Manannan Trilogy

by Michele McGrath

  I shivered. “Perhaps I would see nothing at all.”

  “Very likely. Few people are given the gift of the true sight. I have heard of others, but I never met anyone who had it, except for my own family.”

  “You said you only learned how to make your visions come at will when you grew up. Perhaps anyone can, if they use the method you discovered.”

  “Far more likely you would see nothing.”

  “But would you let me try? You speak so often of leaving the island. My life will be so empty if you do. I’d like to find out a little of what lies before me, if I can.”

  “Very well, you may try. But if you’re in distress, I must bring you out of the trance for your own safety.”

  My excitement mounted as we made everything ready. We built up the fire and we pulled my bed closer. McLir told me to lie down, with my head near to the flames. I felt my cheeks flushing from the heat. He took some packets off the shelf and mixed handfuls together.

  “What are they?” I was curious.

  “If you’re able to have visions which are useful and not harmful, I’ll tell you. You may use these substances again, if you come back safely. Perhaps you may not be able to go into a trance or feel distress. If so, I wouldn’t want you to try when I’m not here. I must make sure you return from the place you go to. The way back can sometimes be hard to find, even with help.” He handed me a huge green stone, roughly cut and incised in swirling patterns, of a kind I had never seen before.

  “Take this, and hold it tightly in your hand. May the stone shed a light for you in dark places.”

  “What is it?” I turned the stone over, studying it, as he had taught me to do with any new object.

  “A talisman from the coast near my home. It has been in my family for generations. My grandmother gave it to my mother and she to me, when she decided my need was greater than hers. She told me to hold the stone in my hand, so I’d come back to my body. Then it wouldn’t matter how far away I wandered.”

  He cast the mixture onto the fire and colours flared up into the air. Crimson and gold, blue, green and violet, just as I had seen before. The purple smoke gushed out in a dense wave, which he wafted over my face. I snuffed eagerly, although I expected it to make me cough, but I did not. The sickly sweet smell was the last thing I remembered, before I swirled down into the pulsing darkness.

  I was falling into a void, as I had fallen down the cliff. This time I felt no fear, just anticipation. I lifted my arms, like a bird’s wings, and I started to drift more gently, a wonderful sensation.

  “Welcome,” said a voice out of the darkness. A woman’s voice, or so I thought.

  “Who are you?” I asked her.

  “I am the Guide of Souls and I come to show you the way.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Down all the years.”

  “Why do we go?”

  “Because time is short.”

  A faint glow appeared, and the darkness around me lightened. I stood on a shore that seemed vaguely familiar to me. Tiny waves lapped at my feet and gulls wheeled over my head in the still grey air. A figure stood at my side, tall and very thin. She was wrapped in veils, so thick I could not see her face.

  “Look,” she said, as she pointed out over the water. A boat sailed towards us, a sleek vessel with a long prow. I had seen one before, McLir’s ship, Wave Sweeper.

  “McLir?” I asked her.

  “No, not he. Watch now.”

  The boat grounded on the sand, not far from where we stood, and a man sprang down. As he waded through the surf, someone called after him, in a language I did not understand. The man answered in the same strange tongue. He had dark hair and a scar ran down his right cheek. I made to move aside, so he should not bump into me, but I could not stir. My companion stayed closely by my side.

  “He is the first but many others come after him,” she said clearly.

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s important to you. His needs are your needs. He doesn’t know it yet, but he’ll learn soon enough.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “You’ll be told when you need to know.”

