“Beloved the land, this eastern land,
Alba rich in wonders,
And to depart I had never planned,
Did I not leave with Noíse.
I have loved Dun Fidhga, loved Dun Finn,
Beloved is the stronghold above them;
Inis Draighen, its seas within,
Dún Suibhne: I loved them.”
The Hall was very still, and the warriors sat quietly, not touching the mead horns by their hands. Was it possible, I wondered in surprise, that I was doing it? Well, the song was very famous and familiar. I sang on, trying to catch the bright irregular rhythms and complex yearning.
“Cuan’s wood, where Ainnle would go—
Alas! the time was short,
Brief the time, as we both knew
Spent on the shores of Alba…
Glen Etive, where first I raised my home,
Lovely the wood is there,
The fold for the rays of sun when they roam
At the dawn of day, Glen Etive.”
And so through the verses. The final stanza came addressed to the beach Deirdre embarked from:
“And now beloved is Draighen’s beach,
Beloved now the waves, the sand—
Never would I go from the east
Did I not go holding Noíse’s hand.”
I swept the notes upward and brought them down slowly to silence, making them weep, thinking of Deirdre, a beautiful woman five hundred years dead, stepping into the boat and going to her doom.
When I finished, the hall was very silent, but with a different kind of silence. Lot looked at me strangely for a moment—then laughed. He was pleased.
I sat and stared at the harp and did not believe it.
“That was good,” said Lot. “By the sun! Maybe you’ll become something after all. Play something else.”
“I…I…” I said, “I’m tired. Please. I want to rest.”
His smile vanished again, but he nodded. “Go and rest, then.”
I set the harp down and left. His eyes followed me, puzzled, all the way out of the Hall.
I did not rest. I lay on my pallet and turned about, and stared at a patch of moonlight crawling across the floor all night. I had pleased my father. To be a bard was a very honorable trade, lower only than that of a king, if one was good enough. I had pleased my father more than Orlamh, who was good. I watched the moonlight and thought: “I have come too far down the path of Darkness to forsake it.”
And I stared too at the cold black place within me, and wept, within myself, alone in the darkness.
I found the next morning that Lot and Morgawse had not slept that night either. My father had become drunk and made his way to my mother’s room to claim his rights. She had tried to throw him out, but he had decided that he was her husband and she must be obedient. For the next few days she wore a high-necked gown to hide the bruises. Lot, though, was the one who looked sick and worn, while Morgawse smiled quietly with complacent satisfaction. I suddenly realized that, if my father used her beauty for his pleasure, she fed upon him like a shadow upon a strong light, and drained his power slowly away. I pushed the thought aside as soon as it occurred to me, for it made me uncomfortable.
August wore away slowly, and September after it. I did all that I had done before—still practiced with my weapons, had lessons with Morgawse, went out riding and playing with Medraut—but there was a difference now. Lot ordered that everyone should learn some of the new ways of fighting from horseback, which Arthur had used against the spearmen, and suddenly I was first instead of last, not only among those my age, but even among most of the older men. I was fourteen, beginning to grow, and I knew all the tricks which no one had bothered to study: how to move about on horseback, how to take a spearman on the ground without being thrown from the horse, and make the horse rear and back when the place was too narrow or the press too great to manage—things which called for agility and speed instead of strength and order, and so had been neglected in the usual methods of fighting. The tricks I had practiced on my own.
We received news, too, from my father’s spies in Britain. My father was hoping that Arthur would be killed in battle, though he was unwilling to arrange such an event himself, for the sake of Agravain and for his oath. But there was no such good fortune. Arthur took tribute from every king in Britain, and even from the Church they have there. This last had cost Arthur almost as much as it gained him. All of Britain—except the Saxon kingdoms—held the faith of this Church, and had done so ever since the last Roman High Kings had decreed that they should, and given the Church many privileges. The Church was very rich, holding much land and goods given it by its followers, and being free from tax or tribute because of the privileges it had been granted. It had been expected that Arthur would honor the rights and privileges of the Church; indeed, it had been expected that he would make generous donations to it. He had been raised in a monastery in the west of Britain, living, with other orphans and bastards, on the charity of the Church; he was supposed to be devout, and to call upon God before his battles. The Church had been eager to recognize him as Pendragon, despite his dubious title to power. When, instead of showering it with gifts, he had demanded supplies, the outrage of the bishops and abbots resounded as far as Dun Fionn.
I did not understand the problem. Though Britain had long been Christian, and Erin had become so, Caledon and the Orcades knew of that faith only by hearsay. I asked my mother about it.
“It is all stupidity and pretence,” she told me sharply. “The Church claims that there is one god who rules all the world, and that it alone can bring men to this god. It pretends that the nature of this god is all justice and love, yet itself cares nothing for either. But it is rich, and it has a strong hold on men’s minds. Arthur,” she said, smiling, “Arthur will have to beware of it.”
“Will you and Father make an alliance with its leaders?” I asked.
