The Oath

by A. M. Linden

  Offended, the great stallion sent his younger son to complain to the sprite about this abuse of their hospitality, but Bervin pretended that he didn’t understand horse speech and went on doing whatever he wished.

  The next morning, when Bervin went to take a bath in the lake, the water was too cold, so he worked a spell to heat it up. It became so hot that all the fish in the lake were boiled. Bervin saw this and was pleased, since it saved him the trouble of making a fire to cook his breakfast.

  Seeing the pool befouled and reeking from the leftover dead fish, the great stallion sent his older son to complain that now they couldn’t drink the water, but Bervin didn’t care, since he only drank wine brewed from thistle berries, and he threw a rock at the great stallion’s son to drive him away.

  Later that day, Bervin set out across the valley, looking for a place away from the smell of rotting fish to build another house. Flies were swarming and their buzzing bothered him, so he cast a spell that made clouds from the mountaintops gather up snow from the peaks and cover the valley floor in a thick layer of snow that killed all the insects. Since sprites can walk on the softest snow as easily as on solid ground, Bervin continued on his way, heedless of what trouble the snow meant to the horses.

  This time the great stallion went himself to complain that his herd was trapped and foundering in the snowbanks, and that they would starve without the summer grass to eat! But Bervin didn’t care because he didn’t eat grass and didn’t see why anyone would—and also because he had magical powers and the horses didn’t. He dismissed the great stallion as if he were no more than a common cart horse.

  By this time, the entire herd was outraged. They were stamping their feet and gnashing their teeth and crying out for revenge. The great stallion called for calm, reminding them that Bervin was right about one thing—that he had magical powers and they didn’t. While true, these words added to the horses’ anger, and some of the mares began to mutter amongst themselves that if the great stallion couldn’t do anything about the nasty little sprite, then they’d find a stallion that could!

  “I will find a way but need some peace and some time to think!” With that, the great stallion galloped away from the herd and up the side of the highest ridge above the valley.

  From his lookout, he saw a figure in the distance coming toward the valley’s entrance. Not only was the great stallion strong, beautiful, and wise, he also had eyes as sharp as an eagle’s. He could see that the distant figure was not any ordinary wanderer but a hero, his golden hair flowing down his shoulders and his shield and armor sparkling in the sunlight.

  It was Trystwn, son of the Great Mother Goddess by one of her most beloved mortal lovers, and the great stallion guessed rightly that he was coming to the valley in search of a horse to ride into battle against the giants of the northern mountains.

  The great stallion moved so that he was hidden behind the trees and looked out. He watched as Trystwn cut down willow branches to build a pen and worked magic to make it invisible. The great stallion watched and waited until the trap was finished, and then he cantered back to where his herd was gathered and waiting for him.

  They expected him to lead them off to safety, but instead the great stallion sent his younger son into Trystwn’s trap, telling him that when he was captured, he was to plead for his freedom and promise to send a faster, stronger, and more beautiful horse in his place.

  The stallion’s younger son did as he was told, and when he pleaded for his freedom, Trystwn made him swear an oath that he would do as he promised and let him go.

  Then the great stallion sent his older son into Trystwn’s trap, again telling him that when he was captured, he was to plead for his freedom and promise, as his brother had, to send a faster, stronger, and more beautiful horse in his place.

  The stallion’s older son also did as he was told, and again Trystwn was persuaded to let him go after swearing to keep his promise.

  The third time, the great stallion went into the hero’s trap himself. When he was captured, he bowed low before Trystwn and pleaded for his freedom, offering to give the hero a faster, stronger, and more beautiful horse in his place. The great stallion was bigger and stronger and more beautiful than any horse that Trystwn had ever seen, so, as he could not believe there was a more wonderful horse anywhere, he demanded that the great stallion show him this steed before he would set him free.

