Daughter of the Witcher Ch. 02

And they were the learned ones and told me that it could not be. Since I was not yet a king, and was told that it had been my king's word which bound the slave to the holy men, I could do little, other than treat him well.

What was not known was that he came from a tribe and place far away and he had powers which the holy men knew nothing of. He was a holy man himself and he taught me the name. A Dru-wid, he said to me that he was once but he said that his kind was very hidden, even among the other kinds of them. When I was to leave the next spring, he begged me to take him along, saying that he needed me. What he wanted was not to be permitted, though I had done what he wanted many nights. He grew a little cold to me and I was a young fool and far too trusting.

"What was not to be permitted," Louhi asked, "That you were lovers, two men?"

He seemed to look a little troubled then over how to explain it, not knowing the ways of their people. "Caitts are Picts and Picts come from Celts, long ago, I learned. The same wild and free people are inside the ones here now. Celts pushed back the Romani long ago with the Picts as their allies, among many others. To love another man was not a strange thing, even for a king with a wife. But a king and a slave ..."

He shook his head before he went on.

"One day, not long before the boat came to bring me back, he told me that he had been told to assist me in a secret rite, and so I went with him. He took me to the holy place and bade me to lie on a stone bed. The next thing that I knew was that I had been cast asleep and when I awoke, he was gone. What I told to the holy men meant nothing to them and they said that they had not sent for me and knew nothing of it. When I was the king finally and if I'd known that he was there, I would have sent men to free him and bring him here so that he could make a better life. No one could find him and I sent for word often about him.

I returned to my land and in time, I became king over the Caitts and a little later I met and wed my wife.

But, ... there are always those who plot and scheme and it was only later that I learned that my 'slave' and lover had been one of the whispered voices which guide the easily-led. I was beset one night as I traveled to one of our towns. My loyal guards were cut down, though they slew many of the ones who attacked us. I slew the rest and went back to Caithness alone. What I found there was that my family had been killed by others the same night that I had been attacked. It took little time to find the ones and I slew them myself.

But in my questioning, I learned of someone who had played a hand in a very quiet way, and the more that I sought to know, the more I learned of a person whom I knew once far to the north on an island.

As much as I searched, I found no more of the man who had acted out of anger to me, taking the closest ones to me in his jealous hate of me.

I had the chance many times but I never wanted to seek for love anymore."

He shrugged sadly, "I dared not in any event. With no finish to it, I knew that a man such as he was could do it again and no one deserves that death after trusting their safety to me. I had him hunted, but he was never found."

He drew a deep breath and went on, "I died an old man, and then I awoke far to the north in a cairn. I, ... I do not know how I came to be there. I awoke in darkness and knew nothing for a time until I tried to get out. I had to feel my way for so long in blackness until I remembered that I, ... I made my own light then."

He looked at them, expecting some reaction, but they only looked at him nodding so he went on.

"I saw that there were the bones of a man on a shelf and by what I saw, I knew my own clothing on him, but it was little more than dust – and that is what it became when I touched it. The bones had fallen apart from each other even before that.

All around in the cairn, I saw the bones of men, older bones with long-rusted and ruined swords, but I saw that they had not been laid to rest. They were as they fell, and it seemed to me that they died fighting, though who or what they fought - none of it was clear to me.

I looked at myself and I saw me as I was at perhaps twenty-one summers. I had no clothing and I was cold."

He thought for a moment and said, "I knew myself, not by looking at a shiny thing to see my face though I have done it since and I look as I did then. I could find nothing shiny like that there. I saw my own body as I remembered it and when I looked to see, I saw markings the same as what I had before I was wed. Most of what I wore was put on me by my wife after. She was very good at things like this. But there in the cairn, what I saw was what I had before I was wed."

He drew up his cloak and they saw that the markings on his skin there on his arms were in patterns. Louhi moved forward and with a questioning look at Taran, she opened his cloak and they stared at his chest there under his simple shirt.

