The Paradise War (58 page)

The realization settled on my shoulders like a dead weight.

For the world was no longer the same. Frail, colorless, weary, the world before me displayed a tentative, temporary appearance. Everything— trees, rocks, earth, and sky and dull winter sun—seemed not to exist as much as merely to linger—like a fast-fading memory. There was no feeling of import or solidity, nothing at all substantial about the world I saw. Ephemeral, impermanent, it looked as if it were a transitory phenomenon—a mirage that might dissolve at any moment.

And I could see that Weston and Professor Nettleton had changed as well, subtly but perceptibly: their features were coarser, their bodies smaller and more ungainly. They appeared slighter, less physically present somehow. There was a peculiar ghostlike quality to them, as if they clung to corporeal existence by the slenderest of threads, as if the atoms making up their bodies might relinquish their cohesive attraction and go flying apart at the least provocation.

Even as I stood looking on, the man Weston rose abruptly and ducked into the tent. As soon as he was out of sight, I lurched forward and the movement caught Nettleton’s eye. His gaze shifted. An expression of frank amazement appeared on his owlish face.

“Oh, no!” he whispered sharply.

He clearly did not recognize me. Why should he? I was dressed like something out of the
Mabinogion
—from the silver torc at my throat to the leather buskins on my feet, breecs, siarc, and bright-checked cloak. He was waiting, yes; but he was obviously not expecting a Celtic warrior to come shuffling out of the cairn.

I stepped cautiously forward, aware of the disturbing effect my appearance was having on him. “Do not be afraid,” I said.

Nettles gaped at me in uncomprehending shock. Thinking he had not heard me, I repeated myself, and only then realized that I was speaking ancient Celt. It took me a moment, and not a little effort, to find the English words.

“Please,” I said, “do not be afraid.” My voice sounded harsh and clumsy in my ears.

If my Celtic speech puzzled him, my native tongue terrified him. Professor Nettleton, trembling like a terrier, put out his hands as if to hold me at arm’s length away from him.

“It—it’s all right,” I said. “I have returned.”

The professor peered at me through his round-rimmed spectacles in the wan, uncertain light. “Who are you?”

I cannot describe the devastation wrought by those three innocent words. Sharper than spears, they stabbed me through. The gorge rose in my throat. I gasped and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes.

“
Who . . . are . . . you?
” the professor repeated slowly, adopting the carefully exaggerated speech one would use in speaking to a foreigner, or a madman. Then he said the same words again, in Welsh, which only made me feel more of an alien being.

It was a moment before I could utter a sound. “I—I am . . . I am . . . ,” I stammered. The words clotted on my tongue. I could not make myself speak my name.

In dawning realization, the professor edged forward. “Lewis?” he asked softly. “Is that you?”

Indeed, the professor’s question was better than he knew. Who was I? Was I Lewis, the Oxford graduate student who had been sucked into an impossible Otherworldly adventure? Or was I Llew, the changeling who stood with one foot in both worlds?

Nettles crept closer, darting a quick glance to the tent behind him.

“Lewis?”

“Y-yes . . . it is Lew—Lewis,” I said thickly, stumbling over my own name. Wrapping my tongue around the language was an effort.

“I have been watching,” Nettles said. He stepped closer, his eyes taking in my appearance—he gazed at me as if at a wonder. “I have been waiting.”

“I’ve returned,” I told him. “I’ve come back.”

“Look at you,” he breathed in an awed voice. His eyes glowed like a child’s at Christmas. “Look at you!” He raised a trembling hand to touch my cloak. “Why . . . it—it’s miraculous!”

I had encountered astonishment before, and the same expression of awestricken disbelief—on the faces of the warriors on the wall and in the eyes of the gathering in Meldryn Mawr’s hall. I knew my sojourn in the Otherworld had changed me; and judging from the reactions of so many, my contact with the Singing Stones in the Phantarch’s chamber had changed me still more. But standing in the chill, thin light of this shabby, pathetic world, I understood at last: I was not simply changed, I was transformed.

