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  Hertha felt in one moment a burden fit for an ox had been taken from her shoulders. The Holy Nine were the best midwives in the land. Perhaps Ramis had come only to save Athelinda. How she knew she was needed here was known only by the ghosts.

  At the sight of her, Athelinda made a mewling sound and struggled weakly to get away. But Ramis put a gentle palm on her forehead and intoned the words of a birth-charm in a voice full of powerful comfort. Terror eased from Athelinda’s pain-fogged eyes.

  Ramis’ hands then traveled with brisk confidence over Athelinda’s swollen body, moving through a succession of tasks with light, swift grace. First she determined the position of the child, probing deftly for what was wrong. Then she massaged Athelinda’s belly with an ointment of hen’s grease, dittany, and hollyhock, stroking her hips, her back, beseeching her body to release the child. When the draught she had ordered the thralls to prepare was poured out into a clay vessel, she put it to Athelinda’s dry lips. Ramis’ presence seemed to reawaken Athelinda’s will, as though an extinguished torch were touched by one that burned brightly.

  Then Ramis dragged the laboring woman to her feet while carefully supporting her weight, and forced her to take staggering steps. Athelinda’s copper-colored hair, soaked with her exertions, swung limply down. For long moments Ramis walked with her this way; Hertha guessed she was shifting the child’s position. When Ramis was satisfied she had done so, she helped Athelinda into a crouching position over a bed of straw. After a few more brisk, insistent manipulations of Ramis’ hands, the child came all at once.

  Ramis caught the glistening, red creature in her strong hands. Mudrin’s eyes blurred with tears. Those hands that so skillfully took life at the edge of the lake now just as skillfully preserved it.

  As Ramis raised the child up, Hertha saw something flickering in the prophetess’s eyes that she had not thought possible there—a vulnerable look, the look of a mother, helpless with love.

  With gentle triumph Ramis proclaimed, “A girl child is born to the clan.” After saving aside the birth-string so it could later be ceremonially buried, she laid the small creature on her mother’s breast.

  “You have blessed us,” Hertha said with exaggerated graciousness—she did not want to seem ungrateful by betraying her unease. A girl child was more likely to be stolen away for an apprentice. “Mudrin! Fredemund!” She clapped her hands. “Prepare for the oracle.”

  A seeress was called to every birth to prophesy the future of the child; all counted it an honor they had one so august as Ramis to perform this common rite. Fredemund, moving stiffly as an old mare, spread a white linen cloth before the hearthfire. Mudrin found her birdbone flute and, with a child’s animal spirits, began to play while walking sunwise round the hearthfire, weaving an intricate net of notes through which harmful ghosts could not pass.

  Ramis shook out her silver and bronze hair until it hung down like a second cloak, nearly as long, laid over the first. The prophetess then placed her staff at the edge of the white cloth and settled herself behind it, sitting cross-legged. She waited until she saw the babe take milk. No oracle would be given before a child was put to the breast, to protect the newborn in case the parents were terrified of its fate and wanted to cast it out. For once a child took food it became a member of the clan, and to kill it then would be the most grievous crime of all, the murder of kin.

  “Tell us first,” Hertha ventured as she settled beside Athelinda, “what ancestor is born among us? Whose name shall she bear?”

  Ramis watched approvingly as the babe began to suck. “There is but one name for her, my lady. She must be called Auriane.”

  Hertha’s eyes flashed, but she stifled her fury. They had been betrayed. And a name, once given, could not be taken back. With cautious affront she protested: “But…that is not a name of our family. You have given her a seeress’s name.”

  “I have given her the name that is hers.”

  Athelinda spoke; in her exhaustion she feared nothing and no one. “It is the right of the mother and father to name the child.”

  Hertha glared at Athelinda, astonished by her spirited rashness. If Ramis were goaded to wrath she might curse their cattle with disease or blast the fields for a generation.

  But Ramis only answered Athelinda mildly, “I am her mother and father.”

  Athelinda pressed the child’s cheek to hers and shut her eyes. Tears seeped from beneath her dark lashes. “You thief of children! You shall not have her.”

