"True enough, as far as it goes." Elphin put his hands behind his head and leaned back against his pack. Above him the cloudy sky began to darken with the setting of the unseen sun. We were sleeping rough for the third night straight, there being few loyalists in these parts to give shelter to a pair of travelling rebels—few folk of any sort, which was why Elphin had chosen this route.
"Leowyn's death was mischance only for that Edeyrn did not know of it when it happened, nor had he ordered it just then," he said after a pause. "But Edeyrn had ordered it, make no mistake, aye, and Amris's death as well. And both deaths were of a piece with Gwaelod, and your father's slaying, and Perran's coming to Daars, and the hunt for you and Arthur—oh aye, the Marbh-draoi knows you both well! Understand then, Talyn: All our lives are at risk in this, that is the choice we make; but we are hunted only as renegades to the Marbh-draoi's rule. You and Arthur—aye, and Gweniver, and Morgan and Marguessan now too—are hunted because you are who you are.
"Edeyrn knew you yet lived in spite of his efforts, and he would rather have you taken or slain than all six of your sibs. Gweniver—well, she is acknowledged heir to Uthyr, and that is cause enough right there; the same too for the lasses. As for Arthur, Edeyrn knew that Amris had fathered a son, and that that son lived and prospered. But he did not know where that boy might be, or even who was his mother; and Merlynn so managed it that all Gwynedd, and even the Marbh-draoi for many years, believed Arthur to be Gorlas's son. Though he might have suspected otherwise, Ederyn could prove naught; and so we were safe in Daars for as long as we were."
I stirred in my cloak. "Then how came it that Daars fell and Gorlas was killed? Did Edeyrn learn he had been cozened all those years?"
"We still do not know," admitted Elphin with a sigh. "There must surely have been some treachery in it—at least Scathach and I have ever thought so, though we had no proof then and none now—but it may be simply that as Arthur and you became presences more easily discerned by magical Sight, Edeyrn was able to see you more and more clearly."
This was no comforting news, and I pondered it awhile in silence. "If that is how he found us out," I began, then hesitated. "Then by logic we should be hidden from him again, now we are both Druids and well able to shield ourselves, as we could not before."
Unexpectedly Elphin laughed, but not at my words or at me. "I should say so! At the least let the old bodach run his nose up against it, does he try to sniff you out again… and I daresay Merlynn will have arranged somewhat as well."
"And if it was not Sight but treachery after all?" This time there was an edge of ice to my teacher's laugh. "Then let the traitor run up against our swords, Scathach's and mine and some others'… But enough of talk for now. Smoor the fire, and get what rest more you can. We must be afoot again before middlenight, and we have still a long way to go."
At dawn one day in our fourth week of journeying, we sighted a dark smudge on the horizon to the south, on the edge of the endless plain. Far to the west the Arvon mountains stood grape-blue in the dawnlight, save where the sun's rays touched their tips with gold, and between us and that sun stood the towering black bulk of the lone mountain Cruach Agned, its three horns sharp against the brightening sky.
Elphin paused, and took a flask from his pack to drink and fill again from the stream that ran by our feet. I did the same, and putting my own flask away I pointed southward.
"What is that lies there?"
"That is where we are bound: Corva Wood, present home of Tinnavardan and still a day's march off. But we are near enough to dare travel by daylight in these parts, so what say you? Do we sleep now and go on again by night as usual, or walk on and come to Corva in time for a late supper?"
I instantly elected to go on now, as I was not in the slightest sleepy and heartily bored with nightmarches; and Elphin was pleased with my willingness to continue. Doubtless he was right about us being safe in travelling by day hereabouts: The land that lay between Agned and the first fences of Arvon was open but much broken—rolling uplands crossed by three major rivers and a myriad of feeder streams, all racing down to the plain from the heights to east and west. Few Ravens ever bothered to patrol here; it was thought in Coldgates that Owein's strategists trusted on the rough terrain, boglands and many watercrosses to keep any Counterinsurgency troops from passing this way.
