Only the Stones Survive: A Novel

by Morgan Llywelyn

  I found my people encamped in an oak grove. They had already eaten their sunset meal, but my father had saved something for me. I hardly tasted the food, so absorbed was I in my own thoughts. Eventually I began to listen to what the Dagda was saying. “After endless discussion and with not a little rancor, we have determined on a strategy to use against the enemy, Joss. But it will be a gamble. So many of the brave and bold, the kind and clever, are gone; even if we agreed to unearth the Earthkillers, we do not have enough collective strength left to use them. We must try something else.”

  “A different kind of weapon?” I was still hoping he would explain about the Sword of Light and the Invincible Spear, but he did not take the bait.

  “Not a weapon at all,” said the Dagda. “We shall call upon the resources of our sacred island in the heart of the sea and the fear that lurks in the hearts of men. The preparations will take time, though. Producing the Green Wave will require everything we have to give. Meanwhile, the Great Queen plans a final meeting with the New People. It is being arranged through their bard. Eriu hopes they will agree to a truce that makes desperate measures unnecessary.”

  I heard Prince Torrian grind his teeth. “They won’t agree to a truce, the filthy murderers, and even if they did, they wouldn’t abide by it. They just want to kill and kill and…” His voice broke.

  My father said sadly, “We must not believe that, Torrian. If it is true, we are all doomed.”

  His words echoed in my ears again and again during the days that followed. The Dananns were so determined that it did not seem possible, at least to me, that we could fail. Every member of the tribe had a part to play. There were long, earnest conversations about location, and intense discussions about timing—the most elusive aspect of Ierne. Energy was wrung out of my people like water from a wet blanket. Children gathered small sacrifices to offer to the land and the sea, while men and women combined their skills to arrange a terrifying trap. On another level, they simultaneously were planning for a cessation of hostilities and a peaceful future.

  Hope is the cruelest trap of all.

  We discovered that in the final battle.

  At least my people did. Once again, and over my furious protestations, I was relegated to the status of child and sent into sanctuary to await the outcome of the conflict that would determine all our futures.

  While time, amorphous time, its tentacles wrapped around past and future alike, brooded over the island of Ierne.

  The Mílesians assumed their traditional battle formation, with the chariot warriors in the lead, riding in their carts and bedecked in full battle gear. Éremón issued orders that footwarriors below noble rank were to be naked and in a self-induced state of sexual arousal. This often was the practice among Celtic tribes when going into battle, a proven way to intimidate the enemy.

  Sakkar, humble foot warrior and former shipbuilder, was unable to achieve the startling effect Éremón wanted. He could not imagine having an erection under the circumstances, so he held his shield in front of his disappointingly flaccid penis and hoped no one would knock his protection aside.

  For the foot warriors, the battle would degenerate into a pandemonium of screaming insults and fists beating on shields. They would be choking in a cloud of dust if they were in the front rank behind the chariots or slogging through a sea of churned-up mud and horse dung if they were farther back. Either way, they must blindly plunge into a press of warm bodies and strike out in every direction, killing to avoid being killed.

  The Mílesian nobility who rode to battle in their chariots before dismounting to fight on foot had a different experience. They too yelled and screamed and beat on their shields, but in the beginning they would be above the fray. They would be able to see individual faces and bodies.

  According to their custom, the noble Mílesians would challenge and engage the leaders of the opposing side first. The surviving nobility of the Túatha Dé Danann, the kings and queens in their royal splendor, the princes who waited for the onrushing chariots with beautiful, fearless faces.

  Sakkar tried to remain close to the chariots because Amergin stayed close to the chariots. To the bard’s remaining brothers, this battle would be retribution for their mother’s killing. And for those who had died in the Green Wave.

  Amergin was not seeking vengeance. He carried no implement but his harp, had no objective but to prevent the destruction of a singular race.

  He did not know what the Túatha Dé Danann were, but he knew what they were not. They were as different from the Mílesians as Egyptian hunting dogs were from a pack of wolves.

  Seamen and merchants from a number of lands and backgrounds frequented the trade routes along the Iberian coast. Amergin had met many of them over the years and observed them with interest. They possessed different complexions and customs and spoke different languages, but all had one thing in common. They were men in the same way the Mílesians were men.

  The intuition of a druid informed Amergin that the Túatha Dé Danann were human, but they were not men.

  They were what men might aspire to be.

  To kill them would be an abomination.

  He knew them; knew them to the depths of his spirit.

  They had stood around the bard in a circle, the delicate little men and women with their large eyes and gentle fingers, and they had touched his mind. Not with their fingers.

  A spark within him had responded to memories lost in time, recognized the same folk as beloved companions still. When as a boy he sat dreaming beside his father’s hearth, they had been part of his dreams. When as a man he gazed at the sea and wondered what lay beyond, they had been waiting for him.

  On Ierne.

  And among them had been the young woman called Shinann. Shinann of the Túatha Dé Danann, a riverrun of a girl, filled with light and laughter. She who was meant to be the other half of the bard.

  They had known each other the moment their eyes met. The moment he realized he would never be alone again.

