Authors: Bernard Evslin
The cat on Finn’s shoulder yawned, flicking its coral tongue, grinning right into the hooks of death—then rose straight up in a great leap to meet the dropping falcon. Finn watched aghast, expecting to see his pet, twice beloved because it was taken from an enemy, smashed into a bloody rag of fur. But he had forgotten that it was a witch’s cat, witness to spells and incantations. The black tom uttered a rhymed meow, and made a delicate pass with its paws. Finn saw the falcon dwindle into a wren, which had time for but one flutter before the cat pulled it in, and, dropping back onto Finn’s shoulder, began to chew.
“I would sooner have lost my stable of horses,” said the man softly. “I took that hawk from the King of Aram after a fight that lasted three days and cost ten of my best men, not to mention a few of the worst. How shall I refrain from killing you where you stand despite all the Laws of Hospitality ever spoken by half-witted ancients?”
“I put you under Obligation,” said Finn.
He said a word to the cat, who spat feathers which floated on the air, thickening into the royal shape of the falcon. The bird spread its huge wings briefly and resumed its perch on the man’s shoulder.
“That’s a clever cat you have there,” said the man.
“He has had certain advantages,” said Finn. “Now sir, I have told you my name, will you tell me yours?”
“Goll McMorna.”
“How well things fall out. You are the man I most wanted to know, and I meet you first. You were the leader of those who killed my father, I believe.”
“Still am.”
“So I must kill you, of course.”
“Of course you must try.”
“But not quite yet. I need to grow to my full size first.”
“You had better grow fast,” said McMorna. “That Hospitality nonsense shelters you only while you are a guest here, and the Law of Obligation lasts only one year thereafter.”
“Oh, but I may abide here quite a while. Tara’s hospitality is famous.”
“Yes, the king has been known to devise novel entertainments,” said Goll. “Especially for uninvited guests. Come, I’ll take you to him now.”
The High King made Finn welcome. Stags were roasted whole in the great fireplaces of Tara, and young pigs, wood grouse, and pheasant turned on their spits, dripping hot gravy and giving off a smell that made the dogs howl with greed. Finn was questioned about his favorite dishes, and was served winter strawberries in clotted cream, hot chestnuts, honeycomb—and one night a fat trout cooked according to the recipe given him by the Salmon that night he had fed it to the Druids and stuffed them so full that he was able to make off with their secret wisdom.
“You need new clothes,” said the king. “No son of Cuhal shall walk Tara clad like a peasant.”
And he bade his tailor weave Finn a chestful of garments out of spiderweb, the lightest strongest thread in all the world, and they were dyed blue and rust and silver.
There was feasting every night. Bards sang stories, poets riddled, slave girls danced, acrobats turned, bears were baited, cocks fought. By day there was hunting and fishing and jousting, foot races, wrestling, puzzle-verse, chess, and bowls. And all during these first days of welcome Goll McMorna was at the king’s right hand, devising pleasures for Finn.
One night at the feasting the king stood on the table, banging a gold dish with his dagger.
“Silence!” he cried. “I would speak.”
The voices fell off. The huge dining hall filled with a silence so deep there seemed to be a humming at its core.
“Tonight is the Night of the Winter Burning,” said the king. “Tonight we fortunate ones who dwell at Tara pay our yearly toll of shame and blame and flame. Tonight we are visited by the Destroyer, and a brave man will watch, and there will be peril and pain. I need a brave man now. Who offers himself? Any man here may volunteer save Goll McMorna whose chieftainship makes him exempt, and Finn McCool who is too young and tender for such an adventure, and is a guest besides. Speak then. Who dares watch through the fatal night?”
“I claim guest-gift,” said Finn.
“What?” cried the king. “Now?”
“Even now.”
“It is considered more courteous for a guest to take his gift when his visit ends.”
“At the risk of discourtesy, O King, I must ask it now. Immediately. I cannot wait.”
“What is it you wish then? If it lies within my bounty I must grant it.”
“I wish to stand watch tonight against the Dread Coming.”
“Impossible!”
“Entirely possible. It lies within your bounty.”
“I need a strong man to stand against the Intruder. And even so, he will perish. But at least he will have made honorable resistance. You are but a lad with no experience in battle.”
“Being young is an experience in itself,” said Finn. “It has given me training in being outweighed, outnumbered, and—most advantageous of all in a conflict—underestimated.”
Goll McMorna spoke: “It cannot be permitted, brave youth. It is certain death.”
