Gods Concubine (69 page)

T
hey rose, reached for their clothes, then dropped them as another of the Sidlesaghes—some forty or fifty were gathered there—shook its head.

The Sidlesaghe led them down the north-west face of the Pen, the side furthest from London and closest to the Llandin, towards a small grove of trees at the base of the hill.

Harold looked around as they neared the trees. It was now almost twilight, the fading of the light intensified by the close-gathering of the Sidlesaghes. Gods, there must be several hundred of them waiting just before the trees!

He looked at Caela. She was close enough to him that he could feel the warmth of her skin, smell the womanly scent of her rising in the coolness of the evening. He slipped an arm about her waist, half-expecting her to pull away, then smiled as she relaxed against him.

Harold kissed the top of her head, then nodded at the Sidlesaghes. “What is happening?”

Caela gave a slight shake of her head. “Something…momentous. Something good.”

She shivered, and he knew it was in anticipation. “Should I be here?”

She raised her face to him, and smiled. “I would not be here, if not for you.
This,
” she indicated the encircling crowd of Sidlesaghes, “would not be happening if not for you. I think, Harold of England, you are to be very welcome in whatever is about to happen.”

“You are not afraid.” It was a statement, not a question.

“No. I am content.” She touched his bare chest, briefly. “I am whole.”

Harold’s eyes swept over the Sidlesaghes. “Where have they all come from, Caela?”

“From the stones of England,” she said. “From the past. From the future. We have to follow them. Look, they are moving into the grove of trees.”

He looked, and saw that she was right.

Caela took his hand, and they followed.

The stand of trees numbered only some twenty or thirty. They encircled a small rock pool, its waters emerald green and as still as the sky above them.

“I had not known this was here,” Harold muttered.

“Nor I,” said Caela. She had stopped, looking strangely at the pool, then again she turned to Harold. Under the trees it was almost full night save for a gentle glow that came from the water, and it lit up Caela’s eyes and teeth as she smiled. “It is for us,” she said. “Just for us. A doorway.”

“Into what?”

Caela remembered a conversation she’d had with Saeweald a long time ago, when she had been Cornelia and he Loth.

“Into a light cave,” she said. “Pen is a sacred mound, and I think that this evening its sacredness is about to be revealed to us.”

“Are you sure I should—”

Before Caela had time to interrupt, one of the Sidlesaghes had stepped to Harold’s other side, taken his hand, and led him forward toward the pool.

“I think that might be a ‘Yes’,” Caela said, and followed.

At the pool’s edge Caela took Harold’s other hand—he was now visibly tense—and together all three, the King of England, a Sidlesaghe, and a woman who was about to become something that not even she had yet fully realised, stepped into the water.

It was not wet. Rather, it felt to Harold like the soft caress of a warm breeze. Led by the Sidlesaghe and Caela he walked forward until the water reached his chest then, at the insistent tugging on both his hands, and with a quick, silent prayer in his heart, he ducked beneath the level of the water.

It was a different world beneath, and yet similar. It was a reflection of the world above, only smaller, more compact, and far, far more magical.

They stood in a green meadow, the grasses weaving about their knees. Above them shone a clear sky—a soft grey—and before them rose a low hill.

On its summit stood something that Harold could not quite make out. It appeared to be a building constructed of something so indistinct—almost out of focus—that he could not make out its lines.

He felt a slight squeeze on his right hand—the Sidlesaghe had now let go of his left—and found Caela smiling at him.

“Is this not beautiful?” she said.

“Aye,” he said slowly, again looking around.
Thousands
of Sidlesaghes were wandering about this soft, gentle landscape. They hummed—a sweet, reassuring melody.

“Aye,” Harold said again, and, after a pause, “What is it?”

“The Otherworld.”

Harold jumped. It was not Caela who had replied, but a Sidlesaghe, standing a pace or so away.

“Am I dead?” Harold said.

“No,” said Caela. “We are, I think, merely being granted an audience. Look.” She pointed to the hill.

A figure had emerged from the indistinct structure atop the hill.

