by Brian Bates
I sat up with my heart pounding, feeling foolish. The incident with the power circle had obviously left me nervous and insecure. I tried to control myself and waited impatiently for Wulf to return.
Eventually he appeared around the bend in the river and I breathed easily again. When he splashed on to the bank, I could see that he was carrying fistfuls of large, dark green leaves which had spiked edges and a rough, hairy surface.
‘What are the leaves Wulf?’
He knelt down, cautiously lifted my foot and rested it on his knee. The leaves had apparently been soaked in the river and he slapped them one by one on to my ankle, like wet fish.
‘Your ankle was injured in a spirit-dream and needs special attention,’ he said, without looking up from his work. ‘These leaves are from a plant known only to sorcerers.’
I glared at him with a mixture of anger and awe. There seemed no limit to his knowledge of my affairs.
‘There! Now you can run like a deer!’ he said emphatically, applying the last of the leaves and binding them to my ankle with a strip of cloth taken from his bag. Then he stood up and held out a hand to help me to my feet.
‘Let us cool ourselves in the river,’ he said, striding down to the water’s edge.
I limped to the bank and waded eagerly into the fast, cold current. At first the chill took my breath away, then it was exhilarating. I heard Wulf splashing into the river behind me and turned, laughing, in time to see him emerging from complete submersion like some river monster, water streaming from the end of his nose and glistening on his eyelashes.
Suddenly he stared past me upriver, his smile stiffening into a frown. I followed his gaze towards a copse of trees on the South bank, but saw nothing unusual. I blinked my eyes clear of river water, however, and immediately noticed two huge black ravens in the lower branches of a weeping willow, perched perfectly motionless like creatures in a tapestry. Their very stillness gripped me with a strange fascination. I could not shift my eyes from them; gradually the forest sounds receded into the distance as if I were slipping into a dream.
The ravens flapped enormous silent wings, lifted into the air and flew downriver straight towards me, but they continued to speed low over the water and, at the very last moment, I had to duck my head beneath the surface. The ravens passed inches above me, their wings beating like the great, groaning oars of raiding ships. Gasping and spitting river water, I turned to watch them fly away from us like arrows until both ravens simultaneously stilled their wings, drifted upward on the wind, dipped again and then glided towards the North bank of the river. Abruptly they disappeared and I stared in bewilderment at the spot where they had vanished.
‘Death’s bonds will stalk someone tonight.’
I started at the sound of Wulf’s voice, then my ears popped and the sounds of the forest clanged back into my head like a chapel bell.
‘The ravens have spoken to us,’ Wulf said severely, wading to my side. ‘When birds fly like that it is a powerful omen. A warrior will die tonight.’
I had been truly startled by the strange flight of the birds, but I smiled to myself when I heard Wulf’s ludicrous claim, recalling that in my Mercian homeland the peasants superstitiously associated ravens with death. Brother Eappa had taught me the error of such beliefs and that the Lord is truly the only giver and taker of life.
‘There is no destiny apart from the Almighty Creator,’ I said firmly.
‘Are there no other forces?’ Wulf asked mildly. ‘What about the destiny of the stars?’
I snorted with derision, though I tried to temper my reply.
‘There are some, who know no better, who say that every man is born according to the position of the stars and that his destiny befalls him as a result of their course. But man is not created for the stars; rather, the stars are created for man as a light in the night time. If this is true of the stars, then how can the mere flight of birds tell us about events distant in time and place?’
Eappa would have been pleased; I must have quoted his teachings practically word for word. I turned to wade ashore, but Wulf suddenly gripped my by the arm and I looked at him in alarm; he was looking at me piercingly, his eyes clear azure blue through lashes sparkling with river water. He spoke with conviction:
‘It is a mistake to assume that events far apart in time are thereby separate. All things are connected as in the finest web of a spider. The slightest movement on any thread can be discerned from all points in the web. The flight of those ravens trembled the threads that connect indivisibly with the affairs of men.’
