Legend of the Celtic Stone

by Michael Phillips

  “In times not nearly so ancient, times of my own great-grandfather, new peoples began coming to the north. Brown-faced tribes came from the distant south. The Scothui from Eirinn journeyed eastward. And though the land remains bountiful, they seek to wrest control from one another. We of the tattoos, whom they call the blue-painted ones—we have always been here, since the days when the white stag roamed these highland places alone. Now other warrior tribes would drive us out.”

  “Do you foresee war, Pendalpin?” asked Fidach.

  “I do not know,” answered the bard. “Perhaps there will yet live many generations in harmony after us. But I fear the future bodes not well for this land and its discordant inhabitants. We are too different, and the blood of too many runs hot for battle. Though the stag summons us to harmony, and though the common blood of the ancients flows through us, I fear the plants of this land will be fed more by the blood of feuding brothers than by the gentle rains of peace.”

  “Perhaps it is you who has the second sight after all,” reflected Fidach.

  “Only the passage of many years will tell if what I have spoken be true,” replied the bard. “The words come not from my father, but from my own heart. The illness of your own father has weighed heavily upon me, Fidach. Many thoughts have come while I sat at his side and my chief lay sleeping. I have felt evil forebodings. And your dream of the stag sends chills through my spine. I fear he is not happy with us, with the way we quarrel among ourselves. He summons us to brotherhood, but we have not the eyes to see him, nor ears to heed his call. Only few see him, Fidach—like you and Cruithne. Do not neglect this gift which has been given you, this gift of seeing with your heart. Teach it to your people when you are chief. Teach it through your life, through your deeds.”

  “Is that the true second sight?”

  “Such I have always considered it. Others may speak of being able to foretell the future or may speak of visions. For myself, the ‘sight,’ given to so few, is to see that life’s meaning comes from harmony with this earth and its beasts and with our fellows. You of the next generation must not forget. You must teach these things to those who come after you.”

  “We will not forget, faithful Pendalpin.”

  “And you, my son? You will before many years be bard of Caldohnuill.”

  “I will not forget what you have taught me, Father,” answered Domnall.

  “It is good,” said the old man. “I can rest in peace.”

  He sank against the wall, still staring into the fire. He had spent a great energy. He had discharged a portion of his duty, and now retreated into thoughts of deeper things. Truly Pendalpin carried in his soul the blood of the Mystic, and was no less one himself.

  Slowly Fidach rose, bade both the young man and his father a restful night, and left. When he reached his own quarters, the only sounds to greet him were the night sounds of sleep.

  Eight

  The next evening, shortly before dusk, the two sons of the chief had climbed to the top of the broch together. They now stood leaning against the topmost parapet, gazing westward toward the setting sun.

  “It is a beautiful land, is it not, Fidach,” sighed Cruithne.

  The elder nodded. His spirit was still.

  “I never tire of coming here and looking into the distance,” his brother continued. “On a clear day, I often imagine I can see the Dark Waters. But I fear it is only my eyes playing tricks upon my mind.”

  “The water can be seen, Cruithne,” replied Fidach, speaking at last. “Down through the valley of Dungal, Durcellach Bay is plainly visible. But even the eastern sea lies not too far distant for mortal eyes.”

  “Perhaps not for yours,” laughed Cruithne.

  “But on this evening my eyes gaze not to the east, my brother, but rather to the north.”

  Now it was Cruithne’s turn to be silent. He did not reply, and after a moment his brother went on.

  “He is out there, Cruithne,” Fidach said softly. “I feel him. He calls . . . he beckons me to come.”

  “Who?”

  “The stag, Cruithne. He calls us to seek him.”

  “Stags do not call men to hunt them, Fidach.”

  “Perhaps they call for different reasons.”

  “You have been talking again to Pendalpin!”

  “This is no mortal beast.”

  “The mysticism of the bard has seized your brain, my brother!”

  “Perhaps. But what the bard sees is true.”

