The Cold Moon Vigil

Chronicle Entry
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 923
Known As: The Blacksmith's Telling, The Sign of the Longest Night
Date of Events: Time Immemorial to Present
Location: Buallt, Mid Wales
Primary Source: Oral tradition of the smiths, as received from my father, Cerith Gof

Each December, when the sun falls to its lowest point and the full moon climbs higher than any other moon of the year, I watch. I have done so since I was a boy at my father's forge near Nant y Arian, where the bright spring lent the water its pale gleam. The smiths of that country keep a tradition older than the Church, older than Rome, older perhaps than the naming of these hills. They call it the Cold Moon Vigil, and they speak of what shall come when the moon turns at the height of heaven.

The Sign

The learned men of the Church measure the heavens with instruments brought from the East, charting the movements of sun and moon with admirable precision. Yet the smiths of Buallt needed no such tools. They observed and remembered, passing down what they witnessed through generations beyond counting.

On the night of the winter solstice, or near to it, the full moon rises in the east and climbs to the roof of the sky. No summer moon reaches such heights, and no harvest moon, bright as it burns, ascends so far. This happens because the sun has bowed to its lowest arc, and the moon, which stands always opposite the sun when full, must therefore climb to its highest.

The smiths call this the turning. They do not mean that the moon spins or reverses its course. They mean it reaches the apex of its long climb through the year, and there, at the crown of heaven, it pauses before beginning its slow descent. A hinge in the heavens, when one age looks back and another looks forward.

I have read the astronomers and understand the geometry of the spheres as well as any monk of my training. Yet I cannot dismiss what my father taught me. The Cold Moon is a sign. Whether it signifies what the smiths believe, I cannot say with certainty. But it signifies something.

The Telling

My father, Cerith Gof, worked the forge near Nant y Arian until the day the bishops came for me. Men travelled from both sides of the Wye to commission his work, claiming the iron tempered there held its edge longer than most. He was not a lettered man. He could not read Scripture or sign his name. Yet he carried knowledge that no book in our library contains.

On winter nights, when the forge fire burned low and the cold pressed against the walls of our dwelling, he would speak of things passed down from his father, and his father's father, back through generations beyond memory. He called it the Telling. Something that simply was and had to be spoken so it would continue to be.

I was eight years old when I heard it complete for the last time. That same year, the bishops examined a ceremonial blade my father had forged for King Ffernfael, and they found the old knot pattern on its hilt troubling. They gave my father a choice that carried no true choice: his son would be given to Caermynach, or judgement would fall upon the forge itself. He brought me to the monastery without ceremony. It was the last time I saw him.

But I carried the words with me. They lodged in my memory the way iron lodges in stone, and no amount of Latin prayer or scriptural study could dislodge them.

This is what my father spoke, as I received it from him, set down now for the first time in written form:

When the sun bows low, set your eyes upon the cold moon.

For on the longest night it climbs to heaven's crown. There, it turns.

And beyond the shattered gardens, Brenin Fawr draws near. The Great King, breaker of Eden, whose claws scattered embers through the gulf between stars.

Long has he walked the starless deep. The cold that rides before him rends and devours the sun's warmth.

At the Second Dawn, his shadow must unmake our skies once more.

Yet a hearth can endure in the roots of these mountains.

Fire that burned before forge-song, before iron-craft, before flame had a name. He sleeps in stone. The oath sworn at his kindling holds fast.

All roads lead to the Second Dawn. When the moon will turn and all is undone.

The Pendragon shall rise where the world breaks. His light given freely, that the men of Cymru be forged in blood and fire and song.

The people abide in the ruin of all else.

This the smiths have carried, hammer to hammer, since first the telling began.

When the deep flame calls from the mountain's heart, our lands will answer.

I have written it exactly as I heard it. I have not altered a word, though some of what it contains troubles me.

The Prophecy Within

The Telling speaks of matters I have documented elsewhere in these chronicles. Brenin Fawr, the Great King, appears in the oldest accounts of creation that Nest ferch Ifor preserved from the Druidic tradition. The breaking of Eden, though not described in Scripture as the work of a dragon, finds strange resonance with certain apocryphal texts from the Eastern churches.

The prophecy embedded within the Telling is one I have heard from other sources. Cwmni'r Llwybrau, the Company of the Paths, preserve a similar form in their merchant chants:

All roads lead to the Second Dawn. When the moon will turn and all is undone.

