The Prophet and the Lady of the Mountain
Having been expelled from Carth, the Prophet Aulus, having no other road available to him, perforce made designs to journey north and to go into the land of the forest dwellers where the Lord's Word might be planted in more fertile soil. And thus did the Prophet and his companions embark, and journeyed for many days, sustaining the harassment of the enemies of the Lord, and ere long the Prophet's party came to the foot of the Seven Sisters, whose roots reached the deepest depths and whose high peaks scraped the blue heavens. Thus the Prophet led his party into the Pass of Corvena.
During the long and arduous journey through the pass, the Prophet's party came before a group of goatherds belonging to a mountain kindred, and the Prophet stopped before them, and greeted them, and the Prophet saw that they were disturbed and unwelcoming of his greetings.
The Prophet solicited the men for their attention, and ere long they warmed to his gentle temperament, and the Prophet spoke to the men. The men asked Aulus whence had he come, and he told them he had come from Carth, and that he had been banished from the Great City for preaching the Lord's Word. And they spoke further, and Aulus learned that they called themselves Velnii, and he learned that they worshipped a great eminence who dwelled in the high peaks, and they called her the Lady of the Mountain, and they sacrificed to her.
The Prophet learned in what manner they sacrificed to the Lady of the Mountain. He learned that the Velnii brought goats, sheep, and oxen, even honey and good wine to the Lady, and that when she was pleased with their oblations, the kinsmen said, she kept them like a Great Mother. She slew the wolves that stalked the hills and predated on their flocks, she drove away thieves who waylaid caravans in the narrow passes, and she cast her great shadow over the land and kindled awe in the hearts of the people. When the Lady of the Mountain did these things, the Velnii honored her and praised her with great praise.
But, in times of hunger, the men told Aulus, when the people had nothing to sacrifice, the Lady grew wroth, and cried terrible cries, and instead of wolves and thieves the Lady took the people's children to gratify her appetite, and the Velnii told Aulus that her hunger was insatiable and that her fury was like a scourge. They told Aulus that they were afeared to travel the narrow passes, that they might espy the Lady's fearsome shadow cast over the land.
The Velnii told Aulus that a hard winter and a dry summer had brought hunger and disease even into the mountains, and that the numbers of their livestock had been greatly reduced, and their herds were spare and thin, and they had little to offer the Lady. Aulus saw with his own eyes that their words were true, and that their goats were few in number and that their ribs could be counted by eye.
The kinsmen told Aulus that they failed in the prior season to propitiate Her Ladyship, and that they felt shame, having reneged their duty to their god, and that the Lady of the Mountain had grown furious with them, and cried terrible cries, and had no ears to hear their plaints. She snatched children and livestock from their villages, and the Velnii suffered unbearably under her rapacious depredations. The people mourned their lost children, and Aulus pitied them.
Aulus Marus heard the plaints of the kinsmen, and went with his companions into the mountain pass where the Lady dwelled so that he might parley with her. The Lady of the Mountain flew down to meet Aulus, and Aulus saw that she was half woman and half beast, and he knew that she belonged to the accursed race of the Fallen One.
The Lady of the Mountain spoke harshly to Aulus, and asked who he was. And Aulus said, “I am a servant of the King of Heaven.”
The Lady of the Mountain laughed, and her voice was a shrill screech like that of an eagle.
And Aulus said, “The Lord has sent me to remind Your Ladyship that there is a greater power even than you, a power who dwells in Heaven and reigns over this land, and indeed all lands.” And Aulus continued, and said, “Methinks that ye and your kin have forgotten the face of your Lord, and in your pride have lost your fear of the Almighty.”
And the Lady said, “Who is this Lord of Heaven, and where might his sign be found? I have not seen Him nor his mark.”
And Aulus said, “I am his sign, for He lives in me, and in ye, and in all the living things that inhabit this land, and indeed all lands.”
