“Please,” soothed Avallach, “it is not my intention to insult you further, which is why I do not encumber my gift with any conditions.” He grinned happily. “Your acceptance imposes no obligation.”
“But such a gift,” remarked Hafgan. “One cannot accept a gift of this value without incurring obligation, directly or subtly.”
“Why not? What does the size of the gift matter? It is not a tenth of what I own-and even if it was half my kingdom I would feel no differently. I simply want you to have it.”
“Why?” asked Cuall, “So we will fight for you when the Northmen come screaming down from Pictland?”
Avallach confronted him bluntly. “That is as much insult to me as my unthinking offer was to you. Still, I do admit that an alliance between our two peoples would be advantageous, and I will seek it earnestly. But not through guile, and not through gifts.”
Elphin looked around him and caught Taliesin’s eye; Tal-iesin nodded silently. “It is not easy to put aside the clanways of a hundred generations, nor scarcely less difficult to lay down a king’s pride,” Elphin replied evenly. “Another time, another place, I would not accept your gift, for it would shame me. But a king without land is no king at all; so for the sake of my people I will accept your gift, Lord Avallach.”
Cuall shook his head in amazement. His mouth flapped once, twice, and then closed again speechless, Hafgan studied those around him through half-closed eyes and allowed himself a private smile. Avallach slapped his knees and shouted, “That was well done, Lord Elphin! Land or no, you are a king, and the equal of any I have met. I welcome you as neighbor and friend.”
The clansmen, who had been following this involved exchange in their own secret way, burst out in cheer for their unexpected good fortune and for the honor paid their king. Suddenly the camp was awash in laughter and celebration. A harp was produced and thrust into Taliesin’s hands. He jumped up and began to strum and sing, gathering other voices to his own until the whole camp rang in soaring, Celtic song.
Avallach roared with laughter, his dark head thrown back, white teeth flashing through his beard as his great shoulders shook with delight. Even Belyn and Maildun managed fishy grins as they watched the celebration commence.
During a lull in the singing, when the food was being served from the steaming caldrons, Taliesin found a moment to take his father aside. “Good fortune, eh, Taliesin? Less a surprise to you, I suspect, than to the rest of us.”
Taliesin shook his head. “Avallach’s gift was his alone. I had no part in it.”
“And nothing to do with the saving of his daughter?” Elphin asked, favoring Taliesin with a knowing look.
“She required little help from me. I arrived in time to scatter the sea-wolves, nothing more. They were only too happy to flee for their lives when I came upon them.”
“Remarkable,” said Elphin. He turned his head to view Charis across the fire where she stood with Rhonwyn and several other women, helping to fill bowls with food. “A woman with beauty and spirit-a treasure, Taliesin.” He looked at his son, noted the glimmer in the clear dark eyes, and grinned. “A worthy bride for a Cymry lord. Do you wish me to speak to her father?”
“Indeed,” replied Taliesin, his voice tight. “I have thought of nothing else since I saw her.”
“Then we waste time jawing on about it. I will speak to him now.”
“Now?”
“What better time? Let us further the alliance between our people with a marriage!”
With that Elphin strode off. Taliesin watched as his father made his way around the fire to Avallach, who stood talking to Cuall and Hafgan. He saw Elphin join the group, say a few words, and gesture in his direction. He saw Avallach’s head come up and turn toward him. He saw his father’s mouth moving, and he saw first surprise and then shock on the Fisher King’s face. The smile never left Avallach’s lips but passed directly into a grimace of anger.
He saw Avallach’s head swing around as words were spoken to his father and Elphin’s wide smile dwindle into a look of bewildered dismay. Then the Fisher King turned stiffly and disappeared into the darkness. A moment later a call for the king’s horses sounded. Maildun appeared beside Charis and took her by the arm. He saw Charis’ frantic look over her shoulder as she was pulled away.
Taliesin saw all this as he might have seen it in a dream-each detail sharp and clear and dreadful in its finality. Then his legs were moving and he was running around the circle of the fire. He caught Charis as she was being handed into the saddle. Her face in the firelight showed anxiety and confusion. “What happened?” she asked in a harsh whisper. “Avallach is angry.”
“We must talk,” said Taliesin urgently, stepping close when Maildun moved to his own mount.
“Charis!” Maildun shouted from his horse. “Come away.”
“We must talk, Charis!” insisted Taliesin.
“Meet me in the orchard,” she whispered, turning her horse in line with the others. “At sunrise.”
CHAPTER NINE
Taliesin rose just before dawn the next morning and rode to the Glass Isle to meet Charis. The night had been cool and the night vapors still lay on the marsh, rising from the narrow streams of open water to drift in undulating waves through the land, waiting for the warm rays of the morning sun to melt them with their touch.
Upon reaching the orchard, Taliesin dismounted and tied his horse to a branch, and then walked among the blossom-bound trees. The night’s dew on leaves and flowers glittered in the early light like little stars late to leave the sky. The long grass was wet, and water seeped down the smooth, charcoal-dark trunks of the apple trees and dripped from the branches in a slow, incessant rain to vanish in the soft green Below. The air, though cool, was already thick with the scent of the blossoms.
As Taliesin strolled the wide pathways of the grove, he gradually became aware of a sound winding through the trees, faint but clearly audible. On strands of liquid melody, a wordless song was weaving itself around branch and bole-as much a part of the grove as the pale pink blossoms themselves. He followed the sound, hoping to discover the singer, thinking that perhaps Charis had come after him and entered the orchard by another way.
The source of the sound proved elusive, however, and it was some time before he could locate it, searching first this way and then another, only to have it disappear and come at him from another way. Finally, stooping beneath a low branch, he saw a fresh-made beech bower erected in the center of the orchard and before it a maid with hair like morning light, dressed all in green and sitting on a three-legged stool beside a tripod. Suspended from the tripod was a cauldron over a small, smokeless fire. The caldron was round and made of a strange metal with a deep red luster, and its sides were etched with the figures of fantastic animals.
The maid sang softly to herself as she dispersed the rising steam with a fan made of blackbird wings. Every now and then she would reach into a bowl at her feet and bring out a leaf or two which she dropped lightly into the boiling pot. Taliesin watched her for a little while before she turned her head to regard him, coolly and without the least hint of surprise in her green eyes or in her honeyed voice when she said, “Greetings, friend! You are early to the grove this morning. What brings you here?”
Taliesin lifted the branch and stepped forward. “I have arranged to meet someone,” he replied.
“And so you have.” The maid smiled, but whether with satisfaction or at some privately amusing thought he could not tell. “Come close, singer,” she said, dropping another leaf into the pot. “Let us talk together.”
The maid bore an uncanny resemblance to Charis and was just as beautiful-although her beauty hinted at something cold and inhuman: the icy lacework of autumn frost on a summer rose perhaps, or the frozen elegance of a spring snowfall. “I had no wish to disturb you,” he said.