Taran Wanderer (13 page)

“An egg!” cried Llonio, taking it from her, raising it aloft, and peering as if he had
never seen one before. “An egg it is! The finest the brown hen's given us! Look at the
size! The shape! Smooth as glass and not a crack on it. We'll feast well on this, my
friends.”

At first Taran saw nothing extraordinary in the egg which Llonio praised so highly; but,
caught up by the man's good spirits, Taran to his own surprise found himself looking at
the egg as though he, too, had never seen one. In Llonio's hands the shell seemed to
sparkle so brightly, to curve so gracefully and beautifully that even Gurgi marveled at
it, and Taran watched almost with regret as Goewin cracked such a precious egg into a
large earthen bowl. Nevertheless, if Llonio intended sharing it among his numerous family,
Taran told himself, the fare would indeed be meager.

Yet, as Goewin stirred the contents of the bowl, the children crowded one after the other
into the cottage, all bearing something that made Llonio call out cheerily at each
discovery.

“Savory herbs!” he cried. “That's splendid! Chop them up well. And here--- what's this, a
handful of flour? Better and better! We'll need that pot of milk the goat's given us, too.
A bit of cheese? Just the thing!” Then he clapped his hands delightedly as the last and
smallest child held up a fragment of honeycomb. “What luck! The bees have left us honey
from their winter store.”

Goewin, meanwhile, was busy popping all these finds into the bowl and, before Taran's
eyes, the contents soon filled it nearly to the brim. Even then, his surprise did not end.
Goewin deftly poured the mixture onto a sheet of metal which, Taran was quite certain, was
nothing else but a warrior's shield hammered flat, and held it over the glowing embers.
Within moments; the scent of cooking filled the cottage, Gurgi's mouth watered, and in no
time the farm wife drew a dappled golden cake nearly as big as a cartwheel from the
fireplace.

Llonio quickly sliced it into pieces and to Taran's amazement there was not only enough
for all but some left over. He ate his fill of the most delicious egg he ever tasted--- if
egg it could now be called--- and not even Gurgi could eat more.

“Now then,” said Llonio, when they had finished, “I'll see to my nets. Come along, if you
like.”

The Weir

W
HILE GURGI LINGERED
in the cottage, Taran followed Llonio to the riverbank. On the way, whistling merrily
through his teeth, Llonio stopped to peer into the baskets, and Taran noticed one of them
held a large bee hive undoubtedly the source of the honey which had sweetened Goewin's
cake. The rest, however, stood empty. Llonio merely shrugged his shoulders.

“No matter,” he said. “Something will surely fill them later. Last time a flock of wild
geese flew down to rest. You should have seen the feathers left after they'd gone. Enough
to stuff cushions for every one of us!”

By now they reached the river, which Llonio named as Small Avren since, farther south, it
flowed into Great Avren itself. “Small it is,” he said, “but sooner or later whatever you
might wish comes floating along.” As if to prove his words he began hauling vigorously at
the net staked along the bank. It came up empty, as did the fishing lines. Undismayed,
Llonio shrugged again. “Tomorrow, very likely.”

“How then,” Taran exclaimed, feeling perplexed as he had ever been, “do you count on
baskets and nets to bring you what you need?” He looked at the man in astonishment.

“That I do,” replied Llonio, laughing goodnaturedly. “My holding is small; I work it as
best as I can. For the rest--- why, look you, if I know one thing, it's this: Life's a
matter of luck. Trust it, and a man's bound to find what he seeks, one day or the next.”

“Perhaps so,” Taran admitted, “but what if it takes longer than that? Or never comes at
all?”

“Be that as it may,” answered Llonio, grinning. “If I fret over tomorrow, I'll have little
joy today.”

So saying, he clambered nimbly onto the weir, which Taran now saw was made not to bar the
flow of water but to strain and sift the current. Balancing atop this odd construction,
seeming more cranelike than ever as he bobbed up and down, bending to poke and pry among
the osiers, Llonio soon gave a glad cry and waved excitedly.

Taran hurriedly picked his way across the dam to join him. His face fell, however, when he
reached Llonio's side. What had caused the man's joyful shout was no more than a discarded
horse bridle.