  As the Mílesians approached the battlefield, Amergin turned to face his oncoming brothers. He strummed Clarsah with enough passion to break the strings. He cried out to Éremón and Éber Finn, “Stop where you are! There is no need for bloodshed! This land asks no sacrifice of blood; her gifts are gifts of the heart and the mind, and she offers them freely. Here we can acquire knowledge even druids do not have. The Túatha Dé Danann can help us if we…”

  Éremón and Éber Finn were not listening. They only heard the trumpets of war and the fists beating on shields and the roar of the crowd at their backs.

  By now the Dananns knew they stood no chance. If the invaders ever had been inclined toward showing them mercy, that impulse was well and truly lost.

  The Dananns came to battle equipped with bronze weapons, long outdated, and the subtle arts of the mind, but there was no place for subtlety in what was about to happen, no place for bronze either.

  Heartsick, Greine raised his arm to signal to his people. They drew the weapons they had concealed among their swirling rainbow-colored clothing and prepared for the inevitable.

  After it was over, Éber Finn recalled in disbelief, “They came to battle dancing, with flowers in their hair!”

  “Obviously, they didn’t expect us to butcher them,” said Éremón.

  “We did more than butcher them; we betrayed them.”

  “I don’t see how you worked that out.”

  “We—you yourself, Éremón—had agreed to a truce. Or have you forgotten?”

  “Oh. That.” Éremón gave a negligible wave of his hand. “You surely didn’t think I would honor that. It wasn’t even a truce. It was only an arrangement the bard accepted. He had met some of the Túatha Dé Danann before the rest of us did and formed a favorable opinion of them. Amergin has a favorable opinion of everyone until he finds a knife in his back.” Éremón curled his lip in contempt. “Bards can negotiate for peace, but I refuse to accept their right to tie the hands of a warrior.

  �
��Look what happened as a result of Amergin’s misplaced faith. The supposedly safe route the Dananns suggested we use to reach this place marched us straight into an armed camp of the Fír Bolga—who were more than ready for us. We were lucky to get away with so few losses. I consider every dead Gael a charge on the bard.”

  Éber Finn was shaking his head. “You’re saying he betrayed us? You know Amergin better than that, Éremón. I think he fell under the spell of one of their women. He truly thought the Dananns had no interest in war; that’s why he urged a formal meeting with their leaders.”

  “That’s ridiculous. They may not look much like us, but they’re men, aren’t they? And all men are interested in war, for how else can people acquire more land? For that matter, how else can we prove we really are men? I tell you, the Túatha Dé Danann were determined from the beginning to destroy us, and they came very close to doing it. Colptha warned us they were creatures of tricks and treachery, and he was right. Any friendship they offered was a lie.”

  “It was not a lie!” Éber Finn insisted passionately. “When we met their royal family, the one called Eriu held out her hands and said in the sweetest voice I ever heard—the sweetest voice, Éremón!—‘May your descendants live here forevermore.’ And she meant it. I could tell. There was no malice or deceit in that woman. Her nature was one of incredible generosity. She was offering us a homeland with them. With those amazing people. As a gift!”

  Éremón shot his brother a look of contempt. “Colptha called you a gullible puppy that day, and you still are.”

  “Colptha’s dead,” Éber Finn retorted. “Why do you keep mentioning him? Is he haunting you, Éremón?”

  “I didn’t kill him. Amergin hit him in the head with his harp.”

  Éber Finn looked disgusted. “With you someone else is always to blame, aren’t they? Blame Colptha for everything, then; thanks to his advice, you refused the best offer we’ll ever have! Instead of accepting her kindness with the gratitude it deserved, you shouted the most outrageous insults at Eriu, just as you did to the tattooed savages. You didn’t seem to realize there was any difference between them.

  “And do you remember how the Danann queen responded? She said, ‘I tell you this: neither you nor your children will have joy of this island.’ No angry threat could be more chilling than those bitter words, spoken in the same sweet voice. At that moment, the marrow turned cold in my bones, Éremón.”

  “The woman was only trying to scare us,” the other asserted. “You know what women are: a lot of smoke with little fire.”

  “Those who can command the sea don’t need fire,” Éber Finn said bitterly. “You saw the Green Wave.”

  At the mention of the Green Wave, Éremón shuddered in spite of himself. No Gael who had survived that day would ever forget the wave.

  Terror transcended time.

  Following Éremón’s inflammatory response to the Danann queen, there had been no avoiding conflict between the two races.

  But thanks to urging from members of both sides, they had reached an accommodation of sorts, one based on their respective concepts of honor in warfare. Invader and native had met one final time atop a long green ridge the Dananns called their Gathering Place. There it had been decided—with Amergin’s help and over the strenuous objection of Colptha—that the Túatha Dé Danann would be allowed adequate time to prepare for battle.

  Greine, speaking for the Túatha Dé Danann, had agreed. At the suggestion of his royal half-brothers, Cuill and Cet, he had requested nine days to make his people ready.

  On behalf of the Mílesians, the bard had accepted the terms. “We will return to our settlement on the southern coast, where our ships await us, and retire beyond the ninth wave,” he said. “When we come ashore again, we will bring all our people with us, and the battle will be joined. Where shall we meet?”

