The girl stepped forward shyly. The green eyes scoured Charis’ face, and she found herself unsettled by the frankness of that innocent stare.
“Morgian, this is Charis. Say hello.”
“Hello,” replied Morgian. “You are b-blootiful.”
“So are you,” said Charis.
“But you are big.” said the little girl.
“Someday you will be big too,” Charis told her. “I see you like greengages. Is it good?”
Morgian looked at the fruit in her hand and dropped it, as if a guilty secret had just been discovered. Her mother gave her a stern look and explained, “She knows she is not supposed to pick anything in the garden… Correct, Morgian?”
The little girl looked abashed and lowered her eyes. She pushed the greengage with a dirty toe.
“You may go, Morgian. Say good-bye.”
“Goodbye, Princess Charis,” Morgian said and was gone.
“What an enchanting child,” said Charis, watching her flitter away.
“She is a joy. Your father says she looks just like you did at that age.”
Charis nodded. “Lile, you asked me to try you,” she said abruptly. “I need your help.”
Lile held her head to one side as if weighing conflicting responses. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking behind those hard, dark eyes. At last she said, “How may I serve you?”
“Walk with me. I have something to tell you.”
The two women moved off together, and Charis began explaining about Throm’s prophecy of cataclysm and doom. Unlike the others Charis had told about the coming disaster, Lile took it seriously, accepting Charis’ astounding pronouncement without qualm or question.
“What can I do?” Lile asked. Her voice was steady, with no hint of apprehension or fear.
“Belyn has agreed to go after Seithenin’s fleet. There is a plan, and a small chance they will succeed. Once we get the ships-if we get them-it is only a matter of filling them.”
Lile’s eyes grew wide as she glanced around her. “It would take years!”
“We do not have years, Lile. A month, two perhaps. Not more. Annubi is trying to find out how much time is left.”
“I see.” There was such resignation in the words, Charis stopped and turned toward her. Lile was staring at the palace whose balconies, porticos, and terraces were towering over them. “We leave it all behind. We start again.”
“Yes, we start again-but we take with us what will be most helpful in beginning life anew.”
Lile took a deep breath, as if she meant to start bundling crates to the harbor at once. What an unusual woman, thought Charis. But I am glad I told her. I could not do this alone.
As if reading Charis’ thoughts, Lile turned to her and said, “You are not alone now, Charis. I will help you all I can. Where do we start?”
“I have been thinking about that,” answered Charis, and they began walking back to the palace. “Clothing, tools, food-those are all important. But I think we start in my mother’s library. There are books there that should be saved.”
“I agree. Knowledge will serve us better where we are going” She broke off with a strange smile.
“What is it?”
“How can we begin preparing for the doom of our race if we have no idea where we are going?”
“West, I think,” replied Charis. “There are lands there much like these, I am told, and little inhabited. We will be able to make a life there much like the one we know here.”
“Or better,” said Lile, and Charis noticed the set of her jaw as she said it.
“Tell me,” said Charis. “Do you believe me-about Throm’s prophecy?”
“Of course,” replied Lile. “Should I not?”
“No one else does.”
“Then they deserve their fate,” muttered Lile darkly. Her expression was fleeting but unmistakably fierce. Cold hatred gleamed in the dark depths of Lile’s eyes.
Was this the beast that watched from the shadows? wondered Charis. Have I made a mistake telling her?
But Lile smiled and the beast, if it was there, withdrew to the shadows once more. “You ask why I Believe you? I will tell you. All my life I have known that this would happen. I have carried the knowledge within me” She raised a hand to touch her heart. “I did not dare hope that I would see it, but I knew it. I felt it. Even when I was very small, I looked out on the world and knew that I looked at a world that could not last. When you told me just now, I knew that it was true, for your words merely confirmed what I already guessed.”
“This will be the trial you asked for then,” said Charis. “Everything I value in life, I have placed in your hands.”
