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  What community had ever been more like the Taltos? Monk children is what they seemed, surrendering the entire concept of sophisticated adulthood to serve the abbot as their lord, and thereby serve their Lord Himself, the Crucified Christ who had died for them.

  These were happy, happy days.

  Gradually I began to see what many a heathen prince had come to see in Christianity: absolute redemption of everything! All my suffering made sense in light of the woes of the world and Christ’s mission to save us from sin. All the disasters I’d witnessed had done nothing but improve my soul and school it for this moment. My monstrousness, indeed the monstrousness of all the Taltos, would be accepted by this church, surely, for all were welcome into it, regardless of race, it was an utterly open faith, and we could submit as well as any human being to the baptism of water and the spirit, to the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience.

  The stringent rules, which bound even laymen to purity and restraint, would help us to control our terrible urge to procreate, our terrible weaknesses for dance and for music. And the music we would not lose; we would, within the constraints of the monastic life-which for me at this point was synonymous with the Christian life-sing our greatest and most joyful songs ever!

  In sum, if this church accepted us, if it embraced us, all our past and future sufferings would have meaning. Our true loving nature would be allowed to flower. No subterfuge would be required any longer. The church would not let the old rituals be forced upon us. And those who dreaded the birthing now, as I did, out of age and experience and seeing so many young die, could consecrate themselves to God in chastity.

  It was perfect!

  At once, with a small escort of monks, I returned to the glen of Donnelaith and drew all my people together. We must pledge our allegiance to Christ, I told them, and I told them why, in long rippling speeches, not too fast for my human companions to understand, talking passionately of the peace and harmony that would be restored to us.

  I also spoke of the Christian belief in the end of the world. Very soon all this horror would be over! And then I spoke of heaven, which I imagined to be like the lost land, except that no one would want to make love, everyone would be singing with the choirs of angels.

  We must all now confess our sins and prepare to be baptized. For a thousand years I had been the leader, and all must follow me. What greater guidance could I give my people?

  I stood back at the end of this speech. The monks were overcome with emotion. So were the hundreds of Taltos gathered in the glen around me.

  At once began the heated discussions for which we were known-all in the human Art of the Tongue-the endless debates and telling of little tales and relating of this to that, and drawing memories into it where they seemed to pertain, and beneath it all the great theme: we could embrace Christ. He was the Good God! He was our God. The souls of the others were as open to Christ as was my soul.

  A great many at once declared their faith. Others spent the afternoon, the evening, and the night examining the books I’d brought back, arguing somewhat about the things they’d heard, and there were some very fretful whispers about its being contrary to our nature to be chaste, absolutely contrary, and that we could never live with marriage.

  Meantime I went out to the human beings of Donnelaith and preached this great conversion to them as well, and the monks followed me. We called all the clans of the valley together.

  And in our great gathering ground, amid the stones, hundreds declared their desire to come to Christ, and indeed, some of the humans confessed they had already converted, maintaining it as a secret for their own protection.

  I was very struck by this, particularly when I found that some human families had been Christian for three generations. “How very like us you are,” I thought, “but you don’t know it.”

  It seemed then that all were on the verge of conversion. En masse, we begged the priests to begin the baptisms and the blessings.

  But one of the great women of our tribe, Janet, as we had come to call her, a name very current then, raised her voice to speak out against me.

  Janet too had been born in the lost land, which she mentioned now quite openly before the human beings. Of course they didn’t know what she meant. But we did. And she reminded me that she had no white streaks in her hair, either. In other words, we were wise and young, both of us, the perfect combination.

  I had had one son by Janet, and truly loved her. I had spent many, many nights at play in her bed, not daring to have coitus, of course, but nursing from her rounded little breasts, and exchanging all kinds of other clever embraces that gave us exquisite pleasure.

  I loved Janet. But there had never been any doubt in my mind that Janet was fierce in her own beliefs.

  Now she stepped forth and condemned the new religion as a pack of lies. She pointed out all its weaknesses in terms of logic and consistency. She laughed at it. She told many stories which made Christians look like braggarts and idiots. The story of the gospel she declared unintelligible.

  The tribe was immediately split. So loud was the talk that I could not even tell how many were for Janet’s point of view or against it. Violent verbal quarrels ensued. Once again we undertook our marathon debates, which no human being could watch without realizing our differences.

  The monks withdrew to our sacred circle. There they consecrated the earth to Christ, and prayed for us. They did not fully understand yet how different we were, but they knew we were not like other people.

  At last a great schism occurred. One third of the Taltos refused utterly to be converted, and threatened battle with the others if we tried to make the glen a haven of Christianity. Some evinced a great fear of Christianity and the strife it would cause among others. Others simply did not like it, and wanted to keep to our own ways and not live in austerity and penance.

  The majority wanted to convert, and we did not wish to give up our homes-that is, to leave the glen and go elsewhere. To me, such a possibility was unthinkable. I was the ruler here.

  And like many a pagan king, I expected my people to follow me absolutely in my conversion.

