Stephen Lawhead - Taliesin

Avallach and his family were given seats of honor, surrounded by Coranian nobles and worthies. After a very long series of ritual toasts, the meal began. Charis sat between Guistan, the youngest of Avallach’s line, and a tall, gawky boy who was the son of a Coranian patriarch. The boy leaned over her constantly in order to talk to Guistan about hound racing, which apparently was the only diversion available to the youth of Corania.

“I have four hounds myself,” said the boy, whose name Charis promptly forgot. “Someday I will race them and they will win. They are very fast.”

“If they are really fast, you must race them at the Royal Oval in Poseidonis. Only the fastest may race there.”

“They are fast,” insisted the boy, “faster than any in the Nine Kingdoms. One day I will race them in Poseidonis.”

“I prefer horse racing,” sniffed Guistan importantly.

Not to be outdone, the youngster said, “My uncle races horses. He was won wreaths and chains at every important race.”

“What is his name?” inquired Guistan around a mouthful of food.

“Caister; he is very famous.”

“I have never heard of him,” replied Guistan.

The boy huffed and turned away. Charis felt sorry for him, having been baited and bested by Guistan. She gave her brother a jab in the ribs with her elbow. “Ow!” he cried. “What was that for?”

“He was only trying to be friendly. You could be polite,” she whispered.

“I was being polite!” Guistan hissed angrily. “Did I laugh in his face?”

The feast continued, Guistan’s bad manners notwithstanding, and the night stretched on with more eating and laughter and dancing. Charis ate until she could not hold another morsel, and then joined the dance with some other young people. They assembled beneath the lanterns and formed a serpentine to weave among the lantern poles and pavilions.

The dancers chanted as they wound through the feast site, lifting their voices as the serpentine moved faster and faster, until they could no longer hold on and tumbled over one another to fall sprawling to the grass. Charis laughed as she lay on the ground, lanterns and stars spinning dizzily above her.

She closed her eyes and panted to regain her breath. The laughter in the air died. She sat up. Others were standing motionless nearby, staring into the darkness. Charis climbed to her feet.

A looming, dark shape waited just beyond the periphery of the light. As Charis watched, the shape moved, advanced slowly toward them. The silent dancers backed away. The mysterious shape drew closer to the light and the mass of darkness resolved itself into the arms and legs, head and torso of a man.

He did not advance further but stood just at the edge of the light, looking at them. From a place just a little above his shoulder Charis saw a cold glimmer of yellow light, a frozen shimmer, like the wink of a cat’s eye in the dark.

Charis felt an icy sensation of recognition. She knew who stood there watching them. The stranger made no further move toward them, but Charis could feel his unseen stare. Then he turned and walked away as silently as he had come.

Some of the older boys snickered and called after him- rude taunts and insults-but the man had vanished in the darkness. The others quickly formed another serpentine, but Charis did not feel like dancing anymore and returned to her place at the table, where she sat for the remainder of the evening despite Liban’s repeated urging to join in the fun.

The moon had long ago risen and now rode a balmy night breeze, spilling its silver light over the land. When the guests had had enough of food and celebration, the carriages were summoned and people began making their way back to the palace.

Charis, half-asleep, was bundled into the royal carriage where she curled into a corner and closed her eyes.

“Look!”

The voice was sharp in her ears; Charis stirred.

“There… another!” someone else said.

Charis opened her eyes and raised her head. All around her people were peering into the heavens; so Charis too raised her eyes to the night-dark sky. The heavens glimmered with the light of so many stars that it seemed as if a tremendous celestial fire burned in the firmament of the gods, shining through myriads of tiny chips in the skybowl.

As she watched, keen-eyed in the darkness, a star slashed across the heavens to plunge into the sea beyond the palace. Instantly another fell, and another. She turned to her mother and was about to speak when she saw a light flash on her mother’s face and all cried out at once.

Charis glanced back and saw the sky flamed in a brilliant blaze, hundreds of stars plummeting to earth, arcing through the night like a glittering fall of fire from on high. Down and down they came, striking through the night like burning brands thrown into dark Oceanus.

“Will it ever stop?” wondered Charis, her eyes bright with the light of falling stars. “Oh, look at them, Mother! All the stars of heaven must be falling! It is a sign.”

“A sign,” murmured Briseis. “Yes, a very great sign.”

As suddenly as it began, the starshower was over. An unnatural stillness settled over the land-as if the whole world waited to see what would happen next. But nothing did happen. Mute spectators turned to one another as if to say, Did you see it too? Did it really happen or did I imagine it?

Slowly the nightsounds crept into the air again, and the people started back to the palace once more. But the queen stood gazing at the sky for a long time before taking her place in the carriage with others in the party. Charis shivered and rubbed her arms with her hands, feeling the breath of a chill touch her bones.

The carriages rolled over the starlit meadow to Seithenin’s palace. When they arrived, guests alighted and filed slowly into the hall, many talking in hushed but animated tones about what they had seen. Briseis turned to see Annubi standing alone, gazing into the sky. “I will join you in a moment,” she told the others and returned to where he stood. “What did you see, Annubi?” she asked when they were alone together.

The seer lowered his eyes to look at her and she saw sadness veil his vision like a mist in his eyes. “I saw stars fall from the sky on a cloudless night. I saw fire rake the furrows of Oceanus’ waves.”

“Do not speak to me in Mage’s riddles,” said Briseis softly. “Tell me plainly, what did you see?”

“My queen,” replied Annubi, “I am no Mage or I would see more plainly. As it is, I see only what is permitted me, no more.”

“Annubi,” Briseis chided gently, “I know better. Tell me what you saw.”

He turned to stare at the sky once more. “I saw the light of life extinguished in the deep.”

The queen thought about this for a moment and then asked, “Whose life?”

“Whose indeed?” He gazed into the star-filled night. “I cannot say.”

“But surely”

“You asked what I saw,” Annubi snapped, “and I have told you.” He turned brusquely and started away. “More I cannot say.”

Briseis watched him go and then rejoined the others inside.

Annubi walked the terraced gardens alone, lost to the world of the senses as his feet wandered the shadowy pathways of the future which had been so fleetingly revealed in the glittering light of the starfall.

Elphin and his companions forded the river and fol-lowed the wooded track along the southern bank, until they came at last to the gently sloping headland which overlooked the Aberdyvi, and upon whose flat crown lay the hillfort of Elphin’s father. They passed pens with ruddy pigs and dun-colored cattle that lifted their heads to watch them as they climbed the rock-strewn track past thatch-and-twig outbuildings to the ditch-encircled caer.