Excerpt from
Forge of Virgins (Tunnel of Light Book 3)
© Karin Kallmaker, 2006
No portion of
this work may be reproduced by any means
without express written consent of the publisher.
Breath
Were it not for the memory of love, she would be dust again, as before, as always. The rock of time ground all things to dust.
Her inner stillness heard the future and knew the time. They called her Elspeth, Liz, Bess—by all names she had always been and ever would be consecrated to the great mother. The present was a whirlwind and, as before and as always, she had a choice.
The inquisitors circled Liz and the one tree where they had bound for her their questioning. The one tree had seen the great mother birthed in fire, raised in ocean and sheltered by forest. Its roots formed the weaving of years, while its branches sifted tomorrows. It had seen Liz here before, and knew the faces of the inquisitors.
But the one tree spoke only to her. Those who served the memory of the great mother were frustrated by the tree, the world, the fear of final endings, and they tried once again to force her to speak its truth. Their actions were as old as the memory and thought, the past and future, the love and despair that stirred the limitless branches.
Questions spilled into her. Once again, as before and as always, she sought the essence of the tree for strength. Resistance was her only power; it was the only act in which she had ever had a choice.
And yet.
She told them, as never before, “Were it not for the memory of love I would yield, though what I know is not yours.”
They answered, fervently, once again, “We love the great mother.”
Liz found the strength to tell them, as never before, “This time I know your names. This time I see your faces. This time I will not speak. This time I have the reality of love, not just its pale memory.”
The three voices answered in a chiming chord. “We are the goddess. We are the heart, mind and eyes of the great mother. We know your fear.”
She knew that they would work on her weakness. She had given her fear to them, knowing it for a weapon. They would take her memory as they grasped at the future. They had done it before. If this was not the time of turning, they would do it again, in all likelihood. The tree did not tell her that particular future.
Were it not for the memory of a love that she felt unshakable, the memory of a life where love sheltered her from the chaos of life, she would have given them all that they wanted, and all that she was would be finally ground to nothing.
And yet.
They, Liz reminded herself once again, did not know everything.
***
“That was awesome.” The groupie turned over on the filthy couch, dislodging a half-empty can of beer. “Do you always grab a guitar right in the middle like that?”
“No.”
“Does that make me special? Lea Battle played a solo for me while we were doing it?”
“No.” Hilea rubbed her temples, her ears still ringing from that one single note she’d sent spiraling into the chaos. She hated being called, but she’d half expected it tonight. It was the Autumnal Equinox, after all, and the voices of the others had been busy over the summer. Another exercise in futility.
“No, what?” The groupie ran her hand over Hilea’s bare thigh.
“No, I don’t usually play when I’m fucking. No, you’re not special. And no, most of all, any real musician would know that was not a solo.” She sighed when the little brunette began pouting. “You know the rules here.”
She sidled out from underneath the groupie’s touch and strode to the mirror, naked except for the boots that added five inches to her height.
“Okay.” The voice behind her quavered. “I know the rules, but you don’t have to be such a bitch about it.”
Hilea bit back an angry retort.
The scene was so old and so not worth the time and energy. She met the other
woman’s gaze in the mirror and whispered a simple, low spell. I
am out of here because I am worth better than this.
The groupie abruptly decided that flouncing out of the room was easier than arguing. She tossed, “I can do better than this,” angrily over her shoulder before the door slammed behind her.
Glad to be alone—the tediousness of acolytes was universal and timeless—Hilea scrubbed her face with the foul-smelling water that the broken sink offered. Vertigo threatened, as it always did when she was called by the others. She was angry she had answered. Angry that she couldn’t help herself even though she had no hope that anything she did would make any kind of difference.
How many years had it been? She wished, again, she had kept track of them. Instead, she had lost a few years between this calendar and that, lunar versus Georgian, Asian versus Hebrew. Something like 1500 years, though. She had watched them all die so many times. Watched Killera and Autumn locked in bitter struggle over Ursula’s fate. She had sought Ursula, too, once upon a time. Made spells and written music and fought. All for naught.
