Taran Wanderer

by Alexander, Lloyd

  Inside Taran saw racks and shelves holding earthenware of all kinds, vessels of plain baked clay, graceful jars, and among these, at random, pieces whose craftsmanship and beauty made him catch his breath. Only once, in the treasure house of Lord Gast, had he set eyes on handiwork such as this. He turned, astonished, to the old man who had begun laying dishes and bowls on an oaken table.

  "When I asked if you sought daub to mend your chimney I spoke foolishly," Taran said, humbly bowing. "If this is your work, I have seen some of it before, and I know you: Annlaw Clay-Shaper."'

  The potter nodded. "My work it is. If you've seen it, it may be that indeed you do know me. For I am old at my craft, Wanderer, and no longer sure where the clay ends and Annlaw begins--- or, in truth, if they're not one and the same."

  Taran looked closer at the vessels crowding the hut, at the newly finished wine bowl shaped even more skillfully than the one in Lord Gast's trove, at the long, clay-spattered tables covered with jars of paints, pigments, and glazes. Now he saw in wonder that what he had first taken for common scullery-ware was as beautiful, in its own way, as the wine bowl. All had come from a master's hand. He turned to Annlaw.

  "It was told me," Taran said, "that one piece of your making is worth more than all of a cantrev lord's treasure house, and I well believe it. And here," he shook his head in amazement, "this is a treasure house in itself."

  "Yes, yes!" Gurgi cried. "Oh, skillful potter gains riches and fortunes from clever shapings!"

  "Riches and fortune?" replied Annlaw smiling. "Food for my table, rather. Most of these pots and bowls I send to the small Commots where the folk have no potter of their own. As I give what they need, they give what I need; and treasure is what I need the least. My joy is in the craft, not the gain. Would all the fortunes in Prydain help my fingers shape a better bowl?"

  "There are those," Taran said, half in earnest as he glanced at the potter's wheel, "who claim work such as yours comes by enchantment."

  At this Annlaw threw back his head and laughed heartily. "I wish it did, for it would spare much toil. No, no, Wanderer, my wheel, alas, is like any other. True it is," he added, "that Govannion the Lame, master craftsman of Prydain, long ago fashioned all manner of enchanted implements. He gave them to whom he deemed would use them wisely and well, but one by one they fell into the clutches of Arawn Death-Lord. Now all are gone.

  "But Govannion, too, discovered and set down the high secrets of all crafts," Annlaw went on. "These, as well, Arawn stole, to hoard in Annuvin where none may ever profit from them." The potter's face turned grave. "A lifetime have I striven to discover them again, to guess what might have been their nature. Much have I learned--- learned by doing, as a child learns to walk. But my steps falter. The deepest lore yet lies beyond my grasp. I fear it ever shall.

  "Let me gain this lore," Annlaw said, "and I'll yearn for no magical tools. Let me find the knowledge. And these," he added, holding up his claycrusted hands, "these will be enough to serve me."

  "But you know what you seek," Taran answered. "I, alas, seek without knowing even where to look." He then told Annlaw of Hevydd the Smith and Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman, of the sword and cloak he had made. "I was proud of my work," Taran went on. "Yet, at the end neither anvil nor loom satisfied me."

  "What of the potter's wheel?" asked Annlaw. When Taran admitted he knew nothing of this craft and prayed Annlaw to let him see the shaping of clay, the old potter willingly agreed.

  Annlaw drew up his coarse robe and seated himself at the wheel, which he quickly set spinning, and on it flung a lump of clay. The potter bent almost humbly to his work, and reached out his hands as tenderly as if he were lifting an unfledged bird. Before Taran's eyes Annlaw began shaping a tall, slender vessel. As Taran stared in awe, the clay seemed to shimmer on the swiftly turning wheel and to change from moment to moment. Now Taran understood Annlaw's words, for indeed between the potter's deft fingers and the clay he saw no separation, as though Annlacv's hands flowed into the clay and gave it life. Annlaw was silent and intent; his lined face had brightened; the years had fallen away from it. Taran felt his heart fill with a joy that seemed to reach from the potter to himself, and in that moment understood that he was in the presence of a true master craftsman, greater than any he had ever known.

  "Fflewddur was wrong," Taran murmured. "If there is enchantment, it lies not in the potter's wheel but in the potter."

