“Not good enough.”
“An enemy warrior, someone of noble rank?”
“Not good enough. Remember, you are fighting for your own son. The sacrifice you offer must be of equal value.”
Conn of the Hundred Battles furrowed his forehead in deep thought. Who could be of equal value to his son?
At that moment, his senior wife yelled for the tenth time that day, demanding fresh water and honey from the comb and someone to rub her back.
Coran’s eyes met those of the old chieftain.
“Not her, I cannot!”
“Nothing less will do,” Coran insisted, feeling pleased at the neat twist of fate that had given him such a chance to exercise his power. A druid who could get his chieftain to sacrifice his own wife must be recognized throughout druidry as having tremendous power indeed.
“No chieftain has ever ordered his own wife to the fire,” Conn said. “Better you ask me to cut off my own hands at the wrists.”
She yelled again, louder this time, demanding a comb for her hair and an additional coverlet for her bed and someone to hang a rug to screen off a draft that bothered her.
“Well...” said Conn of the Hundred Battles.
“Desperate times demand desperate measures,” the druid told him.
“They do. They do indeed,” Conn agreed. The flesh of his face sank into sad folds from which it would never entirely recover. “She was young and cheerful once. Such a laugh she had! She does not laugh now. I no longer recognize in her the maiden I married. I suppose the most important thing is to protect my son, and who better to protect him than the spirit of the woman who gave him birth?” To his credit, he sighed, for the thing sat heavily on him.
In the dark of night, silent men crept into the royal sleeping chamber and tied the senior wife with stout rope. They stuffed a cloth soaked in an infusion of herbs in her mouth and carried her away in a large bag. The herbs made her groggy; she did not realize she was being taken to the Hill of Fires, where a wicker cage awaited her dazed eyes as the first rays of the sun stained the sky red.
Connla lay sleeping, lost in a dream of Blathine. The dream was so real he thought he heard her voice, then realized it was in fact her voice. “Violence is being done to your mother, my love!” she cried.
He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. “The Hill of Fires,” the silvery starshine voice told him urgently. “Hurry!”
Leaping out of bed, Connla was running before his feet touched the ground. A guard, startled by the sudden appearance of a running man, challenged him and tried to catch him, but he knocked the guard aside with one sweep of his arm and ran on.
He reached the foot of the traditional hill of bonfires in time to see flame climbing into the sky, and hear a terrible scream from the wicker cage.
Coran’s voice rolled like thunder. “Deities of battle, I exhort you to accept this sacrifice for the protection of Connla of the Fiery Hair! Defend him against a woman’s wiles and sorcery! And you, his mother, as you enter the world of the spirits, look back on him and protect him, see all that happens to him and stand as his invisible guardian against...”
“Stop!” yelled Connla, plunging up the hill. His heart was hammering in his chest like a bird trying to escape a net. With great bounds his young legs carried him to the top, but it was already too late. The screams had stopped, the cage was collapsing into a bed of glowing coals.
Connla turned his eyes away and wept.
The druid finished the last details of the ritual and hurried to the young man. “You must understand, it is what your mother would have wanted to do. She will protect you now from the monster.”
“You are the monster,” Connla told him bitterly. “You are infinitely more dangerous and cruel than a pack of foam-mouthed wolves.” He bowed his head again and stood in agonized silence.
Up the hill behind him came Conn of the Hundred Battles. Strong though he was, the old chieftain had not been able to witness the moment of sacrifice, but now he approached his son and tried to put his arm around the young man’s shoulders. “You don’t understand,” he said. “This was done to save you.”
“Save me from what?” Connla threw back his head and glared at his father out of red-rimmed eyes. “From a beautiful girl who loves me? From the promise of a land where no one suffers? Father, Blathine offers me endless joy and you offer me the chance to fight and die, kill or be killed, to hold together a kingdom for a man who ordered my own mother slain when he got tired of her.”
