Dahut

by Poul Anderson

  As the sun lowered, well-nigh everyone hastened indoors. Tomorrow and the day after, they would welcome in the new year. On this night they huddled away from Those who then went abroad. A few of the mightiest druids stayed out to take omens; a few covens met to carry out rites and cast spells handed down from the Firi Bolg and Fomóri; outlaws and gangrels cowered in the bracken; but otherwise the hours of the moon were given over to what was unhuman.

  Save for Niall of the Nine Hostages and his charioteer.

  Folk at Tallten shivered, muttered, made fending signs. They were not many, mostly warriors on watch in the fortress raths round about. The great fair here took place at Lúgnassat. Samain fair was at Temir itself, and the King should have been there.

  Instead he had entered with guardsmen and menials the day before, opened and occupied the royal house, sent messengers to and fro, conferred in secret with those who came; and an eldritch lot they were. His fighting men were picked: tough-hearted old bullies who had followed him for long years, some to the wall of Ys. Likewise the servants were such as recked little of Gods and less of ghosts. The feast had been savage; a quarrel over the hero’s portion led to a slaying, which had not happened in living memory.

  Niall denied that that was an evil portent. He gave out that his tanist Nath could well preside over the first day’s sacrifices and games at Temir. He, Niall, would return there at dawn of Samain—the distance was only ten leagues or so—to partake in the Sharpening of the Weapons, the Wedding of the Year-Bride, and whatever else required himself. But this eve he must be at Tallten.

  For that was where the Kings and Queens of Temir lay buried.

  During the day, his men brought wood to a grave he named. Toward sunset, three women lighted it. Nobody dared watch what more they did. Besides, the mounds hampered sight, though except for the barrow of Lug’s foster-mother at the middle they were not long or high. Unlike the children of Danu at their Brug, these descendants of Ír and Éber rested each in his or her own chamber, alone and prideful.

  The sun dropped down to a black wall of forest in the west. It had turned the river fiery. Purple beyond the plain, eastern heaven began to lighten as the moon climbed from below. Bats flitted about. The chill made early dew glimmer on grass and stones.

  Through silence came a trampling of hoofs and rumble of wheels. Niall drove forth from the hall. He stood splendidly garbed in a chariot that sheened with bronze. A cloak worked in seven colors rippled from his shoulders. The head of his spear caught the last rays of sun, as did the fading gold of his hair. Also richly attired, Cathual had the reins of two matched gray stallions, animals of Southland breed such as were seldom seen in Ériu and beyond any price.

  Ahead of Niall loomed the grave of the Goddess, amidst the ridges that covered his own kin. Shadows blurred them, but wavered as he neared the balefire at the foot of one. There flames roared upward from a white-hot bed. Three black-clad women stared into them.

  Cathual drew rein. He must stay where he was, because the horses were uneasy, snorted, nickered, stamped, chafed. Niall descended. He dipped his spear to the women. “Have you made ready?” he hailed them.

  “We have that,” said the maiden.

  “Herself will listen,” said the wife.

  “Ask no more,” said the crone.

  “But this I intend.”

  “It is for you,” said the maiden.

  “Make your bargain yourself,” said the wife.

  “You shall not see us again,” said the crone.

  They departed, went behind the barrow, were perhaps lost in the nightfall; for just then the sun slipped away. Bleak greenish glow lingered a while. The moon rose monstrous.

  “Lord,” said Cathual, and the firelight showed sweat aglitter on his face, “best you be quick. Sure, and I know not how long I can hold these beasts.”

  Niall advanced to the head of the grave. He held his spear level above it. “Mongfind, stepmother mine,” he said, “wake.” The fire brawled. “Behold who has dealt with witches such as once you were, he whose death once you sought. I call you back to the world. I give you blood to drink. I make my peace with you, now at last on this night, that you may turn the hatred that was ever in you against my foes.”

  He leaned over and thrust the spear downward till it stood at the middle of the mound like a lean menhir deeply implanted. “By this I rouse you, I please you, I compel you!” he cried.

