Taliesin

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Dawn arrived with no sunrise, just a minute lightening of the slate-dark heavens, and another interminable day began. The boats drifted; the remnant waited. Charis wondered whether it would not have been better simply to stay in the palace and let the walls fall in upon her, upon them all.

  It was Annubi who saw the sail first. He was in the boat next to the one Charis was in, and the two had drifted close. "Charis," he said softly. She raised her head from its rest on her folded arms. "Charis, look to the north and tell me what you see."

  She looked long and then stood. "Is it a sail? A ship? Annubi, is it?"

  They watched, squinting hard at the tiny square on the horizon, dark-hued in the gloom, the ship carrying it still too far away to be recognized. The sail drew slowly closer. Soon others saw it too, raising a clamor in the surrounding boats, some waving articles of clothing to draw the ship to them.

  "There is only one," Charis called to Annubi when the ship could at last be seen. "I see only one! Where are the others? There must be more,"

  "Only the one," affirmed Annubi. "And it is not large."

  "It is coming this way!" shouted someone across the water.

  The ship had adjusted its course and was now making for the flotilla of half-swamped boats. The survivors watched as it plowed toward them and their elation changed gradually to alarm, for the dark ship gave no signal of recognition, nor did it show any sign of slowing in the water but drove ahead, its great sail bulging full.

  "They do not see us!" cried one of the survivors. The ship bore down, its sharp prow slicing the gray wash. The cry was repeated across the water. The ship was close now, close enough to see individuals standing on the deck, watching them. The survivors called out, raising their voices hysterically.

  Something is wrong, Charis thought and realized in the same instant what it was: Seithenin!

  The ship closed on the first of the small boats even as the oarsmen struggled at the oars to propel it from the path of the oncoming ship. The boat was struck amidship with a resounding crack. It bounced in the water, splintered, and split, spilling passengers and cargo into the sea. A second boat managed to slide away from the punishing prow; another was saved when one of the oarsmen lifted his oar and slammed it against the moving hull and drove his own boat away, losing his balance in the process and tumbling into the water.

  Another boat, heavy with water and too sluggish to move quickly, was tipped and swamped in the wake of the passing ship. It slid under the surface without a sound, its passengers shrieking as it went down.

  The death-ship passed the boat where Charis sat mute with rage, seething inside. Seithenin's face appeared briefly over the rail. Charis saw him and recognized him; she spat and saw him sneer, half-crazed with hate.

  "Seithenin, I defy you!" The voice was Avallach's. Charis turned to see her father standing in his boat: wet, bedraggled, but still king. His hate had roused him to shout his impotent threat.

  The big ship's rudder wagged sideways; the ship turned, the sail collapsed as it made to come at the boats again.

  Men rushed about on the deck; the points of spears bristled at the rail. "They are coming back! They will kill us all!" cried a woman in a nearby boat.

  But even as the ship heeled toward them, its sail flapping uselessly, it seemed to hesitate. The arc straightened and the sail puffed full again as it swung onto a new course. Seithenin appeared at the rail once more and called back, "I am sorry I did not kill you, Avallach! Now Oceanus will have to finish what I began."

  Charis turned and saw then what Seithenin's captain had seen and what had driven him away before finishing his cruel work: Three fast triremes were flying toward them across the water.

  "Belyn and Kian! We are saved!"

  No one heard her. The others had seen the ships too and, overcome with relief, were shouting themselves hoarse.

  Charis gazed around her. Of the ninety boats that had left Kellios harbor, she estimated that fewer than fifty remained: some had drifted away in the night, others had been struck by flaming debris or scuttled by the tidal wave, and at least three were destroyed by Seithenin—although most of the passengers of the rammed vessels were still alive and clinging to floating wreckage.

  The ships struck their sails as they came gliding nearer. The oarsmen in the fishing boats eagerly plied their oars, bringing the rescue craft close, and the first of the passengers clambered up the hulls of the larger ships on nets flung over the rails. Charis saw to it that all passengers were rescued and the cargo taken aboard before she allowed herself to be pulled up onto the deck.

