The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)

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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

BOOK: The Horse Goddess (Celtic World of Morgan Llywelyn)
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For Michael
This book is dedicated
to the hope that men everywhere
may discover brotherhood,
and find freedom.
THE BLUE MOUNTAINS
I
t was night, and the spirits walked.
In the lodge of the lord of the tribe, Toutorix, the Invincible Boar, Epona waited for the representatives of the spirits to come for her. Since sunrise she had carried a knot in her belly, but she refused to give in to it. She had gone through the day as if it were any other day, pretending not to notice the jealous teasing of the other girls and the suddenly speculative glances of the boys. She had eaten her meals without tasting them and had licked her fingers afterward as if she had found the food delicious. It was important to avoid offending the spirits of the animals and plants that had been sacrificed for her nourishment.
As the sun moved across the sky the knot in her belly became a stone. The older women began preparing her for the night’s ritual, and she submitted in silence as they bathed her body in three changes of cold water, and oiled her skin with perfumed oil from a silver Hellene ewer. Rigantona watched closely to be certain no drop was wasted. It was her oil and her ewer.
Epona’s masses of tangled, tawny hair were pulled smooth with a bronze comb and plaited into three braids, with a copper ball knotted into the end of each to signify her status as the daughter of Rigantona, the chief’s wife. Rosy-cheeked Brydda batted at the balls to make them swing, and laughed like a child, but for once her infectious gaiety did not strike an answering note in Epona.
After sundown she could no longer wear the short tunic appropriate for children, but she was not yet a woman, so her mother wrapped her in a blanket woven of soft baby goats’ hair and pinned it securely with one of her own bronze brooches. “Be certain you return that brooch to me afterward,” Rigantona said sharply. “Don’t you dare lose it!”
Afterward. It was hard to believe there might be an Afterward, when you were going into the unknown to face the spirits. Epona looked into her mother’s face and thought of all the questions she wished she could ask, but she said nothing aloud. What lay ahead was mystery. To be worthy of her blood she must face it bravely, just as any warrior went to certain death, knowing that life continued beyond. Afterward.
At night the spirits walked.
When the long purple shadows swallowed the lake the women would come for her. Epona’s younger brothers and sisters sat big-eyed on their sleeping benches, waiting. The chief and his wife stood on either side of her, proud and tall, prepared for the arrival of the
gutuiters.
They heard the footsteps on the path outside. They heard the knock: three heavy blows on the wooden door.
Epona’s heart was pounding, but she tossed her head back and stood very straight as the door was thrust open. Nematona, Daughter of the Trees and senior
gutuiter
, a woman as lean and vigorous as a mountain pine in spite of her many winters, strode into the room. “We have come for the girl child,” she announced with the authority of her office. Two other women entered behind her, bringing with them a scent of sweet smoke and bitter herbs.
“She is not ready,” Rigantona protested according to custom but without sincerity. She had waited a long time for this
night, to see the child leave. She held Epona by one shoulder and Toutorix took hold of the other, ready to propel the girl forward if she should threaten to humiliate them by balking. Children did sometimes struggle at this final moment, and even those who knew her best could not always predict what Epona might do.
“Come,” Nematona commanded, holding out her hand.
I do this willingly,
Epona said in her mind, to her mother.
If I did not, you could not force me; you could not!
She had had many similar conversations with her mother over the seasons, not all of them silent.
She clasped Nematona’s hand firmly, realizing by the warmth of the
gutuiter’
s fingers how cold her own were. It would have been clever to warm her hands by the fire before the women came for her, but of course no one had suggested it and now it was too late. What was done now must be of her own doing.
Nematona led her from the chief’s house, the other two women walking beside them, holding torches aloft. Epona ached to steal one look backward, to see if her parents were watching her straight back and squared shoulders; but she heard the door pulled shut behind her, its hinges creaking. Only the lord of the tribe had the new iron hinges Goibban had recently designed. Epona heard the thud of the bolt, signifying that the child was now barred from the lodge of the mother; she might enter again only after she had passed into her nextlife.
The lodge of Toutorix occupied a central position in the village, a community of dwellings and workplaces built of timber and clinging to the western shore of a narrow, winding alpine lake. Grouped around the chief’s house were the lodges of his nearest kinsmen, the nobles of the tribe, and beyond these clustered the smaller lodges of miners and craftsmen and stockmen. Arranged for convenience around the village perimeter were the workshops and carpenters’ pavilion, the dome-shaped bakehouse and smokehouses, the storage pits and holding pens for the livestock. In a place of honor,
slightly set apart and surrounded by precious space, stood the forge of Goibban the smith.
The mountains rose abruptly, crowding in on the village as if to shove it from its precariously narrow perch into the cold lake. Clinging to the forested slopes above were the lodges of more miners, for many men now worked the great Salt Mountain. In the folds of the hills, above deep wooded valleys, were the old smelters and mine shafts that had supplied the tribe with copper for bronze-making for many generations. Nearby were the huts of the charcoal burners, the strange men who held themselves apart from most aspects of village life yet faithfully cut wood and tended the smoldering charcoal mounds upon which the forge and smelters depended.
A timbered palisade shielded the village from view of the stony path leading up over the hills to the mountain passes. Four nights to the west, along that trail, lay the famed Amber Road leading far north to the “sea gold” of the Baltik, and south to sunny Etruria, where it was partially paved with stone and causeways had been built over the frequent marshes.
Along this road were shipped copper ingots and bronze ornaments, furs and hides and cattle, casks of honey and resins, bales of wool beeswax and tools and countless wagonloads of salt, the outpouring produce of the Blue Mountains.
