A bolt of fear surged through me. I grabbed Rhia’s arm. “Come! Before a branch falls on us.”
“Nonsense.” She wriggled free. “Arbassa would never do that. Just listen.”
As I shook the leaves from my hair, I realized that the snapping and swishing branches were indeed making another sound. A sound that repeated itself over and over.
Tttuuuaaathhha. Tttuuuaaathhha.
The swaying slowly diminished. The branches grew quiet. The majestic tree towered above us, just as it had before. Yet one thing had changed. For while I still knew nothing about the souls of the Songs, I now had an idea where I might go to find out.
“Tuatha’s grave,” I declared. “Our quest begins there.”
Rhia bit her lip. “If Arbassa believes it might help, then I believe it, too. But I don’t like the idea of going there. Not at all.”
Just then Bumbelwy, looking more pained than usual, poked his head out of the doorway in the trunk. He staggered onto the grass, clutching his belly. “What a storm that was! My tender stomach is turned inside out.”
The lanky fellow straightened himself, jostling the bells on his hat. “But fear not, no, fear not. Weather like that follows me everywhere, so I am quite used to it.”
Rhia and I traded worried glances.
“I am still coming,” he continued, rubbing his side. “Even though this new injury will make it more difficult to entertain you on the way. Still, a jester must do his best to try!” He pulled his cloak over his head and started hopping around the roots of Arbassa, his bells jangling in muffled bursts.
I frowned. “Better you try to entertain us than my mother.”
Bumbelwy removed the cloak from his head. “Oh, don’t worry about her,” he said casually. “She still has plenty of time. She has almost a month of unremitting pain before she must die.” He glanced thoughtfully at Rhia’s aerial cottage. “If you like, I could go back up there and give her a few laughs before we leave.”
I raised my staff as if to strike him. “You fool! You have no more ability to make people laugh than a rotting corpse!”
He frowned with all of his chins. “Just you wait. I
will
make someone laugh one day. That I will.”
Lowering my staff, I said scornfully, “I can taste my boots already.”
The massive trunk of Arbassa creaked, as the doorway slid closed. I gazed at the trunk, following it higher, higher, until it disappeared in a mesh of branches above our heads. For a moment, I peered into the branches, woven like the threads of a living tapestry. Leaves glinted in the sun; moss sprouted like fur under every bough.
“Do you think,” I asked Rhia, “that someday Arbassa might open her door to me willingly? Perhaps even gladly?”
At my words, the entire tree shuddered, raining more leaves and broken bits of bark on us.
Rhia’s eyes narrowed. “Arbassa is being protective of me, that’s all.”
I searched her gray-blue eyes. “You don’t have to come.”
“I know.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Are you sure, though, about going to Tuatha’s grave?”
Bumbelwy gasped, wringing his hands. “The grave of the great wizard himself? Nobody goes there. Nobody who survives, that is. It is a haunted place, a terrible place. Too true, too true, too true.”
“We’re going there,” I snapped.
“But I can’t lead you,” protested Rhia. “I don’t even know where it lies.”
“I do. I have been there once before, maybe even twice, though I need to go there again to be sure.” I rubbed the top of my staff, filling the air with the scent of hemlock. “If you can guide us to that big swamp just below the Misted Hills, I can take us from there.”
She shook her curls doubtfully. “We will lose precious time by doing this.”
Bumbelwy shook his jangling head. “We will lose more than that.”
“So be it.” I thumped my staff on the grass. “Let’s go.”
Rhia cast a longing glance at Arbassa’s boughs, then turned and strode across the grassy meadow, disappearing into a gap in the trees. I followed behind. Bumbelwy took up the rear, grumbling to himself about haunted graves and vengeful wizards.
For some time we followed a twisting trail marked by the prints of foxes, bears, and wolves, as well as others I could not identify. Then the trail vanished and we struggled to cross a wide swath of fallen trees, downed by some ferocious storm. When, shins bruised and bleeding, we finally found our way back to standing groves of pine and cedar, Rhia led us to higher ground. There the spaces between the needled trees were greater, letting more shafts of light reach the forest floor. That helped my second sight, so at least I could avoid tripping over every root and jabbing against every branch.
