The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  As if in answer to his thought, the path took a dip into a ravine and wended its way downward, coming to the edge of a fast-flowing stream. The main trail went straight into the water—meaning, most likely, that it could be forded. Realizing that it would be safer not to suggest to Annwr that they attempt another risky crossing in the dark, Caelym took the side track along the bank.

  Chapter 48

  Merna’s Gift

  It had been a long journey, especially for Lliem, and the splashing and splattering of the water rushing past reminded him of something important.

  “Can we speak now?” Lliem hesitated, and then, in a timid whisper, added, “Ta?”

  “We can, my beloved son,” Caelym answered solemnly. “And you may say anything you wish to me, and I will endeavor to answer you to the fullest extent of my training and knowledge.”

  Lliem opened his mouth, only to close it again.

  Caelym knelt down to his eye level and asked softly, “So what is it, then, that you would like to say to me?”

  “I need to pee.”

  Hearing this, Arddwn knew there was no time to lose.

  “He has to go right now, Ta, or else he’ll wet all over himself.”

  “I will not!” Lliem squealed, hopping tensely from one foot to the other.

  “He will too! And I have to go with him, because he’s afraid of the dark!”

  “I am not!” Liam squeaked again, but not too loudly, because he really didn’t want to go into the bushes by himself, and he did need to pee and couldn’t hold it much longer.

  Caelym rose up and held out his hand. “Of course, you are not afraid. But we all must void sometime, so now we men will go together into the privacy of the bushes on the right side of the path, leaving the bushes on the left for the women to use as they will.”

  Annwr grunted and made for her side of the bushes. Aleswina was going along when Arddwn pointed at her, shocked, and sputtered, “He can’t go over there! He’s a boy!”

  Before any of the others could explain about Aleswina being in disguise, Lliem (who was proud that for once he knew something his older brother didn’t) announced, “She is not a boy.” He paused for effect before declaring, with a dramatic flourish that proved he was indeed Caelym’s son, “She is a goddess!” Then, with one hand firmly clasped over his crotch, he rushed into the bushes.

  At that, Caelym caught hold of Arddwn’s hand and pulled the confused youngster along, leaving the two women to their own affairs.

  When the necessities had been attended to and they were getting ready to go on, Arddwn stared at Aleswina. “So her name is really Aleswina, not Codric?”

  Caelym had enough experience with children to know that to tell the boys Aleswina’s name was a secret they must never reveal was to guarantee that one or both would announce, “Her name isn’t Aleswina,” at the worst possible moment. Thinking swiftly, he said, “Goddesses take many forms, each of which has its own name. The name for this goddess in this form is . . .” Here he paused, trying to think of a fitting name, as names are of grave importance and to rename even a Saxon was no small matter.

  “I know! I know! It’s ‘Ethelwen’!” Lliem piped up, remembering the name of the goddess who saved a hero in a somewhat garbled story Arddwn had told him when they were locked in Barnard’s woodshed. “Ethelwen,” he repeated in a whisper as he looked up at Aleswina, his face bright in the light of the moon.

  Less interested in names than in getting something to eat, Arddwn changed the subject. “Can we catch our fish now, Ta?”

  “We must find a clearing and make our camp, and then I will show you how to set a trap in the river, and in the morning, we will have fish for our breakfast.”

  Disappointed because he was hungry now and morning was a long way off, Arddwn grumbled “Yes, Ta,” and followed Caelym along the trail, occasionally kicking a stone off the path.

  The clearing they found was not particularly inviting. It was surrounded by thorn bushes and there was an eerie formation in the center that turned out to be a stunted trio of dead cedars leaning into each other, their upper branches tangled together, and their long-shed needles piled in a forlorn heap between them.

  Still disgruntled over Caelym’s refusal to go back for their packs, Annwr grumbled, “There is a stack of firewood,” when Caelym pointed to the skeletal trees and announced, “There is our shelter for the night.”

  “To one who has lived a year in the wild, they are more than that,” he answered back, sounding irritatingly cheerful.

