Gern lifted the woman's head and gave her to drink. The woman smiled weakly as she lay back. A few moments later she closed her eyes and slept. Gern then went to the chief and stood before him.
'Will the woman live?' asked the chief. He might have been speaking about one of his hounds.
'She lives,' answered Gern-y-fhain. 'See she does keep warm, and drinks the potion.'
The chieftain grunted and removed one of his bracelets. He handed the golden object to his man, who dropped it gingerly into Gern's palm lest he touch her. The slight did not go unnoticed. Elac stiffened. Nolo's hand alreadyjhad an arrow in it.
But Gern looked at the bracelet and hefted it in her hand. Likely, there was much tin in the thing and little enough gold. 'You promised four bracelets.'
'Four? Take what you are given, and get out!' he growled in his sorry speech. 'I will not hear your lies!'
The Hill Folk drew their weapons.
Gern raised a hand in the air. Elac and Nolo froze. 'Chief thinks to cheat Gern-y-fhain?' She spoke softly, but the threat was undeniable. Her hand weaved a strange motion in the air and something fell from her fingers. The fire suddenly became a fountain gushing bright sparks.
The women screamed and threw their hands over their faces. The chieftain quickly reconsidered, glaring with red-eyed anger. He muttered and removed three more bracelets, throwing them into the flaming embers of the fire at his feet.
Quick as a flick, Gern reached into the fire and scooped up the bracelets, to the astonishment of the tallfolk. The gold disappeared into a fold in her clothing and, straight-backed, she turned and walked from the hut. We followed her, mounted our ponies, and together returned to the crannog in the winter twilight.
Two days later, Elac and Nolo took the sheep back down to the pasture and were there when the tallfolk came upon them: three riders as before and the chief with them. I was halfway down the hill and saw the riders sweep down on my fhain-brothers, scattering the sheep. I stopped and hunched myself into a motionless shape, blending instantly into the hillscape.
When the riders halted, I hurried forward.
'Give back the gold!' the chief shouted. Elac's knife appeared in his hand. Nolo's bowstring stretched taut. The tallfolk were not unprepared. Each held a sturdy sword and a small, well-made wood-and-oxhide shield. I wondered about the weapons. Where had these men come by them? Trading with the Scotti? 'Give it back, thief!'
Elac may not have understood the word, but he knew the tone. His muscles tensed, ready to leap to the fight. The only thing that checked him was the horses. Had the Hill Folk been astride their own ponies they would have been nigh invincible to the rogues before them. But it was four against two, and the two were on foot.
The tallfolk chieftain meant to have his gold back, or the heads of those who had it on sharpened stakes outside his house. Perhaps both. As I watched, I felt the same quickening in the air around me as I had felt the day the stones danced. I knew something would happen, but did not know what it might be.
But the moment I stepped between Elac and the chieftain, I saw that the tallfolk felt it, too.
'Why have you come here?' I asked, trying to imitate Gern-y-fhain's unassailable authority.
The tallfolk started as if I had sprung full-grown from the turf at their feet. The chieftain tightened his grip on his sword and grumbled, 'The woman is dead and lies cold in the mud. I have come for my gold.'
'Go back,' I told him. 'If you think to avenge yourself on those who helped you, then you deserve what will happen to you. Turn back; there is nothing for you here.'
A fierce and ugly glee twisted his stupid face. 'I will have the gold, and your flapping tongue as well, bastard!'
'You have been warned,' I told him, then looked at the others. 'You have all been warned.' They were not as brave as their chief, or else they were not as stupid. They muttered and made the sign against evil with their hands.
The chief opened his mouth in a rude laugh. 'I will gut you like a herring and strangle you with your own entrails, boy!' he boasted, lowering his sword to my throat.
Elac tensed, ready to strike. I held up a hand to stay him. The chiefs sword, the blade black with caked blood, came nearer. I turned my eyes to the length of jagged iron and imagined the heat that had forged it, imagined it red hot from the forge fire.
The sword-tip began to glow – duskily at first, but brightening rapidly, the fireglow spreading along the blade towards the hilt.
