Taltos Read online

  I climbed off the bed, put my sword back on, buckling everything properly so that I was ready should I meet with trouble, and then, taking a crude lump of wax with a wick, which she kept at hand, I lighted the wick, and I entered the cave by this secret doorway.

  I went up and up in the darkness, feeling my way along the earthen wall, and finally I came to a cool and open place, and from there, very far off, I could see a bit of light stealing in from the outside world. I was above the cave's main entrance.

  I went on up. The light went before me. With a start, I came to a halt. I saw skulls gazing back at me. Rows and rows of skulls! Some of them so old they were no more than powder.

  This had been a burial place, I reasoned, of those people that save only the heads of the dead, and believe that the spirits will talk through those heads, if properly addressed.

  I told myself not to be foolishly frightened. At the same time I felt curiously weakened.

  "It is the broth you drank," I whispered. "Sit down and rest."

  And I did, leaning against the wall to my left, and looking into the big chamber, with its many masks of death grinning back at me.

  The crude candle rolled out of my hand, but did not go out. It came to rest in the mud, and when I tried to reach for it, I couldn't.

  Then slowly I looked up and I saw my lost Janet.

  She was coming towards me through the chamber of the skulls, moving slowly, as if she were not real, but a figure in a dream.

  "But I am awake," I said aloud.

  I saw her nod, and smile. She stepped before the feeble little candle.

  She wore the same rose-colored robe that she had the day they had burnt her, and then I saw to my horror that the silk had been eaten away by fire, and that her white skin showed through the jagged tears in it. And her long blond hair, it was burnt off and blackened on the ends, and ashes smudged her cheeks and her bare feet and her hands. Yet she was there, alive, and near to me.

  "What is it, Janet?" I said. "What would you say to me now?"

  "Ah, but what do you say to me, my beloved King? I followed you from the great circle in the southland up to Donnelaith and you destroyed me."

  "Don't curse me, fair spirit," I said. I climbed to my knees. "Give me that which will help all of us! I sought the path of love. It was the path to ruin."

  A change came over her face, a look of puzzlement and then awareness.

  She lost her simple smile, and taking my hand, she spoke these words as if they were our secret.

  "Would you find another paradise, my lord?" she asked. "Would you build another monument such as you left on the plain for all time? Or would you rather find a dance so simple and full of grace that all the peoples of the world could do it?"

  "The dance, Janet, I would. And ours would be one great living circle."

  "And would you make a song so sweet that no man or woman of any breed could ever resist it?"

  "Yes," I said. "And sing we would, forever."

  Her face brightened and her lips parted. And with a look of faint amazement, she spoke again.

  "Then take the curse I give you."

  I began to cry.

  She gestured for me to be still, but with patience. Then she spoke this poem or song in the soft, rapid voice of the Taltos:

  Your quest is doomed, your path is long,

  Your winter just beginning.

  These bitter times shall fade to myth

  And memory lose its meaning

  But when at last her arms you see,

  Outstretched in bold forgiveness,

  Shrink not from what the earth would do

  When rain and winds do till it.

  The seed shall sprout, the leaves unfurl,

  The boughs shall give forth blossoms,

  That once the nettles tried to kill, and

  Strong men sought to trample.

  The dance, the circle, and the song,

  Shall be the key to heaven,

  As ways that once the mighty scorned

  Shall be their final blessing.

  The cave grew dim, the little candle was dying, and with a subtle farewell gesture of her hand, she smiled again, and disappeared completely.

  It seemed the words she'd spoken were carved in my mind as if engraved on the flat stones of the circle. And I saw them, and fixed them for all time, even as the last reverberation of her voice left me.

  The cave was dark. I cried out, and groped in vain for the candle. But quickly climbing to my feet, I saw that my beacon was the fire burning in the little hut far back down the tunnel by which I'd entered.

  Wiping at my eyes, overcome with love for Janet and a terrible confusion of sweetness and pain, I hurried into the small warm room and saw the red-haired witch there, on her pillow.

