Pendragon

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “I am ever with you, my son,” he said gently. “Fare well, Myrddin, until we meet again.”

  The next I knew I stood alone on the hilltop before the half-flaming, half-living tree. There I remained for a time—whether short or long, I do not know—puzzling over the meaning of this conundrum, repeating the words: this is the way by which you must go. But I came no nearer to an answer. The weather changed; a sharp wind gusted around me, raw and cold. Hard rain began to fall, stinging where it touched my skin, driving me away.

  Gathering my cloak around me, I peered over my shoulder one last time. The solitary oak had become a grove and I understood that it was for me to enter there. I stood for a moment, hesitant, fearful. The way back led through the grove; there was none other. I understood…still, I hesitated.

  “Great Light,” I said at last, “go before me into this dark place. Be my Savior and my Guide through all things, whatever shall befall me. And if it please you, Lord, oversee my safe return. I place myself under the protection of your Swift Sure Hand, and entreat you to surround me with Heaven’s Champions. Though I go into the pit, there let me find you. Though I ascend the heights of moon and stars, there let me find you. Where I go, I go in faith, knowing that wherever I am, there will you be also; I in you, and you in me. In life, in death, in the life beyond, Great Light, uphold me. I am yours.”

  So saying, I entered the grove.

  The path lay silent, the air heavy and redolent of the tomb. No kindly ray illumined my passage. It was as if I walked in the shadowlands, alive yet cut off from the realm of the living. The trees—their thick, gnarled trunks black with age and scarred by the gnawing ravages of time—seemed stout pillars holding aloft a canopy so green and dark that it formed a shroud over me. I walked steadily, but no eye marked my passing, no sound of footfall attended my steps.

  I had entered a sanctum, a holy remove from the wider world, a nemeton. What is more, moving among the trees I felt a strange familiarity. With a shiver of recognition, I realized where I was: Bryn Celli Ddu, the sacred grove on the Holy Island. Hafgan, dear, blessed Hafgan, had told me about it when I was a boy.

  Within this secluded remove, I sensed the spirits of the Druidkind still lingering in the dense and dusky silence. Old beyond reckoning, the trees were ancient when Rome was still a muddy cattle pen. They had witnessed the ascent and decline of princes, kings, and empires; they had witnessed the slow ebb and flow of the years and seen Fortune’s Wheel revolve in its ceaseless turning. These trees had watched over the Island of the Mighty since the first days, when the dew of Creation was still fresh on the ground. Brutus of Troy, Alexander, Cliopatra, and great Constantius had come and gone beneath their steady and unyielding gaze. The Learned Ones had held discourse under their twisting branches, and many yet slept in the bare earth beneath them.

  Hafgan had told me, too, about that terrible day long ago when the Legions of Rome attacked the grove on the Holy Island. The Bards of Britain were felled like trees, hacked to death by Roman swords without protection of armor or weapons. For all its genius, the Roman military mind failed to recognize that the grove, not the Learned Brotherhood, was their true enemy. Had they burned it down or uprooted the trees, they would have triumphed that day, for they would have cut the Bardic Fellowship to its heart.

  Relentless realists, men of practical habits and cool logic, the Romans never imagined that the trees, the symbol of the druid, must be conquered. The canny druids knew that flesh is weak, it lives out its span, dies and is no more. They sacrificed the perishable to the imperishable. The dying served the everliving, and thereby gained the eternal. The hardheaded Roman generals, watching the slaughter with cold eyes, never guessed it was their own downfall they beheld. For every drop of druid blood secured a future victory, and every druid death a triumph.

  The Romans are gone now, but the Learned Brotherhood lives on. Many, very many, have realized the end of Truth’s quest in the Cross of Jesu. The Wise Ones of the Oak have become the Brotherhood of Christ. The power of the holy grove is now the provenance of the Holy Church. The Great Light moves how he will. So be it!

  In a little while, my steps led me to the mound I knew I would find in the center of the grove: a round hump of stone covered by earth and turf, its entrance barely visible in the gloom. It was a tomb—both actual and symbolic, for as everyone knows actual symbols are always the most potent. Actual, for the dead were truly buried within. But symbolic, too; for here among the bones of the illustrious dead of elder days, the Seeker could lie down in figurative death that his living bones might commune with the age-brittle remains of his fathers.

