Ban Talah

by A. L. Duncan

  Chapter Four

  THE EARLY EVENING sun rested quietly within the saddle of Highland mountains known to the surrounding clans as the Throne of Aos Dana, or the Gifted People. It was near the foothills of these mountains a small mud brick shack stood alone, eclipsed by the shear immensity of vast, open country. Ban Talah rode Lugh to step through the nearby creek, which had risen slightly by the melting of snows from the mountain ridges above. Not an uncommon sight, the creek could be five feet deep by morning. On her arm, Bran clung comfortably, eyeing the little shack with curiosity. The sod roof grew tall grasses and cascading carpets of green moss, which dangled down about the door like a protective blanket. The fresh scent of baked bread wafted in the chill air to meet them.

  Talah climbed off Lugh and called to the owner of the hut, but no answer came. The door had been opened slightly. Talah was disturbed by this. Normally, one would leave their home wide open or closed shut, especially when one has only a common wren as a neighbor. She unsheathed her dagger and lifted Bran to stand a moment on her saddle. The heavy wooden door was dry and stiff and sat uneven on the threshold of the dirt floor, skidding and creaking a bit when pushed open. The hut was dark except for what light filtered about from the large, open fireplace.

  The aroma of baked bread again drifted past her nostrils as well as a thick air of various herbs, which hung upside down from the rafters to dry. A cup of tea sat on a modest table, still steaming as if it had just been poured. Dirt clung freshly from a bowl of turnips just picked from their winter storage.

  “Well, sit down,” an impatient voice ordered. “The tea is yours.”

  Talah twisted about, half startled to death, with the dagger held close to her side. It was just an old woman going about her business, piddling with this tartan or that basket. Talah dropped her shoulders in a sigh of relief and sheathed the dagger at her waist.

  Grabbing her own cup of tea, the old woman sat opposite of her. “Go on. Sit.”

  Talah grimaced at the woman and sat down facing her. Wrinkled features showed a texture of softness and timelessness, framed by silver white hair. Deep eyes glowed as night orbs casting a regal air and knowing of ancient wisdoms. The woman kept a gray and brown weathered tartan draped over her shoulders that vaguely resembled Talah’s. The woman’s back was curved from years of slumped labors and Talah noticed her bony fingers, deformed with arthritis, as a hand clasped hold of a cup.

  The woman looked up and scowled. “Why do you look at me that way? Have no pity upon me. I have earned every crippling bruise and broken bone that has haggard this frail body you now see before you!”

  After a pause, she laughed and studied Talah’s features as if looking at a familiar face long forgotten. “You are afraid of me.”

  “Afraid...of you?” Talah scoffed. “Why on earth should I be afraid of an old woman?”

  “You are afraid to someday see yourself look like this,” she gestured to her seasoned body. “Well, take a good look. This is what happens to great warriors.” She grinned to Talah’s alarm. “Aye. Like you, I was a warrior. I fought and won many battles. Eh...lost a few. And not all were on the battlefield.” She pointed a crooked finger to her head. “From the time my grandfather pulled the rattle from my little fingers and caused me to grasp hold my first blade, until the day came I could no longer lift a sword over my gray head.”

  The woman gruffed and waved the memories away like a gnat. “That was a long time ago. Now, I have no need for such useless things. I have better use for my time. I have settled gracefully into my new name, the name of Old Woman.” She pulled from her waistline a dagger and laid it in front of Talah. “The handle was carved from the wood of a yew tree. Do you know the properties of such a tree?”

  “Yew. Rebirth and transformation.”

  The Old Woman nodded. “The Spirit of the Ancestors. I’ve been told I’ve had this since birth. It has brought me luck and many victories. I want you to have it.”

  Indeed, the handle was simple and smooth, but the blade was twisted like Talah’s sword, Lisula, and from a certain angle seemed almost to glow incandescent.

  “No,” replied Talah, overwhelmed. “I couldn’t.”