A small, dark, fey woman.

Caela gasped and, her hand still linked with Harold’s, pulled him towards the hill.

By the time they reached the hill’s summit Harold was out of breath, but Caela didn’t seem affected by the climb at all. She let go Harold’s hand and wrapped the shorter woman in a tight embrace.
“Mag!”

Harold felt himself freeze in awe.
Mag?
But was not Caela Mag-reborn?

The woman, Mag, returned Caela’s embrace, then smiled at Harold. “Mag-who-once-was only,” she said. She reached out a hand for Harold and, hesitatingly, he took it.

Immediately a sense of peace flowed through him.

“Will you come into England’s water cathedral?” said Mag, and she drew Caela and Harold forwards.

She led them into wonder, and the moment they stepped inside Harold realised why it was he found it difficult to put this building in focus.

It was, unbelievably, constructed entirely of water.

They had entered a massive hall—columned and vaulted in flowing water. It was the most magical sight that Harold had ever seen, or could ever have imagined seeing. The vast interior of the hall was colonnaded on either side by twin rows of water columns, rising to some fifteen or twenty paces where they merged into a gigantic circular domed vault that rose at least a further twenty paces.

They walked to the centre of the hall, directly under the dome, and Harold looked down to the floor.

It, too, was made of water, although it felt solid under his feet. The water
(floor)
was of a deep, rich emerald colour, but running through it were lines of blue, trailing haphazardly, crisscrossing each other at random intervals.

Harold raised his head to find Mag smiling at him.

“The island’s waterways,” she said. Then she stepped forward and embraced Harold with almost as much emotion as she’d hugged Caela. “Thank you for bringing her to us,” she said.

“It
was
my pleasure,” Harold said, and Mag laughed, and kissed him on the cheek.

“We wished she could have found you sooner, but that she found you at all is a blessing indeed.”

Harold was going to say something more, but then stopped as he saw that a score of shadowy womanly figures had emerged from behind the columns to walk to within several paces of where Mag, Caela and Harold stood. Most appeared in their late middle age, but apart from their shared femininity and the gentle smiles on their faces, that was their only similarity. Some were fair, some dark, some tall, some slim, some plump, some beautiful, some homely.

Harold gave a small start…there was one other thing all these woman shared in common. They all had knowledge and power shining from their bright eyes.

For once, Caela seemed as puzzled as he.

Mag took Caela’s hand, ignoring for the moment the other women. “Caela, you have had trouble accepting the heritage I bequeathed you.”

“Yes. It has been…difficult. I felt myself empty. Lacking.”

“Aye. For that you have blamed yourself. Ah, my dear, that was my fault, not yours. Here, let me explain.”

Mag gestured to the encircling women with her free hand. “These woman are all my predecessors, as I am yours.”

Caela so forgot herself that she gaped. “There were others
before
you?”

“Indeed. I will explain, but first, if they may, my sisters would introduce themselves to you.”

“I am Jool,” said one of the women. “I came three before Mag.”

“And I am Raia,” said another. “I came ten before Mag.”

The woman all introduced themselves in turn. There were thirty-one of them.

Mag turned to Caela and took both her hands in her own, giving the woman her undivided attention. “I am the thirty-second in line from the dawn of time,” she said. “You will be the thirty-third. All of us have lived long lives, millennia long, and at our given time we have passed into this world, handing on the responsibilities we shouldered to our successor. Part of that succession was, firstly, ensuring that the woman we picked was mated with the land. That normally happened
before
we left our successor to her work. In your case,” Mag smiled sadly, “well…in your case, events, and Genvissa’s darkcraft, intervened. I was not able to ensure that you had mated with the land. No wonder you found it so difficult in this life.”

“But,” said Caela, looking between Mag and Harold. “Coel and I…” She stopped, remembering.

“Brutus murdered Coel before the act was completed, before that moment when both of you sighed in repletion. And besides, that act took place before I had told you of my decision. That was not, in any sense of the word, a true mating of my chosen successor with the land, although the souls were right. You both needed to be reborn into the places you are now to have accomplished the act you have.”

