Lady of Avalon Read Online Free PDF Page B

“That hill is a holy place, and now even more so, but the blood that was shed there has closed the gateway.”
    Caillean bit her lip, seeing once more dead ashes beneath a weeping sky. Would her grief for Eilan never end?
    “You did well to leave it,” the fairy woman went on. “And well to bring the boy.”
    “What do you want with him?” Fear for Gawen sharpened her tone.
    “To prepare him for his destiny…What do you want for him, priestess, can you say?”
    Caillean blinked, trying to regain control of the conversation. “What is his destiny? Will he lead us against the Romans and bring back the old ways?”
    “That is not the only kind of victory,” the Lady answered her. “Why do you think Eilan risked so much to bear the child and keep him in safety?”
    “She was his mother-” Caillean began, but her words were lost in the fairy woman’s reply.
    “She was High Priestess, and a great one. And she was a daughter of that blood that brought the highest human wisdom to these shores. To human eyes, she failed, and her Roman lover died in shame. But you know differently.”
    Caillean stared at her, scars from taunts she thought she had forgotten awakening to new pain in her memory. “I was not born in this land, nor do I come of noble kin,” she said tightly. “Are you telling me I have no right to stand here, or to raise the boy?”
    “Blackbird”-the other woman shook her head-“listen to what I say. What was Eilan’s by inheritance is yours by training and labor and the gift of the Lady of Life. Eilan herself entrusted you with this task. But Gawen is the last heir to the line of the Wise, and his father was a son of the Dragon on his mother’s side, bound by his blood to the land.”
    “That was what you meant, then, when you called him Son of a Hundred Kings…” breathed Caillean. “But what use is that to us now? The Romans rule.”
    “I cannot say. It has been given me to know only that he must be prepared. You and the Druid priesthood will show him the highest wisdom of humankind. And I, if you will pay my price, will show him the mysteries of this land you call Britannia.”
    “Your price,” Caillean repeated, swallowing.
    “It is a time for building bridges,” said the Queen. “I have a daughter, Sianna, begotten by a man of your kind. She is the same age as the boy. I wish you to take her into your House of Maidens as a fosterling. Teach her your ways and your wisdom, Lady of Avalon, and I will teach Gawen mine…”

Chapter Two

    “Have you come, then, to join our order?” asked the old man.
    Gawen looked at him in surprise. When the priestess Kea had brought him to Brannos the night before, it had seemed to the boy that the ancient bard had outlived his wits as well as his music. His hair was white, his hands so palsied with age he could no longer pluck the harpstrings, and when Gawen was introduced, he had stirred from his own bed only long enough to point to a heap of sheepskins where the boy might lie and then gone back to sleep.
    The bard had not seemed very promising as a mentor in this strange place, but the sheepskins were warm and without fleas, and the boy was very tired. Before he had half finished thinking through all the strange things that had happened to him in the past moon, sleep carried him away. But Brannos in the morning was a very different being from the mazed creature of the night before. The rheumy eyes were surprisingly keen, and Gawen felt himself flushing under that grey stare.
    “I am not sure,” he answered cautiously. “My foster-mother has not told me what I am to do here. She asked if I would like to be a bard, but I have only learned the simplest songs that the children being fostered in the Forest House sang. I like to sing, but surely there is more to being a bard than that…”
    That was not quite the truth. Gawen loved to sing, but the Arch-Druid Ardanos, who was the most notable bard among the Druids of his time, had hated the sight