The Eagle and the Raven (43 page)

“I do know them,” the master said gently. “And I also know that without them you would be simply Caradoc, Catuvellaunian warrior. The Druithin do not hold you a witless prisoner, Caradoc. You, and only you, have the power to say yes or no to us, as you have done before.

Indeed it is you who hold us in your hands, every one of us, and all the tribes besides. An arviragus is lord over the Druithin, as well as his followers, for strong reasons, and above all men, he must be master of himself. This is why I show you the darkest places of your heart. This is why you are tormented by your own visions and dreams. An arviragus is unique.”

“But I am not an arviragus yet.”

“No, you are not, but you will be. So l must give you not only your past, but such of your future as I have been able to divine. I am not infallible, Caradoc. I see not one future but many, path upon path, and those paths branching into other paths, all leading only to the possible. I cannot often disentangle truth from shadow. I am not permitted to tell you what I have seen, but I can advise. Will you listen?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. The omens and visions are very mixed for you, perhaps because you and Albion are intertwined, and your fates are bound together. I can tell you little. I have seen you victorious, I have seen you ambushed and killed in a lonely valley, I have seen you in a great battle. Once, many years ago, I saw you at Camulodunon, living at peace with the Romans as your overlords, but that avenue of vision is now closed. I can tell you what you will do tomorrow with certainty, and the day after that with probability, but then the visions multiply, split, become unsound because of all the decisions, your own and others, crowding into the moments of each day. All I know with certainty is that you are the chosen one, you will be arviragus for good or ill, and that the universe is indestructible!”

“What use are your dreams then, Master, if you cannot tell me whether I shall succeed or fail?” The man beside him leaned back. The colorless eyes were hooded as he bent his head.

“I did not say that I was powerless before the dreams, Caradoc. I have been dreaming now for nearly thirty years and I have learned to catch the fleet heel of truth as it goes rushing by me. Also, I read the stars, and meld what I learn from them to the message of my visions. If there is no agreement between the two, then there is no truth.”

“Well, tell me then! Do not leave me to the daily agony of seeing my people die and never knowing whether their deaths will be in vain!”

“The stars tell me that you will fail, and that your failure will be turned to good, but my visions tell me that you will succeed. Therefore I see it thus. You will come to a point in time, Caradoc, a place, a moment of great destiny, and so fine will be the line dividing failure from success that even the stars waver and dare not fearlessly predict the outcome. Neither must I. I cannot make conjecture. You have flaws, arviragus, but whether those flaws will destroy the tribes is entirely up to you, and I know also that there is no finer, more cunning warrior in Albion. So the only advice I can give you is this. Trust only your own judgment in all things, and then test that judgment in your heart. But when you are in grave doubt, listen to Bran. He is not a seer but his intuitions are perhaps more valuable to you than my visions.”

Caradoc was stiff with the cold of the approaching dawn. He was stiff with anger also, yet, though he wanted to call the master an impostor out of his own disappointment, he did not dare. He sat with knees hunched to chin, his heart chilled, his mind in a ferment, and the master chuckled. “You hate me, Caradoc, and you wish to believe either that I am keeping truth from you or that I am a false seer, but you know that truth is many-faced and subtle, and that not only am I a seer but I can see into your thoughts when you let me. You can shut yourself off from me, Caradoc, if you are strong enough!”

Caradoc knew that the master was joking with him at his expense and in spite of his irritation, he smiled. “Forgive me,” he said. “I wanted a great blast on the carnyx of truth, Master. I wanted all my doubts laid to rest.”

“Even if I could have done this, I would have refused. The Druithin are bound by ancient laws, Caradoc, and we break them at our peril. One of those laws states that no man may be told his future, for then the power of choice is removed from him and he loses his soul. This means that my brethren and I must learn to circumvent the will of the people, to move from Council to Council with words that are not always welcome, and to clothe our advice in riddles.”

“Will you at least perform the last test?”