Still, the region was not left all ungarrisoned: The great stronghold of Ravens' Rift stood on the far side of Agned, a good fifty miles from where we now walked. Guarding the main pass that led like a narrowing funnel down out of the central plains, Ravens' Rift held the main road—the only real road, all others were mere tracks—stretching southeastward to Caer Dathyl, and the other towns of that region strong for Owein. But we seemed safe enough as I looked round; and, for all my Druidry, no hand of prescience caught at my cloak.
As we headed south again at a steady pace, I cast round constantly for any feel of danger threatening; finding none, I fell into that mode I had been 'customed to use of old, a kind of walking trance, learned long since, when Ailithir that was Merlynn Llwyd and the six-year-old that was myself had walked another long secret southward path.
Much had changed since that journey nearly fourteen years ago; pleased though I was with those changes, I found myself wishing that my father could have lived to share them with me, and that thought led me inexorably on to thoughts of my mother. I thrust a hand inside my tunic, to touch the small flat gold case that hung on its gold chain against my chest. Arthur had crafted both case and chain for me, for birthday-gift one year at Coldgates: The case held, and was wrought in likeness of, the hawk's feather my father had given me on our parting in Tair Rhamant, that my mother had given to him. Never since my fostern had hung it round my neck had I removed it, save for my initiation as Druid, when all metal must be removed from the person—it was the last thing I shed before the rite, and the first I put on again after.
I closed my fingers now round the case, feeling the delicate chasing of the gold, the rock crystal that covered the feather within, taking comfort from the three living presences I sensed in it: Gwyddno, Medeni, Arthur. The strength that came to me from them made the road easier, so that I followed unwearied the tall figure of Elphin striding ahead, and steadily the shadow that was Corva Wood drew ever nearer.
We reached the eaves of the forest before nightfall, as Elphin had predicted. By this time I was very weary indeed, for over the last miles my companion had pressed the pace rather harder; but we had still some way to go into the wood itself.
"I know you are tired, Talyn," said Elphin over his shoulder, "but we will sleep safer and softer at Tinnavardan than on a bed of leaves and tree-roots. If you can go on, let us do so for any sake."
I said no word, wishing to conserve the few rags of energy I yet possessed, but he must have sensed my agreement, for we went on in deeper among the trees for another hour or two.
Though I had heard much of Corva Wood, I had never before been in it or even near it. A hundred miles from east to west, and near half that north to south, it was one of the oldest forests on all Gwynedd, most of it still virgin first-growth, the trees huge-trunked and towering, the forest floor thick with the detritus of centuries of leaf-fall. It came to me as we threaded through the giant trees, on a path Elphin seemed to know well though I could see no path at all, that there were few of the night-noises of beast and bird that so ancient a wood must surely be filled with. I thought that perhaps in my weariness I simply had not been paying much heed, but Elphin told me later that I had heard—or rather not heard—aright. Few animals, and no birds, dwelt in the deeps of Corva Wood; on the fringes of the forest there was creature life in plenty, but the farther in one went, the fewer the beasts became, until at last at the wood's heart there were none at all.
But we did not go in so far as that: Perhaps ten miles from the northern edge, I by then all but dropping where I stood, Elphin halted before a rockface that rose up among the clustering iron-oaks and redpines. Moss-grown an
d water-carven the black stone of the ridge-spine stood a good forty feet high, and still the trees towered above it and upon it.
"Druimdhu," said Elphin with a sigh of satisfaction. "The Black Ridge—" He reached round and extracted a slim silver pipe from the worn leather case that hung by his side. Putting the pipe to his lips, he blew an intricate trill, then paused; and in that pause the silence of the surrounding wood became heavier than ever. But different: Now it was as if the forest itself hearkened to us, that great listening blackness holding its breath to hear what sound we might make next.
In the closeness of the silence, I shifted nervously from one foot to the other. Elphin gesturing me to stillness blew another, different, trill upon the silver pipe. Silence flowed back again; then came the sound of stone grating upon stone, splitting the shocked dark forest, and the sound came from the ridge before us. I gaped, weariness forgotten, as a crack of light appeared, running down through the rock, outlining a doorway in the ridge itself. Then the door opened, and light flooded out upon us, almost blinding eyes so long used to the forest dark.
