"You are my fostern since we were five years old, and you are wedded to my mother’s daughter, Morguenna, with whom you have a son called Gerrans."
I stirred restively, but I could not say I had been touched by an actual memory, just so, at the mention of my mate and son; yet somehow it did not seem so unfamiliar as before.
"What was I, then, before I came here? What was my calling? And how came I here at all? And where is ‘here’?"
He seemed to choose his words now with even greater care. "You are the Chief Poet of Keltia. Folk sing your songs on all our worlds, and on worlds far among the stars, and for your great gifts they have named you Pen-bardd."
Taliesin Glyndour ap Gwyddno, Pen-bardd of Keltia… It sounded far too grand for the likes of me as I was here, in my well-worn (if clean) garb and untrimmed (if also clean) hair and beard. I pondered it all for a while, and he respected my silence; then I remembered that he had not answered my last questions—and did not appear disposed to do so just yet—so I asked another instead. "Who, then, are you?"
An expression I had no words for crossed his face, a vivid shading of love and ruefulness, sorrow and amusement, pity and care, hurt and patience and impatience all together. Then he did something extraordinary: He reached forward and pulled my recently rediscovered gold locket out from under my leinna. But when he spoke, his voice was even and his manner plain.
"I made this for you, braud, for one thing. But for the rest of it, I am Arthur Penarvon, son of Prince Amris Pendreic and the Lady Ygrawn Tregaron, and I am Ard-righ of Keltia, King of Kelts. I have come to this place—have allowed myself to be brought here—only to bring you out of it. This is the castle of Oeth-Anoeth, and it is my mother’s other daughter, Marguessan, who has kept you here."
Well! This was a parcel of news and no mistaking, rather a lot to take in all at once, as you will doubtless agree. Yet what he had said carried the immediate bright ring of truth. He was the High King. He was Arthur, my brother by fostering and by marriage, and his sister—who was presumably also my wife’s sister—had shut me up here, for reasons I could not imagine…
"It sounds—correct," I said at last, still thinking furiously. "A touch unlikely, I grant you, but correct—"
At that he laughed—Arthur laughed. "Now that sounds more my Tal-bach—but are you not wishful to know the rest of it?"
"Oh, perhaps just the tiniest bit curious; no doubt Your Majesty will tell me in royal good time."
Still grinning, he leaped up and began to pace the chamber, and—it is hard to explain—it was as if a shutter had blinked open inside my head, just for an instant, and I knew him. Truly knew him, knew I knew him: That pacing was a thing he often did when he needed to work things out, and very often I myself had been there to watch him do so… But then it was gone again, and I settled back expectantly on my pillows and some piled-up cloaks, hands behind my head, to listen.
"You had been sent," he began cautiously, "to a place I think I shall not speak of aloud just yet, for fear of who might be listening. There it was you had the truth of your mother, her name and arms and origins—for you had not known of her before—and also you were given a message, information of the most terrible purpose and consequence, to bring back to me and to the Ard-rian—"
"Gwennach." The name was out before I even knew I had spoken, and Arthur shot me a glance like a lasra.
"Oh aye, her you remember—" The tone was teasing, exasperated, mock-annoyed, but the delight in the dark eyes was very real; and so too the tiny gleam I saw of relief along with it. "Well then," he continued, "when you came to leave that place and return to us at Court, you simply—vanished."
I was enormously interested, and inverted my position, head to the bedfoot, flat on my front to listen in greater comfort.
"Where did I go?"
"We had not the smallest idea. You had departed, as I say, in good order and good time, and should have been back with us within hours. But you did not come, not then, not later, and we began to fear almost at once."
"What did you do?"
"We had another messenger in your stead—again, I think I will not name him, or her—who came to tell us what had befallen: that you were gone missing, and that your horses had been found wandering on the outskirts of Drum Wood. Now were we alarmed in good earnest, for Drum is many hundreds of miles from where you went missing. We mounted a search for you all across the planet, but there was no trace."
In some perverse way, I was much enjoying this. "And I was here?"
