The Endless Knot

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “The Men of the Serpent,” Tegid said, indicating the warriors.

  “Do you know of them?”

  “Their tale is remembered among the Derwyddi but, like the song of Tir Aflan, we do not sing it.” I thought he would not say more but, gazing at the cauldron, he continued, “It is said that the Serpent awoke and with a mighty war host subdued the land. When there were no more enemies to conquer, the Serpent Men fell into disputes and warring among themselves. They destroyed all they had built, and when the last of them died, the Serpent crawled back into the underworld to sleep until awakened again.”

  “What awakens it?” I asked.

  “Very great evil,” was his only reply.

  Strewn about the room were objects of everyday use: more cups and bowls; many short, bone-handled swords fused to their scabbards; a few round shields; a collection of small pots, flasks, and boxes carved of a soft reddish stone—all of them empty; several long, curved spoon-shaped ladles and long-handled forks for getting meat and broth from the cauldron; numerous axeheads; knives of various sizes; a mask of bronze showing the glowering face of a bearded warrior with a great flowing moustache, elaborately curled hair, and a serpent helmet on his head, his mouth open in full cry; four very tall lampstands, one in each corner, bearing stone-carved oil lamps.

  Underneath one of the shields, Emyr found a curious object—a circlet of small shieldlike discs linked together around a protruding conical horn. Turning it this way and that, he announced, “I think it is a crown.” Like most of the other objects we had seen, it was made of bronze and, when he put it on his head, it was shown to have been made for a much larger head.

  “Mo anam,” muttered Cynan, trying the crown himself, “but these serpent men were giants.”

  “Look at this!” called Garanaw, holding his torch to the far wall.

  We crossed to where he stood and saw a painting on the wall. It was well done, and no doubt brightly colored at one time. And though the colors had faded to an almost uniform gray-brown, leering out at us was the face of a serpent man, fleshy lips curved in a mocking smile, pale reptilian eyes staring with frozen mirth, his mouth open and forked tongue extended. A mass of coiled curls wreathed the face, and below the chin it was still possible to make out the winged torso and a raised hand grasping a black serpent that coiled around the arm.

  We turned from the painting, and Niall called our attention to an iron ladder set in a recess of one wall. The ladder rose through the stone ceiling to the roof above. He climbed it and then called down for us to follow. There was nothing on the roof, but the view was breathtaking. Looking to the south, far below us in the riverbed among the fallen columns, lay our camp, men and horses gathered near the gray thread of moving water.

  To the west rose the gigantic hump of the mound, its top lost in the low-hanging cloud, and to the east only the river flowing on between its rockbound bluffs. To the north, behind the high stone wall stretching away to the east and west, lay an endless series of low, snow-covered hills, rising and falling like white sea waves in a frozen ocean.

  The size and emptiness of the landscape, like that of the dark tower and its objects, made us feel small and weak and foolish for trespassing where we did not belong. I scanned the rolling hillscape for any sign of habitation, but saw neither smoke nor any trail by which we might go. “What do you think, bard?” I asked Tegid, who stood beside me.

  “I think we should leave this place to its dire memories,” he answered.

  “I am all for it, but where do we go from here?”

  “East,” he replied without hesitation.

  “Why east? Why not south or west?”

  “Because east is where we will find Goewyn.”

  This intrigued me. “How do you know?”

  “Do you remember when Meldron cast us adrift?”

  “Mutilated and left to die in an open boat—could I ever forget it?”

  “In exchange for my eyes, I was given a vision.” He made it sound as if he had merely traded one pair of breecs for another.

  “I remember. You sang it in a song.”

  “Do you remember the vision?”

  “Vaguely,” I said.

  “I remember it.” He closed his eyes as if he would see it anew. He began to sing, and I listened, recalling the terrible night that vision had been given.