  “Go on. Take it. It’ll do little good to me now. At my age it’s useless and wasted on turnips. It’s much too deserving a nobler lifestyle than mine. Oh, but don’t worry—it is not given freely. I give it as a barter.” Talah tried reading deep into the old, yellowed eyes. “You do something for me and I’ll do something for you.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Ah-h. First you tell me what you need, and from that I shall discern what you shall do for me in return. I did not get this old by sword alone, you know. Not even the Tuatha deal with me without knowing there’s a price.”

  Talah stood and paced around eyeing the piece with curiosity. She lifted the blade and twirled the pommel to spin and dance upon the palm of her hand. Its balance was impeccable. She then flicked it to embed into the worn table, between the woman’s fingers, startling her despite herself.

  Talah stared into the woman’s harsh eyes. “Don’t toy with me, Old Woman. I have little patience.”

  “And don’t cause me to rile, lass!” she retorted. “I may be just an old woman to you, but my power is as strong as your youthfulness.”

  Talah propped her foot upon a chair and leaned close, staring into the woman’s soul and smiled. “Now, that I do believe.”

  “Why is it you tax me so, if you don’t trust me then? Why have you come?”

  Talah picked up the dagger again and proceeded to slice a piece off a turnip. “Ceridwen spoke of you.”

  The Old Woman gasped. “The Mistress of Awen?”

  “You seem surprised.”

  The old face frowned begrudgingly. “When the season comes that the winds are stilled with no voices to carry them, the Tuatha send tidings. So, go on...tell me what tidings she brought with you.”

  “She told me you were the person who laid upon me at birth the geasa, the binding duties of my destiny. And that I would know when the time would come to return to you again.”

  The Old Woman sat back and nodded. “So, you have come to fulfill your prophecy, eh?”

  “Prophecy?”

  “Do not flatter yourself,” cackled the Old Woman. “Each woman is born to be chosen from the heavens, to do something extraordinary in her lifetime for the good of the earth and the universe. La-de-da-de-da. This is her nurturing to the welfare of all humanity in the balance of all things. Only the gods, the Tuatha de Danann knows each person’s prophecy, written in their great book of Wisdoms since before time itself.”

  “How is it then you know of mine?”

  The Old Woman’s eyes drew wide. “Because I am the Keeper of that which is written, and it was my geasa, my binding duty, to lay the gift upon your tiny little newborn brow.”

  “Tell me then of this prophecy.”

  “Humph! You have been on the battlefield too long, Ban Talah, that you forget your manners. Are you to be so disrespectful to your elders that you must dictate to me as if I were one of your warriors?”

  The Old Woman’s verbal thrash humbled Talah. She regretfully dropped her eyes. “Forgive me. Scruples I’ve not had much time for lately.”

  The Old Woman pulled the tartan shawl up over her shoulders with a grunt and turned about to stir the coals in the open hearth. She looked over her shoulder then back to the embers. “Your thirst for vengeance has masked your integrity, Ban Talah.”

  “It is an unholy man who started this war, not I!” Talah shot back defensively.

  “A specter before you—you cannot even see his face.”

  This woman knew her vision. Talah sat down at the table, wide-eyed in disbelief as the Old Woman continued.

  “How will you know when his eyes fall upon you?”

  Talah recalled the last cardinal she held in her grasp. His eyes were terror stricken but honest. She could read his deepest vocations. She knew he was not the ma
n she sought. He did not have the callus, malicious ice as the eyes in her vision did. Those eyes belonged not to a holy man of God. Those were the eyes of darkness, of emptiness.

  “I shall know,” Talah murmured.

  The flickering light of the fire fell on her face as the Old Woman walked around the table and stood behind her. Her wrinkled hands pressed gently upon Talah’s shoulders. The sage spoke to her in a low, compelling voice as if attempting to reach her very spirit. “Loyalty is a very hard thing to live by, my child. How can one be loyal to the Church when under Rome’s heel? Hmm? When, as Rome, the king is twisted under the evil of one who secretly wishes to eradicate the whole of us by a political conquest?”

