October 31st, 1600

Almost a decade in exile had swallowed Oliver St. Clair's heart as surely as any battle-borne defeat. The thick-burred English of the Welsh hillmen barely matched his own Scots tongue, so that they thought Oliver as barbarous as he knew them to be. Though he kept the faith, even the Catholicism of St. Clydai's parish seemed alien, infused with the melancholy of these dark hills and their bloody history.

Ever since the breaking of the altars at Rosslyn Chapel, Oliver had kept the Spear of Longinus wrapped in black silk, hidden in the walls of his little cottage in Wales, awaiting a message from his cousin George, from the hidden commanders of the Templars, or even a sign from Heaven itself. In the long Welsh nights, the relic seemed to whisper to him, so that Oliver awoke with visions of great power and greater destruction slipping from his mind's eye like salmon escaping the net.

And no message ever came. Scotland sank ever further into the grip of Reformation and cosmopolitanism, if reports from distant London and Edinburgh were to be believed. It wasn't the waiting in exile, Oliver told himself, it was the decline of purpose. He would die here, alone and unheralded, the sacred relic lost to Christendom. Some thrifty miner would break down the Spear for firewood, making fishhooks or nails from its iron head.

"Enough," Oliver told the firedogs that supported his cottage's little hearth, his preacher's voice thundering though his last homily was years gone. "I will take me down the Spear and go walking in the world, and see what sign draws itself forth. If God will not come to me in the years of my exile, I will go to Him."

He shifted the heavy garderobe, prised forth the loose timber behind it, and found the heavy bundle of velvet. Oliver kissed the wrapping, prayed briefly to Virgin, then drew the relic forth. The haft was almost five feet long, splintered at the end. Dismounted, the steel head was another two feet and more, most of its length the well-wrought slender neck. The portions of the Spear were bound together with two purple stoles, themselves relics from an earlier age when the Templars still held power.

Oliver unwrapped the stoles, kissing them each before setting them side, then fitted head to haft. The Spear of Longinus was a legionnaire's weapon, a foot and half longer than his own height, but it seemed light as air. He took it in hand, expecting to hear the roar of armies. It was naught but splintered wood.

"This is All Hallow's Eve," Oliver told the Spear. "Let us go walking in these Welsh woods and see what the saints bring us."

Perhaps it was the land, or his empty heart, but Oliver's mood was as fey as the Fairy Folk themselves. Spear on his shoulder, he stepped out of the cottage into the gathering gloom and headed toward Cwm Cych. Each stride Oliver took felt like the trampling of armies, each breath the burning of cities.

Havgan felt power rippling through the woods, more than any that had passed in centuries. Annuvin had been silent since the Irish had brought their god-on-a-stick to Wales, and he was sick of silence. He called his servants, the loyal goblins -- Coblynau -- and the final bedraggled, insolent corpse bird, and sent them forth to sniff out this new power. Havgan summoned the last vestiges of his old strength, hidden within his scarred spirit, so that he might walk in the world, a haunt in word as well as name.

The ancient armor, segmented mail and leather skirt, was as rusted and rotted as ever it had been since Powell struck him down. Havgan left his dented helm behind, carrying only the Roman short sword he had always borne.

Almost full, the moon gleamed as brilliant as Arianrhod's silver crown. Drawing power from the little deaths in the forest around him -- leaves falling, insects curling up in the settling frost -- Havgan felt his feet strike soil for the first time in generations. Whatever power moved tonight among the silvered birches and dark yews of Cwm Cych, its call was strong.

Had the old gods come back? He would have heard, surely. Havgan would fight Arawn himself, bare hands against a sword, for a chance to feast once more with the Bright Ones -- the old gods in their glory. That childish bastard Taliesin may have overwhelmed Elphin's court with his tales of old, but Havgan had been among the Bright Ones, before the English, before the coming of the pigs, when even the mighty Irish had been straw-eared savages.

The power was feeding his temper as well as his strength. Havgan hadn't found the heart to be angry in centuries.

The Coblynau came back to him, flitting among the trees, knocking on the rocks, their homely gray faces grinning from the shadows. "It comes," one whispered. "A great thing," said another, "announcing itself." Voices of the Coblynau echoed like the leaves of the forest. "The Christian god's blood...Jesu Grist...the key to history. A Spear, to be feared."