Following the same road up from the south came gold and silver, wine and olive oil, faience glass beads and topaz jewelry and ivory bangles, perfumes and dyes, and tanned strangers from lands warmed by the seas of endless summer.
Aside from the trail through the mountains, which villagers called the trade road, the only other access to the community was by water, across the lake. This proved a convenient route for floating out timber and bulk shipments of salt to be moved into the descending waterways and the network of rivers to the north.
Up the steep valley at the head of the lake was the great Salt Mountain itself, dominating the thoughts of all those within its sphere of influence, providing a wealth for the tribe
of the Kelti that they could neither measure nor exhaust.
For most of each day, the village lay in the shadow of the towering mountains. What little level terrain existed was long since crowded with buildings, except for the tribe’s commonground, near the lodge of Toutorix. Epona and the three
gutuiters
must cross this open space on their way to the sacred grove and the house of Kernunnos, Priest of the Stag, chief priest of the Kelti.
Shapechanger.
No! Epona would not let herself think about the shapechanger. Her loathing for the man might weaken her, and she must not allow that to happen.
I will do this my way
, she said to herself.
My way
. She matched her pace to the processional stride of the
gutuiters
and pressed her lips together to keep them from quivering.
Sometime during the long day one of the women attending her, Suleva, She Who Bears Only Daughters, had broken the prohibitions to whisper a fragmented warning: “You must not show fear. An awful thing will happen if …” Then the woman shrank into herself and said nothing more.
The
gutuiters
began the ancient chant:
“Maiden to sacrifice,
maiden to sacrifice.
See her go.
See her go.
Dark is the night,
cold is the wind.
See her go.
See her go.
Follow the fire,
follow the fire.
See her go!
See her go!”
They moved their upper bodies in time to the chant, bending from side to side so the torches they carried made swirling patterns of light. The swaying movements and light dizzied
Epona, and it was an effort to keep her steps regular, one foot set neatly in a direct line in front of the other as was proper for mountain dwellers.
Spectators, crowding into the doorways of their lodges, took up the chant: “Maiden to sacrifice. See her go!” Their voices rang in the night air, calling the attention of the spirits to Epona.
As she came abreast of each lodge, those who watched were careful to look down, for it was considered dangerous to meet eyes with a person passing between worlds.
An evening breeze sprang up, bringing the smoke from Kernunnos’ lodge to meet the little procession, and as they passed the house of the dead, the voice of the chief priest could be heard, joining in the chant with secret words from the language of the spirits. That harsh voice carried a long way.
The valley seemed to grow darker, as if the residual twilight were being sucked out of it by the smoke and the chanting. The breeze became a cold wind from mountain passes still blocked by snow, and the ice crystals it carried froze out the softer scent of the pines at the edge of the sacred grove.
Epona did not look at the trees, but she heard Nematona call to them with love, and heard the soughing of their branches in answer. There was a spirit of exceptional power in the sacred grove. To walk close to the gnarled trees was to feel its presence, like a multitude of eyes looking at you, like the humming of a vast hive of bees, like the breathing of great animals, crouched and waiting, thinking unimaginable thoughts.
The people of the village gave up the chant and went back into their sturdy safe lodges, to their bright warm fires. Only Epona and the
gutuiters
remained under the open sky, where the awakening stars could see them.
The path became narrow and broken, and sharp stones pressed into Epona’s bare feet. Beyond the trees stood the magic house of Kernunnos, which she had never seen, for children were forbidden to go near it. It was built of oak, like the house of the dead, instead of birch, as other lodges were.
The wood of the sacred tree was used for these special buildings because having once been sanctified they must stand forever; they could not be remade.
There was another structural difference between the house of Kernunnos and those of other people. All other lodges of the living were rectangular, that of Kernunnos was built to conform to the sacred circle. Trees crowded close behind the priest’s lodge, and Epona knew from whispered stories that the ravens of Kernunnos sat hunched like black spirits of doom in those trees, surely aware of her approach.
The smoke issuing from the magic house was acrid and made her cough.
The
gutuiters
stripped her of her blanket before shoving her inside the lodge. At first she could see nothing, could be aware of nothing but the smoke stinging her eyes and nostrils and the sound of the chanting reverberating through her being, making her part of itself. A beating like a drum. There was a drum; she could make out its voice, the booming of the priest drum, and it came closer. Something was coming closer. Something terrible and irresistible.
There was a shrill cry directly in front of her, and a face materialized from the smoke, a sharp-featured face like that of a fox, with yellow eyes that burned into hers. The power of those eyes made everything else fade away and she saw only the feral gaze of Kernunnos the priest.
Shapechanger!
Epona was nauseated by the visceral revulsion she always suffered when she was near the chief priest, but she struggled to fight it off. It must not interfere with the ritual.
Kernunnos was dressed in a cloak of animal skins, with dangling paws that swung limply as he circled the girl. She smelled his body; rank, musky, a wild animal’s smell. His eyes stared and glittered. On his head towered the branching antler headdress that marked him as a shapechanger, the rarest of the
druii
, the most awesome member of that priesthood whose talents were passed on through the blood or, occasionally, bestowed as a sign of exceptional favor from the spirits themselves.
In one hand Kernunnos grasped a piece of horn, a prong taken from the antlers of a mighty stag sacrificed generations before. The bone had been polished and sharpened to a fine point. At its tip it bore a permanent stain, like ocher.
Kernunnos lifted the prong to the level of Epona’s eyes and shook it at her. “Your time has come,” he chanted in a singsong voice. “One life is over. One life begins. It is always so. Make ready for the spirit of the strong and the powerful, Epona, the strong and the powerful. Make ready for the sacrifice of the blood, for the blood is the life. Make ready for life, Epona.”

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