  “Not only,” Talah replied. “As all of England and Europe are spell-caught in this sorcerer’s illusions, we are caught beneath his tread also in the Otherworld. I have seen this. Our people weaken every day. I must find out what conjurment this is and destroy it.”

  The Old Woman stood squarely next to Talah, looking down upon her. “Look at me, Ban Talah.” The woman’s voice resounded with stern absolution as Talah’s dark eyes focused on her steady gaze, highlighted as it was by the dancing peaks of hearth flames. “It is forbidden for me to speak to you this prophecy. It is to be revealed to you in silence and in darkness. You must perform the Taghairm. I can tell you this much. It is not a healing you seek, but a quest.”

  Talah knew of this Taghairm by custom as a form of divination. Those who practice this were called taibhsear or spirit-seer. The Old Woman was a taibhsear and had performed and perfected her craft through the ages where all preparation had come quite by second nature.

  The Old Woman added, “The fresh meat you bring is your gift to me.”

  By evening, Talah tracked down a Highland bull from the meadow and walked it back to the rundown mud brick stable that was hardly even a manger. The rain was frozen on this cold night. The thatched roof leaked droplets to patter upon Talah’s cloak and the fresh meat from the slaughtered animal that hung from the small rafters. By the time Talah had finished skinning the hide it was nearly dawn. The rain that had turned to snow had subsided to allow various cloud patterns to cross over and part one another, letting in the first glimpse of light for the day through misted shrouds of laden fog.

  The Old Woman had spent the night preparing her herbs and tying them into little bundles. She had prayed over the hearth fires and set a piece of meat that Talah had offered from the first cutting within the embers, spitting a mouthful of blood-broth into the flames in incantations to the Tuatha de Danann, for the blessing of such a sacrifice. After all Spirits had gathered, she braided her hair and set about for Talah’s ceremony. With the only light coming from the fire, the Old Woman’s aged fingers nimbly painted lines and ancient Druidic symbols over Talah’s naked body. Talah’s skin glowed an amber hue underneath the ornate designs of Ogham cryptics and totem symbols. Each swirl and line met and intermingled like an artistic dance upon the waves of muscle and bone. Flowing from the jaw and strong neck, blue ink swirled like the rivers, ebbing and caressing around each breast to a forest of letters around her hips and muscular back. Lines, curves, and crest shields formed intertwining embraces over tight, round buttocks and thighs. Talah smiled at the simple thought of just getting out of those damp clothes and feeling the warm fire.

  Feeling as if she were being fitted for armor, the light touches soothed her to nod off asleep, until the occasional slap on the head would awaken her again to the importance of such a sacred ceremony.

  The Old Woman had taken nearly the entire day drawing over Talah’s body and singing in ritual prayers. The pale gray clouds had parted like fingers to allow rays of a falling sun to streak out onto the distant moors like a fan. The sun was still cloaked in its whiteness, yet not much time remained of the day before it was soon to show its mask of pale colors.

  The Old Woman escorted Talah to a waterfall not far down the stream from the stable. Talah had worn a hooded tunic and found it quite beneficial to protect the laborious paintings from the waterfalls sprays and mistings as the Old Woman directed her on a path that took them behind the falling waters. The small enclave was barely large enough for Talah’s tall frame to lie down. Wrapped within the bull hide, membrane side against her bareness, Talah felt the Old Woman’s hands tucking in the final flaps.

  “Expect nothing,” the elder seer whispered to her. “Simply be, and all else shall flow to you as the stream.” The last, she spoke as she drew the hide over Talah’s face, enclosing her completely within its skin.

  Darkness was cast. Only the sound of rushing water was heard. She didn’t hear the Old Woman depart but she knew she was alone. The membrane and hide was still warm from the kill and Talah knew it would only be a matter of time before the heat from her body and added moisture from her breath would begin to ferment the hide to an almost unbearable stench.

  Her senses were attuned to every muffled sound and vibrating movement of the enclave’s walls and ground. And it was this, not the smell, she decided to concentrate on. She soon slowed her breathing and relaxed to the rhythmic pattern of the water, her heartbeat at rest with the musings of the Water Spirit’s song.