“It isn’t like that at all!” Conn protested. “The druid said we must have a very specific type of sacrifice to protect you. I was following the advice of the priest, my son. I had no choice.”
“In the Isles of the Blest,” Blathine murmured softly into Connla’s ear, “we do not cringe in obedience to druids, for we are upright folk who have not fallen out of favor with the gods. We need no priesthood to beg on our behalf or make cruel demands upon us. No one is ever sacrificed in our land, Connla. Come with me now and leave pain and the memory of pain behind.”
Hundred Battles read correctly the expression on his son’s face. “She is talking to you right now, isn’t she? Trying to work her enchantments on you? Don’t listen to her, my son. Stay here where we need you.”
“What about what I need?”
The druid had joined them, listening to the tides of the conversation to see which way they ran. Now he interjected, “You cannot go even if you try, Connla. My magic will override all others, for nothing is more potent than the sacrifice I offered on this hill in the sunrise.” He said this defiantly, catching the old chieftain’s anguished eye and demanding belief.
“Love is more potent,” Blathine told Connla. “If you love me, come with me now. All you have to do is take one more bite of the apple I gave you. Its sweet juices will flood your mortal senses and make you forget mortal food, mortal life. That apple came from the Isles of the Blest.”
Reaching into his tunic, Connla took out the apple. In spite of all the times he had bitten into it, the fruit was still whole, shiny with immortality. “If it were not for the woman who just died here,” he said to Hundred Battles, “I might have stayed with you. But I want no part of what you are or what you’re willing to do.”
“I did it for you!” his father protested.
“So much the worse, then.” And Connla bit into the apple.
At once a blue-white wind came howling down out of the clear dawn sky. Whirling and spiraling it made for itself a shape, and that shape solidified into a snowy horse with a proud high crest and a long tail. The horse pawed the earth but did not stand upon it, since it floated in the air and they could all see space between its hooves and the grass.
They could see something more, for with the materialization of the horse, Blathine herself appeared, as solid as a mortal woman. She wore a robe of silver silk fastened with brooches of amethyst, and her black hair was bound with fillets of silver. With one small hand she seized the horse’s bridle; her other hand reached out to Connla. “Mount behind me,” she said.
Now that the moment of decision had come, Connla hesitated. He was not afraid of the magic, and there was nothing in Blathine’s beautiful face to frighten him. But this was his homeland, and the man who clutched at him and pleaded with him had been his admired father.
Seizing the opportunity, Coran the Druid rushed forward with his hazel stick held over his head. He brandished it at the fairy woman and cried, “Begone, sorceress!”
The hazel has great power. Gentle friend of the ill, enemy of fever, lovely and graceful tree, it represents wholesomeness and healing. Life flows through the veins of the hazel tree, mortal life. Yet, like all trees, it inhabits a different world from that men know, and in that world it has its own magical properties.
So the druid threatened Blathine with his hazel wand, and for one brief moment the spectators saw her eyes change. Soft and brilliant those dark eyes had been, burning with love for Connla, but just for one heartbeat they went as
flat and black as stones of polished obsidian.
In that fateful interval Connla made his choice, reacting to this final intervention on the part of the priest. With a great spring he leaped up behind Blathine on the horse and they swirled from the sight of mortal men.
Hundred Battles stood on the hilltop, beside the still-smoldering sacrificial fire, and he stared at the receding silver clouds. “What have you done?” he at last asked Coran.
“I did exactly what you wanted,” the druid told him.
“But my son is gone.”
“Ah ... well. That is unfortunate.”
“Unfortunate! I’ll show you what unfortunate means, you shaggy-eared dog-dropping!” The old chieftain grabbed for his druid’s throat, with murderous fingers.
At once the other druids closed around the pair and pulled Coran to safety. Hundred Battles, firmly pinioned, glared in fury. “You failed and I’ll have you burned on this same hill!”