  Now it was my turn; I was the Seeker.

  Stepping to the mound entrance, I raised my face to the sky but could see nothing through the dense thatch of interwoven branches save a dull golden glow. The boles of the mighty yews showed iron-black against the uncanny gloaming. It was the time-between-times and I could already feel my feet on the path. Raising my hands to either side of my head, I cried out in supplication:

  Traversing glens, traversing forests,

  traversing valleys long and wild,

  Fairest Jesu be upholding me,

  Christ triumphant be my shield!

  Great King of Mercy be my peace:

  In every pass, on every hill,

  In every stream, headland, ridge, and moor;

  Each lying down, each rising up,

  Whether in this world or some other.

  Thus emboldened, I bent my head and stepped into the mound. Once inside, I was able to stand; I did so and walked farther into the mound, passing stone chambers on either side. I came to another threshold, crossed it, and continued. More chambers, some still bearing the bones of the ancient dead. I came to a third threshold and crossed it, entering yet another chamber—round as a womb and almost as dark. My shadow shattered and danced on the walls around me, quickened by a strange, flickering light behind me.

  The walls of this chamber had been limed with white and painted with blue designs: the spiral and sundisk, the Mor Cylch and Cernunnos’ horn. But the white had flaked away and the blue was little more than a stain on the rock. There were bones piled neatly against one wall: skulls round and white as river stones, thin curved ribs, arms and thighs.

  I considered the impermanence of all things flesh, and the timeless moment that is eternity. I pondered the Eagle of Time sharpening his beak upon the granite mountain of this worlds-realm: when the stone mountain has been worn away to a single grain of sand, the eagle will fly away to the eyrie whence he came.

  I meditated on these things as I stooped and stretched my hand towards a slender shinbone. All at once the ground beneath my feet gave way—as if a pit had suddenly opened under me. The chamber where I stood was hollow and the floor, weakened over time, could not hold my weight. I plummeted down into the blackness of Annwn; the Underworld realm had swallowed and claimed me.

  I spun into the abyss.

  Darkness, blacker than the cold embrace of death, swarmed over me. The world of light and life vanished somewhere far above, extinguished like a rushlight in a gale. I cast aside all hope and clung to my failing senses as a man hurled into the teeth of the storm.

  I fell, tumbling, turning, dropping down and down and down past roots and rocks, past springs and pools and underground streams. Far, far below, I heard the clash and clatter of water breaking on rock in a vast hidden cataract. Falling swift and straight, I struck the dark water and struggled to swim, to rise, but my clothes were heavy and my limbs exhausted. I plunged beneath the surface and sank without hope into my cold deepwater grave.

  In a rictus tight as rock, my body was seized and borne along by swift currents. Over naked spires and crevices yawning wide in unending night, over a landscape barren as it was bleak, I flew. Far beneath the roots of the world, I drifted, deeper than the deepest whale, deep in Afanc’s realm I soared in a slow, undulating flight.

  Through eons of earth ages, I existed in my elemental wandering: w
ithout breath, without sight, without sense, a pure spirit pulled along by the slow circulation of Annwn’s unseen ocean. Bereft of all volition, I moved where the currents moved me. I became light and tenuous as a single thought, possessing only a thought’s ineluctable freedom.

  In this way was Myrddin Emrys reduced and undone: I became nothing—less than nothing. Trackless was my journey, unknown and unbeheld by any save God alone. Outward and inward, drifting over broken vistas of the Underworld and my own arid soul—the two were one and the same to me. The darkness of the pit was my inner darkness, its emptiness my own. I was a ripple on the crest of a secret wave. I was a fleeting disturbance in the hidden deep.

  I was nothing.

  The silence of the tomb engulfed me—a stifling, suffocating quietude, solid as granite and as heavy. I shouted my name aloud in defiance, but my voice could not penetrate that dense oppression and the word fell at my feet like a bird, dead, from the sky. I felt the mass of this deadweight silence on my skin, as if I were immersed in an ocean of fire-thickened pitch.