She’d seem them all in so many guises, but she herself had only ever had but one. Stripped of the wigs and boots that added enough height to survive in the modern world, Hilea knew she had not changed since that first journey with Ursula. Mirrors might tell lies, but she looked into the same face that had stared back at her from the shimmer of a still pond, a soldier’s pounded bronze shield, a sultan’s golden cup, an abbey’s altar plate, even the cracked glass of a wrecked dressing room. She was Hilea, the bard.
She’d celebrated the Autumnal Equinox on the broken sofa with whatever-her-name was. A hollow remnant of festival broken by the angry skirl of a note meant to lift the others to the light or drive the dark back to its hole. She didn’t want to think that the streak of Autumn’s essence she’d seen during the Fourth of July concert, nor desperate screams that might…might…have been Ursula’s on Lammas Night meant anything was truly happening this time—she would not let herself hope. She had not heard Ursula again last night either. She had not, and damn it all to endless fire.
Anger was her shield. Unfocused, without the ambition of hope to drive it, her anger fueled her music and her existence. Her anger kept her hidden. Her anger was all that she trusted.
Her gaze fell on the double-necked guitar in the corner. It was the only instrument in the room that wasn’t broken. Embedded in it were remnants of ancient lyres, mandolin, sitars and more. She trusted her anger, and music has always been the expression of her faith.
Anger, music and an acolyte or two high on goddess love completed the life of a punk rock star.
Her jaded smile wavered in the mirror, but that was a trick of light. Her eyes were not hesitant. She was not thinking about old puzzles. Could not be. She’d sworn off them when she’d seen Autumn raving in that mad house. No more puzzles, no more memories.
She needed to forget again. She’d been in this disguise for a decade now. It was time to get lost. Lea Battle was nobody. The dressing room stank of stale cigarettes. She could not think here, but unrelenting reflection and remembrance bore down on her, even when she put up a shaking hand to hold them back.
Desperately, she told herself that it could not be Ursula herself who had called, not once but twice this summer. That would mean that something was new. If there was a new something in this world, then something old had died. Something had changed. Something…was born. Something was undone so that something could become.
Became,
becoming, shall be.
She stumbled back from the mirror, a burning heat in her hands, her mouth. Her fingers itched for the quill, the pen, the strings, anything to release this fire.
It was never how much I tried, how great my fervor. It does not matter if I am on my knees for a second or a millennia, all that I have ever loved has been laid to waste.
She struggled to swallow, her reflection mottled in yellow flame and red vapor, as red as hair she had once helped braid. Her fingers formed a chord in the air and she felt the notes chiming behind her eyes.
Her hands trembled with creation but she could not think what to play, what to spell. Prayer? Reverence? Hate? Despair?
The blood of Ursula is upon us, she thought. Why today? After centuries, why right now? Why this fire, why the old, old question? Since her earliest years when her father had sold her to pay a gambling debt to a Northumbrian lord, her driving question had been Why am I?
She stepped over the trash to pick up her guitar case, then carefully settled her beloved instrument safely with it. Spandex tights, a thin black shirt and the lumpy satchel where a sweater and money might be found completed her luggage. Her hand hovered over the keys to the brunette’s car for a moment, but she did not put them in her pocket. Only one of her journeys had ever been shared, and besides, the brunette was not Her. Too small, too fragile. Not Her.
The fetid sunlight of a swampy noon washed over her. It was more alive than the air of the wasted dressing room. She didn’t know where she was going but that didn’t matter as her thoughts were suddenly too circular to unwind. She felt small and useless and getting tinier with each passing second.
A snake, swallowing its own tail until it was consumed. A chord, wanting to be struck, but trembling in silence. Fire on her skin and the smell of molten rage in her nostrils.
One thing she knew, and it had ever been so. If something had changed, if Ursula had been found or lost, if the long, long struggle had finally been decided, nobody would bother to tell her. Killera could see nothing but her hate of Autumn. Autumn was blind to everything except Ursula. Claire and Elspeth were instantly and always inseparable. And where did that leave her?
It left her seething with rage on the Rue de Bourbon, searching for numbness in vengeful songs and an unending stream of bodies.
“Hey, Lea. Where you banging?” The club manager aimed the hose over the most fragrant of the previous night’s leavings.
“Like I’d tell you,” she snarled.
Invocation and Responsory, ever running on a different path.
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Forge of Virgins is the third novel
in the lesbian fantasy "Tunnel of Light" series by Karin Kallmaker.
Available from:
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