Only the Stones Survive: A Novel

by Morgan Llywelyn

  And Taya’s.

  The quarrel that followed was spectacular, even by their standards.

  Éremón wanted to hit Odba. He wanted to hit somebody—anybody! It almost but not quite destroyed his appetite for the meal the women were preparing.

  Sakkar remained remote from the busy scene around him. He was given tasks and he did them, he was given food and he ate it, yet all the time he was somewhere else.

  As the sun set, the men dragged the galleys farther up the shore so the women and children could sleep on them. Amergin noticed that Sakkar was using both his hands to haul on the ropes. After the ships were in place and securely blocked, the bard sought out the Phoenician. “Your shoulder appears to be greatly improved,” he said, indicating the limb in question. It now looked identical to its opposite number.

  Sakkar ducked his head and scuffed his toe in the sand like a boy who had been caught in a lie. “Yes,” he mumbled.

  “How did that happen?”

  “How?” Sakkar raised his head.

  “Your shoulder. What happened to it, Sakkar?”

  “My shoulder?”

  Amergin was perplexed. The Phoenician had never been reticent; in fact, Sakkar was always willing to talk to the bard, delighted to find someone who took an interest in him as a person. The former shipwright had proved to be a treasure house of information about distant lands and exotic customs. Their conversations had enriched Amergin’s mental store.

  Now Sakkar seemed to be struck dumb.

  Amergin tried to reestablish normal communication. “I thought your shoulder was permanently ruined, Sakkar.”

  “Yes.” Sakkar stared into the distance.

  The bard waited. Cleared his throat. Rearranged his worn tunic. His tranquil expression and relaxed body said he was not going anywhere until Sakkar talked to him.

  With a visible effort, the Phoenician pulled himself into the here and now. “I met a woman.”

  Amergin raised an eyebrow. It was the first time Sakkar had ever spoken of a woman. “Which woman?”

  “Not one of ours.”

  “Are you saying there are other people here?”

  “Not … people. I don’t know what they are.”

  Perhaps Sakkar had taken a blow to the head, Amergin thought, one that temporarily deprived him of his senses. Whatever had happened, it was serious. The bard stood up and looked around for help. “There’s a man over here who’s been hurt!” he shouted.

  A druid healer labored over Sakkar for a long time, rolled back his eyelids and peered into his eyes, thoroughly examined his skull with fingertips as light as a moth’s wings, smelled his breath and tasted his urine. Finally pronounced him uninjured—yet could not explain the dramatic change to Sakkar’s shoulder.

  Amergin was not satisfied. He resolved to keep an eye on his friend for a few days. Then he went to seek his own bed.

  By the time Sakkar was left alone, the sky was a sea of stars.

  Sleep eluded him. His brain had never been so active. He tossed and turned, remembered and imagined. At first light he took a disc of polished metal from the faded tapestry bag in which he kept his personal possessions. Peering into the mirror, Sakkar frowned at the face that looked back at him. It was entirely wrong for a man to whom something extraordinary had happened.

  From a rolled leather case he selected a small knife and a set of razors with handles of polished horn. A soft pouch provided a well-worn whetstone. Chewing on his lower lip in concentration, Sakkar sharpened his neglected blades. Then he propped the mirror atop the tapestry bag and began trimming his beard. Since the injury that limited the use of his right hand, the beard had grown unchecked. Now it was an impenetrable tangle of thick black hair. After a few preliminary cuts, Sakkar’s restored fingers began a patient search for the hidden man.

  The Mílesians were waking up. Grunting, yawning, stretching, farting, scratching, calling to one another, talking about food. A horse whinnied. A baby cried. Odba and Éremón had an argument that roused the most determined sleepers. Donn organized a foraging party. Some went to seek game while others scoured water’s edge for crabs and mussels and edible seaweeds. “Don’t overlook anything that might be eaten. If in doubt, take it to the women and try it on them.”

