Free Warriors of Camlann by N. M. Browne Page A

finding anyone in the state he was in, of that one small thing he was certain. He had reached the limits of his strength. But it was good to stop for a moment, to rest. He relaxed a little more. Taliesin said nothing but watched Dan with that strange, still intensity of his, and Dan knew he would have to ask, knew that the older man had always been miserly with his secrets. Dan was afraid of what Taliesin might tell him and yet he hated to be ignorant. He tried to keep his tone light as if nothing mattered.
    â€˜So, how did you do it then?’
    Taliesin looked at Dan, his expression inscrutable. Dan thought he was afraid, felt it strongly, but could not understand why. What had Taliesin to fear from a question – less, surely, than Dan had to fear from the answer?
    â€˜What do you mean, Daniel?’
    â€˜How did you leave Macsen’s time after me and end up here before me – wherever
here
is? It doesn’t make sense.’
    There was a long pause, several heartbeats, andTaliesin sighed. Dan knew he was gathering his internal resources, fighting his fear. He still did not know why.
    Taliesin’s voice was quiet, undramatic, as if he deliberately eschewed his bardic skill to tell the bald truth. ‘After you left Craigwen, things went well with us. Macsen managed to consolidate his position and there was peace. The loss of Rhonwen played on his mind – whatever else she was and is, she remains his sister and he loves her. He begged me to find a way to get her back and to learn more about the Veil – it had after all proved useful to him, to us. Years passed for me while you and Ursula were outside time, inside the Veil where there is no time. I travelled in search of the remaining druids, to find the secret of raising the Veil. I learned what I could of the fading magic of the druids and their link with the Veil, their knack of calling it and guiding it. I used it to travel to many places in times very different from Macsen’s and my own.’
    Taliesin’s eyes seemed very dark and old to Dan as he listened, excited in spite of himself.
    â€˜I saw things – I couldn’t tell you.’ Taliesin gave him a quick glance from under bushier eyebrows than Dan remembered.
    â€˜At last, I found a man who could help me – Igris, a philosopher, wiser than any druid, from a people who had explored the potential of the Veil over the ages. He found Rhonwen for me. She was at what he called a“turning point” – a moment in time when big changes depend on small events. He said that the descendants of my people, the Combrogi, were fighting for survival and that Rhonwen was hastening our end.’
    Taliesin looked at Dan again with appeal in his eyes. ‘The prophecy you heard me speak of – that was real. Igris talked in terms I rarely understood, but one night we sat in something like a sacred grove and he explained quite clearly that if no leader emerged to guide us, all that the Combrogi had been, all that we had loved and fought for would not just die, but vanish as if it had never been. That our land, Island of the Mighty, that I love, would be possessed by others.
The Bear
is the key to our survival but he could not or would not say who
The Bear
was.’
    â€˜What was the prophecy? I heard you say it but I didn’t understand.’
    â€˜Igris told me, “As the bear on the high hillside protects the cubs, so
The Bear
of Ynys Prydein, the Island of the Mighty, protects its own. Remember
The Bear
and cherish it, for when
The Bear
is gone the hillside falls.”’
    â€˜Well, that could mean anything!’
    Taliesin’s smile was brief and humourless. ‘I don’t think members of his order were supposed to interfere in the ways of the worlds revealed to them through the Veil, though they were allowed to comment – as long as they did it poetically and—’
    â€˜Uselessly?’ Dan finished for him.
    Taliesin’s