Chapter 43 Gwynedd
Gwynedd
When I returned from my pilgrimage to Stonehenge, I was stunned to discover my father had arranged to have me wed King Tutugal’s son Rhydderich in a political alliance.
Even though it was well known Rhydderich’s affections ran to men, not women.
I was the daughter of a great chieftain, and it was my duty to accept.
I considered running away until I met Rhydderich.
He was a towering, magnificent warrior, striking with dark hair and a powerful countenance.
Immense intelligence shone in his eyes. Rhydderich had heard tales of my time with the Druids along with rumors that, like my brother, I had been born with magic.
My love for Taliesin was already well known and Rhydderich did not take offense, for he had his own lover.
Yet both our fathers were still determined our lives be bound together.
In life there are waymakers, those souls who enable you to accomplish your life’s work.
Rhydderich and I quickly found we were each other’s.
Instead of husband and wife in the truest sense, we became best friends and confidants.
I carried his secrets, he carried mine, and we forged a partnership together.
I could not have accomplished my life’s work without Rhydderich, nor his without me.
When his father died and Rhydderich became king, he crowned me queen with the name Languoreth.
The Golden One. For he knew I possessed a ring from the Golden Age and a connection to the world’s glorious past. As Rhydderich’s queen, I was afforded incredible freedom and protection to travel the land and visit the stone circles.
For Merlin and I had much to prepare for in the future.
Merlin was the one who bestowed my husband his name, “Rhydderich the Generous,” for there was no better king with a more valiant heart.
Years later when Rhydderich died in battle as a wizened old soldier like my father, I retired my duties as queen.
I left Partick and built a house in the forest to become a sanctuary for myself and my brother.
In our lifetime we saw the Druids’ island destroyed in battle.
I watched Cathan’s beloved observatory and all its wonders go up in flames.
After Cathan’s death, Merlin became the last High Druid, the equivalent of a living library.
During the course of his life, my brother’s gift of seeing the future slowly drove him mad.
As his twin, only I understood the depth of his pain.
He lived his final years at our hidden sanctuary in the woods, where Taliesin finally joined us when he retired his duties as Bard.
Now in the twilight of our lives, we three have been united once more. Two comets and a North Star. Together we have begun to sift memories and record our knowledge to help ensure the future has a chance against the incredible odds we all face.
The ability to remember our previous lives was lost long ago after the Golden Age ended.
My brother Merlin, who foresaw the future, told me when the time came to enter the labyrinth and retrieve the song, I would not have these memories to guide me.
My life and the time I live in will seem as far away as a distant star.
I have broken every Druid law to leave behind an account for my future self.
Taliesin was the one who suggested it, for words are forever tied to their writer.
He and Merlin have promised to help safeguard the diary until the time comes to find the song.
I have left as much instruction within these pages as I can, although I do not know how the future will unfold.
Just as I cannot fathom why Garesh, the immortal sentry at Stonehenge, needed a lock of my hair.
What I do know is we are part of a greater plan, spanning millennium all the way back to the last Golden Age before the galactic war, to keep the Earth whole and alive.
To give you some sense of the scope, I will share with you the first history lesson I was taught during my time with Cathan, and that is of the Great Year and the Map of Time.
Merlin and I sat with Cathan at his enormous table, where he spread out ancient maps of the galaxy.
We listened, spellbound, as he explained, “Our planet’s history spans a farther distance than we can imagine.
The Great Year is twenty-four thousand years, the time it takes for Earth and the sun to spin around the galaxy once, like an ever-turning wheel.
” He showed us the cycle an astronomer had meticulously charted.
“Half the time the Earth is descending in a twelve-thousand-year night and the other half ascending in a twelve-thousand-year day. Within this cosmic night and day, our hearts and minds are greatly affected.”
My finger traced the path of the world. “How so, Cathan?”
“Where we are in the cosmos will determine what age we are in. The Golden Age is the pinnacle of human enlightenment. Every ancient culture remembers this time, when men and women were perfectly empowered, before our slow descent to the Silver and Bronze Ages and on to the Iron Age. Then the ages rise again, and round and round it goes, the rise and fall of civilizations—the rise and fall of history—and the rise and fall of magic.”
