It came soon enough as it was.
Book II:
Bethtraf
* * *
Chapter Eight
It was nothing like Gwaelod, the death of Daars. For one thing, I it was who Saw it coming—though I did not come by this vision far enough in advance of the event for it to do much good. Even now I cannot say if the Seeing made it any easier for me—certainly it made no differ to the dead—as a thing dan had decreed, and no act of man or woman; or if it was all the harder to bear for having been Seen…
The Druids and the Ban-draoi say that great changes cast long shadows, and that to See such a future requires only that one stand where the shadow may fall across one's soul. They say never a word of how one's soul will shiver in that shade—and perhaps it is as well that they do not. It is a hard gift, the Sight: Never does it come to order, when one would wish to See—at least not without some grave and goodly price being paid. It has rules and laws all its own, and because we on this side cannot perceive them we say that Sight has no master.
But for myself I think it has a Master we know naught of, and that Master it is who sets the laws of Sight and the rules that bound it: who shall See and what it is that shall be Seen. All we know for certain is what we may be shown; and even that we do not always recognize—not until the thing is full upon us.
* * *
I was lost in a dream of Tair Rhamant, such a dream as I had not suffered for years now. Yet it was not Rhamant, nor Daars even, nor any other place I knew; it was only that the water made me think it.
An unknown strand, then, and out between beach and horizon great waves rearing themselves up; giant waves, that hung in place and did not move but only stood, rooted in the deeps, growing taller and thicker every moment. And every moment more and more were forming, in ranks behind the ones nearest shore; until at last their foaming furrows, hill-high and glass-green, reached the horizon itself, and maybe beyond. But no crest toppled and fell, not so much as a fleck of foam, and I awoke from the dream sweating, in the most profound terror I have ever known.
Strangely, it was not the terror that freezes one where one may stand, for before my eyes were full open I had flung on my chamber-robe and was out into the corridor, dashing barefoot up the winding stair to Ailithir's chambers, where I had seldom gone unless summoned.
Yet I knew this was a summons—though scarcely one of his making—and when I staggered panting to the top of the stair the door swung open before I could lift my hand to knock.
Ailithir stood there, and caught me as I tumbled through into the room. He had been reading, it seemed, for a book lay open on the table and the fire still burned low, but he was clad as I in a chamber-robe; perhaps he had himself awakened from a restless sleep, perhaps he had never yet that night been to bed. Any road, he sat me down in a chair across from his—neither of us had as yet spoken a word aloud—and in the way he had taught me I stilled my mind and let my eyes become as windows, that he might 'look-past' to see what I had seen. He needed to look neither long nor far. So it has begun, I heard him say; then realized he had spoken with the inner voice, as he had seen my vision with the inner eye. Doubtless he read in those images of motionless waves—waves that had seemed to rise forever, hanging back before they crest and fall—far more than had I, for all at once he broke the link and stood up, his face expressionless, his voice quietly commanding. "Now it has been for you to See first what comes upon us. Go and wake your brother, and make ready to depart."
I was never to remember afterwards just how I had done all that—warned Arthur, gotten back to my own rooms, begun packing; all I can recall is that I did so. Indeed, it was becoming terrible custom: another escape in danger and the dark, though this time danger would prove far closer than before. I had gathered together warm clothing, my precious copying-books, the treasures that had come with me out of Gwaelod and those I had come by while in Daars, and was strapping my harp to my back when Arthur appeared in the door.
Desperate moments have often a power all their own to focus our minds and awarenesses on utterly trivial, and utterly true, aspects of things we have gone on blithely unseeing of for weeks or months or years even. As I glanced up to see Arthur standing there, I suddenly seemed to see him: not him as he was then, or as I had known him, but as he was to be. Saw all the glory begin to gather round him—the laeth-fraoch, the hero-light—saw him taller, older, stronger, surer; in love and in pain; saw for the first time the king he would become, and the legend after.
Only for a moment: As I drew in my breath at the beauty and the terror of it, it was gone, and he was again only Arthur, my foster-brother, dressed as I was dressed for a journey, with a bundle much like mine and Luath dancing beside him. We exchanged silent looks, and then we were out again in the corridor that ran down that wing of the castle parallel to the walls outside.