  Sakkar worked on, oblivious. At last he scrutinized himself in the mirror again. What remained of his unruly beard was trimmed very tight and close, coming to a precise point on his chin. It gave a newfound distinction to what had been an ordinary face.

  He might have been a desert nomad. He might even have been a Persian prince.

  SEVEN

  AS THE MÍLESIANS MADE preparations for occupying their new homeland, Sakkar the Phoenician was given his choice of going on an expeditionary party with the warriors or staying in camp with the women—warriors’ wives who would regard him as a coward for remaining behind.

  So he reluctantly allowed Éremón’s armorer to fit a sheet of hard-cured leather across his chest to protect his torso. The leather had been soaked in seawater and then moulded to shape with heated stones before it dried. A fitted helmet made of the same material was jammed onto Sakkar’s head.

  He had never worn body armor or a helmet before. The breastplate was stiff and chafed the tender flesh of his underarms. The helmet had been formed to a Gaelic skull shape and kept slipping down over his eyes.

  When Éremón’s attendant asked, “Are you a sword man or a spear man?” Sakkar had no answer, having never used either. From observation, he thought the sword seemed marginally less awkward, but both were alien to his hands.

  “Must I carry weapons?”

  The armorer, a grizzled veteran who had served the sons of Mílesios throughout their fighting lives, gave a snort of contempt. “Are you going to just stand there with one arm as long as the other while your enemy cuts you down?”

  A memory of the woman with gray eyes flashed through Sakkar’s mind. The enemy?

  The armorer took advantage of his lapse in attention to press a weapon into his hand. “Here you are, shipbuilder. This will do for you; it’s a short-shafted thrusting spear, easiest for a beginner. All you do is ram it into your opponent’s belly, low down, give it a twist, then pull it out as fast as you can. If he doesn’t die immediately, he will bleed to death soon enough. Think you can manage that?”

  Without waiting for an answer, the man moved on to adjust someone else’s breastplate.

  Sakkar was left holding his spear and half-blinded by his helmet. The edge of his breastplate pressed painfully into his chest. Soon it would become an agony.

  This did not augur well for his career as a warrior.

  But here he was. Where fate had brought him. If there was one thing every child of the East learned early in life, it was that one’s fate could not be avoided.

  Sakkar had never taken part in a battle and did not know what to expect, but he was a quick learner. With the rest of the foot warriors, he would trot in the wake of the leaders in their chariots and copy the actions of his companions.

  While he waited to get under way, he picked at his fingernails and stared at the sea.

  Donn, the only one of the brothers with any organizational skills, appointed a band of scouts to precede the warriors. When they returned to report sighting a few natives bathing in a lake just beyond some hills, Éremón was elated. “What a perfect beginning! They’ll be helpless and unprepared, and we can slaughter the lot of them. That will heat the blood of our warriors.”

  “Let one or two escape,” counseled Donn, “so they can spread fear among the rest of their people. Their terror will be our best ally.”

  Éber Finn scoffed, “We don’t need any allies; we are the sons of Mílesios.”

  They approached the lake as quietly as possible until the last moment. Then the chariots thundered toward the startled Dananns and the air was torn by raucous Gaelic war cries.

  When it was over—the battle took no time at all—a dozen dead bodies lay in the bloody shallows. Young men and w
omen, some with flowers in their hair, friends who had been celebrating the beauty of the day together.

  Sakkar stood at the edge of the lake and watched the slender corpses bobbing gently in the rippling water. Water that seemed full of light. Brighter than any water he had ever seen before.

  “I am afraid we have done a bad thing,” he said under his breath.

  Noticing Amergin on the opposite side of the lake, Sakkar made his way around to him. Amergin had taken no part in the attack because bards did not fight. They only observed and told of the battle afterward.

  “We have done a bad thing,” the Phoenician repeated to his friend.

  Amergin cocked an eyebrow. “We? I see no blood on the head of your spear.”

  “Ah … no. I did enough fighting as a lad in the streets of Tyre. I have no taste for it now.”