Caela nodded. Mag had told Cornelia of her plans many months after Coel’s death, the night Genvissa had forced her daughter from her womb.

“Normally,” Mag said, “the old mother goddess of the land and the waters passes over at the moment her successor and her mate have sighed in repletion. I went too early. I could not aid you to the place that both of you found today.”

“With the Sidlesaghes’ aid,” said Harold.

“For my lack of being there,” Mag said, “I apologise from the bottom of my heart.”

“We all do,” said the woman who had called herself Raia, “for we all should have helped you.”

“And welcomed you,” said a woman called Golenta.

“But late is better than never,” said Mag, smiling. “You are here now. And Harold,” she nodded at him, “is here because he is a beloved man both to you and to us, and because all of us need a witness when…” She stopped, and arched a questioning eyebrow at Caela, to see if she understood.

“Ah,” said Caela, after a moment. “You said that only part of the responsibility in handing on succession was ensuring that your chosen successor was mated—married—with the land. There is something else which needs to be accomplished, and which needs a witness.”

Mag nodded, pleased. “None of us shares the same name, my dear. And in the past few months, you have felt awkward using the name ‘Mag’, have you not?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“You have avoided using it,” Mag continued. “It has not felt comfortable to you. That is as it should be. My dear, when each of us came into our own, when we came into that power, that
embrace
which you know as the essence of this land, its soul, we each chose for ourselves our own name.

“Now,” she said, “you must choose for yourself a name, as I chose Mag when I shouldered the burden, and as all the other women present chose a name when their turn came. Your name, your goddess-name, is not only most sacred, but most powerful. One day you will wear it openly, but for the time being, until this land is free of the burden which currently consumes it, it will be your secret name, and the more powerful because of that.”

“I can choose any name I wish?”

“Indeed, my sweet. But listen, for this is important. Your name will become your nature. It will dictate who you are. You will never be able to act beyond the confines of your name, for be certain that your chosen name
will
confine you. Do you understand me?”

“I’m not sure,” Caela said.

“I chose the name Mag when I ascended,” Mag said. “In the language of the people who lived on this land when I lived only as a mortal woman it means welcoming…intaking…nurturing. I thought it the essence of motherhood, and for me that is what I wanted to be for this land.”

“Of course. Thus, Mother Mag.”

“Yes. And as I had chosen that name, so it confined me—and eventually it damaged the land. Can you know of what I speak?”

Harold saw Caela’s brow furrowing, then it cleared and understanding replaced the puzzlement on her face.

“Ariadne. When she came begging a home you welcomed her. You took her in, because that was your nature, that was your name.”

“Yes. Mag was who I
was,
and it meant that once I took Ariadne in I could not reject her. What mother can reject any of her children? The Darkwitches attacked me, and drew away my power, but that was not the only reason I weakened. The time was coming when I needed to pass into this world and pass on my responsibilities. ‘Mag’ was no longer what the land needed.”

“You all passed on when the ‘who’ of you became irrelevant?”

“Aye. And now you must choose your own name, Caela. Your secret name, your power name, your goddess name. Choose well and choose wisely, for it must be a name that will provide this land what it needs to repel the malevolence that assails it.”

Caela drew in a deep breath, pulling her hands from those of Mag. Harold thought he saw a fleeting expression of panic cross her face, and he didn’t blame her.
Choose well and choose wisely
…

For if you don’t…

Caela turned away, her head down, thinking. She paced very slowly about the room, her arms wrapped across her breasts as if in protection, then, after a few minutes of total silence with all eyes in the hall upon her, Caela came to a stop before Harold.

She lifted her eyes, staring at him, and Harold felt tears come into his own eyes at the depth of expression and of love in hers.

“I have chosen,” she said softly, looking at no one but Harold.

There was silence, and Harold felt the breath stop in his throat.

“Eaving,” Caela said. “My name will be Eaving.”

Harold’s breath let out on a sob, and the tears that had welled now flowed down his cheeks.