And the Lady said to Aulus, “Indeed, and let me ask once more: might the Almighty Lord, who at once dwells in Heaven and apparently in each of us, offer proof that he reigns here, then, or does he only send frail men to do his bidding?”
Aulus continued, and he said, “The Lord has sent before Him a humble servant bearing His Message, for He is a gentle, modest, and loving Lord. Accept me, His living instrument, as proof.”
The Lady laughed at the words of Aulus and said with bemusement, “Do I have no choice but to accept thy words, then?”
And Aulus said, “The choice is yours, but let me say once more: the Lord is the highest power in Heaven and on Earth, and ye, like me, and like the honest folk you predate upon, are a slave to His Sovereignty, and ye should do well to bear witness to that fact.”
The Lady, incensed by the Prophet's words, told the Prophet, “Enough! Begone! This is the principality of the Lady of the Mountain, and there is no higher power here than me.”
Aulus persisted, and told the Lady that if she did not submit to the Lord of Creation, and humble herself before the Almighty, that the Lord God would terrorize her with thunder and with lightning and send upon her a storm that would rob her wings of flight and pummel her bones to dust, and that if she did not soon humiliate herself, He would extinguish not only her, but the whole of the Fallen One's cursed posterity, no matter how many of their number nested in the high peaks of the mountains, and that He would place the land under the stewardship of righteous and God-fearing people.
The Lady of the Mountain laughed shrilly at the persistent reproach of Aulus, and, uncowed by the Prophet's words, she proceeded and said to Aulus, “I demand that thou and thy companions bring me oblations if thou wouldst pass through these mountains unmolested. Bring me a dozen horses and six of the oxen that pull thy carts, and then shall I let thee pass, and I shall forgive thy haughty threats and imprecations.”
Aulus returned to his camp and slept, and on the following day went again to the narrow pass to speak with the Lady. He again beseeched her to abase herself before the Lord and to fear the Almighty God who is her Father, but she again laughed at him.
Aulus told her, “If ye do not submit to the righteous authority of the Most High God, the Lord will see fit to punish you, and He will cast you into a Great Fire. Remember that within you, like within Men, lives an immortal soul, and upon the death of your earthly body, your deeds will be accounted in Heaven by the Master of Creation, and if the Lord judges that ye have done wrong, or behaved wickedly, and has found ye have not made course to amend for your misdeeds, nor have ye repented of your pride and your haughty arrogations, ye will be damned by the Lord and the Lord's angels will punish you with hellfire and with hot pokers and with scourges for Eternity in the darkest chambers of the Fiery Heaven.”
The Lady of the Mountain, whose name was Waltforta1, grew wroth, and reminded Aulus and his companions that if they did not bring oblations on the following day, she would cast rocks down upon them and their caravan from her high perch and bring ruin upon them.
That night, the Lord sent Lunifer to Aulus to tell him that the Lord would bring a hailstorm on the prideful Lady, and to go again to her, so that she might be brought out from the safety of her cave, and that He would protect Aulus from any harm she would design to do him. Aulus Marus obediently accepted the Lord's command.
On the third day, Aulus went again to parley with the Lady of the Mountain in the narrow pass, and the Lady came again to him to receive oblations from the Prophet and his companions.
Aulus said to the Lady that there would be no oblations for Her Ladyship, but that the Father Above would bring a storm of hail and lightning down upon her if she did not submit to the Lord God, and if she continued to arrogate to herself the prerogatives of the Lord, and to take for herself the children and the property of the meek and diligent people of the mountain, and to beguile them, and to obscure the Glory of the Lord with the shadow she cast over them as if she were the Lord's own manifest presence on Earth, then the Lord's punishment would be given to her.
