Taliesin

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  It was a sad song, a heartbreaking song, wild and proud, a song about a lost valley, a lost land, about all the losses a human heart might hold dear and remember. As the song spun out, Charis gave herself wholly to its spell, letting the ache of her own loss wash over her in a sweet, dark flood. As the last, trembling notes of the song faded away, she saw glistening drops on the young man's cheeks.

  We are alike, you and I, she thought, homeless wayfarers in a world that is not our own.

  The harpstrings sounded again and the young man began another song. Charis did not wait to hear it but pushed herself away from the column and hurried from the hall as the first notes from that honey-smooth voice flowed into the air.

  FOUR

  THEY SLEPT THAT NIGHT IN THE HALL OF THE FISHER KING. The fire burned brightly in the great pit and they pulled their cloaks over themselves and slept, heads filled with dreams of their lost home.

  Elphin and his warband had returned to find Caer Dyvi already besieged. The invaders who eluded Cuall at the river had struck south, marching all day along the coast to reach the caer at dusk. The hillfort's defenses had kept the wary raiders at bay through the night. But with the coming of the dawn, the enemy saw that the fortress was virtually unguarded; only a token force made up of the older men and boys too young to take arms in the field had been left behind to defend it.

  But if the invaders thought that made Caer Dyvi an easy conquest, they were soon persuaded differently. For the defenders succeeded in turning away outright assaults not once but three times, to the anger and frustration of the invaders.

  When Elphin reached the caer, the barbarians had mounted a fourth assault and were on the brink of breaking through the gate. Women and children stood shoulder to shoulder with the men on the ramparts, hurling stones and hot coals upon the heads of the raiders, their arrows long since spent. A moment or two later and the warband would have ridden home to a burning tomb.

  As it was, they arrived to engage the enemy on the slopes leading up to the fort. The raiders, furious to find themselves suddenly confronted by several hundred well-trained horsemen, put up a fierce fight before scattering into the woods along the river. Cuall took half the force and rode after them. Elphin entered the settlement to find the destruction all but complete: gutted houses and outbuildings stood as charred ruins; the granary was a smoldering heap of black timber and burnt grain through which pigs trampled and snuffled; the great hall had lost its roof of thatch. The loss of life had likewise been heavy; many good people had died with Picti arrows in their throats or Irish spears in their chests.

  The warband entered the caer to cheers of welcome and relief. The survivors, exhausted and bloody, still gripped their weapons with iron-fast determination. Rhonwyn, holding a spear and a Roman footman's shield, stood at the forefront of the defenders as her husband rode in. Her face was smeared with soot and her hair gray with ash, but fire was in her eyes. "Greetings, lord," she said, leaning her cheek against the spear. "As ever, your return is most welcome."

  "Are you hurt?" he asked, sliding down from the saddle.

  "I am unharmed," she replied, lifting a hand to drag her hair from her face. "Although your hall will require a new roof."

  Elphin gathered her in an embrace. They clung to one another for a long moment and then began walking through the ruins of the caer.

  Caer Dyvi was attacked three more times in the next two days. The Cymry held them off, but each time their ranks were diminished; and no matter how many of the enemy were killed, more came the next time. It was clear that they had identified Caer Dyvi as a major stronghold and were determined to take it or destroy it, no matter how high the cost.

  And the cost was high: the naked, blue-painted bodies of Picti, Scotti, and Attacotti lay virtually stacked outside the walls; the gate road was muddy from the blood of the fallen; spears stood like a sapling forest, growing up amidst thickets of arrows on the slopes of the hill. The air was thick and foul with the buzzing of flies and the stink of death. The skies over the caer darkened as ravens and carrion crows flocked to their grisly feast.

  And still the invaders would not withdraw.

  In the end Elphin had no choice. It was either abandon the caer and save as many of his people as he could, or stay and watch them slaughtered one by one. It was not an easy choice: most of the kinsmen would rather have died with an arrow through the skull than forsake their land and homes.