Annikki was off the bed and urging him to take his shirt off. As Louhi turned to set his cloak down, she heard that her friend was almost not giving Taran the time to remove his shirt – or was struggling with it herself in her haste.

But she heard the gasp and as she turned around, she felt a gasp of her own escape her throat.

The patterns on the skin over his arms resembled bracers, above the wrists and around his biceps – both arms. There were swirls and stripes over the crowns of his shoulders and stars and suns on him here and there. In the center of his chest, they saw a bare circle, small and just over the very center. But radiating outwards from that, there were many wavy rays to the design. Though they were bolder and darker, they seemed to match the style of the ones there on his face.

"What are they, Taran?" Louhi asked.

He didn't shrug or anything. He only said, "It was the way of my kind to do this. I see little or nothing of it anymore among the ones here – and this place – this town has come and now stands on the place where the southernmost town of ours sat."

He looked at his own arms, "This is little to what my wife made on me and is only one color – it comes from woad driven in through the skin with needles.

If there was a fight to be made with another tribe or people, we also covered ourselves with paste made from woad to make the skin blue. Mostly, we used woad for the blue though we could make a red dye from another plant. In battle, most did not do this. There is enough red which comes of it then anyway.

That day when I awoke, I slowly found my way to the outside, because the cairn was made in a way that I knew and remembered. That was when I knew that it was once a hall and not a barrow, which it was when I awoke. I was at the entrance and I looked back. Then it was that I saw and knew the place – for it was where I had gone to learn. The bones around me were not those of fighting men. They were the holy men of that place.

I found the door closed in and there was earth behind it, and digging a little, I felt the cold air of the night and went out.

Much had changed and I saw lights from the edges of a doorway. After a time, I saw the size of the place and it was something that I did not remember to be there. It looked strange to me, but I found washing there left from the day.

I had nothing, so I took for me only what I needed and returned to my hole.

I closed up the door and sought for what I knew must have been there, and I found a passage. It led me to the broch of the place-"

He looked and saw no comprehension.

"As broch is a tower, made in northern places as a storehouse and refuge which may be defended and to keep attackers out. They are round in their shape and are built using flat stones piled up in a ring. Inside one ringed wall, there always stands a second wall. The top is thatched and can be used for storage and living in for many people until it is either breached – which almost never happens – or until the attackers give it up and go.

I went to the upper stage and could look out from under the thatching. I also found and took some dried fish and returned once more to my burial cairn, for by then I knew that it had been used as such for me.

Where I'd lain was a holy place to my people and when I knew it from living there before, there were perhaps a hundred living there and many more over the island. By the time that I awoke, my people were gone and the land belonged to Northmen.

The old man that I saw on the shelf wearing my things and lying with my rusted weapons was me. I know not how any of this came to be.

In the morning, I watched as much as I could while I hid and I learned that Northmen now lived and kept cattle there and grew things to eat for themselves on my land. But from what I saw, there were eighty or so, some women and children in the number and one of their boats lay in the water close by.

But most of the men were leaving and from what I knew of them, they often go to plunder.

I was there less than a fortnight when a boat came to trade and though most of the men on it were Northmen by their words, I heard three who spoke in a tongue between them such as was used by Caitts though it was also different. When I showed myself to them, they saw this – "

He pointed to what he wore on his chest, "and two at least knew of it, this mark. It was to mark me as a king, and they said that it could not be. But they spoke for me to the Northmen and I stayed on the boat until they left the next day. The boat carried me to Innse Orc, and thence to the land here. I left when I had the chance because the Northmen wanted to sell me as a slave, but they left it too late.

I was over the side when we came close enough to the shore and running for my freedom when I heard them search for me. As I ran in the trees, I heard horsemen coming for me to hunt me down. I slew first one with my hands and then the other with the sword of the first and I took what I needed before I rode away on a horse of theirs, leading the other horse. I sold one and rode the other after the second town that I came to.