  The verbal battles progressed to physical pushing and shoving and threats, and I saw within an hour that the entire future of the valley was threatened.

  But the end of the world was coming. Christ had known this and come to prepare us. The enemies of Christ’s church were the enemies of Christ!

  Bloody skirmishes were being fought in the grasslands of the glen. Fires broke out.

  Accusations were flung out. Humans who had always seemed loyal suddenly turned on Taltos and accused them of wretched perversity, of having no lawful marriage, no visible children, and of being wicked magicians.

  Others declared that they had long suspected the Taltos of evil things, and now was the time to have it out, Where did we keep our young? Why did no one ever see any children among us?

  A few crazed individuals, for reasons of their own, shouted the truth. A human who had mothered two Taltos pointed at her Taltos husband and told all the world what he was, and that if we were to sleep with human women we would soon annihilate them.

  The frenzied zealots, of whom I was the most outspoken one, declared that these things no longer mattered. We, the Taltos, had been welcomed into the church by Christ and Father Columba. We would give up the old licentious habits, we would live as Christ would have us live.

  There followed more confusion. Blows were struck. Screams rang out.

  Now I saw how three thousand people could die in an argument over the right to copy a book! Now I perceived everything.

  But too late. The battle had already commenced. All rushed to their brochs to take up arms and to defend their positions. Armed men poured out of doors, attacking their neighbors.

  The horror of war, the horror I had sought to hide from all these years in Donnelaith, was now upon us. It had come through my conversion.

  I stood confounded, my sword in my hand, hardly knowing what to make of it. B
ut the monks came to me. “Ashlar, lead them to Christ,” they said, and I became as many a zealot king before me. I led my converts against their brothers and sisters.

  But the real horror was yet to come.

  When the battle was over, the Christians still stood in the majority, and I saw, though it did not register very clearly yet, that most of them were human. The majority of the Taltos elite, never very numerous anyway, thanks to our rigid control, had been slaughtered. And only a band of some fifty of us remained, the oldest, the wisest, in some ways the most dedicated, and we were all still convinced of our conversion.

  But what were we to do with the few humans and Taltos who had not come over to us, who had not been killed only because the killing had stopped before everyone was dead? Now gathered from the battlefield, wounded, limping, these rebels, with Janet as their leader, cursed us. They would not be driven from the glen, they declared, they would die where they stood in opposition to us.

  “You, Ashlar, look at what you’ve done,” Janet declared. “Look, everywhere on the bodies of your brothers and sisters, men and women who have lived since the time before the circles! You have brought about their death!”

  But no sooner had she laid on me this terrible judgment than the zealous human converts began to demand: “How could you have lived since the time before the circles? What were you, if you were not human beings?”

  At last one of the boldest of these men, one who had been a secret Christian for years, came up and slit open my robe with his sword, and I, baffled as Taltos often are by violence, found myself standing naked in the circle.

  I saw the reason. They would see what we were, if our tall bodies were the bodies of men. Well, let them see, I announced. I stepped out of the fallen robe. I laid my hand upon my testicles in the ancient fashion, to swear an oath-that is, testify-and I swore that I would serve Christ as well as any human.

  But the tide had turned. The other Christian Taltos were losing their nerve. The sight of the slaughter had been appalling to them. They had begun to weep, and to forget the Art of the Tongue, and to talk in the high, rapid speech of our kind, which quickly terrified the humans.

  I raised my voice, demanding silence, and demanding allegiance. I had put back on my slashed robe, for all that it mattered. And I walked back and forth in the circle, angry, using the Art of the Tongue as well as I’d ever used it.

  What would Christ say to us on account of what we had done? What was the crime here, that we were a strange tribe? Or that we had murdered our own in this dispute? I wept with great gestures and tore my hair, and the others wept with me.

  But the monks were now filled with fear, and the human Christians were filled with fear. What they had suspected all their lives in the glen was almost revealed to them. Once again the questions flew. Our children, where were they?

  At last another Taltos male, whom I greatly loved, stepped forward and declared that from this moment forth he was, in the name of Christ and Virgin, celibate. Other Taltos made the same pledge, women and men both.

  “Whatever we were,” the Taltos women declared, “does not matter now, for we will become the Brides of Christ and make our own monastery here in the spirit of Iona.”

  Great cries rang out, of joy and agreement, and those humans who had always loved us, who loved me as their king, rallied quickly around us.

  But the danger hung in the air. At any moment the bloody swords might clash again, and I knew it.

  “Quickly, all of you, pledge yourself to Christ,” I declared, seeing in this Taltos vow of celibacy our only chance for survival.

  Janet cried out for me to cease with this unnatural and evil plan. And then, in a great volley of words, rushing sometimes too fast and sometimes too slow, she spoke of our ways, of our offspring, our sensuous rites, our long history, everything that I was now prepared to sacrifice.

  It was the fatal mistake.

