Chapter 44: The Autumm Equinox

“Well, what do you think now?” Olyrrwd stifled a yawn as he spoke and Herrwn shook his head—partly out of discouragement and partly to keep from yawning himself.

They had been up late into the night, talking about whether Caelym would be ready to take part in the Fall Equinox Celebration. The hearth was burned down to embers and Herrwn’s bed called to him from the next room, but he remained where he was, reluctant to give the answer Olyrrwd was waiting for.

It had been two months since Caelym returned to the priests’ quarters and resumed his studies. By Olyrrwd’s account, he was doing “well enough” in the healing chamber, where his lessons consisted mainly of tending to the aches and pains of servants unaccustomed to the rigors of working in the fields. He was not doing at all well in the classroom, however—especially for a pupil who had moved through his basic studies with such ease, and by his last birthday had already been close to completing the memorization of the last of the major sagas, something that Herrwn himself had not achieved until he was almost sixteen.

“Before the battle” and “since the battle” were phrases that Herrwn found himself and others saying frequently, and he’d used both earlier that night, telling Olyrrwd that before the battle he’d had no doubts that Caelym would be ready to take part in the Fall Equinox Celebration, but since the battle …

While the rituals of the Fall Equinox Celebration had to be carried out with exacting precision, the actual words, steps, and harmonies were quite simple and Herrwn had not expected that Caelym would have any difficulty mastering them—in fact, had started his instruction earlier than he’d thought necessary only as a way of easing the still edgy and distractible boy back into his studies.

He began by reciting the first of the required chants and demonstrated the accompanying dance steps, and Caelym, as expected, had no difficulty following along. But when he stepped back, saying, “Now show me what you have just learned,” Caelym started on a false note, took a few faltering steps, and then stopped, looking bewildered. Herrwn’s going through his instruction a second and a third time only increased Caelym’s frustration and his own dismay. It was no better the next day, or the next. And now, with the equinox just three weeks away, there was no longer any reason to hope for some miraculous improvement.

“Well, what do you think?”

When Olyrrwd repeated the question, Herrwn sighed. “It’s like trying to carry water in a sieve. He’ll never be ready in time!”

Knowing Olyrrwd’s own reservations, Herrwn wasn’t surprised to hear his cousin grunt, “Just as well. This is not the year for him to go dancing with the dead!”

Only Olyrrwd could so oversimplify the most complex and profound of all their high rituals. Conducted in the hallowed Hall of Distant Voices in the depths of the sacred catacombs on the night when the dwindling light of day and the expanding dark of night were equally balanced, the rites of the Fall Equinox Celebration opened a gap in the otherwise impermeable curtain that separated the ordinary from the ethereal, allowing the spirits from the next world to pass through and join the living in a mystical dance of universal oneness. Far from being grim or macabre, it was for Herrwn and for most others a source of solace and comfort.

Later, it occurred to Herrwn that Caelym must have overheard what he and Olyrrwd had said that night, because the next morning the youngster was up, still in his nightshirt, with his teeth clenched and his eyes squinting almost shut as he plodded doggedly through the steps for the first of the five autumn equinox ritual dances, and for the next three weeks he exhausted himself in an unrelenting effort to learn every word of the chants and every step of the dances.

So, despite Herrwn’s doubts and Olyrrwd’s reservations, Caelym was ready to join the line of priests and priestesses as they filed out of the shrine’s great hall at twilight on the night of the autumn equinox.

Holding Caelym’s hand, Herrwn could sense the same tingling of excitement he’d felt at the start of his own first journey into the labyrinth of tunnels that led deeper and deeper into a world without moon or stars, sun or seasons, where the only light came from their flickering torches and time went faster or slower in keeping with the rhythm of their chants.

As the men’s line followed the priestesses’ through the cavern’s entrance, they linked arms and began the first slow dance that would carry them—three steps forward, one to the left, one back, three forward, one to the left, one back, three forward—down the long, descending tunnel, the tread of their feet echoing like the heartbeat of the earth itself.

As they came out into the great underground hall, the priestesses’ line moved to the left and the priests’ line to the right, each singing and dancing their separate rites with the shadows cast by their torches dancing between them. Both the men’s and women’s parts of this chant were quick, even spritely, characterized by sparkling gaiety and light, skipping steps. One of the critical points in the ceremony was when, at the same exact moment and on a single note, they shifted from the second chant’s bright, open harmonies to the darker, tenser tones of the third. But it was between the third and the fourth chants that the most crucial of the ceremony’s rites, the Oracle’s Invocation, took place.