  It was on the tip of Annwr’s tongue to remind him he’d only been gone from the shrine for six months, but she held the retort back, crossed her arms, and watched while he made an elaborate show of evoking the good-will of the wood spirits and got to work.

  He stripped the dry branches off the trunks up to where they meshed together and by hanging his cloak around them, created a serviceable three-sided tent. In spite of herself, Annwr was impressed, so when he turned to her and bowed, she nodded in approval and sent him off with the boys to build their fish trap. Then she crawled inside the shelter to smooth the pile of pine needles and spread her apron over them to make their bed for the night. With that done, she and Aleswina worked together to finish setting up camp, clearing away the dead leaves and broken twigs from around the tent before they scraped out a fire pit in front of the shelter’s open side.

  Worn out from the day’s exertions, Aleswina hadn’t said anything as she’d helped Annwr finish setting up the campsite. Hungry as well as exhausted, she stared at the crackling campfire and sighed. “Won’t there be any fish in Caelym’s trap tonight?”

  “Never mind him and his fish trap, Dear Heart,” Annwr answered, “look what we have here.”

  With all that had gone on since Caelym dashed headlong out of the Spotted Hound, Annwr hadn’t had time to pull out the pouch with the supplies that the inn’s Christian cook had given her. The woman had not only refused any payment but had also added a goatskin filled with the inn’s best mead “to warm your souls on your holy mission.”

  At the time, Annwr had salved her conscience over accepting the cook’s gifts under false pretenses with the rationalization that Caelym was a priest and she was a priestess, and the trek to their shrine was just as righteous a journey as any Christian pilgrimage. Now, she emptied a pile of dried apple slices, a round of hard cheese, and three fat sausages into their wooden bowl and began cutting the cheese and sausages into sections with no qualms whatsoever.

  Even as a little girl Annwr had liked to see food presented so it was attractive to look at, and she wanted to make the boys’ meal a special treat, so she took even more than her usual care— stacking the wedges of cheese into a miniature mountain in the center of the bowl, laying the slices of sausage around the cheese, and arranging the dried apples like a circle of crescent moons in a ring around the border. She put enough mead into her water pouch to sweeten their evening drink without making it too strong for the boys and hung the pouch from a stick propped up near the edge of the fire so it would be warm for them when they returned to camp.

  Chapter 49

  The Squirrel

  Arddwn had given up on the idea of getting anything to eat that night. He’d had several long drinks of water from the stream and peppered his father with questions about anything he could think of to keep his mind off food. By the time the fish trap was finished, he’d found out the reason the moon changed shape, why owls hoot at night, quite a bit about the mating habits of frogs, and had almost completely suppressed his hunger pangs.

  Those pangs surged back, however, at the sight of the bowl piled high with sausage, cheese, and slices of dried apples that Annwr held out in both hands as he pushed his way through the thorn bushes and into the camp. He started forward, eager to have something to eat that wasn’t the kitchen waste: gristle that had already been chewed, rinds with nothing good left on them, and leftover peelings that Barnard had divided between him and Lliem and his pigs—with the pigs ge
tting by far the better share.

  “Before we partake of this unexpected feast,” Caelym put a restraining hand on Arddwn’s shoulder, “we must give our thanks and pay our tribute to the guardian spirits of this place and the forest creatures who make this glen their home.”

  “Why, Ta?” Arddwn’s voice had a distinct whine to it. There wasn’t enough food in the bowl for them and the forest creatures too, besides which no guardian spirit had done anything for him during any of that time he’d been slaving away at Barnard’s manor, and he didn’t see why he should share his newfound bounty—or his father’s attention—with them.

  “Patience, my son,” Caelym cautioned. “We will eat soon, only first we will honor our hosts who have so generously allowed us to share their home.”

  “Yes, Ta,” Arddwn muttered, scuffing his boot in the dirt.

