Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

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.