The Earth Goddess
It is 3000 BC. The cult of the Earth Goddess is controlled throughout the vast empire of Europe by the secretive and unscrupulous Red Order, the priesthood which manipulates all power for its own ends. The land that is now called England has been annexed and its lord, Brennis Gehan Fifth, betrayed and murdered. The Lady Altheme, his consort, has escaped to the forest. She is carrying his son, Paoul, rightful inheritor of the Valdoe domain.
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gs. He was too tired, too old, too weary of wandering from place to place. He had seen his own and all the other nomad tribes destroyed: the old way of life was finished for ever. Its freedom and plenty, its grinding hardships, its terrors and grandeur, everything he had lived for, everything was gone. Even had there been enough people to make a spirit group, there was nowhere left for them to go. The trees had gone from vista after vista, cut down or ring-barked and left to die. The ancient territories of his people had been laid waste, and still Valdoe's blades were at work. Once he had been angry; recently he had begun to fear that, one day, he would view it all with indifference.
By his reckoning he was thirty-three. The last eight years he had spent in pain, and now he could scarcely walk ten steps unaided. His hair was turning grey, years before its time. Often at night he longed for release. It would be better then for the others in his party, the people who still called him their chief. Includi