  With the possibility of malevolent spirits hovering nearby, listening to their every word, Caelym could hardly explain to his disappointed son that any spot as grim and bleak as this one was certain to be inhabited by the most ill-tempered of local denizens, and so they had to be especially generous in their offerings. Recalling The quicker the invocation’s begun, the sooner the chanting is done, a rhyme that Olyrrwd, the least orthodox of his three childhood teachers, had whispered in his ear when he was Arddwn’s age and complaining that it was too nice a day to spend inside learning chants, he gave Annwr a quick bow and scooped up a handful of apple slices to lay out as tribute.

  What Caelym didn’t know was that Arddwn loved dried apples, because they were the sweetest-tasting things he’d been able to steal out of Barnard’s pantry, and he wasn’t about to let some stupid sprite have them all.

  As thin and malnourished as they were, Arddwn and Lliem would have been worse off (and Lliem certainly dead of starvation long since) if Arddwn hadn’t learned how to steal food when Barnard’s back was turned, so, while Caelym moved from one corner of the clearing to the next, depositing a few slices here and there and singing exaggerated praises for the scraggly thorn bushes and stunted trees, Arddwn trailed along—waiting for his chance to slip over and snatch them when no one was looking.

  The site of Caelym’s first offering, behind a patch of low-growing brush, was too close to the campfire to try anything, the second; on top of an otherwise bare rock, was too open, but the third, at the base of a tree at the farthest edge of the clearing, was out of sight. Once Caelym finished that spot’s incantation and moved on, Arddwn checked that the coast was clear, then he ducked down and slunk back to get the apples before the sprites did.

  He was too late. All but one of the apple slices were gone. Before he could get to that one, a squirrel darted down the side of the tree, snatched it, and ran back up the tree to the crook of an upper branch, where it sat, eating Arddwn’s apple and chattering at him.

  Losing his temper, Arddwn picked up a rock and threw it at the squirrel as hard as he could and almost hit it. He picked up a bigger rock and was taking aim when Caelym dashed back and caught hold of his wrist.

  “Whatever are you doing, throwing rocks at he who is our host?”

  “He took my apples!”

  And before Arddwn knew what he was doing, he’d thrown himself on the ground, pounding it with his fists and kicking it and sobbing that it was not fair and he hated the stupid squirrel.

  It was more than the squirrel Arddwn hated.

  It was his mother sending him away and his father not coming to get him until now, when he’d finished learning English forever ago. It was Barnard beating him and making him eat garbage and locking him in a stinking woodshed. It was having to take care of Lliem, who was always crying and hungry and wetting himself, so Arddwn had to clean him up to keep Barnard from beating him and then having to steal him something more to eat to make him feel better when Barnard beat him anyway. It was being just as hurt and hungry and scared as Lliem but never getting to cry because he was older, and now everybody cared about Lliem and nobody cared about him, and the squirrel got his apples, and he didn’t want his father to pick him up and rock him like he was a baby, and he would have told his father to let him go only he was sobbing so hard he couldn’t talk, so he just kept flailing and kicking, and his father still didn’t let go of him and just kept rocking him until he’d run out of tears and was too exhausted to struggle anymore.

  Caelym rocked Arddwn back and forth until his sobs subsided into gasps and hiccups. Then, still clutching him close, he got up and carried him back to the tent where he settled down facing the fire with Arddwn on his lap.

  The others, who’d run over when the outburst began, looked around for something to do.

  Lliem, who knew how much Arddwn loved apples and also knew how his brother had always given him the best part of everything he stole for them to eat, took all the rest of the slices of dried apple out of the bowl and pressed them into Arddwn’s hand. Instead of eating them, Arddwn clutched them in his fist so he could smell them while he was sucking his thumb, forgetting for the moment that only babies sucked their thumbs.

  Aleswina picked up the wimple that Annwr had used to cover the bed, warmed it by holding out to the fire, and brought it over to tuck it in around the shaking, shivering boy. Annwr took the skin of mead-flavored water down from where it was hanging and handed it to Caelym. After a while, Caelym nudged Arddwn’s thumb out of his mouth and slipped the spout of the water skin between his lips.

