Free The Divining by Barbara Wood Page A

thought, but pride had kept them strong.
         When the first came near, Ulrika saw that around the crown of her head lay a handsome circlet of twisted silver, twined and curled with silver leaves and stems, coming together on the old woman's forehead to support a tiny silver owl resting on two silver oak leaves, a pale moonstone between the leaves, like an egg, as if the owl were waiting to hatch it.
         The two women paused to give her close scrutiny. When the second of the two saw the Cross of Odin on Ulrika's breast, she pointed and murmured, while the other pursed her wrinkled lips. Milky blue eyes peered at Ulrika from beneath white brows. "Are you lost, daughter?"
         It was a dialect Ulrika understood. "I am looking for—" Ulrika could barely breathe.
         "You should not be here," the woman said gently, "among the dead."
         "I need to find—"
         The old woman had sharply chiseled cheekbones and jaw, a thin aquiline nose, making Ulrika think that in her youth she must have been a very striking woman. But now the young flesh was gone, leaving her with bone and sinew, but an air of strength all the same. She reached out and laid a hand on Ulrika's arm. "You are weary. Come, daughter. Away from all this death."
         "I am looking for my father. He is Wulf, the son of Arminius."
         The old woman shook her head in sadness. "Wulf is dead. His family all perished. Come now, you must eat and rest."
         "Dead! No, you are mistaken. I am searching for him. He cannot be dead."
         But the women turned to lead the way, lifting their skirts as they stepped over corpses, allowing Ulrika a glimpse of leather boots lined with fur. She fell wordlessly into step behind them, carrying her travel packs, her burdens, her pain as she walked with one sandaled foot and one bare foot over ground that was soaked with blood.
         At the edge of the meadow they approached an area of blackened earth where the Romans had set fire as they had retreated with captives and weapons looted from the dead. Nearby, Ulrika knew, the legionaries would have given their own slain a decent burial, in mass graves with prayers and offerings to the gods.
         As she followed the two old women over scorched ground where not a blade of grass had survived, she realized that they had entered what was left of a village. All that remained after the Roman fires were the charred foundations of what had once been sturdy log halls. Ulrika's eyes stung with smoke as she passed places where embers still glowed, and straw and wood smoldered. Trees that had once been magnificent pines and oaks were now stunted and black, twisted and grotesque. The stench was overwhelming.
         The old woman with the silver circlet around her head stopped in front of what appeared to be a pile of grass and twigs but which turned out to be a crude shelter. "Inside is food and drink."
         Ulrika bent to enter the hut, finding darkness inside. But when her eyes adjusted, she saw a bare, earthen floor with fur pelts, waterskins, woven baskets holding vegetables and fruit.
         She gratefully accepted what she suspected was the last of their food, and so although she was ravenous, she ate sparingly, and then drank from the proffered waterskin.
         "Who are you?" she asked of the two women who sat watching her.
         "We are the caretakers of a sacred grove. We have been so for countless generations, ever since the Goddess Freya wept her red-gold tears among the ancient oaks. You must sleep now," the old woman said, "while we return to the task of burying our sons and husbands."
         "Yes," Ulrika said wearily, laying back on a blanket made of thick bear skin. "I am so very tired ..."
         She did not know how long she slept, but when she awoke it was dark and the two caretakers of the sacred grove were lighting torches and stirring something in a hot cooking pot. As Ulrika struggled to sit up—every bone and