by Andre Norton
Once more one of the fliers spiraled out. It made a wider swing, its distort on full. The farthest reach of that swing carried it across another spur of rock reaching skyward. The beacon which had summoned the installation out of space and time had died. Only now, deep within other rocks beneath, another signal woke to life. Undetected by the flier, it began to pulsate, its wavelength sweeping higher and higher as its energy built and roared to full power.
Outward into the high heavens sped a new beam, climbing starward. It would take a long time, perhaps years for that warning to be caught by those who patrolled there. But it could not be quenched. Ancient battles might begin, lesser in force now than of old, because both adversaries were depleted to a thousandth, a millionth of the power they once possessed. Time and exhaustion had not, however, wearied their resolve. They were as implacable as ever. Though now they must face each other with new and lesser strength, yet they would do it.
The flier wheeled, coasted through a fierce wind, fluttered along within its grasp as a leaf might. Yet it was not powerless; it had a task it must do and nothing man or nature could devise in this time could prevent it from accomplishing that act.
Brigitta slept heavily, yet it seemed to her that in truth she waked. The wooden wall of the kin house was no longer about her. She stood instead on a path she knew well, the one which led to the spring of prophecy where the goddess might bless with eternal good fortune someone who flung an offering. Nor was this the dread night of Samain with its dark, veiled hunters waiting to ensnare man-kind. About her now was the green freshness of first spring, of Beltaine when the fires would burn high and maids and men would leap over their flames hand and hand, united in worship of those forces which increased rather than diminished the tribes.
There was a golden light about her that did not come from the sun overhead. It made a spear point which reached to her sandaled feet, though the source remained hidden by bushes just leafing with the spring. The glow leaped up from that triangle of light into her heart, so she laughed joyfully and began to run through the brilliance, a great excitement filling her. Never had she felt so free, so alive, so entirely happy as in this moment.
Then she saw him as he moved out of the green and stood waiting for her. This, her heart knew at once, was the face she had so long searched for among the visitors to the clan house, or in those few times when she had traveled abroad. This was the one meant by the Great Mother to give her full happiness.
He was all light, clothed with radiance and warmth. She reached him and that warmth and light encased them both in a private place which was theirs alone. No one else in the world might ever find or share it. She was a part of him and he was a part of her, and so they became one in a way Brigitta could find no words to explain.
The world about them was golden, and it sang as if all the true-toned birds in the woodlands raised their sweetest notes at once to blend. She was lost in the warmth, the song and in him until there was no Brigitta left, only another one who was fulfilled as a field sown with grain is fulfilled, ready to bring forth an abundant harvest.
In the clan house Lugaid edged back into the shadows. His body swayed slightly to right and left; his features were mask-like, without expression. He might have been concentrating with his whole being on something he heard, or sensed or imagined. But with that concentration was a growing bewilderment. It was as if a man who each day passed some long-ruined temple of a faceless, forgotten god, suddenly heard from within that desolate sanctuary a summons to a worship old beyond the memory of any man.
Then bewilderment became exultation. The mask of Lugaid’s face broke and he was like one who, after years of aridity from serving a lost cause, had been proved the victor in truth. His hands folded over the spiral on his breast, he whispered words in a tongue not of the tower town which held him, nor of the Roman state which had been torn into nothing, but a language far older than either. In these latter days the words were largely meaningless even to those very few who still learned them as part of a discredited ancient belief.
Above, Brigitta smiled, crooned, stretched her arms to embrace him who stood in her dreams. And over the chief’s hold the flying thing began a slow downward flight. Swooping through the roof opening, it unerringly found the inner door of the chamber in which the girl lay.
Within the cave the installations hummed to a high pitch and then began to sink again, almost drowsily, as though some beast had used its powers to the uttermost and must now rest to recoup its strength. But in that other distant crag there was no ceasing of outward flow. The beam signal strengthened, searched out farther and farther, a finger crooking into space to draw down aid in the old, old war.
Lugaid’s eyes were open, fixed on the door of Brigitta’s chamber. He could only guess a small portion of what had happened there this night, and of that he would say nothing until he was sure. But he drew a deep breath of wonder that such a thing could happen in these troubled days. The gods had long since withdrawn, yet it would seem that they still lived. He must go as soon as possible to the Place of Power. Surely there he would find some answer, some assurance that this thing had meaning for his people.
He heard the drone of voices about him and knew impatience. They occupied themselves only with the things of this earth, with death. Yet this night he was sure the things of the sky had touched here and brought life, not death. Truly this was the hour that legend promised, when the Sky Lords would come again!
2.
* * *
It was thickly hot within the upper chamber. Brigitta, between the waves of pain, longed to lay her swollen body in the stream which ran from the Fortunate Spring. She was dimly aware that most of the people in the fort village had been gone before sunup, out into the fields to celebrate the Feast of Lughnasa when the harvest fell to the sickle. Julia, who had been her mother’s nurse, sat patiently beside her, dipping a cloth into a basin of tepid water, using that to wipe the dripping salt-sweat from the girl’s face. There was a brazier in the far corner and from that came the scent of burning herbs, strong enough to make Brigitta cough and gasp when some trick of the breeze blew it in her direction. They had opened all the doors within the house, untied all knots, done what they might to make this birth an easy one. But, Brigitta thought dully, it was not easy. How could it be easy for a mortal woman to bear the son of a god?