  I wandered I know not where, creeping with utmost care over a rough stone floor that slanted away from me, descending with every step, down and down and down into a darkness immense and greedy.

  Occasionally, I passed a fissure where I glimpsed the dim flicker of lurid flames crackling up from a deep-chambered cell below. At one such crevice I felt the hot blast of vented gas—like the belch of a fire-throated dragon. The heat gust washed over me in a great hissing gasp. My eyes stung and nostrils burned with the acrid, sulfurous stink.

  Tears streamed from my eyes; my nose ran and my breath came in racking gulps. Choking, gagging, I stumbled on, bowed by the rack in my lungs and the pain in my eyes, each step a cry of defiance. Gradually I came to feel the presence of another with me in the gallery, walking but a short distance ahead as it seemed to me. I say that I became aware of this presence, for I think the stranger had been with me from the first step, but I had been too absorbed in my own misery to perceive her.

  Yes, I knew, as one knows in a dream, that a female presence went before me, leading me along the death-dark corridor, matching my steps with hers—stopping when I stopped, moving when I moved.

  Once I stumbled and fell down on hands and knees. I heard the footsteps continue a little way ahead of me. “Wait!” I shouted, lest I be left alone once more.

  My voice struck the rock surface like the flat of a hand. But the steps ahead halted and then turned back. They came towards me. I heard the soft footfall return—closer, until the woman stood directly over me. Though I could not see her, I knew she was near.

  “Please,” I said, “wait but a little. Do not leave me here alone.”

  I expected no reply from my phantom companion. Nevertheless, my plea was answered. “Then get you up, Merlin,” the woman commanded sternly. “Or I will leave you.”

  That voice…I knew it!

  “Ganieda! Is it you?”

  The footsteps started away again. “Wait! Please, wait!” I shouted, scrambling to my feet once more. “Do not leave me, Ganieda!”

  “I have never left you, my soul,” she answered, her voice echoing back to me from somewhere ahead. “And I never will leave you. But you must hurry.”

  I raised myself and lurched onward, desperate now. I must catch her! Dragging myself along, striking the solid jutting stone walls now and again with hands and arms and elbows…however fast I moved, she remained that many paces ahead of me; I could not gain so much as half a pace on my beloved guide.

  I ran, growing breathless in the pursuit. My chest heaved with the effort, but I did not slacken my pace. Just when I thought I must faint, I felt cool, fresh air on my face and perceived a lightening of the darkness ahead—a slight but discernible graying of the all-pervading shadow in which I moved.

  A dim, gray pall like false dawn hung over the room into which I stumbled. No more than a dozen paces ahead of me stood my beloved Ganieda. She appeared as she had on our wedding day: dressed in a fine white linen mantle with a golden bell on each and every tassel of her hem, her black hair brushed to shining and braided with silver threads, and on her fair brow a circlet of spring flowers. Folded over one shoulder, she wore a cloak of imperial purple and sky-blue check of the northern tribes, the folds fastened with a splendid golden brooch; gold bracelets and bands graced her slender wrists and arms, and white leather sandals held her feet.

  All this I beheld with ease, for a light radiated from her, dim and diffuse, but distinct—as if her clothing glowed with a will-o’-the-wisp light. She gazed at me intently, her face at once severe and lovely, her hands clasped before her.

  “Ganieda, you are—” I began, moving towards her.

  She threw out a hand to halt me. “Come no nearer!” she said harshly, then added in a softer tone, “It is not permitted, best beloved.”

  “Then why have you come? If we are not to be together—”

  “Torment me not, beloved,” she said, and oh, I thought my heart would break. “We will be together—that I promise you—but not yet, my soul, not yet. You must endure yet a little longer. Are you willing?”

  “I am—if by enduring I may secure the promise you have given.”

  “Then hear me, my husband. Believe me when I tell you that Britain will fall to the invader’s sword. Through rapine and slaughter the land will be lost and the people destroyed. Kings shall die unmourned, princes shall go to their graves unmarked, and warriors curse the day of their birth. The holy altars of Prydein will be baptized in the blood of her saints and flames destroy all they touch.”

