As if through the fog of a dream, the white marble stone walls rose to a cathedral’s height over Eithne’s head. The grotto was twice as long as it was wide, bordered by a double row of columns on each side, columns of true wood that put out leaves like natural living trees.

      Eithne tried to blink, to shake her head, to rid herself of the fog over her mind.

      At one end of the grotto rose a circular white marble platform, a single step high. Upon it, a yard-wide cauldron yawned. It gleamed with the white glint of a metal that was somehow both silver and gold at once, while forever being neither.

      Beneath it, a fire had been kindled, and steam arose from it.

      Eithne couldn’t move. Couldn’t so much as lift a hand. Curse that old witch. Her teeth ground together at the back of her jaw.

      At the other end of the vast hall was a semicircular pool filled with pure, clear spring water. The pool was fully ten yards across and another yard deep. Four more of the tree-like columns with their living leaves lined the pool.

      Despite her frustration, Eithne felt placid and dreamy, as if she dozed in the morning sunshine of a holy day, with no daily tasks ahead of her. She’s ensorcelled me. Even the thought of it had no force, no rancor, only the bland truth of fact. She knew she should be angry. She wanted to be angry. With the wave of a hand, the high-priestess of the Drymyn Order’s sisterhood had sapped all her free will from her, and she couldn’t even protest.

      From her place inside the wide, arched entrance to the grotto, Eithne overheard an argument in the shadows at the far end. Corchen, the high-priestess, scolded a blue-robed novitiate.

      “Do what I told you. Go prepare for the Rite of the Oracle.”

      The young woman protested. “But Grandmother, I haven’t been prepared.”

      “Go and do it now, Sister Kerridwen. Even you should be able to do this. The rest of us will be along presently.”

      The girl’s hissed reply—“Fine, Grandmother”—told Eithne that the High-Priestess was certainly the girl’s grandmother, and that the matter was certainly not fine.

      The young priestess left with a thunderous look, followed by two other girls.

      Eithne wished she had even enough self-possession to sport such a look for herself. A strand of her copper-red hair fell across an eye and tickled her nose, and she couldn’t move it away, couldn’t even sneeze.

      Corchen emerged from the shadows of those strange tree-like columns, her grey-hair crowned by a spring laurel, her wrinkled hands folded on the plump belly under her stark white-robe. She took note of Eithne and raised a finger to someone behind her line of sight.

      Two grim-looking Huntsmen with sheathed swords and boar-head hoods, warrior-guardians of the shrine, flanked Eithne.

      At the center of the spring-water basin, against the wall on a pedestal, stood a white stone statue. Soft, slender, curved and graceful—the form of a beautiful woman carved in white marble. Ringed around her neck was cunningly twisted torc of silvery metal. The statue seemed fixed in place, as if it had been carved from the living rock. A soft pearly light radiated from it, illuminating the hall.

      From the wall on either side of the statue, spring water bubbled and cascaded down into the pool.

      In the pool of spring water, nine priestesses in pale robes knelt. There was something floating there between them in the water.

      It was a body. A man’s body. Bearded, broad-shouldered, bear-chested, narrow-hipped and naked. Blood and gore floated around him in the water.

      She wanted to gasp with shock, Eowain. But she could make no sound.

      She wanted to run to him, to draw his head from the waters and hold him. But she could make no move.

      Her intended husband and king, if the drymyn priests and priestesses had their way.

      “I’m sorry for this, but it’s necessary. Keep silent please.”

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      Two of the Huntsmen took hold of her arms.

      Corchen made a gesture, and Eithne was free again. She shook the wyrd fog from her head, pulled against the grip on her arms. “What is the meaning of—?”

      Corchen raised a finger. “Silence, please.”

      Eithne felt no more sorcery or glamour then, yet the stern tone of the High-Priestess, the still strangeness of the chamber—the haunting sense of a greater presence—compelled her to silence.

      She watched, restrained by the two Huntsmen, as the priestesses wrapped Eowain’s ursine form in long white funereal linens.

      What madness is this? Eithne strained at the Huntsmen’s grip, but they pulled her back roughly. But Corchen said he lived, that he survived the betrayal of his cousin and the bandits that plagued our journey here?

      Anxiety clutched at Eithne’s throat, knotted her guts. She yanked again at the grip of the Huntsmen, but they were unyielding. Is he dead after all?