My scepticism must have been plainly visible in my expression. ‘Wulf, are you saying that the ravens we have just seen will kill a warrior tonight?’
With the hint of a smile, Wulf released his grip on my arm and splashed on to the river bank. I stood in the water, watching him.
‘Imagine you were to witness a raven swooping from the sky to peck out the eye of a warrior,’ he said, stretching out on the grass. ‘You would say that the flight of the bird was connected directly with the wound. But if you had observed the flight of the same raven half a day before the attack, you would see no connection with the warrior’s injury. Nevertheless the pattern of a raven’s flight at noon is bound to the pattern of its flight at dusk, just as surely as the progression of day and night. One can read the pattern and thus see what the future has in store.’
He sat up and stared at me intently.
‘You are labelling pieces of the world with words, then confusing your word-hoard for the totality of life. You see life as if you were viewing a room by the light of a single moving candle; then you make the error of assuming that the small areas you are seeing one at a time are separate and cannot be seen as one. Since the small areas of your life are thus seen as separate, you have to invent ways of connecting them. This is the fallacy of the ordinary person’s view of life, for everything is already connected. Middle-Earth is one room, lit by a thousand candles.’
I sat in silence, impressed by the beauty of Wulf’s flawed view of life. But behind his words, I found his argument absurd. I glanced upriver into the sun, slanting through silvery-grey clouds. Suddenly my eye caught the brilliant red and blue flash of a kingfisher and I watched it darting above the water until it disappeared around the river bend. I could see no pattern or significance in its flight.
I waded from the river and sat down wetly next to Wulf.
‘Do you really believe that you can read future events from a tiny snatch of bird flight? Do all your people believe in such omens?’
Wulf rolled on to his back and cupped his hands behind his head, squinting up at the sky.
‘Omens frighten the ordinary person because they believe them to be predictions of events that are bound to happen: warnings from the realms of destiny. But this is to mistake the true nature of omens. A sorcerer can read omens as pattern pointers, from which the weaving of wyrd can be admired and from which connections between different parts of patterns can be assumed.’
I was puzzled by his use of the term ‘wyrd’. When used by monks orating poetry, it seemed to denote the destiny or fate of a person. I explained this view to Wulf and he hooted with laughter, sending the sparrows flapping from the shrubbery in alarm.
‘To understand our ways, you must learn the true meaning of wyrd, not the version your masters have concocted to fit their beliefs. Remember that I told you our world began with fire and frost? By themselves, neither fire nor frost accomplish anything. But together they create the world. Yet they must maintain a balance, for too much fire would melt the frost and excessive frost would extinguish the fire. But just as the worlds of gods, Middle-Earth and the dead are constantly replenished by the marrying of fire and frost, so also do they depend upon the balance and eternal cycle of night and day, winter and summer, woman and man, weak and strong moon and sun, death and life. These forces, and countless others, form the end points of a gigantic web of fibres that cover all worlds. The web is the creation of the fo
rces and its threads, shimmering with power, pass through everything.’
I was astounded by the image of the web, which seemed to me both stupendous and terrifying I trembled with excitement, for I knew that Eappa would drink in such information like a hunter pinpointing the movements of his prey.
‘What is at the centre of the web, Wulf? Are your gods at the centre?’
Wulf smiled, a little condescendingly, I thought.
‘You may start at any point on the web and find that you are at the centre,’ he said cryptically.
Disappointed, I tried another line of questioning ‘Is wyrd your most important god?’
‘No. Wyrd existed before the gods and will exist after them. Yet wyrd lasts only for an instant, because it is the constant creation of the forces. Wyrd is itself constant change, like the seasons, yet because it is created at every instant, it is unchanging, like the still centre of a whirlpool. All we can see are the ripples dancing on top of the water.’