Relic, thought Havgan. A Christian relic. Could he make use of such a thing? The power even now knitting his bones and mending his armor said yes, that the relic would lend him strength. And who bore it?

High above the woods, his corpse bird, deryn corf, shadowed harbinger of doom, whispered to him that she had spied the Spear. It walked on the shoulder of a man, come to Cwm Cych of his own free will on this, All Hallow's Eve, the night when even the meanest of spirits might dance with a man's bones.

"If the Christ is your god, man," Havgan said, "then a messenger of Jesu Grist I shall be." His servants guided him forth, that the power of the Spear should be his, and through him, theirs.

As he broke through of a great stand of gorse, Oliver saw the angel. It stood tall, in shattered armor of ancient design, rust and blood mixed down the dented scales of the chest. Wings spread behind the angel, mixed of shadow and dark instead of honest feathers.

Spear of Longinus clasped before him, Oliver sank to his knees. The haft tingled in his fingers, buzzing like the little spirits that jumped off wool on a cold, dry night. Moonlight flooded the little glade before him, lighting the angel's armor but not its face.

"What is your fate, mortal?" the angel asked. Its voice was a whisper rather than the thunder Oliver had expected.

"I do not know, fair one," Oliver said, staring at the angel's feet. Where was its radiant effulgence? "I have come to these woods seeking counsel."

The angel laughed. "It is a strange counsel you pursue. This valley was sacred long before the Grist came to this land."

Oliver summoned his courage. Strange or not, this was his angel, the message he had sought. "The altars of Rosslyn have been cast down, and our purpose declines. These Holy relics we preserved for the Knights of the Temple are scattered. What to do, now that I have abided in this wilderness almost ten years without hope or rumor of success? I cast myself upon your mercy."

"There is but one mercy I can give, man," said the angel. "That is to relieve you of your life's burden."

Oliver looked up, seeking the angel's face and seeing only shadow. "You would take this Spear up into Heaven for Our Lord?"

"I would take it up from your care, if you wish it," said the angel. "No more can I promise."

The Spear seemed to crackle in Oliver's hands, summer lightning on a distant meadow. The angel strained, both leaning toward him and holding back, balanced on a precipice of action. Some animal or spirit knocked in the woods, a banging of rocks like the drums of judgment.

"I wish my brother were here." Oliver wished many other things: that the Confession of Faith had never come to Scotland, that Henry VIII had kept to his wives, that his cousin John Knox had never torn Oliver's country apart and remade it on the austere altars of the Presbytery. "Oh, Rome," Oliver said, "forgive me." He tilted the spear toward the angel. "Take it then, relieve me of my burden."

Wings brushed over Oliver's face as the angel swung its sword.

"Man only carries one burden," Havgan told his servants, "and that would be his life. Which is all I can take from him."

The god sat on a rotten log of oak, balancing the Spear of Longinus across his knees. For the first time in more than a thousand years, Havgan had shed the rusted armor in which Powell had slain him, usurping his place in Annuvin of the dead. For the first time since the Black Plague, Havgan was again a god of death. Hope was his, and a will toward the future.

The Coblynau muttered among themselves. The corpse bird hung back, hiding among the trees, perhaps afraid of the Spear.

Havgan gestured at Oliver's startled corpse with the spear. "Bury this Scot in a fine place, where his shade might see the moon when he rises uneasy from his grave. I will go down to Annuvin and welcome him to the underworld, then plan what I shall do next. My purpose is renewed, and we will prosper from this, though I do not yet know how." He hefted the spear, testing its balance. "For once, an old god has taken something back from Jesu Grist."

"It was given, not taken," croaked the corpse bird, leaping to flight under the setting moon.

Havgan had not the heart to call her to heel, not on this of all nights. He headed for his empty kingdom of the dead, to welcome his deliverer home.

The End

Bio

Jay Lake lives and works in Portland, Oregon with his family and their books. He will have over thirty short stories published in 2003, including stories in REALMS OF FANTASY, WRITERS OF THE FUTURE XIX, and a twelve-part series at STRANGE HORIZONS based on the old English counting song "Green Grow the Rushes-Oh." Jay is also Fiction Co-Editor of the critically-acclaimed POLYPHONY anthology series. He can be reached at jlake@jlake.com, or http://www.jlake.com/