The Hallowed Isle Book One

by Diana L. Paxson

  “Dragons . . .” whispered Ambros. “I would tell you to leave this place, but you will not do it. Command your men to drain this pool, and you will see.”

  Once more the laborers were summoned. Working with pick and drill, they made a channel through the side of the hill. As the work proceeded the wind grew stronger, blowing now from one direction and now from the other. Overhead, clouds were gathering. Light from the westering sun slanted golden beneath them, gilding the metal of the shovels and turning the grass a vivid green.

  Ambros sat on the ground, frowning beneath his heavy brows. He could hear men marveling at how swiftly the wind was driving the storm, but he knew it was not the wind, but an echo of the disturbance in the hill. As the level of the channel neared that of the pool, he got up and edged backward. When he approached the oak trees that grew at the rim of the hill, two warriors barred his way.

  “Very well, I will stay—” He sat down again. “But take my mother a little ways down the hill. Tell her it is because of the storm.”

  The man’s grim expression softened a little and he turned to do as Ambros had asked. Vitalinus had been eyeing them suspiciously, but when the boy sat down he resumed his watch on the pool. The last cut was made, well below the level of the pool, and the water began to sink rapidly, swirling in a widdershins vortex toward the hidden hole. So swiftly did it spin that a fine spray flew up from it, continuing to whirl in the wind. In another moment it seemed as if the clouds themselves had caught the motion. Wind whipped at men’s mantles and blew anything lightweight away.

  Ambros hunkered down where he was, fingers digging into the grass. Leaning against the wind, Vitalinus stumbled toward him.

  “What is it?” he cried, staring up at the storm. “What is happening?”

  Ambros looked up at the clouds shot with lightnings, partly a dirty white, and partly tinged red by the setting sun. Then his focus changed and he allowed himself to see the energies that other senses had shown him.

  “The Dragons are fighting!” Ambros shouted back, waving upward. “The Red Dragon, and the White!” Storm-white and crimson, the sinuous forms roiled; now the white one taking the ascendant and then the other claiming victory. “Don’t you see them? Can’t you see?” He gripped the Vor-Tigernus’s shoulder and felt the man stiffen and knew that at least for that moment he did see.

  The White Dragon had risen from the path that came up from the southeast toward Mona; the Crimson from the line of power that crossed it. The earth trembled with the force of their conflict. But gradually, as he watched he could see that the White Dragon was forcing its opponent downward. Lightning flared, and in the next instant they were deafened by a clap of thunder. Blinking, Ambros saw the Crimson Dragon sink into the earth and disappear. But the White circled upward on the storm, spiraled three times widdershins around the hill, then sped away in the direction it had come.

  The great wind died away as suddenly as it had appeared, and the hilltop stood silent. The last light of the sun picked out the wreckage strewn across the grass and the empty hole in the ground. Men picked themselves up, staring about them. One by one, they gathered around the Vor-Tigernus and the boy.

  “What does it mean? Why did they come?” Vitalinus picked Ambros up and stood him on his feet. The boy rubbed his eyes. He felt dizzy, and his vision was still seared by that last lightning flash, so that he saw in shadows speckled with little sparks of light.

  He started to say that he did not know, but in his head his invisible friend was speaking. As he listened he began to weep, because he was very tired, and what she was saying filled him with fear. He shook his head, but the terrible knowledge would not go away, and in the end, it was easier to close his eyes and let her use his voice to say the words.

  “The Red Dragon belongs to the tribes. It is part of this land.”

  “And the White?” The question seemed to come from a long ways away.

  “The White comes from over the sea. It follows the path of the conquerors, the way the first Romans came. The White Dragon belongs to the Saxon folk that you have called into this land. In blood and fire they will rise against you, and only in these mountains will the Red Dragon find refuge from the foe. . . .”

  With the words came images: burning cities, dead children lying sprawled like abandoned dolls, fleeing families pursued by fair-haired men with bloody swords. It was too much for him—consciousness fled inward, while from his lips the dreadful prophecies rolled on and on.