Even so, it was not easy to keep up with Rhia. Like me, she was driven by the urgency of our task. And, perhaps, by the tempting possibility of losing Bumbelwy somewhere in the forest. But helped by his long, spindly legs, he managed to stay with us, rattling with every step. Meanwhile, Rhia loped along as gracefully as a deer, sometimes breaking into a quick run up a slope. Watching her reminded me of the Greek story about Atalanta, the girl who could run impossibly fast. Yet even as I grinned at the comparison, I frowned to think about the woman who had first told me the story.
I pushed to keep up. Perspiration stung my sightless eyes. As the sun rode high above us, the land grew wetter. Moss sprouted from the sides of every tree, rivulets bubbled out of the ground, and mud clung to our boots. Dark pools of stagnant water appeared more frequently. It was the smell, not the sight, of this terrain that I recognized. Dank, rotting, and ominous, it dug into my memory like claws into flesh.
“Here,” I announced, veering to the east.
Rhia turned to follow me, stepping lightly through the mud, unlike Bumbelwy who skidded and stomped just behind. I led them to a shadowed glade of cedars. The sounds of the forest died away, succumbing to an eerie stillness. Not even the whir of a beetle’s wings broke the silence.
At the edge of the glade, I halted. With a backward glance, I told the others to remain where they were. Rhia started to speak, but I raised my hand to quiet her. Slowly, cautiously, I advanced alone.
A sudden wind moved through, tossing the branches of the cedars. Instead of making their usual crackling sound, they vibrated strangely, as if they were singing a low, mournful dirge. A song of loss and longing. A song of death. The glade darkened, until I could barely make out the shape of my boots on the needle-strewn soil. All around me, the wailing of the branches swelled. At last, I entered a small clearing, surrounded by the circle of ancient cedars that I knew marked the grave of Tuatha.
Slowly, very slowly, the clearing brightened. Yet the new light did not come from the sun. It came from the ancient cedars themselves, whose swaying branches had begun to glow with an ominous blue light. As the branches waved in the wind like the beards of old men, I wondered if those trees might hold the spirits of Tuatha’s disciples, doomed to watch over his grave, ever mourning.
Twice before, I now felt sure, I had stood on this spot. Once, not long ago. And once as a small child, when I had been brought here on the back of my father’s black horse, Ionn, to witness the funeral of Tuatha. I remembered very little from that event, except the feeling of sorrow that permeated the glade.
My gaze fell to the narrow earthen mound in the center of the clearing. Twelve polished stones, perfectly round, bordered its rim. They gleamed like blue ice. As I drew a bit closer, I was struck by the sheer length of the mound. Either Tuatha had been buried with his hat on, or he had been very tall indeed.
“Both are true, you impudent young colt.”
The deep voice sounded in my ears. It was the same voice that I had heard while reading the runes in Arbassa. It was the voice, I knew in my bones, of Tuatha himself. Yet beyond my fear, beyond my dread, I felt a strange sense of longing. Training my mind on the burial mound, I gave words to my thoughts.
“I wish I had known you, great wizard.”
The blue stones glowed brighter, until they outshone the circle of ancient cedars. Candles seemed to flame within the stones, candles whose flames arose from the very spirit of Tuatha.
“You mean you wish I had saved you from your own folly.”
I shifted uneasily, scraping the ground with the base of my staff. “That, too. Yet I also wish I had known you just to be with you. To learn from you.”
“That chance was stolen from us,”
declared the voice bitterly.
“And do you know why?”
“Because you were felled by the ogre Balor?”
“No!”
thundered Tuatha, making the stones light up like torches.
“You have answered how, not why.”
I swallowed. “I—I don’t know why.”
“Think harder, then! Or is your skull no less thick than your father’s.”
My cheeks burned at the insult, yet I tried not to show my outrage. I furrowed my brow, probing my mind for the answer. Suddenly I remembered Cairpré’s words of warning at the gates of the Town of the Bards.
“Was it . . . hubris?”
“Yes!”
thundered Tuatha’s spirit.
“It
was
my most grievous flaw, just as it is yours.”
I bent my head, knowing too well the truth of his words. “Great wizard, I do not deserve your help. But Elen does. And if I am to have any hope of saving her, I must know something.”