  “Athelinda! Silence yourself or fall into darkness,” Hertha hissed.

  “Hertha. Be at peace,” Ramis interrupted in her clear, commanding alto. “I do not hear those words. They are spoken not to me but to the specter of the evils she has known.” Ramis turned to Athelinda, her voice now soft as fleece, “Athelinda, take heed. The child is neither yours nor mine, truly, and these things are not to be feared. Life flows through this little one and carries her along, as it flows through you and me. Would you try and dam the springs of the gods? You cannot stop a name, no more than you can stop the night.”

  With a quick gesture Ramis flung agaric onto the fire, causing it to jump. But it settled back at once as though it knew its master. Mudrin’s notes on the bone flute shifted in tone; now they were warm, low, and enticing as she lured the spirits of foreknowing.

  Ramis withdrew from her robe a linen bag that contained twenty-four polished sticks of beechwood; on each was burned a runic letter painted with red lead. She began casting them three at a time onto the white cloth, collecting them up and throwing them down in a sure, rapid rhythm, gathering information about the life of the child in the order that they fell. As she divined she hummed a strong amelodic tune that blended chillingly with Mudrin’s aching notes on the bone flute. Ramis paused only once and smiled a bare smile, as if a thing she had suspected had been confirmed. Then just as swiftly she returned the rune-sticks to the cloth bag, tied it up again, and returned it to her cloak.

  The thralls edged closer, full of some dim sense that this oracle would be a disturbing one. Hertha found Athelinda’s moist hand and held to it tightly.

  Ramis bowed her head, humming still; her voice rose in pitch and intensified until it seemed it would shake ghosts from the air. When slowly she raised her head again, it seemed to Hertha her features were melted by the firelight and music and remolded into ancient shape. In the smoky gloom that face was a stark mask with two nether pits for eyes. She was a woman of a thousand winters, fashioned of rocks and rime. Her hair was long grass, her bones were stone, her mind, a field of stars. Her lids eased closed; her head gently rolled back. The fire seemed to swell and subside with her breathing. Her humming faded away, and Mudrin let her last flute note evaporate on the air.

  Ramis had fallen into a deep trance; her eyes were peacefully shut. When she spoke at last, her voice was tired and drawn; the words seemed to drift from her like smoke.

  “We are the spirits of forest and grove. We hum with one voice: This child is mine. But she shall not know it for a long time. She will resist us mightily, and from this will come her sorrow.

  “The fate of this one is fearsome and surpassingly strange. But such things come, at turnings of the times.”

  Ramis was silent for an uncomfortably long time, and Hertha shivered, shifting closer to Athelinda and the nursing child for comfort; Ramis’ silence was a black chasm crowded with demons.

  Then Ramis began to cough, though no smoke from the hearthfire was carried in her direction; they realized she saw fire in her mind. When she spoke again, her words seemed a surging lay of tragedy sung to the beat of a funereal drum.

  “In her time will be war and more war, until the Wolf-Men of the South break into our lands in great numbers to devastate and burn. The dead will lie unquiet, their bleached bones buried in snow. The Fates will weave with our entrails. Dead children will be our crop. Mothers and fathers will bury daughters and sons, and holy groves will be devoured by fire. Victorious wolf! Beware your victory, for the w
heel never stops turning.”

  Hertha felt a low pulse of alarm. The meaning in the words was unmistakable: Within the lifetime of the girl there would be some great and terrible war with Rome. The Fates grant me death by that day, she prayed.

  “But this one who has come will be a thorn in the paw of the Great Wolf. She will bring shame down on the posturing mighty. Great will be her luck in war.”

  Hertha tautened in disbelief. What sort of child had they brought forth? She had heard many birth oracles and usually they promised such common things as a fruitful marriage, an honorable life, a gift of land or cattle, or vengeance won against an enemy of the clan. Hertha looked at the babe as if for an explanation, but the child’s blank surprised eyes revealed nothing.

  “This one newly born has come to close wounds. She will bring disruption to the common order, then turn round at the last and give everything to save it. She will endure a great trial by ordeal in a foreign land. But for this there is no knowing, for we are masters of our fates, though few of us know it, and she will die or live by her own designing.