  Seemingly unconcerned by the mention of “all our people,” Greine had suggested a plain beyond the mouth of a large river. “Your fleet can be harbored in the river mouth. The plain itself is level and well-drained, with no surface stones to damage the wheels of your war carts.”

  Éremón had put his own stamp on the proposal by declaiming, “Let this honorable agreement become part of the history of our people, remembered in the name of Éremón, son of the Míl.” What fools these Dananns were! he thought silently. Now the Mílesians would have the rest of the Gaelicians with them, a number sufficient to overwhelm any Danann force.

  “In the histories of both our tribes,” Greine had murmured, “let your name be so remembered.” On your heads be it, he thought to himself.

  No truce, then. No peace.

  Instead, there would be the rivermouth, and the plain, and the Green Wave.

  After that meeting, there had been little rest in the Mílesian camp. Colptha was angrier than anyone had ever seen him. The sacrificer had excoriated everyone involved in the negotiation and predicted a dire outcome, but for once Éremón had ignored him. He was pleased with his cleverness in claiming credit for the decision. Honor was paramount to the Gael, and Éremón’s had sometimes been in question. No longer, though. Whether Amergin liked it or not, the wording of the pact would be part of bardic history now.

  Éber Finn had not been happy with the plan in spite of the numerical advantages it would provide. He was convinced that he would be a better leader in the battle to come than his brother. After all, Colptha had said so, and he was a druid. Colptha knew things.

  It was time for Éber to rally his supporters. While Éremón was devoting himself to his customary enormous meal, his brother had quietly approached one warrior after another, collecting them in twos and threes and groups. “I would have handled this situation much differently,” he assured them.

  They required little convincing. Éremón’s pomposity was not universally admired.

  In the shadows beyond the campfire, someone else was busy too. Colptha had trailed after Éber Finn, eavesdropping on the recruiting. When he considered the balance of power had sufficiently shifted, he took his brother aside. “Attack the Dananns in their camp this very night, Éber,” he hissed in a penetrating whisper. “Kill them as they sleep. By doing this, you will prove your leadership with one swift stroke, and Éremón’s remaining followers will flock to your side.”

  Amergin had been sitting not far away with his back against an oak tree, tuning Clarsah. An idle breeze brought the sound of a serpent’s hiss. One of the harp’s brass strings responded with a discordant twang. Amergin tensed, strained all his faculties to hear what proved to be the voice of his own brother.

  The bard quickly put the harp back into her case and went to accuse Colptha of fomenting rebellion.

  Colptha shrieked his denial.

  Druid faced druid with unshielded fury.

  The warriors of the Gael had gathered around them: men whose fighting skills had been honed since childhood, men who defined themselves by their ability to inflict physical injuries and destroy life.

  To them, a battle between druids was as thrilling as it was rare. Druids possessed weapons of the mind. The wounds they could inflict would be invisible; the results in the afterlife could be horrendous.

  In the excitement of the moment, the warriors forgot who supported Éremón and who was aligned with Éber Finn. They even forgot what had precipitated the quarrel. Ír did not understand at all; he thought it was some kind of game and cheered them both on. But Donn understood well enough. For years he had observed the tensions growing between his brothers. Hot blood, hot tempers, hot ambitions—Donn had held himself apart, forcing himself to remain cool. Privately wondering if madness was Ír’s way of escaping from a closely woven family destined to tear itself apart.

  On that ill-starred night, Donn had watched with grave concern as his druid brothers dueled, each pitting the strength of his mind and his will against the other. In the end, Colptha had backed down. To Donn’s relief, the bard’s anger burned too hot for him to challenge.

  But later,
as Colptha lay wrapped in his blanket, he had promised himself, “Amergin will be sacrificed. On Ierne, I will silence the voice of the bard forever. Then only my voice will be heard.”

  FIFTEEN

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, the Mílesians had set off to collect the rest of the colonists. They had moved swiftly, hoping to avoid the primitive tribes and save their energies for the ultimate adversary.

  They did have a few skirmishes on the way south, but a larger problem was the division within their own ranks. Every night, more men were sleeping around Éber Finn’s campfire, and fewer around Éremón’s. Éremón missed the sense of brotherhood that had distinguished the Gaels until now and looked forward to a heroic battle with the Dananns that would unite them against a common enemy.

  Amergin hoped to discourage that battle entirely, but whenever the bard had tried to speak to Éremón about it, Colptha had thrust himself between them. The sacrificer only had one song to sing, but he repeated it every chance he got. “Fight the Dananns and kill them—kill them all! They are our mortal enemies. Feed the Mother their blood so we will prosper in this new land.”

  Éremón did not want to listen, but the words slid into his ears anyway.

  Persuading the rest of the colonists had not been as easy as Éremón envisioned in the high tide of self-congratulation. Odba argued with him on general principle. Even Taya did not take his side. Most of the women wanted nothing more to do with perpetually damp wooden galleys and leather coracles reeking of mildew. “Why not stay here?” they asked. “This is a pleasant place; the weather is warm and the headland protects us from the wind. We’ve already set out our salt pans, and they’re almost half full.”