ONE

They had come to the Druids' Isle just before sunset, Boudica sitting very straight in the saddle so that no one would know she was afraid. She blinked back memories of blue waters hazed with magic and conical thatched roofs against a fading sky, a crowd of bearded men in white robes and veiled women with eyes full of secrets, and the little shock as they passed between the carved and painted gateposts that warded Lys Deru—the court of the oaks.

They had taken her to the House of Maidens. Eight girls of varying ages, from nine or ten to fourteen, her own age, stared back at her.

"Is it always cold here?" Boudica asked. She did not know whether she was shivering from exhaustion or from magic.

"Cold?" answered a dark-haired girl who had been introduced as Brenna. "In the winter surely, but now it is spring!" She was dressed in the simple sleeveless tunica of undyed linen that all the girls wore, pinned at the shoulders with bronze fibulae and girded with green.

"You will learn how to keep your inner fire burning so that you are not cold," Brenna went on. "But for now, let us see if we can make it warmer in here…" She frowned in concentration, then gestured, and the sticks on the central hearth burst suddenly into flame. From Brenna's smile, Boudica thought that she had only lately learned this skill herself. She smiled back, trying not to show how much the feat had impressed her. She might be a novice to magic, but she came of royal kin and had been fostered in the household of the great king Cunobelin.

Boudica was very aware of having lived in the woolen tunica and breeches she wore beneath it for the past month of journeying, but the simple garments the other girls were wearing seemed a poor alternative. And as for a wash—the Druids probably bathed in the chill waters of the stream. She straightened and stroked the fox fur edging of her cloak, which was so near in color to her hair. Better they should think her vain than weak. She had wept the first few nights of this journey across Britannia, huddled in cloak and blankets upon the hard ground, but she would not do so now.

"You are from the Iceni country, are you not? Let me introduce you to the rest of our company. This is Coventa—" Brenna put her arm around a small fair-haired girl. "She comes from the Brigante lands, like me. And that's Mandua, of the Atrebates—" She pointed to an older girl with a discontented face. As the names flowed by, Boudica saw curiosity and judgment in their eyes.

Clad, as they were, all alike, she could not tell which ones were the daughters of chieftains and which were the daughters of farmers. That was probably the intention. It was customary to give the children of good families a season or two among the Druids so that they might have a grounding in the deeper philosophy behind the superstitions of the common folk. But the peasant children chosen by the priests for their talent might well look down on those whose birth was their only qualification for being here. Boudica had already sworn they would have no cause to look down on her.

"But the Isle of Mona belongs to no tribe," Brenna finished. "That is why the School of the Mysteries was established here at Lys Deru."

"Truly?" asked Mandua. "I thought we settled out here at the end of the world to stay beyond the reach of Rome."

Boudica sat down on the bed, remembering the sheer mass and might of the mountains they had passed. And yet the road, however difficult, had brought her here. In Camulodunon it had seemed that nothing was beyond Rome's reach. But here, so far from everything she had ever known, she was not so sure. She summoned up a bright smile for the other girls.

"I bless the hour of our meeting. I am sure you will all have many things to tell me…"

"It is Lhiannon you have to listen to," said little Coventa with a laugh. "Helve has the title Mistress of the House of Maidens, but Lhiannon does the work—" She broke off at Brenna's frown. "Well, it's true, and is not truth what we are seeking here?"

Boudica lifted an eyebrow. "If it is, then the Druids are different from any other group of people I ever knew," she said dryly.

"Do you think you know so much more because you were fostered in a king's dun?" objected Brenna. "Here we serve the gods!"

"But you are not yet gods yourselves." Boudica shrugged. "The Druids who served King Cunobelin were as avid for power as any of his chieftains."

Coventa frowned. "Perhaps living in the world corrupted them."

"Well, we must not quarrel about it on your first night here," Brenna said peaceably. "What was it like in Camulodunon? Does Cunobelin's dun really have golden thatching and marble walls?"

Copyright © The Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Trust and Diana L. Paxson, 2007.