The chief held the weapon as long as he could, and burmed his hand badly for his stubbornness. His shriek echoed in the valley. 'Kill him!' he shouted; the red welt on his palm was already blistering. 'Kill him!'
His men made no move for their own weapons had become too hot to hold, and indeed the iron in their belt buckles, knives, and arm rings was growing uncomfortably warm.
The horses jigged nervously, showing the whites of then-eyes. 'Take yourselves from here and do not trouble us again,' I said levelly, although my heart was beating furiously.
One of the men turned his horse and made to ride away, but his leader was a bull-headed man. 'Stay!' Rage and frustration blackened his face. 'You!' He roared at me. 'I will kill you! I will – '
I had never seen a man carried away by such hate. And, although I have seen it once or twice since, at the time I did not know that it could kill.
The chief gagged and his words stuck – like fishbones in his throat – and he choked, making a hideous sound. Clawing at his neck, eyes bulging, he pitched from the saddle. He was dead when his body struck the ground.
The men stared at their fallen leader only for an instant, then wheeled their horses and fled back the way they had come, leaving their chief where he lay.
When they had gone, Elac turned to me and looked long into my eyes. He did not speak, but the questions were there. Who are you? What are you?
Nolo squatted beside the body. 'This one is dead, Myrddin-wealth,' he said softly.
'We will put him back on his horse and send him home to his own,' I told him.
With some difficulty, the three of us lifted the body and slung it across the saddle, tying the wrists and ankles together to keep it from sliding off. We turned the horse and gave the unhappy beast a slap on the rump and it trotted after the others. I breathed a prayer for the man – I did not have it in me to despise him. We watched the horses out of sight and then returned to the crannog, Elac and Nolo running on ahead in their eagerness to tell what they had seen.
Vrisa and Gern-y-fhain regarded me knowingly as they heard what had happened. Gern-y-fhain raised her hands above my head and sang the victory for me; Vrisa showed her appreciation in another way. She put her arms around me and kissed me. That night I sat beside her at supper and she fed me from her bowl.
SEVEN
The snow came to the north country. Through cold, grey days of little light and long, black nights of howling wind, I sat at Gern-y-fhain's feet beside the peat fire and she taught me her craft – the ancient arts of earth and air, fire and water that men in their ignorance call magic. I learn quickly, but Gern-y-fhain was a good teacher, as adept in her own way as Dafyd or Blaise in theirs.
It was at this time that I began to See, and it started with the peat fire, which glows so beautifully, all cherry red and gold. Not all Gerns have this ability, but Gern-y-fhain could look into the fire and see the shapes of things there. And once she awakened the ability in me, we would sit there for hours together, fire-gazing. Afterwards, she would ask me what I had seen and I would tell her.
I soon learned that my vision was more clear than her own.
As my skill improved, I could almost summon the images I chose – almost. Nevertheless, one night I saw my mother. This occurrence was as pleasant as it was unexpected. I was staring into the flames, emptying my mind for the images that would come, while at the same time reaching out for them – an act more difficult to describe than to do. Gern-y-fhain likened it to drawing water from a stream, or coaxing shy, winter-born colts
down from the hills.
As I stared into the fire that cold night, I saw the form of a woman flicker before me and I drew it in, held it – much as a man might cup his hand around a candle flame – coaxed it to take shape, willed it to remain. It was Charis and she was sitting in a chamber beside a brazier glowing with charcoal. At the moment I apprehended her, she raised her head and looked around as if someone had spoken her name. Perhaps I did; I cannot say.
The image was strong and I could see from her contented
expression that she was at peace – which could only be, I reasoned, if my message had been received and understood in the way I had intended. At least, she was not sick with worry over me.
As I watched, the door behind her opened and she half-turned in her chair. The visitor approached and she smiled. I could not see who it was, but as the other came near she reached out…
With one hand in hers, he put the other on her shoulder and settled himself on the arm of the chair. She turned her head to the hand at her shoulder and brushed it with her lips. I knew then who it was: Maelwys.