  Swiftly, then, he went to stand before the horses. They neighed aloud and snapped at their bits. “Steady, Cathual,” Niall commanded. From his waist he drew a shortsword that he had taken off a slain Roman in the year of the Wall. He stepped in and smote. Blood spurted from the neck of the right-hand stallion. The left-hand animal screamed, reared, lashed his forehoofs. Barely did Niall avoid a blow that would have shattered his skull. He wielded his weapon, there between the huge thrashing bodies, and scrambled clear.

  Cathual fought the reins while the horses bucked, lurched, stumbled, shrieked in their death throes. Blood reddened the grave. The noises rattled off into stillness. They struggled a while yet, down on the earth, before they lay quiet. The moon mounted higher. It turned the land ashen.

  “Now,” said Niall. He cut the bodies free. Meanwhile Cathual unloaded a wine cask, two beakers of gold, and a battle ax. Racket lifted anew as he hewed the chariot into pieces which he cast on the fire.

  Niall butchered the carcasses. He slashed off steaks and chops; the rest he divided roughly, chunks such as a strong man could lift. Blood-besmeared, he stood at the tumulus and said, “Mongfind, wise-woman, take your sacrifice and be slaked. I am Niall whom you hated, and you are she whom the people so fear that at Beltene and Samain a druid has come to do that which will keep you under. But your sons are long since my faithful followers; and at this turning of the year I have sent the druid away, and instead called witches to my aid and yours.

  “Mongfind, come! Help me. Tell me how I may destroy Ys, the city that slew my firstborn son, Ethniu’s child. Give me this, and I will unbind you for aye. I will make the law that folk shall offer to you at the turnings of the year, quench your thirst, ease your hunger, and beg your blessing. Mongfind, come to this, the first of your feasts!”

  He took back the spear and skewered meat. While he roasted it, Cathual kept the fire fed and broached the wine cask.

  Thereafter the two men squatted to eat until they could hold no more and drink until they could barely walk. They said nothing; this meal was not for pleasure.

  When at last they were done, and the moon high and small and icy in a frost-ring, they cast the remnants of the horses on the fire. It sparked, sputtered, sank low. Tomorrow the birds of the Mórrigu would gorge. Niall planted the ruined spear in the coals. Flames ran up its shaft like the wreathings of a Beltene pole. “I am going to bed now,” the King said drunkenly. “Mongfind, follow me.”

  He and his charioteer helped each other through the moonlight to the hall. Reeling and staggering, all but helpless, they still met no creatures of the night. Guardsmen who sat awake greeted them with shouts of relief, then stepped back, dumbstricken, for these two were entranced. They fell into their beds and toppled into sleep.

  In the morning Cathual, hammers and chisels at work in his head, groaned that he had dreamed about a river. There had been woods, and an arrow, and the river flowing forever west into the sea. Everything was confused and senseless, mainly he felt sorrow, grief unbounded, but he did not know why, unless it was that the river flowed always west into the sea. Perhaps he had only had a nightmare. Prophecy was not for the likes of him.

  Niall said nothing. Calm though pale, he returned to Temir and carried out his duties. Indeed, he seemed unchanged; men could see that he thought about some great undertaking, but this he had often done.

  Only afterward did he reveal that his stepmother had sought him out while he slept. She looked newly dead; a wind he could not feel or hear tossed her gray locks and fluttered her gown; the hands that touched him were cold. Yet she g
rinned as well as a corpse can and told him, “Seek the Queen who has no King.”

  4

  As ever, the first evening of Hunter’s Moon filled Ys with bacchanalia. Then the lowest laborer became equal to the highest-born Suffete, owed no reverence, incurred no blame. Even among temperate families, a gathering in someone’s home could well lead to stealing off with somebody not one’s spouse, or turn into an outright orgy. If weather was at all bearable, the young took to the streets, unless parents were so strict as to forbid a virgin daughter’s going out. Wine, ale, hemp smoke, and giddying mushrooms ruled the night. Lowtown was apt to become dangerous, but violence was rare in the prosperous parts of the city; there were better things to do than fight.