There were figures moving now in the brightness, though my sight had still not adjusted enough for me to discern more than shapes. But they came out then into the night, and took each of us by an arm; and speaking words of welcome they led us out of the wood and under the hill, into Tinnavardan, the House of Bards that lay beneath the sheltering rock of Druimdhu.
* * *
Chapter Eighteen
Apt as I had been to the study of magic, and content as I had been at Bargodion, all the same my schooling as Druid had seemed at times—to me at least—to lag and drag a little too much for my own liking.
This was not to prove a problem with my schooling as a bard: Indeed, if there was a problem at all, it was that there were no problems, that all went far too smoothly for one who had ever believed that for a thing to be well mastered and well won, it must be hard won.
That is doubtless true enough for most of us—and most often it was true for me as well; but that does not alter the plain fact that my years spent in bardic studies—there were to be fifteen of them in all—seemed no work worthy of the name.
I say this not to vaunt my prowess, nor do I mean that I did not work: Elphin and his fellow ollaves drove us hard, the thirty or so of us who had been sponsored to Tinnavardan by masters such as mine; nor was Tinnavardan the only secret school. For as long as Edeyrn continued to produce his false bards—even sullying the sacred precincts of Seren Beirdd itself with his half-trained, wholly bent mouthpieces—we in the hidden halls of true bardship must harden ourselves to counter him, and them.
It had not always been so, that bards must skulk and hide: In the early days of Keltia, and on Terra before, bards were among the most honored Kelts of all. Our art placed us next to royalty at royalty's own table, and the Chief Bard might wear as many colors in his cloak as the consort of the monarch. On a less lofty level, bards were much in demand as house poets and clan genealogists and teachers of the offspring of nobles and commons alike.
A fine thing, you say, to enjoy such standing; and so it is. But to claim that standing it is necessary to labor fifteen years together; and, should one then seek the golden starburst that betokens an ollave, a master-bard, to pass the most torturous of all tests of knowledge that any craft can demand.
Thanks to Elphin's instruction at Coldgates and at Daars, eight or so of those years were already to my credit, notched as it were into the flange of my harp. So did I enter Tinnavardan as a journeyman, or cliath as it is known, and began at once upon my term as institutional bard—to end, it was hoped, in ollaveship, to wear the gold star of master-bard upon my cloak as Elphin did now.
But though my teacher bore proudly that star of his rank, he bore it as did all his fellows on the inside of his cloak, beneath the lining where none might see, and that too was not as it had once been. It seemed to me cause for bitterness and anger, that one's great glory and rightful pride might be one's worst betrayer should the wrong folk come to learn of it; but when I spoke of it to Elphin he smiled in understanding.
"If pride were all it meant to me, Talyn, I had renounced it myself long since. Nay, it matters no whit how I may be seen and judged from without—look how long you thought me to be a mere rhymester and no bard at all, let alone an ollave, and it troubled me not."
Well, it troubled me to recall it, and my cheeks burned as I did so, but I persisted all the same.
"Yet even that was your skill at work, athro, to make me think it."
Elphin laughed outright. "I am well chided! But, Talyn, it is never the glory—as I know very well you know—but the love of the learning for its own sake. And had I not seen this love in you back in those first days at Daars, I had never even begun your training—nay, not had you shown flair and talent to equal Adoran's own."
Adoran Tudur was a famed bard of old, called Aurllaw—Goldenhand—for his great skill and gift; traha of the highest order, for me to think myself capable of tuning my harp to the same pitch…
"Now it is I who am well chided," I said. "Yet it seems to me, athro, that I should not pride myself on that which comes so easy to my mind and hand. Druidry, as Merlynn will tell you, I had of force to work at; I loved it well, and had a certain modest talent for certain aspects, but it was pure slog and no mistake. Now this"—I spread my hands, to encompass the teaching hall in which we now sat, and by extension the entire warren beneath Druimdhu that was the bardic school—"this seems too readily won for me to be commended for its mastery, and I deserve no praise for it."
I had never spoken to him of this before, though it had been troubling me some time now, and once I had got the words out I felt only a great relief, and glanced sidewise at Elphin to learn what he might think.