Whether the smiths borrowed from the merchants, or the merchants from the smiths, or both from some older source now lost, I cannot determine. What I can say is that the prophecy appears ancient. It was not invented by my father or his forebears. They received it and transmitted it faithfully, as iron receives the hammer's shape and holds it.

The Pendragon remains unnamed in the Telling. This is deliberate. The smiths believe he will be recognised when the time comes, not before. To name him prematurely would be presumption. To wait and watch is the proper stance.

The Sleeper

One element of the Telling has drawn my particular attention across these many years of study.

He sleeps in stone. The oath sworn at his kindling holds fast.

My father believed this referred to a being of fire who rests beneath the mountains of Eryri, waiting for the hour of his waking. The old Druids spoke of such creatures. Dragons, they called them, though not the worms of legend that hoard gold and terrorise villages. These were beings of elemental power, formed before the shaping of the world as we know it.

If such a being exists, and if he truly sleeps beneath the stone, then the Telling is not merely prophecy but promise. A covenant made at the kindling of fire itself, held fast through all the ages since.

I confess I do not know what to make of this. The Church teaches that God alone holds power over the elements, exercising that power through no intermediary save Christ and the Holy Spirit. Yet the persistence of these traditions, their consistency across sources that had no contact with one another, gives me pause. I record what I have received and leave interpretation to those wiser than myself.

The Vigil

I have kept the Cold Moon Vigil for forty winters now.

Each December, I climb to the high ground above Caermynach when the moon is full. I follow its arc across the sky and note whether it reaches the height my father described. Each year, I return to my cell before dawn, having seen nothing but the ordinary beauty of God's creation.

No sign has manifested, no shadow has darkened the stars, no fire has called from the mountain's heart. And yet I continue. The Telling lodged too deep for me to abandon the practice. My father's voice still sounds in my memory when the cold bites and the moon ascends. I hear him speaking those words by the dying forge-fire, and I am eight years old again, receiving what I did not yet understand.

I do not know if my father kept the vigil after I was taken, or if he watched alone, or if he taught another before his time came. The smiths of Buallt still speak the Telling, so I trust the chain did not break. But my link to it was severed the day I passed through Caermynach's gate. What I carry now, I carry alone.

Perhaps nothing will happen in my lifetime. The prophecy speaks of the Second Dawn, and dawns come when they come, not when men wish them. Perhaps I am merely another link in a chain that will not reach its end for generations yet.

The Doubt

I must record my uncertainty, for honesty demands it.

The Song of the Stars brought this prophecy to mortal ears. The Grand Druids of Carn Ingli translated what the heavens sang, and from their translation the Telling eventually descended to the smiths of Buallt. But stars have been known to deceive. Their light travels through such depths of darkness that none can say with certainty whether what we see is truth or its distant shadow.

My father believed without question. He had the faith of a man who works with his hands and trusts what he can hold. Iron does not lie. Fire does not pretend. The Telling felt as real to him as the hammer in his grip, and he paid a heavy price for the old knowledge he carried. When the bishops came for me, he did not argue or resist. He accepted what came as a smith agrees with the weight of iron: without complaint, because complaint changes nothing.

I have spent my life among books and questions. I have learned that even Scripture contains mysteries wise men dispute. Will the Pendragon rise? Does Brenin Fawr truly walk the starless deep, drawing nearer with each passing age? Does fire sleep beneath Eryri, waiting for the oath to call it forth? I cannot say. The Telling has survived through generations beyond counting. That survival carries weight. What kind of weight, I leave to those who come after me.

Final Entry

Tonight the Cold Moon rises. I will keep the vigil as I have always done.

I am old now, and my hands shake when I write. I do not know how many more Decembers remain to me. I have set down the Telling so that it will not die when I do. The smiths of Buallt still speak it, but smiths die and forges grow cold. Parchment endures where memory fails.

If the Second Dawn comes after my death, those who read these words will understand the signs. They will know what the moon's turning means. And if the prophecy proves false, if the stars deceived those first Druids on Carn Ingli, then let this chronicle stand as record of what men believed and why they believed it.

We are not fools for hoping, nor weak for keeping vigil. We are the people who abide.

The moon rises. I go to watch.