Flickering flames caught the elder Divicacious’ robes and in an instant he was engulfed in the inferno. Through the billowing smoke the Druid priestess, Boann, stared in frozen fascination as the venerable sage continued to utter curses against the Roman soldiers whose advance had forced him into the sacrificial bonfires. A fiery corona encircled his head like a halo, while sallow, yellow flames licked his robes and withered frame. Boann choked back tears as she fled from the conflagration and the onslaught of the legions.

Amid the smoke of black burning pitch, brave tattooed warriors screamed like banshees above the cacophony of war horns, but the legions were relentless. Swarming like ants onto the shore from their flat-bottomed landing boats, they pushed hard against the defenders, cutting and slashing with their short swords, and pummeling those who were nearby with their shield bosses. The native warriors and deserters were outnumbered and outmatched, but they fought ferociously, viciously, and with their last breaths.

Fleeing from the carnage along the shore, Boann turned after seeing all of the elders of the priesthood consumed by the raging inferno of burning oak wood. The smells of scorched flesh sickened her and she retched. Briefly, she closed her eyes against the images of slaughter. Surely the goddess would let some live. Was this their day of judgement as foretold in the prophecies? Boann prayed aloud as she ran from the hell on the beach, slingstones bursting on the rocks around her, while arrows took their toll among the poorly armoured tribesmen who were valiantly fighting for their kinsmen and their country.

With sickening apprehension she realized the front-line defences along the beach were lost. She turned when Longinius’ wife screamed as a legionnaire pierced her side with his gladius. Too late to save the love of his life, Longinius leapt to her side, swiftly decapitating her murderer with his spatha. Waist deep in the bloody tidal waters, he pushed the luckless soldier aside. Through the smoke and the din of battle, Longinius caught Boann’s eyes. Knowing all hope was lost, he screamed to her across the chaos. "The children! Save the children!"

Boann ran headlong for the cover of the trees. She knew she must reach the village before the legions advanced beyond the beaches. Just as she reached the high tide line, a slingstone struck her, ripping open the skin and tearing the muscles across her left cheek. Momentarily stunned, she fell into the twisted driftwood. Struggling to her feet, she scrambled for the safety of the bush.

Dazed, bleeding and breathless, she ran for a little more than half an hour before reaching the village of Caer. Distantly, she could still hear the din of battle and the clash of swords. Looking over her shoulder, she could see the eastern skies filled with clouds of black smoke drifting toward the village. Boann paused at the top of the tree-lined ridge above the valley. With an overwhelming sense of loss and despair, she gazed down into the peaceful, terraced, valley below. Smoke curled lazily from a myriad of thatched, hive- shaped dwellings. From her vantage point she could hear the high--pitched songs of the children singing their lessons in the great hall. It was almost midday, and she could see only a few elderly initiates moving among the long-house libraries, where thousands of books written on fine leaves of bark were kept.

At the western edge of the village, she could just see the rectangular, stone-built healing centre. For a moment, Boann’s heart stopped. She realized with sadness that those who were ill and infirm -- those who couldn’t flee -- would be slain as surely as the children, if she was unsuccessful.

Running like a fury across the uneven ground, she burst into the great hall. Dozens of small heads turned to stare at her, while the elder Gwynedd struggled to hide her shock. Finger-like rivulets of blood ran down her neck, coloring her breasts, and staining the multi-coloured sagum she wore. White flecks of saliva streaked the blood along her cheek. Pain etched her features as she struggled to speak. "The beach defence is lost," she gasped. "The legions will be here at any moment. Hurry! We must leave."

Fearful voices broke into a thousand questions. Gwynedd hushed the children. Her face paled as she asked about her life partner, "Divicacious?"

"The legions drove the elders into the sacrificial bonfires. I saw him burning as he cursed them and their blood. All the elders are lost, except you. Never have I seen so many men-at-arms. Our kinsmen and Longinius’ men are vastly outnumbered. There is little time between us and their standards. We must leave, now!" She pleaded.

Blood squirted from Boann’s cheek as she spoke. She pressed her hand onto the wound. "Death comes on the wind, can’t you smell it? Send Coelbren to the sanctuary. They must be prepared."

Coelbren rose from the circle of students. He was tall for a boy of twelve. Above his ice-blue eyes, his reddish hair glinted like burnished copper. Wordlessly, he left the great hall, mounted his pony and rode to the western edge of the village.

