The Silver Hand (19 page)

“Do you hear?” Llew said. “The guardians of this place are greeting us. Come, brother, we will be welcome here.”

We stood atop Druim Vran, the Ridge of Ravens . . . This is the place I have seen, I thought, and I heard again the Banfáith's prophecy:
But happy shall be Caledon; the Flight of Ravens will flock to her many-shadowed glens, and ravensong shall be her song.

Llew spoke the truth. I turned again in my mind to the vision I had been granted. And yes! I could see the path stretching out before my feet—as if in the full light of day.

“Very well,” I said. “Let us prove this vision of mine. We will go down together.”

I adjusted the harp on its strap and stepped forth boldly. My foot struck the path as I saw it in my mind. I took another step, and two more. To my surprise, the path of my inner sight shifted slightly as I moved. I saw the narrow trail sloping down before me—less a path than a dry watercourse choked with the tangled roots of trees and loose rock. Dangerous in any light, it would be treacherous for Llew in the dark.

I took a few more steps. “The trail drops away sharply here,” I warned, describing what I saw in my mind's eye. “Put your hand to my shoulder. We will go slowly.”

Llew did as I bade him, and together we began the long, laborious journey down to the lake. It took all my strength of concentration; despite the cool night, sweat ran freely from my brow and down my back. Each step was a trial of trust, each step a pledge to be renewed— and no easier for the success of the last.

Down we climbed, and down, following the twisting path. Contrary to Llew's brash affirmation, our feet were rarely placed right: we stumbled over stones and tripped on exposed roots; we slid on the loose scree; and branches scratched at us from thickets on either side. Ignoring these small irritations, we persevered.

“Tegid, you are a wonder,” Llew gasped with relief when we gained level ground once more. We continued on a little way to a place overlooking the lake. The trees grew tall; we found a place under sheltering branches and sank down on a bed drifted high with pine needles. “I am tired,” he said with a yawn. In a few moments he was asleep where he had dropped.

I, too, was weary. But my mind was quick with excitement. Blind, I had traversed the treacherous way. Guided only by my inner vision, I had mastered the unseen path, and I could feel the newfound power leaping like a fresh-kindled flame within me. The vision granted me was genuine. Step by step, we had tested it and it had held true.

I was blind still, and yet I had found a new sight. And it seemed to me that the sight I now possessed was greater than the sight I had known before. Sight! No longer confined to the limitations of light or even distance. Sight! If I could see beyond the furthest vistas, might I also see beyond the present and into the future . . . into realms yet to be?

I did not sleep. How could I? I sat wound in my cloak, gazing inwardly at the lake as it was, and as it perhaps would be. I strummed the harp softly and sang, giving voice once more to the vision that burned within me. Goodly-Wise is the Many Gifted; let all men honor him and perform endless homage to the One who sustains all with his Swift Sure Hand.

13
T
HE
C
RANNOG

W
e established our camp in a clearing among the pines on the slopes above the lake. The first day Llew caught two fish in traps he had made of woven rushes and hidden in the reeds and tall watergrass.

That evening, while Llew cooked the day's catch over the fire, we talked about all that had happened to bring us to this place. We discussed the meaning of the vision, and how it might be fulfilled; and we determined all that we would do. And then, with the vision glowing in our hearts, we ate our meal of fish and talked some more.

Later, however, as I settled back with my harp and began to strum, Llew caught my wrist and held it.

“Tegid,” he said urgently, “I want to do something.”

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“We cannot sit here like this,” he continued, “or nothing will happen. We have to make something happen. I think we should make a start.”

“What is it that you want to do? Tell me and we will do it.”

“I do not know,” he admitted. “But I will think of something.”

He said nothing more about it, then. But the next morning he woke at dawn and left the camp. I woke later and found my way down to the lakeside, thinking to find Llew there as well. But he was not to be found.

I washed, standing in water to my waist, splashing cold water over myself. Upon emerging, I heard a dull, thudding sound. I heard it again as I pulled on my clothes. I turned in the direction of the sound. “Llew?” I called. Then louder, “Llew! Where are you?”

