Taran Wanderer

by Alexander, Lloyd

  "Life's a forge!" cried the smith, as Taran, his brow streaming, beat at the strip of metal. "Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You'll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and you'll scarce know what's happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal's worthless till it's shaped and tempered!"

  Despite the weariness that made him drop gratefully at day's end to the straw pallet in the shed, Taran's heart quickened and his spirits rose as the blade little by little took shape on the anvil. The heavy hammer seemed to weigh more each time he lifted it; but at last, with a joyous cry, he flung it down and raised the finished sword, well-wrought and balanced, gleaming brightly in the light of the forge.

  "A handsome weapon, master smith!" he cried. "As fair as the one I bore!"

  "What, then?" Hevydd exclaimed. "Have you done your work so well? Would you trust your life to a blade untried?" He flung out a burly arm toward a wooden block in a corner of the forge. "Strike hard," he commanded. "The flat, the edge, and the point."

  Proudly Taran raised the sword high and swung it down to the block. The weapon shuddered with the force of the blow, a sharp crack and clang smote his ears as the blade shattered and the shards went flying in all directions.

  Taran shouted in dismay and could have wept as he stared, disbelieving, at the broken hilt still clutched in his hand. He turned and gave Hevydd a despairing glance.

  "So ho!" cried the smith, not at all distressed by Taran's wretched and rueful expression. "Did you think to gain a worthy blade at first go?" He laughed loudly and shook his head.

  "Then what must I do?" Taran cried, appalled at Hevydd's words.

  "Do?" the smith retorted. "What else but start anew?"

  And so they did, but this time for Taran there remained little of his joyous hopes. He labored grimly and doggedly, all the more dejected when Hevydd ordered him to cast aside two new blades even before they were tempered, judging them already flawed. The reek of hot metal clung in his nostrils and flavored even the food he hastily swallowed; the billows of steam from the great quenching tub choked him as if he were breathing clouds of scalding fog; the ceaseless din almost addled his wits until indeed he felt it was himself, not the blade, being hammered.

  The next blade he shaped seemed to him ugly, dinted, and scarred, without the fair proportions of the first, and this too he would have cast aside had not the smith ordered him to finish it.

  "This may well serve," Hevydd told him confidently, despite the doubtful look Taran gave him.

  Again Taran strode to the block and raised the sword. Doing his best to shatter the ungraceful weapon, he brought it down with all his strength. The blade rang like a bell. This time it was the block that split in two.

  "Now," said Hevydd quietly. "That's a blade worth bearing."

  Then he clapped his hands and seized Taran's arm. "You've strength in those chicken wings after all! You've proved yourself as well as you proved the blade. Stay, lad, and I'll teach you all I know."

  Taran said nothing for a time, but looked, not without pride, at the new-forged blade. "You have already taught me much," he said at last to Hevydd, "though I lost what I had hoped to gain. For I had hoped I was indeed a swordsmith. I have learned that I am not."

  "How then!" cried Hevydd. "You've the makings of an honest swordsmith, as good as any in Prydain."

  "It cheers me to think that may be true," Taran answered. "But I know in my heart your craft is not mine. A spur drove me from Small Avren, and it drives me now. And so must I journey, even if I wished to stay."

  The smith nodded. "You are well-named, Wanderer. So be it. I ask no man to go against his heart. Keep the blade in token of friendship. Yours it is, more so than any other, for you forged it with your own hands."

  "It's not a noble weapon, and thus it suits me all the more," Taran laughed, glancing at the ungainly sword. "Lucky it was that I didn't have to make a dozen before it."

  "Luck?" snorted Hevydd, as Taran and Gurgi took leave of him. "Not so! More labor than luck.

  Life's a forge, say I! Face the pounding; don't fear the proving; and you'll stand well against any hammer and anvil!"

  WITH HEVYDD THE SMITH

  waving a sooty hand in farewell, the companions traveled on, bearing northward along the rich valley of Great Avren. A few days of easy riding through pleasant countryside brought them to the edge of Commot Gwenith. Here, a shower suddenly began pelting down on them, and the wayfarers galloped for the first shelter they could find. It was a cluster of sheds, stables, chicken roosts, and storehouses seeming to ramble in all directions, but as Taran dismounted and hastened to the cottage amid the maze of buildings, he realized all were linked by covered walkways or flagstoned paths, and whichever he followed would sooner or later have brought him to the doorway that opened almost before he knocked on it.