  Belyn stood before her, exhausted, wreathed in an air of sadness. "I knew you would find us," Charis said as Belyn gathered her into his arms.

  "Charis, I am sorry," he whispered, and she felt his tears warm on her neck. "We could not come sooner."

  She pulled away. "Is Elaine…?"

  "Safe, I think. There is one other ship," explained Belyn. His shoulders sagged in a gesture of futility. "Kian has it— they are all in Kian's hands now."

  The three ships were nearly full with rescued survivors. Charis made certain that Avallach, Lile, Morgian, and Annubi were safely aboard and that the cargo she had worked so hard to preserve was secured before collapsing exhausted into a corner.

  Belyn called orders to his captain, which were relayed to the other ships, one of which was in Maildun's care. The sails rustled up the masts once more, flapped, and puffed full in the breeze, and the ships strained forward, moving out to sea.

  They had not sailed far, however, when they heard a howl, distant and menacing, carrying over the water. Those at the rails lifted their heads and saw thick clouds lowering over Atlantis. Spider-threads of shining crimson lava flowed over the unsteady landmass, gushing up and out of numerous gaping rents in the earth.

  Smoke snaked over the water in wispy tendrils so that Atlantis appeared to float on night-dark storm clouds. The hot air smelled of sulfur and burning stone. Sooty ash drifted down in a filthy snow, blacking everything it touched. Although it was well past midday, an inky twilight prevailed. The survivors huddled on the decks in the darkness, their drawn faces illumined by lurid flares and lightning.

  The howl became a vast, soaring hiss that spread out from the broken shell of the island to fill the world. Charis closed her eyes and heard in the ugly sound the rush of departed spirits hastening on their deathless flight. Someone jostled her shoulder and she looked up. Annubi stood over her, his eyes red in the fireglow. "Come and see," he told her.

  She rose and followed him to the stern where they pushed their way to places at the rail. Atlantis had shrunk utterly, its once-vast terrain now merely a cluster of broken mountains, wrecked Atlas a shapeless black hump in the flame-shot darkness.

  The sibilant hiss intensified, overlaid by another sound, like that of an enormous cloth being ripped from end to end, a great tearing—the fabric of the world torn in two from one end to the other. The sound grew and filled the world, overwhelming the ships and their frightened passengers.

  Then, while they all watched, the dark hump of Mount Atlas sank inward upon itself, heaved, and burst in a final shattering cataclysm of fiery destruction. The awful force vomited up gas and dust, and debris rose in a magnificent churning pillar whose top was lost high in the streaming clouds above. A moment later they saw the shock wave racing at them over the water, flattening the wave crests.

  It hit like an invisible hand, knocking the observers off their feet, rattling the ships to their planking. The shock wave was accompanied by a screaming wild wind that caught the flagging sails so sharply that the masts bent and cracked. The triremes were driven helplessly over the water, their decks slanting almost vertical. Charis, gripping the rough decking with her fingers, lay flat and held on, her eyes squeezed shut to keep out the stinging salt water.

  The wind flew past them across the sea. Smoldering chunks of rock debris whistled from the swollen sky, hot and trailing white smoke, sizzling as they struck the sea and
sank in a welter of steam. Glowing missiles struck the ships, sputtering and fizzling as they skittered crazily, burning into the planking, setting the decks afire. Down rained the deadly hail. Charis heard a shriek and saw a woman race past her, scurrying for safety, a child clasped tightly in her arms, the hem of her tunic fluttering with a bright border of flame. She ran to the woman, knocked her to the deck, and beat out the flames with her hands, then pulled a bit of sailcloth over them hoping to weather the firestorm.

  They crouched together under the canvas and Charis realized that her companions were Lile and little Morgian, their faces white beneath smeared soot, hair gray with ash. Lile peered at her blankly, without recognition. I must look as unnatural to her, Charis thought; she does not know who I am.