“No, not everything.” Lile touched her gently on the side. Charis winced. “Trust me to help you, Charis. I can heal your injury. You will need your full strength in the days to come. I can give it to you much sooner.”
Charis hesitated, then relented. “What you say is true. You have your way, Lile.”
“I will not fail you, Charis. Believe me.”
“I will try,” promised Charis. “Believe me.”
Charis’ trust was rewarded and Lile proved true to her word and to her skill, for the chirurgia was flawlessly successful and Charis recovered rapidly. A few days after the bandages were removed, Annubi found Charis sitting cross-legged among a pile of vellum scrolls, her chin in her palm, scanning studiously the unrolled document before her. He watched her for a moment and then entered the disheveled library.
She glanced up as he approached. “Oh, Annubi, what word? Something from Belyn?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“About the stars?”
“No, nothing yet.”
“What then?”
“About you, Charis.”
“About me?”
“You told Lile about the cataclysm.”
“Yes, I did. Why?”
The seer sighed, dragged a chair across the littered floor, and collapsed onto it.
“Why?” insisted Charis. “Have I done something wrong?”
He shook his head wearily and passed a hand over his eyes. “I cannot see anymore.” This admission came so casually that at first Charis did not realize the import of his words.
“Why was it wrong? I thought it best to” She stopped. Annubi sat as if his chest had collapsed; his shoulders slumped and his long fingers twitched in his lap. “Annubi, what has happened?”
“I cannot see anymore,” he said, spitting each bitter word. “The Lia Fail is dark to me. There is no light anymore.”
“You are overtired,” offered Charis, setting aside the manuscript. “I have pushed you too hard-asked too much. You will rest and it will come back.”
“No,” he groaned. “I know it will not.” He paused and then lifted his shoulders in a gesture of hopelessness. “But that is not why I came.”
“You said I should not have told Lile. Why? What has she done?”
“I found her in my room-with the Lia Fail. I was angry. I shoved her… I wanted… to kill her…” He shook his head in disBelief. “I did this. I, Annubi! I have never lifted a hand against another living being in all my life.”
“What did she do?”
“She laughed at me,” he muttered, his eyes squeezed shut. “She laughed and told me I had lost.”
“Lost the sight?”
“Lost you.”
Charis’ stomach tightened. “What then?”
“She left. I could hear her laughing in the corridor.” He put his hands to his head as if to stop the sound.
“Oh, Annubi, I am sorry. I would never have told her if I had known.” Charis pitied her old friend, but even as her heart went out to him in his misery she could not help asking, “Is there any way you could possibly be mistaken?”
“Mistaken!” The king’s advisor reared up; the chair clattered backwards. “She has won you! Curse the day I ever saw her!”
“Annubi, please, I only meant that perhaps there might be som
e other explanation.”
“I have lost the sight and my mind as well, eh?”
“No, of course not.”
He stiffened, his fists clenched at his side. “She has won, Charis. First your father and now you.” He turned and stormed from the room.
Charis sat where she was, unmoved. I must confront her, she thought. I must go to her at once and… and what? What? Tell her Annubi has lost the sight and thinks she has won? Even if it is true, it would be just the sort of admission she would be looking for. No, I cannot let on that I know about this. I cannot let her know… but what do I know? What has Annubi told me really? There might still be some other explanation. Perhaps it is as Lile said-he resents her and twists her words to discredit her. Perhaps there is some other reason.
In any case, she thought, I said I would trust her. I cannot go to her now without dishonoring my own word. Poor Annubi, he will just have to suffer a little longer. I cannot help him, and there are more important matters at hand.
She returned to her work, sorting out the valuable and irreplaceable manuscripts from the thousands in her mother’s collection and placing them in the watertight wooden casket.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For Taliesin the last of summer was pure enchantment. He rose with the sun to greet glorious golden days that passed with regal, unhurried serenity. When he could spare time away from the work of the great hall, Elphin took Tal-iesin with him into the forest to hunt, down to the estuary to fish or dig for shellfish, or simply to sit on the rocky shingle and watch the clouds and waves.