      Nine squat, ruddy-visaged brutes in hairs and furs entered the grotto from the two arched passages. They were silent as they passed between the columns, and arranged themselves in a line at the edge of the pool. The priestesses finished their work and lifted the swaddled head of Eowain up out of the pool. One of the brutes took the head and stepped back, drawing more of his body from the water. Two more brutes stepped in and took the shoulders, then two more, and two more again, until the final pair of squat little men took up the feet and together, the nine of them raised Eowain’s body over their head.

      Her eyes fixed on his wrapped hands. Hands that had once gathered away a spider that had startled her. Hands that had killed men that had threatened her. She wished she could hold them to herself. Her own hands clutched the air helplessly.

      Corchen began to chant.

Bread of the Cult of the Dead in its Place I eat

In the Court prepared

Water of the Cult of the Dead in its Place I drink

A Queen am I, Who has become estranged to the Cities

She that comes from the Lowlands in a sunken boat

Am I.

I AM THE VIRGIN GODDESS

HOSTILE TO MY CITY

A STRANGER IN MY STREETS.

      Corchen raised a silver sickle to the white marble statue of the woman overlooking the pool. “Oh, Spirit, who understands Thee? Who comprehends Thee?”

      The dark brutes hefted his body up, carried it with grave ceremony to the silvery cauldron that boiled at the far end of the grotto. The priestesses, their white robes drenched with spring water and clinging to them, rose from the pool and followed after them.

      The plates of the cauldron had been hammered from within to push out the wyrd metal surface. From the facets of the boiling pot, mystic coelbreni runes and curvilinear pictographs stood out in the glow from the statue at the other end of the chamber.

      The ancient image of Kârn, god of the forest, was on that cauldron. He wore roebuck antlers and sat with goat-legs crossed beneath him. In his right hand, he held a torc, and with his left gripped a horned serpent behind the head. To the left was a stag with antlers similar to those of the god. Dogs, cats, and cattle surrounded the scene. Some faced the god, others faced away. Between the antlers of the god was the motif of a tree. The antlers of the god reminded Eithne of the massive rack that hung over Eowain’s hearth in Dúnsciath. That seems so long ago and far away now. How strong and fierce and handsome he looked. And now… Tears welled into Eithne’s eyes, no matter the guards, the people. Helplessness and defeat overwhelmed her.

      The brutes raised Eowain’s linen-wrapped body high in the air. The cauldron bubbled with herbs and mystic roots. On another of its plates was the bust of a torc-wearing woman, flanked by two six-spoked wheels and what seemed to be two elephants and two fierce, winged gryffins. Beneath the the woman’s bust was the image of a terrible lion. The ancient chants of Corchen and the priestesses rose in a feverish spiral through the grotto.

      Eithne shrieked a little as his linen-wrapped body sizzled into the scalding water. She had not thought it possible, for those short men to reduce his whole, bearish, war-like body, his whole life, into that cauldron. It seemed not nearly so vast as to contain the man she’d come to love.

      And yet they raised him over their heads and folded him down into the waters until he was submerged. His body, wrapped in sodden linens, gleamed with a spring-green pallor in the shadows, as the waters of the cauldron boiled, bubbled, toiled, and troubled.

      Then the linen-wrapped form stood up from the cauldron.

      Revulsion clutched at her throat. How—? But—? Even if he had not been dead before, surely the boiling cauldron had killed him. Eithne yanked again at the grip of the Huntsmen. She had to go to him, to pull aside the linens and see his face, to prove to herself it was truly he that arose from those scalding waters.

      Corchen spoke urgently. “Now. Get him out of there. Get him upstairs.” The priestesses helped him from the waters, the short brutes carried the bandaged body away.

      Eithne struggled against the stern hold of the Huntsmen, but could do nothing save watch him go. The fight faded from her and dread overwhelmed her. She whispered, “He is alive again?”

      Corchen shook her head. “He was never dead. But it was a close thing.” She raised her hands in open supplication to the shrine. “The Goddess is restless tonight.” She furrowed her brow, as if she listened to some sound lost in the grotto’s stones and waters. “The goddess is restless indeed!” Her eyes went wide. “Put Lady Eithne in the novitiate’s quarters. Tell the Hunt-Lord to double the guard. Turn all the men out.”

      The implacable grip of the Huntsmen pulled Eithne away from the arch through which Eowain had been taken. “Wait? Why can’t I go with him? What’s happening?”

      Corchen’s face was grim. “The Dragon is coming. Go now. There is more villainy afoot this night.”