  The great stallion, who remained kneeling, told Trystwn to get onto his back. Once the hero was mounted, the great stallion leaped over the trap’s invisible gate and landed lightly on the other side, his hooves skipping across the ground. Together, they rode like the wind across the valley and into a glen where, from behind a thicket of hornberry bushes, they could see Bervin bathing in a steaming pool.

  “That is no beautiful stallion,” Trystwn said, dark-faced and angry, “That is nothing but a common, ordinary sprite—and an ugly one at that!”

  It was then that the great stallion sprang his trap.

  “That is no sprite,” he said. “That is my older brother, a golden stallion so beautiful that the Sun himself was jealous and turned him into a homely sprite.”

  Then the great stallion bit off a hair from his own tail and gave it to Trystwn, telling him to take the hair and use his magic powers to turn Bervin back into a horse—only adding that he must do this in stealth, so as not to let the Sun see what he was doing.

  So Trystwn crept to the edge of the pool, keeping down so that he was hidden in the reeds, and he dropped the hair from the chief horse’s tail into the water and said his magic words.

  Bervin was finishing his bath, and as he rose up out of the water, his neck and arms grew longer, his face stretched out, and his hands and feet turned into hooves, and instead of standing on two legs he found himself on four. Growing tall enough to see over the reeds and the hornberry bush, he realized what was happening, and he tried to say the counter-spell and to curse the great stallion, but he could only neigh and whinny, for he had already turned into a horse that was everything that the great stallion had promised to Trystwn—a steed whose coat was the color of the sun, whose mane and tail were color of the moon, and whose eyes were as blue as the midday sky on a cloudless day, a horse that was bigger and stronger and more beautiful than any horse before or since. And so Trystwn mounted Bervin and rode off to the adventures that waited for him in other stories, leaving the great stallion and his herd to live in peace in their beautiful green valley.

  As Caelym finished the story with the admonition Herrwn had spoken to him twenty years earlier—“And so now you must decide for yourself whether you will strive to understand the cares and needs of others or behave as though only your own wishes matter, as did that rude and selfish wood sprite”—Lliem drew in what began as a deep sigh but ended as a soft snore and drifted off into a dream where he and Ethelwen were riding on golden horses with silver wings and galloping up through the tops of trees and into the sky together.

  Chapter 51

  Family Secrets

  An exceptionally imaginative boy, Lliem had found escape from the misery of his life with Barnard in his dreams—some frightening, some consoling, but no two ever the same.

  Arddwn was imaginative as well, but he was weighed down with the responsibility of taking care of his younger brother, and he’d had—with minor variations—one single recurring dream. Every night for the past two years he’d dreamed that his father had come to get him. Sometimes Caelym arrived riding on a horse and sometimes sailing in a boat. Sometimes he came alone and sometimes with an army. Sometimes he led Arddwn and Lliem away playing his harp and dancing and sometimes he put them onto a wagon pulled by two huge oxen. The dream always ended the same way—Arddwn would be walking through the forest with his father and they would be talking, and suddenly he couldn’t hear his father’s voice anymore, and he’d look around, and Caelym would be gone, and then he’d wake up, still locked in the filthy, rat-infested wood shed.

  Now, gripping Caelym�
�s shirt with both hands, desperate to keep his father’s voice from stopping, Arddwn asked one question after another about anything he could think of.

  For Caelym, who’d been an insatiably curious boy himself, Arddwn’s volley of questions was no more than he’d expect of his son and, tired as he was himself, he considered it his duty to answer each one as patiently and as truthfully as he could. The first few—Why do we have to poop? How are babies born? What happens after we die?—were easy enough, but as they got closer to more sensitive and challenging matters, Caelym began to feel as though he was stepping his way across a flooding stream on shaky stones. Keeping his voice even, he answered, “The journey ahead of us is long, but we are together now and that is what matters,” when Arddwn asked, “How far is it to Llwddawanden?” and “Elderond couldn’t be better” when Arddwn asked about his favorite goat, as this was not the time to break the news about slaughtering their entire herd for meat—or to mention that Elderond had been among the tougher and stringier of the provisions they’d had to divide.