  "Lile," she said, reaching out her hand. "It is Charis, Lile. We are alive and we are going to survive. Do you hear? We will live." Morgian whimpered softly, but Lile did not respond; she turned her face to stare out at the ghastly hail.

  The mountainous wave that followed the last explosion lifted the light ships precariously high before sending them plunging down into the deep-riven trough. The wave passed beneath them, hurtling on its way across wide Oceanus, building power and speed as it went. The thought of what that wave would do to the first landmass it encountered made Charis shudder.

  When the firestorm had passed, Charis and Lile threw off the sailcloth and looked out across the water into an immense impenetrable curtain of smoke and dust all around, so thick they could no longer see the ships nearest them.

  Through the interminable night, the triremes drifted in a dead calm sea. Survivors collapsed, slept where they fell, awakening to a murky sunrise. The sails hung limp and useless from the masts. Ash still drifted like snow, coating the water with a foul, thick sludge. The dense air stank of sulfur.

  For three days the ships drifted idly in the still water. On the fourth day the sun rose as a pale, gray disk, burning through the brown sackcloth sky. By midday a fitful breeze out of the south scattered the last tattered remnants of smoke, and the people looked out across Oceanus. Where Atlantis had been there was nothing now but a dull expanse of filthy water. Not a rock, not a grain of sand, was left. Atlantis was gone and only the faintest wisp of steam rising from a vast seam of bubbles marked the place where it lay.

  Atlantis was no more.

  BOOK

  THREE

  THE MERLIN

  ONE

  WHAT SHALL I WRITE OF THE HARD YEARS, THE TERRIBLE years, years of despair, disease, death…What is there to say—that we struggled, starved, ached, bled, and suffered in every one of a thousand different ways?

  We did this.

  We did more. We survived and forced a cold and hostile land to yield a home.

  After nearly four grim, wretched, restless months aboard our crippled ships we landed on the rock-bound western coast of a land called Ynys Prydein, a cloudbound island of mist-covered mountains and soft green hills far to the east and north.

  There were few inhabitants of the narrow spit of land where we made our landfall, but those few received us with respect despite all their suspicious, backward ways. Slight and short of stature, hair and eyes dark like the forest creatures they resembled, these people, who called themselves Cerniui, lived crudely in small holdings of wood and mud. We could not speak to them; speech was hopeless. Their language was a meaningless tangle of soft gutturals and willowy sibilance, not speech at all. Yet, somehow we made our desires known to them and they were eager to provide for our needs, looking upon us as very gods and goddesses.

  We stayed with them two seasons, waiting for the fourth ship which, sadly, never came. Kian, Elaine, and all the rest were lost, and we mourned them. Then we moved deeper into the land, beyond a range of low mountains, sacred to the Cerniui, to a region of rich woodlands, lakes, and fair glades which Belyn had surveyed and believed could be made to furnish us with the means of survival. Thinly populated to begin with, there were none to oppose us; the savages we did encounter fled at the mere sight of us, abandoning home and livestock without lifting a hand, so strong was their terror.

  We named our new land Sarras, after the home we had left behind. But to our diminuitive neighbors it soon became known as Llyn Llyonis—their approximation of Atlantis. And here, in Llyn Llyonis, we began to make a life in this rough and unsparing land.

  Just beyond the northernmost border of the land Belyn surveyed stood a great hill surrounded by marshland with a very broad but shallow lake beside it. Avallach claimed this hill on which to build his palace; Belyn remained in the south, settling his remnant in Llyn Llyonis, on that narrow peninsula jutting out into the sea. Maildun stayed with him. I think Belyn wanted to be near the water to see the missing ship if it ever should arrive.

  Avallach's hill, or Tor as the locals called it, was set in a strange and fantastic landscape: roundly humped hills and wide glens seamed through with darksome, wood-bound rivers and glinting silver streams, with heavy stands of ancient oak, yew, elm, and horse chestnut—a tree so large that an entire herd of cattle could shelter beneath the lofty, spreading branches of just one venerable grandsire of the wood. It was a moody and melancholy place of quiet airs and shadow, of great distances made short and small things made large, a waterworld on dry ground.