While the rest of the rituals were strictly prescribed and rigidly carried out, the Oracle’s Invocation sprang from the inner depths of the oracle’s being and was well known to be unpredictable—even to the oracle himself. In all the years that Herrwn had been taking part in the Fall Equinox Celebration, the Oracle’s Invocation, enacted by Ossiam or his father before him, had never been the same, sometimes a brief, soft whisper and sometimes a resounding and prolonged oration, sometime delivered from a motionless stance and sometimes accompanied by sweeping gestures or spinning steps. Assuming that in keeping with the pall of their recent tragedies, this year’s invocation would be more subdued than usual, Herrwn was startled when, without any preliminary ode or accompanying song, Ossiam broke out of the men’s line and into the center of their circle in a wild and erratic dance and then, just as suddenly, gave a shrill, spine-chilling shriek and dropped, fainting, to the floor.

Alhwran and Oddogwn, the sub-priests whose duties included seeing that the oracle wasn’t injured in the course of being possessed, sprang out of the men’s line in time to break his fall and catch his torch and staff. After they lifted his head and gave him a reviving dose from a small silver flask, Ossiam let out a moan and rose, slowly and awkwardly, as if he were being lifted by some outside force. Once upright, he began to sway and swirl, pointing into the shadows, and then called out in a shrill and eerie voice, “Look there! They have come! See how they move among you! See how they beckon! See how they reach out their hands to you!”

Standing next to Herrwn, Olyrrwd muttered, “See how only he can see them,” despite Herrwn’s elbowing him to be quiet.

He needn’t have bothered, as Olyrrwd’s muffled jibe was lost in the murmurs of, “There! No, there! No, over there!” echoing through the line—murmurs that changed into a single gasp as Feywn stepped out of her place.

Moving so silently and gracefully she might have been floating, the chief priestess walked toward the entrance of the tunnel leading to the burial chamber. At first it seemed that she might be going into the tunnel, but she stopped before she reached it. Then, looking up and smiling as if there were someone in front of her, she raised her arms, embracing the empty air, and began to turn in a circle, dancing what they all recognized as the Sacred Summer Solstice dance.

As mesmerized as everyone around him, Herrwn watched her finish the dance’s final steps, kiss the tips of her fingers, reach out to touch her invisible partner’s lips, and nod at words no one else could hear before walking back to her place, where she retrieved the staff she’d left in Rhonnon’s hand and lifted it to signal the start of the next chant.

Herrwn and Olyrrwd had agreed to keep Caelym between them, and it was a good thing they did as he stood dazed, staring at the entrance of the burial chamber, and would have missed the cue for starting the fourth dance if Olyrrwd hadn’t taken hold of his arm and muttered the opening lines of its chant in his ear. Fortunately, its steps began slowly, so Caelym was able get his feet moving in unison with theirs before its tempo increased, going faster and faster, until their circle became an ecstatic cyclone of solid figures and shadows spinning and swirling together.

There was no clear demarcation between the fourth and fifth dances—the former simply slowed gradually until they were no longer flying and the wild, exuberant chorus that accompanied it quieted into the solemn chant bidding the spirits farewell and promising to return next year.

Counted separately, there were actually six dances, but the last was the same as the first—three steps forward, one to the left, one back, three forward, one to the left, one back, three forward—back up the passageway to emerge sometime past midnight and make their way down the narrow trail.

Even after they reached the shrine and the rest of the priests and priestesses went their separate ways, Olyrrwd would not let go of Caelym’s hand. As he pulled him through the corridors to their sleeping quarters, Caelym kept asking, “Who did Ossiam see?” and Olyrrwd kept repeating, “Nothing! He saw nothing!”

It had been a long and exhausting night, and Herrwn had told Caelym he could sleep late the next morning. While he himself managed to get up for the Sacred Sunrise Ritual, he’d skipped breakfast and gone back to bed. It seemed he’d barely fallen asleep when he felt Olyrrwd shaking his shoulders and crying, “He’s got him! What are we going to do?”

Herrwn had been in the throes of a bad dream—not one he was ever able to remember clearly afterwards, but Olyrrwd’s anguished voice seemed at first to be a part of it, and in a last, strange, and very unnerving flash he saw a cadaverous Rhedwyn gripping Caelym’s arm with a skeletal claw of a hand—dragging him along as he leaped into a mist-filled void.

It took several moments for his heart to slow and his head to clear, and by then Olyrrwd was halfway through a garbled account of Ossiam taking Caelym as his disciple that was so interspersed with curses as to be almost unintelligible.