Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

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?