was.
Rudi stood waiting for her; he removed his bonnet and bowed, smiling. Their eyes met as if in complicity, sharers in some solemn game, and her heart twisted with love and the sorrow that was its shadow.
I loved him so as a baby, and a child, and now a man. I protected him from all I could, but in the end love means letting them go.
The procession led to the edge of a slight rise; the valley fell away downslope and southward from there. It was packed now, a sea of upturned painted faces that stretched into a firelit darkness where clumps of leaves glittered amid the rising sparks of the torches. A rolling cheer started as she stopped and raised her hands; it built rapidly into a war-yell, the racking banshee shriek surging back and forth as blades and bows were thrust into the air. Juniper shivered a little. Mackenzies weren’t exactly warlike; at least, they didn’t go out and start wars as a group. On the other hand, when someone provoked them…
O Powers, she thought, not for the first time. What have we brought back, to run wild once more upon the ridge of the world?
Quiet fell as she brought her staff up to make the Invocation, the silver Triple Moon on its top glittering. The throng raised their hands as she spoke, her strong trained voice ringing out: “I am Juniper, the Mackenzie of the Clan Mackenzie, Chief and Bard and Ollam, trained and consecrated to this my task. I am called here, by you and the Gods to hear, to judge, and to speak. Does any deny my right or my calling? Speak now or hold your tongue thereafter, for this place and time is consecrated by our gathering. All we do here is holy.”
A long silence and she continued, face raised: “Let us be blessed!”
“Let us be blessed!” the great crowd murmured, following her line by line.
“Manawyddan-Restless Sea, wash over me.”
A green branch sprinkled seawater, and she tasted the salt on her lips like tears.
“Manawyddan-Restless Sea, wash over me. ”
“Cleanse and purify me! That I may make of myself a vessel; to listen and to hear.”
“Cleans and purify me! That I may make of myself a vessel; to listen and to hear.”
“Rhiannon-White Mare, stand by me, run with me, carry me that the land and I can be one, with Earth’s wisdom.”
She bent and took a clod of the dry friable earth, touching it to her lips. There was a long ripple as the Mackenzies did the same.
“Rhiannon-White Mare, stand by me, run with me, carry me that the land and I can be one, with Earth’s wisdom.”
“Arianrhod-Star-tressed Lady; as you light the firmament above us, dance in the light of this world of ours, dance through our hearts and through our eyes, bring Your light to our minds.”
She took a torch from her daughter Maud and lit it; the resinous wood flared up, and more lit all across the valley as her people called the response. The chanting rolled on: “Sea and Land and Sky, I call on you:
Hear and hold and witness thus,
All that we say
All that we agree
All that we together do.
Honor to our Gods! May they hold
Our oaths
Our truths.”
Then she spoke formally: “Let all here act with truth, with honor and with duty, that justice, safety and protection all be served for this our Clan, and may Ogma of the Honey Tongue lend us His eloquence in pursuit of Truth,” she said. “This Oenach Mor is begun! By what we decide, we are bound, each soul and our people together.”
A tension went out of the air in a long sigh. She put aside something of the ritual voice and went on: “I yield to my son, Rudi Mackenzie, called Artos in the craft, and tanist of this Clan.”
She stepped back. Rudi stood tall for a moment, his arms crossed over his plaid and the tall raven feathers in the clasp of his bonnet flickering slightly, like a wing of shadow. When he spoke it seemed almost quiet, yet rolled out through the sough of night wind and the slight tearing ripple of flame: “My people, what were the words spoken by my mother over the altar at my Wiccaning? That day in the first year of the Change, in the depths of the winter when the Sun turned towards the light once more?”
A long moment of rustling silence, and then many thousand voices took it up, Juniper’s among them. It was almost as if that voice spoke through her again, as the babe stirred in her arms and reached out one chubby hand to grasp the ritual sword in the nemed, the sacred wood above her home. But this time it was not through her alone; through many and many, as if some great rough beast spoke as its moment came at last: “Sad Winter’s child in this leafless shaw-
Yet be Son, and Lover, and Horned Lord!
Guardian of My sacred Wood, and Law-”
His people’s strength-and the Lady’s sword!
Rudi was silent again when the voices died away. Then he put his left hand to the hilt of the Sword and drew it slowly, raising it above his head.
There was a gasp. Juniper felt the same slight involuntary huh! escape her own lips. She wasn’t sure that she saw anything at all, save a gleam of starlight and moonlight and firelight, but it seemed to blaze until all her eyes were filled with it.
“Artos!” someone called; and that name had been given him by her on the same day.
Then the name over and over again, until he suddenly sheathed the Sword. That cut it off, as he had swung that supernal edge against the sound.
“My people,” he said into the silence. “A Mackenzie I was born, and among the very first begotten and born in this new time after the Change. A Mackenzie I shall be until I die. But Chief of the Clan, the Mackenzie Himself, I can never be.”
Another roar, this one of protest. Rudi waited it out.
“I am the Lady’s sword!”
That brought ringing silence, and he went on: “I am called by the Powers to be Ard Ri in Montival. The High King must be King of all his peoples and give good lordship and fair judgment to all; yes, and be seen to do that. I see men and women of our Clan from Sutterdown here, which is under the patronage of Apollo, the God who loves above all justice and due proportion in men and realms. Nor, by the Mare and the Raven and the Moon, does Rhiannon love it less.”
He shook his head. “Your Chief I cannot be. And therefore I cannot be tanist, the successor. You must chose another, while my mother can yet train your choice”
He stepped back, and ostentatiously crossed his arms again. Juniper quirked a smile as she took up the words: “Long ago, at our first Oenach Mor -and it’s considerably smaller that was!-”
That produced a startled laugh.
“I swore that I would be Chief only of a free folk. You may choose the Chief you will, and you may chose the Chief’s tanist.”
A low murmuring went through the throng, and then Oak Barstow stepped forward into the semicircle of firelight before the natural dais. His voice was more of a battle-shout than a bard’s, but it carried well enough. “I say that we should have none but the blood of Lady Juniper to be Chief of the Clan; this by our free choice. Who says aye?”
A roar, one loud enough to make her almost take a step backward; it took a moment for quiet to fall again, and she felt a prickle of tears. Partly of joy-that love and offered devotion made all the years of work and worry seem less hard. And partly a mother’s love of her children, for they would bear that burden after her.
“Lady Eilir has pledges to the Dunedain,” Oak went on, in a fine carrying roar; bards with the outer Duns relayed his words. “The Rangers are our friends and kindred, but they are another folk with their own laws and ways. Lady Fiorbhinn is too young-”
“And would be better suited to run crowing through the treetops and fly to the Moon, than to be Chief of three children in a bathtub, let alone a great roynish Clan!”
Her clear young voice cut through effortlessly. There was a swelling ripple of laughter out to the edges of the