Arthur was still pacing. "Aye, but we did not yet know it. Even Morgan, your own wife, could not find you with the strongest of her magics, and she is the greatest sorcerer we now have. All she could learn was that you yet lived; no more, save that whoever held you also commanded mighty magics, and had a place to keep you proof against all comers."
At his mention of Morgan’s name, an image of the woman in my dreams, the one with dark-gold hair and the serpent ring upon her hand and the urgency in her hazel eyes, flickered across my sight. Ah, my Guenna, how could I not know you, of all folk else?
"This place—Oeth-Anoeth, you name it—where is it?"
"On the planet Gwynedd, in the Old North, on the lands of Irian, who is Lord of Lleyn. He is wed to Marguessan—" Arthur spoke the name quietly enough, but there was an undernote of icy anger that caused me to look sharply up at him. No love lost here, then, between brother and this sister; therefore, I wondered—
I said, choosing my words with care, "I take it that Marguessan is not our favorite amongst our kin."
His laugh was grim. "Nay, not by a far cry… But Talynno, we have not the time to rehearse all our lives just now. Marguessan it is who put you here, and she too who has sent me to join you; and I do not think we have time to waste in doing aught not aimed to free us both."
My excitement and interest had been steadily growing as he spoke. "But what can we do? You have not said so, not in so many words, but clearly it is only by magic that Marguessan has got us here at all. I am no sorcerer; are you?"
His eternal credit that he did not laugh in my face; but he did allow himself that faint grin again. All he said, though, was, "Enough of one to open the door on a crack for one who truly is… Listen, now—"
He spoke urgently and to the point, and when he had finished I nodded; what is more, I understood.
"You are beginning to remember," he said approvingly. "A Druid Merlynn made does not so easily forget—"
At that name I started violently; and if a shutter in my mind had been chinked before, now it was as if someone had set shoulder to it, had flung it back and light had come flooding in. He had the right of it: I was beginning to remember, and also I had not forgotten so much as I had feared.
"What shall we do?" I asked, with a certain deference to my manner, for now I also remembered rather better just how much of a sorcerer he was.
"We wait," he said with a grimness. "Marguessan will be along presently; until she arrives, let us try to fill in the gaps in your mind."
It turned out that I had been to visit the Sidhe-folk—those whose name Arthur would not speak, and as things turned out it was as well that he had not—had disappeared while en route back to Caerdroia, and had wandered in impenetrable forests for some weeks before Marguessan, who had engineered my going astray, finally reeled me in and set me down here in Oeth-Anoeth.
It has a fell sound even now: Oeth-Anoeth, a stronghold of the Marbh-draoi Edeyrn, up in that ancient quarter of the planet Gwynedd called the Old North. I reflected that it said much for Marguessan’s connections, as well as her magical abilities, that she was able not only to arrange my long and involuntary rambles, but that she had managed to get me off the Throneworld entirely and here to Gwynedd, all without the best sensers in Keltia being any the wiser.
And here I had been, for nearly two years’ time; though, as I told Arthur, it seemed less, and I had had to my knowing only that one interview with Marguessan, or the woman I assumed was Marguessan,
at least…
"But why?" I asked at last. "Why me? You have said she and I had a long history of unfriendliness, but what use could I be to her here? Or was it merely to plague and fret you and Morgan and the rest of my dear ones? Just simple revenge, and no more?"
Arthur lifted eloquent eyebrows. "Revenge is never simple—you must know that by now—and almost never is it merely ‘no more.’ There is almost always more, and I think"—he had come silently to his feet, and had assumed a stance of combat-readiness; it was all done unthinking, beautiful to see, and I was most impressed—"I think she is about to answer your questions for herself."
I saw no reason to stir me from where I was ensconced—Arthur seemed to have that covered—so when Marguessan all at once was in the chamber with us, I was still lying comfortably on my pillowed bed.
She spared me the briefest of glances, then turned on Arthur a stare as straight and as potentially fatal as a spear. For his part, he seemed unconcerned, if wary, but I suddenly sensed peril, and very quietly began to shift position so that I might help, if help was called for.
