The monks withdrew to our sacred circle. There they consecrated the earth to Christ, and prayed for us. They did not fully understand yet how different we were, but they knew we were not like other people.
At last a great schism occurred. One third of the Taltos refused utterly to be converted, and threatened battle with the others if we tried to make the glen a haven of Christianity. Some evinced a great fear of Christianity and the strife it would cause among others. Others simply did not like it, and wanted to keep to our own ways and not live in austerity and penance.
The majority wanted to convert, and we did not wish to give up our homes-that is, to leave the glen and go elsewhere. To me, such a possibility was unthinkable. I was the ruler here.
And like many a pagan king, I expected my people to follow me absolutely in my conversion.
The verbal battles progressed to physical pushing and shoving and threats, and I saw within an hour that the entire future of the valley was threatened.
But the end of the world was coming. Christ had known this and come to prepare us. The enemies of Christ’s church were the enemies of Christ!
Bloody skirmishes were being fought in the grasslands of the glen. Fires broke out.
Accusations were flung out. Humans who had always seemed loyal suddenly turned on Taltos and accused them of wretched perversity, of having no lawful marriage, no visible children, and of being wicked magicians.
Others declared that they had long suspected the Taltos of evil things, and now was the time to have it out, Where did we keep our young? Why did no one ever see any children among us?
A few crazed individuals, for reasons of their own, shouted the truth. A human who had mothered two Taltos pointed at her Taltos husband and told all the world what he was, and that if we were to sleep with human women we would soon annihilate them.
The frenzied zealots, of whom I was the most outspoken one, declared that these things no longer mattered. We, the Taltos, had been welcomed into the church by Christ and Father Columba. We would give up the old licentious habits, we would live as Christ would have us live.
There followed more confusion. Blows were struck. Screams rang out.
Now I saw how three thousand people could die in an argument over the right to copy a book! Now I perceived everything.
But too late. The battle had already commenced. All rushed to their brochs to take up arms and to defend their positions. Armed men poured out of doors, attacking their neighbors.
The horror of war, the horror I had sought to hide from all these years in Donnelaith, was now upon us. It had come through my conversion.
I stood confounded, my sword in my hand, hardly knowing what to make of it. But the monks came to me. “Ashlar, lead them to Christ,” they said, and I became as many a zealot king before me. I led my converts against their brothers and sisters.
But the real horror was yet to come.
When the battle was over, the Christians still stood in the majority, and I saw, though it did not register very clearly yet, that most of them were human. The majority of the Taltos elite, never very numerous anyway, thanks to our rigid control, had been slaughtered. And only a band of some
But what were we to do with the few humans and Taltos who had not come over to us, who had not been killed only because the killing had stopped before everyone was dead? Now gathered from the battlefield, wounded, limping, these rebels, with Janet as their leader, cursed us. They would not be driven from the glen, they declared, they would die where they stood in opposition to us.
“You, Ashlar, look at what you’ve done,” Janet declared. “Look, everywhere on the bodies of your brothers and sisters, men and women who have lived since the time before the circles! You have brought about their death!”
But no sooner had she laid on me this terrible judgment than the zealous human converts began to demand: “How could you have lived since the time before the circles? What were you, if you were not human beings?”
At last one of the boldest of these men, one who had been a secret Christian for years, came up and slit open my robe with his sword, and I, baffled as Taltos often are by violence, found myself standing naked in the circle.
I saw the reason. They would see what we were, if our tall bodies were the bodies of men. Well, let them see, I announced. I stepped out of the fallen robe. I laid my hand upon my testicles in the ancient fashion, to swear an oath-that is, testify-and I swore that I would serve Christ as well as any human.
But the tide had turned. The other Christian Taltos were losing their nerve. The sight of the slaughter had been appalling to them. They had begun to weep, and to forget the Art of the Tongue, and to talk in the high, rapid speech of our kind, which quickly terrified the humans.
I raised my voice, demanding silence, and demanding allegiance. I had put back on my slashed robe, for all that it mattered. And I walked back and forth in the circle, angry, using the Art of the Tongue as well as I’d ever used it.
What would Christ say to us on account of what we had done? What was the crime here, that we were a strange tribe? Or that we had murdered our own in this dispute? I wept with great gestures and tore my hair, and the others wept with me.
But the monks were now filled with fear, and the human Christians were filled with fear. What they had suspected all their lives in the glen was almost revealed to them. Once again the questions flew. Our children, where were they?
At last another Taltos male, whom I greatly loved, stepped forward and declared that from this moment forth he was, in the name of Christ and Virgin, celibate. Other Taltos made the same pledge, women and men both.
“Whatever we were,” the Taltos women declared, “does not matter now, for we will become the Brides of Christ and make our own monastery here in the spirit of Iona.”
Great cries rang out, of joy and agreement, and those humans who had always loved us, who loved me as their king, rallied quickly around us.
But the danger hung in the air. At any moment the bloody swords might clash again, and I knew it.
“Quickly, all of you, pledge yourself to Christ,” I declared, seeing in this Taltos vow of celibacy our only chance for survival.
Janet cried out for me to cease with this unnatural and evil plan. And then, in a great volley of words, rushing sometimes too fast and sometimes too slow, she spoke of our ways, of our offspring, our sensuous rites, our long history, everything that I was now prepared to sacrifice.
It was the fatal mistake.
At once the human converts descended upon her and bound her hand and foot, as those who sought to defend her were cut down. Some of the converted Taltos tried to flee, and they were immediately cut down, and another vicious battle broke out, in which cottages and huts were set aflame and people ran hither and thither in panic, screaming for God to help us. “Kill all the monsters,” was the cry.
One of the monks declared it was the end of the world. Several of the Taltos did also. They dropped to their knees. Humans, seeing those Taltos in that submissive posture, at once killed those whom they did not know, or feared or disliked, sparing only those few who were beloved of everyone.
Only I and a handful were left-those who had been most active in the leadership of the tribe, and had magnetic personalities. We fought off the few who had the stamina to attack us, subduing others with mere ferocious looks or vociferous condemnations.
And at last-when the frenzy had peaked, and men fell under the burden of their swords, and others screamed and wept over the slain, only five of us remained-Taltos dedicated to Christ-and all those who would not accept Christ, except for Janet, had been annihilated.
The monks called for order.
“Speak to your people. Ashlar. Speak or all is lost. There will be no Donnelaith, and you know it.”
“Yes, speak,” said the other Taltos, “and say nothing that will frighten anyone. Be clever, Ashlar.”
I was weeping so hard this task seemed utterly beyond me. Everywhere I looked I saw the dead, hundreds born since the circle of the plain, dead and gone now, into eternity, and perhaps into the flames of hell without Christ’s mercy.
I fell to my knees. I wept until I had no more tears, and when I stopped, the valley was still.
