AE in the Irish Theosophist Part 26

Bring him to us. Let him come on the night of Samhain.' They showed the chosen one from afar, in a vision while hid in their mountains. The Tuatha de Danaans, the immortals, wish for Cuchullain to aid them. The daughters of Aed Abrait are their messengers.

If Fand and Liban were here they would restore the hero."

"Who are you?" asked Laeg, who had joined them.

"I am Angus, son of Aed Abrait." While he spoke his form quivered like a smoke, twinkling in misty indistinctness in the blue twilight, and then vanished before their eyes.

"I wonder now," muttered Laeg to himself, "if he was sent by the Sidhe, or by Liban and Fand only. When one has to deal with women everything is uncertain. Fand trusts more in her beauty to arouse him than in her message. I have seen her shadow twenty times cooing about him. It is all an excuse for love-making with her. It is just like a woman. Anything, however, would be better for him than to lie in bed." He went off to join the others. Cuchullain was sitting up and was telling the story of what happened last Samhain.

"What should I do?" he asked.

"Go to the wise King," said Laeg, and so they all advised, for ever since the day when he was crowned, and the Druids had touched him with fire, a light of wisdom shone about Concobar the King.

"I think you should go to the rock where the women of the Sidhe appeared to you," said Concobar when appealed to.

So Laeg made ready the chariot and drove to the tarn. Night came ere they reached it, but the moon showed full and brilliant. Laeg waited a little way apart, while Cuchullain sat himself in the black shadow of the rock. As the warrior gazed into the dark, star-speckled surface of the waters, a brightness and a mist gathered over them, and there, standing with her robe of green down--dropping to her feet and trailing on the wave, her pale flaxen hair blown around her head, was Liban. She smiled strangely as before, looking through him with her subtle eyes.

"I am one of the Sidhe," she said, and her voice sounded like a murmur of the water. "You also, O warrior, though forgetful, are one of us. We did not indeed come to injure you, but to awaken remembrance. For now the wild clouds of demons gathered from the neighboring isles and we wish your aid. Your strength will come back to you exultant as of old. Come with me, warrior. You will have great companions. Labraid, who wields the rapid fires as you the sword, and Fand, who has laid aside her Druid wisdom longing for you."

"Whither must I go with you, strange woman?" asked Cuchullain.

"To Mag-Mell."

"I will send Laeg with you," said Cuchullain. I do not care to go to an unknown place while I have my duties here." He then went to Laeg, asking him to go with Liban.

"He is longing to go," thought Laeg, "but he mistrusts his power to get away. He has forgotten all he knew and did not wish to appear nothing before a woman. However, it can do no harm if I go and see what they do."

Oh, marvel not if in our tale The gleaming figures come and go, More mystic splendors shine and pale Than in an age outworn we know.

Their ignorance to us were wise: Their sins our virtue would outshine: A glory pa.s.sed before their eyes: We hardly dream of the divine.

In world may come romance, With all the lures of love and glamour; And woesome tragedy will chance To him whom fairy forms enamour.

There slain illusions live anew To stay the soul with coy caresses; But he who only loves the True Slays them again, and onward presses.

For golden chains are yet but chains, Enchanted dreams are yet but dreaming; And ere the soul its freedom gains It bursts all bonds, destroys all seeming.

IV. The Maidens of the Sidhe

"Yes, I'll go with the maid in the green mantle," muttered Laeg to himself; "but I'll don the crimson mantle of five folds which it is my right to wear in the land of the Sidhe, even though my earthly occupation is only the driving of a war-chariot."

He began chanting softly; a golden gleam as of sunshine swept circling about him; then as the chant ceased a look of wild exultation came to his face, and he threw up his arms, so that for an instant he had the aspect he wore when guiding the great war-chariot of Cuchullain into the thick of battle. His swaying form fell softly upon the greensward, and above it floated a luminous figure clad in a crimson mantle, but whose face and bare arms were of the color of burnished bronze. So impa.s.sive and commanding was his face that even Liban faltered a little as she stole to his side. Cuchullain watched the two figures as they floated slowly over the dark expanse of the lake, till they suddenly disappeared, seemingly into its quiet surface. Then with his face buried in his hands he sat motionless, absorbed in deep thought, while he waited until the return of Laeg.

The rec.u.mbent form of Liban rose from the crouch where it had lain entranced. Before her stood the phantom figure of Laeg. All in the house save herself were asleep, but with the conscious sleep of the Sidhe, and their shades spoke welcome to Laeg, each saying to him in liquid tones such as come never from lips of clay:

"Welcome to you, Laeg; welcome because of her who brings you, of him who sent you, and of yourself."

He saw about him only women of the Sidhe, and knew that he was in one of the schools established by the wise men of Eri for maidens who would devote their lives to holiness and Druid learning; maidens who should know no earthly love but fix their eyes ever on the light of the Sun-G.o.d. But not seeing Fand among them, he turned with an impatient gesture to Liban. She read his gesture aright, and said:

"My sister dwells apart; she has more knowledge, and presides over all of us."

