly descends into chaos.
No one could say just how long it continues, a wild madness of blood and fury and death, before they break through to the shores of the frozen river. There by the water, it is Aileron dan Ailell who dispatches the final seven wolves with the deadly, stunning grace that is his gift of skill with a sword, and Cavall who, at Arthur's signal, lifts his head to sound the call that ends the hunt.
Instead, the grey dog lets out a snarled warning as the earth rumbles, which is the only warning they have before the enormous white boar, with savage curling tusks and maddened eyes, thunders from the trees and charges straight toward Kevin Laine.
The feast that night ends up being a raucous celebration after all. Despite having been gored, Kevin is in attendance, thanks to Loren and Teyrnon's healing-- as is Dave, whose wild flying tackle into the boar's side hadn't been all that effective at anything but providing a story that's been making the rounds ever since.
But that's only part of it, as their victory in battle that day is only part of it. For it's Maidaladan, Midsummer's Eve in Fionavar, and the power of the goddess Dana on this night -- perhaps most especially here in Gwen Ystrat -- is strong indeed.
There is much to be discussed and more to be done, but not tonight. Not on Midsummer's Eve. After Jaelle leaves her, Kim sleeps again for a while-- and wakes when the bells ring, signaling the departure of the priestesses from the sanctuary to the town.
She knows why. It is Maidaladan, after all, and not a night to be alone.
Still, she lies quietly for a time, thinking. She doesn't need the knowledge gleaned from either a Seer's sight or the twinned soul within her now to tell her that she is on the cusp of something with the potential to be both wonderful and terrifying.
There had been tears on Aileron's face when she had opened her eyes.
Look to your own heart, Seer, Galadan had snarled at her once, before you begin speaking of mine.
He had spoken to her of kings and mages both, and it is a King who fills her thoughts now; the High King of Brennin, whose Seer she is. It has yet to end well, he had said, and Kim knows that whatever else the Wolflord may be, he is both clever and subtle-- and often, often right. She could go to Aileron; she might even be welcomed, she thinks. But if she did, what then might follow, with their differing roles and responsibilities, their different worlds and different lives?
Oh, what then?
But as she hesitates, something else occurs to her, an incident from the day before, and in remembering it Kim makes a decision. She rises from her bed and dresses in her long robe, then goes quietly down the hall to his chamber.
"It is not a night to be alone," she tells Loren Silvercloak, whose strain shows in his face when he opens the door. "Unless you'd prefer to go in search of a priestess?" He almost laughs at that-- both of them know that he would not, could not; not as a mage and follower of the skylore, whose very existence is nearly anathema to Dana's followers.
"Are you sure?"
"I am," she tells him, and she is. There is no fascination here, no danger; only his need, and yes, her own as well-- a flame of desire instead of war, Dana's own fire burning in them both here tonight, with a heat that cannot go unacknowledged and if possible should not be denied. And as Loren lifts her in his arms and carries her to his bed on Midsummer's Eve, Kim raises her face for his kiss and deliberately stops thinking of anything else, at all.
Arthur refuses it. The danger of producing a son or daughter in this fertility rite is too great, and any child of his might be pulled into the unravelling of Arthur's destiny. After all, he has been cursed for the children, and for love.
Arthur locks his door, so that no woman might enter to test his resolve. Restless, he paces his quarters all night.
He is still awake just before dawn, when the priestesses begin to cry out.
(There is irony, perhaps, that virginity is called for to be that closely tuned to the Mother of all, but it would be lost on Jaelle, especially tonight, with the cry ringing within her.)
Again it comes to her, the sound she has never thought to hear, a cry not uttered for longer than anyone living knew. Oh, the ritual has been done, has been enacted every morning after Maidaladan since the first Temple was raised in Gwen Ystrat. But the lamenting of the priestesses at sunrise is one thing, it is a symbol, a remembering. This is something infinitely otherwise.
(Infinite in a way that only death can be, she thinks. Only death and, she realizes, love.)
This is the mourning for no symbolic loss, but for the Beloved Son. Jaelle rises, aware that she is trembling, and still not quite believing what she has heard. Bit the sound is high and compelling, laden with timeless grief, and she is High Priestess and understands what has come to pass.
