Taliesin: Book One of the Pendragon Cycle

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  The second attacker drew his knife and ran toward her. Charis waited until he was too close to dodge away and then simply lifted her legs, planting her feet firmly against the man's chest. Momentum impelled him forward and lifted Charis into the air. She swung up and over the man holding her, as lightly as if she had been tossed by one of the bulls. The two assailants collided, and one of them dropped to the ground with a knife wound in his side.

  She was free once more, but the remaining two had caught up and, together with the one wielding the knife, were advancing slowly toward her, swords drawn. The pain in her back was fierce, the muscles stiffening. Her cheek and jaw throbbed and her vision wavered.

  The three circled around her and Charis faced them, allowing them to ready themselves for their assault; she already knew what she would do. When they rushed upon her, she leaped forward into the downward slope of the hill and rolled, swiping the feet of one of her attackers from under him as she passed.

  A heartbeat later she had found her feet and was flying down the side of the hill. She reached the bottom and fell headlong onto the turf, tried to rise, but the movement sent black waves of nausea through her. She heard footsteps pounding toward her and twisted on the ground to meet her attackers for the last time.

  They were standing on the hillside above her, staring, not at her but beyond her. She swiveled her head and saw a line of horsemen sweeping over the turf. There is no escape, she thought. Not from men on horseback.

  The three on the hillside above her cried out, and the next thing Charis knew there were horses racing by her and voices shouting. But all this was happening a long, long way off and no longer concerned her. She lay her head down against the grass and let the pain take her. A dark pall of smoke hung between earth and sky, dispersing on the breeze. Charis felt her own cloudy consciousness dispersing as well and closed her eyes.

  * * *

  The sun was bright and hot on her face and Charis awoke. There were arms around her and a face hovering over her. "I am thirsty," she said and a moment later a cup was pressed to her lips. She drank the cool water, looked at the face once more, and recognized it. "Kian!"

  "The men were worried," he said lightly. "They thought they would not get the chance to thank their deliverer." He smiled and gave a laugh that was mostly relief. "I told them they did not know my sister if they thought any army of Seithenin's could get the best of her. Lucky for those butchers we got here when we did."

  "Kian, I—"

  "Just lie back. Where are you hurt?"

  "My back—an old injury," she said and tried to smile.

  "Can you ride?"

  She shook her head, which started the dizziness again. "I doubt that I can."

  Kian called to one of his men, who nodded and hurried away. "There will be a carriage here soon," he told her and lay her gently back down. "Rest now."

  "I need to talk to you."

  "Later."

  "No, now."

  Kian tugged on the leather strap at his chin and removed the plumed helmet as he settled himself beside her. She saw the long dark curls spilling over his collar and the jut of his taut jaw; she might have been seeing Avallach. "What were you doing out here—besides saving our lives?"

  "Waiting for you."

  "You knew we would be coming this way?"

  "The Lia Fail—I had Annubi look."

  He accepted this but asked, "Why?"

  "I had to see you, to talk to you. I knew nothing about the ambush—Annubi did not see that."

  "We would not have seen it either if not for your warning." He smiled again, with pleasure this time. "Little Charis, I never thought to see you again. Seven years and no word…nothing…and then here you are…What was so important that you had to take on Seithenin's best in order to talk to me?"

  He had asked the question and now she did not know how to tell him what she had come to say. Words were frail, clumsy vessels, incapable of conveying the truth of what she knew.

  "I need your help, Kian. You are the only one I can trust to listen to me,"

  "I am listening."

  "Kian, there is not much time," she said and then it all came in a rush. "We have to be ready—it is ending…All this, this war is meaningless. We have to get ready …It is over, Kian. We have to—"

  He stopped her. "Wait a moment. Get ready for what? What is ending?"

  She hesitated, then spread her hand to indicate all around them. "Our world, Kian. Atlantis; it is going to be destroyed. Very, very soon. We have to get ready."