  Hafgan and Taliesin, who had labored long, upholding the warriors with praise and incantations, had come to Elphin with the sorry truth. "We cannot win against them, Father," Taliesin said gently. "There are too many. We cannot kill them all."

  King Elphin, fatigued beyond all endurance, only nodded as he sat hunched before the glowing remains of a fire. He had not the strength to summon an answer.

  "We must leave here," said Hafgan. The words were stinging wasps on his tongue.

  Elphin raised his head; defiance stirred in the depths of his eyes. "Never!"

  "Father," said Taliesin more gently, "listen to me." He sank to his knees beside the king. "It must be. There will be other battles, other wars for us. But not here. I have seen this."

  "Listen to the one you call your son, Elphin," put in Hafgan. "There has been too much dying here. If there is to be life, it must be elsewhere."

  "Go then," croaked Elphin. "Take as many as will go with you. I mean to stay."

  "No," Taliesin said simply. "You are the king; your people will follow only you. We will need a strong leader in our new home."

  Elphin passed a weary hand over his face and shook his head. "Lleu help me, I cannot," he said hoarsely. "The disgrace—"

  "Death has no dignity," replied Taliesin. He rose slowly and extended his hand. Elphin looked at it, his eyes glimmering with unshed tears. "Come."

  The king took the hand of his son and climbed to his feet. When dawn pearled the skies the next morning, clan and kinsmen left Caer Dyvi forever. Of Elphin's proud warband of three hundred, fewer than a hundred remained, and only slightly more than a hundred clansmen.

  They left, taking what provisions and possessions they could carry in three wagons, driving their cattle and pigs before them. As the last kinsman passed through the gates, Elphin gave the order and the caer was put to the torch. Amidst rolling smoke and crackling flame the king followed his people down the hill and away, the remnant of his warband riding grimly at his back.

  They kept moving through the wet, miserable autumn, traveling south, leaving Gwynedd behind, eventually passing into and through Powys. Along the way they saw sights most of them had only heard about in rumors and traveler's tales: rich Roman villas with painted statues of fountains and mosaics on the floors; wide, smooth-paved roads; triumphal arches; a splendid stadium for racing horses; and carved into a hill in one prosperous town, an amphitheater where several thousand people could gather at once. They wintered in Dyfed, near Brechaniauc where Elphin's mother, Medhir, had once had a kinsman and the name of Gwyddno Garanhir was remembered with honor. The cold took many whose wounds, and the rigors of the long journey, had weakened them beyond recovery.

  When spring came they crossed the channel Mor Hafren into Dumnonia where they began hearing tales about a strange people—the Faery, or Fair Folk—who had come to the region with their monarch, Avallach, called the Fisher King.

  These people, it was said, were extremely tall and handsome to behold: the men were well-formed and robust, the women beautiful beyond compare. Further, skilled in every art and endowed with every grace, the Fair Folk possessed many unusual powers which enabled them to attain vast amounts of wealth with little effort so that even the lowest of them lived more lavishly than the emperor himself in Rome. In short, a more noble race could not be imagined.

  Elphin and his people listened to the stories and decided to go to this Avallach and see the truth of these tales for themselves. Elphin called a council and announced, "If what is said about this Fisher King is true, it may be that he will receive us a
nd help us find lands of our own."

  Hafgan heard the stories too and puzzled over them. He remembered that blazing night of long ago when the starfall lit the sky and wondered if this Avallach was the one whose coming had been foretold that night. He also wondered where these Fair Folk had come from. Sarras, some said; Llyn Llyonis said others; from the Westerlands across the sea, from the Isle of the Ever Living. Guesses were many, but no one seemed to know anything certain.

  "Yes," Hafgan told Elphin, "it is a good plan. As the Romans hereabouts can offer no aid, we must seek it where we can. It may well be as you say."