I stared at him in complete confusion. His concept of wyrd, obviously of vital importance to him, repeatedly slipped through my fingers like an eel. I went back to the beginning of our conversation.
‘But Wulf, you say that the flight of birds shows you the pattern of wyrd, of these fibres; if you can predict events from wyrd, it must then operate according to certain laws?’
Wulf looked at me with kind, friendly eyes. He seemed to be enjoying my attempts to understand his mysterious ideas.
‘No, Brand, there are no laws. The pattern of wyrd is like the grain in wood or the flow of a stream; it is never repeated in exactly the same way. But the threads of wyrd pass through all things and we can open ourselves to its pattern by observing the ripples as it passes by. When you see the ripples in a pool, you know that something has dropped in the water. And when I see certain ripples in the flight of birds, I know that a warrior is going to die.’
‘So wyrd makes things happen?’
‘Nothing may happen without wyrd, for it is present in everything, but wyrd does not make things happen. Wyrd is created at every instant and so wyrd is the happening.’
Suddenly I tired of his cryptic responses. ‘I suppose the threads of wyrd are too fine for anyone to see?’ I said sarcastically.
Wulf chuckled good-naturedly. ‘Sometimes they are thick as hemp rope. But the threads of wyrd are a dimension of ourselves that we cannot grasp with words. We spin webs of words, yet wyrd slips through like the wind. The secrets of wyrd do not lie in our word-hoards, but are locked in the soul. We can only discern the shadows of reality with our words, whereas our souls are capable of encountering the realities of wyrd directly. This is why wyrd is accessible to the sorcerer: the sorcerer sees with his soul, not with eyes blinkered by the shape of words.’
I knew Wulf’s views to be erroneous, yet I was fascinated by them. He spoke about his beliefs as confidently and fluently as Eappa explaining the teachings of our Saviour. I rested my chin on my hands and tried to analyse Wulf’s ideas as Eappa would have wished. ‘Be sure you understand clearly everything you see and hear,’ he had cautioned. ‘You can remember only what you comprehend.’ I tried to identify the main tenets of Wulf’s beliefs and subject them to scrutiny, one by one.
Wulf leaned closer to me and spoke into my ear as if sharing a secret:
‘You are strangling your life-force with words. Do not live your life searching around for answers in your word-hoard. You will find only words to rationalize your experience. Allow yourself to open up to wyrd and it will cleanse, renew, change and develop your casket of reason. Your word-hoard should serve your experience, not the reverse.’
I turned on him in irritation. ‘I was chosen for this Mission because I do not swallow everything I hear like a simpleton. I am at home in the world of words.’
He smiled gently. ‘Words can be potent magic indeed, but they can also enslave us. We grasp from wyrd tiny puffs of wind and store them in our lungs as words. But we have not thereby captured a piece of reality, to be pored over and examined as if it were a glimpse of wyrd. We may as well mistake our fistfuls of air for wind itself or a pitcher of water for the stream from which it was dipped. That is the way we are enslaved by our own power to name things.’
‘My thoughts are my personal affair,’ I said sulkily. I was here to listen to his beliefs, not to submit to criticism of my private contemplation.
‘Thoughts are like raindrops,’ he persisted, introducing yet another of his interminable images. ‘They fall, make a splash and then dry up. But the world of wyrd is like the mighty oceans from which raindrops arise and to which they return in rivers and streams.’
Suddenly Wulf sat up, as though he had just thought of something important. ‘What did the runes say? The ones carved under the horse’s head?’
I went cold. I no longer believed that I could conceal from Wulf any of that night’s horrors, but the memory of my nightmare was still painful.
‘I would rather not talk about it, Wulf. I do not see what benefit it would bring to either of us.’
‘But it is important,’ Wulf insisted. He spoke quietly, but his eyes bored into me relentlessly.
‘Runes are another path to the mysteries of wyrd, more powerful even than omens. The runes carved on the horse-stake may have been a message for you from the spirits. Did you see any marks or symbols carved into the post?’