  Darkness closed round us again and the scene changed. Now we were standing in the middle of my village, with sounds of battle raging all around us. I was almost deafened by the screams and the blows of metal crashing into metal. A crowd of men fought one another with swords, axes and spears. My father wielded his huge axe, which few others can even lift. He ran screaming into the fray and brought it down onto a man, even as I watched. The man’s head split open like a ripe apple and he dropped, spurting blood and brains. My father jumped over his twitching body and ran towards another foe. The attackers gave way before him. His headlong rush carried him far away from the rest of our men and his enemies quickly surrounded him. Instinctively, I followed, not knowing what to do, but reacting to his danger. Our men were few, and those who attacked outnumbered them by at least four to one. The battle could only end one way. My father fell, as a great axe slashed down and hewed his head in two. I was so near him, his blood spurted into my eyes, and everything turned red. I fell to my knees screaming and a bony hand took hold of my shoulder and drew me to my feet.

  “Oshin would choose such a death in battle, as his fathers did before him. He goes to feast with them in the realms of the dead,” the Guide of Souls said to me. A type of unholy glee echoed through her voice.

  As she spoke, the scene changed yet again, and this time I stood on a dark hill. A wheel of fire rolled down the cliff, plunging at last into the waiting sea. Faint shouts of anguish rose. I knew that the strange thing had passed among my enemies, searing them with its heat. I did not know why I had rolled it, or for what purpose. Yet I was certain I was the one who had sent the fiery wheel down upon them and into the sea.

  The woman touched me and I felt iciness again. Then I rose through a haze, which was dark no longer. Everything shone brightly with the flickering flames of red, green, and purple.

  “Where is she?” I searched blindly around me for the woman, trying to focus my eyes, which were dazzled by the light.

  “Drink this.” McLir held out a cup to me and I took it gratefully. My throat burned and the water tasted like the finest cordial. “So you did find something in your dreams. I didn’t think you would and, from your face, your visions have, indeed, frightened you.”

  “Yes, I was terribly scared.” I shuddered at the memories although, in the light and his reassuring presence, some of my fear had gone.

  “Tell me.”

  “A man landed on a shore, a man with dark hair and a scarred face. He spoke in a language I didn’t understand. Then a fiery wheel rolled down among my enemies and burned them. I had rolled it deliberately to do them harm. But the worst thing was...” I shivered again, “men fought a great battle. Many died including my father. What do these visions mean?”

  “I can’t tell you, but you’ll find out in time. Who went with you on your journey?”

  “A woman. She spoke to me, but she hid her face with thick veils. She called herself the Guide of Souls.”

  He nodded. “The Guide is different for each one of us. She was there to lead you forward and perhaps keep you in that place, if she could. That’s why I gave you the stone to bring you back here. I’m glad you returned safely, even if you saw things you did not want to see.”

  I dropped the green stone into his open hand. My hand had clenched around it and I found it hard to prize my fingers open. “So it protected me?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “I wouldn’t choose to look into the future again. You were right.”

  “No one wants to do so, but sometimes it’s necessary and can be useful.”

  “Did I see the world as it will be?”

  “Maybe. We’ve both looked into the future, but what we’ve seen is different. Either vision may come true, at least in part.”

  “My father’s blood poured out all over me. Even though I hate him, I wouldn
’t wish that kind of death on him or on anyone else.”

  “Many men would freely choose to die in battle.”

  “She said so too, the Guide of Souls.”

  “Perhaps it might not happen. Only time really tells us the truth.” He passed his fingers through his beard, restlessly, tugging at the fine strands. His thoughts were obviously far away from the quiet room where we sat. “The things I foretell are sometimes changed, but the essence of them is not.”

  “In what way? I don’t understand.”

  “If, in trance, you’re scared of someone, in reality you would be right to be afraid of that person. Even if they seem, at first, to be quite harmless, their real substance doesn’t change. I have found that knowledge to be the one thing that’s never let me down, when all the rest has. Perhaps it’ll be so for you. I hope it may be. But go to sleep now. You made a long journey tonight. Don’t be afraid to close your eyes. The visions won’t come back and your rest should be dreamless.”

  In this, McLir erred. For some days afterwards, I could not get the pictures I had seen out of my mind, waking or sleeping. My peace shattered and the future once again filled me with dread. My own fault, of course, for wanting to share in things I did not understand. I paid the price of my curiosity. It took me a long time to achieve a certain fragile calm. Then I met the man with the scarred face in reality and my visions haunted me once again. His name was Edan.