  "Come in, and a good greeting to you!" called a voice crackling like twigs in a fire.

  As Gurgi scuttled inside to escape the teeming rain, Taran saw a bent old woman cloaked in gray beckoning him to the hearth. Her long hair was white as the wool on the distaff hanging from her belt of plaited cords. Below her short-girt robe, her bony shins looked thin and hard as spindles. A web of wrinkles covered her face; her cheeks were withered; but for all her years she gave no sign of frailty, as though time had only toughened and seasoned her; and her gray eyes were sharp and bright as a pair of new needles.

  "I am Dwyvach Weaver-Woman," she replied, as Taran bowed courteously and told her his name. "Taran Wanderer?" she repeated with a tart smile. "From the look of you, I'd say you've indeed been wandering. More than you've been washing. And that's clear as the warp and weft on my loom."

  "Yes, yes!" cried Gurgi. "See loom of weavings! See windings and bindings! So many it makes Gurgi's poor tender head swim with twirlings and whirlings!"

  Taran for the first time noticed a high loom standing like a giant harp of a thousand strings in a corner of the cottage. Around it were stacked bobbins of thread of all colors; from the rafters dangled skeins of yarn, hanks of wool and flax; on the walls hung lengths of finished fabrics, some of bright hue and simple design, others of subtler craftsmanship and patterns more difficult to follow. Taran gazed astonished at the endless variety, then turned to the weaver-woman of Gwenith.

  "This calls for skill beyond anything I know," he said admiringly. "How is such work done?"

  "How done?" The weaver-woman chuckled. "It would take me more breath to tell than you have ears to listen. But if you look, you shall see."

  So saying, she hobbled to the loom, climbed to the bench in front of it, and with surprising vigor began plying the shuttle back and forth, all the while working her feet on the treadles below, hardly pausing to glance at her handiwork. At last she stopped, cocked her head at Taran, fixed him with her sharp gray eyes, and said, "Thus is it done, Wanderer, as all things are, each in its own way, thread by thread."

  Taran's amazement had grown all the more. "This would I gladly learn," he said eagerly. "The craft of the swordsmith was not mine. Perhaps the craft of the weaver may be. I pray you, will you teach it to me?"

  "That I will, since you ask," replied Dwyvach. "But mind you: It is one thing to admire a well-woven bit of cloth and another to sit yourself before the loom."

  "My thanks to you," Taran exclaimed. "I'll not fear to labor at your loom. With Hevydd the Smith, I didn't shrink from hot iron or the flames of his forge, and a weaver's shuttle is a lighter burden than a smith's hammer."

  "Think you so?" Dwyvach asked, with a dry chuckle that sounded like knitting needles clicking together. "Then what shall you weave to begin with?" she went on, eyeing him sharply. "Taran Wanderer you call yourself? Taran Threadbare would be more like it! Would you weave yourself a new cloak? Thus you'll gain something to put on your back, and I'll see what skill you have in your fingers."

  Taran willingly agreed; but next day, instead of teaching him weaving, Dwyvach led the companions to one of her many chambers, which Taran saw full nearly to bursting with piles
of wool.

  "Tease out the thorns, pick out the cockleburs," the weaver-woman ordered. "Comb it, card it--- carefully, Wanderer, or when your cloak is done you'll feel it's made of thistles instead of wool!"

  The size of the task ahead of him made Taran despair of ever finishing, but he and Gurgi started the painstaking work, with Dwyvach herself lending a hand. The aged weaver-woman, Taran soon learned, had not only a tart tongue but a keen eye. Nothing escaped her; she spied the smallest knot, speck, or flaw, and brought Taran's attention to it with a sharp rap from her distaff to his knuckles. But what smarted Taran more than the distaff was to learn that Dwyvach, despite her years, could work faster, longer, and harder than he himself. At the end of each day Taran's eyes were bleary, his fingers raw, and his head nodded wearily; yet the old weaver-woman was bright and spry as if the day had scarce begun.