This so unnerved me that I lost the image. It dissolved back into the flames and was gone. I was left with a throbbing head and a question. What did it mean?
It was not the shock of seeing my mother with Maelwys – that was logical enough; indeed, it made perfect sense that she should return to winter in Maridunum while the search for me went on. Rather, it was seeing her affection for another, affection which heretofore had been reserved for me alone. This too was logical, after all; but that did not make it easier to accept.
It is always a humbling thing to discover your own insignificance in the grand design.
I puzzled on the meaning of what I had seen for several days before giving it up. The important thing was that my mother was cared for, and that she was not overwrought for me.
I saw other things, other places. More and more often now, I recognized what I saw: Blaise wrapped in his cloak and sitting on a hill, staring up at the night sky; priest Dafyd and my grandfather Avallach hunched head-to-head over a chessboard; Elphin stropping a new sword. Other times I did not know what I saw: a narrow, rocky glen with a spring bubbling out of a cleft in a hill; a girl with raven-dark hair lighting a rushlamp with a reed; a noisome smoke-dark hall filled with glowering, drunken men and snarling dogs…
Always it ended the same way: the image dissolving in the flames, fading into red heat and white ash. I had no idea whether what I saw was happening, had already happened, or was yet to happen. Ah, but that would come. In time, that too would come.
Gern-y-fhain taught me other things in those dark winter days. She was pleased to have someone to tell the things she had stored up over a lifetime, and I was happy to mine that rich store. She must have known that her work was impermanent, that I would leave one day, taking all with me. Still, she gave freely. Perhaps she also knew the value I would one day place on the knowledge I was given.
When spring came again to the Island of the Mighty, the fhain travelled back to the south. They chose a rath in a different place, hoping for better grazing than they had had the previous year.
Our summer place was not far from the Wall – where the mountains enfold hidden valleys and settlements are rare. Twice that summer, when I rode hunting with Teirn, we saw troops hurrying along the ancient ridge ways. Crouching beside our ponies we watched them pass, and I sensed the upheaval in those troubled spirits; like a disturbance in the air, I felt the rolling, churning chaos as they marched by.
That was not the only indication I had of the great and terrible events proceeding along their ordained courses in the world of men… I also heard the voices.
This began soon after the second sighting of the troops. We were returning to the rath with the day's kill and had stopped to allow the ponies to drink from a stream. The sun was standing low; the sky was aglow with yellow flame. I drooped my arms across my pony's neck – we were both sweating and tired. There was not a breath of wind in the glen and the blackflies were thick and bothersome. I was simply resting, watching the sunlight dance on the rippling water, when the buzz of the flies seemed to form itself into words.
'… make them understand… nearer now than ever… few years, perhaps… southeast… Lindum and Luguvallium are with us… bide, Constantius. It will not be for ever… '
The words were spoken softly. A mere whisper on the breeze – but there was no breeze. The air was dead.
I looked across at Teirn to see if he heard it, too. But he remained squatting at the water's edge, cupping water to his mouth. If he heard anything he gave no sign.
'… six hundred is all… orders, my friend, orders… Imperator.'… more in tribute… this year than last, Mithras help us!… bleed us dry?… here is the seal, take it… then it is agreed… cannot turn aside… Ave Imperator!'
The words came in gasps and snatches, many different voices, overlapping one another in a gabble of confusion. But they were voices and I had no doubt that somewhere, far or near, the words had been spoken. Although there was no sense to what I heard, I knew from the tone that a thing of momentous import was taking place.
I thought about this for a long time that night and after. What did it mean? What could it mean?
But that, I regret, I was not to discover until much later. Not that I could have done anything about it. I was very much a part of Hawk Fhain now. I had altogether stopped thinking about running away – having come, like Gern-y-fhain, to believe that my stay with the Hill Folk was meant to be. Perhaps I was not the Gift they thought I was; indeed, they were a gift to me for I was learning much that would stand me in good stead the rest of my life.
