Stephen Lawhead: Merlin

We were silent a few moments and Blaise sighed again, then turned to me. 'Would you like to see where Hafgan taught your father?' he asked, and started off before I could answer.

We walked from the caer into the wood along an old track now overgrown with burdock and nettle, and emerged in a small clearing which had been Taliesin's wooded bower. There was an oak stump in the centre of the clearing. 'Hafgan would sit here with his staff across his lap,' Blaise said, sitting down on the stump and placing his own oak staff across his lap. 'Taliesin would sit at his feet.' He offered me the place at his feet and I sat down before him.

Blaise nodded slowly, with a frown of remembrance and mouth pulled down. 'Many and many a time I came to find them so. Ah,' he sighed, 'that seems so long ago now.' 'Was this where my father had his first vision?' 'It was, and I well remember the day. Cormach was Chief Druid then, and he had come to Caer Dyvi. He knew himself to be dying and told us so – I admit I was taken aback by his bald pronouncement, but Cormach was a blunt man. He said he was dying and wanted to see the boy Taliesin one last time before he joined the Ancient Ones.' Blaise smiled quickly, and ran his hand through his long dark hair. 'He sent me off to boil cabbage for his supper.'

There was a long pause and I sat with my arms around my knees listening to the same woodland sounds my father would have heard: the chirruping of woodfinches, thrushes, jays; the little furtive rustlings in the winter-dry underbrush and light shifting of the leaves; the tick and creak of swaying branches.

'I was tending the pot when they returned,' Blaise said when he continued. Taliesin was unusually quiet and his movements erratic; his speech was odd, as well – as if he were creating the sound of the words anew as he spoke them. I remember feeling the same way the first time I tasted the Seeds of Wisdom. But in this, as in all else, Taliesin excelled.

'Hafgan told me that he feared Taliesin dead, so still did the boy lie when he found him. Cormach blamed himself for pressing the youngster too hard… ' He broke off abruptly and regarded me strangely.

'Too hard to do what?' I asked, already knowing the answer he would make.

'To walk the paths of the Otherworld.'

'To see the future, you mean.'

Again that fierce appraisal, and the slow nod of admission. They thought he might see something they could not see.'

'He was looking for me.'

Blaise did not look away this time. 'He was, Myrddin Bach. We all were.'

The silence of the wood crept in once more and we sat watching one another. Blaise sought guidance for what he was about to do, and I was content not to press him, but to trust his judgement. How long we sat there I do not know, but after a time he put his hand to the pouch at his belt and brought out three fire-browned hazelnuts. 'Here they are, Myrddin, if you want them.'

I regarded them and would have reached for them, but something restrained me – a cautious thought: wait, the time for visions is not yet. Thank you, Blaise,' I told him. 'I know you would not have offered them if you thought I was not ready. But this is not my way.'

He nodded and put the hazelnuts back in his pouch. 'Never from curiosity,' he said. 'No doubt you have chosen wisely, Hawk. I commend you.' He rose. 'Shall we go back to the caer now?'

We slept that night in the ruined caer and just before sunrise it rained, a soft pattering of falling drops, tears from a low, sorrow-laden sky. We saddled our horses and rode inland along the Dyvi river towards the druid grove at Garth Greggyn, where we meant to leave Hafgan for a few days to meet with his brother druids.

Along the way, we passed Gwyddno's salmon weir, or what was left of it, for the nets were long gone. Several of the poles remained, however; blackened nubs in the water. We paused to see the place where all our lives had, in a sense, begun.

No one spoke; it was almost as if we stood before a holy shrine. For here was the infant Taliesin fished from this very weir in a sealskin bag. The weir pool made a good ford and as we crossed the river I could not help thinking of that now-distant morning when an unsuspecting Elphin, desperate for salmon – and a change of fortune – pulled a baby from the water instead.

We crossed the Dyvi and continued on into the rough hills, and into an older, wilder land.

At Garth Greggyn we camped for two days and on the third day the dniids came. I half-expected the gathering to simply appear – like Otherworld sojourners in elder times – even though I knew better. The warband waited in the glen below the sacred grove, and were happy to do so since, like most people, they regarded druids in number as a menace to be avoided.

That is a curious thing. Having a bard attached to his court was high prestige for a lord, and certainly every king who could find and keep one enjoyed enormous benefit. Also, the harper's art was respected above all others, including the warrior's and smith's; sorry indeed was the celebration with no druid to sing, and winters were interminable, intolerable, without a bard to tell the old tales.

Nevertheless, let three druids gather in a grove and men began to whisper behind their hands and make the sign against evil – as if the same bard that gave wings to then-joy in celebration, eased the harsh winter's passing, and gave authority to their kingmaking, somehow became a being to be feared when he joined with his brothers.

But, as I have said, men's hearts remember long after their minds have forgotten. And I do not wonder that men's hearts still quake to see the Brotherhood gathered in the grove, remembering as they do an older time when the golden scythe claimed a life in blood sacrifice to Cernunnos, Forest Lord, or the Mother Goddess. Fear remembers long, I tell you, if not always wisely.

After breaking fast on the third day Hafgan rose and stood looking at the hilltop grove, then turned to Charis saying, 'Lady, will you come with me now?'

I stared; another time Blaise might have questioned the Chief Druid's invitation, but this seemed to be a time for unprecedented events. He held his peace and the four of us began the long climb up the slope to the sacred grove.

The grove was a dense stand of ancient oak with a scattering of walnut, ash and holly. The oak and walnut were by far the oldest trees: they had been sturdy, deep-rooted youngsters before the Romans came, planted, some said, by Mathonwy, first bard in the Island of the Mighty.

Deep-shadowed and dark, with an air of imponderable mystery emanating from the thick-corded trunks and twisting limbs, and even the soil itself, the sacred druid grove seemed a world unto itself.

In the centre of the grove stood a small stone circle. The moment I set foot in the ring of stones I could feel ancient power, flowing like an invisible river around the hilltop, which was an eddy in the ever-streaming current. The feeling of being surrounded by swirling forces, of being picked up and carried off on the relentless waves of this unseen river nearly took my breath; I laboured to walk upright against it, my flesh tingling with every step.

The others did not feel it in the same way, or if they did gave no indication and said nothing about it. This, of course, was why the hill was chosen in the first place, but still I wondered that Hafgan and Blaise did not appear to notice the power flowing around and over them.

Hafgan took his place on the seat in the centre of the circle – nothing more than a slab of stone supported by two other, smaller slabs – there to wait until the others arrived. Blaise inscribed a series of marks on the ground and then stuck a suck upright over them. The sunshadow had not passed another mark on the ground before the first druids appeared. They greeted Hafgan and Blaise, and regarded my mother and me politely but coolly, while exchanging news with the two druids.