Gwynedd hushed the children, swearing them into silence. She began comforting the little ones by singing a song about the glories of Annwyn. Trusting her, they joined her in the familiar song and fled the great hall without panic, but all could see the smoke rising across the east ridge.

Gwynedd stopped singing. "They have set the forest afire," she cried incredulously. "May the Mothers protect us," she prayed aloud, while urging the little ones forward.

Like small animals, the children scrambled through the trees and up the side of the valley. Near the great stone circle, along the western ridge, Gwynedd and Boann paused to make sure all the children were with them. Looking down into the village, they saw armed men riding on horseback, swarming among the houses. Only the librarians, a few vates and the physicians with their patients remained in Caer. Gwynedd’s hazel eyes widened with fear. Wordlessly, she looked at Boann. The two women urged the children to drop into the undergrowth of ferns so they’d be hidden from sight. Crouching and crawling, they made their way onto the forest path leading to the standing stones. Screaming rose from the village below. When the younger children lagged, the older ones scooped them up, carrying them in their arms and across their backs.

Gwynedd shook with fear. "Did they see us, do you think?"

"If they did, they will be on us soon enough," answered Boann.

Like hares the children scrambled among the standing blue-stone sentinels that for centuries had protected the students and teachers of Caer.

Meanwhile inside the healing sanctuary, Coelbren’s news was met with equanimity. Healers calmly moved among the sick and the bedridden. With loving care they gave each one a drink of the distilled essence of Ul Liu.

Coelbren left the healing centre and moved toward the great libraries. He urged the elders to flee, but they declined, urging him instead to make for the northern beaches, where he would find a coracle and flee the doomed sanctuary. When Coelbren resisted, pleading to stay and fight, the seeress Brawnwyn calmly told him it was his destiny to spread the news of their destruction to the tribes on the mainland.

By the time the legionnaires burst into the healing centre, all were sleeping in the embrace of death.

Boann and the others reached the standing stone circle, where she stopped at the well of prophecy beside the altar stone. Blood dripped from her wound into the dark waters and they rippled. The sun’s reflection grew dark on the surface of the sacred water. Looking up, Boann saw the sun surrounded by a vast, dark corona, its circumference glistening with shimmering colours like the winter’s aurora. Surprised, both women paused, staring into the hazy sunlight.

"Is it a sign?" Gwynedd asked. Boann nodded. The reflection in the well cleared and Boann saw an image of cliffs above the Cerrig Bach Lake. She cupped her hand and drank from the holy waters. Coolness and calm flowed over her like a gentle wave. Fear washed away from her like a gentle tide. She felt strangely at peace. Now, she knew there was a sanctuary in the cliffs, if they could reach them. She sighed. If destiny sent her to the shores of Annwyn today, she would go with grace, but if pressed, she would fight for the lives of the children.

Gwynedd pulled frantically at her sleeve. "This is madness. You dream in the day! You shouldn’t have taste the sacred water," she scolded.

Serenely Boann whispered, "I’ve seen a sanctuary. On the eastern shores of Cerrig Bach, halfway up the cliffside, there’s a cave. We must take the children there."

It was mid-afternoon when they reached the western shores of Cerrig Bach. Gwynedd, Boann and the children passed two elderly men who were busy consigning the temple treasures into the sparkling blue waters below. They had a great hoard of relics and objects made of gold and silver. The men were busy destroying, weapons, shields, and jewelry collected as tribute from the tribes and tithed to the holy sanctuary.

Boann was relieved to see that generations of spoils dedicated to the goddess of the sacred groves wouldn’t fall into the hands of non-believers. The men stood beside a small anvil and were poised to hammer the sword of Kaledon into twisted metal when she stopped them. Boann begged them for the sword for herself and for some of the small arms for the older children. Gwynedd wept as with shaking hands she took a sword and shield from the hoard. It had been decades since she’d taken a head, and she had never intended to battle again in the autumn of her life.

Fanning into the forest along the lower slopes of the lake, the children crept like wraiths. It was nightfall by the time they reached the rock-cut paths leading up the cliff-face and the caves. Exhausted the smaller children whimpered for food and their mothers.