  Taliesin also agreed readily. He had his own reasons for wanting to see the Faery. From the first that he had heard about the Fisher King and his people, his heart had burned within him. He had entered his awen and tried to follow along the scattered paths of the future, but a dense, glistening fog had obscured the way and he had been forced to return lest he lose his way in the Otherworld. But before the shimmering fog had taken his sight, he saw a tangle of smaller tracks merge a small distance ahead and took this to mean that, for good or ill, the futures of his people and Avallach's were in some way bound together.

  "In any event," said Elphin, "it is only right to offer respect to the king whose lands we hope to pass through peacefully."

  Thus, it was agreed to search out this Avallach and pay him a visit. That same night Taliesin took himself off to a secluded grove and, chewing a handful of specially prepared hazelnuts, entered his awen to attempt once more to peer into the future regarding the fortunes of his people.

  Closing his eyes, he began to sing softly to himself and in a moment felt the dark headlong rush and the sudden stillness that indicated to him that he had crossed over into the Otherworld. Opening his eyes, he saw once again the shadow world that had over time become as familiar to him as the world of men.

  He saw the luminous sky like shining bronze and heard the familiar strains of the haunting, ethereal music. He smelled the sweet, heady fragrance of land and saw the mountains in the distance, and though he had explored their slopes many times it was not to the mountains that he turned now. Instead, he found himself gazing on a small stream winding through the trees to empty itself in a forest pool nearby.

  Taliesin followed the stream among the glimmering trees to the pool, pushed through the bracken-covered bank to the water's edge, and wondered if she would still be there—the lady he had seen so long ago. Kneeling down, he peered into the crystalline water, his breath catching in his throat…

  The lady was gone. The water still flowed, the green horsetail weed still waved among the smooth, amber-colored stones, but the woman was not there.

  He rose slowly and retraced his steps along the stream to the place where the pathways converged. Choosing the one he had followed before, Taliesin started off. As before, he had not gone very far when the strange, glimmering, glistening fog began curling around his legs. In a few moments the fog had risen and deepened so that he could no longer see the path before his feet. He pushed on a short distance and stopped.

  Reluctantly Taliesin decided to turn back and discovered that the fog now surrounded him completely. All about him the dense vapor curled and wreathed on unseen channels in the air. Taliesin knew the peril of stumbling through the Otherworld blind and dropped to his knees. He crawled a few more paces on his hands and knees before settling down to wait for the fog to clear.

  He waited a long time, but the fog did not lift. Instead, the luminous sky—showing through the fog overhead like a roof burning with a dusky flame—began to dim, and the fog grew deeper and more dense. Taliesin had never before been frightened in the Otherworld, but he became frightened now.

  He waited, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth as the sky darkened and the Otherworld slipped into one of its rare, interminable nights. To buoy his sinking spirit, Taliesin began to sing, quietly at first, but with increasing volume to keep the fear away by the cunning beauty of his verse.

  While he sat there, wrapped in his cloak, singing his most powerful songs, he heard footsteps on the invisible path behind him. He stopped singing. A soft radiance shone through the rolling fog, and he perceived the presence of an Otherworld being approaching: an Ancient One.

  The being came to stand near him but not near enough to see clearly—it was just a glowing blur through the fog. Taliesin waited, not presuming to address the entity, but allowing it to speak first if it would.

  "Well, Shining Brow, here you are once more," the Ancient One said after a moment. The voice seemed to come from a place high above his head.

  Taliesin instantly recognized that he was being addressed by the entity he had encountered on his very first visit to the Otherworld as a boy, years before. "I am here," he said simply.

  "Why have you come this way when you know that it is forbidden?"

  "I had hoped to see—" he began and faltered.

  "You hoped to see," replied the Ancient One in a lightly mocking tone. "And what have you seen?"

  "Nothing, Lord," replied Taliesin.

  "You do well to call me Lord," said the being. "That shows you have learned something in your years as a man. What else have you learned?"

  "I—I have learned to sing in the way of bards," answered Taliesin. Pride made him bolder. "I have learned the secrets of words; the elements obey my voice. I have learned the ways of wood and glen, of water, air, fire, and earth, and of all living things."

