A shadow passed close and Iamerge woke disoriented and a bit confused.  “Iamerge?” a voice said.  Iamerge opened his eyes and was blinded by the sun, lower now and shining directly in his eyes.

Blinking, he threw his arm over his eyes, “yes, I’m here.”

Seeing Iamerge’s discomfort, Gospels moved to his side, “I didn’t see you after Teirt, and I was afraid you’d left us. . .” Gospels seemed to run out of words or pause to consider, “. . .I had hoped to ask you about what you meant to do.”

Iamerge probably shouldn’t have been irritated by the monks prying, but the muddle he’d made of his morning angered him too much, “What, am I not allowed to leave this place? It’s really none of your business what I do.”  He instantly regretted his pique, but it was too late, the words were spoken and he saw Gospels harden at his harsh words.

Before he could speak to take back what he’d said he saw the battle on Gospel’s face and then, remarkably, a sheepish smile grew where there had been wounded pride, “You are quite right my friend.  I . . .  I have the habit of command from when I was Abbott you know.  And now, perhaps for pride, I’ve imagined some work that the Lord has for me through you.  I apologize.” 

Iamerge imagined he must have looked like a stranded fish, gaping and gasping, but before he could even be gracious enough to apologize himself or even to accept the one offered, the older man plunged on, “Might I sit with you Iamerge?”

“Certainly, oh please do.  I only meant. . .   I didn’t mean rather. . .     This morning did not go as I’d planned.”

Gospels plopped down beside him with a little groan, “Indeed, I was just surprised that you had business in the town.  And too, very happy that you’d returned seeing that you did.”

“I’m sorry for snapping at you Gospels, you’ve been so kind to me.”

“Yes, and brought you here and abandoned you.  It was about that which I wanted to talk to you.  As it happens, though I return as one of the brothers here. . .  Well, I’m not.”

“No?”

“No, I was the Abbott.  Then I abandoned my post on my personal quest and left many problems.  And no doubt the Lord would have sorted out all that in time, but my return has done nothing to further healing and much to hurt it.”

“I see. . .”

“In part perhaps, but the rest of it is that I am convinced that God led me to this seeming madness that I might be the instrument of your salvation.  In this I may be engaging in pridefulness. . .”

“But you did save me.”

“No.  No Iamerge.  In truth I was there to see it, but it was the hand of God that plucked you from the flood.  I see that.”

“How can you say that?  I would have died, if not drowned then starved, or of the cold.”

Gospels smiled, “No, I believe that the God who created the world and upholds that creation by his will could uphold you.  Out of the sea, out of hunger, it matters not.”  The old man laughed and leaned back against the tree with his eyes closed, “And so here I am and again I do not know why.  I pray thee God, please show me what to do.” 

Gospels seemed to fall into reverie or sleep.  All this was strange to Iamerge though it reminded him of time he had spent with the old Jewish book-keeper who had taught him letters and opened to him the world of books.

“Look, Gospels, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I expected to be able to get a small amount of money, some seed money to begin again.  I would never have left without saying good-bye.  Or left at all, I really don’t know what I’m going to do.  In fact I thought I might be able to repay your kindness to me.” Iamerge glanced over at Gospels to see if they had had any effect, he doesn’t believe a word I am saying and why should he?  I’m not sure what I would have done then and I don’t really know now.

“Before it seemed so easy.  I thought I would sail into the port, get my money, and begin a new life, but all that has changed as you know.  I’ve no boat, the money is in doubt, and the man I went to meet is dead and his son nearly ran me down riding out of town to some emergency.”

Gospels seemed to come back, he looked hard at Iamerge, “What sort of emergency was this?”

“I’m not really sure, I think it was an attack on a trade caravan, at least that’s what Jim Cooper thought.  It was he who pulled me out of the path of the riders returning to town and the one who told me that Rhaury Ui Birlinn rode back out with a small army of guards to see to it.”  Gospels clamoured to his feet, obviously agitated. ”Gospels what is it?” 

Gospels put his fingers in his mouth and shrilled a whistle that made Iamerge’s ears ring.  A young monk working in a field nearby rushed toward them.

She was asleep on the ground.  Around her were arrayed bags and travois, bales of hide and smaller lumps, like a play fort you might make.  At first it seemed she slept there alone.  I only had eyes for my friend.  I knew her face, but there was something quite different about it, longer and with sharper angles.  “Jella?”

