The Priest of Blood Read Online Free Page B

declare war on his neighbors. She punished the strong and just, and rewarded the weak and vain.
    “One night, the prince, now king, went to his garden, so beloved by his first bride. He remembered how she had called the bird, and he did the same, for he missed his true love. When the bird came, down from the silver moonlight, it brought with it the silver dress in its beak, as well as a diadem of gold. The bird told the king of what his father had done, how his first wife had begged for her life, and, feeling pity, the brigands released her but swore that she would die if she ever left the Great Forest. The king was inconsolable, but the bird told him that he must have faith. ‘Keep the gown and the diadem, for she will return when her strength is in her. Remain with your new wife, but when the time is right, you will see your True Bride again. She will come from the Great Forest, so you must protect it and its creatures. And when she comes, bring out the silver gown and the diadem, and embrace her and celebrate the True Bride when you see her.’
    “And so, one day, when the king was very old, and his second wife had died of a fit of anger and bitterness, he stood in the field and saw the True Bride step out of the woods, naked and beautiful. On her forehead was a crescent moon. On her arms and fingers, the secret gems of the Earth. She was as young as she had been when he had last seen her, and although he barely recognized her because of the years that had passed for him, and his memory had waned like the moon, still he welcomed her with warmth and love. He gave her the silver gown and diadem, and she clothed herself in these. She had no anger for his father, who had betrayed her, nor for him for taking a second bride. Together they returned to the castle, for the time had come for the True Bride to take her place with the king of men.”
    None of us understood this strange tale, but Mere Morwenna looked at each of us, deeply, to see if we had pictured it in our heads. Had we? Yes. “Good,” she said. “The Forest stories need to live. For just like that king, you each will need to recognize the True Bride when she returns to the world of men. She is hidden now, but she will return, and you need to have her clothes and crown at hand.”
    I was too ignorant of my own homeland to know that the True Bride she spoke of was the worship of the goddess of Nature herself, gone into hiding in the Great Forest when the new god had invaded and sought to destroy her.
    The Great Forest’s trees were ancient oak, but even between these were a jungle of other trees and plants such that it seemed always green, even in the depth of winter. If I chanced upon a salamander along one of its streams, as a child, I imagined it as a faerie cursed by a sorceress; and a hedgehog might be a princeling that had not been pure enough to cross the lake of gold or fire. It was a place of imagination, wonder, and danger, and the source that sustained us through hardship.
    Once, when my older sister and I went hunting for berries in the wood (knowing that we risked punishment of the most extreme kind if caught by any authority), we came across what looked to me like part of a ruined castle. It was covered with vines, its stones interlaced with fern that grew from it at strange angles, and I entered through its little doorway. Although a mess of mud and brambles met me within, I saw the roof of it—a dome-shaped place, with faint paintings upon it of naked women who danced among strange beasts with heads like eagles, hindquarters like lions, and the wings of dragons. My older sister Annik told me that we should leave this place, for it was an ancient one, of the Old Ways, of the ways of the Devil.

    4

    Beasts were my childhood companions, outside of my grandfather.
    My first loves were the dogs, great wolfhound mutts that were the extra coverings on winter nights between and among my brothers and me. My second loves were the birds of the air. My