  For one moment it was Janet! And not this gentle spirit who had just looked at me with loving eyes, and spoken verses that promised some remission.

  It was the burnt one, the suffering and dying woman, her hair full of small flames, her bones smoldering. In agony she arched her back and tried to reach for me. And as I cried out and reached to snatch her from her own flames, it was the witch again, the red-haired one who had brought me into her bed and given me the potion.

  Dead, white, quiet forever in death, the blood staining her gathered skirts, her little hut a tomb, her fire a vigil light.

  I made the Sign of the Cross. I ran out of the place.

  But nowhere in the dark wood could I find my horse, and within moments I heard the laughter of the Little People.

  I was at my wits' end, frightened by the vision, uttering prayers and curses. Fiercely I turned on them, challenging them to come out, to fight, and was in a moment surrounded. With my sword I struck down two and put the others to flight, but not before they had torn and dragged from me my green tunic, ripped away my leather girdle, and stolen my few belongings. My horse, too, they had taken.

  A vagabond with nothing left to me but a sword, I did not go after them.

  I made for the high road by instinct, and by the stars, which a Taltos can always do, and as the moon rose, I was walking south away from my homeland.

  I didn't look back on Donnelaith.

  I did go on to the summerland, as it was called, to Glastonbury, and I did stand on the sacred hill where Joseph had planted the hawthorn. I washed my hands in Chalice Well. I drank from it. I crossed Europe to find Pope Gregory in the ruins of Rome, I did go on to Byzantium, and finally to the Holy Land.

  But long before my journey took me even to Pope Gregory's palace amid the squalid ruins of Rome's great pagan monuments, my quest had changed, really. I was not a priest anymore. I was a wanderer, a seeker, a scholar.

  I could tell you a thousand stories of those times, including the tale of how I finally came to know the Fathers of the Talamasca. But I cannot claim to know their history. I know of them what you know, and what has been confirmed now that Gordon and his cohorts have been discovered.

  In Europe I saw Taltos now and then, both women and men. I thought that I always would. That it would always be a simple thing, sooner or later, to find one of my own kind and to talk for the night by a friendly fire of the lost land, of the plain, of the things we all remembered.

  There is one last bit of intelligence I wish to communicate to you.

  In the year 1228, I finally returned to Donnelaith. It had been too long since I had laid eyes on a single Taltos. I was beginning to feel a fear on this account, and Janet's curse and her poetry were ever in my mind.

  I came as a lone Scotsman wandering through the land, eager to talk to the bards of the Highlands about their old stories and legends.

  My heart broke when I saw that the old Saxon church was gone and a great cathedral now stood upon the very spot, at the entrance of a great market town.

  I had hoped to see the old church. But who could not be impressed by this mighty structure, and the great glowering castle of the Earls of Donnelaith that guarded the whole valley?

  B
ending my back, and pulling my hood up high to disguise my height, I leaned on my cane as I went down to give thanks that my tower still stood in the glen, along with many of the stone towers built by my people.

  I cried tears of gratitude again when I discovered the circle of stones, far from the ramparts, standing as it always had in the high grass, imperishable emblems of the dancers who had once gathered there.

  The great shock came, however, when I entered the cathedral and, dipping my hand into the water fount, looked up to see the stained-glass window of St. Ashlar.

  There was the very image of myself in the glass, clothed in a priest's robes, with long flowing hair such as I had worn in those days, and peering down at my own true self with dark eyes so like my own they frightened me. Stunned, I read the prayer inscribed in Latin.

  St. Ashlar Beloved of Christ

  And the Holy Virgin Mary

  Who will come again

  Heal the sick

  Comfort the afflicted

  Ease the pangs

  Of those who must die

  Save us

  From everlasting darkness

  Drive out the demons from the valley.

  Be our guide

  Into the Light.