I tried to force the image into my mind, but concentrating only gave me a splitting headache.
‘I cannot remember them, Wulf. There were some carvings on the post, but I do not recall what they looked like.’
‘You must try to remember. The runes on that stake may help us to determine the spirits’ attitude towards us and to gauge their intentions.’
I was suddenly angry. Learning from Wulf was not only proving very taxing but his apparent ability to see into my dreams was totally demoralizing. ‘Surely you saw the runes,’ I snapped. ‘You seem to have seen everything else.’
‘Tell me about the runes,’ he repeated quietly, ignoring my childish outburst. ‘Your safety in this forest may depend upon our reading those runes.’
‘I cannot tell you about the runes,’ I shouted. ‘I do not understand them. We are not allowed to work with them.’
In Mercia runes were now officially outlawed, though peasants still carved them on sticks and threw them as lotteries, foretelling the future. Brother Eappa knew how to read and write runic inscriptions, but they were forbidden to initiates in the scriptorium for they were sacrilegious.
‘All I know is that each runic character represents a sound, and beginning with each sound is a word of significance.’
Wulf nodded once in agreement, then reached over and placed his hand on my shoulder. ‘All right, forget about the runes on the horse-head stake,’ he said in a reassuring tone. ‘We shall deal with those later. But let me tell you about runes, so that you will not make another mistake when presented with a message from the spirit-world.’
He sat, cross-legged, facing me.
‘Rune images are like the shifting cloud-shapes of wyrd,’ he explained. ‘The dimensions and formation of each rune can be learned by anyone, but the way in which a set of runes is interpreted in a particular context requires the knowledge of a sorcerer. They are not to be read like a simple set of sounds, for the runes have been evolved by the spirits by correlating all the dominant cycles and forces which course through Middle-Earth.’
He waved his arm to indicate the surrounding landscape and sky. ‘Wyrd is too vast, too complex, for us to comprehend, for we are ourselves part of wyrd and cannot stand back to observe it as if it were a separate force. Just as a fisherman cannot see the full extent of the seas, so even a sorcerer cannot view the totality of wyrd. So we carve runes into wood or bone and cast them like nets on to the sea of wyrd. The messages the runes bring back are like a good catch: enough for us to feed on until the tides of life carry us back again.’
I did not like his simile, for Blessed Jesus was also a f
isherman. Somehow it seemed wrong to think about pagan untruths in images reserved for the teachings of Jesus Christ our Saviour.
‘Do you then think you can change the world by manipulating these symbols?’ My tone was sneering; I was still upset by his implication that I had failed badly in being unable to read the runes on the stake. But I listened carefully for his answer; I wanted to learn about runes.
Wulf shook his head. ‘The forces of wyrd are like the winds and tides for a fisherman. If they are known, the sailor can trim his sails to adapt to them. He can be in harmony with the forces and use their power. But he cannot thereby change them.’
Wulf stood up and with his foot scraped away grass and dandelions until he had cleared a small patch of bare earth. He picked out and threw away pebbles, sticks and other small obstructions, then smoothed the soil with the flat of his hand. Snapping off a twig from a nearby hazel shrub, he squatted next to the patch of soil and, working very rapidly, drew a series of angular shapes on the surface. When he had finished he sat back, cleaned the soil from the end of the hazel twig and then handed it to me.
‘Each rune is a complete representation of wyrd. Just as one drop of water reflects a perfect image of all that is around it, so each rune reflects the totality of wyrd. The rhythm of wyrd may be observed at all levels, whether it be the movement of the stars across the sky or the cutting of shapes into a patch of earth.’
He pointed at the set of runes spread out in front of us. ‘Copy the runes I have drawn,’ he instructed.
My mind raced, Eappa’s warnings about the forbidden script sounding in my ears. But I forced misgivings to one side, for I had resolved that I was about the Lord’s work and that anything that I did was in His service.