“Here!” came the reply. “Over here!”

I made for the sound of his voice and found him standing on the broad lea above the lake. “What was that sound I heard?” I asked him.

“It was this,” he told me, and placed a large, heavy object in my hands. It was round and smooth and cool to the touch.

“Why are you carrying stones?”

“I am marking out the dimensions of our caer,” he replied, retrieving another stone. “These are the markers.”

Apparently he had gathered stones from the lakeshore and heaped them in a pile. Now he was walking the circumference of his wouldbe fortress, using the stones to mark out the walls. We began the circuit of the walls, and he showed me where he had placed the stones.

“This is good,” I told him. “But a bard should choose the place to build the stronghold if it is to stand. All the more if it is to be the residence of a king.”

“I am no king,” he growled. “You keep forgetting, Tegid. I am a maimed man. In this world, men do not follow cripples. That is the truth of it!”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That is the way of it! Yet, Goodly-Wise is the Many Gifted—”

“No more! I do not want to hear it.”

“Yet you will hear it!” I insisted. “The Swift Sure Hand has marked you; he has chosen to work in you this way. Now it is for you to choose: follow or turn back. There is no other way. If you follow, more may be revealed.”

“It makes no sense to choose me. None of this makes sense.”

“I have already told you—it is a mystery.”

“And still you persist?”

“I do persist,” I answered.

“Why? What makes you so certain?”

“But I am not certain,” I told him. “Nothing is certain. You want certainty?”

“Yes!”

“Then you want death.”

“This is hard for me, Tegid!”

“It is hard, yes. It is difficult. Life is harsh and it is relentless. You will choose in the end—one way or the other. No one escapes the choice.”

“Bah! It is no use talking to you,” he cried, and his voice echoed across the water like the cry of a bird.

“The path is revealed in the treading,” I said.

“You sound like . . . like a bard,” he replied sourly.

“A bard who cannot help believing that we have been brought to this place for a purpose. And the One who brought us here will not see his purpose fail.”

“It has failed already! I
believed
you, Tegid!”

Oh, the pain went deep in him. I realized that now, and I understood that the loss of his hand was the least of it. There was a potent bitterness in him, like a poisoned spring seeping into his soul. He had borne his suffering bravely, but it had been wearing at him all the same. It was behind his impatience of the previous night—and it was behind this impulsive exercise in moving rocks.

“I am telling you the truth when I say there is a mystery—”

“Stop it!” he roared, throwing down the stone he carried. “Speak to me no more of your mysteries, Tegid—and say no more of kingship. I will not hear it!”

He stood seething; I could feel the heat of his anger flow across the distance between us. “Oh, what is the use?” he grumbled; he snatched the stone from my hands and heaved it away. “We do not even have tools enough to cut a willow branch, let alone build anything. If we did, we would not stay here; we would go back to Sci where we belong. It is hopeless, and I am sick of it.”

We stood silent for a long time. The sun was warm on our backs, the wind light in the pines. Away on Druim Vran, I heard the squawk of a raven.
He is wrong
, I thought.
This is where we belong
. “It is not hopeless,” I said. Impossible, perhaps, but not hopeless.”

“Bards,” Llew grunted. “We cannot stay here, Tegid. There is nothing for us here. If we cannot get to Sci, let us travel south to the Galanae. It may be that Cynan's people will receive us.”

When I did not answer, he said, “Did you hear me?”

I stooped to the rock at my feet—I had felt the impact in the earth when he threw it. “I heard you,” I told him. “You are right.”

“We should travel south?”

“We should make a beginning. But not here.”

“What is the difference?” he said sullenly.

I turned toward the lake. In turning, my inner vision awoke and I saw the stronghold; I saw where it should be. “On the lake, yes,” I told him. “But not here. Out there.”

“You are mad.”

“Perhaps.” I began walking toward the lake.

