Huw would have attacked the Arch-Druid himself, if he had threatened me… Eilan thought numbly, and in the end, he had.
“Take him away,” Bendeigid was breathing hard. “He was a fool.” Abruptly he turned, and grasped Eilan by the arm. “If you had been true, I would have asked you to invoke the Goddess to bless us. But instead, you shall be Her sacrifice!”
Why should that frighten me? My life has been one long offering, thought Eilan as her father dragged her across the circle to stand at Gaius’s side. There was a mutter from the people at that. Some of those who had heard the accusations wanted her blood immediately, others thought it sacrilege to lay hands on the High Priestess, whatever her crime.
“Eilan, can you forgive me?” Gaius said in a low voice. “I was never worthy of your love. You wanted me to be your Sacred King, but I am only an ordinary man…”
She turned to look at him, and found a nobility in his bruised face that had never been there before. She wished that she could take him in her arms, but the priests were holding her and she realized that he did not need it; she no longer saw the lost child that before had always waited in his eyes. He met her gaze without flinching, at peace with himself at last.
“I see a god in you,” Eilan answered fiercely. “I see a spirit that will never die. We did what was required of us, and if we did not do as well as we would have wished, the Lady’s purpose was accomplished all the same. Surely it will be given to us to walk together in the Summerland for a time before we come back again.”
“You have called him a Sacred King,” said Bendeigid hoarsely, “and as such he shall die.”
Slowly she saw the stern acceptance that had upheld Gaius deepen to a kind of wonder. He continued to gaze at her as they slipped the noose around his neck and began to tighten it. But before the sword went in beneath his ribs, his eyes had lost focus, fixed forever on something beyond the world. The blood was still pumping from his breast when they carried him to the fire.
“Tell me, Priestess, what omens do you read in this sacrifice?”
Eilan turned her gaze from the flames to her father, and something in her face made him take a step backwards, though she had not moved.
“I see royal blood that sanctifies the ground,” she said in a still voice. “In this man the seed of Rome and Britannia was mingled, and you have bound it forever to the land by giving him to the sacred fire.”
Eilan took a deep breath. Her head was pounding so that she could hardly see, but it no longer mattered. The final thing she had desired to see in this world was the glory in Gaius’s eyes. There was a roaring in her ears. She felt the surge of trance taking her, though she had not tasted the sacred herbs, and heard a voice that was not her own ring out.
“Hear me, ye men of the Cornovii and the Ordovices and all you others of the tribes, for this is the last time a priestess shall prophesy from this sacred hill. Hide your swords, oh warriors, and put away your spears, for not until the ninth generation has been born and died shall the Roman Eagles depart. And when they have flown, those who bear your blood and theirs together shall be left to defend the land!”
“You are lying! You must be lying!” Bendeigid’s voice cracked. “You betrayed your oaths!”
Eilan felt herself falling back into her body; pain stabbed her temple, but she shook her head. “I did not, for Gaius was the Year-King. You yourself have made it so, and thus my love for him was no sin!”
Bendeigid swayed, his face contorting with the agony of a man who sees all his certainties crumbling. “If what you say is truth,” he cried, “let the Goddess show us a sign before I give you living to the fire!”
Even as he spoke, it seemed to Eilan that a great thunder crashed through her head; startled by the weight of it, she felt herself slip to her knees. Her father reached out, but she was sliding down a long tunnel away from him. Her heartbeat was a fading drum; then it ceased suddenly, and she was free.