Gwenllian sat for a long time with eyes closed, weeping inwardly. I wanted nothing more than to slink away, to flee her presence so that I would not have to hear more of her pronouncements. But she opened her eyes and held me with her mournful gaze.
“Banfáith,” I said, my own heart troubled with the torment of her terrible vision, “I know nothing of this Hero Feat, or how it may be accomplished. It seems to me a task more befitting a bard. Yet, what may be done, that I will do. Only tell me one thing more. How is the Cythrawl to be defeated?”
“Before the Cythrawl can be conquered, the Song must be restored.”
“This song of which you speak—am I to know it?”
The wise Banfáith regarded me sadly, solemnly. “No one knows the Song, save the Phantarch alone. For it is the chief treasure of this worlds-realm and not to be despoiled by small-souled creatures or unworthy servants. Before the sun and moon and stars were set in their unchanging courses, before living creatures drew breath, from before the beginning of all that is or will be, the Song was sung. You have asked me to name the Song. Very well, know you this: it is the Song of Albion.”
23
THE DAY OF STRIFE
I did not sleep that night. And I did not return to the hall. I stalked the cliffs above the restless water in the dark, little caring whether I struck my foot and plunged headlong to my death on the sea crags below. Then let the Dagda choose someone else. I wanted no part of it.
I stomped along the clifftops for a long time—anxious, fearful, tormented by the prophecy the Banfáith had given me, and angry at Tegid’s goading. So I stormed the coast track, cursing to the wind and shouting my defiance to the surging sea. In the end, I perched myself on a rock overlooking the tide-washed shingle and settled to watch the sun rise. That was where Goewyn found me, watching the pearly sunlight seep into the sky and stain the sea with blood. She came so quietly to stand behind me that I did not hear her. I simply knew that she was there, and then I felt her warm fingers on my neck.
She stood for some time without speaking, pressing her body against my back, stroking my hair and neck. At last she said, “Tegid tells me you must leave.”
“He is determined,” I muttered morosely. “Determined to get us frozen to death and drowned.”
“Sollen is not begun in force. You may yet sail with some assurance.” She stepped around beside me and settled next to me on my cold rock.
“Nothing is assured,” I muttered. “Nothing ever stays the same.”
She leaned against me, resting her head lightly on my shoulder. “So gloomy,” she sighed. “Yet you are strong, and life is yours for the taking. Why think the worst?”
Because the worst and the inevitable are often one and the same, I considered. But I did not want to provoke Goewyn, who was only trying to cheer me, so I said nothing, and we listened to the waves churn the pebbles on the strand. Four white gulls sailed low across the water, their wingtips touching the waves.
“When a bard like Ollathir dies,” she said after a time, as if we had been discussing the subject at length, “he must breathe his awen into another, so that it will not be lost. Once lost, the awen is never recovered, and its light passes out of the world forever.”
“Yes, and what else did Tegid tell you?” I snapped, regretting the remark at once.
“Tegid would have given his life to save Ollathir,” Goewyn continued, ignoring my rudeness. “But it was not to be. Yet when the time came, you were with him to receive the Chief Bard’s awen.”
The awen . . . so that was on Tegid’s mind as well. The awen, I knew, is considered the source of a bard’s insight, the all-inspiring spirit of his art. It is that which nourishes, clothes, and shelters the people of his tribe. The awen is the breath of the Dagda which guides and instructs, and which sets a bard apart from other men.
“But why give it to me?” I demanded, my anger flaring again. “I am no bard! I do not want it. I cannot use it.”
“It was given to you because you were there,” Goewyn soothed.
“And I would give it to Tegid if I could,” I declared sharply. “I want no part of it!”
I felt her hand on my cheek as she turned my face to hers. “You have been chosen for great things,” she said, and although she spoke lightly her tone was edged with an iron conviction.
“You have been talking to Gwenllian too.” I turned my face away.