  When Ambros awakened he knew it had been a long time because it was dark. Beside the empty pool a bonfire was blazing. He lay with his head in his mother’s lap, wrapped warmly. He felt empty, as if only his mother’s touch anchored him to earth. He stirred a little, and one of the people who had been watching over him ran off. Presently a shadow came between him and the fire, and he looked up and saw the Over-King.

  “So, Ambros, you have confounded my men of wisdom,” said Vitalinus.

  “They were fools. . . . Will you give my mother the gold?” Ambros swallowed. His voice was hoarse, as if he had been shouting. Maderun offered him some warmed milk in a panniken and he drank it gratefully.

  “I will keep my word,” said the king. “But if my druids are fools I must send them away. Stay with me, Ambros, and be my prophet.”

  “But he is only a boy!” exclaimed Maderun.

  “Is he?” Their gazes locked above Ambros’s head.

  If I go home, thought Ambros, Dinabu will tease me and my stepfather will glower and wish me gone. Here, where so many men come and go, maybe I can find out who I am. . . .

  “I will stay,” the boy said into the tense silence, and Vitalinus turned back to look at him. Ambros gazed up into those yellow eyes, and in the end, it was the Vor-Tigernus of Britannia who looked away.

  IV

  THE FORGE

  A.D. 437

  THE WISE MEN OF BRITANNIA WERE DEBATING IN THE OVER-KING’S hall. In the portico of what had once been the palace of the Roman governor of Britannia, the philosopher and priest Maugantius, who studied the stars; a druid from the lands of the Votadini called Maglicun and another from Guenet named Melerius; and Godwulf, the Saxon thyle, argued beneath the dispassionate gaze of painted gods. With them sat Father Felix, who had been a student of Pelagius, and Martinus, come over from Gaul to preach the new theology by which Augustinus of Hippo explained the disasters that had overtaken the empire. And just beyond the circle of light cast by the brazier, the king’s prophet, Ambros son of Maderun, sat listening, with his back against a marble pillar and his arms around his knees.

  Some of the Vor-Tigernus’s wise men viewed Ambros as a mindless vehicle for prophecy. Such creatures were born from time to time—unable to speak properly or care for themselves, but capable of great feats of calculation, or of repeating back lists of names and lore. But Ambros was something else, a wild child with an endless thirst for knowledge. Remembering his mother’s teaching, he kept quiet and made himself useful, and they condescended to let him listen to their discussions, though they did not suspect how much he had learned.

  At eleven, he had the growth of a boy of fourteen, all long legs and clumsy feet with a head that seemed too large for his body and teeth too big for his jaws. It had been some time since Vitalinus had called on him for prophecy. Maybe, thought Ambros as he listened to the men’s voices, when I grow up the gift will leave me, and I will be an ordinary man.

  “It does not matter how hard you strive,” said the new priest, Martinus. “You will still fall so short of God’s perfection that only His grace can save you, as He has predestined.”

  Ambros did not yet know what Martinus might have to teach him, for the Gaulish priest still crossed himself and muttered charms against the devil when the boy came too near. Now, he saw Ambros watching him and his fiery gaze flinched away.

  “And I call that a heresy!” exclaimed Felix. “I believe in a God of justice, who will reward good works done in His name. Will you tell our lord that all his labor to pro
tect this land meant nothing? For twelve years the wolves have been kept from our borders, and Britannia has prospered as never before.”

  Felix was a priest in the civilized tradition of the later empire, able to argue philosophy as well as theology, viewing other faiths with an easy tolerance so long as they prayed for Britannia. He had taught Ambros to work hard and to value the wonderful variety of humankind. The boy smiled as Felix continued, for he had heard all this before.

  “The Vor-Tigernus has pacified the men of Eriu by marrying his daughter to their king, and the Irish who remained in Guenet are being cast out by the Votadini. Those who tried to take Dumnonia were defeated by the Cornovii whom he has settled there. Coelius and the Army defend the lands around Eburacum, and Amlodius those of Luguvalium, and our allies in Dun Breatann and Dun Eidyn are a further bulwark against the painted people of the North. In the South and East we are protected from the Saxon wolves who formerly savaged these shores by Hengest and his men! All these forces are commanded by the Vor-Tigernus!”

