The Elez stream flowed from the dreaded bog called Yeun Elez, trickling away to become, in a farther land, a merry, friendly stream that gave no hint of its origin at the very mouth of the nether regions. Here was the Youdig, a seething, sucking hole where anything dropped therein is sucked down. Many believed it the mouth of Purgatory or something worse, where we Bretons had cast witches and other malefactors. A treacherous quagmire supposed by legend to be unfathomable.
Here one might see the dreaded Ankou, the death spirit, female and a skeleton, that we Druids knew to be the survival of the Death-Goddess of the dolmen builders. Where the Elez flows from the quagmire it was a dark and sullen stream, its banks haunted by black dogs with eyes of fire who rushed upon travelers who chanced upon the region unawares. Here were the haunts of werewolves and vampires, all manner of unclean things.
No tracks saw I, either of man or beast except a lone raven who dipped a black wing at me with a hoarse cry of warning as it flew by. A gloomy, cloud-shrouded land where the soil was thin over rocks, and clumps of dark woodland gleamed with the eyes of teursts, those black and fearsome things, or of gorics, evil creatures only a foot high who guard treasures in secret caves or ruined castles.
At each stream crossing I rode wary of nightwashers who wash the clothes of the dead in streams at night, and who drag unwary travelers into the water to help them wash. If the traveler refuses, or attempts to escape, they break his arms and leave him to drown. Evil things they are, with hollow eyes that stare from black and empty sockets into one’s very soul.
As a child I had been brought to this place by my mother’s uncle, himself a Druid, a priest, diviner, and magician, said to be possessed of all human as well as supernatural wisdom. It was said he could bring storms or illness, and I, who had been bred in the tradition, was taught some of what he knew.
Darkness came, lightning flashed weirdly in the sky, and I came at last to the Youdig. Getting down from my horse, I unleashed the body of Tournemine and carried my grisly burden to the stone only we Druids knew, the stone that marked the only path to the Youdig.
Thunder rolled among the sullen hills, and rain whispered among the dark pines and over the empty moor. Step by step I carried his body along the narrow way, each step taken by number, each with care until directly before me lay the pit.
It was flat and ugly water, occasionally bubbling, rank with corruption. This was the heavy lip of the nether world. Holding Tournemine’s body high above my head, I held it so until lightning flashed, then with all my strength I heaved it outward, and it fell, landing with a splash on the dark, ugly water.
The arms flailed loosely as it fell; the black body struck the surface lit green by lightning. It lay there, the rain falling upon the wide-open eyes, and slowly the body sank, the face upturned and last to submerge, dark water flowing into the open mouth and eyes. As it disappeared, one pale hand remained above the mud and water, seeming to clutch one last time at the life it left behind and to all things of this earth.
“There, Tournemine, destroyer of homes, murderer of women, evilest of evil creatures, there by my promise you sink into the Youdig, swallowed by the morass of evil.”
After a long moment alone, I stood, a dark figure amid the darkness, then I turned and picked my way back. My horses, frightened by this place, welcomed me eagerly. Mounting, I rode away down the faint track to the north.
Not until long after did I know that a son and a nephew of Tournemine had fled the castle during the fight, going east to the forest of La Hunaudaye, where deep in a trackless wood, haunted by wild boar and deer, they built another castle that may be seen there yet.
Westward lay my homesite, and that night rain fell on its roofless floors, its fallen stones. The house where I had grown up. Before our time it had been a Roman villa, and who knew what else before that. In Brittany all things are timeless, and whatever lies before is only a page in what lies before that and before that. I, trained in the ancient lore, knew history before history, where no beginning is, and no end will be.
We know there are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond. We of the Druids know the lore we have withheld and kept for ourselves alone, passed down father to son, from times beyond memory. We few hold this knowledge in trust for those who can grasp the awfulness and incompleteness of time.
Along the high trail, among the barren hills, along the lonely moors I rode with my two horses. Lightning flashed, then ceased, and thunder died rolling away to mutter among the far-off hills. The rain ceased to fall, and I drew up and removed my helmet to let the last few drops fall upon my head.
I was empty now; Tournemine was dead. He who knows his enemy is dead feels a loss as much as he who buries a friend, and the thought of Tournemine had long haunted my memory.
Nothing lay behind me now but the shell of a ruined house and the grave of my mother. The moors where I had run and played and hunted as a boy, they lay behind me.
My way was eastward. My father might yet live, and if so he must be found, whatever the circumstances, whatever the cost.
Now I could go as a warrior goes, with a debt paid, the blood of my mother avenged. Eastward.
First, the caravan, the fulfillment of my duty to Safia. And so I rode from the vile sink of the Youdig, nor did I look back.
29
There is a saying that one should “Trumpet among the elephants, crow among the cocks, bleat among the goats.” For a man traveling in a strange land it is good advice.
Far to the north was the caravan with my goods, and with Safia. It was many days distant, and days add to miles. The people were strange to me, and I to them, and in many languages the words for stranger and enemy are identical.
My armor was battered, my clothes nondescript, but my horses were of the finest, although disguised somewhat by their winter coats. My sword was of the best, and in my pocket there was gold.
Yet a man is often betrayed by his heart, and lout that I am, I am often taken in by those who plead, by those who suffer. It is a wise man who tends to his own affairs, but who is wise always? One is betrayed by his own memories of hardship.
There was a night when I arrived at an inn. Stabling my horses, I went inside.
A fire blazed on the hearth, the bare board tables were wiped clean, and a few men sat about, not talking, looking downcast and beaten. When I entered they glanced up, then shifted their eyes quickly, for such as these had no good to expect from a roving soldier. The poor devils had been robbed often enough.
The host brought, at my order, a loaf, a hand of cheese, and a haunch of mutton, good fare for the time. “Wine,” I said, “a flagon of wine.” My eyes went past the innkeeper and it seemed the sitting men were lean in rib and flank, hollow in the cheek. They stared hungrily, then averted their eyes. “Join me,” I said, “there will be a glass for each.”
They came, willingly enough, accepting the wine and glancing hungrily at my mutton, so I cut a slice for each.
“It is little enough we find to eat or drink,” one fellow said, “a gruel of millet and a carrot or two. They take our sheep and cattle, and today they took our honey which we planned to take to the fair.”
“We are tenants,” another said, “but you would not believe it to see how we are treated. The maire, the agent who presides over the estates, he takes all, and the lord never comes to see how we fare.”
“The honey,” the first man said, “was from bees we hived of an evening, and the bees gathered nectar from the heather. The maire had no claim upon it, but it was taken, and you may be sure the lord will never see it.”