“I know nothing of what Gwenllian has told you. But it does not take a Banfáith’s vision to see it. When Tegid returned with you in the boat, I thought you dead. But one look, and I saw the hero light on you—and I knew that the Dagda had covered you with his hand.”
“I never asked for it,” I muttered bitterly. “I never wanted any of this!” I looked toward the rising sun. Already, the day’s fresh light was fading behind black clouds, and the wind was lashing the waves to froth. Soon Tegid and I would set forth on that cold sea to return to Sycharth, and I would never see Ynys Sci again.
As if reading my thoughts, Goewyn replied. “The future is reached by many pathways. Who is to say where our ways may meet?”
We sat for a while longer, and then she departed, withdrawing quietly, leaving me to my selfish misery.
The boat that had borne us to Scatha’s island was small. Without a pilot and crew, we would not have been able to handle a larger boat. So the small sturdy craft served us well, where another would have foundered in the Sollen swell. Indeed, our little black boat rode the wind-driven waves like a feather.
Still, it is tempting disaster to trust too much in the fickle and inconstant Sollen weather. One moment the sun can be warm and shining, the next an icy northern blast is slicing through your winter wool and freezing your flesh. We knew that we could not reach Sycharth by boat, though that would have been much the quickest way. Tegid was not intent on suicide; he only thought to reach the harbor at Ffim Ffaller where we could obtain horses and provisions to continue our journey overland. Or, failing that, to put in at Ynys Oer and make our way to the mainland from there—much the slowest way.
The weather was not a friend to us. The second day out, a storm swept down from the north, and we were forced to take refuge in a sheltered bay on the rock-bound coast of the mainland. We found a cave in the cliffside and managed to gather enough driftwood to make a fire. The cave was home to us for five endless days while we waited for the wild wind to exhaust itself.
The evening of the fifth day the wind fell, and as the moon rose we put to sea once more. The air was cold, but the sky clear and bright. Tegid had no trouble steering by the stars and by the softly silvered coastline. We sailed through the night, and through all the next day, and the next—taking it in turn to sleep.
My hand on the tiller was not expert, but I could spell Tegid long enough for him to rest and sleep. Nearly frozen by the constant lash of the wind and froth-churned waves, and almost out of food, we made for the western coast of Ynys Oer. I was not sorry to leave the boat and put steady land beneath my feet once more.
Our horses were put up in a dingle, where Tegid had left them to fend for themselves. They might have stayed there without harm through the season, for the steep sides of the dingle kept all but the foulest wind and rain away, and the grass grew thick on the valley floor. We stayed the night in the stone hut on the western shore—in sight of Ynys Bàinail and its sacred pillar-stone which now marked the place where Ollathir lay buried in his grave.
“I could not carry both of you down from the White Rock,” Tegid explained. “As you had slightly more life left in you than Ollathir, I heaped the stones over his body and brought you to Ynys Sci.”
“For that I am grateful, Tegid. You took a great risk. It could have been no easy journey.”
“Far less risk than you took in facing the Cythrawl,” he replied frankly. “I could in nowise leave you there, brother.”
At dawn the next morning, we fetched the horses from their hidden glen. I say “dawn,” although we did not see the sun that day, no
r for many dark days to follow. Rain and wind whipped the coast; icy mist sheathed the high hills and filled the glens. We rode across the island in a misery of drizzle; wretched, cold, wet to the skin. We reached the eastern shore and paused to look at the expanse of gray, choppy water separating Ynys Oer from the mainland.
“What now?” I asked, gauging the narrow distance between the two shores.
“The farmers on the mainland swim their cattle to summer pastures on the island. And those on the island swim them to market on the other side.”
“It sounds a wet undertaking.”
“We cannot become more wet than we are,” Tegid pointed out. Water dripped from us with every movement; our clothing lay heavy and sodden on our backs; our limbs were stiff from holding them close to our bodies.
“Then let us be done with it,” I said, watching a sharp wind whip the wavetops. “The sooner we are on the other side, the sooner we will have a fire.”
I knew the water would be cold, I just did not imagine it could be that cold. The distance was not far, and our horses swam well—but we nearly froze to death just the same.