But now it was not as it had been before, a place known to us filled with the comfortable secure silence of night and sleep. Above our heads we heard the sound—unmistakable, though never before heard by either of us in life—of laser fire from low-flying attack craft. We heard too the cries of the folk in the city below, the curses of the castle warriors as they struggled to defend their trust against an enemy they could not reach. That it was Edeyrn, striking at Daars and Gorlas through his Ravens, none could have doubted; that simple slaughter was all he had in mind, none was yet sure.
At a sudden turn in the hallway we cannoned into Elphin and Berain. Ailithir must have used methods swifter than speech to rouse them, for they too were clad for flight, their faces grim in the sconcelight. And as we, they too were silent, but taking some of our gear from us they shouldered it with their own. Then all four of us were running hard, Luath bounding ahead, as we were dragged along at speed through a part of the castle I had never known was there.
I dared a question in between puffing strides. "Where are we?"
"An old tunnel beneath the river," said Elphin, throwing the answer over his shoulder. "Be silent now, and run, if you would live."
So we ran until I thought I should die of the running, and not at the Ravens' hands at all; then a door swung, a wall moved silently aside, a gate opened. I felt on my prickling skin a cold electric sparkle that I later learned was a restraint field lifting, and then I was breathing great gulps of fresh night air, the smell of hills in darkness all round me.
We were high on the side of the valley across the river from Daars, near to that same place in the open fields where Arthur and I had met that first fateful morning. Instinctively I turned to look back at the city, but Elphin moved with sudden swiftness to block my view. I opened my mouth to question, but then came a voice cutting down sharp from above us. "Nay, let him see! Let them both see!" The voice was Ygrawn's; I stared as she came toward us out of the dark. She was clad as a warrior, her black hair bound up in the mionn, the braided wreath-like arrangement worn by Fians in the field, and in her hand was a bare gleaming shortsword. I had never seen her so before, but it was more than surprise that now made me gasp: Her face was a warrior's face to match her bearing, but tears stood upon her cheek.
I looked back then at Daars, where Ygrawn's eyes were turned, and myself wept at the sight: The little city seemed laced with light, abloom with it like some exotic nightflower. But it was the light of death that burned now over Daars—corpse-candles, not the Solas Sidhe. Killing bolts from above were ripping seams of fire along the streets, the dust and smoke plain to be seen rising in the rainbow laser glow. We could hear the screams even from here, even above the roar of the attacking ships—sleek black engines of destruction, killer hawks flown by Ravens, and not a one of our own did we have to fly against them.
Or so at least I thought, until I turned once more to my foster-mother. And gasped again, for there behind her, gleaming in the tunnel-shaft that had hidden it, was a starship, a personal craft the like of which I had not thought still existed in Keltia. Edeyrn had forbidden them more than a century since, fearing lest his unquie
t and unwilling subjects should become perhaps too mobile, to threaten his sway with unsanctioned goings and comings. Ravens had gone through the worlds destroying any ship they came across, and it had been commonly believed that none had survived.
"No time, Taliesin!" snapped Berain as I stood open-mouthed and staring. "Get in, for all our sakes! Arthur, inside! Now!"
Arthur leaped for the door in the shining black hull, and I but a half-step behind him; Luath too scratched and scrabbled in, and then Scathach, who had been guarding Ygrawn and the ship both, slammed the door to. I stumbled forward through the dim companion way, then all but fell over my own feet into an open space: the main cabin. As the engines began to shake the ship beneath us, and the hill itself, I threw myself against the wall of the cabin, to huddle there beside Arthur, staring dully at the score of others present: Elphin, Ailithir, Scathach among them.
And as I stared, something dark and terrible, something that had been growing silently for the past hour, suddenly burst into the light, even as the ship did burst from the concealment of the hill.
"Athra-maeth! Gorlas! Where is my father?" The cry cut like a sgian through the cabin, hanging in the air; I saw Scathach's face crumple like a child's—aye, even she—and then I realized that the cry had been my own.