She gasped and sat up, “Dream-walker?”  A couple of the lumps around her stirred and one sat up.  Oddly, this one looked almost as much like the Jella I remembered as did the one I had first identified as my friend.  Eerily this younger Jella pointed at me and laughed.  The little one spoke her strange tongue and was answered by my friend and yet not my friend. 

Jella threw back her covering of sleeping skins and rose.  I was not so young that I couldn’t tell that this was now not the girl I had first seen, but a woman.  She quickly covered the shift she slept in with buckskin and colorful woolens.

She looked me in the eye, and a smile twitched the corner of her mouth. Her generous lips did not move more than that, but I heard in my head, “You haven’t changed in all these years, I wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

I’m fairly certain I frowned, because I saw one reflected on her smooth adult face, “Ah, are you still in the sidhe?  But I left you the lamp and the flint. . .” I suspect my frown turned to a blush, because her smile returned and she said, “did you forget?”  She tsked, and I was uncomfortably reminded of my own mother, ” It should be right there at the beginning of the souterrain.”

“The tunnel thing?  I forgot that too.” I felt heat on my face and neck and was sure now that if I wasn’t blushing before I was now.  “It is so dark.”

“Well, the sun should be rising.  It may not light your way much, but it should help you find the center.  At mid-day the light should point you toward the souterrain as it is due north.”

I mumbled thanks.  She smiled.  Her hair was much longer than before.  It was braided in thick ropes with bits of bright bead and bright cloth or leather, I wasn’t sure.  I thought her very lovely.

“Dream-walker, meet my children.”  She reached over and roused the lump on the other side from the little Jella who stared at me with big blue eyes.  A tossle-haired boy sat up.  “My children, Oren and Joy.”

“How is it that you have lived your life and I am still in this hole?” I thought to her.

“I can’t say,” She looked puzzled, “Perhaps you can walk through time as well as through. . .” She shrugged.  “. . .You would know better than I.  Mostly I see the dead, you were the first living spirit I ever saw.  And until now the last as well.”

“You see the spirits of the dead?” I asked her as if I had not just heard her say so.  I blushed again.

She nodded, but otherwise took no notice of the question, “If you were outside of your time when first we met I wonder what time you are in now?  We have not lived in a sidhe in a six-year and more.  I think that one has been sealed for eleven years since I saw you that night.  There may have been another clan that took refuge, but we have avoided the old secret places, riding with the deer, to keep them safe and ourselves free.”

“To keep yourself free?  What threatens you?”

Her face was pale from sleep, but she paled still more, “Could you possibly have not met the foul ones, the devourers?” Jella frowned not in anger but with concern.  “Why are you alone in the sidhe, why haven’t your people come for you Dream-Walker?”

“I’m a scout, a searcher, I seek out new places for my people.  We have been at a great river to the south.”

“Are you saying that your people are not in the secret place?  They are still at the River?  In the open?”

“My people always live in the open. . .”

“No no, they must not.  The hordes of foul ones will kill and feed.  You should not have come into the north.  It has not been safe since before the giants came, and they are the worst of all.

“I can see you live on the land.  Why can you do it but my folk can not?”

“You do not know.  We track them, we watch.  We herd the deer away to the far north.  Dream-Walker, your folk must be warned.  There is a great gathering of the foul ones.  They are on the march.  It is all we can do to keep the herds from them, to stay alive and free from them.  If they find you they will gather and kill you all.  They are made to destroy man, we are food to them.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“We have gone into the far north.  That as much as any reason is why we left the sidhe that sheltered us during the long winters.  This new plague of monsters and giants is worse than that of ice.  You must warn your people, Dream-walker, you must warn everyone that the dark hordes will come and they must flee or die.” Jella’s face hardened, “Go to your people Dream-Walker.  It may be too late already. . .”

And as if her words had the power I was snatched away.  My friend and her family shrunk to a tan blotch among the smaller blotches of the herd and then they were gone. As I rose I saw the great whiteness of the frozen wastes beyond.  I flew across mountains, watching the white, ice-locked peaks dwindle.  I saw below me the stony knob and the hidden place in the bramble wood with its sidhe where I guessed I lay, but I did not stop nor slow though I drew near the ground. 

Along the river I saw a man.  He strode along the banks and suddenly I saw that he was immense.  He dwarfed the trees.  The giant man had hair of red and he looked at me as if he saw me.  I rushed along the river, there were creatures among the trees.  I saw an army of them, armored, and armed for battle. 