  For a long time I was overcome with tears. I could not understand how this could have happened. Remembering to play the cripple still, I went to the high altar to say my prayers, and then to the tavern.

  There I paid the bard to play all the old songs he knew, and none of them were familiar to me. The Pict language had died out. No one knew the writing on the crosses in the churchyard.

  But this saint, what could the man tell me about him, I asked.

  Was I truly Scots, the bard asked.

  Had I never heard of the great pagan King Ashlar of the Picts, who had converted this entire valley to Christianity?

  Had I never heard of the magic spring through which he worked his miracles? I had only to go down the hill to see it.

  Ashlar the Great had built the first Christian church on this spot, in the year 586, and then set out for Rome on his first pilgrimage, being murdered by brigands before he had even left the valley.

  Within the shrine his holy relics lay, the remnants of his bloody cloak, his leather belt, his crucifix, and a letter to the saint himself from none other than St. Columba. In the scriptorium I might see a psalter which Ashlar himself had written in the style of the great monastery at Iona.

  "Ah, I understand it all," I said. "But what is the meaning of this strange prayer, and the words 'who will come again'?"

  "Ah, that, well now, that's a story. Go to Mass tomorrow morning and look well at the priest who celebrates. You will see a young man of immense height, almost as tall as yourself, and such men are not so uncommon here. But this one is Ashlar come again, they say, and they tell the most fantastic story of his birth, how he came from his mother speaking and singing, and ready to serve God, seeing visions of the Great Saint and the Holy Battle of Donnelaith and the pagan witch Janet burnt up in the fire as the town converted in spite of her."

  "This is true?" I asked, in quiet awe.

  How could it be? A wild Taltos, born to humans who had no idea they carried the seed in their blood? No. It could not have been. What humans could make the Taltos together? It must have been a hybrid, sired by some mysterious giant who had come in the night and coupled with a woman cursed with the witches' gifts, leaving her with his monster offspring.

  "It has happened three times before in our history," said the bard. "Sometimes the mother does not even know she's with child, other times she is in her third or her fourth month. No one knows when the creature inside her shall start to grow and become the image of the saint, come again to his people."

  "And who were the fathers of these children?"

  "Upstanding men of the Clan of Donnelaith, that's who they were, for St. Ashlar was the founder of their family. But you know there are so many strange tales in these woods. Each clan has its secrets. We're not to speak of it here, but now and then such a giant child is born who knows nothing of the Saint. I have seen one of these with my own eyes, standing a head taller than his father moments after he left his mother to die at the hearthside. A frantic thing, crying in fear, and possessed of no visions from God, but wailing for the pagan circle of stones! Poor soul. They called it a witch, a monster. And do you know what they do with such creatures?"

  "They burn them."

  "Yes," came his answer. "It's a terrible thing to see. Especially if the poor creature is a woman. For then she is judged to be the devil's child, without trial, for she cannot possibly be Ashlar. But these are the Highlands, and our ways have always been very mysterious."

  "Have you yourself ever laid eyes on the female thing?" I asked.

  "No," he said. "Never. But there are some who say they have known those who have seen it. There is talk among the sorcerers, and those who cling to the pagan ways. People dream that they will bring the female and the male together. But we should not speak of these things. We suffer those witches to live because now and then they can cure. But no one believes their stories, or thinks them proper for the ears of Christian people."

  "Ah, yes," I said. "I can well imagine." I thanked him.

  I did not wait for morning Mass to see the strange, tall priest.

  I caught his scent as soon as I approached the rectory, and when he came to the door, having caught mine, we stood staring at one another. I rose to my full height, and of course he had done nothing to disguise his own. We merely stood there, facing one another.

  In him I saw the old gentleness, the eyes almost timid, and the lips soft, and the skin as fresh and free of blemish as that of a baby. Had he really been born of two human beings, two powerful witches perhaps? Did he believe his destiny?

  Born remembering, yes, born knowing, yes, and thank God for him it had been the right time that he remembered--and the right battle, and the right place. And now he followed the old profession they had marked for us hundreds of years ago.