They rode together for hours, and Elphin described the monotonous work of riding the Wall, or talked of the necessity of keeping the Picti and Irish at arm’s length and of the brief, hot clashes that occasionally ensued. He taught Taliesin about the Roman way of fighting and, more importantly, of governing the land. He recounted the stories his warriors told around the fire at night when they were far from home. He told Taliesin about men and their desires and ambitions; he told his son about his hopes for his people, the reasons for the decisions he had made.
Taliesin listened to it all and hid every word in his heart, for he knew the gift his father was trying to give him.
“You must be strong, Taliesin,” his father told him one day. They were riding through the woods, boar spears in hand, while up the trail the hounds sought out the animal’s spoor. “Strong as the cold iron in your hand.”
“Hafgan says the same thing. Strength and wisdom are the king’s double-edged sword.”
“And he is right A king must be strong and wise for his people. But I fear the time is coming when wisdom will fail and strength alone must suffice.”
“The Dark Time?”
“Dark as ever a time was dark, and darker still.” He reigned the horse to a halt and lifted his eyes to the green lacework of branches above them. “Listen, Taliesin. Listen to it, but do not be deceived. It is quiet here and peaceful.
Yet there is nothing peaceful about it. The world neither knows nor cares what happens in the lives of the men who walk upon her back. There is no peace, Taliesin. It is an illusion-an enchantment of the mind.
“The only peace you will ever know will be the rest won by your own strong arm.”
Taliesin wondered at his father’s sudden gloomy turn but said nothing. A woodcock nearby filled the wood with its cry, which under the melancholy mood cast by Elphin’s words seemed mournful and lonely.
“It is coming, Taliesin. We cannot keep it back much longer.” He looked sadly at the boy in the saddle beside him. “I wish I could make it different for you, my son.”
Taliesin nodded. “Cormach told me about the Dark Time. But he said that in the midst of such darkness, the light is seen to shine the brighter. And that there is one whose coming will blaze in the sky from east to west with such brilliance that his image will be forever burned into the land.”
Elphin nodded. “That is something at least.” He glanced around the drowsy wood once more. “Ah, but we have this day, Taliesin. And listen!” The baying of the hunting hounds had taken on a frenzied note. “The dogs have found something. Let us ride!”
Elphin flicked the reins across his horse’s neck and the animal, excited by the sound of the dogs, gathered its legs and leaped away. Taliesin kicked his mount’s flanks and galloped after. There followed a reckless, breathless chase in which the dogs and horses and three wild pigs-two young sows and a huge, grizzled old boar-careened through the wood, crashing through thick undergrowth, leaping over fallen trunks of trees, darting under low-hanging limbs, and all grunting, squealing, barking, snorting, laughing at the pleasure of the wild race.
The pigs led them far into the deep heart of the wood before disappearing. The dogs plunged into a quick-flowing stream where they lost the scent, and the riders bounded up a moment later to see the dogs whining at the water’s edge, nosing the air and crying for their lost game. Elphin dropped his javelin, sticking it in the mud beside the stream. Taliesin did the same, and the two slid from their saddles and led the horses to the water, where the winded creatures drank noisily.
“A fine chase!” chuckled Elphin, his breath coming in quick gasps. “Did you see that old tusker? Two wives has he-King of the Wood!”
“I am glad they escaped,” remarked Taliesin, his face flushed with excitement and exertion. Sweat soaked the hair across his forehead, curling it into tight ringlets.
“Oh, aye. Though the ride has made me hungry, and I can almost taste that fine meat aroast on the fire, I am happy to see them go. We will chase them again one day.”
Elphin stretched himself upon a shady, moss-covered rock and closed his eyes. Taliesin settled beside him and was just leaning back when he caught a gleam out of the corner of his eye.