Merlin and I were born in the Iron Age, the darkest age when the world’s light is most dimmed. But even in our barbarous time, as my brother and I are testament to, magic still exists like the seedling that refuses to die.
Cathan went on to teach us how thousands of years ago at the end of the last Golden Age, survivors of the Great War came to our island for sanctuary.
They were the ancient magicians who first came and laid down the megalithic stone circles that stretch across the land in an array of geometric wizardry.
They intimately understood the language of the Earth, the power of the Ley Lines, and those pathways of energy connecting time and space.
Millennia later when wandering Celtic tribes began to arrive at our shores, they encountered these keepers of the stone circles.
Cathan explained, “They called us the Wise Ones—they called us wizards—and over time we earned a new name: the Druids, which simply meant those who know the trees, for our power had dwindled. We had become only the keepers of memories.”
Stories were told of the Druids, mystics in white robes who could talk with the trees. Travelers came as far as Alexandria, Egypt, to see for themselves the megalithic stone circles the Druids protected, which were as mysterious as the Great Pyramid in Egypt.
When word of the Druids reached Rome, the empire lusted for our lands, which sat at the edge of the known world.
The Romans came to conquer and rounded up every Druid and Druidess—Healer, Teacher, and Bard—they could find and executed them in mass slayings.
They chopped down the ancient groves and forests.
They burned the schools and massacred every person on the isle of Ynys Mon, the Druids’ heartland.
After the massacre, the new Roman governor made it against the law to draw near a stone circle.
It did not matter what the stones were for.
Rome wanted to erase the Druids so not even our memory remained.
The Romans occupied our southern lands for four hundred years. When their empire fell, they left just as quickly. The Druids, few as they were, came out of hiding, though only a small group remained.
I often think of Cathan as I write these words. His beloved island, the last Druid sanctuary, is gone, and the ancient world he taught us so much about is almost forgotten. The great stone circles remain only as ghostly relics of a lost age.
To history’s probing eyes, I am the sister of a wizard and the wife of a king who lived in the Dark Ages.
From history’s narrow vantage point—written by men—I am a woman, defined only by the men around me.
But in the turning of the Great Year, this too is fleeting.
For as the wheel turns and the ages rise, women will embrace their power once more and transform the world.
If we can keep the Earth spinning.
One guardian gave us the power to save this planet. She gave us her song and the labyrinth to find it.
The song has not been played in over ten thousand years. Assembling its parts will not be easy. For with each part you find, the labyrinth will splinter and ultimately break.
You must find the parts by Winter Solstice.
Once you return to your own time, you will need to gather instruments from around the world.
Musicians will come forward to play, answering the call in their hearts.
In the final moment, the guardian’s son, Horus, will bring the song’s last part to make it whole.
The task ahead may seem daunting, but we are all waymakers to keep this world spinning.
When the song is played, every atom on this planet will sing.
Every atom.
The resonance will stabilize the poles and create a higher dimensional field for the entire world where nothing discordant can exist. As the Earth shifts to a higher vibrational frequency, lower vibrational frequencies will fall away.
Hatred, anger, shame, despair, and fear will dissipate.
The forces seeking to destroy this planet will no longer be able to reach us. Our resonance will be too powerful.
This is what we have been working toward for millennia over lifetimes, and the hour is near.
As I write these final words, the lifetime I claim as my own is fading. I am an old woman now looking ahead to the horizon, and my heart is as heavy as the stones of Merlin’s beloved circle he has built for us.
For today, Taliesin and I laid my brother to rest.
Merlin said this would not be the first nor the last time he would die before us. Though we are always connected through time, I miss him already.
I laid a yew branch on his grave. The yew tree signifies death and rebirth. The end and the beginning. The oldest of the trees, only the yew can stand alone in the darkest grove without any light.
We are all in the dark now. Stay strong, stay the course, and remember, like music, the soul is all-powerful and never ending. One lifetime is but a star in the sky of the soul, and the soul is as vast as an endless sea.