“In the water, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Out in the lake?”

“It is to be a
crannog
,” I explained.

“A crannog.”

“It is a dwelling constructed on a false island made of timber and stone, and which is—”

“I know what it is,” interrupted Llew impatiently. “But if we cannot erect a simple mud hut on the meadow, how are we to build a fortress in the lake?”

At his words, my inner vision shifted and I saw an image of the crannog as it would be. “Not a fortress only,” I replied. “A city.”

Indeed, the stronghold I saw was as large as great Sycharth itself had been. It was an island of earth and timber in the center of the lake—and not a single island only, but a cluster of smaller islands linked together with bridges and causeways to form a great fortress, a caer built on water: round dwellings of wicker and daubed earth, stockades, granaries, storehouses, and, on an earthen mound in the center of the central isle, an enormous timber hall for the chieftain.

I saw smoke rising from cookhouses, and from the hearthfire of the hall. I saw sheep and kine and pigs in the pens on the crannog, and also on the broad lea where fields of grain had been planted. Many dozens of boats, large and small, plied the water all around the island caer, and children swam and played, and women fished in the shallows.

I saw it all; I saw more. And I related everything to Llew, just as it appeared to me.

“This I want to see,” he remarked, and I sensed the bitterness abating, submerging once more. Llew took the rock he held cradled in the crook of his wounded arm, marched down to the lakeside and heaved it in. I heard the splash as it struck the water. “There!” he called back. “I have made a start. What shall we call this water city of yours?”

“But you have already named it,” I said, walking down to join him. “Dinas Dwr—Water City—so let it be called.”

Llew liked the name and threw another stone into the lake. “Dinas Dwr is begun,” he said. “Truly, I hope the Many-Gifted Dagda sends us a boat, or we will be forever building it this way.”

“It will take more than a boat. It will take a host of builders and craftsmen. This will be no mean city, brother. It will be a refuge for many, and a beacon in the north for all Albion.”

We sat for a time on the stony lakeshore, discussing how the crannog would be constructed. I described the means and manner of building, its advantages in times of trouble, its limitations. Llew listened to all, taking it in, and when I finished he rose. “We cannot perform this mighty work on roots and bark, small fish, and the occasional bird,” he declared. “Arms that lift heavy stones and timber need meat to sustain them.”

“What do you propose?”

“I propose finding some ash saplings and fashioning a few spears so that I can hunt,” he replied. “The forest abounds with game—all we have to do is catch it.”

“Yes, but—” I began.

He cut me off. “I know what you are thinking. But Scatha always insisted that a man who fought with one hand only was but half a warrior. On Ynys Sci we learned to use our weapons with either hand.”

“I never doubted you.”

“It may take some practice,” he allowed, “but I will revive the skill, never fear.”

“How will you cut and shape the ash sapling?” I wondered.

“Flint,” he answered. “There is flint on the ridgetop and on the slopes. We can use that to make scrapers and axes and spearheads— as many as we like.”

Thus we spent the next day gathering and chipping flint to make the blades we would require. It was easier to work by feel than I imagined, and I soon became proficient in producing stone blades as sharp, if not as durable, as iron. We had no leather to bind the crude blades to the wood, but I used threads from the edges of our cloaks. I braided the threads in threes and then braided the three: three threes, a satisfactory number, and very strong.

While I braided the rope, Llew searched for and selected a sturdy branch to make the haft of the ax. He found a short, thick length of forked oak, and I bound the finished ax head to the branch.

Llew tied the tool on a piece of firewood. “This will work,” he announced, hefting the finished ax. “Now to find a good, straight sapling.”

“You will find as many as you like along the eastern rim of the ridge,” I told him.

“You have seen this?”

“No, but that is where the tree grows.”

He was gone for the rest of the day and returned just before nightfall with not one or two, but six fine, straight ash saplings. Four were green, but two were dry, having been uprooted on the slope. He had trimmed the branches and top, and was ready to begin shaping them with a flint scraper I had made for this purpose.