A Hera's Journey, a hero tale of Pictland.

This marvellous tale of the Pictish Queen Tansen, the second part in Dorothy's trilogy, reaches across time and weaves for us a picture of tragedy and triumph amid rapidly changing times. In the style of all great hero/hera tales, the author has provided our hera with ample fodder for the classic pattern of separation, initiation, and incorporation. Using the historical time and events surrounding the Battle of Dun Nichen in 685 AD, and set against a background of Pagan/Christian conflict, the fabric of the story is both fast paced and eventful.

The story captures the reader from the first page as our hera, Tansen, finds her world torn apart by the raiding Sea-Danes. The raiders destroy her home, kill most of her family, and turn her world into "a wasteland of death where this morning there had been the fullness of life". Her village is destroyed and her hera's journey begun.

A daughter of the line of the Pictish Queen Caterin and with her own dream of Queenship someday, she leaves all that she knows to take a message of brutal and violent raids to the capital at Dalgynch. Her faith in the pagan traditions and patterns of her people is strong as she travels with the sure expectations that the court at Dalgynch will respond with quick action to avenge the wrong and punish the raiders.

Arriving in the capital Dalgynch, she discovers a world not as she expected. A complacent court, a Queen who is more Kentish than Pictish, a King who is unwilling to assist his people, and a Princess who "plots" with dark and evil forces all confront her as she rashly and passionately seeks to be heard. Accustomed to the patterns of life in her village, she is quickly swept into a current of manipulations, deceit, betrayal and rapidly changing alliances with only her quick wits and vision for her people to support her.

Her love for a young prince, Eanfrith, a hated Sea-Dane, is the catalyst that sends her on a journey into North Humbria and great danger. Through a series of quickly changing events and alliances she becomes his bride and follows him into North Humbria and beyond to Gwynedd. There only her wits, her Pagan traditions and her bodyguard Dale, protect her from enemies on all sides. Yet she is not quick enough to protect her beloved Eanfrith, and returns to North Humbria only to see him betrayed and murdered by his own brother Ecfrith. She is captured raped and imprisoned. Her own life in grave danger, she escapes with the aid of a group of Clan Mothers led by her maid Verna. They hide her and help her in travelling north with Eanfrith's milkbrother Wulf who befriends her. She finds herself pregnant with a son but unable to determine which of the two brothers, her beloved Eanfrith or the hated Ecfrith, is the father.

Gone are her dreams of queenship, but not her determination to find a way to help her own people in driving the deadly enemy from their land. Upon arriving in her own village she finds love and comfort with Wulf, but is rejected by her sister for abandoning them for court, a dream of queenship, and a North Humbrian King. She remains long enough to berth her child, then leaving her newborn son to be fostered by her sister, she and Wulftravel to Burghead where the last of the forces are gathering to stop the increasing tide of invading Angles from the South. Wulf is reunited with his family of stone carvers but Tansen finds that she must continue to fight for her dream of returning the land to the Pretani people.

Kingdoms rise and fall quickly in a time of shifting alliances, devastating raids and general chaos as the Angles advance even farther into the North. She is in the centre of a storm of change that confronts both her faith and her will as she struggles to realise her vision. Caught between the dream of Dale, the Briton of Strathclyde, for a skilled, disciplined army and the wild raiding style of Liath of Caledonia, she relies more heavily on the traditions of her Pagan Pictish upbringing to guide her. Dale of Briton wins out and, with the help ofliath, the hope ofultimate victory returns to Tansen.

Rapidly changing and powerful events catapult Tansen, Dale, Wulf and Liath into building alliances based on the history and tradition ofqueen Caterin. Tansen finally accepts the challenge of Pictish Queenship and Dale that of elected Kingship in a powerful alliance oftribes and traditions that will finally drive the Angles from the land. Leading in the tradition of queen Caterin, and with some assistance from the heavens, she instills in her people both vision and purpose. The battle plan forged, the Angles are engaged at Dun Nichen and soundly defeated. Yet even in the joy and reality of victory, Tansen knows that the patterns, traditions and lessons of the past that were so much part of her life, will be changing. "She waited for a moment while the future slotted itself into place. It felt right. In the knowing places of her body and mind it felt right".

A finely crafted hera tale, this work takes advantage ofthe patterns of separation, initiation, and incorporation. Separation occurs for Tansen, in the first pages of the tale, by a violent and brutal act that confounds her life's realities. With this event, she is brutally and unequivocally thrust on her journey.

The initiation phase is fraught with both physical and spiritual conflict as she struggles to understand her role in the fabric ofthe change that confronts and surrounds her. Yet she has helpers in her task. The patterns and traditions of her Pagan upbringing, her sense of association with powerful unseen forces, her connection to Queen Caterin, and her memories of Grannie Bea, all work to help her maintain her commitment to the path before her. Through a mire of shifting alliances, betrayals, and disappointments, she steers a course for her goal offreedom for her people. Buffeted, battered, and challenged at every level, she ultimately emerged as a strong, visionary Queen for her people. Incorporation for Tansen is bittersweet. While acknowledged by her people as Queen and leader, she knows in her heart that the fabric oftradition that is her strength and courage is being rewoven in ways even she will not know. Yet she turns to engage in the reweaving, a strong and vibrant Queen.

A high quality piece of historical hero/hera fiction and a wonderful read, this tale is well suited to all persons aged 15 through to adults. I look forward to the third part in this trilogy The Harps are Hushed due out in January 1995.

Maggie Scheibe, Ph.D

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