“The Dark Time?”

“Dark as ever a time was dark, and darker still.” He reigned the horse to a halt and lifted his eyes to the green lacework of branches above them. “Listen, Taliesin. Listen to it, but do not be deceived. It is quiet here and peaceful.

Yet there is nothing peaceful about it. The world neither knows nor cares what happens in the lives of the men who walk upon her back. There is no peace, Taliesin. It is an illusion-an enchantment of the mind.

“The only peace you will ever know will be the rest won by your own strong arm.”

Taliesin wondered at his father’s sudden gloomy turn but said nothing. A woodcock nearby filled the wood with its cry, which under the melancholy mood cast by Elphin’s words seemed mournful and lonely.

“It is coming, Taliesin. We cannot keep it back much longer.” He looked sadly at the boy in the saddle beside him. “I wish I could make it different for you, my son.”

Taliesin nodded. “Cormach told me about the Dark Time. But he said that in the midst of such darkness, the light is seen to shine the brighter. And that there is one whose coming will blaze in the sky from east to west with such brilliance that his image will be forever burned into the land.”

Elphin nodded. “That is something at least.” He glanced around the drowsy wood once more. “Ah, but we have this day, Taliesin. And listen!” The baying of the hunting hounds had taken on a frenzied note. “The dogs have found something. Let us ride!”

Elphin flicked the reins across his horse’s neck and the animal, excited by the sound of the dogs, gathered its legs and leaped away. Taliesin kicked his mount’s flanks and galloped after. There followed a reckless, breathless chase in which the dogs and horses and three wild pigs-two young sows and a huge, grizzled old boar-careened through the wood, crashing through thick undergrowth, leaping over fallen trunks of trees, darting under low-hanging limbs, and all grunting, squealing, barking, snorting, laughing at the pleasure of the wild race.

The pigs led them far into the deep heart of the wood before disappearing. The dogs plunged into a quick-flowing stream where they lost the scent, and the riders bounded up a moment later to see the dogs whining at the water’s edge, nosing the air and crying for their lost game. Elphin dropped his javelin, sticking it in the mud beside the stream. Taliesin did the same, and the two slid from their saddles and led the horses to the water, where the winded creatures drank noisily.

“A fine chase!” chuckled Elphin, his breath coming in quick gasps. “Did you see that old tusker? Two wives has he-King of the Wood!”

“I am glad they escaped,” remarked Taliesin, his face flushed with excitement and exertion. Sweat soaked the hair across his forehead, curling it into tight ringlets.

“Oh, aye. Though the ride has made me hungry, and I can almost taste that fine meat aroast on the fire, I am happy to see them go. We will chase them again one day.”

Elphin stretched himself upon a shady, moss-covered rock and closed his eyes. Taliesin settled beside him and was just leaning back when he caught a gleam out of the corner of his eye.

A moment later Elphin heard a splash and jerked himself upright. Taliesin was halfway across the stream and heading toward the opposite bank, crying, “I see it! Hurry!” The dogs whimpered and stood with lowered heads and drooping tails at the edge of the water.

“Taliesin! Wait!” Elphin called. He snatched up his spear and plunged after the boy. “Wait, son!” He reached the far bank just in time to see his son dive into an elder thicket and vanish.

“Hurry!” Taliesin’s voice sounded far away. “I see it!”

Elphin listened and heard the boy crashing through the undergrowth and a second later… silence. He then began the tedious task of tracking the boy through the woods.

He found Taliesin an hour later, sitting on a lichen-covered slab of stone in a circular, oak-lined clearing, his expression blank, hands limp in his lap. “Are you all right, son?” Elphin’s quiet question echoed in the place.

“I saw it,” replied Taliesin, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “It led me here.”

“What did you see?”

“A stag. And it led me here.”

“A stag? Are you sure?”

“A white stag,” said Taliesin, his eyes gleaming in the dimness of the clearing like two dark stars. “As white as Cader Idris’ crown… And his antlers! He had great spreading antlers as red as your Roman cloak and his tail was red.” He peered at his father doubtfully. “Did you see it?”

Elphin shook his head slowly. “I did not. You were too fast for me.” He looked around the clearing. It was bounded on all sides by stout oaks whose tough, gnarled branches spoke of an age beyond reckoning. A slight depression in the ground around the perimeter of the clearing indicated the remains of an ancient ditch. The stone on which Taliesin sat had once stood in the center of the enclosed circle. Although the overarching branches allowed a disk of sky to show pale and blue above, very little light entered the ring. “The stag led you here?”

Taliesin nodded. “And there is where I saw the man,” he said, pointing to a gap where the ditch-ring opened into the wood. “The Black Man.”

“\bu saw him?” Elphin regarded his son closely. “What did he look like?”

“He was tall, very tall,” replied Taliesin, closing his eyes to help him remember clearly, “and thick-muscled; his legs were like stumps and his arms like oak limbs. He was covered by black hair, thick stuff, with twigs and bits of leaf clinging to him all over. His face was painted with white clay, except around his eyes which were black as well-pits. His hair was limed and pushed into a crest with small branches worked through it and a leather cap tied to his head with antlers on it. He carried an antlered staff in one hand and with the other held a young pig under his arm. And there was a wolf too, enormous, with yellow eyes. It watched me from beyond the circle of oaks and did not enter the ring.”

“The Lord of the Beasts,” whispered Elphin. “Cemunnos!”

“Cernunnos,” confirmed Taliesin. “ ‘I am the Horned One,’ he told me.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He said, ‘Lift what is fallen.’ That is all.”

“Lift what is fallen? Nothing else?”

“What does it mean?” Taliesin wondered.

Elphin looked at the stone on which the boy sat. “The standing stone has fallen.”

Taliesin ran his hands over the stone. “How will we raise it?”

“Raising it will not be easy.” Elphin pulled on his mustache and began pacing the perimeter of the ring. He returned a moment later with a limb of strong ash, which he wedged beneath the edge of the fallen stone. “Roll that rock over here,” he instructed, and the two began levering up the slab.

The stone came up slowly, but by working the lever and moving the stone they were able to make steady progress and found that once it was lifted high enough for Elphin to gain a good handhold, he could tilt it up still further. Stripped to the waist, both man and boy strained to the task, and little by little the stone came up, higher and higher, until with a groan and a mighty shove Elphin felt it settle back onto its base.

They beamed at each other and gazed at the stone, shaggy with moss. Stained dark by its long sleep in the ground and reeking of damp earth, it tilted slightly so that what little light filtered into the ring struck its pitted surface. Taliesin approached and put his hands on the symbols cut into its surface: intricate spirals and whorls, like circular mazes, all bounded by a border of snakes whose intertwined bodies formed the shape of a great egg.

“Is it very old?” asked Taliesin.

“Very old,” said Elphin. He glanced down at the bare place where the stone had lain. “I see why the stone fell.”

Taliesin followed his father’s gaze and saw that he was nearly standing on the long, yellow bones of a man. The weight of the stone had crushed the skull and ribcage flat, but the rest of the skeleton was intact. A golden gleam caught his eye and he knelt down and carefully brushed the soft dirt away to discover a chain made of tiny, interlocking links-a chain which had once hung around the neck of the man beneath the stone. At the end of the chain was a pendant of yellow amber with a fly trapped inside.