Chapter 5: Rhedwyn

As they advanced through their training, all three cousins had excelled in their chosen field of study—Herrwn in recitation, Ossiam in prophesy, and Olyrrwd in healing—so it surprised no one when each was picked to be his own father’s disciple.

Referred to collectively as the “Three Elders,” the shrine’s bard, oracle, and physician were the highest ranked of the priests, presiding over the High Council and acting as intimate advisors to the chief priestess. As the term implied, the Elders usually lived into venerable old age, and as young men, their understudies knew they could expect to have the benefit of at least twenty more years to fully master the intricacies of their roles before they needed to assume their full responsibilities.

This last stage of indoctrination, however, was cut short for Herrwn, Ossiam, and Olyrrwd by a wave of illness that swept through the shrine the winter after they completed their formal training, taking away almost the whole of the generation above them and leaving them “Elders” before their time.

For weeks afterwards, Ossiam was too busy making sacrifices to appease the malevolent spirits, and Olyrrwd was too busy tending the recovering survivors for them to argue about anything. But eventually, things returned to normal.

As they settled into their seats at the head of the High Council, Ossiam and Olyrrwd’s bickering evolved into divisive debates over any question brought before them. While to Herrwn most of his cousins’ disputes seemed petty and unnecessary, rising more out of habit than from real disagreement, one proved to be pivotal and to have lasting consequences for the shrine.

The plague that left Herrwn, Ossiam, and Olyrrwd pronounced Elders while they were still in their mid-twenties carried a compelling message—so, as soon as they were able, they returned to the shrine’s classroom to take up the task of training their own successors.

Before the epidemic struck, there had been a dozen boys of sufficiently high birth to become priests. Now there were only five. The oldest of them, Herrwn’s brother, was the sole survivor of seven who’d reached the upper level of their studies. Three of the other four were still in their rudimentary lessons, and the youngest was only a toddler who would still be in the nursery if the women responsible for him hadn’t been needed to care for the sick and dying.

Still, five was, as Olyrrwd, who was more accustomed to dealing with illness and death than Herrwn or Ossiam, put it, “better than none, giving us one apiece with two extras, just in case.”

But it was not as simple as that.

Herrwn’s brother, who’d always been a deeply sensitive boy, too kindhearted to kill a fly and liable to cry for hours over the body of a dead sparrow, withdrew from his training to wander in the high meadows and forests above the shrine, playing his harp and singing songs of unrelenting sadness.

That left the four younger boys—Rhedwyn, Madheran, Moelwyn, and Labhruinn—and it was clear that the handsomest of those four, Rhedwyn, outshone the others. Gifted with a quick mind, an astounding memory, and a flawless voice, he was taking part in all but the highest rituals—chanting the sacred invocations and dancing the sacred dances as if he’d learned them from the firstborn of the Goddess’s immortal offspring—by the age of fourteen, and by sixteen he could recite the longest and most complicated of their sagas without so much as a misplaced pause while accompanying himself on a harp with unerring precision.

None of the other boys, with the possible exception of Labhruinn, were incompetent or stupid. Moelwyn actually had quite a good memory and was a quick learner, especially when it came to brewing potions, and—apart from a tic of blinking his right eye—had no major failings. Madheran had a strong, resounding voice and an impressive ability to recite and act out epic battle scenes, although his memory for the other portions of the sagas or for medicinal and oracular incantations left something to be desired.

Unfortunately, the best that could be said of Labhruinn was that he tried hard. At first, his struggles with the most basic of his recitations was put down to his beginning his training at three instead of the usual age of six. As time went on, however, the boy’s failure to recite the simplest ode without stammering or to dance more than three steps without tripping over his own feet was an ever-increasing disappointment—especially since he was Rhedwyn’s brother by his father as well as his mother.

In all, it was no surprise that the competition over Rhedwyn became a source of renewed contention between Ossiam and Olyrrwd. And being honest with himself, as he invariably was, Herrwn had to admit that he had been as determined as either of the others to claim Rhedwyn for his own calling.

To the best of Herrwn’s knowledge, the only song Olyrrwd ever composed was a ditty about the boys that gave vent to his sardonic sense of humor. Almost four decades later, he could hear his cousin’s gravelly voice warbling its facetious lines.

Madheran shouting, “I’m so brave!”

Boldly climbs a tree.

Moelwyn, paying him no mind,

Stirs two pots or three.

Labhruinn, rushing to catch up,

Stops to wipe his nose.

Rhedwyn, loveliest of all,

Brings we three to blows.