  The Fire Fountain played in the Forum. Colored gushes and spurts of burning oil threw uneasy radiance and shadows over the throng that milled about, almost hiding the moon that rose above the hills. Nobody felt the cold. All were too closely together in each other’s perfume and sweat, all were too active. Most wore either finery overdone to the point of gaudiness or fantastical costumes. They capered, danced, hugged, kissed, frequently at random; they laughed, shouted, howled, sang. Instruments rang, brayed, tinkled, clicked, hooted, squealed, throbbed, altogether wild.

  A goblin mask leered at a girl who pranced wearing swirls of gold skin paint beneath a couple of flimsy veils. Feathers covered a man from head to foot. A lass and lad had partnered their attire to form a bare-breasted centauress. Two youths, the first outfitted as a satyr, the second with antlers and deerskin cape, wagged phalluses of matching immensity. A hideous old witch revealed well-turned ankles as she danced with a fellow gotten up to resemble, he imagined, a Hun. A girl with the Suffete face giggled as a burly sailor held her by the waist and felt inside her splendid gown. A visiting Osismiic tribesman carried in his arms an Ysan lady who could not walk because her legs were encased in a fish tail; she rewarded him with a cup brought to his lips and ingenious caresses. The tumult seethed on beyond any person’s sight.

  One could see what was on the steps of the buildings around the square. Three different groups of musicians played regardless of conflict. Here pipes wailed and drums pulsed frantically in the Phrygian mode, there two kitharas resounded in the Ionian with a drinking song, yonder a trumpet blew a stately Dorian measure—but the words being sung to it were far from stately. Two lithe women in scanty Egyptian garb rattled their sistrums and undulated. A juggler practiced his art. Several couples had spread their cloaks and were in various stages of lovemaking. In the portico of the Christian church, a man stood naked except for a crown of thorns and held his arms straight out to the sides while at his feet three women, wearing exiguous suggestions of Roman legionary gear, shook dice.

  Tommaltach frowned when he noticed that. It could be unwise, and was certainly ill-bred, to mock anybody’s God. For his part he wore tunic and trews of good stuff, and a gilt mask over the upper half of his face. He cheered himself with a fresh squirt of wine from the leather bottle slung at his shoulder.

  “Yaa! Give me some of that!” cried Dahut. She opened her mouth and cocked her head back. He laughed and obliged her. She was in clothing similar to his, sufficiently loose that she could pass for a boy. A full mask covered her head except for jaw and lips (like rose petals they were, those lips). It was an owl’s-head image, hollowly staring.

  She darted from him, up onto the steps where the dancers were. There she skipped, swayed, snapped her fingers, no less fleet or graceful than they. He gaped in his marveling. She had been wildly gleeful from the sundown moment when they met. Each time she had caught his hand, stroked his back, leaped and trilled before his eyes, burned in memory.

  “To High Gate!” called a voice through the uproar. More joined in: “To High Gate! To High Gate!” The processional dance along Lir Way was traditional, after the moon had mounted enough to light it.

  Dahut bounded back down. “We go, let’s begone,” she sang, and tugged at her escort’s arm, urged it around her waist. For an instant he was alarmed. Folk who saw a man and boy thus together—But nobody would care tonight, and he and she were both nameless, and besides, she had remarked that many women would be in male disguise. And she was Dahut and he held her.

  The musicians scampered to take place at the front of the line that was confusedly forming. They composed their differences and began the saucy “She Sat Upon the Dolmen.” Forth they went, and the young of Ys rollicked after. Their dances were manifold. Some sprang or whirled by themselves, some in pairs or rings or intricate interweavings. Dahut and Tommaltach, side by side embraced, kicked their way, with much laughter. When the line had straggled a distance, she signalled to him—somehow he understood—that every few minutes they should link their free hands and gyre around cheek to cheek. He drowned in the warm fragrance of her, spiraled down and down a maelstrom forever.

  From its frost-ring the moon silvered towertops, dappled pavement, made the stone chimeras appear to stir as if they too would fain join the lunacy. Echoes boomed. As the avenue climbed, revelers who glanced backward saw past the wall and sea gate to a slowly rolling immensity, obsidian dark but bedazzled by the moon.

  Dahut guided Tommaltach. They moved away from the line and into a side street.

  “We’re, we’re drifting off,” he faltered.