  Then Arddwn asked, “Is Mother still the Goddess or is it Arianna’s turn now?”

  “Your mother remains the Goddess.” Here Caelym’s voice did falter, but only a little, and he kept a calm—or at least a blank—countenance when Arddwn heaved a sigh and said, “Good! Arianna told us she was going to be the Goddess when we got back, and then we would have to do everything she wanted.”

  Arddwn had been on the verge of losing his battle to stay awake, but he rallied at the recollection of old grievances.

  “And she said if we didn’t, she was going to make us be consorts to troll-women and live in a bog. It made Lliem cry, but I said I’d rather be a consort to a troll than to her!”

  All Caelym said was, “Your mother will be our Goddess for many years to come, and then your dear cousin Cyri will be the Goddess in her turn.”

  Arddwn’s relationship with his older sister had been a rocky one, and her threats hung over his head more than he ever let on. Cyri, on the other hand, had never been bossy like Arianna. She brought treats when she came to visit in the nursery, she let him make up the rules when they played games together, and she never tattled to his nurse about anything he did. After a brief consideration of the new situation, he saw its advantages, and said, “I wouldn’t mind being Cyri’s consort, even if she is a girl.”

  “To be chosen as the consort of so wise and beautiful a priestess as your cousin Cyri is an honor that must be earned.”

  With this opening, Caelym launched into the lecture he’d received from Herrwn on the day he’d entered his formal training for the priesthood.

  “It is my hope you will apply yourself with diligence to your studies of all the wondrous wisdom that has been passed down through all the ages and that someday you will be ready to enter the highest ranks of our sacred order . . .”

  Caelym continued the flow of elevated oration in hopes that the words Herrwn had spoken to him twenty years before would have the same effect on Arddwn they had had on him, sending him to off sleep before it was finished (and wondering belatedly whether this had been Herrwn’s intention as well).

  Watching Arddwn’s eyes glaze over and his lids start to droop, Caelym ended in a soft whisper, “And it is my fondest wish that when you have learned all those things and have grown to be a man, your wise and beautiful cousin Cyri will find you worthy to be her consort, and you will know the joy in her service that I have found in your mother’s.”

  For a moment Arddwn’s eyelids fluttered open and, in a last flash of wakefulness, he managed to form one final question, “But what about Arianna?”

  He fell asleep before he heard the end of Caelym’s evasive answer: “When you are older . . . old enough to understand . . . your mother . . . or Herrwn . . . will tell you all that you must know . . .”

  As Caelym gazed down at his sons, nestled together like a pair of bunnies in their nest, a shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see Annwr with her arms crossed, her eyebrows lowered, and her lips pinched in a tight line.

  She jerked her head in the direction of the stream in a gesture so like her sister’s that there was no question in Caelym’s mind she meant for him to go with her somewhere “they could talk”—which, of course, meant that she would talk and he would apologize. Just what it was that he was needing to make amends for wasn’t clear to him yet, but no doubt it would be soon.

  Sighing, he slipped the folds of his tunic out of Arddwn’s fingers, got up, and followed Annwr across the clearing, through the thorn bushes, and down the bank to a place just below his fish trap, where the rapidly flowing current dropped into a deep, quiet pool.

  Annwr pointed to a flat rock.

  Obeying her silent command, Caelym sat, drawing his knees up and making himself as comfortable as he could while he waited to find out what he had said or done that had so upset her.

  His answer came in the form of an undeserved reproach: “It does no good to lie to children!”

  Dismissing his protest that he didn’t lie to Arddwn—and never had and never would—Annwr paced back and forth in front of him, shaking her finger as she spoke.

  “You didn’t tell him the truth! He asked you about Arianna and instead of telling him what happened to her, you said nothing! She was his sister! He must be told the truth—however painful and sad—so that he may grieve for her, and so that he does not dishonor her memory with childish complaints.”