  Softly, so that only I would hear, Tegid sang of a steep-sided glen, and a fortress on a shining lake. He sang of an antler throne adorned with white oxhide and established high on a grass-covered mound. He sang of a burnished shield with the black raven perched on its rim, wings outspread, raising its raucous song to heaven. He sang of a beacon fire flaming the night sky, its signal answered from hilltop to hilltop. He sang of a shadowy rider on a pale yellow horse, riding out of the mist that bound them; the horses’ hooves striking sparks from the rocks. He sang of a great war band bathing in a mountain lake, the water blushing red from their wounds. He sang of a golden-haired woman in a sunlit bower and a hidden Hero Mound.

  Some things I recognized: Druim Vran, Dinas Dwr, my antler throne; the golden-haired woman in the bower was Goewyn on our wedding day. But other things I did not know at all.

  When he had finished, his eyes flicked open again and he said, “This land has a part in my vision. I did not know it before coming here to this tower.”

  “You mentioned no tower in your vision—was there a tower?”

  “No,” he confessed, “but this is the land. I know it by the feel and taste and smell.” His dark eyes scanned the far hills, rising and falling one behind another to the edge of sight and beyond. “In this worlds-realm a mighty work waits to be accomplished.”

  “The only mighty work I care about is rescuing Goewyn before—” I broke off abruptly. The others were not listening, but they were close by.

  “Before the child is born,” Tegid finished the thought for me.

  “Before anything happens to either of them.”

  “We will journey in hope and trust the Swift Sure Hand to guide us.”

  “A little guidance would not go amiss right now,” I confessed, gazing out at the trackless waste of hills and empty sky.

  “Llew,” he said, “we have ever been led.”

  We left the roof, retreating back through the tower to the gate. Tegid advised us to close the door, so we rolled the stone back to its place. Then we climbed down the bluff to rejoin our waiting war band. We showed them the coins we had found, and they wanted to go back up and get the rest, but Tegid would not allow it. He said further disturbance would not be welcome.

  They let it go at that. The tower had a dolorous air, and even those who had not been inside felt the oppressive sadness of the place. Besides, it was already getting dark and no one wanted to risk being caught outside the fire ring after nightfall.

  That night we listened to the plaintive cry of the wind tearing itself on the broken stones of the wall on the bluffs high above. I slept ill, my dreams filled with winged serpents and bronze-clad men.

  Twice I wakened and rose to look at the tower—a brooding black bulk against a blacker sky. It seemed to be watching us, perched on its high rock like a preying bird, waiting to unfold its wings of darkness and swoop upon us. I was not the only one bothered by bad dreams; the horses jigged and jittered all night long, and once one of the men cried out in his sleep.

  We continued on our way the next day, listening to the wind hiss and moan through the valley. The snow fell steadily and drifted around our feet; we pulled our cloaks over our heads, bundled our saddle fleeces around our shoulders for warmth, and slogged through the weary day. The scenery altered slightly, but never really changed— always when I lifted my head there were the sheer bluffs and the wall looming ragged and dark above.

  For five days it was the same—cold and snow and deep starless nights filled with wailing wind and morbid dreams. We struggled through each day, riding and walking by turns, shuddering with cold, and huddling as close as possible to the fires at
night. And then, as the sixth day neared its end, we saw that the bluffs had begun to sink lower and the river to spread as the valley opened. Two days later we came to a place where the bluff ended and the wall turned to continue its solitary journey north over the endless hills. Rising before us was the dark bristling line of a forest.

  Seeing it, like a massive battle host arrayed on the horizon, my spirit quailed within me. Tir Aflan was a wasteland vast beyond reckoning. Where was Goewyn? How could we ever find her in this wilderness?

  “Listen, bard, are you sure this is the way?” I demanded of Tegid when we stopped to water the horses. We had left the wall behind and were drawing near the leading edge of the forest, but there was still no clear sign that we were going in the right direction.

  Tegid did not reply at once, and did not look at me when he did. “The forest you see before us is older than Albion,” he said, his dark eyes scanning the treeline as he rolled his ashwood staff between his palms.

  “Did you hear me?” I demanded. “Is this the way we are to go?”

  “Before men walked on Albion’s fair shores, this forest was already ancient. Among the Learned it is said that all the world’s forests are but seedlings to these trees.”