Arthur, however, appeared to be, if not master of the situation exactly, at least in the position of one with much in reserve—a fidchell player whose pieces give no hint to his opponent of the sainn-an-rian to come. Encouraged obscurely by his air, I turned my attention again to my sister-in-law.
Now I looked at her closely, I wondered that I had not known her at once, no matter how she had contrived to cloud my mind. The eyes with their eerie ring of darkness round the blue—surely they should have stood unveiled even to my memory, however tampered with. When one encounters evil, looks it straight in the eye, as it were, one generally finds it fairly unforgettable ever after… I was beginning to remember more bits and pieces now: From incalculable depths of years swam up a sudden vivid darting image—Marguessan as a child of ten or twelve years, she and I in a great vaulted underground cavern full of gleaming technological tools and artificings, and she stirring water in a silver bowl, most untechnological, and on one of the viewscreens a picture of a doomed birlinn heading for fanged rocks on a distant seacoast…
If Arthur was recalling any similar memory, he gave no outward sign of it, merely watched his sister’s face with sharp and close attention, his stance easeful and his outer mind a blank. Then, out of the ease and blankness, came a question like the point of a sword.
"Where is the Cup, Marguessan? Where is Pair Dadeni?"
She laughed, and her eyes somehow sharpened to match his words, as if she had set tiny knives in there amidst the black-rimmed blue.
"The Cup is not for you, Arthur."
"Nor is it for you," returned her brother without heat. "As you well know… Or is it that, not being Ban-draoi, you would not know?"
Now that stung, clearly, though I of course did not recall just why; but I did wonder—why in all the hells was Artos (I had remembered how I called him!) asking her about a cup, of all things? I had heard how he spoke the word—the Cup, as a proper name; not just any old mether, then. And then suddenly I saw it, or rather I Saw it: the great hall in Turusachan full of richly clad folk, and the glowing, blazing quaich with pearls round its rim, spinning like a triskell above our astonished heads and vanishing in a flash of fragrance and flame. The Cup indeed: one of the Four Chief Treasures, the Hallows, one of that great and sacred Quaternity upon which all Keltia was founded, a cornerstone of our faith. And I looked again at Marguessan, and I began to be afraid.
Though Arthur still seemed untroubled, at least outwardly, it was far otherwise with his sister: She had drawn herself up like a hiss-cat at his barb, even her hair seeming to crackle with spite.
"You throw my lack of Ban-draoi skills in my face," she said calmly enough, "but you forget that when that training was denied me, I found for myself another teacher in magic—a teacher mighty enough to suppress all magic in Keltia for twice a hundred years."
"Aye, and you learned well his lessons, I have no doubt; as we all saw at Kerriwick." Arthur suddenly seemed beaten and weary, and Marguessan could not forbear a small smile.
"Taught me well enough so that I could bring both you here," she said with a touch of complacency, "and you will learn still better what he taught me, now that you are here." She glanced aside at me, then back at Arthur. "Be welcome in Oeth-Anoeth." And she was gone.
Arthur’s seeming weariness went with her. "Come, Talyn, we have much to do, and time is not on our side in this one."
He was rummaging through the depths of the leather travelling backsack that had been slung across his shoulders when he arrived in the cell—Marguessan for some reason had not relieved him of it, or of whatever were its contents—and he soon found the object of his rummage, for he straightened with an air of pleased triumph.
"Do you remember this?"
I stared at the thing he held out on his open palm. It was a clear sphere of rock crystal, of the size of a small fruit; two bands of rune-incised silver circled it at poles and equator, as it were, and there was a soldered ring at the top through which was threaded a leather cord. Oddly enough, it seemed most familiar—
"Morgan," I said, though I did not know why, and Arthur smiled.
"Morgan indeed. Come sit by me."
I obeyed full eager, for the crystal drew me powerfully; once I was well settled on the pile of furs by his side, Arthur held up the stone before my eyes. It caught the vague blue light from outside, prisming it into shifting colors and sparkling motes, and I could not look away.
