The Eagle and the Raven (42 page)

They walked many miles that day, through country that was more populous than any they had yet seen, more so even than the thick-scattered people of their own tribe. Everywhere huts were going up, round the edges of the fields and in under the oak groves’ rims. The landless fugitives from Rome’s peace had brought their dishonored gods with them so that each clearing guarded an altar or a stone deity, and many held the pits or pools into which the offerings were thrown. Apart from the armed chiefs who had guarded the Council hut they had seen no weapons, and Cinnamus asked why.

“The people come from every tribe,” the master told him, “and here on Mona we wish only peace. Their weapons are given to their gods as a thanksgiving for this refuge, and I put them to work instead of to fighting. We have been able to clear many new fields since our population has grown, and grain is produced most plentifully. The gods are pleased with their new home, and bless the soil, and the Ordovices grow fat!” He chuckled, then turned in under the shelter of a wind break woven from young oak saplings and squatted, and the company went down with him. The whistle of the steady wind dropped to a low humming, and they loosened their cloaks and dropped their hoods with relief, looking with surprise at the distance they had come. Behind them the land had been steadily rising, and before them the ocean sparkled blue and lacy-white where a wide, calm bay had been carved. Fishing boats lay on their sides in the sand and their owners sat and gossiped around the fire they had kindled, but the company was so high that neither the crackling of the burning wood nor the voices of the men could be heard.

“Master, where are the halls of learning?” Eurgain asked him tentatively. “I had thought…I had hoped…Where are the secret places?”

He sat back on his heels, his hands clasped loosely on the ground. “The halls of learning are all around you, Eurgain,” he replied. “Did you not notice the groups of young men and Druids, pacing here and there? The long, slow absorption of knowledge takes place wherever the teacher wants to teach, be it sitting in a field, walking by the river, or standing in the shrines, and his pupils move with him. The whole island is alive with the flow of thought, and after twenty years of study there is no tiny rock, no wrinkle in the rivers, no sacred tree that remains undiscovered and that does not have the power to recall some lesson to the mind of its observer. This is one reason why Mona itself is called holy. The very mud cries out to the initiate of all that he has learned. And those children who come for five years, or ten, take back to their tribes a fierce love of this, their true cradle.”

“But what of the places of divination? The places where the stars are read? Where do the soothsayers practice their art?”

“You have a greed, Eurgain,” he rebuked her quietly. “Beware. Yet for the love of your soul I will cause you to be shown a place where the evening star gives up her secrets. Caelte, there is a young man here who is engaged in making harps. Would you like to talk with him?” He chatted comfortably to Caelte, to Eurgain, to Cinnamus. Caradoc was silent, gazing out over the peaceful scene below him, aware that though the master had not addressed him once since the moment of greeting his whole inner attention was fixed on Caradoc alone.

Caradoc felt the probing concentration of him as a disquiet, a disturbance of his thoughts that had been growing ever since their boat touched the sandy shore. Memories long dead, long stripped of their power, misted through his mind, trailing anger or remorse. Aricia was there, sitting on the floor of his hut at Camulodunon and giggling, and though he believed that he had conquered the pain of her, yet now he felt nothing but a full-blown desire and he knew that he had not healed himself. Togodumnus passed by, his eager, adoring chiefs trotting in his wake, and the wave of jealousy that shook him was so violent that his hand stiffened on the hilt of his sword. Jealous? Was I jealous of Tog? Ah no! he shouted in his mind. That was not true! He was my brother. I loved him! But after Tog came Eurgain, long, fringed blue tunic sweeping the ground, gold on the gold on her hair and silver on the whiteness of her arms, and the twinge of jealousy widened to a throbbing. Another lie! he called to the memory. I love her, love her, I have no reason to wish her harm, I do not keep her from her rightful place, it is not true, I do not care how much of herself she hides from me!

He grunted aloud, and there was a sudden lull in the conversation. They all looked at him, and he met the nightmare eyes of the master with a new emotion. This man was a force more potent than the graybeards of his imagination, more dangerous than the strongest spell his shadowy, cloistered vision of a master had ever conjured in the cause of victory. Caradoc was afraid.