(What, though not how. Not yet. And still she struggles to let go of the word that comes in the wake of this grief. Impossible.)
She makes her way, barefoot in the unnatural cold of this Midsummer night, to the dome, behind the altar and the axe. The axe that only the High Priestess can lift, and that she lifts now, with both hands, before bringing it crashing down on the altar. Hugely, the sound reverberates, and she waits for it to end, to die back into stillness.
(It is the first sound she’s heard since the cries that woke her, the first to come from without rather than within this night.)
And when the stillness returns, she rends it, as she has rent her robes, with the words that echo through her.
(“Rahod hedai Liadon! Liadon has died again!”)
She weeps, she grieves with all her heart, and she knows every priestess in Fionavar has heard her, that they are coming here now from their sleep in the Temple, to find her here, her robe torn, the blood on her face drawn with her own nails, the axe lifted from its rest.
(“Rahod hedai Liadon!”)
It grows, it spreads, the Mormae begin to rend their robes and faces in that same wildness of grief. Jaelle scarcely notices, just as she scarcely notices the acolyte who brings her cloak or the fear in the eyes of the men in the Temple, or the question Kimberly, the Seer of Brennin, asks of her.
“Jaelle, who is it?”
(Liadon. Beloved Son. The sacrifice come freely on Midsummer’s Eve.)
“I do not know,” Jaelle answers. “Come!” Her horse is brought, and she goes, without waiting, though the streets of the town as the lights come on and priestesses come running towards her. Let them follow. There is only one path for Jaelle, High Priestess of the Mother, this Midsummer’s Eve.
Dun Maura.
Because, you know, he either saved Kevin's life or half got him killed this afternoon during the boar hunt, and he might not be sure which but either way . . . they're good, the two of them. The last of that old lingering resentment's slipping away. True, Kevin's the one in the limelight again, cracking jokes and eating boar testicles and earning public acclaim, but hey, he's the one who got gored by the damn boar earlier, he deserves it.
So when Kevin makes the obligatory wisecrack, Dave laughs with the rest, and when he sees Liane dan Ivor picking her way towards Kevin after the feast, he turns away without envy, or at any rate without much of it. Kevin Laine is always going to spark brighter than everyone else around him, and that's just the way it is. You get used to it. And - as was proven, he guesses, by that ridiculous old-school boar-tackle earlier today - Dave would kind of miss the guy if he wasn't around.
Anyways, it's Maidalaidan. There's plenty of acolytes around eager to celebrate the holiday, so to speak, and Dave doesn't go lonely that night despite the absence of Liane dan Ivor.
There's no loneliness at all until just before dawn the next morning, when Dave is awakened by the acolyte in his bed, who jumps up, weeping. Runs out to the stables, all the while crying, "Rahod hedai Liadon! Liadon has died again!"
Dave follows, still confused and muzzy from sleep. At first, he thinks that it's all just part of the ritual, but a look around tells him that it can't be - there's real grief here, unexpected grief. Real joy, too. The chant echoes in his ears all the way up as he follows the train of people to Dun Maura - Liadon! Rahod hedai Liadon! - and with each repeated cry, Dave grows more and more uneasy. More and more on edge.
He doesn't know why until he hears Diarmuid ask, in tones of sharp disbelief, "Where's Kevin?"
And it seems that he hasn't saved Kevin Laine's life after all.
He says it, and he means it, even though part of him desperately wishes he did not.
But she told him he carried Dun Maura within himself, and here and now, on Maidaladan, with his body marked by the boar, he can feel the truth of it. This is what he has been searching for all those long nights, with all those warm, beloved bodies. This--tonight--is the last time he will lose himself in the act of love.
The bells are ringing as he saddles his horse, and he knows full well what comes after, for all the priestesses abroad tonight, for the men they will come to.
For himself.
Oh, Abba
He turns his horse to the east, and rides out.
He rides out, and up, through drifts of snow, though the path itself is not difficult. He could almost become lost in the quiet inside himself, that deep, dark quiet that leads him ever onward.