The past months—how strangely they had eyed her. It was only Lugaid’s prophecy which had kept the kin from laying black shame on her and so on the House of Nyren. There had been times when she would have willingly taken her own sharp dagger and cut from her living body this thing some strange force had bred in her. It was very hard now to remember the golden happiness of her dream, though Lugaid had assured her that it had actually been no dream, but that one of the Sky Sons had come to claim her.
Now she knew nothing but the pain, and between the onset of that, the fear that the next would be worse and worse. Yet she set her teeth and would not cry out. If one bore a god’s son one did not wail him into the world.
Her body heaved again and Julia was quick beside her. Then Lugaid somehow was there also, his dark eyes holding hers. And from that meeting of their gaze came a strangeness which removed her from the pain, sent her spinning far out among sparks of light which might be stars. . . .
“A son.” Julia placed the baby on the fair piece of linen ready to receive it.
“A son.” Lugaid nodded as if he had had no doubts from the first that this would be so. “His name is Myrddin.”
Julia looked at him with hostility. “It is the father who names the son.”
“His name is Myrddin.” The Druid dipped a finger into the bowl of water and touched the baby’s breast. “His father would have it so.”
Julia hunched a shoulder. “You talk of Sky Lords,” she sniffed. “I am not denying that you saved my lady from shame with such, when there were those who believed. But there is not one even under this roof who believed wholly, or will ever do so. They will say �
��son of no man’ and talk tattle afar.”
“Not long.” Lugaid shook his head. “This will be the first of his kind and through him the old days will return. Those tales of the past are not only the words of bards meant to amuse. Within them lies a core of truth. Look to the babe, and your mistress.” He glanced at Brigitta with less interest, as if, having served her purpose, she was of lesser account now.
Julia made a sound close to a snort. She bustled about caring for the child, who did not cry, but lay looking about him. In those few moments after his entrance into the world, he seemed far more aware of his surroundings than any infant should rightfully be. And the nurse, noting that odd awareness, made a certain sign before she gathered him up. Brigitta slept heavily.
It would seem that in Myrddin’s early childhood Julia had the right measurement of the feeling within the kin house. He was indeed “son of no man,” but since the chief accepted—outwardly at any rate—Lugaid’s assurance that his daughter had been impregnated by a Sky Lord, the boy was not openly shamed. Neither did he find any ready acceptance among those of his own generation, however.
In the first place he was oddly slow to learn. The women of the house looked on his backwardness as a fitting answer to the mystery of his conception. Nor was he forward in walking either. Had it not been for the fierce championship of Julia he might have been neglected, allowed to fade away into early death. For within six months of his birth Brigitta had been given in marriage to a widowed clan leader old enough to have fathered her. She left Nyren’s fortress and her son behind.
She had made no protest over his separation for, from the hour of his birth, after she had awakened from the swoon into which she was always sure Lugaid had sent her, she had had no feeling of tenderness toward the baby. Rather the Druid appeared to have taken her place, with Julia to supply those comforts of physical existence Myrddin needed most at his age. And it was Julia who became most fiercely maternal when comments about the child’s slowness were voiced aloud. It was to Lugaid that Julia appealed when her own faith in Myrddin’s intelligence wavered.
“Leave him be.” Lugaid had taken the child on his knee, was locking eyes with eyes. “He lives by another time, this one. You shall see. When he talks it will be clearly and with purpose; when he walks it will be straightaway walking, not crawling about after the manner of the animals. His heritage is not ours, so we cannot judge him by the actions of those wholly of this world.”
Julia sat quiet for a moment, glancing from Druid to child and back again.
“I have thought sometimes,” she confessed, “that the tale you told was to save my young lady from shame. But that is not so. What you say you believe. Why?”
Now he looked from the child to her. “Why, woman? Because on the night he was conceived I felt the coming of the Power which was to bring him into being. We have lost so much.” He shook his head regretfully. “So very much of the knowledge which made men great enough to challenge the stars themselves. We gabble odd tags of legend and are not sure which is truth, which the embroidery of some later man. But there is enough remaining that he who is trained can sense the Power when it is at work.
“This ‘son of no man’ shall be great enough to make and unmake kings. Yet I believe that was not what he was sent to do. No, he is an opener of gates. And when he comes to his full strength he will speak the High Language and we shall see the beginning of a new world.”
The passion in his voice awed Julia and she took the child back from Lugaid’s hold, regarding the boy strangely. For she knew that the Druid believed what he had said. And from that moment she watched for any sign of coming greatness in Myrddin, not knowing how that might first manifest itself.
Myrddin walked when he was four and, as Lugaid had said, he stepped out strongly from the first moment he found his feet, not wavering or crawling as was normal. A month later he spoke, and his words were as well pronounced as those of a grown man.
