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Chapter Four
Well, they are not gone, just so," Arthur had said. "But for the moment, and for our purposes, they are gone enough. We will find out where in good time."
But that was earlier; now it was just before sunset on the day of my liberation. We had ridden at an easy pace away from Oeth-Anoeth—or where Oeth-Anoeth had been—and were now well out of Marguessan’s lands into a rolling country of hills and open chases and cleared woods. Across ploughed fields there were just visible the lights of a substantial farmstead beginning to glow through the blue dusk. We could have claimed hospitality there with perfect right had we been even the simplest and humblest of travellers, and they who dwelt there would have been glad to entertain us. As it was, the High King, his matebrother and his nephew would have been given the warmest and most lavish of welcomes, the neighbors called in from several farms around—But by tacit agreement we turned our horses’ heads from the farmlands and made our camp under a roof of red oak leaves and heavy maple boughs, in a stand of ancient trees in a small hollow sheltered from the wind.
As we pottered happily about, making safe and soft our campsite preparing a hot supper, caring first of all for our horses’ needs, I kept unbroken the silence I had maintained for the greater part of that unsettling day. Oh, not for ill humor or anything like; but as the three of us had wished and needed to keep ourselves to ourselves just now, so I wished and needed to keep myself to myself a little longer apart if not away from my fostern and my son.
There was much that I wished to say to them, truly, and much more that I wished to hear them say to me; but I had been two years in my own sole company, all but the last few hours of it in ignorance even of my own identity, and I needed a while longer to grow used to myself and others—even dearly loved others—once again. Needed, too, time to make real to my soul and senses the fact that I was free again, was me again; and to their credit, the other two saw this and did not press.
But they were not refraining from cheerful speech between themselves, and this too helped me: Gerrans had ever enjoyed a loving bond with his royal uncle, and for his part Artos had dealt with him as if he had been more son than nephew. I had ever been delighted by their closeness, as was Morgan; considering the full slate of young relations on the Pendreic side consisted of Gerrans and Marguessan’s three brats—Mordryth, the eldest; a lass called Galeron, whom I had ever held to be a sly-eyed piece of goods; and the youngest, a lad named Gwain after his grand-sir, Darowen Ard-rian’s consort, and of whom we as yet knew but little—I was thrilled that the High King and my son were so fond of each other.
So Arthur and Gerrans chatted casually and amiably as they readied our nightmeal, and I listened contentedly with half an ear, as it might be to a running stream, and took comfort in the sheer normalcy of the sound.
We were just finishing our supper of grilled beef and roasted buttered framachs and toasted bread—one of my favorite bills of outdoor fare, the savor of the meat and the framachs and the flavor of the woodfire in both are incomparable—and were washing it down with cool cider when Arthur, answering a query of Gerrans’s, caused me by his words to snort cider up my nose in utter and complete astonishment. When I had finished choking and coughing and wiping cider from my chin, I turned to stare at Arthur.
"A son!? Since what time? Why did you not tell me? Is Gwennach—"
Arthur laughed and filled my mether where I had let it fall in my excitement. "There were somewhat more pressing things for us to deal with and discuss than even your new status as uncle," he said, still smiling. "But aye indeed, there is now a new Tanist for Keltia, Arawn by name, and he will be a full moonyear old this very week. He and Gweniver are both well and happy, and the folk are most pleased. So too his halfsister and her mother, I might add."
"I daresay, I do daresay." I grinned like an idiot for a few moments more. "What else have I missed out on whilst Marguessan’s hospitality ruled my life?"
"Well, you are named godsfather to the Prince, needless to tell; Grehan stood proxy for you with Morgan, and she herself is goddessmother, so that keeps it all nicely in the kindred."
