Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

"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."

The flames leapt up, obscuring her fair face, and a low roar came from the rapidly burning timbers. And then came her voice again, louder, full of agony and full of courage.

"A curse on Donnelaith, a curse on its people forever! A curse on the Clan of Donnelaith. A curse on Ashlar's people."

Something writhed within the flames. I did not know if it was Janet in her final pain, or some trick of light and shadow and flickering.

I had fallen to my knees. I couldn't stop the tears and I couldn't look away. It was as if I had to go as far as I could with her into her pain, and I prayed to Christ, "She knows not what she says, take her to heaven. For her kindnesses to others, for her goodness to her people, take her to heaven."

The flames leapt heavenward, and then at once began to die away, revealing the stake, the smoldering heap of wood and burnt flesh and bone that had been this gracious creature, older and wiser than I was.

The glen was still. Nothing remained of my people now but five males who vowed to be celibate Christians.

Lives that had existed for centuries had been snuffed out. Torn limbs, severed heads, and mutilated bodies lay everywhere.

The human Christians wept. We wept. A curse on Donnelaith, she had said. A curse. But, Janet, my darling Janet, I prayed, what more can happen to us! I collapsed on the ground.

At that moment I wanted no more of life. I wanted no more of suffering or death, or of the best of intentions resulting in abominable ruin.

But the monks came to me, lifting me to my feet. My followers called to me. I was to come, they said, to behold a miracle that had happened before the ruined and burnt-out tower that had once been the home of Janet and those closest to her.

Dragged there, dazed, unable to speak, I was gradually made to understand that an old spring, long dried, had come to life, clear water bubbling up from the earth once again, and cutting its path through the old dried bed, between hillocks and the roots of the trees and into a great drift of wildflowers.

A miracle!

A miracle. I pondered. Should I point out that that stream had come and gone a number of times in the century? That the flowers were blooming yesterday and the day before because the earth there was already damp, presaging the little fount which had now at last broken through the surface again?

Or should I say:

"A miracle."

I said, "A sign from God."

"Kneel, all," cried Ninian. "Bathe in this holy water. Bathe away the blood of those who wouldn't accept God's grace and have gone now to eternal perdition."

Janet burning in hell forever, the pyre that will never go out, the voice that will curse me still crying ...

I shuddered and all but fainted again, but I fell on my knees.

In my soul, I knew that this new faith must sweep me up, it must consume my whole life, or I was lost forever!

I had no more hope, no more dreams; I had no more words, and no more thirst for anything! This had to save me, or I should die in this very spot now, by sheer will, never speaking or moving or taking nourishment again until death stole over me.

I felt the cold water slapped against my face. I felt it running down into my robes. The others had gathered. They too were bathing. The monks had begun to sing the ethereal psalms which I had heard on Iona. My people, the humans of Donnelaith crying and sad, and eager for the same grand redemption, took up the song, in the old-fashioned way, singing the lines right after the monks, until voices everywhere were raised in praise of God.

We were all baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

The Clan of Donnelaith was Christian thereafter. All human save for five Taltos.

Before the following morning a few more Taltos were discovered, mostly very young women who had been shielding two almost newborn males in their house, from which they had seen the whole tragedy, including Janet's execution. They were six altogether.

The Christian humans brought them to me. They would not speak, either to accept or deny Christ, but looked at me in terror. What should we do?

"Let them go, if they will," I said. "Let them flee the valley."

No one had the stomach for any more blood or death. And their youth and their simplicity and their innocence made a shield around them. As soon as the new converts stepped back, these Taltos fled, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, right into the forest.

In the days that followed, we five males who were left did win the entire goodwill of the people. In the fervor of their new religion, they praised us that we had brought Christ to them, and honored us for our vows of celibacy. The monks prepared us with instructions day and night to accept Holy Orders. We pored over our holy books. We prayed constantly.

Work was begun upon the church, a mighty Roman-style building of dry stone, with rounded arch windows and a long nave.

And I myself led a procession through the old circle, at which we effaced any symbols from olden times, and carved into the rocks new emblems, from the Altar Book of the Gospels.

These were the fish, which stood for Christ, the dove, which stood for the Apostle John, the lion for Mark, the ox for Luke, and the man for Matthew. And in a little Taltos fury we carved other biblical scenes into the flatter stones, and moved into the cemetery, putting crosses upon the old graves, in the style of the crosses of the book, very ornate and ornamented.

It was a brief interlude in which something returned of the old fervor that had once taken hold of all of us on the Salisbury Plain. But we were only five now, and not an entire tribe, five who had renounced their own nature to please God and the human Christians, five who had been cast in the role of saints in order not to be massacred.

But a dark terror lurked inside me and in the others. How long would this uneasy truce last? Would not the slightest sin topple us from our pedestals?

Even as I prayed to God to help me, to forgive me for all my errors, to bind me to him as a good priest, I knew that we five could not remain in Donnelaith much longer.

And I could not endure it myself! Even at my prayers, and during the singing of psalms with the monks, I heard Janet's curse in my ears, I saw my people covered in blood. Christ, gi

ve me faith, I prayed, yet in my secret heart I did not believe that the only path for my kind was one of such renunciation and chastity. How could it be? Did God mean for us to die out?

This was not self-sacrifice, it was a form of utter denial. For Christ, we had become no one!

Yet the love of Christ burned hot in me. It burned desperately. And a very strong personal sense of my Savior developed in me as it has in Christians always. Night after night in my meditations I envisioned the Chalice of Christ, the holy hill on which Joseph's hawthorn bloomed, the blood in the water of Chalice Well. I made a vow to go in pilgrimage to Glastonbury.

There were rumblings from outside the glen. Men had heard of the Holy Battle of Donnelaith, as it had come to be called. They had heard of the tall celibate priests with strange powers. Monks had written to other monks, passing on the story.

The legends of the Taltos came alive. Others who had lived as Picts in small communities had now to flee their homes as their pagan neighbors taunted and threatened them, and as Christians came to plead with them to renounce their wicked ways and become "holy fathers."

Wild Taltos were found in the forest; there were rumors of the magic birth having been witnessed in this or that town. And the witches were on the prowl, boasting that they could make us reveal ourselves, and render us powerless.

Other Taltos, richly dressed and armed to the teeth, and now exposed for what they were, came in heavily defended groups to the glen and cursed me for what I had done.

Their women, beautifully clothed, and guarded on all sides, spoke of Janet's curse, having heard whispers of this, no doubt from the Taltos who had fled Donnelaith, and demanded that I repeat the curse to all, and hear their judgments.

I refused. I said nothing.

Then, to my horror, these Taltos repeated the entire curse to me, for indeed they already knew it.

"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.... May the world around you crumble before your suffering is ended."

It had become a poem to them which they could recite, and they spat at my feet when they were finished.

"Ashlar, how could you forget the lost land?" the women demanded. "How could you forget the circle of Salisbury Plain?"