“ ‘Certain death’ is a redundancy,” said Finn. “Death is more certain than the royalty of kings, the stillness of stealth, the wisdom of good advice; it is, in fact, our prime certainty, and it is something that I, son of my father, have forbidden myself to consider. I ask your permission, King. Grant it, and you are quit of guest-gift.”
“Will you allow me to watch with you?” said Goll McMorna.
“What? Challenge a foe, knowing myself backed by the strongest warrior in the realm? Where’s the honor in that?”
All the men of the court sprang to their feet and cheered at the quickness and courtesy of his reply.
“Very well,” said the king. “I have no choice. I must grant your request and make preparations for a noble wake.”
Upon this night of the Winter Burning it seemed as if all the great world beyond the castle had gathered its weathers to contribute flame. The moon burned in the black sky, casting sparks that were stars. Water glittered in fen and tarn; slippery lights danced on the waves of the sea. Hayricks smoldered in the dark fields. The moonlight fell, now silver, now green, now gold, as it fractured variously from mown grass and copse and tangled field. Moonlight splintered upon the windows of Tara, and all the world was coldly aflame as Finn watched.
He was alone in the great council chamber. Everyone else had gone to sleep. Even the sentries had gone to sleep by order of the king, for none might await the Dread Coming save the Appointed Watcher. It was an enormous room Finn waited in. Here the king called his Druids and captains to make battle plan and to solve affairs of state. Here, although the boy did not know it, had Cuhal, his father, years before, taken the chieftainship of the Fianna. Weapons gleamed on the wall. The long thick lance used for the horse charge; the slender throwing javelin; the short handspear for the hedge-defense; the great two-edged sword for cutting and thrusting; the broad short swords of the ancient iron men, who, in the mists of memory had taken land to the east, slaughtered without pity, built roads, and vanished. Harpoons of the island fighters who used the same small spear for killing men and sticking great fish. Peasant weapons for working and fighting: pitchfork, sickle, scythe, mattock, pruning hook. Weapons taken from enemies: the curved new-moon swords and horn bows of the little slant-eyed men who rode small horses on beefsteak saddles—which were also their rations—and who devoured the land like a pestilence when they rode out of the rising sun; battle-axes and antlered helmets of the huge yellow-headed pirates who struck the coast like seahawks in their winged ships. And the enormous long swords that took two hands to swing, called claymores, belonging to the tall Picts in the north.
Finn gazed upon these weapons. He had never yet fought with weapons. His fingers itched to hold each one, to strike with it, and to add his own trophy to the loot upon the wall. He brooded upon the weapons. Each one, he knew, held a scroll of stories, of battle and death and brave intention. He wanted to know each story, and add his own. There among the weapons, like a swan among gulls, hung a harp, an ancient one by its shape. Locked in its strings, he knew, were the songs of these weapons and the men who had wielded them. By now he had almost forgotten about his mission that night and the Dread Coming. He kept staring at the harp. Each string was a thread of moonlight. The Thrig of Tone had taught him only pipe and lute, but as he stretched his fingers he could feel a current of story-music streaming between him and the harp. And then, amazed, he saw the harp slide along the wall. He dropped his hands and the harp stopped. Just as he was caught up in the delight of this, something said:
“Burn! Burn!”
He whirled toward the voice. He saw a tall cloaked figure looming blackly against the moon, which now looked in through the window in perfect fullness. The figure dropped its cloak. It was a woman. But difficult to see now for she was clad in a long tunic, moon-colored. Her eyes were two holes and her mouth was another. Her nose was a hole. And he felt his wits slipping as her hair shook for there was no distinction between the color of her hair and that of her face. He saw that it was not hair at all, as we know it, but strands of skin with the power of movement. It moved upon her head, separating into tentacles of flesh that reached and curled, noosing the attention, as a snake, weaving, charms a bird so it cannot move.
“Stand!” said Finn. “Name yourself. And your errand here.”
“I come to burn,” she said. “I am she who comes by night to parch all moist ideas of youth, to devour honor and courage and all their ornaments and implements, and finally, most cruel, to incinerate hope itself by my punctuality. For men know that I must come and come again upon the night, and no matter what they do or what they say or how they grieve or how they pray, they cannot stay my coming. Queen of Crones am I, marrow of death, come to teach the nature of flame. What is it, young man? You like riddles. What is flame? Give me its name.”