I spread my arms and looked down the length of my body. My hands were hard, my arms muscled and strong; my legs were straight, powerful, my torso lean, tight, and my chest broader, my shoulders heavier. I reached a hand to my face and felt a straighter nose, a stronger chin, and more forceful jaw. But the change was more than physical. There was the aura, the glory reflected from my encounter with the Song.

Lewis was gone. Llew stood in his place.

“What has happened?” Nettles asked, an eager light animating his face. “Did you find Simon? Did you stop him? What was it like?”

How could I tell him what I knew? How could I even begin to describe the Otherworld, let alone put to words all that had happened?

I stood gazing at my friend, a welter of emotions swirling inside me. He looked so weak, so fragile, and so insignificant. Embarrassed by the visible poverty of his crabbed, miserable existence, I wanted to raise him up, to make him see what I had seen, to know what I knew. I wanted him to sleep under Albion’s undimmed stars and to feel the fresh wind of virginal green valleys on his face; I wanted him to hear the soul-stirring melody of a True Bard’s harp, to smell the salt sea air of Ynys Sci, and savor the exquisite sweetness of honey mead; I wanted him to feel the firm rock of Prydain’s matchless mountains under his feet, to see the bright fire-glint on a king’s golden torc, to exult in the glory of the good fight. I wanted to show him all these things and more. I wanted him to breathe deep of the higher, richer life of the Otherworld, to drink from the cup that I had tasted . . . to hear the incomparable Song.

I longed to show him the paradise I had discovered in Albion, but I knew that I could not. Try as I might, I could never make him understand. The gulf between us was too great. Words alone could never span the distance, nor describe the cruel destruction yet threatening that fair world.

But I was spared the need to answer, for Professor Nettleton laid his hand to my arm and leaned close. “Unfortunately, we do not have much time. The others”—he jerked his head in the direction of the tent, and I knew who he meant—“will return at any moment. They are very close to a breakthrough—they know about the portal here. I have contrived to join their excavations so that I can stay close at hand. But we cannot let them find you here like this.”

“Where is Simon?” I asked, my tongue awkward and clumsy in my mouth.

“Simon?” The professor seemed mystified. “But I have not seen Simon. Only you have returned.”

Even as I stood there, struggling to understand, I noticed that the feeble light had dimmed yet further; it was darker now than just a few moments ago . . . odd.

I glanced over my shoulder toward the cairn . . . the glen was sinking into darkness, shadows deepening. A crow circled slowly overhead, silently watching . . . Then I realized that it was not dawn at all—but dusk. In this world the day was rapidly approaching twilight and the time-between-times. Soon the portal inside Carnwood Cairn would open.

And if Simon had not returned . . .

I saw the signs and felt the elemental tidepull of the moment in my blood and in my bones. And I heard the Song—streaming across the blinding distance between the worlds. I heard the Song and knew that the war for paradise extended to this world and to this very moment. And I had, now, to choose.

Nettles was watching me. I swung towards him and raised my hand in a simple farewell. Then I turned and walked to the ancient cairn. I heard Professor Nettleton call out behind me: “Good-bye, Lewis! God go with you!”

And then another voice—Weston’s voice, excited, alarmed, shouting, “Wait! Stop! Stop him, quick!” I heard frantic footsteps on the frozen earth behind me. “No! Please! Turn back!”

But I did not stop. I did not turn back. For I had heard the Song of Albion, and my life was no longer my own.

ALBION FOREVER!

BY STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD

S
ean Connery has a tattoo on his forearm that is rarely visible in any of his films: a small blue banner bearing the words
Scotland Forever
—a slogan that expresses the fierce pride and patriotism of so many of his countrymen. The meaning goes well beyond mere words. It is at once a defiant battle cry, a poignant expression of love for the auld country, and (as in that memorable scene from
Braveheart
), a flip-of-the-kilt to the hated English and all would-be foreign occupiers.