  “Praise ice when you have crossed over it, and a king when he is on the funeral pyre . . .” rumbled Godwulf. “Hengest guards you now, but he cannot do so if Vitalinus does not pay his men.”

  “Let the men of the South and East who have grown rich in these times of peace pay them!” exclaimed Maglicun. “The north must support its own defenders.”

  It had taken some time for the druids’ suspicions of Ambros to ease, but in the end they had remembered his mother’s connection to the Isle of Maidens and accepted the boy. Perhaps the alacrity with which he learned from the other sages had something to do with it also, for as Maglicun said, it was not fitting that a child of the ancient priestly line of Britannia should grow up knowing nothing of his true heritage.

  “I do not think they will,” Father Felix said unhappily. “They complain about the Vor-Tigernus’s taxes and talk of calling the sons of Ambrosius Augustus back from Armorica to rule them.”

  “It is not Justice that Vitalinus needs, but Mercy,” put in Martinus. “If all his labors are in vain, will not that prove the truth of Bishop Augustinus’s teaching?”

  “The stars show that a time of changes is coming, but whether for good or ill I do not know.” Maugantius pulled at his beard thoughtfully.

  Ambros had found Maugantius more approachable than most of the others, and through many long nights had kept him company as the philosopher watched the constellations wheel across the sky. Maugantius was a follower of Plato and his later disciples, Iamblichus and Porphyry, an initiate of Greek mysteries and Egyptian magic dedicated to the Great Work by which a man might re-forge himself into a god.

  Maglicun snorted. “Of course there will be changes. Night gives birth to day and winter to spring. It is the way of the world to turn in a circle, not in a straight line as you Christians say. The end of one thing is the beginning of another. The wise man learns to interpret these cycles, and moves with them rather than fighting the flow.”

  Ambros nodded. This was the wisdom of his mother’s people, and it nourished something in his soul. But all this talk of change was making him uneasy. Would Vitalinus ask him to prophesy? Could he still do it? At the thought, he felt the familiar wave of dizziness and the presence of his invisible friend, awakening suddenly in his mind like an old tune.

  He shook his head and pinched himself to reconnect with his body. No! I don’t want to see what is coming! I don’t want to know.

  “That is so,” Godwulf was saying, “but the little priest says truly that those threads the Norns have spun may not be broken. In the end, it is not the outcome that matters, but the way a man meets his wyrd. Still, one may face what is to be all the better for some warning. I will cast the runes and see what they say.”

  From the thyle, Ambros had learned some of the runelore of the Eruli, and found it powerful but strange. Godwulf turned, as if he had felt Ambros staring at him, and the boy felt that premonitory dizziness brush his mind once more.

  “We must speak to the men on the Council, and to the Over-King,” Melerius said then. “We must make them understand.”

  These were wise men, thought Ambros, and they would speak with wisdom. But in the end he knew that the Vor-Tigernus would call on the wild power that spoke through the boy without a father, and Ambros could not predict what that power might say.

  The river Ictis meandered gently through reedbed and meadow, its quiet belying the proximity of Venta Belgarum, whose tiled roofs could just be glimpsed beyond the trees. The spring had been wet, and the water ran high and strong, but its surface was calm, veiling its power. With the warmer days of summer, vegetation had grown lushly green, at times almost blocking the path beside the stream. But Ambros pushed determinedly onward, looking over his shoulder from time to time at the roof of the basilica where the Vor-Tigernus sat in Council with the lords of Britannia. He was well out of earshot, but it seemed to him that the sound of angry voices still echoed inside his skull.

  The day had the sultry stillness that heralded a storm, though there was no cloud in the sky. He paused, looking down into the brown waters, his sharp eyes catching the sinuous movement of the speckled bass and silver-scaled bream, but although he might for a moment touch the slow, quiet thoughts of the fish that hid in those depths he could not forget the passions of humankind. Maugantius had tried to teach him the skill by which a man can barrier his soul from the emotions of others, but Ambros had not yet mastered it. He wondered if even Maugantius had the power to shut out awareness of what was happening today.