Finn said nothing. He was trying to escape the mesh of that weaving hair. Trying to struggle out of the spell cast by that voice and the words it said.
“You do not know? Then I shall teach you. Fire is impatience, deadliest of sins. Fire is despair galloping. Fire is the inevitable summoned too soon in the secret craven hollow of men, who, in their vile fear of What-Must-Be bring it on too early to ease the pain. Fire is impatience. Fire is death dancing, the music of chaos, the jewel of waste. See?”
From all the holes of her face flame gushed. Fire spurted yellow, red, and green. Tapestries burst into flame. The draft of the flame moved the weapons on the wall, making them chime, touched the string of the harp, which uttered one moaning syllable like a strong man in unutterable pain. She spat at the huge oaken council table, which fell into ash.
Then, most horrible, he saw the tentacles that were her hair coil upon themselves, then violently uncoil, springing clear off her head and hissing through the air toward him. He snatched a sword from the wall and flailed the air, cutting the tentacles into pieces as they came. Each piece, as it fell to the floor, became a fleshy worm with a torch in its tail. The fiery army inched toward him as their mistress harried them onward, screaming out of her mouth-hole.
Finn could not defend himself. There was no use striking with his sword. The tentacles were cut as fine as could be. They swarmed up his legs, stinging him with their fiery tails. In his agony he sang the Final Rune taught him by the Salmon.
Creature pair of earth and air,
Here and there and everywhere—
Come, I pray, and serve me fair.
No sooner had he sung that than he saw his black tomcat leap into the room. Half-blinded by smoke, he saw the great gray falcon of Goll McMorna stoop for the kill, claws gaping. Cat and hawk moved through the fiery worms like mowers through a field, slashing with tooth and claw, sweeping the meaty little gobbets into their jaws, flame and all, screaming the proud scream of rage consuming its object, growing with all it fed upon.
But the ordeal had only begun. Still confronting Finn was the tall robed figure of his enemy, bald now, her head pocked with scorch marks, closer now. He heard the soft wordless crooning of her hate. She smiled at him. An arrow of flame seared his head and buried itself in the oaken bench, which flared brightly, fell to ash. She moved toward him. The front of his shirt caught fire.
All the contrariness of Finn gathered itself in a cold coil in his chest, freezing his flesh. He summoned up the loveliest, coldest images his short life had known: icy fire of cat’s-eye, blue shadow of snow, turquoise wink of mountain lake, wind made visible being clothed in mist, silhouette of Fish-hag against the yellow moon, a tatter of crows, chatter of bats at dusk, hard shark-smile of Norah’s Shoal, and, finally, the chill tinkle of Murtha’s laughter when she wanted him to know that he needed to be scorned. The cold images clustered like snow crystals, shielding him from the darts of fire. The crone, thwarted, screamed a huge gout of flame that rolled across the floor, charring away planks, eating the beams down to the foundation stone. The floor tottered, and the whole castle spun upon its axis, whirling its shadows, scattering moonlight like the jeweled fire-tops that pampered princelings play with in the Land beyond the Sun.
Finn fell to his knees, sinking beneath the heat of that hateful flame that was burning away his crystal shield. He stretched his arms toward Dagda’s harp, the harp of the ancients, which hung on Tara’s wall and had once belonged to the wizard bard of the Tuatha da Danaan, who sang the beginning of things, the roots of heaven and earth, in the days when the gods dawned upon the unpeopled world.
The harp flew through the air, into Finn’s arms. Cradling it, he played one icy plangent note, and released it. The harp flew as easily through flame as the Phoenix, that marvelous bird who lives in the heart of fire and is reborn from ash, and has become the sign of man’s hope. Through net of flame flew the harp, singing icily, straight at the crone and smote her so hard that her head was torn from her shoulders and was hurled through the window, spouting blood and flame.
The window smashed and was glued by her blood, retaining the color of flame. Lozenges of moonlight fell upon the splintered floor, healing its planks. All things arose again from the ash as Finn cradled the harp and sang the phoenix-song, sang each weapon and its numbered battles, which he learned through his fingers as he sang, for the harp played him even as he played it. Song of battle and deed and death, the colored fountains of hope, and the parching of age. Sang past his own memory of how his father had won the chieftainships of the Fianna from the arrogant beardless youth who was now the twisted old king. And of how he, Finn, his father’s son, come unto radiant triumph after the night of ordeal, would claim his own chieftainship, and begin that scroll of deeds that would become song, sung perhaps by his own son when it would be his time to sing.