  The honey-flavored water was the best thing Arddwn could remember tasting in his life—even better than dried apples, although he kept the apples Lliem gave him squished tight in his fist just in case the squirrel tried to take them from him.

  Between the mead-tinged water, the warm blanket, and the steady beating of his father’s heart against his cheek, Arddwn’s pain-filled rage began to slip away, but he still didn’t like the squirrel. Taking another swallow of the honey-water, he managed to say, “Why do we have to give (hic) our food to the for- (hic) forest animals. They’re (hic) just mice (hic) and squirrels, and I don’t care (hic) about them!”

  Caelym loosened his grip on Arddwn a bit, shifted his position to look his son in the face, and smiled a smile so loving and proud that the last of Arddwn’s anger evaporated in its warmth.

  “That, my son, is a very important question! It is a question that the wisest Druids pondered even before the feud began between men and animals. It is a question that I asked when I was much the same age as you are now. And because you are wise enough to ask this question, I will tell you the story that Herrwn, who is greatest of our people’s bards, told me then.”

  “If it’s a story that Herrwn told, we’ll need something to eat before it’s over.” Annwr brought the bowl of cheese and sausages over and set it down where they all could reach it.

  Caelym waited while they got settled, Arddwn now curled up against his left side, Lliem snuggled between Arddwn and Aleswina, and Annwr on the end, making sure that everyone was getting enough to eat and drink. Then, when the only sounds were munching noises of the boys chewing their sausages and cheese and the fire crackling, he began to tell the story that Herrwn had told him twenty years before.

  Chapter 50

  The Horses’ Tale

  As the disciple of their shrine’s chief bard, Caelym had spent his formative years memorizing the hundreds of interconnected stories, songs, and odes that, taken together, comprised the nine major sagas that lay at the heart of the belief system of the followers of the Great Mother Goddess.

  Dismissed by outsiders as fables and fairy tales, those sagas were historical accounts to the Druids of Llwddawanden, and the heroes and villains in them were as important to Caelym as his direct ancestors (which many of the more notable protagonists were said to be).

  Besides the divine, semi-divine, and high-born moral characters, there were myriad less significant beings—loyal servants, greedy merchants, kindly shepherds, or wily wood spirits—with only minor roles to play. It was the mark of a master bard that even the least important ch
aracter in the most obscure tale had a unique name and some attribute that gave each of them an added dimension—not enough to distract from the major characters or the central theme, but enough to give depth and color to the story, and sometimes explain a crucial turn of events.

  There was no question in Caelym’s mind that their shrine’s chief bard was numbered among the supreme storytellers of all times, or that “Trystwn and the Great Stallion” (or the “Horses’ Tale,” as it was usually called)—disregarded by some as merely a minor episode in a larger saga—conveyed an invaluable lesson despite its centering on a lesser sprite whose self-indulgence and lack of consideration for others led to his downfall. Now, looking down at the expectant faces of his two sons, their eyes sparkling in the light of the campfire, he began to tell the story as Herrwn had told it to him twenty years before.

  Long ago, in the time before the feud began between men and animals and we could all still talk to each other, there was a herd of wonderful wild horses that lived in a lush green valley high up in the towering mountains. While all the horses in the herd were beautiful, their leader, a great golden stallion, and the stallion’s two sons, a silver-gray yearling and a copper-red colt, were the most beautiful of all. The great stallion was not just beautiful, he was also wise and judicious, and under his shrewd leadership the herd prospered and was very happy until a wood sprite named Bervin moved into the valley.

  On the day Bervin arrived, the horses were browsing peacefully on the hillside. Looking up and seeing the sprite coming over the top of the rise, they waited for him to approach their great stallion, introduce himself, and ask their permission to make his home in their valley. But he never did. Instead, he went into the middle of the richest meadow in the valley, next to the crystal-clear waters of their favorite drinking pool, and, without saying, “May I?” or “Do you have any objection?” or “By your leave,” cut down the beautiful grove of whispering aspen where they rested in the heat of the summer afternoons to build himself a house.