  He stared at her for a moment. "If everything is going to be destroyed," he said slowly, "will it matter very much whether we are ready or not?"

  "To leave, I mean. We have to be ready to leave."

  He shrugged and smiled placidly. "Where would we go?"

  "You do not believe me."

  "I have heard these rumors before, Charis. I am surprised you believe them yourself."

  "It is no rumor, Kian. Would I risk my life to come to you for some rumor I had heard in the fish market?"

  "Why come to me at all? I am not the king."

  "You know very well why. Father is in no condition to discuss anything. That woman keeps him drugged and half out of his head."

  "You think so?"

  "Are you blind too? Of course she does—but that is not why I came." She moved to get up, and the pain took her breath away.

  "Easy," Kian soothed. "Lie back until the carriage comes."

  "Why? What do you care? I am wasting time here."

  "If I agree to give you ships—"

  "Give me? Do you think to shut me up by humoring me? Give the crazy woman a couple of leaky boats and send her away—"

  "Easy, Charis. I meant nothing like that." He shrugged. "Besides, we have no ships—at least not as many as you would need."

  "Do you think you are doing this for me, Kian?"

  He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "What if I agreed? Could you prove what you are saying is true?"

  "You would believe me if I proved it to you?"

  "Only a fool doubts proof," he replied affably.

  "Then you are a fool already!" she snapped.

  "Me a fool?"

  "Yes! Only a fool demands proof of what he already knows."

  "Listen to yourself, Charis. You talk in Mage's riddles."

  "And you just open your eyes and look around, Kian. The land itself is telling you: hot winds blow out of the south by night; clouds come and go, but the rain does not fall; the villages along the coast are empty, deserted; the earth trembles beneath your feet by day, and the great crystal of the High Temple at Poseidonis is shattered. Look around you, Kian. When was the last time you saw a seabird? Think! We are near the sea—there should be flocks of seabirds. Where are they?"

  He stared at his sister for a moment and turned his face away, his jaw set.

  "You do not believe me," she said. "There is nothing I can say, no proof I can give that will make you believe, Kian, because you have already made up your mind not to believe."

  "Charis, be reasonable!" he huffed in exasperation. "Look, I have not seen you for seven years! What am I supposed to think?"

  Charis stared back in seething silence.

  "There have been earthquakes before, and dry spells, and villages deserted by war. What, in Cybel's name, are we supposed to do—go chasing who knows where every time the ground shakes a little or a few filthy gulls fly off somewhere? "

  "Annubi said you would not believe," she replied sullenly. "He said no one would."

  "Agh!" he said, tongue-tied with aggravation. He stood quickly and stalked off.

  Charis lay back. Why did I even bother? she thought. I knew it would be like this. Annubi warned me. Why did this fall to me? Why do / believe Throm? Maybe I am as mad as he is, after all.

  The carriage arrived while one of Kian's Magi worked over her, and Charis was lifted carefully and placed inside while Kian gave orders to the driver and escort. "What are you going to do now?"
she asked when he turned to say farewell.

  "I am to meet Belyn in two days' time at a place on the border between Tairn and Sarras—at Herakli."

  "Come back home with me. Talk to Father."

  He lowered his eyes. "I cannot."

  "She is killing him, Kian," Charis said softly.

  "It is what he wants!" he growled with sudden ferocity. "Has no one told you what Seithenin did?"

  "Annubi told me about the defeat."

  "It was more than a defeat—it was butchery. After it was over, Seithenin ordered those prisoners left alive stripped and bound to the bodies of their comrades—hand to hand, ankle to ankle, mouth to mouth!

  "And then the madman left them there to die like that, tied to decomposing corpses! We found the survivors three days later—three days in the hot sun! The stink was horrible; the sight was worse. Avallach had to lie there like all the rest and listen to his men scream as they thrashed on the ground in that hideous dance." Kian halted, his jaw muscles working in silence for a moment. Then he said, "They found Guistan beneath him, Charis. It weakened his mind and he has not recovered."