“The Bull Dream?” The master shivered a little, then scrambled to his feet. In the east a thin band of gray light was growing, and now Caradoc could see the night’s lines grooved into the handsome face of the Druid, and the toll his dreams took of him. I should go mad under such a load, Caradoc knew suddenly. This man must be as strong as a mountain. They began to walk back down the drowsy path together.

“Yes, I will, but know that I pay a high price for doing it. What will you give me?”

A single bird began to trill, high in the oak branches, and the morning breeze began to lift the hair from the master’s bent shoulders. Hope came to Caradoc. He felt as though he had lived a thousand ages this night, fought a thousand battles with himself, yet he could not remember a single coherent thought. He flung back his head, and smiled. “I will give you back the whole of Albion,” he said. “Is that enough?”

“Oh I think so,” the master retorted, then burst out laughing, and before long the still-silent huts of the town came into view, clustered by the dark, cool waters of the river.

They all ate together two hours after the dawn, then the master embraced them and bade them farewell. “Remember, Caradoc, speak ill to no man or woman, friend or foe, for from now on you will not be able to discern either,” he admonished. “Love the gods, but love your honor more. Now go.” They bowed to him and he strode away whis tling, then they made their way back to the beach and the waiting boat, and the gray, forested line of the mainland.

“Tell me, Eurgain,” Caradoc said as the little craft skimmed over an ocean that was as calm and limpid as the sky. “What did the Druid show you?”

She was silent for a moment, trailing her fingers in the dark water, then she said, “He showed me many marvels in the sky, and told me many wonders.” She tried to speak again, struggled with the words, then burst into tears.

For three days they lingered in the village that gave onto the narrows and the island, then a snow took them by surprise, sweeping on the wings of a wind that shifted suddenly to the north, and Caradoc was galvanized into action. “We must go,” he told his hosts urgently. “We must not be cut off from your ricon.” He was afraid for Llyn if they had to winter here, afraid of Emrys’s dark, unfathomable warrior’s mind, afraid of the mountains, afraid of the time passing. There was so much to fear, he thought in despair, so much, and I am only a man. “Do not return the way you came,” he was told. “Go south along the coast until you reach the Demetae border, then turn east. There is a track, good in summer, and the ricon uses it to send the refugees to us.”

But it is almost winter now, Caradoc thought grimly, looking out at the swirling whiteness that obscured the island. Yet we must go. They farewelled the villagers and thanked them for their kindness, then checked their swords, picked up their packs, and disappeared.

The snow did not lie for long. It was too early in the season. It melted and the sun shone bleakly though the wind knifed through the travelers with a cutting edge that could only grow keener. Almost at once they entered Gangani territory, but the chiefs of the village had told them not to worry. The Ordovices had a temporary treaty with the men of the peninsula and they would not be molested. They could have cut the peninsula off but Caradoc, after consideration, decided to keep to the coast. He had no wish to be caught in more unfamiliar country with winter on its way, so they slogged forward, bent against the wind, exposed above an uninviting, forlornly vacant coastline. Caradoc’s thoughts went to his sister as he walked, the thunder of the cold surf in his ears and his face stung by spray. Where was she? Had Rome executed her or was she a slave now, chained to some officer’s household? Gladys would not live long in chains, he knew. If she did not kill herself then the loss of the freedom she prized so vehemently would drive her mad. But he could not feel, he could only think. He had no emotions left.

In two weeks they turned inland. They had no difficulty in spotting the track, for it was wide and well worn, but within three days of their leaving the coast the first real snow of winter fell, and it did not go away. The track narrowed. Bran led them, having walked it many times with the refugees he had escorted to Mona. His gray cloak was hard to see against the whiteness of the still, cold world around them, and they plodded doggedly after him, their faces and hands blue with cold, and their feet wet and frozen. The track began to rise, feeling for the drier heights where the traveler could have some view of where he was going. They had to follow it at the risk of becoming lost, though the gorges had offered shelter. There was none on the crests of the increasingly sharper hills and they ate and slept without warmth, buffeted continually. At night they huddled close together, arms around each other, trying with the heat of their bodies to comfort each other, locked in the silence of exhaustion. The wild animals had gone to ground and Cinnamus often came back to them empty handed. Caradoc found his sanity stretching out, the thread of reason thinning daily, and with an effort of will that took all his energy he hung onto it, leaving his body to obey the other bodies that pressed against it, shivering in the nights. If he gave in all battles were lost, all visions gone for naught. He no longer slept. He dozed between fiery waves of dizziness when the wind shrieked at him with a fell voice, and he dreamed that Eurgain came to him, soft and beautiful as she had been in their first youth together, whispering of the peace of abdication and the blessed rest of defeat. He wanted to rip out his brains and fling them away. He wanted to take out his sword and skewer his eyes in an effort to reach the seat of his anguish, but he clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and night after night he held on, while Eurgain and Caelte crushed against him, and Bran watched him with a black, expressionless gaze.