  Nevertheless, the work at last was finished. But now Dwyvach set him in front of a huge spinning wheel. "The finest wool is useless until it's spun to thread," the weaver woman told him. "So you'd best begin learning that, as well."

  "But spinnings are woman's toilings!" Gurgi protested. "No, no, spinnings are not fitting for bold and clever weaver-men!"

  "Indeed!" snorted Dwyvach. "Then sit you down and learn otherwise. I've heard men complain of doing woman's work, and women complain of doing man's work," she added, fastening her bony thumb and forefinger on Gurgi's ear and marching him to a stool beside Taran, "but I've never heard the work complain of who did it, so long as it got done!"

  And so, under Dwyvach's watchful eye, Taran and Gurgi spun thread and filled bobbins during the next few days. Chastened by Dwyvach's words, Gurgi did his best to help, though all too often the hapless creature managed only to tangle himself in the long strands. Next, Dwyvach took the companions to a shed where pots of dye bubbled over a fire. Here, Taran fared no better than Gurgi, for when the yarn was at last dyed, he was bespattered from head to toe with colors, and Gurgi himself looked like a rainbow suddenly sprouting hair.

  Not until all these other tasks were done to Dwyvach's satisfaction did she take Taran to a weaving room; and there his heart sank, for the loom stood bare and stark as a leafless tree.

  "How then?" clucked the weaver-woman as Taran gave her a rueful glance. "The loom must be threaded. Did I not tell you: All things are done step by step and strand by strand?"

  "Hevydd the Smith told me life was a forge," Taran sighed, as he laboriously tried to reckon the countless threads needed, "and I think I'll be well-tempered before my cloak is finished."

  "Life a forge?" said the weaver-woman. "A loom, rather, where lives and days intertwine; and wise he is who can learn to see the pattern. But if you mean to have a new cloak, you'd do better to work more and chatter less. Or did you hope for a host of spiders to come and labor for you?"

  Even after deciding on the pattern, and threading the loom, Taran still saw only a hopeless, confusing tangle of threads. The cloth was painfully slow in forming and at the end of a long day he had little more than a hand's breadth of fabric to show for all his toil.

  "Did I ever think a weaver's shuttle a light burden?" Taran sighed. "It feels heavier than hammer, tongs, and anvil all together!"

  "It's not the shuttle that burdens you," answered Dwyvach, "but lack of skill, a heavy burden, Wanderer, that only one thing can lift."

  "What secret is that?" Taran cried. "Teach it to me now or my cloak will never be done."

  But Dwyvach only smiled. "It is patience, Wanderer. As for teaching it, that I cannot do. It is both the first thing and the last thing you must learn for yourself."

  Taran gloomily went back to work, sure he would be as ancient as Dwyvach before finishing the garment. Nevertheless, as his hands became used to the task the shuttle darted back and forth like a fish among reeds, and the cloth grew steadily on the loom; though Dwyvach was satisfied with his progress; Taran, to his own surprise, was not.

  "The pattern," he murmured, frowning. "It--- I don't know, somehow it doesn't please me."

  "Now then, Wanderer," replied Dwyvach, "no man put a sword to your throat; the choice of pattern was your own."

  "That it was," Taran admitted. "But now I see it closely, I would rather have chosen another."

  "Ah , ah," said Dwyvach, with her dry chuckle, "in that case you have but one of two things to do. Either finish a cloak you'll be ill-content to wear, or unravel it and start anew. For the loom weaves only the pattern set upon it."

  Taran stared a long while at his handiwork. At last he took a deep breath, sighed, and shook his head. "So be it. I'll start anew."

  Over the next few days he ruefully unthreaded and rethreaded the loom. But after it was ready and he began weaving once again, he was delighted to find the cloth grow faster than ever it had done before, and his spirits rose with his new-found skill. When the cloak at last was done, he held it up proudly.

  "This is far better than what I had," he cried. "But I doubt I'll ever be able to wear a cloak again without thinking of every thread!"

  Gurgi shouted triumphantly and Dwyvach bobbed her head in approval.