Beside me, Arthur gave one convulsive move, as if a spear had gone into his guts; then he had seized me by the shoulder, and those unfathomable dark eyes were holding mine. "Talyn, hear me. He stayed behind." I stared at him uncomprehendingly; he might have been speaking in some gallain tongue. Then: "Ah, nay, he would not, he did not—we must wait for him, he will surely come to us here. Athro—" My words had tumbled all together in my haste to deny what I knew to be true; this last plea was addressed to Ailithir, who had crossed the cabin and now stood over us. His voice came down as from the top of a mountain, heavy and passionless as some brehon's pronouncing a sentence all know to be warranted.
"It was not his choice to leave Daars, Taliesin," he said quietly, and even in that moment a small part of me found itself able to wonder how came it that I was so suddenly 'Taliesin' to all: 'Gwion', it seemed, was as dead as Daars—as dead as Gorlas.
With a whimper that would have better become Luath I curled up into myself; Arthur beside me, whom one would have thought to have greater cause for grief, made no move and said no word. The ship was high above Daars now, banking steeply to avoid the Raven ships still swooping upon the burning town. The attackers did not seem to be aware of us, and in my daze I wondered incuriously at that; surely we must have made some trail or trace in our lifting out of the hill? But my mind could not hold the thought, and then all at once there was no longer a sensation of motion beneath me. The ship grew level and solid, and it seemed that we hung there unmoving between earth and stars. I did not know then, never having been in such a craft—or even dreamed it possible—in all my life, that we had gone into true-flight; that Daars, indeed all Arvon, was now far below and far behind.
I do not know how long I huddled there, silently grieving with a kind of terrible inward keen; I doubt it was very long, for Ygrawn would not have left Arthur and me alone in our pain any longer than she must. But all at once she was there; she had turned over the piloting to Berain, and, ignoring the others, came straight now to us, kneeling before us and taking my hand and Arthur's in her own.
Mother and son looked long and deep and calm into each other's eyes, and I watching noted with a strange detachment that for the first time since I had known them, their faces bore each the stamp of the other.
"He is dead then?"
I could not believe that that cold clear voice was Arthur's; could not believe that he had managed to speak at all. My own throat felt as if a sword-edge were pressed against it, and I could not have spoken just then had my continued life depended on my speech.
Ygrawn nodded once; a nod that was less affirmation than the salute of formal greeting and parting, or the inclination of the head one will use to a king.
"He chose to stay, amhic, his choice too that I should go, for I had never left him else." The amethyst eyes moved sidewise to rest on me; I saw where tears had made her black lashes into starry points. "And so you have lost another father, Talyn… All is dan; he said it himself before we parted. His to stay and die with Daars; mine—and yours, both of you—to go, and to go on." She gestured round the cabin at the others, who had in decency turned away to give her some shred of privacy while she spoke with us, and raised her voice for them to hear her. "This is Gorlas's last bidding to us all; we here, we that are the last of Daars."
Scathach stirred. "Some others may yet have escaped, lady."
"May the Mother make it so; but we cannot tarry to search for them. We must go north."
"North!" In my startlement I got a word past the sword edge: Even after all these years, north to me yet meant Gwaelod.
Ygrawn saw and smiled; a kind, tired smile. "Nay, norther still. There is a place where we shall be welcome, and safe too—as safe as any can be, in a haven where others are who have fled as we flee now."
Whatever she must have felt in that terrible moment—alone, her lord dead behind her, her home destroyed, herself left with two children to protect and a hunt upon her heels—it was the measure of Ygrawn Tregaron that she kept it to herself. The only unbending she permitted herself was a sudden quick fierce embracing of Arthur and me together—for a few moments our three heads bent as one—and a kiss upon the brow for each of us. Then she stood up, brushing the last of her tears from her face as she did so. Save but thrice only, in all her life and mine thereafter I was never to see her weep again.