  “And you follow where his eyes see?” Cruithne laughed. “Our people may wind up with two bards if you do not keep at least one of your feet upon the solid rocks of the earth. One man with his head in the sky is enough for any clan!”

  Fidach laughed too. “It is good of you not to mock me for my fantasies.”

  “I would never mock you,” said Cruithne seriously. “I may not see what you see, but I trust you to be true. I would follow your sight over that of any man in the clachan, however practical he might be.”

  Cruithne grinned, then added, “Though I might chuckle now and then at some of your notions and visions.”

  “So will you come with me?”

  “You are still convinced you will find the stag in the forest of Muigh-bhlaraidh Ecgfrith?”

  “Perhaps. But even if we do not find him, it would be good to visit An Stoc-bheinn Mountain to celebrate the coming of spring. We can take young Domnall with us! He will delight in the cave.”

  Cruithne studied his brother’s face a second more, then grinned and nodded. “It is good! I too am eager for such an adventure.”

  “So you do not mind following my fancies?”

  “You pursue what your second sight shows you. I will take my spear to hunt the one you dream of . . . and we will show the son of our bard our place of solitude on the distant mountain.”

  While the two young men thus made their plans, below them in the fort, Taran and Aethilnon spoke quietly around their fire.

  “I am pleased you feel better today, my husband,” said Aethilnon as she gently wiped the old chief’s brow.

  “The meat of the boar brings strength,” he replied in a weak voice. “And it rests my tired soul for Eormen to be away. Has no one in Laoigh seen her today?”

  “No one, my chief. I have been to everyone in the fort and all the huts.”

  “She grows anxious for her son, I fear.”

  “Surely she worries for your health,” protested Aethilnon softly.

  “You know better. She would see me dead if it suited her purposes, which no doubt it would. But you must not worry. It is your Fidach who will be the next chief.”

  “You cannot be certain of that,” said Aethilnon. “I have no claim by blood. Eormen does.”

  “A claim as false as the prophecy that the moon will turn black! A claim hatched in her own scheming brain to wrest power from my hand!”

  “There may be truth in it.”

  “She is no more of the line of Cowall, Brude, and Neithon than are the Scothui from beyond Loch Bruid! I tell you, Fidach is the one I have chosen to follow—my eldest son . . . son of my first wife Aethilnon.”

  He reached out a feeble hand and stroked her face.

  Aethilnon smiled. “Gladly will I serve my people,” she said, “as the chief’s wife, or as the chief’s mother. But the elders must decide how to rule on the succession.”

  “They will rule as I tell them to rule,” insisted Taran. “There is no precedent. They will do what I say. Fidach shall be chief.”

  “You must not exert yourself with such talk,” said Aethilnon, pulling a blanket of skins up around him. “Rest, my husband. I will bring you more of the meat.”

  “Yes, yes . . . that will be good,” sighed the chief with feeble voice. “They are good sons . . . sons to make a man proud. And you are a good wife, Aethilnon. You make an old man’s bones warmer with your care than any flame of fire.”

  She knelt down with a smile and kissed his wrinkled cheek.

  Nine

/>   Two days later Taran, son of Cuthred and chief of the Pritenae of Caldohnuill, watched his two sons make their way down the hill, away from the encampment, and across the wide valley toward the peak known as Beinn Donuill. In truth it was no mountain. But in these regions none of the peaks were of great height, a fact which in no way lessened their severity when fierce snows came.

  They made him proud, but he was also sad, for the trek would keep them away from home for many days, perhaps a week or two.

  Beyond Beinn Donuill, which they would skirt to the east and north, they would ford the Aethbran nan Bronait, still brown and frothy and swollen with the winter’s runoff from the high places, in the safest spot for two miles in either direction, just below Lochan na Gaoithe. In that loch, or perhaps its sister, they would fish and hope to catch their supper before striking out into the rugged region between those lakes and Loch Cracail Mor, where they would make camp their first night.

