“I promised Ardanos I would choose my successor…to serve his plan. He is waiting…” She grimaced. “Like a crow watching a sick ewe. It was to be Eilan, but she…must be sent away soon. Now he says I must choose Dieda, but I will not, and she would not, unless the Goddess—” a fit of coughing took her and Caillean hastily set the tea down, holding Lhiannon upright and patting her back until she was still.
“Until the Goddess shows you Her will,” Caillean finished for her, and the High Priestess of Vernemeton smiled.
Lhiannon was dying. It was obvious to everyone—everyone except perhaps Caillean, who nursed her so devotedly and with a despairing tenderness, night and day, seldom stepping beyond the room where the sick woman lay. Even those of the priestesses who had always been suspicious of Caillean as an outlander had to admire her dedication now. Both Dieda and Eilan guessed what was coming—but it would have taken a braver woman than either one of them to name it to Caillean.
“But she is so skilled in healing,” Dieda said as they carried Lhiannon’s soiled bedding down to the river. “She must know.”
“I suppose she does,” said Eilan, “but admitting it would make it real.” She looked at her kinswoman curiously. Apart from commenting sarcastically that the dirty laundry of a High Priestess smelled no different from anyone else’s, and she could not see why a sworn priestess was required to wash it, Dieda had done her share of the work uncomplainingly.
It seemed odd that they should have become such strangers now, when they were sister priestesses. Working with Dieda these past weeks, when Caillean’s attention was fixed on Lhiannon, reminded Eilan how close they had been as girls. Distracted by her thoughts, she tripped on a tree root.
Dieda put out a hand to steady her.
“Thank you,” Eilan said in surprise. The other woman glared at her.
“Why are you staring?” said Dieda. “I don’t hate you.”
Eilan felt the hot color flare in her cheeks, then fade. “You know, then,” she whispered.
“You are the fool, not I,” came the answer. “Cooped up with you and Caillean all this time I could hardly help overhearing something. But for the sake of our family’s honor I have kept silent. If any of the other women know your secret, they did not learn it from me. At least pregnancy seems to agree with you. Are you feeling well?”
It was a relief to Eilan to speak of something other than Lhiannon’s illness, and it seemed to her that Dieda felt that way as well. By the time they returned to the Forest House, they were more in harmony than they had been in years.
But a day came when even Caillean could not deny it any longer. Ardanos said that the priestesses must be summoned for the deathwatch. He looked grieved and gray, and Eilan remembered that her kinswoman had once said there was love between them. She thought it must have been a long time ago, or a very strange kind of love.
Certainly it was not at all what she would call love, thought Eilan, and surely she was an expert. But Ardanos sat close to the unconscious woman and held her hand; the priestesses slipped in and out to keep watch by twos and threes, and Caillean fidgeted lest they disturb Lhiannon.
“Why does she trouble herself? I do not think anything will disturb the High Priestess any more,” Eilan whispered to Dieda, and the other girl nodded, but without words.
It was near sunset, and Ardanos had stepped into the air for a few breaths. Like all sickrooms, this one was hot and close, and Eilan could not blame him for a moment for wishing to escape it. Though it was nearly Lughnasad the light still lingered late. Sunset made a glare in the room, but the angle of the sinking sun told Eilan it would soon be gone. She had crossed the room to light the lamp when she became aware that Lhiannon was awake and looking at her with recognition for the first time in many days.
“Where is Caillean?” she whispered.
“She has gone to make you more tea, Mother,” Eilan replied. “Will you have me call her?”