“Alas,” said Taran, disappointed, “there's little use in that. The bit's missing and the
rein's worn through.”

“So be it, so be it,” replied Llonio. “That's what Small Avren's brought us today, and it
will serve, one way or another.” He slung the dripping bridle over his shoulder, scrambled
from the dam, and with Taran following him set off with long strides through the grove of
trees fringing the river.

In a while Llonio, whose sharp eyes darted everywhere at once, cried out again and stooped
at the bottom of a gnarled elm. Amid the roots and for some distance around, mushrooms
sprouted abundantly.

“Pluck them up, Wanderer,” Llonio exclaimed. “There's our supper for tonight. The finest
mushrooms I've seen! Tender and tasty! We're in luck today!” Quickly gathering his finds,
Llonio popped them into a sack dangling from his belt and set off again.

Following Llonio's rambling, halting now and then to cull certain herbs or roots, the day
sped so swiftly it was nearly over before Taran realized it had begun. Llonio's sack being
full, the two turned their steps back to the cottage, taking a path different from the way
they had come. As they ambled along, Taran caught his foot on a jutting edge of stone and
he tumbled head over heels. “Your luck is better than mine,” Taran laughed ruefully.
“You've found your mushrooms, and I, no more than a pair of bruised shins!”

“Not so, not so!” protested Llonio, hastily scraping away the loam partly covering the
stone. Look you, now! Have you ever seen one so shaped? Round as a wheel and smooth as an
egg. A windfall it is that needs only the picking up!"

If a windfall, Taran thought, it was the hardest and heaviest he had stumbled on, for
Llonio now insisted on unearthing the flat rock. They did so with much digging and heaving
and, carrying it between them struggled back to the farmhold, where Llonio rolled it into
the shed already bursting with an odd array of churn handles, strips of cloth, horse
trappings, thongs, hanks of cord, and all the harvest of his weir, nets, and baskets.

Over the cookfire, the mushrooms, eked out with the leftover griddle cake and a handful of
early vegetables the children had found, simmered so deliciously that Taran and Gurgi
needed no urging to stay for the repast. As night fell Taran welcomed the family's
invitation to rest by the hearth. Gurgi, stuffed and contented, began snoring instantly.
And Taran, for the first time in many days, slept soundly and dreamlessly.

The next morning was bright and crisp. Taran woke to find the sun high, and though he had
meant to saddle Melynlas and be on his way he did not do so. If Llonio's weir had yielded
little the day before, the night current had more than made up for it. A great sack of
wheat had somehow become tangled with a cluster of dead branches which served as a raft
and thus had floated downstream undampened by the river. Goewin, without delay, brought
out a large stone quern to grind the grain into meal. All took a hand in the task, the
children from eldest to youngest, even Llonio himself; Taran did his share willingly,
though he found the quern heavy and cumbersome, as did Gurgi.

“Oh tiresome millings,” Gurgi cried. “Gurgi's poor fingers are filled with achings, and
his arms with strainings and painings!”

Nevertheless, he finished his turn; although by the time enough meal had been ground,
another day had nearly sped by, and once more Llonio urged the wayfarers to share his
hospitality. Taran did not refuse. Indeed, as he stretched by the fire, he admitted to
himself he had secretly hoped Llonio would suggest it.

During the next few days, Taran's heart was easier than it had been since he chose to
abandon his quest. The children, shy with him at first as he with them, had become his
fast friends, and frolicked with him as much as they did with Gurgi. With Llonio, each day
he visited the nets, the baskets, and the weir, sometimes returning empty-handed and
sometimes laden with whatever strange assortment the wind or current brought. In the
beginning he had seen no value in these odds and ends, but Llonio found a use for nearly
all. A cartwheel was turned into a spinning wheel, parts of the horsebridle made belts for
the children, a saddlebag became a pair of boots; and Taran shortly realized there was
little the family needed that did not, late or soon, appear from nowhere; and there was
nothing--- an egg, a mushroom, a handful of feathers delicate as ferns--- that was not
held to be a treasure.