  For three days they had been arguing, Vitalinus insisting that the rich landowners of the Midlands and the West should contribute to the defense of their eastern neighbors. And for three days the magnates of Britannia had countered that the danger from which the mercenaries had been hired to protect them was past, and it was foolishness to maintain an army when there was no enemy. And throughout it all Hengest, Vitalinus’s magister militum, stood at his master’s right hand and said nothing at all.

  Ambros turned his back on the city and kept walking. From above, the musical “ke-ar” of a hawk came drifting down on the wind. He peered upward, shading his eyes with one hand, and glimpsed a tiny speck against the blue. From such a height the doings of men must seem without significance, he told himself. And yet the hawk’s sharp eyes caught the tiniest movements of the small scurrying creatures that moved through the grass. Is that how the gods see us? he wondered. It was an uncomfortable thought, and he moved on.

  Presently, over the gentle murmur of the stream he heard a musical “tink, tink.” In another moment a shift in the wind brought him the scent of charcoal and scorched metal, and he knew he was nearing a forge.

  The noise grew louder. Ambros saw a path leading away from the river and followed it. Beneath an ancient oak tree stood an unhitched wagon. Nearby, the cart-horse was cropping the grass, while the smith, barrel-chested and bandylegged, with arms like gnarled trees, hammered at a horseshoe for a dappled mare. He was a freedman, Ambros saw from the Phrygian cap he wore; probably one of those who traveled from farm to villa, plying his trade. Two more horses awaited his attention, tied to trees.

  As Ambros neared, the smith finished hammering, took the shoe from the anvil and lifted the horse’s hoof to try it, then swore softly and laid it back on the coals of the forge. As he did so, he saw Ambros watching.

  “You, boy—come give me a hand with the bellows. You look strong, and my own lad’s run off to gawk at the great ones in the town.”

  Amused, for even the Vor-Tigernus did not order him about in quite so peremptory a tone, Ambros set his hand to the work and quickly got the knack of it.

  “Fire’s like a man, you see,” said the smith, “that will die if you don’t give him air.”

  “And the iron?” asked Ambros.

  “Ah, that’s like a man too, a strong man who’s hardened and shaped by the blows life deals him. But sometimes you’ll find a piece of metal, or a man, with a hidden flaw. You strike hi
m wrong and he’ll shatter.” The horseshoe glowed a dull red when he plucked it from the fire, but the color faded quickly as he began to hammer it once more.

  “Are the best pieces the purest?” asked Ambros as the smith got the horse’s leg between his knees and set the shoe against the hoof once more. The metal was still hot enough to singe, and the boy wrinkled his nose at the scent of hot horn. This time the shoe fit, and the smith changed hammers and began to nail it down with swift, precise taps.

  “Not always.” He let go and the horse stamped, unused to the weight of the shoe. “For some things, like swords, you want to melt a little of something else, nickel, for instance, into the iron. If you forge rods whose metal is different together, the sword has the strength of all of them, not just one. Do you understand?”

  Ambros nodded, and the smith took up another shoe blank and laid it on the fire. The boy had sometimes watched the smiths who traveled with the Vor-Tigernus, but his ambiguous position in the court constrained communication. To this man, he was only a boy. Ambros applied himself to the bellows once more, watching with satisfaction as the coals began to pulse and glow.

  “You work well,” said the smith. “Have your people set you to a trade?”

  “I’m only eleven.”

  “That’s not too soon to begin, if you’re strong. What do your folk mean you to be?”

  A Man of Wisdom, thought Ambros, but that was his mother’s saying, not his own. And there were many kinds of wisdom.

  “I don’t know what metal I’m made of . . .” he answered, “or who’s to have the forging of me.” A flock of rooks flew overhead, calling raucously; he looked up to follow their flight and saw the sun disappearing behind the trees. He let go of the bellows and straightened. The work had freed him from his worries for most of the afternoon.

  “I have to go. I’m sorry—” he added, “I liked helping you.”

  “Did you?” The smith’s laughter echoed from the trees and the horses tossed their heads nervously. “Do not grieve then, for we will meet again, and when we do, perhaps you will know what you are.”