But later of that. For the moment (and you will recall I was still in my trance, there in the dark annat in the storm), we had the Hungry Spiral to deal with—Following Morgan’s orders, then, we made all secure aboard our little craft (well, not that little; it held the seven of us, plus our horses, and all the supplies for our journey), then lashed ourselves to each other with long lengths of silk rope and secured ourselves on deck. Why we had chosen this form of safety measure, I had no idea—if one were lost, all would be—but Morgan commanded, and we obeyed.
We had not long to wait. We heard the thing roaring long before we drew near to see it clearly; the mist drifting out of it began to settle on our faces. But it grew swiftly, and now just peering over the gunwales I could see it plain.
Truly a mouth in the sea, as Donah had called it; and a hungry one too… Corryochren was lipped with gray-yellow foamscud, its walls smooth bubbled green glass going down into the depths of Ocean. Though I tried to keep my mind from it, my bard’s fancy would insist on picturing the broken bones of ships down below, the drowned carcasses flung from the wrecks like sodden poppets. And always there was the sound of the thing, the throb and howl, high and low together, deafening, shivering our bones, making our rib-cages vibrate like timpauns…
In less time than any of us liked, we were upon it. The roar was beyond believing now, as dense as the mist and as palpable. Then the little ship gave a lurch from fore to aft, and immediately following a much sharper one to starboard. We had crossed the outer lip of the maelstrom, and had entered upon the heaving swirling waters that seemed more than ready to gulp us down.
I closed my eyes and considered. Tried I never so hard, I could not see us all perishing here in Corryochren; there was no logic or reason as foundation for this feeling, but I had no feeling of imminent destruction all the same. Glancing through the sheets of water now falling like iron veils upon our heads, I saw that the others, for the most part, did not share my certainty. Even Morgan seemed unsure; only Loherin, of all our seven, appeared confident of survival.
It did not go on very long; perhaps half an hour we heaved and tossed upon the cross-currents, spinning all the while to deosil, borne upon the spiral. Then the tide shifted, for I could feel through the hull the grip of the waters slacken upon us; we rolled violently, took an enormous wave bow-on and all at once were sailing serenely onwards, Corryochren howling empty behind us.
I lifted up Donah and Morgan, and raced astern to watch. Already a lai or so behind us, the Hungry Spiral seemed to have fallen in upon itself; it was now a broad furious patch of wild water, white and gray and thrashing. But when the tide turned again, the mouth in the sea would gape once more, and the next who sailed by might not fare so lucky…
All at once I was back in the annat, briefly aware once again of my surroundings, before the vision shifted, and took me with it—
—and I found myself struggling to come to land through rolling surf that broke upon green bright machairs. I looked around, but could see none of my companions, only my horse floundering strongly after me and coming to stand upright upon the shingle.
We had survived Corryochren, but the shoals that extended like a spiny shellback along that part of the coast had claimed our little vessel. There had been just enough time to abandon ship, with our beasts and a few packs of food and clothing, before the shoals ripped the craft to pieces. In the tumult I had tried to stay close beside Morgan and Donah, but the strong seas that had been running counter to the coast soon pulled us apart. The others of our company I had not seen at all.
So I stood shivering on the dry sand as my horse came up to me and nuzzled my shoulder; he seemed as glad as I of the company, and presently I gathered up what remnants of my packs I could find and sought a hollow out of the wind, to light a fire and dry my clothes and maybe eat a little.
I must have slept a little as well, for when I woke it was late afternoon of a bright day, warm sunlight making my grassy hollow a comfortable nest. I glanced around for my horse, and saw him placidly cropping the seagrass a few yards away, near where a little stream cut through the machair and ran over the sand to enter the surf.
I shook off the grass and sand and considered. I had not the faintest idea where I was; not specifically, at least. We had been standing off the coast near to where Drum Wood crept southward to end in a line of downs and dunes; but the current could well have carried us many miles in any direction. This was a most remote corner of the Northwest Continent, some of it unnamed and unexplored, almost all of it empty and unpeopled.
