Taltos Read Online Free PDF

hundreds upon hundreds of tiny blue wildflowers. On the river he rode in a small wooden craft, and the soldiers stood on the high battlements; ah, what these creatures did, piling one rock upon another to make great mountains of their own! But what were his own monuments, the great sarsens which hundreds dragged across the plain to make the circle?
    The cave, he saw that too again, as if a dozen vivid photographs were shuffled suddenly before him, and one moment he was running down the cliff, slipping, nearly falling, and at another Samuel stood there, saying,
    “Let’s leave here, Ash. Why do you come here? What is there to see or to learn?”
    He saw the Taltos with the white hair.
    “The wise ones, the good ones, the knowing ones,” they had called them. They had not said “old.” It would neverhave been a word they would have used in those times, when the springs of the island were warm, and the fruit fell from the trees. Even when they’d come to the glen, they had never said the word “old,” but everyone knew they had lived the longest. Those with the white hair knew the longest stories….
    “Go up now and listen to the story.”
    On the island, you could pick which of the white-haired ones you wanted, because they themselves would not choose, and you sat there listening to the chosen one sing, or talk, or say the verses, telling the deepest things that he could remember There had been a white-haired woman who sang in a high, sweet voice, her eyes always fixed on the sea. And he had loved to listen to her.
    And how long, he thought, how many decades would it be before his own hair was completely white?
    Why, it might be very soon, for all he knew. Time itself had meant nothing then. And the white-haired females were so few, because the birthing made them wither young. No one talked about that either, but everybody knew it.
    The white-haired males had been vigorous, amorous, prodigious eaters, and ready makers of predictions. But the white-haired woman had been frail. That is what birth had done to her.
    Awful to remember these things, so suddenly, so clearly. Was there perhaps another magic secret to the white hair? That it made you remember from the beginning? No, it wasn’t that, it was only that in all the years of never knowing how long, he had imagined that he would greet death with both arms, and now he did not feel that way.
    His car had crossed the river, and was speeding towards the airport. It was big and heavy and hugged the slippery asphalt. It held steady against the beating wind.
    On the memories tumbled. He’d been old when the horsemen had ridden down upon the plain. He’d been old when he saw the Romans on the battlements of the Antonine Wall, when he’d looked down from Columba’s door on the high cliffs of Iona.
    Wars. Why did they never go out of his memory, but wait there in all their full glory, right along with the sweetrecollections of those he’d loved, of the dancing in the glen, of the music? The riders coming down upon the grassland, a dark mass spreading out as if it were ink upon a peaceful painting, and then the low roar just reaching their ears, and the sight of the smoke rising in endless clouds from their horses. He awoke with a start.
    The little phone was ringing for him. He grasped it hard and pulled it from its black hook.
    “Mr. Ash?”
    “Yes, Remmick?’’
    “I thought you’d like to know, sir. At Claridge’s, they are familiar with your friend Samuel. They have arranged his usual suite for him, second floor, corner, with the fireplace. They are waiting for you. And, Mr. Ash, they don’t know his surname either. Seems he doesn’t use it.”
    “Thank you, Remmick. Say a little prayer. The weather’s very volatile and dangerous, I think.”
    He hung up before Remmick could begin the conventional warnings. Should never have said such a thing, he thought.
    But that was really amazing—their knowing Samuel at Claridge’s. Imagine their having gotten used