“In a way,” Taran told Gurgi, “Llonio's richer than Lord Gast is or ever will be. Not only
that, he's the luckiest man in Prydain! I envy no man's riches,” Taran added. Then he
sighed and shook his head. “But I wish I had Llonio's luck.”

When he repeated this to Llonio, the man only grinned and winked at him. “Luck, Wanderer?
One day, if you're lucky, I'll tell you the secret of it.” Beyond that, Llonio would say
no more.

At this time a thought had begun taking shape in Taran's mind. Nearly all of Llonio's
finds had been put to one use or another--- save the flat stone which still lay in the
shed. “But I wonder,” he told Llonio, “I wonder if it couldn't serve to grind meal better
than the quern...”

“How then?” cried Llonio, greatly pleased. “If you think it can, do as you see fit.”

Still pondering his idea, Taran roamed the woods until he came upon another stone of much
the same size as the first. “That's a stroke of luck,” he laughed, as Llonio helped him
drag it back.

Llonio grinned. “So it is, so it is.”

During the several days following, Taran, with Gurgi's eager help, toiled unceasingly. In
a corner of the shed he set one stone firmly in the ground and the other above it. In
this, he laboriously hollowed out a hole and, using the leftover harness leathers, in it
he affixed a long pole that reached up through an opening in the roof. At the top of the
pole he attached frames of wood, over which he stretched large squares of cloth.

“But this is no quern,” Gurgi cried when at last it was done. “It is a ship for boatings
and floatings! But there is no ship, only mast with sails!”

“We shall see,” Taran answered, calling Llonio to judge his handiwork.

For a moment the, family stood puzzled at Taran's peculiar structure. Then, as the wind
stirred, the roughly fashioned sails caught the current of the breeze. The mastlike pole
shuddered and creaked, and for a breathless instant Taran feared all his work would come
tumbling about his ears. But it held fast, the sails bellied out and began turning, slowly
at first, then faster and faster, while below, in the shed, the upper stone whirled
merrily. Goewin hastened to throw grain into Taran's makeshift mill. In no time, out
poured meal finer than any the quern had ground. The children clapped their hands and
shouted gleefully; Gurgi yelped in astonishment; and Llonio laughed until the tears ran
down his cheeks.

“Wanderer,” he cried, “you've made much from little, and done it better than ever I could!”

Over the next few days the mill not only ground the family's grain, Taran also struck on a
means of using it as a sharpening stone for Llonio's tools. Looking at his handiwork,
Taran felt a stirring of pride for the first time since leaving Craddoc's valley. But with
it came a vague restiveness

“By rights,” he told Gurgi, “I should be more than happy to dwell here all my life. I've
found peace and friendship--- and a kind of hope, as well. It's eased my heart like balm
on a wound.” He hesitated. “Yet, somehow Llonio's way is not mine. A spur drives me to
seek more than what Small Avren brings. What I seek, I do not know. But, alas, I know it
is not here.”

He spoke then with Llonio and regretfully told him he must take up his journeying again.
This time, sensing Taran's decision firmly made, Llonio did not urge him to stay, and they
bade each other farewell.

“And yet,” Taran said, as he swung astride Melynlas, “alas, you never told me the secret
of your luck.”

“Secret?” replied Llonio. “Have you not already guessed? Why, my luck's no greater than
yours or any man's. You need only sharpen your eyes to see your luck when it comes, and
sharpen your wits to use what falls into your hands.”

Taran gave Melynlas rein, and with Gurgi at his side rode slowly from the banks of Small
Avren. As he turned to wave a last farewell, he heard Llonio calling after him, “Trust
your luck, Taran Wanderer. But don't forget to put out your nets!”

The Free Commots

F
ROM SMALL AVREN THEY WENDED
eastward at an easy pace, halting as it pleased them, sleeping on the turf or sheltering
at one of the many farmsteads among the rich green vales. This was the land of the Free
Commots, of cottages clustering in loose circles, rimmed by cultivated fields and
pastures. Taran found the Commot folk courteous and hospitable. Though he named himself
only as Taran Wanderer, the dwellers in these hamlets and villages respected his privacy
and asked nothing of his birthplace, rank, or destination.

