Stephen Lawhead - The Paradise War

I turned away from their expectant faces. I turned away and closed my eyes.

And then I felt the touch of a strong hand on mine. I opened my eyes to meet Meldryn Mawr's clear, confident gaze. I do not know when he had appeared, or from where. Weak with hunger and thirst, gaunt and swaying unsteadily on his feet-yet he was there, standing beside me, steadying my trembling hand. The king did not speak, he would not, but his courage emboldened me, bracing my faltering bravery as his hand strengthened mine.

I turned to see Lord Nudd's head and shoulders cresting the level of the walitop. He was immense in his vast, swelling hatred. In a moment he would overwhelm us. I looked to the king; he inclined his head, allowing me to give the order.

«Now!» I cried. And, raising the enchanted stone high above my head, I hurled it into the dark lord's face. With all my might I threw it.

All along the wall, stones sailed out into the gale. Spinning, tumbling, careening, smashing, scattering in a thousand sparkling pieces; striking down through the tempest to fall upon the seething enemy masses. And from each splinter and fragment there arose a strain of that matchless melody.

The individual strains twined and melded, swelling full and fair, and striking deep into the ranks of the enemy. Lord Nudd raged to hear it; he raised the black Wynn's fang, and the wind-wail became a deafening roar. The wind obliterated the wonderful melody, drowning it beneath its horrific scream. Surely we were undone; nothing, not even the Song of Albion could survive the hate-blast of the Lord of Darkness, Death, and Destruction.

The wind swirled, seizing the sound and lifting it high, as if to drive it away. But the sound was not extinguished in the tempest. It rose and intensified, spreading on the wings of the storm, filling the wind-scoured heights with shimmering melody as the gale gave it strength. And suddenly the sound began forming itself into words. The life-giving words of the Song of Albion:

The Coranyid could not stand against the power of the Song. The sound struck them and they fell, choking, retching, gagging and gasping for breath. As the Song coiled around them, the demon warband began to melt away, seeping back into the ground, dissolving like mud before the driving rain. The hateful helispawn sank down foot, knee, and thigh, liquifying, dissipating, dwindling, retreating into the cracks opening in the earth to receive them. The hard brilliance of the Song drove them down, raining its glad refrain upon them like a fall of bright-barbed arrows. They fled before it, hastening back to the dismal galleries of their underworld home.

Higher and higher, the Song rose in sweeping arcs into the clouds, piercing the hard Sollen sky. Sunlight bright and dazzling shone forth, scouring the hidden places where the shadows had grown thick, banishing the darkness. Fair golden light touched the Host of the Pit and they screamed in pain as they ran-hopping like lizards, scrabbling like beetles, slithering like vipers-fleeing for the refuge of their dank, noisome dens.

Meanwhile, the soaring Song echoed in the air. All Albion trembled with the sound, echoing the Song from mountaintop to mountaintop, filling the glens and valleys. Like the waters of a mighty flood bursting through the seawall and inundating the land, like fountains of sweet golden mead bursting forth from a bottomless vat, like a shining river charged from infinite springs, swelling, spreading, overflowing its banks, cascading over the land, sweeping all before it in a deluge, in torrents of sparkling water. And we cupped our hands and drank as much as we could contain, but the waters-the Song-rushed on undiminished.

We caught but the smallest fragment of the whole, yet that little was life to us. The life-giving words burned themselves into our hearts and into our souls. We wept with joy to hear them.

Nudd, standing alone amidst the floodtide of his retreating forces, raised his spear and uttered a great shout of defiance. But the Song, ringing all around him, drowned out his shout. Instead of the hateful voice of Nudd, we heard the Song.

The Foul Lord could no longer stand against the exalted majesty of the Song. Deserted by his legion of the damned, weakened by the Song's magnificent and merciless onslaught, the Prince of the Pit, Lord of Corruption, Nudd shrank into himself. He bellowed his frustrated rage to the mountaintops, but the Song covered all, permeated all, saturated all.

Defeated, Lord Nudd followed his demon Coianyid down into the netherworld depths. We watched, as his black form grew pale and wispy, dispersing like a dirty mist before the blazing radiance of the sun. The wicked enemy simply disappeared before our eyes, fading back into the abyss from which he had been released. Nudd himself was the last to go, and he took the Cauldron of Rebirth with him. For, when he had gone, it was nowhere to be seen.

I looked out on the rocky plateau below: not a single enemy remained. All had vanished. Sunlight shone golden all around us; blue sky, dazzling and radiant, glowed through the gaping rents in the broken clouds. The siege was ended and the battle was over. We were saved.

We stood gazing at one another, and for a moment the world quivered with the after-echo as the Song of Albion sped on and on. And then the stillness was shattered by a tremendous shout. I whirled towards the sound, to see Tegid leap onto the wall to dance there, arms upraised, his cloak flying around him. An instant later, everyone was crying and shouting-tears of gladness, shouts of joy. Others leapt onto the battlements and joined in the dance. Such delight could not be contained and the whole caer rang with the happy sound.