Free Celtika by Robert Holdstock Page B

the shade of the olive trees, drinking wine from clay flagons and eating copious quantities of fruit, meat and olives. This was having a devastating effect on their digestions. Their horses were tethered close by, much to the annoyance of the townspeople, who felt these northerners should have camped outside the walls like all the other visitors.
    I was deeply curious. The men were all fair-haired except for the leader. His own skin, by contrast, had an olive complexion, his hair grey-blue with limewater, but his eyes, unlike the blue eyes of his companions, were dark and brooding, his moustache quite black. He was certainly not clan-born. When it was his turn to stand watch on the group, leaning on a shield bearing the image of Medusa, he seemed particularly aware of the young but wild-looking man who surveyed him from across the square.
    I was uncomfortable with that appraisal.
    The temple to Athena, a crude white-washed stone building with two smoking censers on its rough steps, overlooked the activities in the square and was occasionally visited by priests, asking the goddess if the oracle was on her way. Each day at dusk they came out on to the steps and proclaimed, ‘She is still in the underworld, walking to us through the caverns.’
    This resulted in a groan of disappointment from Roman and Greek, but the keltoi simply laughed cynically and spat olive stones in unison across the square.
    They seemed very relaxed, despite their posturing, probably because they were enjoying this fine weather.
    On the eighth day, shortly before dawn, the hills at last reverberated with the low note of the bronze horn. Five times the horn was sounded and the town erupted into life. Each party broke camp, saddled their horses, gathered their dogs and struck off at the trot for the foothills. The temple of Athena resonated with chanting, welcoming the rising of the oracle. Chickens ran, pigs squealed and dogs barked. There was a great deal of angry shouting from the locals as their Roman lodgers departed for the hills without paying.
    The keltoi watched all of this carefully, and when the square was quiet they calmly saddled their horses, drained the last of the wine from the flagons, belched, laughed, made rude gestures and comments, and rode out of the small town. As they left the square, they looked back at me, watching me with steady, sinister gazes until they had disappeared from sight.
    I bided my time, then fetched one of my own horses and followed along the steep track to the oracle.
    I’d been here before, on more than one occasion, though several generations ago, and I knew where to go and hide, to listen while the oracle engaged with her devotees.
    A series of gullies, each with a marble arch at its mouth, led deeply into the foothills, winding through craggy rock and clinging bushes until the land opened at the gleaming temple of Poseidon. This single building stood before a dense woodland of oak and tall, fragrant cedars, growing over massive piles of grey rock, which barred the way to the deep gully and cave system where the oracle resided. A giant, ram-headed bronze horn hung from two poles, the mouth opened towards the lowland. It swung gently on its rope harnessing.
    Here, a number of shelters had been constructed for the visitors and there was much activity as horses were rubbed down, fed and watered, and cooking fires started. I tethered my own horse in the shade, left feed and water in clay dishes, and slipped away, skirting through the edge of the woods. Soon I came to the rock recesses that bordered the chasm where the voice of the oracle would speak. Sound, here, echoed hugely. The slightest whisper seemed as intimate at this distance as it would have been to the questioner by the cleft.
    There was a smell of sulphur in the air, and of burned flesh. I could hear the shuffling and organising of the oracle’s attendants. A low, moaning wind spoke from the bowels of the earth. The edge of the woodland was alive with