Only the Stones Survive: A Novel

by Morgan Llywelyn

  We had traveled for quite a distance before we came upon the first settlement of New People. Careful to stay well out of sight, we stopped long enough to observe them.

  The dwellings they had built for themselves did not seem to grow out of the land, as ours did, but were set on top of it; heavy, circular structures of timber and sod sealed with mud and roofed with thatch. Aside from a single door, there was no allowance for letting light into the interior.

  The barriers they had erected around their houses—walls and banks and ditches—added to the overall impression of permanence.

  Outside of these barriers, the land was divided into individual holdings separated by low stone walls. The ground had been torn open by iron ploughs and planted with foreign seeds. Instead of collecting the abundant rain on the surface, the Mílesian settlers had punched holes deep into the earth to provide water. It was sickening to see the soft flesh of Ierne abused.

  Yet the actions of the New People were not totally alien. On the grassy uplands where they brought their cattle to graze, we were surprised to discover that the herders had built little shelters for themselves much like the dwellings of the Túatha Dé Danann. Lightweight and easily constructed, they were the ideal solution for people who frequently traveled from one pasturage to another.

  Some of the Mílesians must have observed ours and copied them. It was a good sign; at least they could learn. Perhaps.

  The Dananns knew all there was to know about living in and with this land: which native plants were good to eat and where they grew, the wide array of herbs that could kill or cure, the way to nourish hungry soil or refresh weary water.

  We also could taste the weather. It was our intimate companion. We lived on an island in the sea and the wind came to us from all directions, telling us everything we needed to know. The lessening weight of the air on our skin prepared us for storms. From one moment to the next, the clouds wrote and rewrote their language in the sky for us to read. Rain in all its myriad forms sang the songs of prophecy. Without touching a finger to the ground, we knew exactly how warm or cold the earth was and how soon it would waken the sleeping seed.

  The New People knew none of these things. We could have told them savage measures were unnecessary. Our sacred island would provide as bountifully for them as she did for us—if they were kind to her.

  Our observations soon proved they were not kind. The invaders who believed they had conquered Ierne were trying to beat and bludgeon her warm body into submission with their cold iron tools.

  With heavy hearts, my companions and I resumed the search for Shinann. If the Mílesians had captured her … I could not bear to think about it. Nor did I want to go home without her. At least my people were in a safe place and would be able to fend for themselves until we returned.

  Amergin’s horseboy came to Éremón’s stronghold with troubling news. “The bard has not returned his team for my care since he drove them to Taya’s entombment,” he reported, “and I am beginning to worry.”

  Éremón was worried too. As chieftain of the north, much of his prestige rested upon his having the loyalty and the physical presence of the chief druid. As soon as he could, Éremón hurried to Amergin’s house. It appeared to be unoccupied, although some of the bard’s belongings were still there. A few well-worn cloaks and tunics hung on pegs; domestic fowl scratched holes in the earth beside the door to create dust baths for themselves.

  But Clarsah was missing.

  Éremón immediately sent out search parties. He led the largest one himself.

  The men who had been unable to find the Túatha Dé Danann were unable to find the bard either. Reluctantly, Éremón came to the conclusion that the Fír Bolga must have seized and killed him. He gave orders that every Fír Bolga settlement his men could find should be put to the torch.

  Some of his people had doubts. A warrior who had not received sufficient recognition from his chieftain told a swordsmith that Éremón and Amergin had been overheard quarreling. Whispers gained volume; rumors grew legs.

  When Éber Finn was informed of the suspicions against his youngest brother, he was appalled. He sent messengers north to inquire as to Amergin’s exact location and current state of health, which infuriated Éremón. “How could Éber think I would do anything to the bard! It’s the end to any friendship between us.”

  After the Túatha Dé Danann vanished, time on Ierne had assumed a predictable pattern. Day followed night without exception, each of a measurable length. Except for twilight. A trace of magic lingered in the twilight.

  As if responding to the growing enmity between the Mílesians, Ierne became less accommodating. In the season of leaf-fall, rivers burst their banks and valleys that had never flooded before were inundated. Healthy people fell ill; sick people died. Cattle strayed and children wandered off into the woods, never to be seen again.

  Some claimed the Túatha Dé Danann had stolen them.

  Éremón and Éber Finn blamed each other for their misfortunes.

  Surreptitiously, warriors of the Gael who had gone too long without a battle to fight began sharpening their weapons again. A man needed victories to feel like a man.

  The winds had a message for us.

  Disheartened by our inability to find Shinann, we had decided to return to the western caves. Darkseason was waiting over the horizon, and I had arrangements to make before I could obey the Dagda’s final instructions to me. But as we approached our new home, we encountered a startling change in the weather. The prevailing wind off the Cold Sea was swirling around us as if it had lost its sense of direction. Dark clouds were piling up to the north … and the south. Normally gentle air currents were roiling like water.

  Like war.