But then a shadow moves to his left, and he is aware of himself again, of how alone and weaponless he is on this brightly lit night.
It is no wolf that shadows him, but only a dog, scarred and grey and grave. And oh, but Kevin feels his heart go out to it, even here, on this night of all nights.
"Will you lead me there?"
Kevin is afraid, oh how he is afraid, but something in the face of the grey dog steels his will, and, fear or not, following Cavall, he rides on.
The dog stops before a cave, more a fissure, really, and Kevin can feel himself tremble, though his hands barely shake at all.
Oh, Abba
He breathes deep of the sweet, cold winter air, and swings down off his horse, patting its warm side gently before turning it back toward Gwen Ystrat, toward life and warmth and home.
"Go now," he says, and it does. He watches it for a time, watches its warmth leave him behind, alone and cold, and then he turns back toward the cave.
"Well, here goes."
With a slight half-aborted gesture to the dog, to Cavall, Kevin walks into the dark and does not return.
He hears the sound of wings.
A bird cries.
He keeps walking.
Something flutters behind him.
He flinches, but moves onward, palms dry despite his fear, despite the dampness of the walls.
Something flutters behind him, some creature of this deepest dark.
He ducks, for a moment only a creature of instinct and primal terror.
When he looks up again, panic momentarily calmed, there is a light.
"Bright your hair and bright your blood."
He spins, turning toward the old woman he didn't even see, milky-eyed with cataracts and dressed in a torn and soiled gown that might have once been white.
Kevin bows, deep and true, to the guardian of the threshold in this place.
They speak, and he does not remember it. The formalities trip off his tongue, falling like stones into the silence here.
"Fool!" She cries, in answer to his questions, all unknowing, and Foolfoolfoolfool the walls echo back.
"Do you think I am alive?"
That word, too, reverberates in the chamber, in the air, in Kevin's heart.
Oh, Abba
It is time, now. The crone points a needle at his chest, at his heart, poised to kill if he answers wrongly. Some do, when they come here. The fear is terrible, the knowing--well. Kevin's shoulders want to bow, his back to break, under the knowing.
"Bright your hair and bright your blood,
Yellow and red for the Mother.
Give me your name, Beloved,
Your true name, and no other."
He could say 'Kevin Laine!' and it would be true. But the son of Sol Laine knows what the real answer is, what it has always been, even back in Canada.
"Liadon!"
He would have thought it to be a cry of despair, the last wrenching words of a broken man, beaten down by fate, by destiny, by what he carries within himself. Instead he feels strength fill him, and feels the first whisper of a gentle breeze against his face.
"Pass," the crone says, "Pass."
And he does.
There is an altar in the inner chamber, a hearth, jagged and made for drawing blood. Blood-price is the oldest price, the woman's price.
The Mother's price.
He lays his head down, cheek cut and bleeding on the jagged rocks. It drips into the bowl, and even as his eyes slip closed he hears a high, ululating, exulting wail behind him. There is joy and sorrow both in the sound.
He knows it well.
The crone, who now is old but no longer hideous, terrible now in her beauty and her grief, her warm, sweet power that will sweep over him and burn him alive.
He welcomes it.
"There is a wish in my heart."
She laughs, knowing the wish, accepting it, accepting him, hands slipping off her clothing, pulling his away from his skin.
Oh, oh this is fire, this is desire, this is the deepest heart of Kevin Laine, the heart he never even knew, and oh he is lost.
"Liadon," she whispers, and then, "Kevin," and then again, "oh come!"
The storm gathers, the power gathers, and they are there, together, united as one, suspended above the chasm.
And then she cries out, one final time, his voice lifting to join hers as they--
--as he--
--as Liadon (Kevin)--
Oh, Abba
--falls.
There is silence.
Sol Laine wakes, the sound of his son's voice calling his name echoing in his ears.
Oh, Abba
He doesn't move for a long time, breathing in and out, listening to the silence.
"Oh, Kevin," he says.
"Oh, my boy."
But he does not weep.
He can't. Some wounds are too deep for tears.