“I think we should return to the town and feed our bodies once more,” the master said lightly, and they rose. As they did so a new and final memory blossomed in Caradoc’s mind, as clear and sweet and fresh as the moment itself had been. Gladys came to him, walking along the clifftop to where the combined host had gathered in their fruitless wait for Plautius. Her face was tanned, solemn. Her eyes held sanity and steady warmth. The sea breeze floated out her long, dark hair behind her and wrapped the tunic tight about her legs, and as she approached he smelled the salt on her, and the seaweed, and the rock herbs of the cliff. His heart opened like the petals of a bruised flower under her cleanliness, her honesty. “Have you considered telling the omens?” she asked him. “I can do it, Caradoc.” The master was watching him with a tiny grin. Caradoc turned and followed the others down the scrub-choked slope.

They returned to the town and ate a late afternoon meal, and by the time they had finished it the swift autumn dusk was beginning. The wind abated with its coming, and the scraped sky stayed clear. The master beckoned them all outside where a Druid waited for them, and Eurgain was introduced to him.

“He will show you the evening star,” the master said, “but you must hurry. The sun is already setting.” Without a word Eurgain turned away, following the glimmer of gray cloak, and the master pointed. “Caelte, follow the path that veers to the left. At the end of it is the hut of the bard-craftsman. Make merry music!”

“Cin, will you come?” Caelte asked, but Cinnamus yawned and shook his head.

“No. I will go back into the Council hut and talk some more with the warriors of Gaul. We have many stories to share. Then I will sleep. Caradoc, do you need me?”

Caradoc looked at the master. “No, Cin, I do not think I shall need you tonight. Sleep well.”

“You also, Lord. A good night.” He plunged back toward the doorskins, and Caradoc and the master were alone under the pink, paling sky.

The man gestured and moved away and Caradoc went after him, his body weary from the walking he had done that day but his mind wide awake. They glided swiftly along the track by the river, now placid with the last shreds of the sunset, then the master abruptly plunged in under the oaks to their right and was lost in shadows. Caradoc trudged after him, feeling the ground rising sluggishly beneath his feet. For half an hour they paced the silent forest, then all at once Caradoc found himself out on the crown of a hill. It was bare, and he could tell that at one time the trees had gathered right to the summit, for tiny saplings brushed his legs where the forest struggled vainly to regain lost ground. Now, three huge rings of stones marched peremptorily around the naked space, one inside the other, and in the center stood a low stone altar. There were no stakes, no heads, no god. Only the clean severity of weathered stone and long, frost-gripped grasses.

The master walked straight to the altar. He did not glance back to see if Caradoc was following, and with a wave of resentment it seemed to Caradoc that the man had forgotten he was there. He strode through the circles and came up to the altar to see the master remove a small leather pouch from his belt and tip a pile of powdery, grayish grains into the hollow that had been scooped out of the stone. Then he spoke. “See how dark it has become,” he said. “I can hardly see you, and you cannot see me,” and suddenly Caradoc noticed that full darkness had indeed fallen, and between the Druid and himself was a wall of blackness that his eyes could hardly pierce. “Now we wait,” the master said, turning to face the east, and Caradoc also turned, wondering what marvel he would see. But the night was calm. A few stars pricked out, their light still muted, and as yet the moon had not appeared. In the trees a nightjar rasped his ugly song. The two men stood motionless while the stars swung higher, then all at once it was there, the moon, three quarters to the full and very clear, its blue-shadowed surface aloof. The master sighed. “Watch very carefully, Caradoc,” he murmured. “Keep your eyes on the stones beneath the moon’s face,” and Caradoc strained to see.

After a few minutes, a ray of moonlight touched the base of one of the stones in the farthest circle. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it traveled upward, until for a moment it crowned the blunt, plain shaft with a drop of dry water, then Caradoc lost it only to find it again, halfway up the stone that stood in the second circle, directly behind the first. Once more the light slid up, tipped the stone, then fell to begin another ascent of the inmost circle. Caradoc glanced up. The moon was higher, though he had not been aware of the passage of time. He looked back. The ray of light was inching toward him now, seeming not to move, yet growing nearer, then it was crawling up the side of the altar. The Druid turned, flint at the ready. The pale light came on, and just as it found the incense cup he struck a bright spark. Immediately the powder began to smoulder, and a cloying but sweet-smelling odor filled the cold, tasteless night air.