The Lady, undaunted by the Prophet's warning, and having tired of the bemused rejoinders and mocking laughter she hitherto dealt him, sent her own imprecation upon him, and she said: “Gaze upon me, little prophet, for thine eyes will soon be hollow pits! I shall tear thee limb from limb, and all thy companions I shall kill, and all thy pitiful impressed. Soon thy holy word will be naught but a raucous gurgle in a bunch of wet and dying throats. Mark my words, you overweening man: if thy dear and mighty God does deign to deliver thee, he shall find my clutches wrapped around thy bloody beating heart!” The Lady of the Mountain’s face contorted in a terrible rictus, and she screeched a shrill screech, and she flung with magnificent swoops her poised mass into the low air, and she snapped with cruel and wicked talons before the Prophet’s party, and at this sight the Prophet’s party was afeared.
But then the Lord God struck the mountain with a flash of fire, and cleft the air with booming thunderclaps, and the Lady of the Mountain and the Prophet's companions were awed into silence, and the horses and the oxen were struck with great fear and screamed in terror at the Lord's might. And the Lord brought down hailstones from the sky in great number.
The party of Aulus sheltered themselves from the Lord's wrath under their carts, but the Lady of the Mountain, finding no refuge between the high walls of the mountain pass, cried a loud cry like that of an eagle, and made to fly up the narrow chasm with great haste, but the Lord smote the Lady's wings with white hailstones and she was brought down to the hard earth, where she lay in a pitiable heap, and made futile attempt to crawl and lurch toward the sanctuary of some rocky nook, but there was none to be found under the open sky, and the Lady covered her head from the Lord's wrath with her beaten wings.
The hailstones were large like apples and struck with horrendous impact, bruising the Lady’s flesh and breaking the Lady's bones. Taking pity on her, Aulus went whither the Lady lay, and called his companions to him, and they covered her with their shields and with the lids of barrels.
When the Lord's wrath was spent, the Lady remained humiliated on the ground, having been abased by the Lord's hand, and the Lady moaned in terrible pain from the damages caused her by the Lord's righteous punishment.
Aulus told his companions to construct a large cart to carry her, and they did, and with him Aulus brought the damaged and broken Lady through the remainder of the Pass of Corvena, and with his companions bore her to the town called Aisna, which was the nearest settlement on their course.
In the days that followed, while the Prophet's party reposed in Aisna, Aulus and his physicians tended the wounded Lady, feeding her good meat, fish from the river, and bread, and bringing her clean water to drink while her bones mended, and by the solicitude of the Prophet, and by the indefatigable spirit of vigor that was inside her, she was restored ere long to good health.
During this time, Aulus spoke frequently to her, and told her of the One, who is the Creator and Master of all things, who is the Highest Power and the Emperor of Heaven, and who is the Lord of the Earth and of all Worlds, and he told her of the Unbegotten One, the Unmoved Mover, and of the One who is the Father of Fathers, the God of Gods, and the Cause of Causes, and indeed Aulus told the Lady of the almighty power of the King of Life, and of his servants, growing every day in number, who do his Great Work on Earth, and finally to the Lady he said, “And the way to Paradise is open for you, if ye open your soul to the truth of the Testament and bear witness to the Lord's Sovereignty.”
The Lady took his words to heart and within her the seed of the Lord's Faith was planted, and when her body was healed, she surrendered to the Lord, and offered her testament to Aulus, and bore witness that the Lord was her God and that Aulus was the Lord's Messenger.
Upon hearing her testimony, and affirming its truth and earnestness, the Prophet told the Lady she may take a new name, being born again in God, and the Lady chose for herself a new name, and thereafter she was called Waltruda2.
Thenceforth the Lady Waltruda worshipped the Lord God faithfully, offering Him prayer and remaining at all times a resolute advocate of His Lordship, and, through the many long days that followed, and through the tribulations therein, served the Lord as a valiant herald of His Glory, and bore for the Lord's Messenger the pennant of the Fivefold Testament, and for the rest of her days remained the friend of God and of Aulus, and protected Aulus from the enemies of the Lord. And forsooth, until the last of her days, the Lady bore herself humbly, and devoted her attention to the protection of meek and God-fearing people, and remained a most noble, steadfast, and exemplary Submitter, and indeed the Prophet said of her that the Lord God could not ask for a more devoted and righteous servant.