  Charis closed her eyes hard and bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  "Now you know," he said, and then added apologetically, "I did not mean to tell you like that."

  "Annubi said nothing of it."

  "Annubi remembers only what he wants to remember these days." He spread his hands helplessly. "Anyway, it is best if I do not go home again just yet. The last time I was there we fought."

  "Over her?"

  "She was part of it," he admitted. "I told him to get rid of her and he threw a knife at me."

  "You know he did not mean it. He would not even remember it." Charis took her brother's hand. "Come back with me."

  "If I went back, it would only happen again. Besides, I have to meet Belyn. For the first time in a very long time we have Seithenin and Nestor on the run." He flashed a quick smile. "Small, mobile mounted forces capable of striking anywhere in the kingdom—it is paying off. The ambush you spoiled was a last effort to try to keep us from closing on them." He paused. "What will you do?"

  "I cannot say." She smiled sadly and lifted her head. "Farewell, Kian." The carriage rolled away and Charis did not look back.

  EIGHT

  CORMACH STAYED AT CAER DYVI FOUR DAYS AND EACH DAY took Taliesin to the bower in the woods where they sat together and talked. Rather, Cormach talked and Taliesin listened, hearing in the old druid's words the music of the Otherworld: lilting, magical, strange, frightening, fantastic.

  On the last day Cormach settled himself on the oak stump and gazed steadily at the boy seated before him for a long time without speaking. Taliesin grew self-conscious under the old man's stare and fidgeted, pulling tufts of grass and scattering them over his feet. At last Cormach. stirred. "Yes, yes," he muttered, "it must be done." And he put his hand into his mantle and withdrew a small leather pouch, opened it, and poured into his palm five fire-browned nuts.

  "Know what these are, boy?" the Chief Druid asked.

  "Hazelnuts, Master," Taliesin answered.

  "Yes, they were—once. They are Kernels of Knowledge, Taliesin, Seeds of Wisdom. They are useful in their way. Would you like to taste one?"

  "I would if you want me to."

  "It is not for me, Taliesin," answered Cormach, who paused and then added more truthfully, "Well, maybe it is. But it is not from idle curiosity, lad. Never that…"He fell silent again, staring. This time Taliesin felt that he was not staring at him but through him, at some other presence—one of the Ancient Ones perhaps.

  "…never curiosity, boy, remember that," Cormach said, as if he had been speaking all the while. He lowered his eyes to his hand and looked at the hazelnuts. "These are the last I shall need," he said, choosing. "Take it, Taliesin. Eat it."

  The boy took the hazelnut and put it in his mouth. It had a slightly burned taste but was not disagreeable. He chewed slowly and looked around, trying to discern whether the nut itself had special properties. There were none, so far as he could tell.

  "Now then, lad, do you know what an awen is?" asked the druid.

  "I do, Master," Taliesin replied. "It is the place a bard goes in his heart. Hafgan says it is the gateway to the Otherworld."

  "Good, good." Cormach nodded to himself. "Would you like to discover that gateway for yourself, Taliesin?" The boy nodded. "Very well, just close your eyes and listen to me."

  Taliesin did close his eyes but found listening very difficult indeed. The Chief Druid began singing softly and although Taliesin tried to follow along, his attention kept lapsing, drifting off to other things, and he soon lost the thread of the song altogether. Cormach's words droned in his ears and Taliesin tried to concentrate, but the old druid's song had become an unintelligible tangle of meaningless syllables. For it seemed as if he had closed his eyes on one world and opened them onto another—a world very like the ordinary one, yet distinctly different.

  There were the familiar trees, grass, and shrubs of the natural world, but the sky shone with a luminous bronze color, as if the only light in this world came not from the fiery orb of the sun, but from the sky itself or some great, obscure source behind it so that illumination reached this strange world dimly diffused, as rushlight through the glowing cloth of a tent.