  He came towards me. He wanted to speak. Perhaps he could not believe his eyes, that he was looking upon one exactly like him.

  "Father," I asked in Latin, so that he was most likely to answer, "was it really from a human mother and father you came?"

  "How else?" he asked, quite clearly terrified. "Go if you will to my parents themselves. Ask them." He grew pale, and was trembling.

  "Father," I said, "where is your like among women?"

  "There is no such thing!" he declared. But now he could scarcely keep himself from running away from me. "Brother, where have you come from?" he asked. "Here, seek God's forgiveness for your sins, whatever they are."

  "You have never seen a woman of our kind?"

  He shook his head. "Brother, I am the chosen of God," he explained. "The chosen of St. Ashlar." He bowed his head, humbly, and I saw a blush come to his cheeks, for obviously he'd committed a sin of pride in announcing this.

  "Farewell, then," I said. And I left him.

  I left the town and I went again to the stones; I sang an old song, letting myself rock back and forth in the wind, and then I made for the forest.

  Dawn was just rising behind me when I climbed the wooded hills to find the old cave. It was a desolate spot, dark as it had been five hundred years before, with no sign now of the witch's hovel.

  In the early light, cold and bitter as that of a winter's eve, I heard a voice call me.

  "Ashlar!"

  I turned around and I looked at the dark woods. "Ashlar the cursed, I see you!"

  "It's you, Aiken Drumm," I cried. And then I heard his mean laughter. Ah, the Little People were there, garbed in green so that they would blend with the leaves and the bracken. I saw their cruel little faces.

  "There's no tall woman here for you, Ashlar," cried Aiken Drumm. "Nor will there ever be. No men of your ilk but a mewling priest born of witches, who falls to his knees when he hears our pipes. Here! Come. Take a little bride, a sweet morsel of wri
nkled flesh, and see what you beget! And be grateful for what God gives you."

  They had begun to beat their drums. I heard the whining of their song, discordant, ghastly, yet strangely familiar. Then came the pipes. It was the old songs we had sung, the songs we taught them!

  "Who knows, Ashlar the cursed?" he cried out. "But your daughter by one of us this morn might be a female! Come with us; we have wee women aplenty to amuse you. Think, a daughter, Your Royal Majesty! And once again the tall people would rule the hills!"

  I turned and ran through the trees, not stopping till I had cleared the pass and come once more to the high road.

  Of course Aiken Drumm spoke the truth. I had found no female of my kind in all of Scotland. And that was what I'd come to seek.

  And what I would seek for another millennium.

  I did not believe then, on that cold morning, that I would never lay eyes again upon a young or fertile female Taltos. Oh, how many times in the early centuries had I seen my female counterparts and turned away from them. Cautious, withdrawn, I would not have fathered a young Taltos to suffer the confusion of this strange world for all the sweet embraces of the lost land.

  And now where were they, these fragrant darlings?

  The old, the white of hair, the sweet of breath, the scentless, these I had seen many a time and would see again--creatures wild and lost, or wrapped in a sorceress's dreams, they had given me only chaste kisses.

  In dark city streets once I caught the powerful scent, only to be maddened, unable ever to find the soft folds of hot and secret flesh from which it emanated.

  Many a human witch I've lured to bed, sometimes warning her of the dangers of my embrace, and sometimes not, when I believed her strong, and able to bear my offspring.

  Across the world I've gone, by every means, to track the mysterious ageless woman of remarkable height, with memories of long ago, who greets men who come to her with sweet smiles and never bears their children.

  She is human or she is not there at all.

  I had come too late, or to the wrong place, or plague took the beauty many years ago. War laid waste that town. Or no one knows the story.

  Would it always be so?

  Tales abound of giants in the earth, of the tall, the fair, the gifted.

  Surely they are not all gone! What became of those who fled the glen? Are no wild female Taltos born into the world of human parents?