  “And then I see a long night…the darkness needed to usher in the light. She will be led to slaughter her own…but by this same act she will save her own.”

  A chill hand clamped round Hertha’s heart. To slaughter her own? Which one of us is this baby going to murder? How could Ramis bless such a scourge?

  She wondered if this was a normal child, conceived in the regular way. Tales of women raped by the malevolent river-sprites called water nixes had gone round frequently of late. The children of these horrid couplings looked human enough at first, Hertha reminded herself uneasily. Then she chided herself for believing thralls’ tales.

  “Bring her to me now,” Ramis said softly, her eyes still closed. As Fredemund held the baby before Ramis, the seeress drew forth an amulet; it seemed no more than a pouch of black leather strung from a thong. She adjusted the thong for the tiny neck.

  “Many will seek her life but this child must live. I give her the most powerful protection I can give. In this pouch is the sacred earth called the aurr, the pure soil taken from the tracks of the cart of the Nameless One when she journeys over the earth in spring. This child must be named for the Sacred Mold, for her life is a sacrifice to earth. I will that the protection of earth be always with you, Auriane.”

  She opened the pouch, took a bit of the earth within, wet it with her spittle and daubed it on the forehead of the child, tracing the form of the rune of long life. Then she bound it up again and placed the black leather amulet about the child’s neck.

  What were they to do? Hertha wondered frantically. Should a child be raised who will be “led to slaughter her own”? She thought of sending a message at once to Baldemar. But did he still live? She felt caught in a whirlpool, sucked down into the worlds below.

  “You have asked of Baldemar,” Ramis said suddenly.

  Hertha drew in a breath. She had spoken no word aloud. Instinctively she dropped her gaze, as if to conceal her thoughts from Ramis’ remorselessly searching mind.

  “Bright is his fortune and for long, all is well. Tomorrow he will scatter the Wolf-Men, and from this day he will thrive. More battle-friends will be won to him than to any other…they fling themselves into the fray like the foaming wave onto the shore.

  “He will be called the Feeder of Wolves, the great Breaker of Rings…”

  Hertha turned to smile with relief at Athelinda, but Fredemund had taken Auriane from her and the young mother was sinking quickly into sleep.

  “…and his hall will glitter like the heavens with treasure from his many victories—”

  Ramis had been speaking smoothly and easily; abruptly she stopped. Hertha looked up quickly to examine her face. Ramis’ expression was no longer peaceful; her features had delicately contracted into a look of horror.

  When Ramis spoke oracles she walked a winding path; often she was as startled as her listeners by what was suddenly visible beyond a sharp turn. And now she seemed unwilling to speak on. It was as though she wished to protect them from something and wrestled with herself because she knew she could not. A prophecy could not be held back because it was unpleasant, for this would offend the spirits who attended her. An oracle was an emanation of all nature, and in nature beauty and terror were braided together.

  “What is it?” Hertha whispered. The flames crackled angrily. Auriane started to cry.

  When Ramis spoke at last, her voice was dry as the sound of an adder in the grass; there was a faint rattle in her throat.

  “Baldemar will fall victim at the last to the greatest crime of all humanity. And she who just came forth will be the one to do the deed.”

  When Ramis was gone, Hertha roused Athelinda.

  “…not have the child,” Athelinda moaned as she fitfully awakened. “She shall not…” Life for Athelinda had been cold and hard as an iron blade. She had weathered deadly winters that halved the herds and pruned away the tribe’s aged and ill; she had braved enemy spears while accompanying the grain wagons that trailed the native army. She had endured the hatred of her mother’s kin when she wedded Baldemar because she had broken the oldest law by traveling to her husband’s land to live instead of having her husband come to her. And she had suffered the bleakness of spirit Baldemar’s long absences brought—this land’s gentle summer was the raiding season, and annually he decamped in spring, not to return until the time of rattling leaves. Athelinda wanted this child to be the one creature in the Nine Worlds that was hers alone; she and the girl would be bound in common need, and by a love known only to a mother and daughter who sit at the same loom.