Boann knew that while the rising moon offered them light for climbing, it also meant they could be seen by the enemy. At the same time, they would surely be seen or heard if they stayed along the lakeshore. She decided to chance it. The darkening skies filled with smoke from the burning sacred groves that surrounded Caer. Slowly, beneath the smoke-smeared moonlight, the children climbed the ancient pathways to the caves. An overhanging rock ledge hid the mouth of the largest cave, used long ago by priests and priestesses during initiation rites. Once inside, the children collapsed from sheer exhaustion.

After they settled the children, Gwynedd brought water from a spring deep inside the cave and gently washed Boann’s wound. Like a ragged grimace, her jaw muscle sagged open from the corner of her mouth almost to her ear. Gwynedd filled the wound with cobwebs and stitched it together with a sewing awl and thread from her sagum

As sleep took the children, Gwynedd and Boann took turns near the mouth of the cave, watching the stars and the night pass.

In her turn, Boann slept fitfully, her dreams filled with the hellish cries of dying men and women churned beneath the hooves of Scathach as she reaped warriors from the sands of battle.

"Boann, wake up! Boann!" Gwynedd shook her shoulder, urgently rousing her from her nightmares. Fear filled the older woman’s eyes. "They’ve found us. They’re on the shore below."

Blinking in the dawn light caressing the mouth of the cave, Boann crawled on her belly toward the entrance. Looking over the limestone rim, she saw a century of soldiers milling about the edge of the lake below them. Smoke was rising from a small fire and with sickening apprehension, Boann recognized the two elderly men they’d met the day before.

The soldiers were taking turns torturing them. Using the language of the troops, one of the men cried out that there was no more treasure, that the goddess of Cerrig Bach had taken it all to her bosom, but the soldiers either didn’t believe him, or they were simply more interested in perpetuating his agony.

Boann cringed as he screamed. Uncertainty gnawed at her. She wasn’t sure they were discovered. One of the centurions, whose silvered helmet sprouted purple feathers, glanced upward and she slid back into the darkness.

Her jaw ached. Painfully, she whispered to Gwynedd, "I’m not sure they’ve seen us, but those men may tell them where we’ve taken refuge. We must keep the children quiet. Have the oldest take the youngest ones deep inside, to the rocks beside the stream. Tell them to keep quiet, our lives depend upon it."

Swiftly Gwynedd moved among the sleeping younger children, silently waking them. Dazed and dirty, fearfully they withdrew into the dark inner recesses of the cave.

Boann whispered to the older children, telling them of the danger lurking below. She told them of the courage she’d seen in their parents as they fought the invaders on the beach. She urged them not to grieve, for their parents were now safe among their kin on the shores of Annwyn. As if to console themselves, one by one the children began to recite the tales of Annwyn they’d learned. Buoyed by stories of hope, heroes, and sages, who’d overcome incredible odds, the children hardly noticed the screams coming from the men below. But the sudden sounds of drumming silenced their whispered story telling.

Once more, Boann inched toward the mouth of the cave. Now she could see the soldiers beginning to climb the cliffs, carrying with them bundles of dry brush and grass. Fear chilled her, as she saw the two elderly men hanging lifeless from makeshift, driftwood crosses.

Edging her way back into the cave, she turned to the older children. "The soldiers are coming," she said evenly. "They are bringing brushwood to burn us out." The children’s eyes filled with fear, but silence kept their tongues.

With a quavering voice, Oengus, a boy of ten, stood up. "We will kill them if we can," he said, brandishing a ceremonial sword.

Ariana, whose hair was as fair as her name, stood also. "If it is the will of the gods that we join our kin on the shores of Annwyn today, so be it. I, for one, would be glad to see my mother and father again."

Celeste -- the moonchild -- added her voice; "I’d rather die a freeborn woman, than live as a Roman slave." The older children murmured their agreement. Ariana disappeared into the darkness to tell Gwynedd the soldiers were coming. One after the other, the older children moved silently deeper into the cave.

The younger children were crying in the shadowed darkness by the time Boann reached them. Her voice caught in her throat as she realized that Gwynedd was sprinkling them with water from the stream, blessing them in the name of the Mother. Rough voices from the mouth of the cave silenced her invocations.

Although they couldn’t see the soldiers, they all could smell the smoke from burning brush and pitch. As it thickened, the little ones -- coughing and choking -- began wailing for their mothers. Boann urged them all to wet their clothing in the stream and hold their sleeves across their mouths and noses, but before long the choking smoke was so thick they couldn’t breathe. Oengus was the first to leave.