Coran shook his head. “You dare not do violence to a druid. And I did not fail. True, her magic was stronger than I anticipated, but fortunately we had concluded the sacrifice before she got him. He goes with protection now; no matter what blandishments the witch offers, he will be able to hear another voice arguing for the real world, for you and his homeland and his own people.” Coran gestured to the smoldering coals of the fire. “His mother’s spirit is free of its shell and surely goes with Connla Fiery Hair. In time she will pull him away from the Isles of the Blest.”
“The woman probably has no great desire to do me any favors,” Conn muttered.
“She might not reclaim her son for you, but she will do it for his own sake. Just give her time.”
Hundred Battles was sinking deeper, moment by moment, into abject misery. “Give her time, indeed. Who will give me time? When the people find out their bright hope is gone and my finest son has deserted us, will they still support me? Or have I seen my last day as chieftain at Usna? I tried to do everything right. You know I did. As a warrior I never faltered. I shrank from no task, no hardship. I did everything as I had been trained to do it, and this is my reward. If only I could go back and begin again, I would do it differently.”
The chief druid looked at him. “How would you do it differently?” he asked.
Conn of the Hundred Battles drew a deep breath. When he finally answered, his voice seemed to come from a dark, lost cave inside himself. “I do not know,” he admitted.
Coran touched him, very cautiously. “This has not gone as badly as you think. Your son will return.”
“Will he?” The old chieftain’s eyes were bleak. “Is that all you have left to offer me from your bag of tricks, druid? Hope?”
“Hope is priceless,” Coran assured him.
“Hope is what’s left at the bottom of the bag,” Hundred Battles said. “Like lint.”
Four
AT FIRST THE swiftness of their flight took Connla’s breath away. The horse and its riders were enveloped in a blue-white cloud, obscuring any sight of the land over which they soared. The young man could feel the animal’s broad, warm rump beneath his buttocks, and when he wrapped his arms around Blathine’s waist she felt as solid to him as any mortal woman. Yet he knew he was lost in magic.
He was a warrior’s son. He did not want to admit fear. But he held Blathine very tightly, and from the rigidity of his arms she knew.
He heard her soft laugh. “I think you would be happier if you could see,” she said. “We will travel lower, then.” She uttered a strange combination of syllables in a language Connla did not know, and at once he felt the horse angle downward. The clouds parted and they were galloping above a green and rolling land, fragrant with blossoms.
Connla could hear the hum of bees and the distant sound of women singing at their work. In the distance he caught glimpses of red deer at the edge of a mighty forest. Again, he saw a rise of purple mountains, sweetly rose-flushed in the light of a lowering sun. They crossed the plain and the mountains, they crossed a broad river embroidered along its banks with reeds, and Connla thought he had never seen so beautiful a place.
“Are we in the Isles of the Blest?” he asked Blathine.
“Foolish boy, of course not. We are still in your own land. Do you not recognize it? We will have to cross open water to reach our destination.”
Connla gazed down in wonder at the bounteous earth revealed beneath the hooves of the flying horse. “I never knew my land was this beautiful,” he said.
“It appears so to you because you thought we had reached paradise, and you were all prepared to see marvels.” Blathine said something else to the horse and it veered to one side. “The Isles of the Blest are better than this,” she promised.
Their changed direction took them over a less luxuriant landscape of crumpled earth and stark, staring stone. Yet in this scenery, as well, did Connla find beauty, and he gazed and gazed at it as if he could never fill his eyes. I am leaving this forever, he thought. I will see it no more. And he felt a great sadness, a nostalgia for places he had never had a chance to know.
At the westernmost edge of the crumpled land a gray sea bit chunks out of the coastline. The horse leaped high into the air above this sea, galloping hard. The air seemed colder here and in spite of himself, Connla shivered.
“You will be warm as soon as we get home,” Blathine assured him.
