S. Stirling - Dies The Fire

"A re you sure you're up to this?" Judy asked, turning and needlessly arranging some instruments in one of the clinic's cupboards.

"No," Juniper said frankly to her tense back. "But I think I've got a better chance of bringing it off than anyone else. What's your medical advice?"

Her friend swallowed. "Well, you're a day or two short of eight months," she said. "But it's been as smooth a pregnancy as I've seen, right out of a textbook. As long as you don't try leaping about or riding a horse-"

"Come on, Judy, we've known each other since we were teenagers."

"That's why I specified," she said dourly. "It's a wonder you're not east over the mountains with Sam and the others, waving your sword and waddling into battle like a pregnant duck."

"Is maith an sc?? s? harad!" Juniper replied ruefully. "A friend's eye is a good mirror!"

"Then delegate," Judy said.

"I can't. There are others to fight for us, but this I honestly think I'm best for-and I don't need to be all that mobile, just able to talk."

Judy shook her head and bit her lip; Juniper gave her an impulsive hug and left the little clinic. The corridor of the Hall's second story was dark, lit only by the windows at either end that gave out on a cloudy, foggy morning; the staircase was in the center of the hallway, and it was steep.

And I am waddling, she thought. You two should not make me come up and get you.

She sighed and waddled up the steps; it didn't occur to her to call instead until she was nearly at the top-you lost the habit, when your daughter was deaf.

"You two were supposed to be packed by now and- what are you doing?"

She choked the words off. Eilir and Astrid were kneeling on the floor facing each other, across three taper candles with a chalice and two cups, and a pinch of incense burning in that, and ritual tools scattered about. Eilir's Book of Shadows was open on a folding rest nearby, and they had the backs of their right wrists pressed together as they chanted.

You didn't interrupt a ritual.

": all my wisdom and all my secrets I share with you for as long as this life endures. Until we meet in Tir na m Ban," they finished. "So mote it be!"

Juniper frowned as they put down their wrists, and a bright bead of blood showed on each-the loft office-bedroom got a lot more light, which was one reason she'd snaffled it off for her own.

"Now, what on earth are you two doing?"

"Swearing blood-br-well, blood-sisterhood!" Astrid said brightly. "Like, we're going to be friends and comrades forever! And be Paladins who fight evil and right wrongs and, oh, all that sort of stuff."

Eilir wiped off the bead of blood with a piece of cotton swab and handed Astrid another.

Like she said, Mom, she signed. You know, like Roland and Oliver. Anamchara.

"Or Gimli and Legolas," Astrid said helpfully. "Only we're both: well, Eilir's not a dwarf."

Tolkein and the others have a great deal to answer for, Juniper thought. Do they think those white horses are magical totems, somehow? As I recall, at their age my best friend and I were mostly concerned with music and TV shows and talking about boys. Of course, things have Changed:

Silently, she held out her hand and looked a question. She didn't order. Eilir's Book was her own; she generally didn't mind her mother reading it, but Juniper never did so without permission.

Oh, my, she thought, looking, through the ritual that her daughter had come up with.

The girl had a natural gift for it, probably someday she'd be a great High Priestess and leave a lasting mark on the coven's own Book of Shadows, but:

Oh, my. No sense of proportion at all. Well, neither did I at that age – but I wasn 't raised in the Craft, with magic sung over my cradle.

She spoke, signing at the same time: "And on the strength of a two-week acquaintance, you're promising to: let's see. Defend each other to the death and always answer the other's call. Be guardians of the weak and helpless. Be Goddess-mothers to each other's kids; that's all right: Goddess gentle and strong, you've each given the other a veto on choice of boyfriends and spouses!"

Well, we couldn't be Paladins together if the other fell for someone yucky, could we?

"That's something you have to get right," Astrid said forcefully.

Juniper stifled a small moan. "M thagann ciall roimh aois," she said, and didn't translate: Sense does not come before age.

Eilir recognized it anyway, and gave her a stare and a sniff.

Juniper held on to silence with both hands: Oh, won't that turn adolescence into a total paradise! Did your best friend ever think a boyfriend was worthy of you, any more than a father did? Unless your best friend wants him herself.

Aloud, she went on: "At least you didn't make vows of celibacy or promise to always to wear the same outfits and do each other's hair and eternally help each other with dishes and homework!"

Both gave her hurt looks. She sighed. "Eilir, Astrid is cowan: " : though I suspect not for long, she added to herself, as she continued aloud with voice and hands: ": but I suppose you did remember that a ceremony like this is a promise to the Mighty Ones? That you've asked Them to bind you to a purpose? And that They are likely to hold you to it?"

Her daughter nodded solemnly, and so did Astrid.

Juniper sighed. "Parenthood! All right, done is done. If you're coming, come along, Oh Blood-sworn fourteen-year-old Paladins."

The girls picked up their saddlebags, shouldered their bows and followed as Juniper turned and walked cautiously down the stairs.

The open space before the Hall was crowded, horses milling, kilted archers saying good-bye to children and spouses and friends; Dennis and Sally were in a desperate clinch made awkward by a stomach the size of Juniper's, with Terry sobbing and clutching at their legs. The climb down the stairs to the ground floor left Juniper puffing a bit, and lagging behind the youngsters who tumbled out the door and sprang into the saddles of their Arabs.

Before she stepped into the waiting buggy-another bit of useful museum plunder, well-sprung comfort for her currently cumbersome self-she turned and looked at the Hall. The great house loomed dark above her in the morning gloom, hints of color and shape and drifting fog. Then a break in the lowering sky let the morning sunlight in, and the shapes blazed out at her, curling up out of the mist that lay along the ground and drifted amid the tall wet forest that rose north and east, breaking like surf over the teeth of the palisade.

The great tree-trunk pillars that ran from veranda to second-story gallery and supported the roof above had been shaped smooth, then carved with intertwined running designs like something out of the Book of Kells, stained and painted in rich browns and greens with gold hints and then covered with varnish. Where the support beams for the gallery crossed the pillars their ends jutted a yard further out, worked into the shapes of beasts real and mythical, the newly chosen totems of the Mackenzie septs- snarling wolf and horned elk, hawk and raven, dragon and tiger.

At each end of the house the two timbers of the roof had been extended up past the peak, curling around into spirals- one deosil, the other widdershins-and between them the antlers and crescent moon.

"It's like Edoras, and the Golden Hall of Medusel!" Astrid said behind her, her voice soft with awe.

It's like a cross between an Irish museum and a very gaudy backwoods Chinese restaurant, Juniper jibed to herself. Dennie and his apprentices went bloody well berserk.

All the same, she shivered a little. If she'd seen something like this before the Change, she would have laughed until she cried. Now:

We need myths, she thought. We live by them. But can we live in them?