  The chief watched as they receded from sight, the two sons of his late years, one of whom would soon replace him, the sons whose mothers he had loved, one of whom had brought so much bitterness into the camp. Away they walked, as they did two or three times a year, to be together. Their friendship made him content inside, as did their kindness toward the son of his friend Pendalpin, who now trailed them eagerly. It was the first time he had been invited to accompany the two young men on their odyssey for meat and companionship.

  Slowly Taran turned back inside the stone hill-fort and again sought the warmth of his fire and the comfort of the one wife he had truly loved all along.

  The course that Cruithne and Fidach, with Domnall between them, pursued lay across a well-worn path through a rugged valley of heather and bracken that separated the hill-fort and broch from Beinn Donuill. The wide expanse was actually little more than a river valley, which widened as the flowing current of Aethbran nan Bronait swept round the base of Donuill toward the inlet from the sea that bore its name and opened up in the direction of the hill-fort.

  It was a solitary region through which they walked. Indeed, this whole part of the earth was desolate in its very essence. Taran’s nearest neighbors, the Caleborstii of Kildonanoid and the Roismaeatae of Rossbidalich were yet twenty miles distant. The three young men would likely trek the entire forty or fifty miles of their journey to An Stoc-bheinn and back without encountering another human soul.

  A random amalgamation of bare hills, partially hidden glens, and wide-open heaths and moors made up the area through which they walked. Each little valley or strath possessed its own stream, nearly all flowing with the rich-hued amber waters of peat runoff. Mostly the aspect was of gray and brown, but the coming season had colored the region with pleasant periodic interruptions of green, not numerous but lush where they chanced to burst out of the earth. On the stream banks grew here and there a rowan tree or a silver birch or alder, watered by the foaming waterways as they ran around big stones and under occasional cliffy banks, and long green spring grasses grew to their very edges.

  Had the pilgrims been blessed with the visage and vantage point of the lone falcon which wheeled lazily several hundred feet above them, to the east behind them they would have beheld, several miles distant, the great, expansive northern sea, clear and cold. Over the pale gray-green ocean hung an even paler thin blue sky, dotted here and there with a few cold white clouds sitting offshore miles higher than the falcon himself would have dared venture. A chill wind blew—keen but not angry, as the winds of that land often seemed; keen enough, however, to crisp up into white foam the tips of the waves in patches here and there as they made their way to shore.

  Toward the distance in the opposite direction, low hills and valleys of heather, bracken, scrubby shrubs and brush, and coarse grasses rolled away westward, interspersed with numerous bogs, giving way at no great distance to mountains with snow on their crests. Far away on the horizon, where the mountains and clouds conducted business together, the more distant highland peaks rose to grandeur—still ablaze, this early in the year, with a pure, deep white that reflected the fiery rays from above but felt no compulsion to absorb them. The snowy peaks seemed to laugh at the sun’s feeble attempts to spread warmth across a land that would stubbornly resist his efforts for several more months.

  Few trees were visible to the west, though occasional clumps of Scots pine could be seen, and several of the hills and mountains guarded small forests on their slopes as homes for the thousands of tiny creatures and hundreds of roe, elk, and deer, which were as plenteous as men were scarce. Wolves there were as well, friendly to no man or beast, but they kept mostly inland, in the remotest of the high regions. Of boar there were few, though there had once been many, and their numbers would increase again. Cattle and sheep were now mostly domesticated. The sheep’s cousin, the scrappy highland goat, was multitudinous and prolific.

  How this variety of beasts sustained its existence, only their creator knew. For that matter, how the hundred generations of men and women who had not only survived but, in a manner of speaking, had thrived since the days of the Wanderer was also a fact of existence that only a power greater than the men of those generations could have known. The answer was no doubt born out of the reality that both the people and the beasts of this region were not unlike the land they inhabited. A sinewy and hardy lot they were, content to carve out whatever life they could from a land that was the only home they had ever known.