  15

  Edan’s Story

  The boat slipped silently through the waves towards the dark land. I leaned over to watch the faint trail of sparkles marking our passage.

  “Are you ready?” Dag asked, as he came forward to where I stood with my arm wrapped around the dragon’s head prow. Dag is the oldest of my half brothers and this longship is his.

  “I’m ready!” I remember smiling at him; eager to be gone, ready to start the task our father gave me. I also felt reluctant to leave the ship and my own people. It would be some time before I heard my own speech again. In the coming days, speaking my native tongue would be dangerous. I must never forget, for an instant, that I do not belong wholly to my mother’s people. Hers is not the only language I speak. Fortunately I favour her in build and colouring, rather than my father. For this reason, I am the one to whom he gave this errand. I am not tall and fair like Dag and the others. If I were, I would find it much harder to fit in with the small dark people of my mother’s race.

  “We’re almost ashore,” Dag said to me. “Remember we return here to pick you up on the first night of the new moon.”

  “I won’t forget.”

  “I’ll wait three nights for you. Any more and someone with sharp eyes may spot us and remember. If you don’t come by then...”

  “I’ll be here, don’t fret.”

  The boat’s stem grated gently on the shingle and I leapt into the surf. Dag reached down to give me my pack of tools. I hitched the weight onto my shoulders and clasped his hand.

  “Odin’s favour go with you.”

  “And with you, brother.”

  By the time I waded ashore, Dag’s men had pushed the ship free and its sails filled with the offshore breeze. I took a deep breath and stood for a moment, watching it fade into the darkness. I felt the loneliness that comes when you go to a strange land, among people not your own. I was here to bring back word of their weaknesses. I was proud I had been the one chosen for another such task by my father. Others might have been sent instead of me. Several of our people speak the Celtic tongue, although few of them look sufficiently like Celts. They would be questioned; they are too tall and fair.

  I am, by many years, the youngest of my father’s sons. Yet Fadir, by giving these tasks to me, has acknowledged I am a grown man and useful to him. I am no longer either a boy or his slave. I hoped to find what he was looking for this time, for I wanted to please him. I intended to do my best, as I always did. He has been a good father to me.

  I turned to the south and, when dawn broke, I had travelled many miles from the quiet bay where I landed. Weariness began to drag at my heels. My pack is heavy, being mostly metal, but it is a necessary part of my disguise. I never discovered if Fadir had this in his mind when first he apprenticed me. A worker in metals can pass anywhere, and they are warmly greeted. Everyone needs things mending, or new things to be made. Few are as skilled as I am. Metalworking fascinated me, even as a small lad. When my father realised my interest, he took me to old Ulf, a true master of the craft. Father encouraged me to work hard and learn as much as possible from him. They were good years.

  I smiled as I remembered the first time my father came to visit me. I handed him the brooch I made for him, a poor thing, for I lacked the skill to make a better. Yet he has worn it on his cloak ever since.

  I would probably make a good living, even if I had not been my father’s son and destined for other things. What I did not realise, until much later, was the purposes for which my skills would be used. A metalworker, who learned Celtic at his mother’s knee, is a most efficient spy.

  This was not the first time I had undertaken such a role. My father has always been hungry for good land. Never yet, in all his wanderings, has he found a place to settle in peace. The lands in the north, his birthplace, are barren and cold. He was only one of many sons born to my grandfather. He had no option but to find his fortune upon the seas. Fadir sailed first to the west. The lands they found were icy and unpleasant. He was still young, so, after a couple of years, he took ship again, and this time he headed south. He wandered from place to place, searching. Sometimes he stayed in one spot for a time, but always he journeyed on. Others already held the best lands and were strong enough to keep them. Finally, he took to raiding and, on one of those raids, he captured my mother. He already had several sons by this time, Dag, Snorri, Knut and Ivar who died young. But he saw something in my mother he had seen in none of his other captives. He kept her by him, a slave in his own house. She told me that she, too, liked the blond giant who carried her off, once her first terror left her. Not long afterwards I was born. He brought me up the same as the others, although I looked so different from my brothers. In time, my father’s first wife died. He set my mother free, married her and acknowledged me as his son. I became a useful tool for him, a child between two peoples, sharing their blood and speech. I looked like one race, but was loyal to the other.