It took me a year to journey south again and when I came to the place that I once ruled, everything had passed and I am alone."

He looked down again, "I am no king as I was. I am a Caitt where none live anymore, being mixed and forgotten among others. I find little anymore of the - Picts, as they say that I am. I am nothing."

"No," Louhi said, "not nothing, Taran. Only not a king, though I see that you are kingly in your way. What say you, Nikki?"

"Very kingly," she nodded.

He was astonished and only sat there a moment. "You, ... you believe me. I see it in your eyes. But why? What I have said is nothing like what is known to men."

"I hope that I do not say it in a wrong way, "Annikki began, "But I am a learner to Louhi in many things. She is, ... Do I say it?" she asked as she looked at Louhi.

Louhi smiled, "I saw how you looked, Taran. Look at me and see me better. If you have trouble, then use your light. We knew what was meant. I see much more in you than I saw when you came to the door. What you went to learn, I know as well; Annikki too for I teach her, though she comes late to what I learned at my father's hand as a little girl."

He watched the two candles in the room sprout little flames and begin to burn. Without a thought, he knew that it had been Annikki's will which had caused it.

Louhi held out her hand toward the fireplace and looked at Taran.

Taran looked from one to the other and then the fireplace burst into flame at a glance from him.

Annikki got to her feet smiling as she came to Taran.

"I must confess that I had hopes of knowing you this well," she said, "but only afterwards, talking from one to another in the bed. I hope that you know that we favor you, Cruthne."

Taran looked startled and it caused Louhi to laugh as she got up and pulled the singlet over her head and tossed it onto the hanging rack for the clothes. She stepped behind Annikki and lifted the girl's long shirt a little slowly. For her part, Annikki began to sway her hips because it caused her bottom to slide against Louhi.

"You see? Women hear what is said to them always. We have found a man who is something as we are. Do you choose to look back, Taran, or do you choose to look ahead?

Let us sit and eat, friend, and then we might see what else might be shared between us three."

"Are all of your kind like you?" he asked, "Are there many with the gift?"

"No," Annikki said and they both laughed together, "We would have been dead long before we left if they were."

The bed was just not going to work as a place to eat, so Louhi found a broom and carefully swept the hearth as Annikki and Taran moved the food and ale there. When she was a little satisfied, Louhi moved some of the bedding there and the three of them ate together with the talk between them becoming much easier to manage and understand. Louhi sat cross-legged as did Taran. She was a little careful about it, not wanting things to go quite yet to where there was an obviously combined thought between them all.

She wanted to know more and so now and then, she found little ways to touch Taran, usually by managing to have her knee just making light contact with his leg. She couldn't go deeply into him, not wanting to alarm him to any degree, but she just tried to make do with what came to her from him through it.

What she got disturbed her a little, not from a personal level, but rather for him. She didn't know if she was right just yet, but if her impressions were more or less correct, then she wondered what he'd do with the information if it were spelled out to him.

Simply put – and she was far from done with her gentle seeking, but,...

The man here with them was not Taran mac Entifidich.

He was a replica.

This was a copy created from the essence of the real man with all of the physical features and most of the traits of the original, complete and accurate at the time when it had been made, though she thought that there were inconsistencies in the bits of his memories which came to her. Her next thought was more correct. He was a copy made from an already-existing man who had been changed to suit the likeness of the original as closely as possible.

What sat there next to her was a living human, though she reasoned that if he was stood next to the original at the same point in his life, there would likely have been a few differences evident if one looked closely. Whoever this had been when he'd been born would have only resembled the original in as close a way as it had been possible to do from a magical standpoint and the rest of the features had been tailored to suit.

She looked away to consider it at a point where he and Annikki were laughing a little over one of her jokes to him.

Well he hadn't been made out of mud and feathers, she thought. There had to have been another life involved. A man such as this at that age and in a place where life was often hard, cold, and windblown would likely have had personal involvements and relationships just to stay alive most often, and with a start, Louhi saw that this man had once had a young wife as well, though perhaps not in a formal way.