  “Fascinating. But what I want to know is, do you have even the haziest notion of where we are going?”

  “We are going into the forest,” he answered. “In the forest of the night, we all find what we seek—or it finds us.”

  Bards!

  25

  THE FOREST OF THE NIGHT

  Taking the river as our only guide, we passed into the forest. The snow, which had drifted deep in the exposed valley, was but scant under the trees. And such trees!

  There were trees of every kind: along the river were stands of silver birch, willows of various types, thickets of elder, blackthorn, hawthorn, hazel, and holly; and on the broad meads stood great groves of oak, chestnut, hornbeam, lime, elm, sycamore, plane, walnut, ash, larch, and others; on the high ground there were evergreens: fir and pine and spruce in abundance, as well as cedar and yew. Lichen and moss flourished, making every trunk and branch look as if someone had slathered it in thick, gray-green plaster.

  I could well believe the forest was ancient. The moss-bound branches were bent and the trunks bowed by ages of years beyond counting, eons of accumulated leaf mold cushioned the forest floor, dry grass like wisps of unkempt hair clustered in elderly hanks around massive curving roots. The trees were old.

  And big! The river, wide and deep as it entered the forest, seemed to dwindle to the size of a mere brook beneath those massive boles. Some of the larger limbs stretched from one bank clear across to the other, arching over the river like huge arboreal snakes.

  We moved in a world of outsize proportions. And the further into the forest we penetrated, the smaller and more vulnerable we felt— shrinking in our own eyes. In the shadows of those ancient trees we were not men at all, but insects: insignificant, powerless, futile.

  Dismaying though it was to be a mere insect, more unsettling by far was the silence.

  As we entered the forest, the sound of the world beyond faded, and it diminished further with every step until we could hear nothing at all—not even the wind. No alien birdcall reached our ears, no tick of leafless branch, or creak of sagging limb. Our own footfalls were muffled in the spongy leaf mold, and the river flowed mute in its slime-slick bed.

  I was speculating whether the cold had stolen my hearing, when Cynan called out, “Mo anam, brothers! But this quiet is not natural among men of noble clans. What do we fear that we dare not raise a pleasant tune when and where we please?”

  When no one answered him, the red-haired hero began to sing, roaring out the words as if he were bending horseshoes with them. Full-throated, his head thrown back, he sang:

  Hie, up! Rise up, brave and dauntless friends!

  The sun is red on gorsey hill

  and my black hound is straining to the trail.

  Hie, up! Rise up, bold and doughty men!

  The deer do run on heathered brae,

  and my brown horse is tending to the trace.

  Hie, up! Rise up, raven-haired lady fair!

  A kiss before I join the chase,

  A kiss before I fly . . . Hie!

  It was a valiant effort, and I admired him for it. He even succeeded in rousing some of the men for a time, but no one had the heart to sustain it. This angered Cynan, who sang on alone for a time out of sheer stubbornness. But eventually even Cynan’s brash spirit was stifled by the vast, all-absorbing silence of the forest.

  Thereafter we pursued our way with hushed steps, dull in sense and dispirited. The forest seemed to prey upon our minds and hearts, stirring our fears, bringing doubt and dread to the surface where they could wear away at us with their corrosive power. I suspected that we were being watched, that in the forest around us, hidden from sight, the enemy waited.

  In the latticework of limbs high over us, in the shadow-choked darkness beyond the river trail, behind every trunk and bole, cold eyes watched and cold hands waited. I imagined a multitude of winged serpent-men clutching their short bronze thrusting spears, eyeing us with icy, reptilian malice. I imagined that they moved as we moved, matching us stride for stride, gliding with the silence of snakes in the silence of the forest.

  I told myself that my fears were mere inventions of my mind, but I watched the shadows all the same.

  Night stole secretly over the forest, and it marked little change. In this place, ever dark and preternaturally still, daylight was a weak and alien presence. Coed Nos, Forest of the Night, is what Tegid had called it, and he was right. The sun might boldly pursue its diurnal course, might rise and set in blinding flames that caught the outside world alight, but we had entered Night’s own realm, and the sun had no power in that place.