Then I was in our camp.  The creatures, foul ones Jella had called them, were all throughout it.  The morning sun cast evil glints off their cruel looking weapons dazzling my eyes.  My people were gone.  I looked to the sun.

This continues:  Concerning the Deer Riders from the second installment, Deer Riders Continued

It was dim when I woke,  the deep shade of a forest, not of night.  I could see, so, since it was my job to search and seek, that is what I did.  I walked along the path in the dimness, not really knowing what time of day it might be or what direction I was going.

I believed that the water and the valley I had seen was on my left, but I knew little more.  I hoped to come out to where I could see the sky, but I walked longer and then twice longer than I thought I should have.

I was frustrated.  I felt sure I had not missed a turning, but it seemed that I had.  I remembered walking past the steps rising out of the stream-bed and went back, now looking to my right where I expected to see the open vale.

This turning was more secret, but there it was, over grown and laid so that it could easily be missed by someone who didn’t know the way.

Then too, it was overgrown and I had to pick my way through invading brambles.  Slowly and painfully I made my way until fighting through a particularly thick stand of ropey, spine studded, whips I stepped out into a riot of flowers.

I wondered why I had not smelled them, but one moment there was only green leaves and pain, then the next I was beneath the sun, it was past mid-day, and surrounded by wild flowers of so many kinds that I could not ever remember seeing their like.

I looked back along my way and saw only a green wall of bramble-thorn.  I had a queasy feeling, I feared a magic other than that of growing things, but soon enough I found where I had come.  I tore at the brambles and pulled them aside to mark my way.  I looked around a little to get my bearings so that I could find this path again.

The green wall ran off, bending away each way.  Whereas I had come out into flowers, one way seemed blocked, or rather filled in with a riot of big leaves and huge yellow flowers. The other way was walled off with smaller trees and the brambles had made inroads, out from the green wall was a tall grass like plant that was above my head.

I tore out a few of these big stocks with what seemed to be grain pods on the sides instead of at the top like the oats and wheat with which I was familiar.  I placed my uprooted stocks against and holding open my path.  I marked the smaller trees and my hole into the bramble. 

I guessed the water was through the tall stocks and having marked well my exit in my mind I began to make my way through the tall grass.

In truth the going was easy.  So big were these things that they seemed to dominate looked at in depth, but they were not solid like a field of grain.  The big leafy, yellow flowered plants grew around and even climbed upon the stalks and everywhere there were flowers.  There were other plants I knew, rooting plants, and there were pod plants that climbed the big stalks like the yellow flower plants.

All chaos and randomness, but it dawned on me that most or all of these plants might well be good for food.  I looked around me and could see nothing, but the big stalks and slight sign of my passing behind me.  It seemed I was lost in some mad man’s garden.  Not many steps later the the tasseled stalks thinned and I could see ahead to a stacked stone wall.

Beyond the wall was turf, some of the plants I had seen were growing, widely dispersed, in what I guessed were pats of old manure.  And beyond that, cat-tails and then the water.  Now I could see the fall down a rocky tumble of the stream I had navigated.  At the top of the cascade was the grill-work, the first strangeness, I had recognized as such.

I looked along the bank, following the line of cat-tails to where. . .

. . . I gasped, there across a section of lake was the hill I had seen in my dream, my dream flight, my seeing.  I remembered myself, I was in the midst of some one’s place, I knew not who or whether they would want a visitor.  I quickly slipped over the stone fence.

Of course they did not want visitors.  I lay next to the wall thinking hard on my next move.  I had found the watch place above the stream, the cunning back cut trails, the circling, bramble girdled, wood all of these spoke of secrecy, not welcome.  But I had wandered far, I had stumbled around and met no resistance save deception, and the watch place, well that was moldering in long abandoned disuse.

I had given myself a shock.  But this place seemed to me, abandoned, and yet a wonder that needed exploration.  I determined to press on, but more carefully.  If there were jealous defenders, I would try not to arouse them.

I moved back into the mixed planting where I could see the wall but not much else.  Moving along it brought me through into places that seemed even less cultivated and more wild. I found another stand of trees like the ones I had seen at a distance.  These were heavy with fruit, but beneath them there were wasted fruits and a whole forest of seedlings springing from the fallen waste.