After Ygrawn had whispered a few brief words to Ailithir and to Scathach, she went back to the command cabin; only then did I dare to lift my gaze to look round at the faces of the others. I was not yet daring enough to look upon the face of Arthur who sat beside me, his arm firm and warm and strong pressed against my own. From his place crouched at our feet, Luath looked up at us both, his face as desperate and pleading as only a dog's can be, his soul in his eyes and a low anxious whimper in his throat. Then I saw Arthur's hand go out to ruffle Luath's ears in reassurance—the only reassurance any of us had to give just then. But the hand shook, and then being withdrawn closed at once to a fist, knuckles showing pale against the tan with the force of the grip.
And looking now upon Arthur's face I felt as Luath had felt: I understood what had made the hound afraid to raise his eyes to his own beloved master's. If my grief was composed of abandonment and sorrow, and Ygrawn's of sorrow and resolve, Arthur's was of resolve and vengeance. There might be sorrow in it as well—undoubtedly there was, he had loved Gorlas dearly, though he knew well his father's faults—but it was not yet to be seen, for he did not choose that any should see it.
But I saw in my brother's face what I had long ago felt in my own heart, when first I came to comprehend why it was my own father had been murdered, my own home destroyed. And now it was Arthur's father, Arthur's city, butchered by the Marbh-draoi's will… Ah gods, I cried out in my heart to whoever might hear me, is there no safe place for anyone anywhere? No safe place for me?
No answer came; not then, not eight years earlier. Not for many decades would my cry be answered; and by then I would be asking other questions. But for now, though I had wept for my father and for Gwaelod, my farewell to Gorlas and to Daars was other wise: Arthur had not wept, and therefore if not he, then not I; but I had now another lament to be made, and yet another reason for me to become bard enough to make it.
* * *
Chapter Nine
Grief is a wearying thing; but, fueled by your anguish and your anger alike, in the midst of your grieving you think that you will never sleep again. To you in your sorrow sleep itself becomes a small death, though you would a thousand times sooner welcome its sister, and in your desperate need to cling in thought to your loved lost you begrudge any time spent in unconsciousness. It is as if sleep is but another remove, and your lost one is too far remove
d already. Reason is nowhere near it; your entire being has become a burning-glass of mood. You may be exhausted, you may even yourself be wounded bodily; in your new single-eyed focus on sorrow it makes no differ. Yet your body knows better than your brain what must be done to begin to heal you; and, sooner rather than later, will you or nill you it betrays you into sleep.
When I opened my eyes I was lying in one of the wall-beds—tiered blastcouches set into the cabin's inside walls—with a blanket over me and my boots and gear all piled into the little store-hold at the bed's foot. Someone must have carried me there and tucked me in to uneasy rest, for I had no memory of coming there under my own power. But save for Ailithir, who sat unmoving by the viewports, all the others seemed to be sleeping as I had been—either themselves squirreled away in one of the other wall-beds or curled in nests of blankets on the cabin floor.
Suddenly wary, I drew back beneath the bed's sheltering overhang like a snail into its shell; but Ailithir was beckoning me with a smile and a lifted hand.
I slipped out of the wall-bed, taking care not to tread upon any of the sleepers underfoot, and went gingerly across to him: gingerly chiefly for that I still could not quite believe that I was in truth aboard a starship, and feared to step firmly lest I should somehow cause us all to plunge straight down to earth. Ailithir watched me come, and when I reached his side, and the ship was still flying true on course, he put an arm around me and drew me closer to the port.
"It is a wonder, is it not? We are not 'customed these days to see in Keltia such scope of science and artifice and art." He ran an appreciative hand along the port's gleaming bubble curve. "Once though, Talyn—and gods willing, once again soon—ships such as these, and more intricate enginery beside, were common as grass among us. It was the Marbh-draoi deemed skill and science too dangerous for the folk to continue to practice and enjoy—too dangerous for him. So it is that we have lost part of our ancient heritage from Earth: the tools and knowledge that gave us freedom from slavish toil, so that now we must take hours and days to do in sweating effort what drudgery could one time be done in minutes with no more than a lifted finger, and we free for kindlier tasks. Such is the high solicitude of Edeyrn, to ease the lot and labor of the folk…" The bitterness in his voice was savage; sensing my bewilderment, he smiled again and shook his head.
The Hawk's Gray Feather Page 9