  We made camp by the deep-flowing river and banked the fires high. If I had hoped fire would offer us some comfort, I was deceived. The forest seemed to suck the warmth and light, the very life, from the flames, making them appear pale and wan and impotent. We sat with faces close to the tepid blaze and felt the stealthy silence hard at our backs.

  I could not rest. I could not eat or speak to anyone, but every few moments I must turn my head and peer over my shoulder. The feeling was strong—I was certain of it—we were being stalked. Others felt it too, I think; there was no talk, no genial exchange around the fire as there usually is when men gather after a long day’s journey. It seemed that if we could not overcome the all-subduing silence, we preferred to sink into it, to let it cover us and hide us from the things that stalked the shadows.

  We made a miserable night of it. No one slept; we all lay awake, gazing into the crowded tangle of limbs and branches faintly illumined by our feeble fire. That does not mean, however, that we did not dream. We did. And I think each man among us was visited by queer, disturbing nightmares.

  Sitting hunched over my knees, staring hollow-eyed into the limb-twisted darkness, I saw a faintly glimmering shape that resolved itself into a human form as it approached: a woman, slender, clad in white. Goewyn?

  I jumped to my feet.

  Goewyn!

  I ran to her. She was shivering, her arms were bare and cold, and it was clear that she had been wandering in the forest for many days. She must have escaped from her captors and fled into the forest.

  “Goewyn! Oh, Goewyn, you are safe,” I said, and reached out to take her hand, forgetting that my metal hand would be cold against her skin. I touched her with it and she cried out.

  “I am cold, Llew,” she whimpered.

  “Here, take my cloak,” I said, drawing it from my shoulders. “Put it around you. Come to the fire. I will warm you,” I said and thrust my silver hand into the flames of the campfire.

  In a moment, the metal warmed and I turned and took Goewyn’s hand in mine. The metal was too hot, and it seared her flesh. Acrid smoke flared up, stinging my eyes. Goewyn screamed and pulled away, but the skin stuck
to the metal and came off as she jerked her hand from my grasp. And not the skin only—the burned muscle stuck too.

  Screaming in agony, she raised her hand before her face, but only bones were left. Without the muscles or ligaments to hold them together they separated and fell to the ground and were lost in the snow. Goewyn clutched her stub of arm and screamed.

  I stood in a panic of indecision, wanting to comfort her, but not daring to touch her for fear that my touch would maim. Tegid ran to us. He took Goewyn by the shoulders and began shaking her violently. “Be quiet!” he shouted. “Be quiet! They will hear you!”

  But she could not control herself. Tears flowed from her eyes and she sobbed, holding her arm. Tegid kept shouting at her to be quiet, that she would alert the enemy.

  Bran came running with his sword. Without a word to anyone, he struck Goewyn. She turned toward him, and he thrust the blade into her heart. He pulled it out again, and a scarlet stain flowed down her white mantle. She turned and cried out. “Llew! Save me!”

  But I could not move. I could do nothing to save my beloved. She fell, scattering drops of blood from her wound. She lay on her back and raised her arm toward me. “Llew . . .” she gasped, her voice already fading. My name was the last word on her lips.

  Her warm blood seeped from the wound, melting deep into the white-drifted snow. And the snow began to melt—and went on melting. Soon I could see green showing through the snow; grass was growing, growing up where the blood melted the snow.

  I raised my eyes to look around. I was not in the forest anymore. Tegid and Bran had departed and left me standing alone on a hilltop above a stream; across the stream stood a grove of slender silver birches. I watched as the snow melted from the sides of the hill and hundreds of yellow flowers appeared. The clouds parted, revealing a bright blue sky and a warming sun.

  When I turned back, Goewyn was gone, but there was a slight mound in the place where she lay—little more than a grassy hump of earth. Upon this mound a cluster of white flowers grew: a yarrow plant had sprouted where Goewyn lay.