A moment later Elphin heard a splash and jerked himself upright. Taliesin was halfway across the stream and heading toward the opposite bank, crying, “I see it! Hurry!” The dogs whimpered and stood with lowered heads and drooping tails at the edge of the water.
“Taliesin! Wait!” Elphin called. He snatched up his spear and plunged after the boy. “Wait, son!” He reached the far bank just in time to see his son dive into an elder thicket and vanish.
“Hurry!” Taliesin’s voice sounded far away. “I see it!”
Elphin listened and heard the boy crashing through the undergrowth and a second later… silence. He then began the tedious task of tracking the boy through the woods.
He found Taliesin an hour later, sitting on a lichen-covered slab of stone in a circular, oak-lined clearing, his expression blank, hands limp in his lap. “Are you all right, son?” Elphin’s quiet question echoed in the place.
“I saw it,” replied Taliesin, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “It led me here.”
“What did you see?”
“A stag. And it led me here.”
“A stag? Are you sure?”
“A white stag,” said Taliesin, his eyes gleaming in the dimness of the clearing like two dark stars. “As white as Cader Idris’ crown… And his antlers! He had great spreading antlers as red as your Roman cloak and his tail was red.” He peered at his father doubtfully. “Did you see it?”
Elphin shook his head slowly. “I did not. You were too fast for me.” He looked around the clearing. It was bounded on all sides by stout oaks whose tough, gnarled branches spoke of an age beyond reckoning. A slight depression in the ground around the perimeter of the clearing indicated the remains of an ancient ditch. The stone on which Taliesin sat had once stood in the center of the enclosed circle. Although the overarching branches allowed a disk of sky to show pale and blue above, very little light entered the ring. “The stag led you here?”
Taliesin nodded. “And there is where I saw the man,” he said, pointing to a gap where the ditch-ring opened into the wood. “The Black Man.”
“bu saw him?” Elphin regarded his son closely. “What did he look like?”
“He was tall, very tall,” replied Taliesin, closing his
eyes to help him remember clearly, “and thick-muscled; his legs were like stumps and his arms like oak limbs. He was covered by black hair, thick stuff, with twigs and bits of leaf clinging to him all over. His face was painted with white clay, except around his eyes which were black as well-pits. His hair was limed and pushed into a crest with small branches worked through it and a leather cap tied to his head with antlers on it. He carried an antlered staff in one hand and with the other held a young pig under his arm. And there was a wolf too, enormous, with yellow eyes. It watched me from beyond the circle of oaks and did not enter the ring.”
“The Lord of the Beasts,” whispered Elphin. “Cemunnos!”
“Cernunnos,” confirmed Taliesin. “ ‘I am the Horned One,’ he told me.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“He said, ‘Lift what is fallen.’ That is all.”
“Lift what is fallen? Nothing else?”
“What does it mean?” Taliesin wondered.
Elphin looked at the stone on which the boy sat. “The standing stone has fallen.”
Taliesin ran his hands over the stone. “How will we raise it?”
“Raising it will not be easy.” Elphin pulled on his mustache and began pacing the perimeter of the ring. He returned a moment later with a limb of strong ash, which he wedged beneath the edge of the fallen stone. “Roll that rock over here,” he instructed, and the two began levering up the slab.
The stone came up slowly, but by working the lever and moving the stone they were able to make steady progress and found that once it was lifted high enough for Elphin to gain a good handhold, he could tilt it up still further. Stripped to the waist, both man and boy strained to the task, and little by little the stone came up, higher and higher, until with a groan and a mighty shove Elphin felt it settle back onto its base.
They beamed at each other and gazed at the stone, shaggy with moss. Stained dark by its long sleep in the ground and reeking of damp earth, it tilted slightly so that what little light filtered into the ring struck its pitted surface. Taliesin approached and put his hands on the symbols cut into its surface: intricate spirals and whorls, like circular mazes, all bounded by a border of snakes whose intertwined bodies formed the shape of a great egg.
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