  Stopping still and putting her hands on her hips, she finished sternly, “He must hear what happened before we reach Llwddawanden, and he must hear it from you, his father.”

  Annwr had no patience with family secrets. It was her view that they did far more harm than any truth could, and while she was rarely successful in convincing her inadvertently pregnant patients of that, she meant to have no such nonsense in her own family.

  Certainly she could see that whatever had happened to Arianna was painful for Caelym to talk about. As a matter of fact, just how painful it appeared to be made her wonder if his grief at her death had anything to do with how much closer in age he was to Feywn’s no doubt stunningly beautiful daughter than to Feywn herself.

  But Arddwn and Lliem still deserved the truth. And she meant to accept no excuses from Caelym. She expected he’d wheedle and weasel a bit but would eventually agree, however reluctantly, to be forthright with her and with his sons. She wasn’t expecting him to grip his arms around his chest as if he were being struck by a spear . . . or to look up at her as though she’d been the one to hurl it . . . or to say in a voice that might have come from a dying man, “There is nothing to tell. Arddwn had only one sister—the infant girl who died in my arms—and he has never spoken of her except in sorrow. He had no other sister, and Feywn had no other daughter.”

  Then, gazing up at her with the look of unbearable clarity she had come to associate with those who knew themselves to be on the verge of death, he whispered, “You understand, don’t you?”

  Annwr did understand, at least in part.

  One of the many unquestioned powers of the shrine’s chief priestess was her prerogative to impose the ultimate penalty of banishment on any priest or priestess whose wrongdoing exceeded forgiveness or remediation—not just from the shrine but from any acknowledgment of their existence, past or present.

  It was a dire edict she’d witnessed only once.

  The transgressor was just as tall, just as muscular, just as solid a presence as he had been before Feywn uttered the terse, irrevocable declaration that cast him out of their order and into oblivion, and yet no one in the crowded chamber appeared to see him anymore.

  It was not that they turned their heads or even shifted their gaze. It was worse than that. As Feywn began the denunciation, they were all staring at him. When she finished it, there was some barely perceptible change in the focus of their eyes, so they were looking through him, as if the space he filled were empty.

  Annwr was standing next to Herrwn and instinctively turned to him f
or guidance. Herrwn, however, was looking at the engravings on his staff, lost in contemplation.

  When she turned back, Labhruinn was still there. If he had looked up then, their eyes would have met, and she might have said something—spoken in his defense or at least pleaded that he be given some food to take with him. He didn’t. He just rose from kneeling and shuffled out of the room. For all she’d known then, he might have turned into mist and vanished like the smoke from the candle that had been blown out. She knew better now. If he hadn’t starved to death in the forest or been torn apart by wolves or died some other cold, lonely death, he still walked and ate and slept somewhere in the world outside Llwddawanden.

  Still, she understood what Caelym couldn’t say—that Arianna had been banished. What she did not understand was how Feywn could do that to her daughter, or what wrong Arianna could have done that her mother would deny her very existence.

  Annwr no longer believed that being expelled from the shrine meant people disappeared into the ether, and she no longer felt bound by the prohibition against talking about them. It was clear, however, that Caelym did, so when he repeated urgently, “You do understand, don’t you?” she answered that she did in the soothing voice she’d use to calm a fretful child and phrased her next question carefully.

  “But if Feywn had ever had another daughter . . . one fathered by Rhedwyn . . . and if that daughter were expelled from the shrine, what might she have done to bring this fate upon herself?”

  Caelym had dropped his eyes and seemed to be gazing at the reflection of the moon in the otherwise dark pool. He wrapped his arms more tightly around his knees and rocked back and forth so pathetically that Annwr was surprised by the force in his voice when he answered, “If such a daughter had ever existed, she might have betrayed Llwddawanden to our enemies.”