No help then, or very little… Still, if I headed east, sooner or later I was bound to strike the Rhinns of Kells—unless of course I was east of there already, and in such case I was deeply lost—and folk lived there, though not in great numbers. The other way lay Drum Wood, even vaster and denser and wilder than Corva Wood on Gwynedd, and with evil associations for me; in any case, naught there to fend Feldore and me. So after washing in the stream, and tending to my gray’s needs, I mounted and we set out at last in earnest upon our quest, heading east and a little north.
Again my sight spun through darkness—
—and I was in my saddle, straining to see ahead as Feldore cautiously picked his way through a marsh as gray as his own coat. The good tidings were that I knew now where we were: not many miles from the strand where we had come ashore, on the fringes of the great marshlands called Siennega, or by some the Marai. The ill tidings were that we were well east of the Rhinns of Kells, and beyond the help of mortal Kelts, for no one lived in the lands past there, and certainly none dwelled in this Marai.
I pulled Feldore to a halt and stood in my irons, trying to see as far as I might into the featureless misty wastes. It was not all swampish: There were expanses of bright green grass spangled with tiny flowers, where it seemed a traveller might let down for a rest. He would be resting his last who rested so, I knew, for that shouting green color betokened danger. Below the interwoven cushiony mat lay a sort of earth soup of water and gravel and mud, and it was hungrier even than Corryochren.
But paths had been laid by someone in white stones across the treacherous green, and around the standing waters; and putting all my trust in Feldore’s instinct (not for naught was he named ‘Water-wolf’), I kneed him forward into the marsh.
While the light lasted I had not feared, or not much; now, though, with dusk beginning to shut down over the Marai, I was growing, oh, the tiniest bit uneasy. How simple to lose our way if we kept on; how fatal, possibly, even to lie down… A bad place, truly.
To this day I cannot tell you where he came from: the tall white-bearded man of years, dressed in gray and brown and russet like the swamp in which he dwelled. But all at once he was there, standing beside my off knee, one hand on Feldore’s blue leather bridle.
"You will perish yourselves completely do you keep on so," he said in a tone of mild asperity. "Let me lead you in."
Without waiting for my assent, or consent, he tugged gently on the rein, and Feldore ruckled eagerly and moved willingly to follow—
It was that ruckling which brought me back briefly to the annat; more than ruckling, for I heard Feldore squealing and snorting in the shelter outside. The storm raged, though more wind now than rain, and I guessed the beast was merely lonely and frightened, and sensing my presence had decided to try to get my attention. I would have comforted him if I could; but—
"Who are you?" I ventured to ask, after the remains of a very excellent supper had been cleared away, and my benefactor was fussing with bedding for his unexpected guest in the culist behind the free-standing hearth. But no answer came.
I sighed and bit my lip and looked around instead. The steading to which Feldore and I had been conducted was more than a steading; it was in fact a small keep tower, its battlemented roof rising up out of the marshland like a ghost in stone. And stone-built, that said much right there; for no such blocks came from any quarry closer by than a hundred lai… Yet whoever had raised this place
had not been troubled, apparently, for either labor or expense; but why?
"Inisguidrin," said my host’s voice, close beside me, and I started violently, upsetting my mether.
"My sorrow," I muttered; the stone floor was awash in ale, and I sorrowed more than he knew…
"No matter," he said courteously, and sopped up the drink with a cloth. When that was done, he sat down across from me and fixed me with a penetrating blue gaze.
"Inisguidrin," he said again. "The name of this place."
"White Island?" I had given the name’s meaning in the bardic speech; strange if so, for it was neither an island nor white.
He nodded, and continued to regard me. I began to grow most discomfortable beneath that gaze, and more than once cut my own gaze longingly toward the door. He was tall and spare enough, but he was closer to the double century than the single, as we said; I could most like outrun him to my horse, but after that, how could we manage in the Marai without a guide—even such a one as this?
He seemed to know all my thought, for presently the blue gaze took on a warmer, amused glint, and all at once he smiled.
