Taliesin

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.

“Is it very old?” asked Taliesin.

“Very old,” said Elphin. He glanced down at the bare place where the stone had lain. “I see why the stone fell.”

Taliesin followed his father’s gaze and saw that he was nearly standing on the long, yellow bones of a man. The weight of the stone had crushed the skull and ribcage flat, but the rest of the skeleton was intact. A golden gleam caught his eye and he knelt down and carefully brushed the soft dirt away to discover a chain made of tiny, interlocking links-a chain which had once hung around the neck of the man beneath the stone. At the end of the chain was a pendant of yellow amber with a fly trapped inside.

“What have you found, son?” asked Elphin as he knelt down beside Taliesin.

“A pendant. And look!” He pointed to the thin wrist bone. “And a bracelet as well.”

The bracelet was gold, inscribed with the same spiral and whorl designs as the standing stone around a blood-red car-nelian in the center. The bloodstone itself was carved with a figure, which could not be made out until Elphin gently freed it from the arm of the man who had worn it for so long. He rubbed the soil from the tiny grooved incisions and held it for Taliesin to see.

“The Forest Lord!” he exclaimed. He took the ornament into his hands and traced with his finger the outline of a man’s head with antlers.

Between the skeleton’s knees were shards of pottery where a vessel of some kind had broken. Beside one shoulder blade was a long flint spearhead, and just above the skull a bronze dagger, the blade corroded almost beyond recognition. The jet handle, though lined with a network of minute fractures, was still in good condition.

Taliesin stooped to retrieve the dagger and held it in his hand. He stood slowly and gazed at the stone, but it had changed: its corners were square and the designs on its face were sharp and freshly cut. The ditch forming the ring was sharp too, and deeper. A palisade of timber had been erected around the outer edge of the ditch and on every fourth stake the decaying head of a sacrificial victim, animal and human. Most of the heads were weathered, the flesh blackened and revealing white bone beneath. He could smell the death stench in the air.

He turned toward the gap in the ring and saw two pillar stones standing on either side of the gap which was the entrance into the ring. The stones were carved with niches, and in each niche reposed a human skull which had been daubed with a bold blue spiral.

As Taliesin watched, there appeared between the stone pillars a man dressed in a deerskin jerkin which reached to his knees. There were rabbitskins bound to his legs and deerskin boots on his feet. His face was a painted blue mask, and his hair was clipped very short except for a long braid which was folded and bound at the back of his head so that it stuck up like a horse’s tail. He wore a small rawhide cap with antlers attached to its crown. In one hand he carried a small blue-stained earthenware pot, in the other a skin drum.

The boy stood transfixed as the shaman stepped to the standing stone and lifted a much-frayed stick which he had dipped into the pot of woad. With this crude brush he began to paint the symbols etched into the standing stone. As he finished, another shaman, dressed and painted like die first, entered the ring, carrying a stone-tipped spear. Behind him came two others in rough skins and between them a third, whose wrists were bound with a wide strap of braided leather. The bound man was naked but for the leather mask over his head and tied about his neck. The mask bore a whorled maze like the marks on the stone.

The bound man walked stiffly and was brought to stand before the stone, where the man with the horned cap waited with his twig brush. The captive stood passively while the horned man painted his chest with blue spirals and then was made to stand with his back to the stone. A rope of braided leather was passed between his wrists and then thrown over the top of the stone. One of the men pulled the rope, jerking the bound man’s arms over his head.

The horned one picked up his drum and began beating it with a striker of carven bone-slowly at first and rhythmically but with ever-increasing speed. He chanted in a wild voice and the captive man began to writhe. The drum beat faster, the chant grew wilder. The second shaman stood close by and suddenly, as if pricked into motion, whirled around once, twice, bringing the flint-tipped spear up over his head where it posed for an instant before plunging it into the side of the victim.

Blood spurted from the wound and the man jerked away from the spear point, only to have it thrust again, deeper and held while he twitched in agony. When he stopped moving, the rope was released; his arms fell slack. He sagged against the stone as his lifeblood gushed out upon the ground.

“No!” screamed Taliesin, horrified.

The dying man took a faltering step and then another. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees, doubled over his wound and toppled onto his side, where he thrashed feebly for a moment-all of this under the intense, rapturous gaze of the homed shaman.

The victim struggled to rise once more and then lay still, his blood already thickening as it oozed from the hideous gash in his side. No sooner was the man dead than the second horned figure leaped upon the body, tearing off the leather mask. With his bronze dagger he carved off the man’s head and placed it upon the standing stone where its wide, staring eyes gazed blankly skyward.

The two horned men conferred briefly while the others lifted the corpse and laid it lengthwise before the stone. When this was done, the first horned man gathered up his drum and pot and strode from the circle.

“Taliesin!” The boy heard someone call his name and felt his arm being shaken. “Taliesin!”

He turned and looked at his father. Elphin’s worried face came slowly into focus, and the strange men, their hapless victim, and lastly the wooden palisade faded, dissolving into the air.

“What is it, son? You have gone gray as death.” Elphin gripped the boy’s shoulders hard.

Taliesin raised a hand to his head. “Put it back,” he murmured and then started, staring at his father with wild-eyed fear. “Put it back! Put the stone back!”

“Very well,” said Elphin slowly. “We will put it back.” He straightened and gazed back at the yellow bones in the uncovered grave. “Not everything that is found should stay found; some things are better lost and forgotten.”

They worked at lowering the stone, which was only slightly less difficult than lifting it had been. All the while, Taliesin felt the oppressive atmosphere of the place as a stubborn force that resisted their efforts. But they wrestled and worked and the stone slowly gave way, sighing as it toppled back to its resting-place.

Only when the stone was once again put down did Taliesin breathe easier. “It was not the stone,” explained Taliesin. “The Horned One wanted me to renew the sacrifices to him.” He shuddered and glanced fearfully at his father. “That would be wrong.”

Elphin nodded and took a last look around. “This is an unhappy place. I feel it too and have had enough. Let us go from here.”

They returned through the woods the way they had come and eventually reached the stream. Their horses stood drowsing in the late afternoon light, and the dogs were curled at their feet, heads on paws. The hounds jumped up and began barking excitedly when they saw Elphin and Taliesin splashing across the stream.

“We must ride hard to reach the caer before dusk,” observed Elphin as he climbed into the saddle. “We were in that circle far longer than it seemed. Ready?”

“Ready,” answered Taliesin, resisting the powerful urge to take a last backward glance toward the forest. They snapped their reins and galloped away.