  The portents of a major conflict were unmistakable. They must mean that the bloodthirsty Mílesians were going to fight each other. Good! I thought. Let them. We could wait safe and secure in our glittering chambers. When the foreigners had exterminated themselves, we would reclaim Ierne; we would repair her injuries and heal her wounds.

  Yet what of Shinann? Was she out there in the middle of it? She had survived on a battleground once, I knew, but could she do it again?

  An uneasy peace existed between Éremón and Éber Finn, a peace necessitated by the never-ending work of trying to civilize their conquest: fell enough timber to build more houses and clear land for planting grain, haul countless rocks and boulders out of the fields so they would not break a plowshare, dam the streams and drain the bogs in the constant struggle against the overabundant rain. Men labored until their hands bled and their muscles ached. For a warrior race, it was emotionally unsatisfactory.

  Only a small spark was needed to ignite a flame.

  In the south, Éber Finn’s freemen had been digging into the mountains in search of iron ore. What they found was substantial quantities of gold and copper. The skilled craftsmen of the Gael transformed the precious metals into spectacular jewelery—for Éber Finn. And his wives. And his children.

  Envious observers of this flamboyant display reported it to Éremón, who declared that the island had been unfairly divided and he wanted his share of the wealth.

  Éber Finn laughed at him.

  The increasingly rancorous dispute between the two brothers should have been adjudicated by Amergin. But he had disappeared.

  THIRTY

  WE PREPARED TO MAKE ANOTHER JOURNEY across the face of Ierne. Not all of us, of course—only those few Dananns who were physically able to travel again and old enough to take part in the ritual. The rest would stay safe in the caves.

  Every day was shorter than the one before and every night was longer. The seasons were about to change. Our journey would be dangerous, but we had a great advantage over the New People. We could travel at night. The invaders could barely see in the dark, even with torches.

  I like to think our enhanced vision was a gift from our friends, the bats.

  Before we set out, I explained what the Dagda had explained to me. The ol
der Dananns knew part of it already, but for some it was new. “Before the Before, our ancestors came to Ierne from a very different place,” I told them. “It was not easy for the ancestors to settle here, not at first. They needed to align themselves with their new homeland and its seasons, which also meant aligning themselves with the stars in the sky.

  “For this purpose, they employed the arts and sciences of their ancient race. They erected three great temples above the valley of the cow goddess. The temples comprised chambers built of massive stones covered by mounded earth and encircled with more stones. The interior design of each temple was unique because each was to serve a different function. The structures were situated according to precise patterns carved onto the stones. Other inscriptions recorded and compared the movement of the stars or depicted the journey we had taken and the place where we found ourselves. Many stones faced outward to instruct future generations. Others faced inward, identifying us to the mother earth.”

  My cousin Sinnadar spoke up. He was always the thinker. “You said the temples served different purposes?”

  “Yes and no.” As soon as I spoke, I realized it was the sort of answer the Dagda might have given. I could not resist a wry smile. “All three temples celebrate the Great Fire of Life by marking the passages of the sun. One salutes its birth on the shortest morning, when the days are about to lengthen again. The second marks sunset on the longest day, when the darkseason begins to return. The third temple observes the occasions when day and night are of equal length. Acknowledging the passages of the sun is vital for people who rely on the earth to feed them.

  “Each temple serves multiple purposes, however. For now, we are only concerned with the one that welcomes the rising sun in midwinter, because it is the most important. If the sun did not rise on shortest day and force the dark to retreat, life would not be possible. And life is the purpose of the ritual we will perform for the Dagda. For many generations he has been the keeper of the flame.”

  I kept watching for Shinann. I could not accept that we had lost her. I imagined her dancing forward to meet us when we reached the bend of the river below the temples. I envisioned her laughing face and called to her with the silent speaking.

  But she never answered.

  The two Mílesian chieftains did not go to war against each other that autumn. A persistent and exceptionally cold rain afflicted the season of leaf-fall, pummeling Ierne with such force that the earth was turned to quagmire. Warriors could not practice the killing arts when they were mired to the knees in mud. Or slipping on ice, because that was what happened next. An island accustomed to moderate temperatures was bombarded with sleet and hail.

  The weather improved at night, but the Gael did not give battle at might.

  As he sat close to the fire roaring on his hearth, testing the edges of weapons that needed no further testing, Éremón muttered that Ierne was cursed. His sullen attitude began to affect the other inhabitants of his stronghold. It spread outside the walls and widened to influence the larger settlement of Gaelicians, until they were no longer happy with the land they had won. They counted its flaws but dismissed its virtues. The many flaws they saw they blamed on the island. The few virtues they were willing to recognize they credited to themselves.

  “Our chieftain needs a new wife,” Sétga commented to his own new wife. “Éremón has buried two within a year, and that makes a man sour.”

  “Your friend Amergin has no wife, but he doesn’t appear to be sour.”

  “He doesn’t appear at all anymore,” Sétga replied gloomily. “I asked about him in Éremón’s fort the other day, but no one had seen him for a long time. A bard who never entertains his chieftain is failing in his responsibilities, and that’s not like Amergin.”

