The Paradise War (42 page)

They all agreed heartily with this and voiced their approval with solemn vows to kill as many of the enemy as possible when the day of retribution came. They still did not comprehend the hopelessness of our predicament. I did not have the heart to disappoint them; they would learn the truth soon enough.

The warriors accepted the small comfort I offered. “The blood debt to be repaid is heavy indeed,” Aedd observed. “Still, it is shame to me that I was not with my kinsmen in their time of travail.”

“That is what we thought to prevent,” Simon reminded him.

“When Tegid and I arrived at the caer,” I said, returning to my question, “we thought you dead. We could not imagine what had taken you from the stronghold.”

“We rode to the summons,” Aedd replied and went on to explain how word about a coming invasion had reached them from the southwest coast. Thinking to forestall the assault, the king had raised the warriors of his hearth and left the caer. They ranged far in protection of the realm but sighted no invaders, and after many days with the weather growing worse, they had turned back.

“When we saw the beacon fire, we thought—” Aedd halted abruptly, unwilling to go on.

The soft splutter of the twig fire and the sigh of the rising wind made a melancholy sound in our ears. After a moment, Simon said, “Hear me, brothers. The blood debt will be repaid. We will avenge our dead. The enemy will be crushed into dust beneath our feet.”

Despite Simon’s brave words, the warriors’ sorrow was too great to shrug aside easily. Given time, bold words would again ignite the spark of their valor; they would rise up and clasp courage to their hearts. But not now, not this night. This night, and for many more nights to come, the lament for the lost would fill their souls, and their hearts would remain heavy with mourning.

I left them to nurse their grief and returned to my place with Tegid and the king. Prince Meldron was there, too, vainly trying to pry some word of explanation from his father. At last he yielded to the king’s stubborn silence and stormed away, saying, “You talk to him, Tegid. Perhaps he will listen to you. Tell my father that we cannot reach Findargad like this. It is too far and too cold. The high mountain passes will be filled with snow. We will lose half our people before we ever come within sight of the towers. Tell him that, Tegid!”

“I have already told him,” Tegid mumbled, when Meldron had gone. “He will not listen.”

“Is it really so dangerous?” I asked.

Tegid nodded slowly. “The mountains of Cethness are high, and the Sollen winds are cold. The prince speaks the truth when he says that many will die before we reach the stronghold.”

“Then why are we going?”

“There is nothing else we can do,” Tegid replied dismally. “It is what the king has ordered.”

I saw how the matter stood, so I did not bother asking the most obvious, and most disturbing, questions. If mighty Sycharth could not protect her people, why believe the stone walls of Findargad would fare any better? What good were swords and spears against an enemy that felt neither pain nor death?

As Tegid had morbidly suggested, we might as well have stayed in Sycharth and saved ourselves the hardship and distress of a cold mountain journey, for one grave is very like another, and when Lord Nudd came for us there would be no stopping him wherever we happened to be.

And yet . . . and yet, an elusive glimmer of hope danced at the edge of my awareness like a firefly floating just out of reach. It was there, and then it was gone. I gave chase and it disappeared; I stood still and it drew close. But, try as I might, I could not capture it.

Yet I could not rest until I had seized that hope, however small. That night I withdrew from the comfort of the king’s fire and stood alone in a nearby grove, holding vigil until I should succeed. All through the night I stood, wrapped in my cloak, leaning now and then against one of the alder trees of the grove, listening to the branches clicking in the thin, cold wind while the knife-bright stars turned slowly in the black Sollen sky. All through the night I waited. And when the moon sank from sight below the hills, I was no closer to achieving my purpose.

Then, even as a sullen, gray green dawn lifted night’s curtain in the east, the evasive quarry I sought drew near. It came, slim and fragile, in the form of a question: if Lord Nudd was so powerful, why remove the king from his stronghold before laying waste to the fortress?

The Coranyid had not moved against Sycharth and the other settlements of the realm while the king remained in his stronghold. The destruction came only after Meldryn had been drawn away through deception. It seemed to me that some power had prevented Lord Nudd’s awful attack while the king remained with his people. Despite all the terrible Coranyid had done, the annihilation was not complete. And even now it might be avoided somehow. But how?

As the first faint rays of daylight spread a sickly glow into the sky, I heard again the voice of the Banfáith, clear and strong as if she were before me once again:
Before the Cythrawl can be conquered, the Song must be restored.

Was this the hope I sought? It seemed unlikely, for she had also said: No one knows the Song, save the Phantarch alone. How could the Song of Albion be restored if no one knew the Song but the Phantarch, and the Phantarch was dead?

It was a riddle and it made no sense.

I worried at it through the mist-shrouded day and the long hours of the freezing night, as we sat huddled in our cloaks before our twig fire. But the riddle turned inward upon itself, and I could make no sense of it.

“Tegid,” I said softly, “I have been thinking.” Twrch slept at my feet, the king rested fitfully on his white oxhide nearby, and Tegid sat beside me, staring into the shimmering flames, brooding in silence.

The bard grunted but did not turn his eyes from his contemplation of the fire.

“Where is the Phantarch?”

“Why speak of it again?” he muttered. “The Phantarch is dead.”

“Hear me out,” I insisted. “I have pondered this in my mind and do not speak just to amuse myself with the sound of my voice.”

“Very well, speak your mind,” he relented.

“The Banfáith told me many things,” I began and was quickly interrupted.

“Oh yes, the Banfáith told you many things. And you have told me little.” He was sullen in this observation. “Have you now decided to part with some of your treasure hoard?”

The words of the Banfáith were still a mystery to me, and I still feared them and all they might mean. But as the days passed and the hopelessness of our plight became ever more apparent, I grew less concerned for myself. This was no time for the selfishness of secrets. Tegid was Chief Bard now; he must be told what I knew.