We dragged ourselves out of the surf and across the beach, the wind slashing viciously through our sopping clothes. Behind the dunes we escaped the worst of the wind. Tegid knew where to find kindling and brush among the sandy hollows; much of it was wet, but it burned readily at Tegid’s practiced touch. The Derwyddi know many secrets of earth and air and fire and water. I believe he willed the fire to catch by sheer enchantment. I know I could not have coaxed those few scant, soggy branches to burn.
“Take off your clothes,” Tegid said, as the fire began to burn brightly. We had found a deep pocket between two dunes. It seemed utter madness to shed our clothing in that cold, but it was the only way to get warm.
We spread our clothing on surrounding sedge clumps and sea willow, and sat as close to the fire as prudence allowed. Even the horses edged as near as their fear would allow, drawn by the warmth.
Tegid fed the fire with twisted bundles of dry grass and blackthorn brush, keeping the flames alive. “When our cloaks have dried,” he said, as I held a pair of thick woolen leggings before the flames, turning them to dry them more quickly, “we will ride inland.”
I did not reply; there was more coming, and I could wait. In a little while he continued. “There will be game in the forest. We can hunt along the way. In a few days we will reach the Tyn Water and follow it south as far as Aber Llydan. From there it is only three or four days to Llwyddi land, and only a few more before we come to Nant Modornn. We will follow the river to Sycharth.”
He made it sound as if we would be home and dry in no time at all. In fact, we were to spend many and many a frigid Sollen night on the trail and untold Sollen days along the cold empty trackways of Caledon. Snow had settled heavy and deep on the high hilltops before ever we came within sight of the Modornn valley.
Besides the cold, there was hunger. Hunting was poor, and we could not devote much time to it. Still, even when we could get nothing for ourselves, we made certain to find our mounts a mouthful or two to keep going. The cold made us lean and hard as stormblasted birches. I learned to sleep in the saddle and to find modest shelter in the most unpromising places. I learned to read a trail beneath a covering of snow. And I learned to find direction by the scent of the wind.
One day we passed Caer Modornn. The sight of the timber palisade on the hilltop above the river brought back a swift floodtide of memories. But, strange to tell, though I could remember those first glowing days of my arrival, I could not without intense effort recall much of my life before that—save in the most indefinite terms. Indeed, when compared to the intensely vivid life I knew in Albion, my life before coming to the Otherworld seemed almost unutterably remote and insignificant, little more than a vague pantomime acted out in a dim, colorless, half-light. That I could not remember did not concern me in the least, however. I thought it curious, yet felt no sense of loss. Clearly, I had the best of the bargain. I was content.
We went up to Caer Modornn for the food cached there: grain and fodder for the horses, dried meat and ale in sealed jars for Tegid and myself. Firewood had been stored in the caer as well, so we stayed one night in the fortress, more for the warmth than the rest—though both were equally welcome.
Next day we proceeded on our way. Still weary, still stiff with cold, and whipped by every wind that bawled down the soggy vale, we journeyed on in better heart, for we were in known lands and the end—though still far off—could be seen.
We followed the wide Vale of Modornn, keeping close to the ice-edged river until we came to the marshland. There we turned from the river way in favor of firmer footing on the wooded trail. Two damp, drizzly days later, a little before sunset, we reached Sycharth.
“There is no smoke,” Tegid observed. Weary from our long sojourn, we had paused to rest before continuing to the caer.
I scanned the sky above the caer. The clouds had cleared at the last of day, leaving the sky a frail blue—against which it would have been easy to see the white smoke smudge from the king’s great hearthfire and from those of the kitchens and lesser hearths as well. But there was no smoke, and therefore no warming fire.
What can it mean? I wondered. I could think of no good reason that we should have come all this way to face a cold hearth and a cheerless welcome.
“Something is wrong.” Tegid urged his horse to speed and hastened down the hillside into the glen separating us from the hill on which stood the caer.