  He showed me kindness and I have always been grateful to him. I am happy to carry out whatever task he gives me to do. At first, they were small things, a message to be taken here or a man to be found and asked a question. The tasks became harder over the years. He took me into his confidence, and told me what he was searching for and how I could help him. He sent me from place to place, seeking for land. From lands which were too barren or too well defended, we took any riches we could carry away. We traded them for the things we needed. Many times, I have been dropped ashore, to explore and to be picked up again with my news. Sometimes I found nothing at all, but, if I did find something, we raided soon afterwards.

  Only once did I discover somewhere that satisfied him, in the land to the east. Unfortunately, we were detected before we came ashore. The king heard of our imminent arrival and he brought his army against us. In that battle, I received the scar on my cheek from a Bretlander’s dagger. I did not duck in time and I was lucky not to lose my eye or my life. Dag killed the man who marked me and got me back to the ship. Otherwise I would not be here to tell this tale. They drove us into the sea, licking our wounds. Several of our men died. I had made a grave mistake. Never again did I send a message to attack without making absolutely sure no strong foes lurked nearby. I learned my lesson that day.

  I continued to scout. Sometimes I wondered whether I would ever be able to find the place that my father sought in time. He had grown old now and stiff, although he had been a strong man and a great warrior in his youth. He was not very hale and we feared for him. Nowadays, Dag leads our voyages, but Fadir still gives the orders that send us on our way. I hoped
this time Odin would truly favour me and my long search would be over. I, too, wanted to settle in a place, to farm the land and live in peace. I have seen more than enough of battles and fruitless journeys.

  Many miles had passed behind me, before I came to the small fishing village. The people were already stirring and greeted me with some suspicion. I showed them the king’s token, which allowed me to pass through the land. The token looked genuine enough, for we made an exact copy of one we took from a captured trader. I explained I travelled from place to place looking for work, now that my master was dead. They told me of the plague, which had ravaged the island in the winter and killed so many people. Everyone assumed that my master, too, had died of this sickness. I did not contradict them. In truth, he had been in his grave for many years, in a land far away. I listened carefully to what people said, but I did not ask questions. I did not want to make them wonder about me. Certain of their words sounded strange to me. Our speech was sufficiently alike, though, for me to pass for a man from another part of the island. Yet I knew I must not reveal my ignorance of what had happened by asking too many questions. The people would know me for the stranger I really am. Their tales encouraged me. If so many people had died, fewer were available to defend the land. I now had only to find out which area was the most fertile. Then I might take welcome news to my father and our folk at last.

  I stayed a few days in the village. A broken plough, a dagger, some mast fixings and several other things were brought for me to mend. Their own smith was dead of the sickness and they had found difficulty managing without him. So they greeted my arrival as a gift from their God. The people gave me food, drink, and somewhere to sleep. The whole place seemed poor and everyone was sad and weary. I worked during the days and sat around the fire in the evenings, listening to their tales and songs. I even sang them a few of my own, being careful to choose those which are well known throughout the Celtic lands. I had already decided I would travel onwards as soon as possible, although they were keen for me to stay. Their land was not worth fighting for; their greatest asset was the sea. All the men fished, as well as tilled the poor soil for their meagre crops. I needed somewhere more productive and I found out there was better land elsewhere. I did not tell them, of course, why I wanted to know. This village was only the first place I had visited. There were many others, as well as plenty of time to achieve my purpose.