Taran and Gurgi had ridden into the outskirts of Commot Cenarth when Taran reined up
Melynlas at a long, low-roofed shed from which rang the sound of hammer on anvil. Within,
he found the smith, a barrel-chested, leather-aproned man with a stubbly black beard and a
great shock of black hair bristly as a brush. His eyelashes were scorched, grime and soot
smudged his face; sparks rained on his bare shoulders but he seemed to count them no more
than fireflies. In a voice like stones rattling on a bronze shield he roared out a song in
time with his hammer strokes so loudly that Taran judged the man's lungs as leathery as
his bellows. While Gurgi cautiously drew back from the shower of sparks, Taran called a
greeting, scarcely able to make himself heard above the din.

“Master Smith,” he said, bowing deeply as the man at last caught sight of him and put down
the hammer, “I am called Taran Wanderer and journey seeking a craft to help me earn my
bread. I know a little of your art and ask you to teach me more. I have no gold or silver
to pay you, but name any task and I will do it gladly.”

“Away with you!” shouted the smith. “Tasks I have aplenty, but no time for teaching others
to do them.”

“Is time what lacks?” Taran said, glancing shrewdly at the smith. "I've heard it said that
a man must be a true master of his craft if he would teach it.

“Hold!” roared the smith as Taran was about to turn away, and he snatched up the hammer as
if he meant to throw it at Taran's head. “You doubt my skill? I've flattened men on my
anvil for less! Skill? In all the Free Commots none has greater than Hevydd Son of Hirwas!”

With that he seized the tongs, drew a bar of red-hot iron from the roaring furnace, flung
it on the anvil, and set to hammering with such quick strokes that Taran could hardly
follow the movement of Hevydd's muscular arm; and suddenly there formed at the end of the
bar a hawthorn blossom perfect in every turn of leaf and petal.

Taran looked at it in astonishment and admiration. “Never have I seen work so deftly done.”

“Nor will you see it elsewhere,” Hevydd answered, at pains to hide a proud grin. “But what
tale do you tell me? You know the shaping of metal? The secrets are not given to many.
Even I have not gained them all.” Angrily he shook his bristly head. "The deepest? They
lie hidden in Annuvin, stolen by Arawn Death-Lord. Lost they are. Lost forever to Prydain.

“But here, take these,” ordered the smith, pressing the tongs and hammer into Taran's
hands. “Beat the bar smooth as it was, and quickly, before it cools. Show me what strength
you have in those chicken wings of yours.”

Taran strode to the anvil and; as Coll had taught him long ago, did his best to straighten
the rapidly cooling iron. The smith, folding his huge arms, eyed him critically for a
time, then burst into loud laughter.

“Enough, enough!” cried Hevydd. “You speak truth. Of the art, indeed, you know little. And
yet,” he added, rubbing his chin with a battered thumb nearly as thick as a fist, “and
yet, you have the sense of it.” He looked closely at Taran. “But have you courage to stand
up to fire? To fight hot iron with only hammer and tongs?”

“Teach me the craft,” Taran replied. “You'll have no need to teach me courage.”

“Boldly said!” cried Hevydd, clapping Taran on the shoulder. “I'll temper you well in my
forge! Prove yourself to me and I'll vow to make a smith of you. Now, to begin...” His eye
fell on Taran's empty scabbard. “Once, it would seem, you bore a blade.”

“Once I did,” Taran answered. “But it is long gone, and now I journey weaponless.”

“Then you shall make a sword,” commanded Hevydd. “And when you've done, you'll--- tell me
which is harder labor: smiting or smithing!”

To this Taran learned the answer soon enough. The next several days were the most toilsome
he had ever spent. He thought, at first, the smith would set him to work shaping one of
the many bars already in the forge. But Hevydd had no such intention.

“What, start when half the work is done?” Hevydd snorted. “No, no, my lad. You'll forge a
sword from beginning to end.”