“Look behind you,” the master ordered, and Caradoc swung round. “Do you see the star that perches glittering on the top of the farthest stone? That is your star. I saw it first in that position when Bran returned from his first visit to you, when you were a very young man. Now it sits there again, full of the knowledge of your years between. Stand on the other side of the altar and breathe on the incense.” Caradoc did as he was told, leaning over to be enveloped for a second in warm smoke. “Now stand very still and keep your eyes on it. Do not look at me.”

Caradoc felt the man withdraw into himself, and he suddenly felt lonely. His body cooled and he began to shiver, and his thoughts slipped past the plume of incense, past the tall, gray-folded figure opposite him and the old, spell-hugging circles, to his son, and Emrys, and Madoc. What were they doing, back in the country where solid flesh met warm, solid flesh, and all one needed to understand was that swords can kill? Were they limply asleep around a warm Council fire? He pictured Llyn’s curling hair spread upon his pallet, the room dim, the shadows red, the fire falling into embers. He saw him breathing softly, deeply, lost in his dreams. Dreams. He glanced across at the master, and felt horror race for a moment across his skin. The man was staring at him, eyes wide and fixed, and the moonlight had sucked all pigment from them so that now they seemed white. The rest of him was dim, dark gray tunic, a cloud of darkness that was his hair and his swarthy face, but those two grotesque, inhuman orbs wreathed in incense were full of a pale, sickly glow. Horror turned to fear, and then to panic.

For the first time in his life, Caradoc wanted to run away, run, swim, scramble sobbing through the mountains, anything to escape the coldness seeping to him from the man who no longer seemed like a man. He looked wildly at the sky. The moon was setting. Incredibly, the hours had gone by. The sight of the stars calmed him and he dropped his gaze once more to the thinning plume of smoke, and then he saw a hand reach out, cover the incense cup, and the glow abruptly died.

“You make me tired, Caradoc, with your terrors,” the master said dully. “I am nothing more than a man, and nothing less.” There was no timbre to his voice now, no tones of virility, no laughter. It came quietly out of the darkness like the voice of the stones themselves, heavy, ageless, without inflection. “I am a seer, the greatest seer the Druithin have ever known, but the burden is great, and what use are visions if they cannot be interpreted? Come. Let us sit under the trees and talk.”

He led the way, walking slowly like a cripple, back hunched, and they both sank onto the grass beneath an oak. “I am tired,” he went on after a moment. “I would like to sleep for one night, just one, without dreams.” Then he seemed to recover. His hands found the interior of his sleeves and he shrugged his tunic over his knees. “I had few words for you today, Caradoc, because visions for an arviragus are not for public ears. Yet the day was not wasted. You have been seeing yourself. The magic conjured here can do that to a man, for all the unknown secrets he brings with him become clear to him, and he goes away with no hiding place anymore.”

“You made the magic,” Caradoc snapped, his terror gone, his voice sounding harsh and loud in his ears. “You gave me memories, Druithin, but they were false.”

“Were they? All of them? I can bring truths to the surface of men’s souls, Caradoc, but I cannot take away the lies. And I tell you that the memory which seemed to you the purest was in fact the most untruthful of all. I see you look at me, and there is bitterness. Why am I chosen? you ask me in your heart. Has my life never been my own, after all? What is an arviragus, then, but a stupid gaming piece of the Druithin? You are beginning to see, aren’t you, Caradoc? And did you know that beneath the memories is hidden a lingering affection for the men of Rome? Truly the child still holds a ghostly knife to the throat of the man.”

“No! No! You are wrong!” The master’s words flayed him as though he were a dead white bull, a sacred offering being stripped of its skin. The blood of his slaughter gushed from his throat, his body was rigid with pain. “I have given all for you, I have followed Bran into suffering, I have denied myself a peaceful home and the company of my children! I am empty. Empty! Do you hear me? Even an honorable death was taken from me!”

“You are lying to yourself.”

“No,” Caradoc snarled. “No, not I. You wander in your visions, master, but who can say which ones are true and which are the dancing images of madness? If you knew the secret twistings of my mind you would not push me as you do!”