Now all the tales she had heard in the House of Maidens rose up to sweep her careful reasoning away. It hardly mattered whether the Goddess really cared about what she had done with Gaius, Eilan thought despairingly. To survive the ritual without damage would require a miracle. I meant only to challenge the Druids, but I have challenged Her, daring Her wrath this way. Surely the Goddess will strike me down! And what will this do to my child? Eilan wondered. But if the Goddess would punish an unborn baby for what the mother had done, She was not the loving Presence Eilan had sworn to serve.
Ardanos was waiting for her answer—they were all waiting, watching with hope or judgment in their eyes—and slowly she calmed. If the Lady does not want me as I am, I do not wish to live. She took a deep breath, fighting her way back to the decision to which in the sleepless nights since Lhiannon’s death she had come.
“I am ready.” Her voice trembled only a little. At least her own father was in the North somewhere with Cynric. She was glad. She did not think she could have met his eyes.
“And do you declare yourself a fit vessel for Her power?”
Eilan swallowed. Was she? The night before she had doubted it, and wept on Caillean’s shoulder like a terrified child.
“Fit? Who is, if you put it like that?” Caillean had asked. “We are all only mortal; but it is you who have been chosen. Why else have you been preparing for so many years?”
The Arch-Druid was watching her like a hawk waiting for some betraying rustle in the grass, waiting for her to perjure herself so that she would be in his power. She realized dimly that he was enjoying this.
Lhiannon thought I was fit, she told herself then. Only by going through with this could she justify Lhiannon’s dying choice, and the choice she herself had made when she gave herself to Gaius beneath the trees. It had seemed to her then that she was affirming a more ancient law of the Goddess than the one pledging her to chastity. To refuse this test was to admit that act of love had been a sin. She lifted her chin proudly. “I am a fit and holy vessel. Let the earth rise up and cover me, let the sky fall down and crush me, and let the gods by whom I swear forsake me if I lie!”
“The candidate has been questioned, and she has sworn—” Ardanos said to the Druids who attended him. He turned to the priestesses. “Let her now be purified and prepared for the ritual—”
For a moment he looked at her, and pity, exasperation, and satisfaction seemed to war in his gaze. Then he turned on his heel and led the men from the room.
“Eilan, you must not tremble so,” Caillean said softly. “Don’t let that old buzzard scare you, there is nothing to fear. The Goddess is merciful. She is our mother, Eilan, and the Mother of all women, the maker of all things mortal. Do not forget it.”
Eilan nodded, knowing that even if this moment had come to her in the ordinary course of events she would still have been afraid. If she must die, it should be at the hands of the Goddess, there was no need to perish of fear beforehand.
The curtain stirred again and four of the youngest priestesses, among them Senara and Eilidh, came into the room carrying pails of water from the sacred spring. They stopped just inside the door, looking at her in awe. The hand of the Goddess has descended on me, she thought, and it seemed that she saw in their faces something of that same wonder with which she herself had always looked on Lhiannon. They were all young; not one of them, except Eilidh, even as old as she was herself…
She wanted to cry out, “Nothing has changed; I am still Eilan—” but in fact everything had changed. Yet when they stripped off her gown and she looked down, she was startled that her body still looked so little altered.
But these were virgins. So it was not surprising that they should not see the slight changes her pregnancy had made. As Eilan had done so often for Lhiannon, the girls helped her to bathe. She stood shivering in the chilly room, feeling the icy touch of the clear water on her body as, curiously, a purification; as if somehow it were dissolving away not only the last traces of her contact with Gaius, but the whole of her previous life.