It took them three more weeks to reach the Ordovician town. Weeks of hunger, privation, and wet, chilled misery, but gradually the land smoothed out until they were striding the backs of the rolling, dark-forested foothills. Snow turned to sleet, became rain. Cinnamus speared a deer, dazed with cold and hunger, and Eurgain found dry wood under the protecting branches of the oaks. The worst of their journeying was over.

Two days after Samain they were greeted at the bridge by Llyn, Emrys, and Sine. They came to a halt and stood before the chieftain, their packs falling to the wet ground, and Llyn ran forward and embraced them all. Still they did not speak and Emrys, looking from one to the other, nodded. They were scarecrows, the tattered remnants of their once-gay tunics and cloaks flapping against bodies from which all softness had been eaten away. The skin of their thin faces and hands was burned dark brown and it peeled in places to the tender flesh beneath, and their eyes were cups full of mountain magic, an essence compounded of suffering, loneliness, and fear and pounded in the pestle of their souls by the proud, jealous peaks themselves. The Ordovices blooded their sons by sending them into the mountains and they all, the ones that returned, came back with those eyes, and the mystery never left them. Emrys nodded again and Sine removed her bronze mask, meeting Eurgain’s gaze with the same plumbless detachment. Caradoc took one step.

“We have conquered,” he said hoarsely. “Now call your great Council. I am going back to the Silures.”

“You have indeed,” Emrys answered. “If you had not your eyes would show it, but you have Ordovician eyes now, you soft lowland chiefs, and wherever you go you will carry the mark of the mountains on you. Caradoc, I can call no Council until the spring. I beg you to winter here.”

But Caradoc shook his head. “There will be messages for me from my spies,” he said, his voice hardly above a croaking whisper, “and I want to know how Madoc has fared. Give me meat and bread, Emrys, and let me go.”

Suddenly Emrys glided forward and took Caradoc in his arms. “I did not believe that you would return,” he said, “though a slave was drowned for you in the cauldron. I salute your tenacity, my friend.”

Caradoc did not respond. He picked up his pack wearily and followed Emrys into the Council hut.

They rested for another week with Emrys and his silent chiefs, eating and sleeping, sitting for hours by the big fire while the rain drummed down outside, then they packed and left. Bran did not go with them. “I will stay,” he told Caradoc, “and wait for Emrys’s decision. I think I will also take a little trip to the Demetae. Their minds should be made up before the spring.” He smiled warmly at Caradoc. “Do not despair!”

“What is despair?” Caradoc countered dully. “What is happiness? These words have become meaningless to me, Bran.”

The Druid touched the long fingers laying limp on the knee beside him. “It will not always be so, and you know it. The stars promised great things for you, warrior, many years ago while you were yet heedless and carefree, and the stars do not lie. Look up! The end is in sight.”

“I don’t care. I care about nothing anymore but slaying Romans. I know that the stars do not lie but neither do they always tell the undistorted truth. What comes is often in a very different guise from what was seen, and destiny may be fulfilled as dust and ashes in the mouth.”

“Ah,” Bran whispered, almost to himself. “But what is truth? Can you tell me that? It is the thing that has evaded my brethren through countless years, though we pursue it to death and beyond.”

“It is the backside of a lie,” Caradoc replied. “It is what you see when you turn the coin over. It is nothing, a word.”