  “Then why are you armed?”

  “Sometimes it is easier to go with the tide. But when I saw those people in the lake, hardly more than children, and with no way to defend themselves…” Sakkar stopped talking and looked toward the bodies in the shallows. Palely glimmering in the shallows.

  Amergin recognized his discomfiture. “Finish what you started to say.”

  “Actually … they may not have been helpless.”

  “They were naked, Sakkar, frolicking in the water. What could they have done against us?”

  “The day we arrived I met … at least I think I met … some of their race. They had no weapons either, but they were not helpless.”

  “I recall you mentioned a woman that night. Is that what you’re talking about?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure it actually happened. Except…”

  Amergin gave a sigh of exasperation. “Sometimes you try my patience, Phoenician. You can be as slippery as the rest of your race. Except for what?”

  Sakkar dropped his chin so Amergin could barely hear him. “Except for my shoulder.”

  The bard stood very still. “That evening your shoulder was healed,” he said thoughtfully.

  “Yes.”

  “They healed it? The natives?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so. They have powers I can’t explain, Amergin. You see, when I found them, or they found me, I was frightened at first because I was alone and…” He hesitated, then let the words come out at a rush. “They could talk to each other without speaking. Silently.”

  Amergin started to laugh, thinking it was a joke, but the Phoenician was not in the habit of making jokes. “If they didn’t use words, Sakkar, how do you know what they were doing?”

  Sakkar scuffled a toe in the dirt. “Because … they could put their thoughts into my head and understand my own.” He turned his eyes back toward the bodies floating in the lake.

  Amergin followed the direction of his gaze. “If you are telling the truth, Sakkar—and I don’t know if I believe it—we may be making a mistake by attacking those people. Of course, we were all tired that day; perhaps you fell asleep and dreamed what you just told me.” Narrowing his eyes, the bard tried to count the corpses floating in the water. Curiously, their numbers eluded him. Three? Five? More? Or less? Or were they there at all? Clouds had gathered overhead, and dark shadows played across the surface of the lake, obscuring the scene.

  Amergin said, “Perhaps the natives here can work magic. I suppose it’s possible. Remember the strange fog that prevented our landing?”

  “I’ll never forget it,” Sakkar asserted, “but at least we survived. Not one of us was hurt.”

  “Are you saying the natives are harmless, magic or not?”

  “I don’t know,” the little man replied honestly. “This is all new to me, and I’m … I’m confused, Amergin. Can we leave it at that?” Sakkar was beginning to wish he had told his hosts the more sinister stories about the island. In his own eagerness to find a paradise, had he led them to something very different?

  But it was too late now.

  EIGHT

  THE ARRIVAL OF THE MÍLESIANS was disconcerting, but the Túatha Dé Danann did not foresee its being a catastrophe. I knew nothing about the invaders because my parents did not tell me. When I was supposed to be asleep, I occasionally heard Mongan and Lerys murmuring to one another in the night, but I made no effort to listen. People who share their space learn to give each other privacy. I understood that my parents’ tender exchanges were not meant for me.

  During the day our lives were unchanged—except my father began to be away more often and for longer periods. I assumed that his absences involved the tribes that Aengus had said were causing trouble.

  Sunseason was also known as battle season, because that was when the soft, damp earth of Ierne dried up enough for fighting. Yet I never envisioned my father taking part in a battle. Mongan was the gentlest of men. My mother once told me that all Dananns were gentle unless a different quality was necessary.

  “We have it in us to be whatever is required,” she said. I did not understand. Then.

  While Mongan was away, Melitt sometimes came down the valley to see if my mother and I needed anything. She never failed to bring a loaf of her fruit bread, still warm from the stone oven outside her house. Crisp at the crust but soft in the middle.

  My father was usually home before moonrise, and if any of Melitt’s bread was left, he ate it.

  The remainder of sunseason passed slowly, sweetly, for me. A gift from my parents who tried to shield me from disturbance for as long as they could. One day can be half of a happy eternity if it is filled with expeditions and discoveries, with dreams and fantasies, with billowing white clouds and the smell of grass after rain.