  "Enchantment there is none," answered Annlaw, never turning from his work. "A gift, perhaps, but a gift that bears with it much toil."

  "If I could make a thing of such beauty, it is toil I would welcome," Taran said.

  "Sit you down then," said Annlaw, making room for Taran at the wheel. "Shape the clay for yourself." When Taran protested he would spoil Annlaw's half-formed vessel, the potter only laughed. "Spoil it you will, surely. I'll toss it back into the kneading trough, mix it with the other clay, and sooner or later it will serve again. It will not be lost. Indeed, nothing ever is, but comes back in one shape or another."

  "But for yourself," Taran said. "The skill you have already put in it will be wasted."

  The potter shook his head. "Not so. Craftsmanship isn't like water in an earthen pot, to be taken out by the dipperful until it's empty. No, the more drawn out the more remains. The heart renews itself, Wanderer, and skill grows all the better for it. Here, then. Your hands--- thus. Your thumbs--- thus."

  From the first moment Taran felt the clay whirling beneath his fingers, his heart leaped with the same joy he had seen on the potter's face. The pride of forging his own sword and weaving his own cloak dwindled before this new discovery that made him cry out in sudden delight. But his hands faltered and the clay went awry. Annlaw stopped the wheel. Taran's first vessel was so lopsided and misshapen that, despite his disappointment, he threw back his head and laughed.

  Annlaw clapped him on the shoulder. "Well-tried, Wanderer. The first bowl I turned was as ill-favored--- and worse. You have the touch for it. But before you learn the craft, you must first learn the clay. Dig, sift, and knead it, know its nature better than that of your closest companion. Then grind pigments for your glazes, understand how the fire of the kiln works upon them."

  "Annlaw Clay-Shaper," Taran said in a low voice that hid nothing of his yearning, "will you teach me your craft? This more than all else I long to do."

  Annlaw hesitated several moments and looked deeply at Taran. "I can teach you only what you can learn," said the potter. "How much that may be, time will tell. Stay, if that is your wish. Tomorrow we shall begin."

  The two wayfarers made themselves comfortable that night in a snug corner of the pottery shed. Gurgi curled on the straw pallet, but Taran sat with knees drawn up and arms clasped about them. "It's strange," he murmured. "The more of the Commot folk I've known, the fonder have I grown of them. Yet Commot Merin drew me at first sight, closer than all the others." The night was soft and still. Taran smiled wistfully in the darkness. "The moment I saw it, I thought it the one place I'd be content to dwell. And that--- that even Eilonwy might have been happy here.

  "And at Annlaw's wheel," he went on, "when my hands touched the clay, I knew I would count myself happy to be a potter. More than smithing, more than weaving--- it's as though I could speak through my fingers, as though I could give shape to what was in my heart. I understand what Annlaw meant. There is no difference between him and his work. Indeed, Annlaw puts himself into the clay and makes it live with his own life. If I, too, might learn to do this..."

  Gurgi did not answer. The weary creature was fast asleep. Taran smiled and drew the cloak over Gurgi's shoulders. "Sleep well," he said. "We may have come to the end of our journey."

  ANNLAW WAS AS GOOD

  as his word. In the days that followed, the potter showed Taran skills no less important than the working of the clay itself: the finding of proper earths, judging their texture and quality, sifting, mixing, tempering. Gurgi joined Taran in all the tasks, and soon his shaggy hair grew so cru
sted with dust, mud, and gritty glaze that he looked like an unbaked clay pot set on a pair of skinny legs. The summer sped quickly and happily, and the more Taran saw the potter at his craft the more he marveled. At the kneading trough, Annlaw pounded the clay with greater vigor than Hevydd the Smith at his anvil; and at the wheel did the most intricate work with a deftness surpassing even that of Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman. As early as he rose in the mornings, Taran always found the potter already up and about his tasks. Annlaw was tireless, often spending nights without sleep and days without food, absorbed in labor at his wheel. Seldom was the potter content to repeat a pattern, but strove to better even what he himself had originated.

  "Stale water is a poor drink," said Annlaw. "Stale skill is worse. And the man who walks in his own footsteps only ends where he began."

  Not until autumn did Annlaw let Taran try his hand at the wheel again. This time, the bowl Taran shaped was not as ill-formed as the other.

