Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

Sometimes, too, a beautiful female Taltos would fall in love with a human man, and forsake everything for him. They might be together for years before she would bear, but then a hybrid would be born, and this would unite the little family even more closely, for the father saw his likeness in the child, and laid claim to its loyalty, and it of course was a Taltos.

So that is how the human blood in us was increased. And how our blood came into the human Clan of Donnelaith that eventually survived us.

Let me pass over in silence the sadness we often felt, the emotions we evinced at our secret rituals. Let me not try to describe our long conversations, pondering the meaning of this world, and why we had to live among humans. You are both outcasts now. You know it. And if God is merciful and you really don't, well, then, you can still imagine it.

What is left of the glen today?

Where are the countless brochs and wheelhouses which we built? Where are our stones with their curious writing and strange serpentine figures? What became of the Pictish rulers of that time, who sat so tall on their horses, and impressed the Romans so much with their gentle manner?

As you know, what is left at Donnelaith is this: a quaint inn, a ruined castle, an immense excavation that is slowly revealing a giant cathedral, tales of witchcraft and woe, of earls who died untimely deaths, and of a strange family, gone through Europe to America, carrying with them an evil strain in the blood, a potential to give birth to babies or monsters, an evil strain evidenced by the glow of witches' gifts, a family wooed for that blood and those gifts by Lasher--a wily and unforgiving ghost of one of our people.

How were the Picts of Donnelaith destroyed? Why did they fall as surely as the people of the lost land and the people of the plain? What happened to them?

It was not the Britons, the Angles, or the Scots who conquered us. It was not the Saxons or the Irish, or the German tribes who invaded the island. They were far too busy destroying each other.

On the contrary, we were destroyed by men as gentle as ourselves, with rules as strict as our own, and dreams as lovely as our dreams. The leader they followed, the god they worshiped, the savior in whom they believed was the Lord Jesus Christ. He was our undoing.

It was Christ himself who brought an end to five hundred years of prosperity. It was his gentle Irish monks who brought about our downfall.

Can you see how it might happen?

Can you see how vulnerable we were, we, who in the solitude of our stone towers would play at weaving and writing like little children, who would hum or sing all day long for the love of it? We, who believed in love and in the Good God, and refused to hold death sacrosanct?

What was the pure message of the early Christians? Of both the Roman monks and the Celtic monks who came to our shores to preach the new religion? What is the pure message, even today, of those cults which would consecrate themselves anew to Christ and his teachings?

Love, the very thing we believed in!

Forgiveness, the very thing we thought practical. Humility, the virtue we believed, even in our pride, to be far more noble than the raging hubris of those who warred endlessly upon others. Goodness of heart, kindness, the joy of the just--our old values. And what did the Christians condemn? The flesh, the very thing that had always been our downfall! The sins of the flesh, which had caused us to become monsters in the eyes of humans, copulating in great ceremonial circles and bringing forth full-grown offspring.

Oh, we were ripe for it. Oh, it was made for us!

And the trick, the sublime trick, was that at its core Christianity not only embraced all this, but managed somehow to sacralize death and at the same time redeem that sacralization.

Follow my logic. Christ's death had not come in battle, the death of the warrior with the sword in his hand; it had been a humble sacrifice, an execution which could not be avenged, a total surrender on the part of the Godman to save his human children! But it was death, and it was everything!

Oh, it was magnificent! No other religion could have had a chance with us. We detested pantheons of barbarian gods. We laughed at the gods of the Greeks and Romans. The gods of Sumer or India we would have found just as alien and distasteful. But this Christ, why, my God, he was the ideal of every Taltos!

And though he had not sprung full-grown from his mother's womb, he had nevertheless been born of a virgin, which was just as miraculous! Indeed, the birth of Christ was just as important as his submissive crucifixion! It was our way, it was the triumph of our way! It was the God to whom we could give ourselves without reservation!

Lastly, let me add the piece de resistance. These Christians, too, had been once hunted and persecuted and threatened with annihilation. Diocletian, the Roman emperor, had subjected them to these things. And refugees came seeking shelter in our glen. We gave it to them.

And the Christians won our hearts. When we spoke to them, we came to believe that possibly the world was changing. We believed that a new age had dawned and that our elevation and restoration were now at least conceivable.

The final seduction was simple.

A lone monk came into the glen for refuge. He had been chased thither by ragged wandering pagans and begged shelter. Of course we would never refuse such a person, and I brought him into my own broch and into my own chambers, to pick his brains about the outside world, as I hadn't ventured out in a while.

This was the mid-sixth century after Christ, though I didn't know it. If you would picture us then, see men and women in long, rather simple robes trimmed in fur, embroidered with gold and jewels; see the men with their hair trimmed above the shoulders. Their belts are thick, and their swords are always near at hand. The women cover their hair with silk veils beneath simple gold tiaras. See our towers very bare, yet warm and snug, and filled with skins and comfortable chairs, and raging fires to keep us warm. See us as tall, of course, all of us tall.

And see me in my broch alone with this little yellow-haired monk in brown robes, eagerly accepting the good wine I offered him.

He carried with him a great bundle which he was eager to preserve, he said, and first off, he begged me that I give him a guard to escort him home to the island of Iona in safety.

There had been three in his party originally, but brigands had murdered the other two, and now he was wretchedly alone, dependent u

pon the goodwill of others, and must get his precious bundle to Iona, or lose something more valuable than his own life.

I promised to see that he reached Iona safely. Then he introduced himself as Brother Ninian, named for the earlier saint, Bishop Ninian, who had converted many pagans at his chapel or monastery, or whatever it was, at Whittern. This bishop had already converted a few wild Taltos.

Young Ninian, a very personable and beautiful Irish Celt, then laid out his invaluable bundle and revealed its contents.

Now, I had seen many books in my time, Roman scrolls and the codex, which was now the popular form. I knew Latin. I knew Greek. I had even seen some very small books called cathachs which Christians wore as talismans when they rode into battle. I had been intrigued by the few fragments of Christian writing I had beheld, but I was in no way prepared for the treasure which Ninian revealed to me.

It was a magnificent altar book that he carried with him, a great illustrated and decorated account of the Four Gospels. Its front cover was decorated with gold and jewels, it was bound in silk, and its pages were painted with spectacular little pictures.

At once I fell on this book and virtually devoured it. I began to read the Latin aloud, and though there were some irregularities in it, in the main I understood it, and began to run with the story like someone possessed--nothing very extraordinary, of course, for a Taltos. It felt like singing.

But as I turned the vellum pages, I marveled not only at the tale which was being told to me, but also at the incredible drawings of fanciful beasts and of little figures. It was an art which I loved truly, from having done my own similar form of it.

Indeed, it was very like much art of that time in the islands. Later ages would say it was crude, but then come to love the complexity and ingenuity of it.

Now, to understand the effect of the gospels themselves, you have to remind yourself of how very different they were from any literature which had come before them. I didn't include the Torah of the Hebrews, because I didn't know it, but the gospels are even different from that.

They were different from everything! First off, they concerned this one man, Jesus, and how he had taught love and peace and been hounded, persecuted, tormented, and then crucified. A confounding story! I couldn't help but wonder what the Greeks and the Romans thought of it. And the man had been a humble person, with only the most tenuous of connections to ancient kings, that was obvious. Unlike any god of whom I'd ever heard, this Jesus had told his followers all sorts of things which they had been charged to write down and teach to all nations.