But she frowned. “No. They will not ally themselves with pagans or heretics—and they say I am a heretic, for that is a word they use freely for all who abandon their teachings, whether they ever believed those teachings or not. Indeed, that was the one thing that made me glad when I left Britain; that I should hear no more of the pious gruntings of priests! No, they would appear ridiculous should they ally themselves with us against a Christian High King. They will have to obey Arthur, since he has power and is willing to use it. But they will look for some other king to support in a rebellion.”
And she and Lot did not send messengers to any of the bishops, even after Arthur had resorted to threats to get the supplies from the Church. But my father listened to all the news and hoped. When Arthur gave some of his new wealth to Bran of Less Britain and sent him home, Lot stayed up all night dictating messages. He also came every day to see how the men were doing at the new methods of fighting, and himself practiced them until he was dripping with sweat. He also began scheming for control over the northern Hebrides, renewing an old enmity with Aengus mac Ere of Dalriada. But something of the brightness had gone from these endeavors. My father was not going to control Britain by means of any puppet kings. Arthur controlled Britain.
My mother also laid plans. In September, in the dark of the moon, we killed a black lamb at midnight. I held its head while she cut it open with a stone knife, examining the entrails while it still struggled and bled over us. She was angry with what she saw, but did not explain it to me. Eventually, the next day, I asked her why she could not simply destroy Arthur, as she had destroyed his father.
“It is not so simple,” she told me. “There is some Christian counter-spell he has made against me, and I do not understand the nature of it. Did you not see, in the lamb last night, how the entrails were woven into knots?”
I had not wanted to look. These things still sickened me.
“Do not mind that, though,” she said, be
ginning to smile. “I have cursed him, and the curse lives, and has lived. In the end the Darkness will take him, too.”
I watched that Darkness in her eyes as she gloated and was awed by it. I knew that she was planning some other action, though, and that she had killed the lamb to see how it might turn out. She was filled with tension, waiting. But when I asked, she would not tell me what she waited for, only smiling a soft, secret smile.
As October wore slowly away and the great sea-fogs blanketed the islands I began to guess when she would act, if not what she meant to do. At the end of October there is a night called Samhain. It is a festival, one of four great festivals—the others are Midsummer, Lammas, and Beltane—which are sacred to the powers of the earth and sky. Samhain is the night when the gates between the worlds lie open. On that night, the dead can come creeping back to the world they left, and places are laid for them at table among the living. Other, yet darker things come across the worlds on Samhain, and they are not usually spoken of, and still other things can be summoned then, by wish or by rite, and these are mentioned least of all. As the end of October approached, I knew what my mother was waiting for.
On the day of Samhain I went to her room for the usual lesson. But most of the day we did nothing but read. Morgawse had bought a Roman poem called the Aeneid from a travelling merchant for the value of ten cows in gold. She had seventeen books, which were worth a frightening amount, and I had read all of them. I was enjoying the Aeneid more than any of the others, though it was full of strange names and I understood very little of it. I regretted that we had only the first six books, the first half of the poem, and that we had nearly finished these.
“…sic orsa loqui vates: ‘sate sanguine divum, Tros Anchisiade, facilis descensus Averni: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est.’”
I smoothed the page and began translating again: “Thus the…prophet?”
“Or poet,” Morgawse murmured. “Like an ollamh.”
“Thus the prophet began to speak: ‘You who are sprung from the blood of gods, Trojan, son of Anchises, easy is the descent of Avernus: night and day the gate of black Dis is open; but to recall your step and to come out to the upper air, this is toil, this labor…,” I stopped, swallowing suddenly. “Avernus. That is Yffern, isn’t it? The Dark Otherworld?”
She nodded, her eyes cold and amused. “Does that frighten you, my hawk?”
I put my hand over the page, shaking my head, but the catch was still in my throat. Easy is the descent, but to recall your steps…She was still looking at me.
“Very well, enough for today,” she said. “And what do you think of Aeneas now, my hawk?”
“He still…he relies upon his mother, the goddess, for everything. I don’t really like him. Not as much as CuChulainn, or Connall Cearnach, or Noíse Mac Usliu. And yet…”
“Och, it is an ill thing to rely upon one’s mother, then?” she said, laughing, and I looked at her and felt my face grow hot.
“She was less of a goddess than you,” I said.
“Prettily said! Aeneas is weak, and so is his mother Venus. And yet, the Romans consider this their greatest poem. They were not artists. They could not understand the depths of a thing, the passions of the soul. They built a strong empire on the blood of men, and made good roads. Other than that…Arthur is half a Roman.”
“He is? But I thought all the Romans left a long time ago.”
“The legions left. ‘Defend yourselves,’ Theodosius told the provinces of the Britains, ‘for we cannot defend you any longer.’ But they left their memory, men willing to try to set up a fallen empire. In the south, many still think like Romans. Arthur does. That is why he leads the Britons against the Saxons: he wishes to preserve the last stronghold of the empire against the barbarians, one nation defending itself against another. He does not see that Britain is no more one nation than the Saxons are. His is a peculiar way of viewing things, and has many weaknesses. I know them. I have seen and known Arthur.”
She fell silent, thinking, smiling.