  He looked closer and saw that the trees themselves and even the blades of grass radiated this unearthly light. The air of this place—if it could be called air, for the atmosphere was dense and turgid, more like transparent fog—was also faintly luminous, so that it seemed as if the land were wrapped in a shining mist. The air trembled ever so lightly with the sound of eerily exotic music, bright and flowing like the music of shepherd's pipes, though purer, finer, and changeable as water. This music apparently emanated from the growing, living things around about, for there was no human creature or being near that Taliesin could see.

  Away in the distance, across a wide and rolling plain, there were mountains whose tops were lost in the glowing sky. And the notion came to Taliesin that he had only to lift his foot and start toward them and he would be instantly transported across the plain and onto those faraway slopes. There would be caves in those mountains with passages leading down, down, down into the darksome underworld. But Taliesin did not lift his foot and did not travel to the mountains; instead he turned and saw a stream winding among the trees to a forest pool a short distance away.

  The turf was springy underfoot, as if the grass resisted his footfall; he glanced behind him to see that his feet left no normal imprint upon the earth, though a slight glimmer outlined each step. He followed the stream to the pool and knelt in the bracken at the water's edge where the stream entered the pool. Here he gazed into the crystalline water as it flowed over smooth-polished stones that shone like smoked amber. And there, just beneath the surface of the gliding water, he saw a woman, asleep among the long, flowing strands of green horsetail.

  She was dressed in a white garment that shimmered as the water rippled over it. Her hair, golden like his own, was long, with two shorter braids at her temples and the rest streaming and waving in a golden halo around her head as if a gentle breeze, not water, were passing through it. Her skin was fine ivory, her lips red and slightly parted so that he could glimpse her pearl-bright teeth, perfectly formed. Her eyes were closed; dark lashes lightly brushed her cheeks; and judging from the soft orbits of their sockets, her eyes, when awake, would be large and, like her other features which were shaped with such grace and symmetry, unutterably beautiful.

  Her long, exquisite hands were folded over her breast where she held, lightly clasped, a gleaming sword whose gemmed hilt rested just beneath her chin. The long, tapering blade was chased with odd symbols and a strange inscription Taliesin could not decipher. It wavered in the play of water and light over its keen surface, which to Taliesin indicated that it was in some way alive.

  Taliesin was not astonished to see this woman asleep beneath the rippling surface of the poo
l; rather, he was pleased, awed. And he was glad that she was sleeping, for he could not otherwise have stared at her with such audacity.

  In looking, he experienced a longing to know and be known by this mysterious and beautiful woman, to lose himself in her presence. In all, a strange sensation, and one which the young Taliesin did not understand but identified as belonging to that other, older part of himself. Overcome by the confusion caused by the intensity of these feelings, he rose and, letting his eyes linger over her comely form a last time, turned away.

  He raised his eyes and looked across the pool to see a man standing among the cattails and marsh fern on the opposite shore, watching him. The man wore a deerskin hood and a cloak of glistening bristles, which Taliesin thought very strange until he realized the bristles were feathers.

  The deerskin hood hid the man's face and the marsh fern the lower half of his body; yet Taliesin imagined that he knew this man, or would know him if he could but see the hidden face. As if in answer to this thought, the man raised a gloved hand to the hood and pushed it back, revealing his face. Although Taliesin stared intently, he could not discern the man's appearance, for the man had no face at all, merely the impression of a face where his features should be.

  And where the eyes would have been, a midnight sky full of stars endlessly circled a hill crowned by an ancient ring of standing stones.

  Taliesin thought to call out to the man, to approach and bow down before him, for the man was certainly a figure to be revered. But when he raised his hand to hail him, the feather-cloaked watcher vanished.

  Following the stream back to the place where he had awakened, Taliesin emerged from the grove to see an apple tree standing in the center of the clearing where he himself had stood. The apples were great, golden globes among pale green clusters of leaves. Taliesin stepped forward and picked one of the apples; it filled the whole of his hand. His mouth watered as he looked at the flawless skin, imagining the white, tart-sweet flesh inside. He raised it to his mouth.