A Swiftly Tilting Planet (8 page)

It was almost like slipping down, deeper and deeper, into the waters of a pool, deeper and deeper.

Let go.

Fall into Madoc.

Let go.

Madoc rose from the rock and looked to the east, awaiting the sunrise with exalted anticipation. His fair skin was tanned, with a reddishness which showed that he was alien to so fierce a sun. He looked toward the indigo line of horizon between lake and sky, with eyes so blue that the sky paled in comparison. His hair, thick and gold as a lion’s mane, was nearly covered with an elaborate crown of early spring flowers. A lavish chain of flowers was flung over his neck and one shoulder. He wore a kilt of ferns.

The sky lightened, and the sun sent its fiery rays over the edge of the lake, reaching up into the sky, pulling itself, dripping, from the waters of the night. As the sun seemed to make a great leap out of the dark, Madoc began to sing in a strong, joyful baritone.

When he finished, still looking out over the water, his song was taken up as though by an echo, a strange, thin, cracked echo, and then an old man, dressed with the same abundance of flowers as Madoc, came out of the forest.

Madoc bent down and helped the old man up onto the rock. For all the Old One’s age, his stringy-looking muscles were strong, and though his hair was white, his dark skin had a glow of health.

When the strange duet was ended, the old man held up his hand in a gesture of blessing. “It is the day, my farsent son.”

“It is the day, my to-be-father. Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd, will be Madoc, son of Reschal, Old One of the Wind People.”

“A year ago today, you sang the song in your delirium,”
Reschal said, “and it was the child of my old age who found you in the forest.”

“And it is mirth that is called for,” the young man affirmed, “and we shall sing today for birth, for the birth of the new One which Zyll and I will become when you join us together.”

“On the night that Zyll was born,” the Old One said, “I dreamed of a stranger from a distant land, across a lake far greater than ours—”

“From across the ocean”—the young man put his hand lightly on the Old One’s shoulder—“from the sea which beats upon the shores of Cymru, the sea which we thought went on and on until a ship would fall off at the end of the world.”

“The end of the world—” the old man started, but broke off, listening.

The young man listened, too, but heard nothing. “Is it the wind?”

“It is not the wind.” Reschal looked at the young man and put a gnarled hand on the richly muscled arm. “Madoc, son of Owain, king of Gwynedd—how strange those syllables sounded to us. We did not know what is a king, nor truly do we yet.”

“You have no need of a king, Old One of the People of the Wind. Owain, my father, is long buried: I am a lifetime away from Gwynedd in Cymru. When the soothsayer
looked into the scrying glass and foretold my father’s death, he saw also that I would live my days far from Gwynedd.”

The old man again lifted his head to listen.

“Is it the wind?” Still, Madoc could hear nothing beyond the sounds of early morning, the lapping of the lake against the shore, the stirring of the wind in the hemlocks which made a distant roaring which always reminded him of the sea he had left behind him.

“It is not the wind.” There was no emotion in the old man’s face, only a continuing, controlled listening.

The young man could not hide the impatience in his voice. “When is Zyll coming?”

The dark Old One smiled at him with affection. “You have waited how many years?”

“I am seventeen.”

“Then you can wait a while longer, while Zyll’s maidens make her ready. And there are still questions I must ask you. Are you certain in your heart that you will never want to leave Zyll and this small, inland people and go back to the big water and your ship with wings?”

“My ship was broken by wind and wave when we attempted to land on the rocky shores of this land. The sails are torn beyond mending.”

“Another ship could be built.”

“Old One, even had I the tools to fell the trees for lumber for a new ship, even had my brother and my companions
not perished, I would never wish to leave Zyll and my new brethren.”

“And your brother and your companions?”

“They are dead,” Madoc said bleakly.

“Yet you hold them back so that they cannot continue their journey.”

“We were far from home.” Madoc spoke softly. “It is a long journey for their spirits.”

“Are the gods of Gwynedd so weak they cannot care for their own?”