  Annlaw, studying it carefully, nodded his head and told him, "You have learned a little, Wanderer." Nevertheless, to Taran's dismay, Annlaw cast the bowl into the kneading trough. "Never fear," said the potter. "When you shape one worth the keeping, it will be fired in the kiln."

  Though Taran feared such a time might never come, it was not long before Annlaw judged a vessel," a shallow bowl simple in design yet well-proportioned, to be ready for firing. He set it, along with other pots and bowls he had crafted for the folk of Commot Isav, into a kiln taller and deeper than Hevydd's furnace. While Annlaw calmly turned to finishing other vessels for the Commot folk, Taran's anxiety grew until he felt that he himself was baking in the flames. But at last, when the firing was done and the pieces had cooled, the potter drew out the bowl, turned it around in his hands as Taran waited breathlessly, and tapped it with a clay-rimmed finger.

  He grinned at Taran. "It rings true. Beginner's work, Wanderer, but not to be ashamed of."

  Taran's heart lifted as if he had fashioned a wine bowl handsomer than ever Lord Gast has seen.

  But his joy changed soon to despair. Through autumn Taran shaped other vessels; yet, to his growing dismay, none satisfied him, none matched his hopes, despite the painful toil he poured into the work.

  "What lacks?" he cried to Annlaw. "I could forge a sword well enough and weave a cloak well enough. But now, what I truly long to grasp is beyond my reach. Must the one skill I sought above all be denied me?" he burst out in an anguished voice. "Is the gift forbidden me?" He bowed his head, and his heart froze even as he spoke the words, for he knew, within himself, he had touched the truth.

  Annlaw did not gainsay him, but only looked at him for a long while with deep sadness.

  "Why?" Taran whispered. "Why is this so?"

  "It is a heavy question," Annlaw replied at last. He put a hand on Taran's shoulder. "Indeed, no man can answer it. There are those who have labored all their lives to gain the gift, striving until the end only to find themselves mistaken; and those who had it born in them yet never knew; those who lost heart too soon; and those who should never have begun at all.

  "Count yourself lucky," the potter went on, "that you have understood this now and not spent your years in vain hope. This much have you learned, and no learning is wasted."

  "What then shall I do?" Taran asked. Grief and bitterness such as he had known in Craddoc's valley flooded over him.

  "There are more ways to happiness than in the shaping of a pot," replied Annlaw. "You have been happy in Merin. You still can be. There is work for you to do. Your help is welcome and valuable to me, as a friend as much as an apprentice. Why, look you now," he went on in a cheerful tone, "tomorrow I would send my ware to Commot Isav. But a day's journey is long for one of my years. As a friend, will you bear the burden for me?"

  Taran nodded. "I will carry your ware to Isav." He turned away, knowing that his happiness was ended, like a flawed vessel shattered in the firing.

  *¤*nihua*¤*

  Chapter 20

  The Spoilers

  NEXT MORNING, AS TARAN

  had promised, he loaded Melynlas and Gurgi's pony with the potter's ware and, Gurgi beside him, set out for Commot Isav. Annlaw, he knew, could as well have sent word to the Commot folk, asking them to come and bear away their own vessels. "This is not an errand I do for him, but a kindness he does for me," Taran told Gurgi. "I think he means to give me time to myself, to find my own thoughts. As for that," he added sorrowfully, "so far I've found none. I long to stay in Merin, yet there's little to keep me here. I prize Annlaw as my friend and as a master of his craft. But his craft will never be mine."

  Still pondering and troubled at heart Taran reached Isav some while before dusk. It was the smallest Commot of all he had seen, with fewer than half-a-dozen cottages and a little grazing plot for a handful of sheep and cattle. A knot of men were gathered by the sheepfold. As Taran rode closer he saw their faces tightly drawn and grim.

  Perplexed at this he called out his name and told them he brought pottery from Annlaw Clay-Shaper.

  "Greetings to you," said one man, naming himself as Drudwas Son of Pebyr. "And farewell in the same breath," he added. "Our thanks to Annlaw and yourself. But stay to share our hospitality and you may stay to shed your blood.

  "Outlaws rove the hills," Drudwas went on quickly, answering Taran's questioning frown, "a band, perhaps a dozen strong. We have heard they plundered two Commots already, and not content were they with a sheep or cow for their own food, but slaughtered all the herd for the joy of it. Today, not long past, I saw horsemen over the rise, and leading them a yellow-haired ruffian on a sorrel mare."