The stones flickered ominously.
“How do I know that you will not abandon her, even as you have abandoned the Dark Hills to the designs of Rhita Gawr?”
I shuddered. “You have my word.”
“The Great Council, too, had your word.”
“I will not abandon her!” My gaze swept the circle of cedars, who seemed to be shaking their branches disapprovingly. My voice barely a whisper, I added, “She means everything to me.”
For a long moment, I heard nothing but the sighing branches. At last the blue stones glowed anew.
“All right then, fledgling. What is it you wish to know?”
Cautiously, I stepped closer to the mound. “I need to know what it means to find the soul of a Song.”
The stones flamed bright.
“Ah, the soul of a Song. So little, yet so much! You see, young colt, as brief as the Seven Songs you have read may seem, they reveal the secret wellsprings of the seven basic arts of wizardry. Each Song is but a beginning, a starting point, leading to wisdom and power beyond your imagination. Far beyond, I say! And each Song holds so many verses that it would take several centuries to learn but a few.”
“But what is the soul of a Song?”
“Patience, you beardless infant! “
The stones seemed to smolder.
“The soul is the Song’s essential truth. Its first principle. To find it is as difficult as catching the scent of a wildflower from across a wide lake. You cannot see it, or touch it, yet still you must know it. “
I shook my head. “That sounds difficult even for a wizard, let alone a boy.”
The branches waved more vigorously, as the voice of Tuatha echoed again.
“You may yet become a wizard, young colt—that is, if you survive. But remember this. As little time as you have, you will be tempted to pass over some of the Songs. Resist such folly! Do not try to find the Otherworld Well until you have found the souls of all the Songs. Heed well my words. Finding only five or six is no better than finding none. Without all seven, you shall lose more than your quest. You shall lose your very life.”
I drew an uncertain breath. “How will I know, great wizard? How will I know when I’ve found the soul of each Song?”
At that instant, a tower of blue flame shot out of the stones. It sizzled and crackled through the air, striking the top of my staff like a bolt of blue lightning. I shook with the force of the blow, yet somehow I did not drop the staff. My fingers felt only slightly singed.
The deep voice filled my ears again.
“You will know.”
I stroked the staff. It felt no different than before, yet somehow I knew that it was.
“Now you must go, young colt. Remember what I have told you.”
The light began to fade from the stones.
“May you live to look upon my grave once again.”
“Please,” I pleaded, “tell me one thing more. Is the prophecy true that only a child of human blood can defeat Rhita Gawr, or his servant Balor?”
The glow did not return. I heard no sound but the mournful sighing of the branches. “Tell me. Please.”
At last the stones glimmered.
“The prophecy may be true, and it may be false. Yet even if it is true, the truth often has more than one face. Now . . . be gone! And do not come back until you are wiser than your years.”
13:
S
TRANGE
B
EDFELLOWS
As I emerged from the glade, the trees fell eerily silent again. I clung tight to my staff, aware that it, like myself, had been touched by the spirit of Tuatha. And that it, like myself, would never be quite the same.
Rhia and Bumbelwy came toward me as I stepped out of the cedars. Although they walked side by side, the contrast between them could not have been starker. One, who moved with the liveliness of a young fox, wore the greenery of the forest. The other, as stiff and glum as a tree stump, wore a heavy brown cloak and, of course, a hat of drooping bells. Yet both, at least for now, were my companions.
Rhia reached for me, wrapping her forefinger around my own. “What did you learn?”
I squeezed her finger. “A little. Only a little.”
“That won’t be enough,” said Bumbelwy. “Nothing is ever enough.”
“Where do we go now?” asked Rhia, glancing at the darkened boughs behind me.
Chewing on my lip, I pondered the first of the Seven Songs. “Well, I must somehow find the soul of the art of Changing. And to do that, I need to find a treeling.
The lesson Changing be the first, A treeling knows it well.” I
caught my breath. “But didn’t you say that Cwen was the last of the treelings?”
She nodded, her face grim. I could tell that she felt even now the sting of Cwen’s treachery. “She was the last. The very last. And she’s most likely gone, too. Probably bled to death after that goblin sliced off her arm.”