Thus, it is no simple matter to describe my sojourn among the People of the Hawk. Even for me, the words I speak show themselves hollow, broken things beside the brimming reality that lives in my heart: the colours! – autumn fern like copper shining from the fire; and in the spring, whole mountain-sides clothed in imperial purple; greens as tender and fresh as the dawn of creation, rich as God's own idea of green; the myriad shifting blues of sea and sky and running water; the matchless white of snow newfallen; the grey of lowering thundercloud, the excellent black of night's soft wing…
And more: sunbright days of infinite light and pleasure; starbright nights of deep, deep slumber; seasons of goodness and right, each moment etched in elegant symmetry upon the soul; the slow Earth moving through its inexorable cycle of birth and rebirth, keeping faith with the Creator, fulfilling its ancient and honourable promise.
Great Light, I could not have loved you better than I did then.
For I saw, and I understood. I saw the order of creation; I understood the rhythm of life. The Hill Folk lived close to the order; they felt the rhythm in their blood. They had no need to understand it – they were part of it as it was part of them – but through them I learned to feel it; through them I became part of it, too.
My kinsmen, my brothers! The debt that I owe you can never be repaid, but know that I have never forgotten you, and as long as men hear and remember the old stories, as long as words have meaning you will live, even as you live in my heart.
I stayed with the Hawk People another year, one more winter and spring and summer, one more Beltane and Lugh-nasadh, and then I knew it was time for me to return to my own. As the days began to shorten, I grew uneasy – a light flutter of the stomach when I looked to the south, a slight lift of the heart when I thought of home, the tingle of expectation that in far-off courts the future substance of my life was being shaped, that somewhere someone was waiting for me to appear.
I endured these various sensations in silence, but Gern-y-fhain knew. She could tell that my time was short and one night after supper called me outside. I took her arm and we walked in silence up the hill to stand in the stone circle. She squinted up at the twilight sky and then at me. 'Myrddin-brother, you are a man now.'
I waited for what she had to say.
'You will leave fhain.'
I no
dded. 'Soon.'
She smiled a smile so sweet and sad that it pierced my soul with its tenderness. 'Go your way, wealth of my heart.'
Tears rose to my eyes and my throat tightened. 'I cannot leave without your song in my ears, Gern-y-fhain.'
That pleased her. 'Will sing you home, Myrddin-wealth. Will be a special song.' She began composing it that night.
Vrisa came to me the next day. She and Gern-y-fhain had been talking and she wanted me to know that she understood. 'You would make good a husband, Myrddin-brother. I am a good wife.'
That was true. She would have been a good wife to any man. 'I do thank you, Vrisa-sister. But -' I turned my eyes to the southern hills.
'Needs must go back to your tallfolk rath,' she sighed. Then, taking my hand, raised it to her lips, kissed it, and placed it against her breast. Beneath the warmth of her soft flesh, I could feel the beating of her heart.
'We are alive, Myrddin-brother. We are not sky-folk or Ancient Ones that have no life. Be we blood and bone and spirit – firstborn of Mother's child-wealth… ' she nodded solemnly, covering my hand with both of hers. 'You know this now.'
Indeed, I never doubted it. She was so beautiful, yes, and so alive, so much a part of her world that I was tempted to stay and become her husband. Quite possibly I would have, too, but the road stretched out before me and I could already see my self on it.
I kissed her and she smiled, brushing back a lock of black hair. 'I will carry you in my heart always, Vrisa-sister,' I told her.
Three nights later we celebrated Samhain, Night of the Peace Fire, thanking our Parents for the blessing of a good year. As the moon crested the hills Gern-y-fhain lit the bonfire in the stone circle and I saw other fires on other distant hilltops round about. We ate roast lamb and garh'c and wild onions, and there was much talking and laughing, and I sang them a song in my own tongue, which they enjoyed even though they understood nothing of it. I wanted to leave them with something of my own.
When I finished, Gern-y-fhain rose and paced slowly around the bonfire three times in a sun-wise circle. She came to stand over me and stretched her hands over my head. 'Listen, People of the Hawk, this is the Leaving Song for Myrddin-brother.'
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