  “This is more bitter to me than my own death,” I replied mournfully. “These are not words to steady a faltering heart.”

  “My darling,” she said in a voice of utter compassion, “you above all men must know that where great danger threatens, there hope abides. Faith ever erects her tent in the shadow of travail.” Ganieda smiled, shaking her head slowly. “Is darkness stronger than light? Is not even the frailest good more powerful by far than the most eminent evil?”

  She spread her hands and I saw, all around her, the forms of warriors—scores of warriors, hundreds of them, and each one arrayed for battle: shield over shoulder, strong hands gripping sword hilt and spear. They lay still, their eyes closed.

  “Tell me, Ganieda, are they dead or do they sleep?”

  “They live,” she said. “As long as men love courage and honor, they remain alive.”

  “Then why do they sleep?”

  “They await the battlehorn to call them forth,” she explained.

  “Only tell me where it is and I shall sound it,” I replied. “Britain has need of such men.”

  “Yes,” she agreed readily, “and so shall she ever need them. But these”—she made a circling motion with her hand—“their time is not yet. Be assured, you will know when it comes.”

  “Am I to see this tribulation?”

  Ganieda turned sorrowful eyes upon me. “Yes, heart of my heart, you will live. For it is you alone who must summon the warriors to their mighty work. And it is you who must lead them.” She paused, letting her gaze linger on the forms of the warriors around her. “I show you this so you will know without doubt that you go not alone into the evil day. Your sword brothers go with you, Merlin. They only await your call.”

  I looked upon the warriors once again, and I saw among them faces that I knew: Cai was there, yes, and Bedwyr, and Gwenhwyvar, Llenlleawg and Gwalcmai, Gwalchavad, Bors and Ban and Cador, Meurig and Aedd. There were others as well, the brave dead of previous battles: Pelleas, Custennin, Gwendolau, Baram, Elphin and Gwyddno Garanhir, Maelwys, Pendaran Gleddyvrudd—men of hard purpose, fearless, right-loving warriors who shrank before nothing, valiant heroes all.

  “It is not for me to lead such warriors,” I demurred. “Though I would gladly stand beside the best of them, the call is not mine to give. Certainly, a worthy king can be found to lead them.”

  “If that is what you wish,” she said, and steppe
d aside. And I saw behind her another warrior, a lordly form, a figure I knew well.

  “Arthur…” I gasped. “Say he is not dead.”

  “I have already told you,” Ganieda replied.

  “As long as men love courage—I know,” my voice grew tight with desperation. “Please, say it all the same.”

  “He lives,” she stated firmly. “But he, like all the others, awaits your call. And he will lead the war host of Britain in the battle to come. Use them well, my soul. They are the last, and when they are gone the world will never more see their like.”

  She turned and began walking swiftly away. “Now come with me,” she called, “there is more I would show you. But we must hurry, for my time with you is almost finished.”

  Taking a last look at the sleeping warriors, I hastened after Ganieda and soon found myself in another gallery—this one of uncut stone, a natural tunnel. After several hundred paces, we entered a rough cavern. Water glimmered dully in the center of the floor; ragged teeth of stone dripped water into the black pool, drop by solitary drop.

  Ganieda stood at the edge of the pool. “Come stand beside me, Merlin,” she said, beckoning me nearer. “Look upon the water.”

  “A Seeing Bowl,” I remarked, thinking the pool filled with the black oak water of druid lore.

  “It is the Seeing Bowl of Annwn,” she confirmed. Dread filled her voice; she stretched forth her hand. “Look you, and tell me what you see.”

  I looked and saw the dull glimmer of the water’s surface, agitated by the steady slow drops from the stone teeth above. But beneath the ripples I perceived a young woman. “It is a maiden,” I said.

  The maiden turned as if looking up at me from the pool. But no, she could not see me, for she turned away again and began walking. All at once I could see all around and beyond her. “She is moving through a forest,” I continued. “It is an ancient forest and the path is narrow, but she knows it well. The maiden hurries, but not from fear. She is not afraid, for she knows where she is going. Ah, there, she has come into a meadow in the wood….”