  "Dorath!" Taran cried.

  "How then?" asked one of the Commot men. "Do you know this band?"

  "If it's Dorath's Company, I know them well enough," Taran answered. "They are paid swords; and if none will hire them, I judge them glad to kill even without fee. Hard warriors they are, as I have seen them, and cruel as the Huntsmen of Annuvin."

  Drudwas nodded gravely. "So it is said. It may be they will pass us by," he went on, "but this I doubt. Commot Isav is small prey, but where defenders are few the reasons to attack are all the more."

  Taran glanced at the men. From their faces and bearing he knew their courage would not lack; but once more he heard Dorath's laughter and recalled the man's cunning and ruthlessness. "And if they attack," he asked, "what shall you do?"

  "What would you have us do?" Drudwas angrily burst out. "Offer tribute and beg them to spare us? Give our animals to their swords and our homes to their torches? Commot Isav has ever been at peace; our pride is husbandry not warfare. But we mean to stand against them. Have we better choice?"

  "I can ride back to Merin," Taran replied, "and bring you help."

  "Too far and too long," Drudwas answered. "Nor would I do so, even then, for it would leave Merin ill-defended. No, we stand as we are. Against twelve, seven. My son Llassar," he began, indicating a tall, eager-faced boy scarcely older than Taran had been when Coll first dubbed him Assistant Pig-Keeper.

  "Your count is amiss," Taran interrupted. "You are not seven, but nine. Gurgi and I stand with you."

  Drudwas shook his head. "You owe us no service or duty, Wanderer. We welcome your swords, but will not ask for them."

  "They are yours nonetheless," Taran replied, and Gurgi nodded agreement. "Will you heed me? Nine may stand against a dozen and win the day. But with Dorath, number counts less than skill. Were he alone I would still fear him as much as twelve. He will fight shrewdly and strive to gain the most at least cost. We must answer him in kind." The Commot men listened carefully as Taran then spoke of a ruse to make the raiders believe themselves outnumbered, and to attack where Dorath would expect no more than feeble defense.

  "If two men were to lie waiting in the sheepfold and two in the cattle pen, ready to spring up," Taran said, "they might take the band unawares and hold them a few moments while the rest of us attack from ambush in the rear. At the same time, if the women of your households set up a
din with rakes and hoes, it would seem other swordsmen had hastened to join us."

  Drudwas thought a long moment, then nodded. "Your plan may be sound, Wanderer. But I fear for those in the pens, as they must bear the brunt for all of us. If aught should go awry, small chance of escape would they have."

  "I shall be one to keep watch in the sheepfold," Taran began.

  "And I the other," Llassar broke in quickly.

  Drudwas frowned. "I would not spare you because you are my son. You are a good lad and gentle with the flock. I think of your years..."

  "The flock is in my charge," Llassar cried. "By right my place is with the Wanderer."

  The men spoke hurriedly among themselves, at last agreeing that Llassar would keep watch with Taran, while Drudwas stood guard over the cattle along with Gurgi who, fearful though he was, refused to be any farther from Taran's side. By the time all plans were set and the Commot men posted among the trees just beyond the sheepfold, a full moon had risen above thin clouds. The cold light sharpened the edges of the shadows and the outlines of brush and branches. In the fold Taran and Llassar crouched amid the restless flock.

  For a time neither spoke. In the bright moonlight the face of Llassar seemed to Taran more boyish than before; he saw the youth was afraid and making all effort to hide it. Though uneasy himself, he grinned assuringly at Llassar. Drudwas,had been right. The boy was young, untried. And yet--- Taran smiled, knowing that he himself, at Llassar's age, would have claimed the same right.

  "Your plan is good, Wanderer," Llassar said at last in a hushed voice, speaking, Taran knew, more to ease his own disquiet than anything else. "Better than we should have done. It cannot fail."

  "All plans can fail," Taran said, almost harshly. He fell silent then. Fears had begun stirring in him like leaves in a chill wind. Sweat drenched his body under the fleece jacket. He had come to Isav unknown, unproven, yet the men of the Commot had willingly heeded him and willingly put their fate in his hands. They had accepted his plan when another might have served better; should it fail, though all their lives could be forfeit, the blame would be his alone. He gripped the hilt of his sword and strained his eyes to peer into the darkness. There was no movement, and even the shadows seemed frozen.