Cwmni'r Llwybrau

Chronicle Entry - Secret Annex

Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 918
Subject Type: Organisation (Hidden)
Period of Operation: c. 4000 BC to present day
Primary Function: Intelligence gathering under merchant cover
Secrecy Classification: Protected knowledge, forbidden for ecclesiastical review

The Record

Cwmni'r Llwybrau operated as a merchant guild for six thousand years. They dealt in tin, amber, bronze goods, salt, and textiles across routes connecting the eastern Mediterranean to Atlantic coasts. Their reputation for honest dealing granted them welcome in territories that barred other foreigners. This was their shield.

Their true work was gathering knowledge for Arawn of the Western Veil.

I write this in secret because good men will die if the Church learns what I know. Three merchants visited this monastery last winter. We spoke of weather and trade until the other brothers slept. Then the eldest, a Greek who spoke Welsh without accent, drew back his sleeve and showed me the mark burned into his forearm. The triquetra wreathed in oak leaves, and beneath it a script I recognized from the oldest bardic manuscripts. The scar tissue had healed white against dark skin, raised and deliberate.

"We are the eyes that watch the east," he said. "We have been watching since the tower fell and the tongues scattered. Will you record what we know, Brother Wyn, or must we find another chronicler?"

They asked if I would commit heresy for them. I, being neither brave nor wise, said yes.

Origins and Purpose

The company was founded a generation after the refugees reached the western island and settled into what would become Cymru. The children born during the long westward migration, who learned Tafod Dwybig from birth and spoke it as their mother tongue, grew to adulthood in lands far from the terror of Shinar. They knew the Dragon language purely, untainted by the trauma their parents carried.

Arawn came to certain families whose trade had always crossed long distances. He came after he had chained the two great Dragons beneath the earth, when Brenin Fawr lay bound for what would be thousands of years before his possible return. With that immediate threat contained, Arawn could turn his attention eastward and see clearly what was building there.

Zeus had learned from his failure at Shinar, yet he still held the eastern veil. His methods were changing. His understanding was growing. He remained a threat, perhaps a greater one for having learned caution. If Arawn must one day stand against Zeus, he would need eyes and ears under the eastern veil itself, in the very belly of the beast where no western guardian could walk openly without drawing Zeus's direct attention.

He asked these merchant families to make a choice their parents had fled from: return east. Not as refugees, but as traders whose neutrality would grant them passage where warriors could not go. Learn the eastern tongues. Establish routes. Build reputations for honest dealing that would make men trust them. And watch. Always watch.

The families he approached understood the weight of what he asked. Their parents had carried them west to escape Zeus's dominion. Now he proposed they carry their children back, knowingly, into lands where Zeus's power was absolute and his patience for western interference was exhausted. Yet they also understood that their unique position made them invaluable. They spoke Tafod Dwybig as natives. They carried no trauma from Shinar. They were young enough to learn new tongues and old enough to understand what was at stake.

They swore oaths that bound their descendants. The first generation returned east and established trade routes between Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Six thousand years of continuous operation followed, each generation teaching the next both the merchant craft and the deeper purpose: preserve the Dragon tongue in its purest form, watch the eastern veil, serve as Arawn's eyes where his own presence would mean war.

Methods of Operation

The merchants moved between Greek, Latin, and Celtic tongues with the ease that comes from genuine need. They spoke Tafod Dwybig among themselves when no others could hear, maintaining the purest form of the language even as it evolved into Welsh among the settled peoples. This dual fluency made them uniquely valuable to Arawn's purposes.

They were welcomed in marketplace and feast hall. Neutrality made them valuable. Men spoke freely to traders who held no stake in petty wars, and the merchants listened well. What they learned traveled through networks they would not name, even to me.

I know they met contacts at sacred sites when the moon was dark. I know certain bronze mirrors served purposes beyond vanity, their polished surfaces catching reflections that should not exist in firelight. I know messages were encoded in textile patterns, amber arrangements, pottery marks that appeared merely decorative. The merchants maintained warehouses in port cities where goods awaited collection by those who recognized the signs.