The first time he sang it, the three of them had been up late talking about their pupils’ progress. Ossiam, who’d just finished a far longer and more erudite assessment, left the room in a huff. This was a mistake because it led Olyrrwd to repeat the lyrics so often that after a while he needed only hum the tune to make Ossiam grimace.

Herrwn reproached Olyrrwd about this, not just because he was being childish but because the choice of a disciple was entirely about the skills required to meet the demands of the highest levels of training and was not at all about physical appearance. It was Rhedwyn’s abilities that mattered, not—and Herrwn had made this point repeatedly—that the boy was almost too good-looking to be mortal.

Perhaps it was mere chance—though Herrwn thought not— that at the moment he was picturing Rhedwyn in his mind, the night sky over the valley of Derthwald was lit almost as bright as day by a shower of meteors. Led by a fiery ball that dwarfed the others trailing in its wake, they made a blazing arc across the horizon before that brightest one flared in a final, blinding flash of light and the others flickered out one by one, leaving the heavens darker than before.

Given Rhedwyn’s rapid progress through the most challenging of his lessons, it was no surprise that he passed all the final tests, including a uniquely spectacular dream quest, and was deemed ready to begin his formal discipleship as a bard, oracle, or healer a full year earlier than most.

So on the day of his sixteenth birthday, Rhedwyn, wearing the plain gray gown of an ordinary apprentice, sat waiting on a stone bench near the entryway to the stairs that led up to the priests’ highest tower, while in the chamber at the top of that tower, Herrwn, Ossiam, and Olyrrwd met to determine the best course of his future (or, as Olyrrwd crudely put it—to squabble over who was going to get the pick of the litter).

Herrwn had carefully prepared his words well in advance, and after the obligatory round of ritual incantations, he asserted his right as the head of the High Council to speak first.

“You have heard Rhedwyn’s voice, and you must know that he was born to sing the songs of our past. With practice and discipline, he will master the greatest of our tales—bringing alive the words of bards long dead.”

It was not usual for Olyrrwd to disagree openly with Herrwn, but here he did, saying, “Those bards are, as you say, long dead, and they will stay that way, whoever sings their songs now.” Then, unfairly, he sighed, put his hand to his chest, and said mournfully, “I will not live forever, and you will someday need a physician to take my place—maybe sooner rather than later.”

Olyrrwd’s words caused a spasm in Herrwn’s own chest, and he hastily laid aside his own claim.

Then Ossiam spoke.

Ever since succeeding his father as chief oracle and master of divination, Ossiam had developed the annoying habit of responding to reasoned debate with prophecies of doom when he didn’t get his way. Now he evoked the clustering of crows in the tallest oak in the Sacred Grove, the twisting of the entrails pulled out of a sacrificial hare, and the pattern of the clouds in the west that they could all see through the window of the chamber where they were standing as evidence that the Goddess Herself was commanding that Rhedwyn be given into training as an oracle.

Neither Herrwn nor Olyrrwd could muster an argument to counter this flood of omens, so Ossiam got Rhedwyn, although Olyrrwd got the last word, muttering a saying he’d picked up from the servants: “Beware of getting what you wish for.”

Deaf to Olyrrwd’s disgruntled gibe, Ossiam swept out of the room and down the tower’s curving stairway.

Herrwn and Olyrrwd sighed in unison and stood side by side, staring into the smoldering embers of the chamber’s hearth, until Olyrrwd sighed again and said, “Well, that leaves three—one for each of us and one left over just in case.”

While disappointed, Herrwn was also oddly relieved that Rhedwyn was no longer a source of contention between the two of them. “You’ll want Moelwyn, then?” he asked.

“He doesn’t mind foul smells and likes stirring pots. I suppose I could do worse. And you’ll be content with Madheran?”

“I can’t complain about his voice; it’s quite resounding and works well for opening odes and speeches of the conquering heroes. And after this …”

Herrwn stopped before saying what they were both thinking—that both the younger boys might look better with Rhedwyn gone.

Olyrrwd nodded his understanding and jumped ahead to say what was on the tip of Herrwn’s tongue.

“And Labhruinn—”

“can wait.” Herrwn picked up Olyrrwd’s thought. “He may still—”

“show some promise at something, maybe—”

“as his brother’s assistant. Or maybe—”

Going on in this comfortable exchange of half-sentences, they made their way down the stairs together. At the bottom, they parted ways, Olyrrwd taking the left turn toward the shrine’s herb garden and Herrwn turning right, back to the classroom.