Turning, in silence and dread, Dave saw a woman with a bow standing partway around the glade from where he crouched in darkness. She was clad in green, all in green, and her hair was the same silver as the moonlight. Very tall she was, queenly, and he could not have said if she was young or old, or the color of her eyes, because there was a light in her face that made him avert his face, abashed and afraid.
It happened very quickly. A second bird flew suddenly, flapping its wings loudly, from a tree. The stag raised its head in momentary alarm, a magnificent creature, a king of the wood. Out of the corner of his eye—for he dared not look directly—Dave saw the woman string an arrow to her bow. A moment, a bare pulsation of time, slipped past as the frieze held: the stag with its head high, poised to flee, the moonlight on the glade, on the water, the huntress with her bow.
Then the arrow was loosed and it found the long, exposed throat of the stag.
Dave hurt for the beast, for blood on that silvered grass, for the crumpled fall of a thing so noble.
What happened next tore a gasp of wonder from the core of his being. Where the dead stag lay, a shimmer appeared in the glade, a sheen of moonlight it seemed at first; then it darkened, took shape and then substance, and finally Dave saw another stag, identical, stand unafraid, unwounded, majestic, beside the body of the slain one. A moment it stood thus, then the great horns were lowered in homage to the huntress, and it was gone from the glade.
It was a thing of too much moonlit power, too much transcendency; there was an ache within him, an appalled awareness of his own—
“Stand! For I would see you before you die.”
Of his own mortality.
With trembling limbs, Dave Martyniuk rose to stand before the goddess with her bow. He saw, without surprise, the arrow leveled on his heart, knew with certainty that he would not rise to bow to her once that shaft was in his breast.
“Come forward.”
A curious, other-worldly calm descended upon Dave as he moved into the moonlight. He dropped the axe before his feet; it glittered on the grass.
“Look at me.”
Drawing a deep breath, Dave raised his eyes and looked, as best he could, upon the shining of her face. She was beautiful, he saw, more beautiful than hope.
“No man of Fionavar,” the goddess said, “may see Ceinwen hunt.”
It gave him an out, but it was cheap, shallow, demeaning. He didn’t want it.
“Goddess,” he heard himself say, wondering at his own calm, “it was not intentional, but if there is a price to be paid, I will pay it.”
A wind stirred the grass. “There is another answer you could have made, Dave Martyniuk,” Ceinwen said.
Dave was silent.
An owl suddenly burst from the tree behind him, cutting like a shadow across the crescent of the moon and away. The third one, a corner of his mind said.
Then he heard the bowstring sing. I am dead, he had time, amazingly, to think, before the arrow thudded into the tree inches above his head.
His heart was sore. There was so much. He could feel the quivering of the long shaft; the feathers touched his hair.
“Not all need die,” Green Ceinwen said. “Courage will be needed. You have sworn to pay a price to me, though, and one day I will claim it. Remember.”
Dave sank to his knees; his legs would not bear him up before her any longer. There was such a glory in her face, in the shining of her hair.
“One thing more,” he heard her say. He dared not look up. “She is not for you.”
So his very heart lay open, and how should it be otherwise? But this, this he had decided for himself; he wanted her to know. He reached for the power of speech, a long way.
“No,” he said. “I know. She’s Tore’s.”
And the goddess laughed. “Has she no other choice?” Ceinwen said mockingly, and disappeared.
Dave, on his knees, lowered his head into his hands. His whole body began to shake violently. He was still like that when Tore and Levon came looking for him.
When Tabor woke, he was ready. There was no disorientation. He was in Faelinn, and fasting, and he was awake because it was time. He looked about, opening himself, prepared to receive what had come, his secret name, the ambit of his soul.
At which point, disorientation did set in. He was still in Faelinn, still in his hollow, even, but the wood had changed. Surely there had been no cleared space before him; he would never have chosen such a place, there was no such place near this hollow.
Then he saw that the night sky had a strange color to it, and with a tremor of fear he understood that he was still asleep, he was dreaming, and would find his animal in the strange country of this dream. It was not usual, he knew; usually you woke to see your totem. Mastering fear as best he could, Tabor waited. It came from the sky.
Not a bird. No hawk or eagle—he had hoped, they all did—nor even an owl. No, his heart working strangely, Tabor realized then that the clearing was needed for the creature to land.
She did, so lightly the grass seemed scarcely to be supporting her. Lying very still, Tabor confronted his animal. With an effort, then, a very great effort, he stretched himself out, mind and soul, to the impossible creature that had come for him. It did not exist, this exquisite thing that stood gazing calmly back at him in the strangely hued night. It did not exist, but it would, he knew, as he felt her enter him, become a part of him as he of her, and he learned her name even as he learned what it was the god had summoned him to find and be found by.
For a last moment, the very last, the youngest child of Ivor heard, as if someone else were speaking, a part of himself whisper, “An eagle would have been enough.”
It was true. It would have been more than enough, but it was not so. Standing very still before him, the creature appeared to understand his thought. He felt her then, gently, in his mind. Do not reject me, he heard as from within, while her great, astonishing eyes never left his own. We will have only each other at the last.
He understood. It was in his mind, and then in his heart also. It was very deep; he hadn’t known he went so deep. In response he stretched forth a hand. The creature lowered her head, and Tabor touched the offered horn.
“Imraith-Nimphais,” he said, remembered saying, before the universe went dark.
“Hola!” cried Ivor joyously. “See who comes! Let there be rejoicing, for see, the Weaver sends a new Rider to us.”
But as Tabor drew nearer, Ivor could see that it had been a difficult fast. He had found his animal—such was written in every movement he made—but he had clearly gone a long way. It was not unusual, it was good, even. A sign of a deeper merger with the totem.
It was only when Tabor walked up close to him that Ivor felt the first touch of apprehension.
No boy came back from a true fast looking quite the same; they were boys no longer, it had to show in their faces. But what he saw in his son’s eyes chilled Ivor to the core, even in the morning sunshine of the camp.
No one else seemed to notice; the tumult of welcome resounded as it always did, louder even, for the son of the Chieftain who had been called by the god.
Called to what, Ivor was thinking, as he walked beside his youngest child towards Gereint’s house. Called to what?
He smiled, though, to mask his concern, and saw that Tabor did so as well; with his mouth only, not the eyes, and Ivor could feel a muscle jumping spasmodically where he gripped his son’s arm.
Arriving at Gereint’s door he knocked, and the two of them entered. It was dark inside, as always, and the noise from without faded to a distant murmur of anticipation.