Just beyond this the water widened still more, coming right to my wall with no margin, and beyond it was the large central mound.  Right near to me was a smaller mound.  I determined to see if I could find my way into it.  I was nervous being so exposed, but passing around the bulk of the thing I found a stone lined cut with intricately decorated beams bracing them.  Looking closer I saw that the stone wall had carvings as well, here and there, but the wood was completely covered.

The cut was stopped at the back with more carved wood and more dressed stone.  There seemed to be two great doors positioned in the middle of the space, but in one of them was a much smaller portal and this one was ajar, whether the wall was just a wall or in truth a huge gateway, I could not tell.

I stepped into the cool interior, it was dark and I could not see anything but a little of the stone floor lit by the opened door.  The stone was very well dressed, tightly fit, there seemed to be gouge marks that ran from stone to stone as if they had been scoured by the same heavy hand.

Leaving the entrance I examined the walls.  The drawings there were marvelously fascinating.  There were pictographs of things I could make out, salmon, boar, deer, and there was much more that I could not imagine what they might be.  These carvings, all together on the rocks and carved into the heavy beams, meant nothing to me, I could make no sense of any of it, and finally gave it up.

I looked around the small hollow from my vantage at the front of the cut.  Here and their were sections dominated by trees bearing fruit.  The rest seemed strangely random.  Not far from me was the hill.  I gazed about me for signs of habitation I had missed, but finding none I walked toward the hill that I felt must be central to explaining this strange place.

I came on a hedge of sorts, low lying and dense.  I inspected it for thorns and finding none, I pushed through it.  Again I was presented with a variety of plants that looked like food plants I had gathered myself.  Seeing what looked like a sweet root plant, if perhaps a bit larger than the wild ones I knew and loved, I pulled it from the ground and found what I’d expected.  It tasted sweet and earthy and I promised myself I would keep my eyes open for more.

I glanced over at the hedge and was surprised to see clusters of mushrooms at its base, shaded by the hedge.  They looked good to eat, but I left them alone.  Near at hand was a big plant with small white flowers like the eating tuber plants we found when I was younger.  Lately they had not been seen and I confess I missed the lumpy things.  I grabbed hold of the bushy plant and heaved.  I fell, showering myself with dirt, but when I had recovered I examined the plant I had uprooted.  Around the base of it were many small red tubers.  I dug around in the disturbed earth where I’d uprooted the plant and found more and larger tubers. 

If only I had some wild onion, I thought, and there, not many steps away, were spikes of green just like what I sought.  Though young and small they were indeed what I’d hoped to find.  I stowed all the delicacies I found and started thinking about fire and a way to start one.

The day was fading fast in the tree ringed hollow so I made a dash for the top of the hill to have a look before all the light was gone.  On top of  that grassy knoll was a low circle of stones.  I looked around and could only marvel that such plenty seemed abandoned.  I remembered my need for firewood.  The orchard with the spoiled fruit might have something but I crossed the stone circle to see if there might be something even closer that would provide the needed wood for my feast.  I saw how a little stream bent around the hill and where it widened out into another little pond.

I stepped again into the middle to look once more for fallen wood.  I felt the ground give a little.  Sometimes one can find a burrow of coneys in that way and a whole group will erupt from their ruined home.  I stomped down a bit harder, with the intent to cave in what had given but slightly.  I heard a crunching and a dry snap and felt myself falling.  I desperately tried to spread myself to catch at the edge of the cave in I realized I had caused, but it seemed to me that the whole of the top of the hill, at least as far as I could reach, was falling into darkness.  There was a roaring as of a great wind and then I knew nothing for some time.

I guess this isn’t the conclusion yet.  Stay tuned for the Deer Riders, the Conclusion, part 2.

Much was forgotten and much hidden by the priests to give them power over the people.  How else to make them erect temples to far off gods?  This is why my family, a family of scribes, passed knowledge of the ancients by story and poem, passed by memory.

We know what a star is and that we live on a planet and that the planet we live upon that is near there stars is not the planet from which our forefathers came.  We know that our folk came to this place in a great ship and that they slept in a deep chill to preserve them in their long journey.  Perhaps this is why the priest leave young children, tightly bound, in icy mountain top retreats, some perverted memory of our arrival here or perhaps it is just that they love death more than anything.

We write their words and copy their proclamations, we record the annals and publish their oracles.  We know their desires and they are not even to their gods, but rather, they lust for blood, for death, always for death.

The Corn King’s people they call us. It would be truer to say we are the Corn King’s Priest’s slaves if we live and the priest’s victims if we don’t.