  “Athelinda, take heed—you fell off asleep, you missed the worst of it. This monster must be gotten rid of, named and fed or not. Athelinda, you spawned a murderer of kin!”

  “What foul madness do you speak?”

  “Your daughter will kill my son!”

  “I heard no such thing.”

  “Of course not. You slept through it!”

  “I do not believe you, wicked woman. What vile spirit possesses you?”

  “Give me that child. I’ll do to it what it deserves.”

  “Ramis is sometimes wrong. I did not hear it, and I don’t believe it.”

  “Athelinda! Mother-love has robbed you of your wits. We all must agree to it. The child was born, lived for a day, became sickly, and died. If Mudrin and Fredemund say anything to anyone, they die for it. Now hand the brat to me. It goes into the lake.”

  Athelinda struggled to sit up. She had a fine, supple strength not always visible, but when it came, it flashed to the fore quick as a cat-strike. She was an avenging sylph with eyes that burned hot as a midsummer fire.

  “You are monstrous. She has taken food. Harm her and you commit the very crime of which you accuse the child. Even if Ramis did say it, I don’t believe it, and you are moonstruck to listen. Name a time when this has happened among us. You cannot. And that is because it could not happen. All nature would rise against a child before it could lay a hand upon a parent. Leave this babe be or I will go in arms to the next Law-Assembly and tell the tale of your crime before all our kinsmen and you shall stand judgment for it.”

  “You would not speak against the mother of your husband!”

  “I would and I will, if the mother of my husband murders my child.”

  And so Athelinda prevailed that day, and the child lived. As the seasons turned and Auriane grew, she felt a sense of dread in Hertha’s presence that she could never understand, as though she knew somehow what had passed on that day between her mother and grandmother.

  The oracle Athelinda heard in a fog of childbed pain was soon distorted in her mind and half forgotten. What she remembered most clearly was Ramis’ betrayal: She had given the child a seeress’s name.

  The child will not be one, Athelinda promised herself. The lives of the seeresses are barren and grim with fearful magic, and they have no home to call their own. This child will live close to the heart
h of her kin, and I’ll see she marries someone near—she will weave with me and stay by me.

  And so Athelinda took Baldemar’s first sword, one he cast aside in his youth, and placed it in Auriane’s cradle, hidden beneath the straw. She thought by doing this she would stunt any oracular powers that might develop in the child. Iron would pin her to the earth, to the everyday life of woman and man.

  And so all through her earliest days Auriane slept over a sword.

  CHAPTER II

  SIX SUMMERS PASSED. THIS WAS THE fourth year of the reign of Nero. Dusty evening settled upon the Subura, the saddest and poorest district of the imperial city of Rome. All the flies in the Empire, it was said, bred in this festering sink nestled between two great hills crowned with senatorial mansions. In the Subura prostitutes could be lured from shadowed places for the cost of a cup of boiled peas, and beggar children lamed by their masters so they could better incite pity fought with snake charmers and acrobats to wrest a few copper coins from citizens hurrying to the shops. Here thieves, tomb robbers, charioteers and poisoners felt at ease drinking toasts with idle young noblemen come for a night’s adventure. Each dawn illumined fresh corpses in the street.

  In the dank gloom of a Subura fuller’s shop, one of the poorer establishments where human urine was used to lift the grime from the clothes, a boy called Endymion was offered for sale by his master, a fuller named Lucius Grannus, who had decided this was a boy no reasonable man could restrain. He was fathered by a mad dog, Grannus maintained, and nursed by Nemesis herself in one of her foulest moods. Grannus meant to pass the boy on to someone who would work him to death as he deserved. It was Grannus who had given him the name Endymion—this was what the fuller called every boy he set to the task of hauling the cleaned clothes in from the vats.

  This was the third time in as many years that Endymion had been sold. Each time his lot became more miserable. His back was crisscrossed with scars and welts from Grannus’ beatings; at night he wrapped his feet in rags because Grannus would not buy shoes. As he stood before the buyer, his wrists bound tightly with cord, he formed a resolution that terrified him, but he knew the time had come.