He had no way of knowing how long they had been in the air or how far they had come. Days might have passed, for sometimes a cloud rolled over them again and they could see nothing, neither light nor dark. Then the cloud would roll away and there would be only angry sea below, white-capped and sullen. He had seen lakes and rivers, but Connla had never seen an ocean, and its very size was beyond his comprehension.
“Where does it end?” he asked Blathine.
“It does not end. The ocean is everything. All the land is merely an interruption in the sea.”
Her words made no sense; such things could not be possible.
Weariness overcame him and he leaned his shining red-gold head against the fairy woman’s shoulder. He did not want to fall asleep for fear he might fall off and be drowned in that angry gray water far below. But though every time he felt himself drifting away he forced his eyes open again, at last they became so heavy and grainy he could resist no more.
Connla fell asleep, and the white horse drifted down to alight upon a rocky shore.
He awoke with a start. “Is this it? Are we there?”
“Of course not,” Blathine told him. “Look around you. Does this place answer to my description? This is merely a stop we have to make along our way, for there is a little chore I need you to undertake for me. Passage must always be paid, even to the Isles of the Blest.”
She slung one graceful leg over the horse’s neck and slid to the ground. Stony ground it was, the edge of a pebbled beach devoid of any vegetation. A few sea birds wheeled overhead, and in the distance Connla could see more of them, squabbling over some morsel of carrion the sea had cast up on the shore.
“What needs doing here?”
“Just a small thing, just a little thing for someone like yourself,” Blathine assured him. She smiled, and laid her tiny hand against his cheek, and Connla of the Fiery Hair felt as tall as three spears fitted end to end. “Show me what I may do for you,” he said, noticing at the same time how very solid the stony beach felt beneath his feet.
“Do you see that great boulder over there, the huge chunk of granite breaking the surf into spume?”
“I do see it.”
“Suppose I told you that is a giant, Connla, a brutal creature locked within stone by an enchantment. Suppose I told you further than once a year the stone softens, at midpoint of the longest day of the four seasons—and when the stone is soft enough, the giant emerges looking for prey. He will eat human flesh, my dear one, and the people who live inland are so terrified of him they leave their newborn babies here on this beach as a sacrifice so that he does not come looking for them. At sund
own the enchantment takes hold again and he returns to stone, but in the meantime his appetite is terrible.”
Connla was horrified. He looked down the beach again, at the birds fighting over something. Then, glancing up, he realized the sun was shining above him and had almost reached midpoint of the day.
“You want me to destroy the giant? But ... I thought we were going to a land where there is no killing, no death, no pain!”
“This is not my homeland,” Blathine reminded him. “Just a stop along the way. Still, I have friends here who are dear to me, and with a mighty warrior such as yourself I thought it a fine opportunity to free them from their misery. If you will destroy the giant, we will soon be on our way again.”
Just then a groan issued from the granite boulder. As Connla watched, the stone seemed to expand, becoming soft and flexible. An arm emerged, stretching, and then another. The granite became the torso of a huge, hideously formed man, who stood up yawning. Immense, square yellow teeth were revealed in his gaping maw. His head was also square, with a coarse covering of tangled hair like seaweed, dripping to his shoulders. Tufts of hair sprouted from the back of his hands, and each hand was as big as a blackthorn club.
“Now, Connla,” Blathine urged.
“But I have no weapons!” Indeed, since he had come away in only the tunic in which he had fallen asleep, young Connla had no possessions of any sort. His feet were bare and his arms were already goose-pimpled by the cold wind from the sea.
“I would not ask this of you if you could not do it,” Blathine told him. She stepped backward, sheltering herself against the shoulder of her horse just as the giant turned and caught sight of them.
Letting out a roar, the creature ran down the beach toward Connla. The young man had no time to form a battle plan. He bent and seized a rock, which he threw with all his strength into the oncoming face. The stone struck a solid blow but did not even cause the giant to falter in his stride. Indeed, it merely served to madden him. In another leap he was upon Connla.
The Isles of the Blest Page 4