Thus, the first task Hevydd gave Taran was gathering fuel for the furnace, and from dawn
to dusk Taran stoked the fire until he saw the forge as a roaring, flame-tongued monster
that could never eat its fill. Even then the work had only begun, for Hevydd soon put him
to shoveling in a very mountain of stones, then smelting out the metal they bore. By the
time the bar itself was cast, Taran's face and arms were scorched and blackened, and his
hands were covered with more blisters than skin. His back ached; his ears rang with all
the clank and clatter and with Hevydd's voice shouting orders and instructions. Gurgi, who
had offered to pump the bellows, never faltered even when a cloud of sparks burst and flew
into his shaggy hair, singeing it away in patches until he looked as if a flock of birds
had plucked him to make their nests.

“Life's a forge!” cried the smith, as Taran, his brow streaming, beat at the strip of
metal. “Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You'll be roasted, smelted, and pounded, and
you'll scarce know what's happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal's worthless till
it's shaped and tempered!”

Despite the weariness that made him drop gratefully at day's end to the straw pallet in
the shed, Taran's heart quickened and his spirits rose as the blade little by little took
shape on the anvil. The heavy hammer seemed to weigh more each time he lifted it; but at
last, with a joyous cry, he flung it down and raised the finished sword, well-wrought and
balanced, gleaming brightly in the light of the forge.

“A handsome weapon, master smith!” he cried. “As fair as the one I bore!”

“What, then?” Hevydd exclaimed. “Have you done your work so well? Would you trust your
life to a blade untried?” He flung out a burly arm toward a wooden block in a corner of
the forge. “Strike hard,” he commanded. “The flat, the edge, and the point.”

Proudly Taran raised the sword high and swung it down to the block. The weapon shuddered
with the force of the blow, a sharp crack and clang smote his ears as the blade shattered
and the shards went flying in all directions.

Taran shouted in dismay and could have wept as he stared, disbelieving, at the broken hilt
still clutched in his hand. He turned and gave Hevydd a despairing glance.

“So ho!” cried the smith, not at all distressed by Taran's wretched and rueful expression.
“Did you think to gain a worthy blade at first go?” He laughed loudly and shook his head.

“Then what must I do?” Taran cried, appalled at Hevydd's words.

“Do?” the smith retorted. “What else but start anew?”

And so they did, but this time for Taran there remained little of his joyous hopes. He
labored grimly and doggedly, all the more dejected when Hevydd ordered him to cast aside
two new blades even before they were tempered, judging them already flawed. The reek of
hot metal clung in his nostrils and flavored even the food he hastily swallowed; the
billows of steam from the great quenching tub choked him as if he were breathing clouds of
scalding fog; the ceaseless din almost addled his wits until indeed he felt it was
himself, not the blade, being hammered.

The next blade he shaped seemed to him ugly, dinted, and scarred, without the fair
proportions of the first, and this too he would have cast aside had not the smith ordered
him to finish it.

“This may well serve,” Hevydd told him confidently, despite the doubtful look Taran gave
him.

Again Taran strode to the block and raised the sword. Doing his best to shatter the
ungraceful weapon, he brought it down with all his strength. The blade rang like a bell.
This time it was the block that split in two.

“Now,” said Hevydd quietly. “That's a blade worth bearing.”

Then he clapped his hands and seized Taran's arm. “You've strength in those chicken wings
after all! You've proved yourself as well as you proved the blade. Stay, lad, and I'll
teach you all I know.”

Taran said nothing for a time, but looked, not without pride, at the new-forged blade.
“You have already taught me much,” he said at last to Hevydd, “though I lost what I had
hoped to gain. For I had hoped I was indeed a swordsmith. I have learned that I am not.”

“How then!” cried Hevydd. “You've the makings of an honest swordsmith, as good as any in
Prydain.”

“It cheers me to think that may be true,” Taran answered. “But I know in my heart your
craft is not mine. A spur drove me from Small Avren, and it drives me now. And so must I
journey, even if I wished to stay.”

The smith nodded. “You are well-named, Wanderer. So be it. I ask no man to go against his
heart. Keep the blade in token of friendship. Yours it is, more so than any other, for you
forged it with your own hands.”

“It's not a noble weapon, and thus it suits me all the more,” Taran laughed, glancing at
the ungainly sword. “Lucky it was that I didn't have to make a dozen before it.”

“Luck?” snorted Hevydd, as Taran and Gurgi took leave of him. "Not so! More labor than
luck.