Leaving the room, she walked down a corridor, noiselessly save for the rustle of her long robe of green, which she drew closely about her, for the night was chill. An unaccustomed awe rested upon her, and to Laeg she whispered:

"The evil enchanters have power tonight, so that your life would be in danger if you had not the protection of a maiden of the Sun."

But a smile wreathed for an instant the bronze-hue face of the shadowy charioteer, as he murmured in tones of kindness near to pity, softening his rude words:

"Till now nor Cuchullain nor I have ever felt the need of a woman's protection, and I would much rather he were here now than I."

Drawing aside a heavy curtain, Liban entered her sister's room.

They saw Fand seated at a little table. A scroll lay on it open before her, but her eyes were not fixed on it. With hands clasped under her chin she gazed into the vacancies with eyes of far-away reflection and longing. There was something pathetic in the intensity and wistfulness of the lonely figures. She turned and rose to meet them, a smile of rare tenderness lighting up her face as she saw Liban. The dim glow of a single lamp but half revealed the youthful figure, the pale, beautiful face, out of which the sun-colours had faded. Her hair of raven hue was gathered in ma.s.sy coils over her head and fastened there by a spiral torque of gleaming gold. Her mantle, entirely black, which fell to her feet, made her features seem more strangely young, more startlingly in contrast with the monastic severity of the room. It was draped round with some dark unfigured hangings. A couch with a coverlet of furs, single chair of carved oak, the little table, and a bronze censer from which a faint aromatic odor escaping filled the air and stole on the sense, completed the furniture of the room, which might rather have been the cell of some aged Druid than the chamber of one of the young maidens of Eri, who were not overgiven to ascetic habits. She welcomed Laeg with the same terms of triple welcome as did the mystic children of the sun who had first gathered round him.

Her brilliant eyes seemed to read deep the soul of the charioteer.

Then Liban came softly up to her, saying:

"Oh, Fand, my soul is sad this night. The dark powers are gathering their strength to a.s.sail us, and we shall need to be pure and strong.

Yet you have said that you feel no longer the Presence with you; that Mannanan, the Self of the Sun, shines not in your heart!"

Fan placed her hand upon her sister's flaxen head, saying with a voice mingled joy and pathos:

"Peace, child; you, of us all, have least to fear, for though I, alas! am forsaken, yet He who is your Father and Yourself is even now here with you."

Liban fell on her knees, with her hands clasped and her eyes uplifted in a rapture of adoration, for above her floated one whom she well knew. Yet unheeding her and stern of glance, with his right arm outstretched, from which leaped long tongues of flame, swordlike, into s.p.a.ce, Labraid towered above gazing upon foes unseen by them.

Slowly the arm fell and the stern look departed from the face.

Ancient with the youth of the G.o.ds, it was such a face and form the toilers in the shadowy world, mindful of their starry dynasties, sought to carve in images of upright and immovable calm amid the sphinxes of the Nile or the sculptured G.o.ds of Chaldaea. So upright and immovable in such sculptured repose appeared Labraid, his body like a bright ruby flame, sunlit from its golden heart. Beneath his brows his eyes looked full of secrecy. The air pulsing and heaving about him drove Laeg backward from the centre of the room.

He appeared but a child before this potent spirit. Liban broke out into a wild chant of welcome:

"Oh see now how burning, How radiant in might, From battle returning The Dragon of Light!

Where wert thou, unsleeping Exile from the throne, In watch o'er the weeping, The sad and the lone.

The sun-fires of Eri Burned low on the steep; The watchers were weary Or sunken in sleep; And dread were the legions Of demons who rose From the uttermost regions Of ice and of snows; And on the red wind borne, Unspeakable things From wizard's dark mind borne On shadowy wings.

The darkness was lighted With whirlwinds of flame; The demons affrighted Fled back whence they came.

For thou wert unto them The vision that slays: Thy fires quivered through them In arrowy rays.

Oh, light amethystine, Thy shadow inspire, And fill with the pristine Vigor of fire.

Though thought like a fountain Pours dream upon dream, Unscaled is the mountain Where thou still dost gleam, And shinest afar like The dawning of day, Immortal and starlike In rainbow array."

But he, the shining one, answered, and his voice had that melody which only those know whom the Sun-breath has wafted into worlds divine:

"Vaunt not, poor mortal one, nor claim knowledge when the G.o.ds know not. He who is greatest among all the sons of evil now waits for the hour to strike when he may a.s.sail us and have with him all the hosts of the foes of light. What may be the issue of the combat cannot be foreseen by us. Yet mortals, unwise, ever claim to know when even the G.o.ds confess ignorance; for pride blinds all mortals, and arrogance is born of their feebleness."

Unabashed she cried out:

"Then rejoice, for we have awakened Cu, the warrior-magician of old times, and his messenger is her."