When Zeus moved against mortal kingdoms, when new religions threatened old wisdom, when empires expanded toward western territories, the merchants observed and sent warning. How many lives were saved by intelligence carried in an amphora of oil? How many cultures endured because a trader spoke quietly to the right druid at the right hour? The accounting will never be made, which is perhaps as it should be.

What They Told Me

The Greek merchant spoke for two hours while his companions kept watch. He described events at Shinar that Scripture records as divine judgment, though he spoke not as witness but as one who carried knowledge passed from those who were. He named Zeus as living power who tried to force all into one unified tone and shattered the Song instead. He spoke of towers built to channel resonance, of thunder that broke the air itself, of peoples scattering in terror from lands where the sky sang wrong.

He told me of Tafod Dwybig with the reverence men reserve for sacred things. The Dragon tongue was not merely language, he said, though it served that purpose well enough. It was healing given form, restoration made audible, proof that what terror broke could be mended through patient teaching. His ancestors learned it as children born during the westward migration, speaking it purely before they ever learned Greek or Latin or any tongue of the eastern lands. This purity of knowledge made them invaluable when Arawn later asked them to return east as his eyes.

He told me things about the nature of the veils that I will not write even here. Some knowledge is too dangerous to preserve in any form, no matter how carefully hidden. I listened and my faith wavered. Then I remembered that all truth is God's truth, however strange the vessel that carries it.

They departed before dawn, leaving payment for their lodging and a bronze mirror for the monastery library. I keep it in my cell. Sometimes at night the firelight catches its surface and I see things that cannot be reflection. I do not speak of this to my brothers.

The Language Keepers

The merchants served as more than spies. They preserved the purest forms of Tafod Dwybig long after it evolved into the Welsh tongue we speak today. When bardic schools needed correction on ancient pronunciation, when druidic orders sought the oldest ritual phrases, when Arawn himself required messengers who could speak to powers that predated human kingdoms, the merchants provided what was needed.

This is why they could speak Welsh without accent despite being born in Greek lands or Roman territories. They learned Tafod Dwybig first, in its purest dragon-taught form, and all other languages after. The tongue Arawn taught to heal trauma became the foundation of their entire operation, the secret that bound them across continents and centuries.

Final Entry

The Company of the Paths endures in the year 918. Merchants bearing their marks still travel between Constantinople and the western shores, though Rome's roads carry most commerce now and the old paths grow faint. They face new dangers. Christian kingdoms view pagan knowledge with deadly suspicion. Yet they adapt as their forefathers did, serving powers that exist beyond the sight of bishops and kings, carrying warnings that spare lives and preserve wisdom.

I asked the Greek merchant why they trusted me with knowledge that could destroy them. He smiled and said their master reads hearts better than most men read scrolls. Then he asked if I knew why Arawn chose merchants rather than warriors for this work.

I did not.

"Because merchants deal in value," he said. "And the most valuable things cannot be bought or sold or taken by force. They can only be given freely, and received with gratitude, and protected at cost of life. Your chronicles will be such a thing, Brother Wyn. The language we preserve is such a thing. The Dragon tongue was freely given to heal what terror broke, and we returned east freely to guard both the tongue and the peoples who speak it."

He paused, then added something that has troubled me since. "Our ancestors learned Tafod Dwybig as children, pure and untainted by the trauma of Shinar. This made us valuable to Arawn when he needed eyes in lands where Zeus's power was absolute. We carry knowledge of what happened to Tafod Ddu, the first speaker who later betrayed the gift he received. We watch so that such patterns do not repeat, and we remember so that the cost of healing is never forgotten."

I have tried to write these truths well. God judge whether I succeeded. The mirror lies on my table, catching light it should not hold. The merchants will return when they have news worth the risk. And I will continue setting down knowledge that could cost me my soul, because some lies are more damning than any honest heresy.

May these words stay hidden until wisdom finds them.