She didn't know anything of it from that long-dead woman's side, but she thought that there must have been at least some grief to have had a man like him and then had him ripped out of their lives together.

Another touch of her knee against his and she had the memory of the girl, eighteen and wiry, a thin barely-pretty thing named Gretta who'd loved her man with all of her heart and never forgot her good fortune in him – until he was gone one day and she was almost alone on an island at the far end of the chain. That was as much as Louhi could get and with a little thought, she knew that she was now in so deep that she was sifting through things which had lain torn and cast aside when the changes had been made to this man.

Other memories came to her in a jumbled fashion at first, though she did see the one responsible. He was slender and not tall with dark, almost black and slightly curly hair which the constant winds of the place kept in a state of unruliness. The face that she saw was attractive in his way, with dark brown eyes.

The next thing to flash into her mind had been the purpose – the reason to effect such sweeping and tragic changes to several other lives connected to the original king and this man.

Out there in the cool wind, in a place which never grew very warm in summer where no trees grew and survival was often based on what one could catch for one's self, whether it was the eggs of a nesting seabird or one of the many sheep of the place, or even a crude bucket of shellfish from the shore; out there, a love had grown between two men – though it had never been completely mutual.

The one who she saw now in Taran's memories had been prepared to give his all for their lives. It hadn't been an exactly unrequited thing, since the original Taran had reciprocated, of course.

But Taran had seen it as something between them which had been a physical attraction and though he'd liked it and participated almost as eagerly as the other, it had also been out of a feeling of sadness for the first slave that he'd really ever gotten to know really well, and out of a desire to make what he'd seen a little better. To Taran's mind afterward, it had been an error, since he hadn't, but should have thought things through to the only possible end. The one which had occurred; where he'd left to go back to being a man who was being prepared to rule and where the other one continued his life as a slave who was by then a runaway one.

Louhi watched as the view became one of that place from the point of view of walking to seek for someone and then hearing the call of his name on the wind. The view shifted as though he'd turned to the sound and she watched the other young man run to him and stand wanting to feel his embrace. It happened and she felt the thin arms encircle his neck as the smaller man stood on his toes for the kiss that they shared and she felt the thin fingers as they crept into his clothing to hold and stroke the growing hardness while she felt Taran's own fingers reach to pull up the robe and slide over his flanks.

She saw them together in a room which pre-dated them by thousands of years, built into the face of a hill overlooking the sea. It was deserted then, since none of the Caitts had been there to see it but the two lovers. It was the place where they went for their trysts and she saw the other boy's face from above and behind, facing back over his shoulder but with his pretty eyes closed in bliss as the original Taran plowed into him slowly and gently before this copy had been taken out of his own life.

There were other memories there, and it became difficult to set 'original Taran's' memories – which had been imported into this man from the 'unnamed and stolen Taran's' memories.

One had been a king-to-be who had once had a ten month dalliance with another man and had gone on to become the king with his queen and their children and ...

The one here had been taken out of his life; had his thoughts, knowledge of himself and most of his accessible memories changed in an effort to be what the other man had wanted for a mate in the absence of the real thing.

She saw that it hadn't gone in quite the desired way a lot of the time. This 'Taran' could be put back to sleep for months at a time, and it happened often for a couple of reasons. The replica had to be kept on the island or the enchantment would dissolve. That was a big one in itself.

The other well, ...

Though this 'Taran' had been made to be compliant, there was no drive there from within or he'd have just wandered off looking for his wife and wondering how he'd come to be there with a man who wanted so much of only one kind of thing from him where there had been none of that sort of interest in him to begin with. He did what he was told to do and that was all. There was never any love out of the breast of the man sitting next to Louhi for the man who'd never gotten past what had been and then found the way to have an almost mindless human to service the wants of his body.