I saluted him with the mether, and we drank a belated toast to my new nephew and his mother. Arawn. A likely name, if perhaps but little used heretofore in the House of Don; in the bardic speech it means ‘Lord of the Summer Stars,’ and is the name of one of the mightier deities in our Keltic pantheon. Arawn Ard-righ: It would sound most fine when the time at last came for it. Good that Arthur and Gweniver had an heir at last; good too that they had gotten him in love, for they had not always had a match of the heart. And best of all, it meant that Marguessan was no longer Tanista presumptive, and her brat Mordryth was thrust yet another place farther from the Throne of Scone—
"Arawn Amris Taliesin Gorlas, to give my new cousin his full due," said Gerrans, and I felt tears sting my eyes at the redoubled honor my beloved friends had done me. It was a real honor, too, not just a sop to convention and ties of blood; in Keltia those who stand godsparents to a child have specific obligations and rights and privileges with respect to their ward. They have legal standing, to be consulted in major decisions regarding the child and its schooling and fosterage and career and eventual marriage or liaison; often the child will make use of them as surrogate parents, or even as allies against its parents when circumstances may require. Though of course a royal heir-apparent will have many to look to in time of need, still it will be to goddess-mother and godsfather that any child will turn all life long, and I was deeply and humbly happy. Happy too for that the boy bore also Gorlas’s name; but then Arthur had ever paid attention to details another might have missed.
I looked across the fire at my own son—who was, as it happened, gods’-child himself to Arthur and Gweniver. Gerrans, unaware of my covert study, was industriously and skillfully mending one of Arthur’s stirrup leathers, broken in the afternoon’s ride. His arm that had been injured in the combat was healed now, lightly padded against the soreness that would be in it for a day or two. Otherwise he was hale and whole and seemed happy, and I beheld him with a strange new pride. He was dark-haired like me, hazel-eyed like his mother, with a small gap between his front teeth that gave him the most engaging grin imaginable. As I said earlier, his aptitude, quite unlike my own, was clearly for soldiery, and already the Fianna had tagged him for officer placing. As for other talents, so far both Guenna’s gifts and my own had shown utterly lacking in him; a more literal-minded, unmagical person, seemingly, had never been born in Keltia. But if that had been cause in time past for some wistful or indeed wishful moments, on my part or Morgan’s or his, the future would show different, to Keltia and to worlds beyond…
"Now we shall speak of that which we have not yet spoken of," I heard myself calmly pronouncing, in the bard’s voice of command, and I felt Arthur’s surprise as well as Gerrans’s.
But the King obeyed me equably enough, first smooring the fire, then settling back upon his sleeping furs and padding his saddle with his cloak to serve as pillow, and began the whole terrible tale…
It seemed that I had been captured by Marguessan almost as soon as I had ridden out of Glenshee and long before I reached Methven, the market town from which my trek to the faerie lands had begun. Perhaps she had had spies about, perhaps it was mere mischance; but any road, I was taken and magically transported by her to Drum Wood, where after my monthlong stay beneath the hollow hill I had wandered houseless and nearly foodless and just about witless for a full month more, until I was exhausted and spent in body and mind and spirit, defenseless before her. Since none yet knew I was kidnapped, rumor of my disappearance did not reach Caerdroia until well after Marguessan had whisked me off the Throneworld and brought me in secret here to Gwynedd, where in the rough lonely lands of the Old North, her lord, Irian Locryn, had kept me close until she immured me in Oeth-Anoeth. And there I had been kept, myself not even knowing my own plight, for a full two years… I stared bleakly into the flames, but said n
othing.
"We do not know just when she had you brought to Oeth-Anoeth," said Arthur, divining my thought as he usually did. "But Oeth-Anoeth having been one of Edeyrn Marbh-draoi’s magical strongholds, it was many months before even Morgan’s magic could find you, and longer still before we could mount a rescue."
"But how then did you learn where I was, or even that I had been taken at all?" I asked quietly, and drank some more cider, for I found myself shivering a little. Gerrans saw, and put his arm round my shoulders, but Arthur continued the tale as if he did not see this, though of course he did full well.
"Gwyn told us," he said simply. "The Prince of the Sidhe came to Caerdroia to tell us you had left Glenshee safely, but had not come safe away. By then, of course, we knew that you went missing, but no real word had come until Gwyn brought it."
I stared at him, then into the fire, caught by the picture: Gwyn son of Nudd at Caerdroia! To the best of my knowing, the Shining Folk had not been seen in the streets of the Crown City for centuries…
"Not since Edeyrn, that is certain," said Gerrans, who had been following my thought. "But before that? Uncle? Do you know?"