  Battle season traditionally ended with harvest time. My father stayed home then; there was a lot of work to be done in preparation for darkseason. Before the rains of autumn set in, I helped him to collect a large supply of fallen branches for firewood and to build a shelter to keep it dry. My mother showed me how to find and gather edible roots and other wild foods and store them in the earth. She had always done this by herself before; sharing it with me was an honor I appreciated. One more acknowledged step toward adulthood.

  During that darkseason I learned many new things. My father taught me to shape flint into blades and to make footwear out of hides taken from the bodies of animals who had died in the forest. Mother showed me how to grind grain in a quern—which was hard work!—and make cheese from the milk of goats. She even let me use her precious bone needles to mend my own clothes.

  The adult tasks gave me a heady sense of importance, although my own adulthood was still far away. Or so I thought.

  Darkseason, which had seemed interminable when I was younger, passed quickly because I was kept busy. When my mother measured my increasing height against a line carved in our doorway, she said, “You will soon be taller than I am, Joss.”

  She sounded very surprised.

  I arranged sticks at the edge of the clearing where our house stood, and every day that the sun shone I went out and measured the length of my shadow. I could feel my muscles swelling beneath my skin.

  When the days began to lengthen, Mongan announced, “It is time you learned the use of weapons, Joss.”

  “Not yet, surely!” protested my mother.

  “You yourself pointed out how much he has grown, Lerys. Our boy needs the sort of exercise that builds men.”

  My father took me to a distant meadow where my mother would not have to watch. He carved a serviceable sword for me out of an ash branch, with leaves curling around the hilt, and showed me how to place my feet … just so … and how to bend and weave with my body as I swung the weapon.

  At first I was clumsy, but I soon became agile and enjoyed every moment as my father and I circled each other, feinting and attacking. I could see how much fun a real battle would be.

  My father remarked, “You should have some brothers to practice with. I cannot bring myself to strike you, but obviously you need to take a few knocks. A few hard knocks,” he stressed. “We must invite your male cousins to visit us
. Perhaps they are big enough by now.” He seemed preoccupied, however, and forgot to summon them.

  When I boasted to the Dagda of my improving battle skills, he said, “Do not mistake warriors for heroes.”

  “But they are heroic!”

  “Only if you consider killing to be heroic. Death is not the purpose of life, Joss. Life is the purpose of life.”

  “Then who are the heroes?”

  “Those who master the mind.” He tapped his skull with his knuckles. “Theirs is the victory. No sword lasts forever.”

  I could not resist arguing, and he knew it. “Minds die too,” I countered. “When a person dies, his head dies and his brain and…”

  “Thought does not die,” the old man interrupted. “Thought has no body to be killed.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Now you display the beginning of wisdom.”

  As the tiny new leaves began to spring out on the trees, we dug into the soft earth with our fingers and planted seeds. Once again I worked beside my parents. “This autumn you and I are going to make flour from the grain we’ve planted,” my mother promised. “The bread we bake will be almost as good as Melitt’s.”

  Then Mongan began going away again.

  Goddess weather, my mother called it. The season of the sun. She never said battle season.

  But that is what it was.

  I have a very clear memory of the Day of Triumph. For a number of nights my father had not come home at all, and my mother could not hide her anxiety. At last Mongan returned to announce that the enemy had withdrawn without doing any harm to our people. He lifted Lerys into his arms and swung her around and around while she laughed with glee. She was a laughing woman, my mother. In their joy the two of them were like children themselves.

  I danced about them, asking questions. “Which enemy? The Iverni? Or the Fír Bolga?”

  “The invaders from the south,” my father replied in an unguarded moment. Only then did I realize something important had been kept from me. “We tried a new defensive technique against the men with blue swords. They saw monsters form from shadows and giants take shape from trees. The illusions in their own minds frightened them so badly they will never bother us again.”