But he made no attempt to join the other children at their games. Nor did he ever show interest in sword play, or hang about listening to the lounging warriors telling their battle tales. Instead he tailed Lugaid whenever the Druid was in sight. And it became accepted that Myrddin would become a bard, or one of those learned in the law and the descent of houses. Nyren agreed to this on one of the rare intervals when he was at home.
For the chief had made his choice. He and his men rode with Ambrosius, harrying both the High King who had betrayed them and the Saxons he had brought in as allies and who were now nearly his masters. The war band was often gone from the mountain-hidden kin house, leaving only a token force of defenders, with women and slaves to work their few fields and herd the sheep which were their small wealth.
In Myrddin’s fifth year, when he was pressed into aid as a shepherd, the clan being nearly bereft of men, he found the cave. He had gone higher among the lichen-tinted rocks of the uplands than he had ever ventured before, mainly because the older lads had left him to scramble up the roughest way. But as he rounded one pinnacle he forgot the sheep he sought and those waiting below.
Like a sleepwalker he veered to the right where there was a small opening, hardly large enough for his small, wiry body to wedge into. The fall of rock which had half sealed the cave had occurred not too long ago, but it was an effective screen and Myrddin might not have discovered the crevice at all if that sudden compulsion had not taken charge of his mind, drawn his body toward it.
He wriggled through the hole to find himself in a much larger passage whose outer limits were dim, because the only light came from the crack through which he had squirmed. No sense of fear touched him; he was filled instead with a strange and growing excitement, as if something wonderful lay just beyond, meant only for him.
So he marched on into the dark unafraid, only impatient to find what he knew must lie there. But, as he drew away from the entrance, he was surprised to discover that there was a pale sort of radiance around him, stretching three or four of his short strides ahead, as if he were wearing a giant cloak of light. Nor did that discovery seem in the least strange. Something deep in his mind welcomed it as a nearly forgotten bit of knowledge.
He knew the tale about him, that his father was of the Sky People. And from Lugaid he had learned more, that far, far back in time men had often come from the sky and the women of earth had borne sons and daughters to them. Those sons and daughters had had certain gifts and knowledge which men had never had and which had been forgotten when the Sky People came no more and their blood thinned through earth interbreeding. Few men believed in them anymore, and Lugaid had cautioned Myrddin that this was a story which he must keep to himself, until by his deeds he could indeed prove his heritage. Lugaid also said that unless the boy could learn by himself what the Old Ones knew he would be helpless, for nowhere on earth was there now any teacher of more than vague shadows of this forgotten lore.
There remained a part of Myrddin that was of Brigitta’s giving and that shrank within him, lonely and lost, unable to make contact with those about him. He thought a lot about what would happen to him if he could never discover what he must know. For here even Lugaid failed him, saying that those who might once have taught him were long dead, and only small fragments, probably much distorted, remained in the trained memories of such as the Druid himself. But the priest promised that when the time was ripe, he would give what he could to this one who was truly like a fosterling of his own.
The grayish light which accompanied the boy grew stronger. Now he believed that it was given off by the walls, rather than gathered around his own person. And, when he rubbed an investigating finger along the stone, he discovered something else: a vibration within the rock. Quickly he put his ear flat against that wall to listen, but it was a feeling rather than a sound, a beat like from a creature’s own heart.
All the tales of monsters lairing within caves swirled into his mind then and he hesitated. But the excited feeling drew him and he went on. So he came through an opening into a
larger area where a light winked into flaring brilliance. Myrddin shrank back, his hands over his eyes, blinded by that glare. The vibration was a steady hum which he could hear now as well as feel.
“There is no need of fear.”
Myrddin was suddenly aware that a voice spoke, had been speaking while he crouched, eyes covered, struck dumb for the first time in his life by real terror.
He strove to fight his fear, though he did not yet drop his hands to see who spoke. But the very fact that he heard lessened his first terror, for surely no firedrake nor ghoul would use the tongue of man!
“There is no need of fear,” the same words repeated.
The boy drew a deep breath and, summoning the full force of his courage, he dropped his hands.
There was so much to be seen, and the objects were so alien to all his experience, that wonder overcame the last of his fear. For here was no scaled monster, no evil creature. Instead, under the light stood burnished squares and cylinders for which his native language had no names. There was also a kind of life which he could sense, though it was not the life of fleshed creatures, but of another species altogether.
The cavern seemed very large to him, and it was very full of the objects. Some flashed small colored lights along the surfaces facing him. Others were blank, yet they all possessed that alien life.
Myrddin still could not see who had spoken to him and he was too cautious to venture far into the crowded chamber. Now he moistened his lips with tongue tip and answered with all the boldness he could summon, his voice sounding shrill in that chamber.
“I am not afraid!” Which was in part a lie, but in part only, for the fascination of this place was far outweighing, with every moment he lingered, his first wariness.
He expected to see someone step into view around the bulk of those huge square or round pillars. But, as the moments passed, no one came. Again he spoke, now a little displeased that there had been no real answer.
