The days passed, and each one saw the parchment record grow-through autumn’s cool harvest and into the chill deeps of winter. Sometimes in the snail hours of the night Charis wakened to take up her pen again, writing to hold back the fear always clawing at the back of her mind. Taliesin rose with the first faint threads of daylight to find her wrapped in a soft white fleece, hunched over the parchment roll, her fingers stained with ink, scratching away furiously.
“You should sleep,” he told her.
She smiled sadly and said, “Sleep is no comfort to me, my love.”
She wrote through the too-short hours of thin daylight but more often by glowing candlelight, surrounded by coal-filled braziers. She wrote through the long empty winter nights, taking up her pen even as Taliesin took up his harp in the hall below. She wrote with his song drifting up to her like music from another world as time crawled slowly by.
One day near to the coming thaw of spring Charis felt the first pang of birth. Taliesin, sitting in the chair next to the bed, saw the wing of fear pass across her features. “What is it, my soul?”
She lay her head back against the wooden post of the bed, spreading her hands across her round Belly. “I think Heilyn should come now.”
The old midwife took one look at Charis and, pressing a hand to her stomach, said, “Pray to your god, girl-the birthing time has come.”
Charis took Taliesin’s hand and squeezed it hard. “I am afraid, Taliesin.”
He knelt beside her and stroked her hair. “Shhh, remember your vision-who was the woman carrying the child if it was not you?”
“There will be no men under my feet,” interrupted Heilyn. “Take yourself away from here-the farther away the better. And fetch Rhuna on your way. That will be more help to your lady wife than anything else you can contrive.”
Taliesin made no move, but Charis said, “Do as she says- only stay near so that you can hear your child’s first cry.”
“Go you now and bring Rhuna,” said Heilyn, pushing him toward the door.
The painful spasms established a regular rhythm, the muscles of her distended stomach contracting and subsiding for a time, only to begin contracting again. This continued through the morning, with Taliesin hovering in the doorway until at last Rhuna called for Eiddon to come and take the bard away.
“These things take time,” Eiddon told him. “Let us go hunting. It will do us both good to feel the cold wind on our faces.” Taliesin stared uncertainly at the chamber door, which had been closed against him. “Come on-we will return before anything happens.”
Taliesin agreed reluctantly and they left the birthing to the women. Bundling furs against the cold, they departed into the hills. The hunting was a dismal sham; Taliesin could not give himself to it and rode recklessly, scaring the game before they could come upon it. Eiddon cautioned him but did not greatly mind whether they caught anything or not, as long as it kept Taliesin occupied. Although they rode long, Eiddon made certain they were never out of sight of the villa’s hill.
At last, however, Taliesin reined up, saying, “I think it is time to go back.”
Eiddon put a hand on the bard’s shoulder. “You, my friend, never left.”
“I have been disagreeable?”
“Not disagreeable, but I have ridden with more companionable hounds.”
Taliesin turned his eyes toward the hill once more. “We will ride together another time, Maelwys Vawr. But my child is being born today and I must be there-although Heilyn holds out little enough hope.”
“If so, it is only because she has seen much, Taliesin,” Eiddon replied. “But we will go back now if you like.”
They rode back to the villa and Taliesin went directly to the chamber above the hall. Lord Pendaran and Henwas stood outside talking quietly to one another. Taliesin came and clasped the king by the hands. “There is no word yet,” Pendaran told him, answering the unasked question in Taliesin’s eyes. “But such is the nature of these things.”
“I have made everything ready that can be made ready,” said Henwas. “There is nothing to be done but wait.”
Evening came on, and the hearthfires were banked and can-dletrees brought to the chamber. When the door was open, Taliesin glimpsed his wife lying in the bed, Heilyn beside her holding her hands. He thought to go in, but as he watched, her face convulsed in agony. Charis cried out, thrashing her head from side to side. Rhuna stepped from the room with an armload of blood-soaked bedclothes, and the door was quickly closed again.
“Drink some wine,” offered Pendaran. “It will calm you.”
Taliesin accepted the cup but did not raise it. Charis cried out again and Taliesin winced. “I can do nothing here,” he said, setting the cup down. “I must go somewhere quiet to pray.”
“The temple has been empty these many months,” Hen-was remarked. “Perhaps your god would not mind if you went there to meet him.”
Leaving the hall, Taliesin walked around the villa and up the little mound to the small temple. The square building stood dark in the falling twilight, its square bulk rising from the mound like a crown of stone. The sky was pale green and the air briskly cold. The gray cloud-bound day had given way to a clear, crisp night, aad overhead a curlew voiced its lonely cry as it darted among the treetops.
The inner temple was filled with dry leaves that rustled as Taliesin entered. There as an altar at one end of the cell; otherwise the building was empty. Taliesin went to the altar and after a moment pushed it over. It gave a hollow crash as it toppled against the wall and dust puffed up-the residue of unanswered prayers grown thick like the leafmold under foot.
Taliesin sat down on one of the altar stones, crossed his legs, and put his elbows on his knees, lowering his chin to his clasped hands. He could feel the lingering presence of other gods-their whispered voices brittle like the restless sigh of the dry leaves on the floor. “Father God,” he said aloud, “you who are greater than all the gods worshiped here before now, hallow this place with your presence and hear my prayer. I pray for the one you have given me, that she may be safely delivered of the child now mat the hour of her trial is come upon her. Give her strength and courage, Father, as you give all who turn to you in need.”
He remained in the temple, waiting on the god and watching through the open windows as the night drew its veil over the land. A scattering of early stars shone as hard icepoints in the sky when he finally emerged to stand for a moment on the threshold of the temple, his breath hanging in the air above him, glowing faintly in the light of the rising moon.
Away in the distance, on the crests of the hills, fires burned brightly, creating a necklace of sparkling flame around Mar-idunum. Taliesin gazed through the crystalline air at the fires and remembered what day it was: Imbolc, the first day of spring.
On those far hilltops people observed a rite far older than the circles of stone wherein burned their celebration fires.
King Winter, Lord of Death, was vanquished and driven from the land, forced by the Goddess Dagda to return to his underworld throne, leaving earth ready to receive the seed of new life once more.
He remembered all the times he had stood on freezing hilltops and watched the same fires that now burned into the chill darkness. There had been a time, not long past, when he would have kindled those flames himself. “Tempt me not,” he whispered, “I follow a living God now.” He watched for a moment longer and then hurried back to the villa.
In the time between times when the world hangs between darkness and light, the time when all forces are held in balance for that briefest of moments, the child was born.