"Centuries since," said Arthur. "Athyn Anfa was a great friend to the Shining Folk, and they loved her dearly, and came often to guest with her and Morric her lord; but after their time less often, and in these latter days not at all. It was a great honor, and a thing of great dread, for Gwyn to come so—and the folk are still not sure what to make of it."
"Nay, not even those who had been at Nandruidion, and seen the faerie rade," put in Gerrans eagerly. "I have only heard of that, of course, and as you have sung, athra, and as my mother has told me, but this—"
Arthur smiled at him. "Even for one who has been beneath the hill, my sisterson, let me tell you, it was a daunting moment to see Gwyn son of Nudd ride through the Wolf Gate and up to Turusachan."
I wanted now every tiniest detail, of course, furious and jealous beyond belief that I had not been there to see it myself, forgetful in that moment that of course if I had been there, then Gwyn would not have…
"Came he alone? Was he attended? What did he wear? Did he ride his white stallion? Who—"
"Peace a moment!" Gerrans was laughing. "He had with him two others, two only. Birogue of the Mountain, whom you know, tasyk, and the other—" Gerrans turned abruptly to Arthur, conscious of having trodden upon the tale, but Arthur only grinned and gestured him to continue. I was merely charmed that Gerrans in his excitement had called me by the childname ‘tasyk’…
"Well then," he began again, "the other was a lord of the Sidhe, by name Allyn son of Midna. Gwyn rode in the center, upon a great white stallion with mane and tail of gold; and the Lady Birogue, who was my mother’s teacher at Collimare, you know, rode on his right—her horse was black, with a white star and snip on his muzzle. And the Lord Allyn was on the Prince Gwyn’s left hand, on a horse the color of old bronze. They were all three of them cloaked in gray, and the horses bore neither saddle nor bridle, only jewelled and plumed headstalls, and martingale breastplates with silver and opals for adornment."
I was impressed; for one supposedly not bardically gifted, Gerrans was making a fine job of painting the scene.
"And then?"
"Gwyn and his folk would not come within walls," said Arthur, "but waited ahorse in the Great Square, and Gweniver and I ran out at once to him. I say ‘ran,’ and we did, I promise you! Then Gwyn told us what had befallen: that Marguessan had taken you, though he did not tell us how he knew that. Or would not—any road, he told us where to find your horses, and then he gave us the message he had given you to deliver concerning the Cup."
I went suddenly cold and still. In my prisonment, I had been made to forget that direst and most desperate of messages, and in the few hours of my new freedom I had to my shame and sorrow not thought of it once, all my mind being filled with longing for my Morgan, my life back again…
"Marguessan has taken it," I said dully. "So Gwyn said.
Arthur nodded. "Aye, but Nudd his father thinks there is more to it. What, he knows not, or tells not; but Marguessan is preparing some blackest working, of that there is no doubt. And since the Cup would never permit itself to be used so—"
"But it has been two years missing!" I cried out in anguish. "Two years unsought—"
"Not altogether so," said Gerrans to soothe me. "Gwyn told us how you were charged to tell the Ard-rian that she must lead a quest for the holy Cup, and that women and men of art should assist her. Companies were sent out, but—"
"But it seemed that whilst Marguessan had you prisoned, any quest was doomed to failure. Though I admit it took us all a while to puzzle that out," added Arthur gloomily. "And lives were lost, and much time, and all the while healing has been slowly leaching from the land, since the Cup is gone from us."
"Nay, we healed Gerrans’s arm only this afternoon!" I protested. "We had sufficient magic to do that—"
"Oh aye; and only thank the Goddess he was not more sorely hurt," said Arthur. "For any much graver wound we could not have healed… All of us have seen it so these two years now. And unless we find the Cup, in time all healing will be gone from Keltia, and we will be as poor primitive worlds who have not earned or learned that sacred gift."
But that had reminded me of something… "What then of the other knight, the one Gerrans fought and vanquished? He was hurt badly, if I miss not my guess. What fate must be his tonight?"
