Only the Stones Survive: A Novel by Morgan Llywelyn

from their homeland, and they could not possibly have traveled as far as our own people. But they must feel just as lost and uncertain as we did Before the Before. We should show them mercy.”
    “It is so like you to say that,” my father replied. “Do you suppose they would show us mercy if the situation were reversed?”
    Lerys was not the only one who had misgivings about the war. The other Dananns continued to debate the rights and wrongs of aggression. Confusion clouded the atmosphere. During the short gray days and long cold nights of darkseason, a strange lassitude descended on the tribe, as if an invisible piper were playing the Sleepy Music.
    More men came to confer with my father, and the tone of the conversations changed. There were words I had never heard used before: words like “pain” and “defeat” and “failure.” The ugly, naked language of warfare.
    The shadows in the corners of our house moved toward the center.
    Meanwhile, the Dagda began to place more emphasis on the history he wanted me to learn. “The legends of our race are the proud inheritance of every Danann child,” he said, “along with their chain of names. In the long-ago time when we challenged the Fomorians for the sovereignty of Ierne, we possessed weapons engraved with symbols of the arts we had brought with us from the land of our origin. Arts that must have seemed magical indeed to the primitive Fomorians.”
    Was he referring to the Sword of Light and the Invincible Spear? Were they the Earthkillers? Or was that something even worse?
    When I asked the Dagda, he would not meet my eyes. “You would not understand yet, Joss; you are too young, and your mind is too vulnerable. We are not going to talk about those things because I do not want to put horrible images into your head. You would never be able to get them out.”
    Too young, although I had attended the Being Together. It was only a foretaste; I saw that now. Because of my size and the number of my seasons, I was still being excluded from knowledge. And I wanted to know. Curiosity is an itch that demands to be scratched.
    The Dagda would not tell me about the terrible weapons, yet I could see that he was pleased by my eagerness to learn. So I kept asking questions, more and more questions. I skirted around the topic he was determined to avoid and nibbled at the outside edges of warfare, hoping I could trick him into giving something away.
    That is how young I really was. I thought I could trick the Dagda.
    He explained that over the generations highly stylized warfare had become a sport among our people, a way of releasing the excess energy we had in abundance. Both men and women relished the rigorous exercise. Those who did not care to compete gathered to watch, whistling and applauding and stamping their feet, throwing armloads of flowers and cheering wildly for their heroes. Poems of praise were composed for victor and vanquished alike, and the two sides feasted together afterward.
    It sounded glorious. And perhaps it had been, once. When we were on the winning side.
    But in addition to the lessons the Dagda taught me, I could not help hearing some of the things our visitors said when they came to talk with my father.
    We did not appear to be on the winning side now.
    The conflict was being fought in deadly earnest. There was no sport in it; no skill, no art. The New People were simply killing everyone who got in their way. Elders whose heads were silvered by the passage of time and youngsters with their unlived lives sparkling in their eyes were being cut down where they stood.
    In response, even men and women with no taste for battle were taking up weapons and fighting back. We who hated nothing were learning to hate. Hate the strangers, the foreigners, the enemies who were alien from the shape of their heads to the style of their weapons. Some claimed they were not people at all, but they were.
    People like us. People who wanted what was ours and hated us for a