I admit my own heart pricked with apprehension as the hooves of our horses pounded across the valley floor, drumming on the frozen earth, hastening toward the silent caer. But even before we passed along the narrow palisade and entered the wide-flung gates, I knew that Sycharth was abandoned. One glimpse of the charred remains of the Great King’s hall confirmed our worst fears: Meldryn Mawr’s fine fortress was a burned-out ruin.
The Day of Strife had dawned.
24
TWRCH
Deserted by the living, peopled only by the dead who lay unmourned and unburied amidst the destruction, once-proud Sycharth stood as a pillaged tomb—cold and desolate, broken. The mighty stronghold appeared itself a corpse, forsaken and forbidding.
The eye met atrocity at every glance: women bludgeoned to death still clutching their frozen babes to their breasts; children with hands and feet cut off and left to bleed; dogs and warriors decapitated and their heads switched; cattle roasted alive in their pens; sheep slaughtered and their entrails pulled out to bind and then strangle their herdsmen . . . Everywhere the marks of fire, filth, blood, and outrage.
The stink of death permeated the misty air, just as the thickened blood stained the rain-sodden ground. Tegid and I lurched from one abomination to the next in dazed disbelief. Bile bitter in our mouths, sick and numb, we muttered ever and again the same two questions: How could this have happened? Who could have done such a thing?
Still more mysterious to us was the absence of any sign of battle. For we did not find the king or his war band, although we made a thorough search of all that remained of the hall and the royal quarters. Aside from those few warriors struck down outside the hall, we discovered none of the battle host. By this we presumed that the king had fled the fight with his war band virtually intact, or else that he was away when destruction overtook his stronghold, and perhaps even now did not know it.
Any suggestion that the king had fled the fight, Tegid considered repugnant. “He would sooner cut out his own heart,” Tegid murmured darkly. “He would sooner be food for ravens than see his people slaughtered like pigs and his fortress laid waste. Nor would he allow himself to be captured while he drew breath.”
We stared dismally at the devastation. There was no telling when it had happened. The cold and snow preserved the bodies as they had fallen. If the king and his war band had been there, we would have seen them.
“He must have departed before the destruction took place,” I said. Th
is seemed equally unlikely. Yet there seemed no other explanation.
“Meldryn Mawr is not here.”
Surely the Great King must have been absent when disaster fell upon Sycharth. But in the season of ice, when all the worlds retreat inward, what would induce him to leave? “Where would he go?” I wondered aloud.
“I do not know, brother,” Tegid answered ruefully. “We will not find the answer here, I think.”
“Where else, then?”
“We will go to the settlements and holdings round about. We will ride the circuit of the land and see what may be found.”
We left the caer. Stupid with grief and sick with dread, eyes staring, hands shaking, we mounted our horses and rode directly to the king’s harborage on the nearby Muir Glain estuary. We rode fast to outrace the fading light and reached the shipyard in the dim twilight, as dark clouds closed overhead.
We did not even bother to dismount but sat in our saddles and scanned the wreckage: ships burned to the waterline, every sail and mast destroyed, every hull stove in.
The sheds and houses had been torched, and with them the stacked timber. Even the earthen banks of the sea mouth were burnt and blackened. Nothing escaped. The destruction was utter and complete. All was charcoal and ashes. “It must have burned for days,” Tegid muttered. “The blaze would have been visible halfway to Ynys Sci.”
Our horses jittered nervously, blowing and stamping, as we searched here and there with our eyes for any sign of survival. I touched my weapons—carefully wrapped against the weather, but close to hand—grimly grateful for their cold consolation.
“There is nothing here,” Tegid said at last. “We will go on.”
Night overwhelmed us as we struck off across the wooded hills—a longer way to go, but we could not traverse the marshlands in the dark. So we took the hill track, riding the ridgeways and hunting runs which joined Sycharth with neighboring settlements. As we approached the first stronghold, the cloud cover thinned somewhat and the moon shone briefly; not long, but enough to see the settlement: black against the blacker hills beyond the river.