Madoc’s blue eyes were dark with grief. “When we left Gwynedd in Cymru because of the quarreling of my brethren over our father’s throne, it seemed to us the gods had already abandoned us. For brothers to wish to kill each other for the sake of power is to anger the gods.”

“Perhaps,” the old man said, “you must let the gods of Gwynedd go, as you must free your companions from your holding.”

“I brought them to their death. When my father died, and my brothers became drunk with lust for power, as no wine can make a man drunk, I felt the gods depart. In a dream I saw them turn their backs on our quarreling, saw them as clearly as anything the soothsayers see in their scrying glass. When I awoke, I took Gwydyr aside and said that I would not stay to watch brother against brother, but that I would go find the land the Wise Ones said was at the farther end of the sea. Gwydyr demurred at first.”

“He thought he might become king?”

“Yes, but Gwydyr and I were the youngest. The throne was not likely to be ours while the other five remained alive.”

“Yet you, Madoc, the seventh son, were the favored of the people.”

“Had I let them proclaim me king, there would have been no way to avoid bloodshed. I left Gwynedd to prevent the horror of brother against brother.”

“Have you”—the old man regarded Madoc keenly—“in fact left it?”

“I have left it. Gwynedd in Cymru is behind me. It will be ruled by whomever the gods choose. I do not wish to know. For now I am Madoc, son-to-be of Reschal, soon to be husband of Zyll of the People of the Wind.”

“And Gwydyr? Have you let him go?”

Madoc gazed across the lake. “In many ways it seemed that I was older than he, though there were seven years between us. When we came to the tribe on the Far Side of the Lake he was afraid of their dark skins and hair and their strange singing that was full of hoots and howls, and he ran from them. They kept me as guest, yet I was a prisoner, for they would not let me go into the forest to look for my brother. They sent a party of warriors to search for him, and when they returned they carried only the belt with the jeweled buckle which marked him as the son of a king. They told me he had been killed by a
snake; Gwydyr did not know what a snake is, for we have none in Gwynedd. They told me that he had called my name before he died, and that he had left me the Song of the King’s Sons. And they buried him out in the forest. Without me, they buried my brother, and I do not even know the place where he is laid.”

“That is the way of the People on the Far Side of the Lake,” the old man said. “They fear the dead and try to escape the ancient terror.”

“The ancient terror?”

Reschal looked at the tender sky of early morning. “That which went wrong. Once there were no evil spirits to blight the crops, to bring drought or flood. Once there was nothing to fear, not even death.”

“And what happened to bring fear?”

“Who knows? It was so long ago. But is it not in Gwynedd, too?”

“It is in Gwynedd,” Madoc replied soberly, “or brother would not have turned against brother. Yes, we too know what you call the ancient terror. Death, it is thought, or at least the fear of death, came with it. Reschal, I would that I knew where those across the lake had laid my brother, that I may say the prayers that will free his soul.”

“It is their way to put the dead far from them and then to lose the place. They hide the dead, even from themselves, that their spirits may not come to the lake and keep the fish away.”

“And your people?”

The old man pulled himself up proudly. “We do not fear the spirits of our dead. When there has been love during life, why should that change after death? When one of us departs we have a feast of honor, and then we send the spirit to its journey among the stars. On clear nights we feel the singing of their love. Did you not feel it last night?”

“I watched the stars—and I felt that they accepted me.”

“And your brother? Did you feel his light?”

Madoc shook his head. “Perhaps if I could have found the place where they buried him …”

“You must let him go. For the sake of Zyll you must let him go.”

“
When will come the Old Man’s daughter?
” Madoc asked. “I felt the People on the Far Side of the Lake to try to find my brother’s grave, and in the forest I was quickly lost. For days I wandered, trying to make my way back, straying farther and farther from them. I was nearly dead when Zyll came hunting the healing herbs which are found only in the deepest part of the forest.
When will come the Old Man’s daughter? Where is found the heart’s desire?
Here, Reschal.”