Arthur’s voice came warm and golden to my ear, but that was all the contact I had with present reality: The stone seemed to pull me into it, and at the same time to pull me out of myself, or what for so long had passed for my self. The sensation was distinctly unpleasant, but often healing can be so, or feel so, even though we know very well it is for our own weal.
Any road, I saw naught before me but the light of the stone; I felt dizzy and sick, as if I were being spun about, blindfold, and though I could not comprehend Arthur’s words, those words were the only thing I had to cling to, and I did.
It did not go on very long, perhaps not even so long as I have taken here to tell of it. Or perhaps it went on for hours, days even, time being what it was within these walls; I never found out. What I do remember is that all at once, without warning, Arthur ceased to speak, and the light went out, and I fell forward onto my knees, as if I had been suddenly set free from, well, chains. Not all shackles saw a smithy.
I took a deep uneven experimental breath. My mind was full again: over-full, brimming. There were names and faces and colors and memories and words, places and people, in a long vivid procession reaching back as far as I could see. And I could see, I could; and I almost sobbed, so empty had I been, to be now so full.
I raised my head and looked at Arthur. Slowly, tremulously, the same smile began to form on both our faces. "Well," I said. "I am back."
* * *
Chapter Three
And not, it would seem, a moment too soon… After Arthur and I had spent all the time we dared on the joy of a real reunion, we began to lay plans for escape from Oeth-Anoeth, before Marguessan could put in train other, less wholesome plans of her own. Even explanations and accounts of what had happened in my absence must wait a safer time, so I put my myriad questions aside and gave Arthur my whole attention. Indeed, there was no other choice.
He had different concerns. "Do you feel up to this now? We could perhaps afford to wait a day or two—"
I laughed grimly. "A day or two in this place might well be another year or three out there… Nay, I will make shift to follov and to help as best I can. Only tell me now, how is it with my lady? And my son?"
Arthur grinned. "You shall see… I know that you are feared and weary and troubled, Talyn, but it is best, truly, that we remove ourselves hence as soon as may be. Not only for what may happen here but for what may happen out there." He gestured vaguely toward the high barred window.
I made no answer, but I w
as thinking hard. Whatever it was that he was so reluctant to tell me of just now, it must be terrible indeed if only to know of it would so unsettle me that our escape might be put in peril. Still, it was no joy to work in ignorance—I shook myself. What was wrong with me? Arthur had arranged his own imprisonment, had allowed Marguessan to entrap him and throw him in here with me, all to bring me out with him; I was being apetulant ungrateful churl, at the very least. With my newly restored memory, I called to mind innumerable instances in our long shared history where one or the other of us had done likewise, for ourselves or for others of our Company…
"Is the Company still strong?" I heard myself asking in spite of my resolve and his, and he smiled even as he focused on his working.
"Aye, stronger than ever. We have even taken to formal assembly, each fullmoon; there is an old table in a disused Council-room of the palace, that Daronwy and Elenna thought would serve the purpose."
For some reason the image caught my bard’s fancy. "A table? What of rank and precedence? The seating arrangements—"
Despite his fears and preoccupation with graver concerns, Arthur laughed aloud with real amusement. "Raighne, whose table and Council-room those once were, must have had much the same kind of mind as you… Nay, the table is shaped like the rim of a wain-wheel," he continued with exaggerated teasing exactitude, "open in the middle, and the chairs are ranged in a triple row along its edge. So there is no head to this particular table; no assigned places even, save one alone. Nay, not for Gweniver or for me, even, and thus all are equal at the Companions’ table. But we can discuss furniture another time, Talyn; now we must get ourselves away from here, and swiftly too."
"Well, aye; but how? There is no door to work on, as you did in Kerriwick, as I am sure you have noted; or even that time in the Nantosvelta, when Guenna—" I broke off and stared at him. "That is the trick you plan to try here, not so?"
The Hedge of Mist Page 3