  "Well-woven," she said. Her expression had lost much of its tartness and she looked fondly at Taran, seeming to smile within herself. "You have skill in your fingers, Wanderer," she said, with unaccustomed gentleness. "Enough to make you one of the finest weavers in Prydain. And if my distaff and your knuckles met more often than you liked, it was because I deemed you worth reproving. Dwell in my house, if you choose, work at my loom, and what I know I will teach you."

  Taran did not answer immediately, and as he hesitated, the weaver-woman smiled and spoke again.

  "I know what is in your heart, Wanderer," she said. "A young man's way is restless; yes, and a young girl's too--- I'm not so gone in years that I've forgotten. Your face tells me it is not your wish to stay in Commot Gwenith."

  Taran nodded. "As much as I hoped to be a swordsmith, so I hoped to be a weaver. But you speak truth. This is not the way I would follow."

  "Then must we say farewell," answered the weaver woman. "But mind you," she added, in her usual sharp tone, "if life is a loom, the pattern you weave is not so easily unraveled."

  TARAN AND GURGI SET OFF

  again, still journeying northward, and soon Commot Gwenith was far behind them. Though Taran wore his new cloak on his shoulders and his new blade at his side, his pleasure in them shortly gave way to disquiet. The words of Dwyvach lingered in his mind, and his thoughts turned to another loom in the distant Marshes of Morva. "And what of Orddu?" he said. "Does she weave with more than threads? The robin has truly been scratching for his worms. But have I indeed chosen my own pattern, or am I no more than a thread on her loom? If that be so, then I fear it's a thread serving little purpose. At any rate," he added, with a rueful laugh, "it's a long and tangled one."

  But these gloomy thoughts flew from his mind when, some days later, Melynlas bore him to the top of a rise and he looked down on the fairest Commot he had ever seen. A tall stand of firs and hemlocks circled broad, well-tended fields, green and abundant. White, thatch-roofed cottages sparkled in shafts of sunlight. The air itself seemed different to him, cool and touched with the sharp scent of evergreens. His heart quickened as he watched, and a strange excitement filled him.

  Gurgi had ridden up beside him. "Kindly master, can we not stop here?"

  "Yes," Taran murmured, his eyes never leaving the fields and cottages. "Yes. Here shall we rest."

  He urged Melynlas down the slope, with Gurgi cantering eagerly behind him. Crossing a shallow stream, Taran reined up at the sight of a hale old man digging busily near the water's edge. Beside him stood a pair of wooden buckets on a yoke, and into these he carefully poured spadefuls of pale brown earth. His iron-gray hair and beard were cropped short; despite his age, his arms seemed as brawny as those of Hevydd the Smith.

  "A good greeting to you, master delver," Taran called. "What place is this?"

  The man turned, wiped his deeply li
ned brow with a forearm, and looked at Taran with keen blue eyes. "The water your horse is standing in--- and churning to mud, by the way--- is Fernbrake Stream. The Commot? This is Commot Merin."

  *¤*nihua*¤*

  Chapter 19

  The Potter's Wheel

  "I'VE TOLD YOU WHERE

  you are," the man went on good-naturedly, as Taran dismounted at the bank of the stream. "Now might you be willing to tell me who you are, and what brings you to a place whose name you must ask? Have you lost your way and found Merin when you sought another Commot?" "I am called Wanderer," Taran replied. "As for losing my way," he added with a laugh, "I can't say that I have, for I'm not sure myself where my path lies."

  "Then Merin is as fair a place as any to break your journey," the man said. "Come along, if you'd see what hospitality I can offer the two of you."

  As the man dropped a last spadeful of clay into the wooden buckets, Taran stepped forward and offered to carry them; and, since the man did not refuse, set his shoulders under the yoke. But the buckets were heavier than Taran reckoned. His brow soon burst out in sweat; he could barely stagger along under the load he felt doubling at every pace; and the hut to which the man pointed seemed to grow farther instead of closer.

  "If you seek daub to mend your chimney," Taran gasped, "you've come a long way to find it!"

  "You've not caught the trick of that yoke," said the man, grinning broadly at Taran's effort. He shouldered the buckets, which Taran gladly gave back, and strode along so briskly, despite the weight of his burden, that he nearly outdistanced the companions. Arriving at a long shed, he poured the clay into a great wooden vat, then beckoned the wayfarers to enter his hut.