"Well. No more mystery, my kinsman… Taliesin son of Gwyddno, mate of Morguenna, I am called Avallac’h. I am the son of Cador, third child and youngest son of Alawn Last-king, and by my reckoning, that makes me the son of your wife’s great-great-great-uncle. A far cousinage; but I am here."
A far cousinage indeed. To say that I was staggered would be to put it far too lightly; what is more, my bard’s mind had instantly computed…
"Yet if that is so, lord"—I had instinctively given him his royal due, for he was a prince and the son of a prince—"you should be… the heirship of Keltia…"
He smiled again. "That is long gone by me, Glyndour. Shall I tell you how and why, and how I came here?"
I nodded, for by now I was past speech. This changed everything; or did it? I shivered a little, even so near the fire, and leaned forward for his answer—
—and found myself sprawling prone on the cold stone floor of the annat. This time I was not drawn back at once into the vision, and I thought I knew why.
For I could sense it all around me now, a creeping pervasive evil that seeped along the floor like the boot-high mist that comes off river-lands at night. Doubtless this was what Feldore had earlier sensed and had been protesting; or warning me of, more like…
But the light was still there overshadowing the altar, and the light was good, the light was safe, the light was protecting—I moved closer, by instinct as well as inclination. Despite my entrancements, not more than an hour had gone by in real time of the world; and I guessed I was being shown all the steps and paths that had brought me to this place for some reason I did not yet know.
So I circled myself about with all the protections I could muster, and threw my awareness into the light, and followed after—
—Avallac’h was speaking to me, Avallac’h ap Cador, and I forced myself to concentrate upon his words.
"You will know from the histories that Edeyrn Marbh-draoi slew all kin and connections of Alawn Ard-righ," he said, in a voice at once eager to share a long-kept truth and reluctant to be forced at last to speak.
I nodded, for every child in Keltia knew this: how Edeyrn, having turned against his King and friend, had hunted down and murdered every member of Alawn’s kindred. Even to foster-kin, marriage-kin, and kin of those kin—none was spared.
"None escaped save Seirith, Alawn’s youngest; or so it was commonly held."
The chamber was suddenly silent, as if itself did listen to what this ancient scion of a lost house should say.
"Not even my aunt Seirith, Ard-rian that she then became, did know," said Avallac’h at length. "But I survived. And I did so because I had betrayed my own kindred into Edeyrn’s hands."
Silence absolute. Even the marsh without seemed aghast, all the little sounds of night-creatures suddenly ceased. I dared not move, still less speak…
"Not a betrayal of choice," he went on after a while. "That would have merited death on the instant, and Seirith—rightly—would not have held her hand from it. But a betrayal out of over-trustingness and shameful stupidity. I wonder now that I could ever have believed what he did promise me, to have bought so blindly on his word—
"No shame there," I said softly but very firmly. "I met him. I know how it might have been. The guilt was not yours."
He seemed hardly to hear me. "The guilt, perhaps not. But the lack of wit, oh aye. Any road, I betrayed them into his hands—my own aunt and uncle, Athonwy and Brahan, and Athonwy’s two children Farrand and Keira. They died because of me."
"They died because of Edeyrn!" I said in a voice of stone. "They would have died had you been duped or no, for it was his intent."
Avallac’h waved a hand. "Perhaps so. But I did not see it quite that kindly, and so I went to one I knew, a sorcerer of great might and repute whom some whispered was even of the Sidhe-blood—"
"Merlynn." The whisper was like tearing silk in the silence. After a moment I realized it had been I who had whispered.
He looked surprised. "Aye, he! Though he called himself Maglaras when I knew him—
"And Ailithir when he came to be known to me," I said, still softly. "He comes yet again into the tale, it seems."
"Nor is he yet gone out of it," answered Avallac’h gravely. "But I went to him, and he absolved me of what I held to be my guilt and my sin and my failing. But I asked him for more: I asked him to set me a task, and that I might survive until that task be done did it take never so long. He was hard to persuade, but in the end he agreed, and so it was that I came here to Inisguidrin, to wait until the time and task came round for which I had craved indulgence. And now it is here. It is why you have come; why the rest will come."