  At once the human converts descended upon her and bound her hand and foot, as those who sought to defend her were cut down. Some of the converted Taltos tried to flee, and they were immediately cut down, and another vicious battle broke out, in which cottages and huts were set aflame and people ran hither and thither in panic, screaming for God to help us. “Kill all the monsters,” was the cry.

  One of the monks declared it was the end of the world. Several of the Taltos did also. They dropped to their knees. Humans, seeing those Taltos in that submissive posture, at once killed those whom they did not know, or feared or disliked, sparing only those few who were beloved of everyone.

  Only I and a handful were left-those who had been most active in the leadership of the tribe, and had magnetic personalities. We fought off the few who had the stamina to attack us, subduing others with mere ferocious looks or vociferous condemnations.

  And at last-when the frenzy had peaked, and men fell under the burden of their swords, and others screamed and wept over the slain, only five of us remained-Taltos dedicated to Christ-and all those who would not accept Christ, except for Janet, had been annihilated.

  The monks called for order.

  “Speak to your people. Ashlar. Speak or all is lost. There will be no Donnelaith, and you know it.”

  “Yes, speak,” said the other Taltos, “and say nothing that will frighten anyone. Be clever, Ashlar.”

  I was weeping so hard this task seemed utterly beyond me. Everywhere I looked I saw the dead, hundreds born since the circle of the plain, dead and gone now, into eternity, and perhaps into the flames of hell without Christ’s mercy.

  I fell to my knees. I wept until I had no more tears, and when I stopped, the valley was still.

  “You are our king,” said the human beings. “Tell us that you are no devil, Ashlar, and we will believe you.”

  The other Taltos with me were desperately afraid. Their fate hung now with mine. But they were those most known to the human population and most revered. We did have a chance, that is, if I did not despair and seal the fate of all of us.

  But what was left of my people? What? And what had I brought into my valley?

  The monks came close. “Ashlar, God tries those whom He loves,” they said. And they meant it. Their eyes were filled with sadness too. “God tests those whom he would make saints,” they said, and heedless of what others might think of our monstrousness, our sinfulness, they threw their arms around me, and stood firm against the rest, risking their own safety.

  Now Janet, held tight by her captors, spoke:

  “Ashlar, you are the betrayer of your people. You have brought death to your own in the name of a foreign god. You have destroyed the Clan of Donnelaith, which has lived in this glen since time immemorial.”

  “Stop the witch!” someone cried.

  “Burn her,” said another. And another and another.

  And even as she continued to speak, there was whispering, and those going to prepare a stake in the stone circle.

  All this I saw from the corner of my eye, and so did she, and still she kept her courage.

  “I curse you, Ashlar. I curse you in the eyes of the Good God.”

  I couldn’t speak, and yet I knew that I had to. I had to speak to save myself, the monks, my followers. I had to speak if I was to stop the death of Janet.

  Wood had been dragged to the stake. Coal was being thrown down. Humans, some of whom had always feared Janet and every female Taltos whom they could not have, had brought torches.

  “Speak,” whispered Ninian beside me. “For Christ, Ashlar.”

  I closed my eyes, I prayed, I made the Sign of the Cross, and then I made my plea to all to listen.

  “I see before me a chalice,” I declared, speaking softly but loud enough for all to hear. “I see the Chalice of Christ’s blood which Joseph of Arimathea brought to England. I see the blood of Christ emptied into the Well; I see the water run red, and I know its meaning.

  “The blood of Christ is our sacrament and our nourishment. It shall forever replace the cursed milk we sought from our wome
n in lust; it shall be our new sustenance and our portion.

  “And in this awful slaughter today, may Christ receive our first great act of self-sacrifice. For we loathe this killing. We loathe it and we always have. And we do it only to the enemies of Christ, that His kingdom may come on earth, that he may rule forever.”

  It was the Art of the Tongue as best I knew it, and it was said with eloquence and tears, and it left the entire mob of human and Taltos alike cheering and praising Christ and throwing their swords to the ground and tearing off their finery, their bracelets, their rings, and declaring themselves to be born again.

  And at that moment, as they had come from my lips, I knew these words were lies. This religion was a deceiving thing, and the body and blood of Christ could kill as surely as poison.

  But we were saved, we who stood there exposed as monsters. The crowd no longer wanted our death. We were safe-all except for Janet.

  They dragged her now to the stake, and though I protested, weeping and begging, the priests said no, that Janet must die, that she might die as a lesson to all those who would refuse Christ.

  The fire was lighted.

  I threw myself to the ground. I couldn’t bear it. Then, leaping up, I ran at the slowly gathering blaze, only to be pulled back and held against my will.

  “Ashlar, your people need you!”

  “Ashlar, set an example!”

  Janet fixed her eyes on me. The fire licked at her rose-colored gown, at her long yellow hair. She blinked to clear her eyes of the rising smoke, and then she cried out to me:

  “Cursed, Ashlar, cursed for all time. May death elude you forever. May you wander-loveless, childless-your people gone, until our miraculous birth is your only dream in your isolation. I curse you, Ashlar. May the world around you crumble before your suffering is ended.”