  She felt fused with the breath of the land. At first it was beneath her, then slowly she felt embraced and engulfed by it until her own form dissolved into pure matter. She was suddenly plunged into the cold stream and at once became part of the element itself. Submerged within the swift current, she became the surge, the eddy and billow, the bubbles and waves. At times rising and falling, and other times fluxive and serpentine. Until, like a herd of wild white horses, she swept over a tall cliff edge and cascaded far below to a great, misted swell, crashing against boulders and forming into her own matter once again.

  Far below, far within the core of the earth, she became one with the fabric of the earth itself. Embodied in its substance and density, its maternal warmth and strength, she became matter and molecule only to disintegrate and be consumed by the earth’s inner fire. Talah became thermal radiance. Seething in a torrid blaze, orange and hot blue-white, the incandescence devoured itself in volcanic infernos. Finally, she burst forth like a raging flare through the solar yellow-orange ball of the sun.

  Silence. A breath on the canopy of all creation. Plunged from chaos into chaos. The emptiness and fullness of it all felt almost overwhelming. She floated through oceans of cerulean ether to the pulsating songs of blue and red nebulae, past islands of spiral, celestial bodies and danced with the stars, novas and galaxies. Cloaked with dust clouds and crowned with Ring Nebula, she walked before her host of star clusters and soared past the mighty emperors of planets.

  A voice, at first distant and low, echoed through the serenity. It called to her as a sigh and drew her toward a galactic corridor. There appeared rows of crystal monoliths on either side of her like sentries on guard. Ice blue and mirror-like, they grew colder and more spectral as she passed them. The voice was soft and feminine, yet haunting and sad. It called to her over and over, possessing her every fiber and grasping hold of her like a wanting lover.

  In the shadowy realms of spheres, Talah at last came before an eerie sight. A tall monolith, crystalline like the others, stood before her. Yet, this one held within it a ghostly figure of a woman entrapped in a liquid form. Her long hair flowed and mingled as on a current softly animated with its tendrils of auburn. Talah didn’t recognize this woman. She did, however, feel a deep sense of familiarity. There was something about her that reminded Talah of lavender thistles and ferned heather, and the mountainous ravines that echoed the morning songs of meadowlarks and hawks on wing. Her veiled bareness was like the oak whose symmetry whispered the winter’s stark beauty and her supple limbs the rivers and waters that caressed the land in its ever-giving compassion.

  Talah drifted forward and shape-shifted back to her human form as she reached out to touch the wall of the crystal. The woman laid her slender fingers upon the wall and tried to feel Talah’s warmth. Talah met her g
aze and became lost in her eyes. Eyes that changed color as the seasons. Eyes of suffering and sorrow, malice and wrath, of innocence and frailty, unconditional love and gentle grace. And when she spoke it was as a breath on the wind, a thousand voices from heaven.

  “You must not fail, Ban Talah. You cannot fail. Call upon the Ancestors for your strength. Find your way carefully, but swiftly. Hurry, there is not much time.”

  It was then Talah realized what had happened to the land. This was the enchantment. The very soul of the land had been shape-shifted into a woman and seized by a wickedness. Talah stood aghast and helpless. Suddenly, a great quake shook the crystal and shards of frost began to form, encasing the woman in a bed of solid ice. Alarmed, the woman writhed against her captive hold, her pale skin turning blue from the tortured spell.

  “Tell me how to find you!” cried Talah, painfully aware of the sorcery and its power.

  The woman only had enough time to arise and pull herself to full height, arms held outstretched before being completely frozen in place. Talah staggered at the uncanny, spectral sight. The figure horrifically resembled the crucified Christ. It was then Talah felt the ice crack beneath her weight before being plunged into a watery abyss. A vortex of great magnitude sucked her into darkness blacker than night, only to thrust her out through the surface of a rushing stream.

  Talah, shocked out of her vision, sat up with a start. Jerking the ox hide off her face, she inhaled a deep and painful breath of fresh air and coughed. With heart pounding, she closed her eyes and attempted to gather her rattled senses.