  “Perhaps he has other responsibilities that are more important to him now,” Soorgeh’s red-haired daughter suggested. When Sive smiled, she had a dimple in her chin.

  Her husband loved that dimple. “What sort of responsibilities?” he asked with wide-eyed innocence.

  The dimple deepened. “This,” she said, extending a searching hand. “Or this. Maybe something like this?”

  We reached the temple on the ridge in the dead of night, in the dead heart of darkseason. The rain that had fallen as we traveled had abated; the quartz on the mound glittered in the light of our torches.

  I approached the Guardian Stone with a remembered feeling of reverence.

  It was watching me.

  In front of my people, I folded my hands in supplication and knelt on the winter-chilled earth. Under the stars.

  The Guardian Stone was my silent witness.

  The hackles rose on the back of my neck.

  The Stone knew why I was there.

  Four of us were necessary to push open the heavy stone doors that blocked the entrance to the passageway—the doors the Dagda had once opened by himself. Four more Dananns removed the quartz plugs from the aperture above, leaving the light box open.

  The Guardian Stone waited. When we were ready, it allowed us to enter.

  Inside, all was as we had left it. The scent of ancient stone dust was as sweet and haunting as I remembered. In the basin within the small chamber at the rear, beyond the triple spiral, the ashes of the Dagda lay undisturbed. Holding my torch aloft, I gazed down at them. “We have come as you instructed,” I said softly. “Your wife wanted to be with us, but she is no longer strong enough for the journey. When it is her time, we will bring her here. Melitt was the keeper of your flame.”

  There was almost enough room in the temple for all of us if we crowded together. The few who could not fit inside the chambers stayed outside with the Guardian Stone.

  The passageway had to be kept clear.

  I extinguished the torch.

  The dark inside the temple was darker than the blackness between the stars.

  We waited.

  For a timeless time, we waited until …

  … A thin finger of light from the rising sun entered the temple through the roof box. Almost as one, we held our breath while the narrow line progressed up the inclined passageway like a living being. It came to rest on the front of the basin in the chamber behind the triple spiral.

  Gradually, the glowing beam widened until it filled the central chamber, illumining the carved details within all three recesses. Honey-colored light reflected from every stony surface, from the spellbound faces of the Túatha Dé Danann.

  Sacred light bathed the interior of the temple. Blessing us.

  We stood transfixed until the golden light narrowed again and was cut off by the configuration of the light box.

  Then and only then did I approach the basin where the Dagda’s ashes lay.

  They had gone with the rising sun.

  THIRTY-ONE

  IN THE SEASON of leaf-spring, Éremón and Éber Finn went to war at a place remembered as the Hill of the Oxen. Both men brought their full complement of warriors together with oxcarts laden with extra swords and spears and shields and helmets and body armor.

  Sétga—he who had been Sakkar the Phoenician—marched with the army of Éremón. On the morning he left home, he confided to his wife, “I don’t like going to battle against Éber Finn. I always liked him.”

  “Then don’t go,” said the red-haired woman.

  “I have no choice. Or, rather, I already made the choice to be one of the Gael and follow the banners of Éremón, so…”

  She put her hands on her hips. “So?”

  He shrugged both of his healthy shoulders. “I’ll be back soon; don’t worry. I cannot believe that two brothers would actually kill each other and expect the rest of us to follow along like sheep.”

  She stood in the doorway and watched him march away over the hills. Proudly wearing his Gaelic tunic and cloak, with his pack on his back and his sword in his belt. Her good-natured, kind little man whose only dream was to see their twins born.

  They were due any day.

  The two halves of the Gaelician tribe
crashed together with a scream of trumpets and a thunder of drums. Éremón in his chariot led his men; Éber Finn led for his. Even from a distance, the brothers recognized the fury in each other’s faces. Nearly identical faces.

  The cacophony of battle carried a long distance on the wind. A dying echo reached a modest dwelling of wickerwork and thatch in a secluded woodland where the smell of cooked fish lingered. Earlier in the day, the lanky, graying man who lived in the cottage had collected enough windfall to feed the fire in the outside pit. His woman would not allow him to cut down a living tree.

  The small dwelling was neither as sturdy nor as well-furnished as a bard was entitled to, but he loved it dearly.

  Today he was repairing a battered copper pot. His harp leaned against the cottage door. When Clarsah detected the dissonance of war, she emitted a warning hum.

  Amergin abruptly put down the pot. “What was that?”

  The face that peered at him from the cottage doorway was small and saucy, with enormous eyes and a pointed chin. She recognized the sound as quickly as he did and understood its ramifications. The little woman hurried to the bard and put her arms around him.

  “It’s Éremón and Éber Finn,” he told her. “I must go to them; perhaps there is still time for me to intervene.”

  She shook her head until a lock of pale hair tumbled across her forehead. “They do not want you to intervene; they want to fight. I cannot understand it.”

  “My people are warriors, Shinann; that’s what they are and what they do. Just as fish swim, they fight. If there is no war, sooner or later they will create one; they simply cannot—or will not—help it.”

  “But you’re not a warrior.”