  "You are indeed knowledgeable, O Wise Among Men," taunted the being gently. "Answer me, then, if you can: why is one night moonlit and another so dark that you cannot see your shield beside you or the spear in your hand?"

  Taliesin pondered the question but could not think of a suitable answer.

  "Why is a stone so heavy?" inquired the Ancient One. "Why is a thorn so sharp? Tell me if you know: who is better off in death—the fresh-limbed young or the hoar-headed?"

  Taliesin remained silent.

  "Do you know, or can you even guess, what you are when you are sleeping—a body, a soul, a bright spirit? Where does night await the day? What supports the foundations of the earth in perpetuity? Who put the gold in the ground to make your torc? What remains of a man when his bones are dust?

  "Skilled bard, why do you not answer me?"

  It seemed to Taliesin as if he no longer remembered how to speak. His mouth would not frame a reply. Ignorance covered him like a cloak and shame made his cheeks burn hotly.

  "Have you nothing to say, O Word in Letters?" demanded the being. "No? In that, at least, you show wisdom, Shining Brow. Many prattle idly when they should listen. Are you listening?"

  Taliesin nodded.

  "Good. I told you that I would teach you what to say…Do you remember?"

  Taliesin did remember. He nodded again.

  "On the day of your liberation your tongue will be loosed and the words I give you will come. You will be My bard, My herald, proclaiming My reign in the world of men. Men will hear your voice and will know who it is that speaks. They will hear you and believe.

  "In the Dark Time your people will look to you, and to the one who comes after you, for light. You will give it to them as I give it to you. Do you understand, Shining Brow?"

  Taliesin made no move, so the being said, "Speak, Son of Dust. Do you understand?"

  "I understand."

  "So be it," said the Ancient One. "Do you know who it is that speaks to you?"

  "No, Lord."

  "Look upon me then, Shining Brow. Behold!"

  Taliesin raised his eyes and a sudden, sharp breeze began blowing, dispersing the unnatural vapor. He had a last glimpse of the Ancient One through a gray hanging veil of fog, and then the veil melted away and there stood before him the giant figure of a man—at least twice as tall as any mortal man— wearing a dazzling white robe. Light glinted and shone in dancing rainbows around the man, and Taliesin felt the heat of the being's presence like a flame that licked his face and hands and burned through his clothing to set
his skin ablaze.

  The man's face shone like the sun, burning with a white-hot heat so that it could not be gazed upon, nor its features discerned. The being raised a hand toward Taliesin, the light leapt up, and the Otherworld became a meager shadow, vague and insubstantial.

  "Do you know me now, Shining Brow?"

  Taliesin sank to his knees and raised his hands in supplication. "You are the Supreme Spirit," he said, "Lord of the Otherworld."

  "Of all worlds," corrected the Ancient One, "of this world and the next and the one beyond that. I am the Long Awaited King whose coming was foretold of old, who was, and is, and will be again. I am the Giver of Life, known from before the foundation of the world, by whose hand Heaven and Earth received their form. I am known by many names, but the time is coming and is soon here when all men will call me Lord."

  Taliesin trembled with fear and awe as the Supreme Spirit's words burned into his soul.

  "I am the one you have sought, Taliesin, in the deep, secret places of your heart. I am the light that strives against darkness. I am the knowledge, the truth, the life. From this moment you will hold no other gods above me. Do you understand?"

  "Yes, Lord," Taliesin said, his voice small and uncertain. "I understand."

  "I have raised you up and set you apart for a special task. Remain in me, Shining Brow, and you shall become a blessing to your people. For through you nations not yet born will come to know me, and my reign will be extended to the ends of the Earth. Do you believe what I am telling you?"

  "Yes, Lord," Taliesin said. "I have always believed."

  "Truly said, Shining Brow. Go now, and do not be afraid, for I will be closer to you than your next breath, closer than your heartbeat. Though darkness rises up against you and overwhelms you, I will never leave you. You are mine, Shining Brow, now and evermore."