He had been listening to my words, and to that which had prompted them, with careful attention, that I could see straightway; and with that inner ear of his, the one that seemed able to discern truth from falsehood as surely and swiftly as any Druid truthsenser. Yet he had little magic save that which every bard learns as part of the discipline: Elphin's fior-eolas was with him a thing inborn, as instinctive with him as breathing, as real a gift as his bardship.
I had watched him from under my lashes as I spoke, seeing his expression shift from the everyday into an attitude of attentive judgment as he weighed the undershades and overshadows of that which I had said, and at the end of my speech he stretched his hands and flexed his shoulders and smiled at me again.
"Well. Doubtless the Chief Bard will use my guts for harpstrings when she hears that I have told you this, but time it is you heard it, and so I shall allow myself the pleasure of being the one to tell you first. And this is what you must hear: As Arthur will one day stand above all other rulers, so you will one day stand above all other bards. You are my master already, Taliesin, though you do not know it, and would not believe it did I tell you ten times over. But it is so all the same: You will be not only ollave in the end, but Chief Bard; not only Chief Bard, but for you shall be revived the ancient title of Plenyth ap Alun himself, and you shall be called Pen-bardd, and your name and Arthur's shall go together down the ages."
Ah gods, yet another fripping prophecy, was there no end to the things…
"I do not want to hear about it," I said firmly.
Unexpectedly Elphin grinned. "You will, Taliesin," he said, still smiling. "And you shall."
Though my studies were to last almost six years more, I stayed this time in Corva Wood barely a sixmonth. For the safety of Tinnavardan lay in its flitting: It moved like the Solas Sidhe from wood to mountain to sea-lands to remote rocky isle, never the same place in twice ten years, sometimes the same place never again. There was no shortage of places in which to hide: Gwynedd had never been one of the heavily settled planets—indeed, no Keltic planet had ever been heavily settled, not by the standards of genuinely crowded worlds. In the years of the Theocracy, even such population as Gwynedd could boast had more than once been lit
erally decimated, the survivors tending to cluster together for protection and reassurance, in small settlements such as Daars had been. In most cases the strategy worked rather better than had been the case with both my former homes…
But such clustering left vast expanses of the planet totally unpeopled; and to be safer still, folk whose very lives depended on remaining hidden—Druids, Ban-draoi, bards, Fianna, loyalists such as dwelt at Coldgates and elsewhere—had chosen the most remote and inhospitable regions for their refuges, places where Edeyrn's Ravens seldom if ever came.
The polar lands; the harsh cold arid steppes that lay below them; the bare islands in the Eastern Sea, where the winds were so strong and steady they had blown the very soil away; the thick forest lands of which Corva, though the oldest, was only one, and not the largest either; the burnt lands like the Long Valley—all these were cradles for Keltia's future, and if not easily dwelled in, they were gladly dwelled in, so that that future be assured.
The abrupt changes of habitat affected me less than some of my classmates: Accustomed as I once had been to living as did other folk in builded structures—castles or housen or whatever—I had learned at Coldgates and Bargodion to dwell quite happily in what were, after all, mere caves; and so I did not share the difficulty of some of the others in adjusting to life beneath the Black Ridge's sheltering stone, or in the tiny clochans of the isles, or even in the earth-houses of the southern steppes, dug like snuggeries into the permafrost.
Not that I would have much minded where I dwelt: My studies absorbed all my energies and inclinations. They may not have been any great struggle to master, and that was as I have already declared no especial credit to me; but they exerted on me a mastery of their own, a demand on time and mind and body, so that during my years with Tinnavardan I made no real friends. Acquaintances, aye, and good ones; comrades too—but no true friends, I was too taken up with my inner life in my art to have any attention to spare for outside matters. Even when it came time for my Teltown—that age-old ritual by which young folk are introduced, under the auspices of the goddess Tailltiu and the discreet guidance of their elders, to the pleasures of lovemaking—even then I begrudged at first the time and energy that compliance required; though once the revelry had begun, and I and a tall flashing Erinnachin had chosen each other out from the rest, I daresay I enjoyed myself as well as any.
The Hawk's Gray Feather Page 20