“You will let Gwydyr go to his place among the stars?”

“
Does it call for tears or mirth? Shall we sing for death or birth?
” Madoc sang softly. “I have shed my tears for the past. Today
is for mirth. Why have you dragged me through tears again?”

“So that you may leave them behind you,” Reschal said, and raised his withered arms to the sun. The lake, the shore, the rock, the forest behind, were bathed in golden light, and as though in response to Reschal’s gesture there came a sound of singing, a strange wild song of spring and flowers and sunlight and growing grass and the beating of the heart of all of those young and in love. And Madoc’s tears were dried, and thoughts of his lost companions and brother receded as the singing filled him with expectancy and joy.

The children of the tribe came first, wearing chains of flowers which flapped against their brown bellies as they danced along. Madoc, shining with delight, turned from the children to the Old One. But Reschal’s eyes were focused on the unseen distance across the lake and he was listening, not to the children, but to that sound for which he had been straining before. And now Madoc thought that he, too, heard a throbbing like a distant heartbeat. “Old One, I hear it now. What is it?”

Reschal gazed across the water. “It is the People Across the Lake. It is their drums.”

Madoc listened. “We have heard their drums before, when the wind blows from the south. But today the wind blows from the north.”

The old man’s voice was troubled. “We have always
lived in peace, the People of the Wind and those Across the Lake.”

“Perhaps,” Madoc suggested, “they come to my wedding celebration?”

“Perhaps.”

The children had gathered around the rock and were looking expectantly at Madoc and Reschal. The Old One raised his arm again, and singing drowned out the steady beating of the drums, and the men and women of the tribe, ranging from coltish girls and boys to men and women with white hair and wrinkled skin, came dancing toward the great rock. In their midst, circled by a group of young women, was Zyll. She wore a crown on her head to match Madoc’s, and a short skirt made entirely of spring flowers. Her copper skin glowed as though lit by the sun from within, and her eyes met Madoc’s with a sparkle of love.

Nowhere, Madoc thought, could wedding garments be more beautiful, no matter how much gold was woven into the cloth, nor with how many jewels the velvets and satins were decorated.

The flower-bedecked crowd parted to let Zyll come to the rock. Madoc stooped for her upraised hands, and gently lifted her so that she stood between him and Reschal. She bowed to her father, and then began to move in the ritual wedding dance. Madoc, during the year he had spent with the Wind People, had seen Zyll dance
many times before: at the birth of each moon; at the feast of the newborn sun in winter; at the spring and autumn equinox, dance for the Lords of the lake, the sky, the rain and rainbow, the snow and the wind.

But for the Wind Dancers, as well as for all the other Wind People with their various gifts, there was only one Wedding Dance.

Madoc stood transfixed with joy as Zyll’s body moved with the effortless lightness of the spring breeze. Her body leapt upward and it seemed that gravity had no power to pull her down to earth. She drifted gently from sky to rock as the petals fall from flowering trees.

Then she held out her hands to Madoc, and he joined in the dance, marveling as he felt some of Zyll’s effortlessness of movement enter his own limbs.

At first, when Zyll had found Madoc half dead in the forest, and had brought him to the Wind People, they had been afraid of him. His blue eyes, his pale skin, reddened by exposure, his tawny hair, were unlike anything they had ever seen. They approached him shyly, as though he were a strange beast who might turn on them. As they became accustomed to his presence, some of the Wind People proclaimed him a god. But then his anger flashed like lightning, and though there were some who said that his very fieriness announced him the Lord of the storm, he would have none of their attempts to set him apart.

“Stay with your own wind gods,” he commanded.
“You have served them well, and you live in the light of their favor. I, too, will serve the Lords of this place, for it is their pleasure that I am still alive.”

Gradually the Wind People began to accept him as one of themselves, to forget his outer differences. The Old One said, “It is not an easy thing to refuse to be worshipped.”