  Her hand in the small of his back, her eager feet bore him onward. “We two,” she said deep in her throat. “Follow, follow.”

  Stunned amidst thunder, he danced with her up the winding narrowness. Music and shouts reached him ever fainter, until they were dream-noise beneath moon-hush, where only the tap-tapping of Dahut’s shoes over stone could speak. Houses walled him and her in darknesses broken by glimpses of a pillar or a brass knocker, sometimes a yellow gleam escaping a window shuttered against the cold of Samain Eve.

  “Stop,” she said, and was gone from him like mist in a wind. But no, she was at a particular door, she turned its latch and swung it wide, lamp-glow spilled forth amber across her. She beckoned. He stood stupefied. “Come,” she called, “be not afraid, here is my home.”

  He stumbled into the red atrium. She slipped off her mask and tossed it onto a chair. The low light died and was reborn in her braids. She smiled at him and returned to take his hands in hers, to look into his eyes. “On this night, aught may happen,” she murmured. “I wearied of that vulgar spectacle. Let us celebrate the moon by ourselves.”

  “My lady,” he stammered, “this is—I dare not—I’m but a barbarian, a foreigner, and you a Queen of Ys—”

  Her nails bit into him. Lips drew back from teeth, blood drained from cheeks and brow. “Queen,” he heard. “This day Queen Tambilis went out with the King to the Red Lodge, and this night she sleeps at his side. How long till the rest betray me too?”

  Then immediately she laughed again, crowed laughter, hugged him and laid her cheek to his for one surge of his heart. Withdrawing, she said, “Nay, forgive me, I’ve no wish to plague you with our politics. Let us merely be gladsome together.” Reaching up, she pulled his mask off. “Be seated. My household has this time free, of course, so let me serve you, friend and guest. Forget whatever else we have ever been.”

  There was actually little to do. Wine and goblets waited on a table, with delicate small foods. She ignited a punk stick at a lamp and brought it to an incense burner likewise prepared. Thereafter she held it in a brazen bowl full of leaves parched and crushed, which she must blow into smoldering life. Placing herself on the couch beside him, she said, “This smoke has its virtues, but it does bear a harsh odor which I hope the perfume will soften. Now pour for us, Tommaltach.”

  He obeyed. They regarded each other over the rims of the vessels and sipped.

  She chatted merrily. After a while he became able to respond.

  When she had had him inhale the smoke several times, he felt a boundless, tingling ease and joy. How wonderful the world! He could fling off a whipcrack quip or he could sit and watch her dear lips for a hundred years, just a
s he chose.

  “Wait,” she whispered. “I will be back.”

  He gazed at a lamp flame. There was a deep mystery in it, which he almost understood.

  Dahut re-entered. Her hair flowed free, down over the lightest and loosest of belted robes. Blue it was, sea color, a hue that lapped beneath the lapis lazuli of her eyes.

  Blue also was a pinch of dried blossoms she cupped in her left hand. She raised her goblet in the right. She bent her head and kissed the borage. She licked it up and washed it down with a mouthful of wine. This was another mystery on this night of mysteries.

  She coiled herself at his side and laid her head on his shoulder. “Hold me,” she breathed.

  He never knew which of them began the kiss, or when.

  She took him by the hand and led him to the bedchamber. Moonlight poured through unshuttered glass to mingle with candlelight from a table, quicksilver and gold.

  Gravely, now, she guided his fingers to her girdle and thence to the robe.

  He knelt before her.

  She reached, it was as if she lifted him back to his feet, and that kiss went on and on.

  She giggled, though, while they both fumbled with the fastenings of his clothes.

  But thereafter she caught him to her, and presently drew him onto the bed, and purred to him, “Yea, oh, yea.”

  —He did not know if he had caused her pain. “You are the first, the very first, beloved,” she told him, shivering in his arms; and a dark spot or two said the same; but she drew him onward, and was quick to learn what pleased him most and to do it.

  —Dawn grayed the window. Dahut sat straight in the rumpledness and clasped her knees. Above, her breasts were milk and roses, save for a bruise he had made in his ardor and she had simply bidden him kiss for a penance. She looked down on Tommaltach where he sprawled.