“Life's a forge, say I! Face the pounding; don't fear the proving; and you'll stand well
against any hammer and anvil!”

W
ITH HEVYDD THE SMITH
waving a sooty hand in farewell, the companions traveled on, bearing northward along the
rich valley of Great Avren. A few days of easy riding through pleasant countryside brought
them to the edge of Commot Gwenith. Here, a shower suddenly began pelting down on them,
and the wayfarers galloped for the first shelter they could find.

It was a cluster of sheds, stables, chicken roosts, and storehouses seeming to ramble in
all directions, but as Taran dismounted and hastened to the cottage amid the maze of
buildings, he realized all were linked by covered walkways or flagstoned paths, and
whichever he followed would sooner or later have brought him to the doorway that opened
almost before he knocked on it.

“Come in, and a good greeting to you!” called a voice crackling like twigs in a fire.

As Gurgi scuttled inside to escape the teeming rain, Taran saw a bent old woman cloaked in
gray beckoning him to the hearth. Her long hair was white as the wool on the distaff
hanging from her belt of plaited cords. Below her short-girt robe, her bony shins looked
thin and hard as spindles. A web of wrinkles covered her face; her cheeks were withered;
but for all her years she gave no sign of frailty, as though time had only toughened and
seasoned her; and her gray eyes were sharp and bright as a pair of new needles.

“I am Dwyvach Weaver-Woman,” she replied, as Taran bowed courteously and told her his
name. “Taran Wanderer?” she repeated with a tart smile. “From the look of you, I'd say
you've indeed been wandering. More than you've been washing. And that's clear as the warp
and weft on my loom.”

“Yes, yes!” cried Gurgi. “See loom of weavings! See windings and bindings! So many it
makes Gurgi's poor tender head swim with twirlings and whirlings!”

Taran for the first time noticed a high loom standing like a giant harp of a thousand
strings in a corner of the cottage. Around it were stacked bobbins of thread of all
colors; from the rafters dangled skeins of yarn, hanks of wool and flax; on the walls hung
lengths of finished fabrics, some of bright hue and simple design, others of subtler
craftsmanship and patterns more difficult to follow. Taran gazed astonished at the endless
variety, then turned to the weaver-woman of Gwenith.

“This calls for skill beyond anything I know,” he said admiringly. “How is such work done?”

“How done?” The weaver-woman chuckled. “It would take me more breath to tell than you have
ears to listen. But if you look, you shall see.”

So saying, she hobbled to the loom, climbed to the bench in front of it, and with
surprising vigor began plying the shuttle back and forth, all the while working her feet
on the treadles below, hardly pausing to glance at her handiwork. At last she stopped,
cocked her head at Taran, fixed him with her sharp gray eyes, and said, “Thus is it done,
Wanderer, as all things are, each in its own way, thread by thread.”

Taran's amazement had grown all the more. “This would I gladly learn,” he said eagerly.
“The craft of the swordsmith was not mine. Perhaps the craft of the weaver may be. I pray
you, will you teach it to me?”

“That I will, since you ask,” replied Dwyvach. “But mind you: It is one thing to admire a
well-woven bit of cloth and another to sit yourself before the loom.”

“My thanks to you,” Taran exclaimed. “I'll not fear to labor at your loom. With Hevydd the
Smith, I didn't shrink from hot iron or the flames of his forge, and a weaver's shuttle is
a lighter burden than a smith's hammer.”

“Think you so?” Dwyvach asked, with a dry chuckle that sounded like knitting needles
clicking together. “Then what shall you weave to begin with?” she went on, eyeing him
sharply. “Taran Wanderer you call yourself? Taran Threadbare would be more like it! Would
you weave yourself a new cloak? Thus you'll gain something to put on your back, and I'll
see what skill you have in your fingers.”

Taran willingly agreed; but next day, instead of teaching him weaving, Dwyvach led the
companions to one of her many chambers, which Taran saw full nearly to bursting with piles
of wool.

“Tease out the thorns, pick out the cockleburs,” the weaver-woman ordered. “Comb it, card
it--- carefully, Wanderer, or when your cloak is done you'll feel it's made of thistles
instead of wool!”