“Come here tonight,” she said in a low voice after a long time. “I have planned that tonight you will have your initiation into real Power. It is a good night for it. I will have you accepted by the Darkness, my son, and you will see why I am strong. After tonight, you will have Power as I do.”
I heard, nodded, bowed, and left the room without saying anything. I saddled my horse and went for a long ride out by the sea. I could not stay in Dun Fionn. But with each step my horse made I became more afraid, anticipating something I did not know. I had seen deeply into the Darkness by then, and it frightened me. I desired to be like my mother, to have Power and escape from the fear, but I found the Power still more fearful. I did not know what I wanted, now, but I would go that night.
I realized that the path was familiar, and found that I was going to Llyn Gwalch. Well, why not?
I reached the place where the stream fell over the cliff’s edge, combing the gravel with clear fingers. There was a light mist that day, which turned all the low hills so soft a shade of green that it seemed they would dissolve into the gentle sky. The sea beat-beat at the cliff, a sound as constant as my heart. It seemed to me that I had never heard it before.
I dismounted and hobbled my horse, then climbed carefully down the path.
When I reached the beach with its little pond, everything seemed smaller than I remembered it, and I realized how long it had been, and how much I must have grown. But it was still beautiful. My old dreams hung about it yet, glowing faintly in my mind with colors brighter than those of earth. The pond was infinitely deep, still and clear, dark in shade because of the multi-hued gravel lying rounded in its bottom. The sea clutched at the beach, hissed on the stones, and sighed out. Its smell was salt and strong, wild, infinite, and sad. A seagull flew over my head, flapping and gliding. It wailed, once, and some more sea-birds hidden in the mist cried back.
I went over to the pool and knelt by it, drank from it, then studied my reflection. A boy, looking fourteen or older, stared back. Thick black hair, held back with a bit of worn leather. Smooth skin still dark from the summer, a face slightly resembling Morgawse’s in the shape of the bones. A thoughtful face whose dark eyes met mine openly, trying to look into the confused mind that lurked behind them. It was so very dark in there.
Who is this Gwalchmai? I wondered. A name, but what beyond that? Something beyond my understanding.
I leant back on my heels and looked up at the grey sky. I remembered those dreams I had had of myself as a great warrior, and the dreams that had come at night, the sword burning with light, tattered shreds of glowing color, and, above them all, the song rising from nowhere. Like the sound of a harp played elsewhere on an empty day, but sweet enough for a man to leave his life behind to hear it better. I remembered playing with boats in that very place, sending them out, so far out, into the open sea, dreaming of the Land of the Ever Young. Lugh’s Hall, with its walls woven of gold and white bronze and its roof thatched with the wing-feathers of birds. The sea pounded and sighed on the shore, and the birds keened. I wondered what had happened, and where the Darkness had begun. I felt like a man looking back on his childhood, and I wondered if one could truly be a man at fourteen, and what it was that I had lost. I sat and listened to the gulls, drawing my cloak around me. Tonight it would end. Tonight, truly, it would end.
***
The night was one of wind and broken moonlight which poured raggedly through the clouds driven over the moon, only to be whipped away again. Crossing the yard from the hall, where I slept most of the time now, to the room of Morgawse the Queen, I looked up at the moon’s worn face and thought of the old prayers to it. Gem of the night, breast-jewel of heaven…How many, I wondered, had looked up at her face through the years? Warriors planning raids by her light, lovers laughing to her, druids and magicians pra
ying to her, poets making songs to her, all these she must have seen countless times. But surely, it was all chance whether she shone or no, and I could expect no help from her. And perhaps, when I returned this way, I would no longer want any.
The very air seemed to be vibrating when I reached my mother’s room, as if with the aftermath of a scream. The door-bolt shivered in my hand like a living thing. There was power in the air, so much dark power that it was hard to breathe.
My mother had already prepared the room. The floor had been laid bare, and the wall-hanging raised so that no light could enter. She had dug a trench across the middle of the floor, and made designs about it with white barley and water, and set candles around it. She stood now in the middle of the room in a gown of a red so dark that it appeared almost black, her bare arms pale and strong and cold-looking in the eerie light. Her hair fell about her, a river of gleaming darkness down to her waist; she was barefoot and ungirded, since it was a time to loosen knots and not to bind them. She was drawing a design in the air about the final candle.
I felt a weakness rise in me, gripping my stomach with icy hands, unstringing my knees. Darkness lay in the air, thick, smothering. I wanted to cry out, beat at it with my hands, run, not looking back to what might follow from the corners of my mind.
I closed the door softly and stood silent, waiting until Morgawse was finished.
She set the final candle down and straightened. She was very tall, and the Darkness hung about her like a cloak, so that all the candle flames bent towards her like seaweed towards a whirlpool. She seemed more than ever to be not of the Earth, but a queen in some other realm. Terrified, I loved her. She smiled when she saw me, a smile blurred by the flickering of the flames and by the darkness she wore around her, but her smile still, secret and triumphant.
“Good,” she said. Her voice seemed to come from a deep void, colder than January ice. “Go over there. Stand, be still, wait, and watch what I do.”
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