  The stark border region between the low-lying coastal areas and the more mountainous terrain farther west yielded its bounty grudgingly, and every winter seemed determined to wipe every trace of life from its face. Somehow, nevertheless, the consciousness of nature always managed to sleep under the thick blankets of snow, held in a suspended frozen warmth against the frigid blasts sweeping across the surface of the planet, until spring sent forth its miracle from unknown depths, as it had thousands of times before, and visible life had once more come to the land.

  Chilly though the air was, spring was abroad in the north, and for the day at least, the whole land lay bathed in sunlight. Quietness reigned on the earth, and above the earth, while underneath the feet of the three walkers, in the very earth herself, life—quiet, waiting, eager—readied itself for the blossoming of the new year.

  In the very bowels of the boggy areas they crossed, between the roots of the surface vegetation and the rocky plate that made up the subsurface stratum ten to twenty feet below, lay the remarkable substance known as peat—that partially decomposed, tightly compacted organic material which the ancient grandson of the Wanderer had discovered could be taken from the earth, dried, and then burned with remarkable effect and great heat. These very bogs over which the three made their occasional way, appearing to the eye as uninviting and useless as ever landscape could be, were the storage closets and wine cellars and reservoirs of the sun, collecting and stockpiling its miracle of warmth, the very cordial of life.

  The countryside could not have by any description been termed pretty unless you knew, not so much where to look, but rather how to perceive its beauty. Neither was it friendly unless one lived upon it for sufficient generations to make of it a friend. It was a rugged place, beautiful not with vivid splashes of color, but with infinite subtle hues and variety of lonely terrain, sparse but full of the wide majesty of pure northernness. The solemnity and stillness and solitude of the region itself was alive.

  Little was said as the three young men made their way across the mile or so that separated the hill-fort from the rounded bare summit of Beinn Donuill. Though they had walked this way many times, today they would not climb the path that led to the lookout there. Instead they swung wide around Donuill’s base, walking almost to the bank of Aethbran nan Bronait, where the river took a wide southerly loop, before turning and heading westward to the point a mile and a half upriver where they would cross the waters.

  They walked around the shoulder of the hill that closed off from their view the wide lowland behind them. Now they entered a narrower sectio
n of the valley, through the bottom of which the river ran, and up from whose banks on either side the hillsides sloped more steeply.

  As the sheer cliff of Beinn Donuill’s more precipitous face loomed ominously skyward at their side, the sun disappeared behind it, leaving them for a time walking in an enormous dark shadow from the mountain. A good many patches of snow still lay about here, and halfway up the granite crag, in a protected little hollow that only saw the sun’s brightness for a few days toward the end of every July, the white drifts rose to depths of ten or fifteen feet. Where the valleys opened northward and where hills shielded the sun from reaching the ground, the earth often remained frozen for as many as six months of the year.

  Through such a place they now walked. The ground crunched beneath their leather-clad feet. The sun shone high in the sky. Here and there tender green shoots gave evidence that he was doing his yearly work of attempting to awaken the land. The shadow of Beinn Donuill reminded Fidach especially that the ball of fire overhead was but a wayfarer in these northern wastes of hillside and mountain and valley and moor. Even during the summer he was not able to enter into every nook and cranny with complete freedom. And now, with summer still far off, his heat was more visual than actual, and the crannies were cold and the nooks black with ice.

  Fidach noticed all this and pondered it in his heart. Meditations on the meaning of these things mingled with thoughts of the stag inside his mind, and he was silent as he walked along. He was a Celt, full of mystical idylls and undefined emotions.

  Cruithne exulted in the zestful adventure inherent in the physical substance of life. He led the way with a merry step and a smile on his face, sucking in deeply every so often of the nippy air, clutching his stout spear, whose blunt end now served as a staff to assist his steps over the uneven ground, and relishing in anticipation of the rigors ahead. In his heart were no poems, but rather the hope that he might be the man finally to achieve the conquest over the great stag that none of his tribe had ever attained.