Since the first volume in the Song of Albion series was published in 1991, I have received hundreds—thousands?—of letters and e-mails from readers who have found in these books some articulation of a related sentiment:
Albion Forever.
I cannot claim credit for those who have decided to engrave the words indelibly on their bodies’ canvasses, but I do take great pleasure in knowing that the story of Llew Silver Hand has resonated so strongly with Britons of all backgrounds, North Americans, Europeans, and readers in many far-flung lands. More than any other book or series I’ve written in the past twenty-five years, these volumes have the most stalwart following— including the publisher of this new edition, who read them in his twenties and was determined to publish them himself when he had the chance.

If any author knew why certain books succeeded where others failed, he would apply the magic formula without deviation, and reap the benefits of a sure thing. But this is not the case, so I have had years to ponder the enduring appeal of these books, whose readers sometimes report reading them yearly, incorporating certain passages into marriage or funeral ceremonies, naming their children after characters in the story, and making pilgrimages to the real and imagined sites in the manifest and Otherworld of Albion.

I have concluded that the potent emotional charge many readers experience derives from three interwoven factors, the first of which is the “story vehicle,” or the means by which the reader moves through the tale. Here we have a first-person narrative—which I enjoy writing— by an everyman named Lewis who is, at the outset, sufficiently ordinary to seem familiar to any reader, male
or
female. He is a person from our own here-and-now world with the sort of frustrations and problems most of us can relate to, and who inhabits a recognizable niche in modern society: an American graduate student in Oxford who should be getting on in life, but has yet to settle. Our viewpoint character, Lewis, hasn’t yet found his joy, his passion, his meaning and role in life.

This vehicle allows Lewis’s thoughts and feelings to become
our
thoughts and feelings. We know him, because he is us. And, since the narrative is written in the first-person voice, we are inside his heart and head on every page. Instead of reading
about
a legendary hero doing heroic things in a legendary kingdom, Lewis’s exploits become our own.

This strong identification proved to be a powerful conduit for the underlying substance of the story, and the second important factor: Celtic myth and legend.

I—a Nebraskan, whose native myths revolved around cowboys and Indians—had virtually stumbled upon and into the whole grand universe of Celtic myth and legend while researching and writing my King Arthur series, The Pendragon Cycle. While writing the first three books in that series, I was picking up numerous references to various ancient tales peculiar to the British Isles which, while not specifically about Arthur or Merlin, nevertheless informed the spirit and background of the various tales and legends. Upon completion of
Taliesin
,
Merlin
, and
Arthur
, I was eager to turn my attention to what I considered the raw material of the Arthurian legend: its Celtic roots.

Deeply impressed by the imagery of Celtic folklore and the ancients’ love of beauty and ostentation, as well as the solid sensibility of the voices I heard speaking to me across the centuries, still fresh and still potent after so many years . . . it was my ambition to write something that would honor this tradition.

Of course there were problems—and opportunities. The myths themselves were broken: fragments only. Although it is almost miraculous that anything at all survives from a culture that stubbornly refused to write down anything (for most of their history, the Celts distrusted the written word), still I had to deal with the fact that there are but a handful of even partially complete stories surviving from the past fifteen or sixteen centuries. The rest are mere incidents, story segments, and shards of larger works now lost; nothing like a whole cycle of interconnected tales existed. However, there were some recurring characters and tantalizing clues to suggest tenuous connections to other stories, and even intriguing references to incidents in tales now forgotten but previously well-known.

It would never work to patch together the diverse pieces in hopes of re-creating a plausible whole. Rather, it was obvious from the beginning that my approach would be to create a new myth out of the old—basically, to fashion a brand-new suit of clothes using those ancient scraps. Of necessity, I became something of a scavenger, picking up bits of this and that with which to work: names, incidents, odd bits of lore. And I set about capturing the Celtic mythos in a contemporary story, but one that used the characters, settings, and culture the ancient Celts themselves would have recognized.