“You are right to rebuke me, Tegid,” I told him. “I will tell you everything.” So I began to relate all she had told me regarding the Phantarch and the Song of Albion—reluctantly at first, but then more readily as the words sought release and tumbled out. I described the prophecy as well as I could remember it. I told him about the destruction and upheaval of the days to come, and the looked-for champion. I told him about Llew Silver Hand and the Flight of Ravens and the Hero Feat at the end of the Great Year and all that I could remember, just as the Banfáith had given it to me. When I finished, Tegid did not raise his head but sat staring morosely into the fire.

“It seems to me that despite all the prophecy portends, there may yet be some future for us.”

But Tegid took no comfort in what I told him. Instead, he shook his head slowly and said, “You are wrong. What future there may have been, now can never be. The Cythrawl is too strong in the land; Lord Nudd has grown too powerful.”

“Then why give the prophecy at all?”

Tegid just shook his head.

“I do not understand you, Tegid. You moan because I would not tell you the Banfáith’s prophecy, and when I do tell you, all you can do is complain that it is too late. Before the Cythrawl can be conquered, the Song must be restored—that is what she said. It seems to me that we have to find the Phantarch.”

“The Phantarch is dead, as you well know.”

“And the Song with him?”

“Of course the Song with him. How can it be otherwise? The Phantarch is the instrument of the Song—there is no Song without the Phantarch.”

“But where is he?”

“
You
have Ollathir’s awen,” he snapped, “not me.”

“What does that mean?”

He muttered something under his breath and made to turn away, but I held him.

“Please, Tegid, I am trying to understand. Where is the Phantarch?”

“I do not know,” he answered and explained how, in order to protect the Song, the Phantarch’s chamber was hidden and the location kept secret. “Only the Penderwydd knows where the Phantarch hides. Ollathir knew, and Ollathir is dead.”

“And he died before he could tell you the secret?”

“Yes! Yes!” Tegid rose to his feet and raised his hands in clenched fists about his head. “Yes, Llyd! You have finally grasped this important truth: the Phantarch is dead; Ollathir is dead; the Song is dead; and soon we will be dead too.” The king stirred in his sleep. Tegid saw that his outburst had disturbed the king and dropped his fists.

What a cruel deceit, what a pitiless ruse this prophecy. I felt the fragile hope I had held so lightly begin to disintegrate. There could be no defeating the Cythrawl without the Song, and no Song without the Phantarch. But the Phantarch was dead, and, as if to make matters worse, the only person who knew where to find him was dead too.

“Tell me now that there is still hope for us,” said Tegid, his voice a choked whisper. The fight went out of him, and he sank once more to the ground.

“The king is alive,” I replied. “How can we be without hope if the king is alive? You are alive, too, and so am I. Look around—there are hundreds of us here, and we are ready to fight once more. Why has Lord Nudd been unable to kill our king? Why has he only attacked the unprotected villages?”

Even as I spoke, my own words began to convince me that there was still something or someone keeping Nudd from his ultimate victory. “Listen, Tegid, if I were as powerful as you say Nudd is, I would first kill the king, and the kingdom would be mine. But why has he not done this?”

“I do not know! Ask him—ask Nudd when next you meet!”

“The Coranyid attacked only after the king had been removed— why?”

“It is not for me to say! Perhaps Nudd wishes to prolong his enjoyment with the rich spectacle of our futile efforts at escape.”

“We live only at Lord Nudd’s pleasure? I do not believe that.”

“Believe it! We live at Lord Nudd’s pleasure. And when it pleases him to kill us, he will kill us—just as he has killed all the rest.”

“And it is our king’s pleasure to die at Findargad?” I challenged.

“That is the way of it! It is the king’s pleasure to die in Findargad, and I serve the king.”

These were Tegid’s final words. But as I lay sleepless by the fire that night, these few words of the Banfáith sustained me:
Happy shall be Caledon; the Flight of Ravens will flock to her many-shadowed glens, and raven-song shall be her song.

And as I stared into the shimmering flames I saw, framed in the molten red and gold of the embers, a vision: I saw a green oak grove and, under spreading branches of clustered leaves, a grassy mound. On this mound stood a throne made of stag antlers adorned with the hide of a white ox. And perched on the back of the throne an enormous raven, black as moonless night, with wings outstretched and beak open, filling the silent grove with a bitter, stringent, yet strangely beautiful song.

28
T
HE
H
UNT

A
s if maddened by our escape, the Season of Ice pursued us down the valleys and riverways, filling the world with its ravening roar. Sollen became an enemy to be battled, a foe growing from strength to strength while we slowly weakened. Yet we journeyed on. By the time we reached the foothills of the high peaks, everyone agreed that this year’s Sollentide was by far the worst that any had ever known for wind, rain, snow, and fierce, stinging cold. Not a day went by that the sky did not shed snow; the winds wailed and raged from dawn to dusk; the streams and rivers froze hard. As the snow rose about us, our progress slowed to a crawl.

Finding enough fuel to make the night’s campfires became an obsession. Often we had to stop well before nightfall—sometimes even before midday—in order to find and gather enough firewood to keep us through the night. Any extra was carried along with us. Food supplies held good, but only because we began eating less. To fill our empty stomachs we ate snow as we stumbled along the trail. The warriors now walked, giving their horses to the children and mothers with infants, who could not flounder through the snow. We took to wrapping the horses’ legs—and our own as well—in rags and skins to keep their feet from freezing, and walked two by two on either side of a horse lest anyone fall away unnoticed.

I carried Twrch beneath my cloak when I walked—the snow was too deep for him—and more than once blessed the warmth of his small furry body. I fed him from my own portion, or obtained meat scraps for him from those given to the other hounds. At night he slept next to me and we kept one another warm.