  It was an old and secretive land, empty, haunting, inhabited only sporadically throughout its long history. In time I came to love this place, with its subtle, shifting light and misty atmosphere, although it never lost its strangeness for me.

  In the midst of this eerie landscape stood the Tor. From the top, even before Avallach established his tall gleaming towers there, we had an unlimited view in any direction. At any distance the hill drew all eyes to it, although strangely, from certain nearer vantage points, the Tor disappeared from view.

  Building stone was plentiful nearby, and there was good timber for the taking within easy reach. The lakes teemed with trout and perch and pike; the meadows nurtured game of all kinds. Cattle fattened readily on the fertile pastures, and grain grew almost without care. Wild fruits and berries could be found in the wooded glens, along with all varieties of edible herbs.

  If not as generous as our lost home, it nevertheless yielded what comfort it possessed. And within a few short years we had built an enviable holding, becoming the source of endless fascination and speculation for the native tribes round about, who never tired of watching us and discussing our activities at extraordinary length among themselves. We observed them, in turn, learning their customs and eventually mastering their bewildering language.

  We paid dearly for our gain, however, and the price was high. The climate, chill and perpetually damp, gave rise to a host of diseases which our Atlantian blood had never encountered and could not tolerate. More nights than I care to remember, I stood by helplessly as mysterious feverous maladies carried off my people, steadily dwindling our numbers.

  But each year work continued on Avallach's hilltop palace; his lakes were stocked, fields plowed, orchards planted. Lile, happier than I had ever seen her, took the care of the orchards and gardens as her own particular duty, and seldom could she be found elsewhere than among the dappled leaf-green shadows of her beloved apple trees. Little Morgian grew up with twigs and blossoms in her hair and rich soil under the nails of her herb-stained fingers.

  Annubi grew more and more into himself, living almost entirely alone, shut in his room in the palace. Rarely seen, still more rarely heard, he became a living shade that haunted the dark byways of the palace grounds and the remote high places. The Dumnoni called him Annwn and made him out a god of the Otherworld, their netherland where the dead lingered on in twilight. In this they were very nearly right.

  Curiously, Avallach's wound never completely healed—sometimes forcing him to his bed for several days, whereupon he would conduct the business of his court from a special canopied litter he had constructed. But when he felt better he would resume his activities as before—especially fishing which became
his passion. He spent countless hours out on the lake below the palace. It was a common sight to wake in the morning and see Avallach, like Poseidon plying through dawn's golden mist in his boat, motionless, fishing spear poised.

  And me? I roamed the moody hills on horseback and visited the secret places in the land—forest pools and private glades where no one ever went. This wandering suited my restless and melancholy spirit, and I spent my days dreaming of a time and place now lost forever. For, having brought my people to this land, my task was accomplished, my purpose achieved, and there was nothing left for me to do.

  * * *

  Charis slipped from the saddle and dropped the reins. Her gray pony wasted no time getting at the long, sweet grass beneath its nose. The clearing was not far from the palace, just beyond the hill opposite Ynys Witrin, which was what the natives had taken to calling the Tor now that Avallach's palace was there: Isle of Glass. This lesser hill had, as far as Charis knew, no name, nor had the clearing, although obviously it had been the site of habitation in the past.

  For at one end of the clearing stood the remains of a small, sturdily-built timber structure. A house of some kind perhaps, but a good deal larger than the houses of the natives and with a steeply pitched roof of thatch, now broken in several places. If it had ever boasted a door, that refinement was now long gone and the house stood vulnerable and open.

  Charis studied the clearing and its ruin with interest; the place, like so many of the places she discovered for herself, had a distinct air about it. She had become expert at discerning the subtle textures of the atmosphere exuded by these secret places, and this place had a strong aura. Something significant had happened here upon a time, and the air still tingled with the memory.