Chains of Gold Read Online Free Page B

quickly—I heard the tolling of the bell for the morning ritual and saw the dawn of my wedding day show silver-gold through the window slot. The sun rose, sending out beams the color of orichalc, the glowing bronze of the mountains, strongest of metals. Chains of orichalc bound the glycon, the great serpent of the deep.…
    My thoughts strayed, and after a while I dozed.

THREE
    I dreamed a strange and vivid dream.
    I was hunted, running for my life; I was the swift and tawny deer that leaps between the spires of the Mountains of the Mysteries, and the hunter was an enigma, all flux and fear, first a horror, the flayed man, then a faceless being on a faceless horse, than a great serpent like the glycon. I ran amid oak trees and willow and rowan and golden apple, through mist and across rivers where women in white robes turned into swans and melted into seawater. I ran—and looked back over my shoulder to see that the rider was drawing nearer. It was a glorious youth on a steed of blood bay; it was Arlen. At the sight of the sweetness of his mouth I fell in love with him, and I stopped, turned toward him. But then I saw a rush of shadow, a monstrous, dark, swift-moving thing, unclear. And I realized that it was not he who had hunted me, that some horror pursued him in his turn—
    I awoke with a start and could not sleep again. Within the hour the Gwyneda came to prepare me for the day.
    All the forenoon was spent in lustrations and attentions that I bore with the best dignity I could command, though the Gwyneda were none too gentle. On first entering my chamber, they seized me and upended me to examine me. Only when they were determined to their satisfaction that I was what had been promised—that is, a virgin, and not bleeding at the time—did they release me. Then a bath of milk was prepared, and I was led to it and made to stand in it while pitchers of it were poured over me; it was cold. Only then, in the rhythm of the pouring, did the Gwyneda break silence, and they spoke not to me but to their goddess, in incantation.
    â€œWhite goddess of winter,” they chanted, and then their words followed the cycle of deathlife and the seasons.
    â€œWhite goddess of spring, the seed in thy bosom,
    White goddess of summer, thy sower the sacred king,
    Goddess of life, red reaper of death,
    Great goddess of winter, white goddess, dark winnower,
    Great goddess, hear us.”
    They went on in that way for a while as I stood amidst sheetings of milk. Then they progressed to petitions, begging the goddess for fertility of fields and heifers and women, for a mild winter without pestilence, for easy birthings among women of virtue, for a staying of the powers of death. Then they took me out of the milk bath and let me warm myself in the bed awhile and chanted over me there, surrounding me as if I were a corpse laid out before them. Meanwhile the milk bath was taken away and another brought; this time it was spiced river water, and I stood in it as before, and as before it was cold.
    â€œGreat goddess of vengeance, whom blood of heroes pleases,
    Dark goddess of death, with serpents in thy bosom,
    See thou this naked one, nameless now before thee.…”
    Imprecations! A thousand evil fates were to befall me if I were not a virgin perfect in purity before goddess and winterking and the Gwyneda went on to detail most of them. Any punishments forthcoming from the anger of the goddess were to be visited on me and not on them, the Gwyneda. If my looks displeased the goddess, might my hair fall out, and if I had spoken ill of her, might my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and my lips erupt in putrefying sores. If I were not the purest of virgins, might I lie for a year in childbed, might my sexual organs rot and cause me agony. There was more, which I mercifully cannot remember. I felt no qualms concerning the matter of my purity; no man had ever been allowed to court me. But there was a malice in the