"You know about the quest then?" I gasped. "That the Cup goes missing?"
"And that Marguessan my far-cousin has been trying to work great evil against it. Aye. I know it all."
He broke off to drink sparingly from a gold goblet at his elbow, and I took the moment to reflect. Suddenly something came to mind—
"At supper—you fed me of the best beef, yet you yourself—
"Yet I myself ate only bread and drank only wine and water," said Avallac’h with a smile. "Aye so. It is part of the bargain I made with Merlynn and with magic and with dan: that so long as I did insist on remaining part of this weave, I should partake of naught else. For the measure of all grain is wheat, and of all metals gold, and of all creatures man. Wine is the gift of the Goddess, and in water is a quality endowed with blessing. Had I wearied of the bargain and the waiting, I had only to break my fast with any unsanctified fare and the thing would have been over. But I did not weary; and now the time is come, and you with it."
I closed my eyes briefly. "I am not the one," I said honestly. "Morgan herself said so; said we should See it but not be of it…"
"And she spoke correctly, for all it grieves you… But if you are not the one you are the forerunner, and the herald; and I know by your coming that the time of my abiding is drawing swiftly to its end. When he comes, I shall know him."
"But to me? I am parted these many days from my companions who sailed on quest with me. How shall I find them again? And how do they do?"
Avallac’h seemed to be fading into himself; the fine skin had become almost translucent, as white as hair and beard.
"The River of Blood, the Mountain that Walks—pass and put them behind you. The Wood of Tiaquin—seek the laughing flower that is guarded by a corrigaun with a flaming sword. The woman and the white stag and the hound. The Wood of Seeming and the Wood of Shapes, Shadow Valley and Joyful Valley. The apple and the tree, the snake-maned lion—nay, not for you. For another, then."
He had fallen into a kind of trance as he spoke these signs, or whatever they were—and let me tell you how not pleased I was at the sound of them—but now his eyes blazed open again, and he seemed to grow larger as he sat there in his chair beside the fir
e, and his voice was no dotard’s.
"Taliesin. The Cup’s danger is now, and will be settled. Tell them of the danger to the Sword."
"To Fragarach?" I asked, puzzled, and more than a little surprised. I had always thought, along with the rest of Keltia, that that great Treasure, known also as Retaliator and the Answerer and forged by Gavida himself, was beyond peril; had been given to Keltia to defend us from dangers. That the Sword itself could be endangered was a new and distinctly alarming thought.
"The Sword will never break save in the Peril of the World," said Avallac’h. "And only Gavida and Kelu know when, and what, and if, that shall be. More than that I cannot say. But the Sword has always meant sharpness, separation, correctness, definition, clearness, achievement of goals."
"And the other Treasures?" I asked.
"The Cup’s meanings are what you now ride in search of; it will be for those who achieve the Cup to tell of them. The Spear is aim, direction, intent, impact, velocity, awareness of goals; and the Stone is beingness, endurance, rootedness, absorption, reception, acceptance of goals."
"I know," I said softly, "for so we have long been instructed."
"So. But, Taliesin, the Sword also means cleanness and death. Instruct them of that too." Avallac’h leaned back in his chair, seeming spent; but presently he raised a long pale hand. "Leave me now, my son. There will be provisions in your pack in the morning, and provender for your good beast. The road will be before you straight across Siennega; you have already come east of the Rhinns of Kells, and your road will lie easter still. East of east. Greet my kindred well from me."
He smiled and fell asleep, and I prepared to go and do the same, in the culist where my bed had been made up for me. But before I went in to my couch, I knelt and gently took Avallac’h’s hand and kissed it; in part as a liege to a prince (for had he not set himself out of the succession and time alike, he would quite possibly have reigned himself, and the story I am telling would have been most different), but more as a younger kinsman to a revered elder of his line. Morgan, I knew, would have done so herself had she been here.
The Hedge of Mist Page 10