"In the name of the Mother," he screamed, bolting through the choking black smoke. Boann and Gwynedd tried to restrain the others, but it was no use. The smoke drove the oldest toward the burning brush filling the mouth of the cave, while the little ones lay in the stream.

Feverishly, his tunic sleeves burning, Oengus hacked at the flaming bush with his sword until he secured an opening. He burst through the flames and never saw the sword that cleaved his head from his thin shoulders.

Gwynedd had soaked her shift in the water and now bushed many of the burning branches through the cave mouth, sending burning brands onto the soldiers below. Naked, she ran back into the rear of the cave for the little ones. Through the circle of flames and thick smoke the soldiers poured in.

Uttering the war cries of her clan, Boann raised the sacred sword of Kaledon, splitting the mail shirt of the first soldier who pressed her. Back to back, the older children furiously fought their attackers; their small, unarmored bodies falling like ripe corn beneath a harvest scythe.

A plumed centurion drove his blade beneath Boann’s breast and she cried out, her legs folding beneath her, as he pulled his word from her. Raising her sword arm, she fended another blow from the same man. Her feet slipped in the blood spilling across the slick rocks as she tried to stand. Pulling herself up on one knee, Boann looked at the flaming mouth of the cave. An apparition appeared. Through the flames she could see the elder Divicacious floating in the air outside the hellish inferno.

"That’s it!" She screamed with revelation. The circle of flames was the doorway to Annwyn. Boann turned her back on the sight and saw two soldiers pulling Gwynedd from the darkness. Covered with blood, her body weeping with wounds, but she managed a smile. She called to Boann across the hell between them. "I freed the children," she said, showing her bloody hands, as the soldier beside her opened her gut with his sword.

Agonized surprise crossed her face as her bowels oozed like wet sausages between her legs.

Pushing herself against the rock wall, Boann staggered to her feet. With superhuman effort, she drove her sword through the back of the soldier who cut down Ariana. Slashing another aside, she flung herself through the cave mouth and into the bright blue sky.

She gasped for breath as she fell. The air was sweet and the sky bluer than she ever remembered it. Turning as she fell, she was surprised to see among the clouds the face of the Iceni queen, smiling at her, as if from the shores of Annwyn.

With a voice as soft as the wind passing her ears, Boudicca’s apparition whispered to her, "Vengeance will be ours."

The whispering wind was the last thing Boann heard before her body broke on a granite outcropping of rocks along the shores of Cerrig Bach. Small clots of pale yellow brain spattered the stones as blood darkened her copper coloured hair.

-----------------------------

Abruptly the waters in the well of prophecy cleared and Boann stared into the stern, reflected face of Divicacious. Disoriented and uncomprehending, her face pale and streaked with tears she looked up at him. Sounds of celebration -- music and dancing --drifted up from the village below them. Confusion fogged her mind and words failed her.

"In the space of eighteen moons, we will walk this world no more, and the men in this dream will spill their seed into these holy waters, and urinate upon our sacred altars," said Divicacious.

Choking back sobs Boann cried, "But as we have seen it today, surely we can change it tomorrow. Oh Mother, the children, Gwynedd, will all die?"

Divicacious shook his head. "Coelbren will live. But it is destiny, who weaves the threads of our lives, and Scathach will have her due. Dark times and darker magic has aroused the Eagle in the east and death comes swiftly on his wings."

"Do all with the sight know these things?"

Divicacious sighed. "No. Some will see only shadows, and feel the fear, but the awful truth of this is known only to a handful of us at Caer. The sight and the knowing is a terrible burden."

"Can we do nothing?"

"We can ready the Iceni queen for her role. You must send her the dreams of wakening."

"Surely, there is more to be done than dream. We can ready our people, train them, arm them, warn Longinius and his men," she urged in desperation.

"And what would you tell them? They would ask, ‘ who is the enemy?’ In their fear the people might turn upon Longinius and his families. It is better to let them live as they are, here and now, than to tell them what fate awaits them. The high council has decided it must be so… but all may not be lost. In my dreams, I have seen two men among the eagles who will aid us -- one with his sword, the other with his words -- but first they must be won to our ways."