Arthur looked uncomfortable, and he and Gerrans exchanged glances before he spoke again.
"Have you not guessed who that knight was?"
I shook my head. "Some champion of Marguessan’s, I had thought." Then, as I suddenly recalled a thing Marguessan had said in the faha, and another thing Arthur had said, after, to Gerrans…
"It was—it was Mordryth?"
Their silence confirmed it, and I thought about it for a moment or two. Mordryth, Marguessan’s son; Arthur’s nephew, Morgan’s nephew, Gerrans’s cousin…
"No wonder she said dragon fought dragon," I remarked then. "It was Pendreic against Pendreic today—"
"Fighting against myself," said Gerrans somberly, "or at the least against my own blood and House. I could wish… well, no matter now. It is done."
"Marguessan will see to his healing, wherever it is she has betaken them both," said Arthur, who was drawing little patterns in the dirt around the fire with the handle of his sgian. Gerrans marked them not, but I did, and was keeping a close eye on them; if Arthur thought we needed runes of warding, he must surely have good cause to think so…
"With the Cup?" I asked aghast. "Does she then have it, in truth? How did she get it, how was it taken from Dun Aengus?" I tried to keep despair out of my voice, but I do not think I was successful.
"As Gwyn told you, aye and nay. As to how she came by it, we do not know, and if the Sidhe know, they have not told us. But that is where Nudd’s fear comes into it: The Cup will not allow itself to be harmed, or to work harm, but it is powerless to prevent its own power from being turned. The thing Nudd fears is the thing your lady fears, and she being the sorceress she is, she most rightly fears it…"
I closed my eyes briefly, opened them and looked straight at Arthur. "And that would be?"
His voice was hushed; the wind died as he spoke, even the trees above us seemed to bend to hear him.
"She fears Marguessan is creating a Black Graal."
The fire went out in front of my eyes, and I believe I nearly fainted away right there; it felt that the earth heaved in protest beneath me—certain it was my guts had writhed and knotted, though I did manage to keep my supper where it did me most good. After a while I sat up, running a hand over my face which was clammy and cool, and in that moment probably white as milk.
A Black Graal, a Cup of darkness… The mere idea was an abomination, a filth, a pollution and defilement, an uncleanness and a stench out of the seventh hell; but in the calmness to which I now forced myself, I had to admit that the poss
ibility was no new one. For all things and persons of power, there are things and persons of equal and opposite power—for every Morgan, a Marguessan; for every Merlynn or Gwyn, an Edeyrn. Whether or not those things and persons of darkness ever come into ascendancy, or even existence, on this plane is a matter for the Pheryllt, or for the Reverend Mothers of the Ban-draoi, to debate in their conclaves.
But as above, so below; as without, so within; as the Light, so the Dark. It is not the good in a sacred thing that makes it holy, it is the power. And power can be used for good or for ill, as we have all by now seen. If no Black Graal yet existed in our Keltia, be very sure it has existed since time began, on the inner planes or in a Keltia that is not the one we know. And if Marguessan had found at last a way to bring it through to our world…
"What would happen, do you think?" I asked at last. "If Marguessan succeeds?"
Arthur shook his head, and his eyes were haunted. "No one knows for sure. Even the Pheryllt disagree, and the Reverend Mothers… Morgan believes that the Graal and its opposite cannot exist in the same plane at the same time, that one must surely destroy the other. In such a plight, Keltia itself would be destroyed; for we cannot allow the Dark such purchase, such a foothold in our Light."
"We as Druids are not bound to destroy the Dark," I reminded him gravely, "but to take the evil from it, to restore it to the balance it had once at the Beginning, before the evil came. This is the charge of Kelu to all those who are of the spirit; and until we come to that, without Darkness there can be no Light."
"Oh, do not quote Merlynn Llwyd at me, Glyndour!" snapped Arthur, and I knew by that very snap just how deeply frightened he was at the prospect before us. "That is as I have said a thing for the highest of the priestesses and priests to work out; I am only Ard-righ, I can do only what I can do."
The Hedge of Mist Page 5