I dismounted as if I moved in dreams, not even troubling to tether the horses, and walked slowly forward until I stood beside the hound. Seen close to, the stag seemed right enough a beast of this world, save for his color and his collar and his jewel and his size. He was massively muscled, furry with his winter coat coming in; his heavy horns were thick at their base as a man’s arm, their twelve tines sharp as spear-points, and his breathing was that of a beast run hard and hunted close many miles over rough country. Then his eyes met mine, and I could not recall why I had ever thought, for the least tiniest moment, that he had seemed a natural hart…
The huge deep dark eyes held a light that was only in part reflected from the flaming skies above; the rest of the piercing luminescence came from some other place, and I was not at all sure I wished to learn where that other place might be. His coat too had begun to glow, blue-white, fearfully distinct in the clearing’s darkness. I stepped back a pace, involuntarily, with a half-formed thought that even at this late hour, perhaps I might yet turn away… But it seemed I had no choice in the matter; not here, not now. Indeed, I doubt me now that I had ever had one.
Then the stag spoke. His muzzle moved, his velvet nose twitched and from his mouth, the mouth of a beast, came human words in a human voice—a deep voice, that vibrated through every bone in my body; grave, and yet also mysteriously gay, as if the creature rejoiced in his own capture, was glad of the fact that I was the hunter who had brought him to bay at last.
And what he said to me was terrible.
"Kill me," came the calm deep merry voice. "Kill me, and nail my head to the greatest of the oaks. This is Ashnadarragh, the Place of the Oak, the Gateplace, the hinge upon which all doors turn. It must be done, and done now."
I quite think I lost my mind just then, at least for a moment or two, for when I was ‘ware of myself again I found that I had fallen to my knees, hands blindly in front of me pushing against the turf, my head shaking in mute unseeing unreasoning denial.
"Nay," I said when I found my voice at last. "Nay. I cannot. Not—not that. Do not ask it of me."
The royal stag said nothing for a few moments, but gazed upon me in silence, and I could not endure it, could not bear the sadness, the eternal, the inexhaustible patience in that glance. It was as if he—never once in all my pursuit had I thought of him as ‘it’—could not bring himself to chide me, or berate me, or bully me, even; but knew so well that I was only wasting his time and my own with my feeble futile outcries and denyings of what I and he both knew well must be done. Then he spoke again, still gently, but this time with a steel sternness beneath the velvet. Like his horns…
"Taliesin. Do it. Trust it. Trust us. It is yours to do."
"What—what will come of it?" I managed to gasp, in a croaking uneven shuddering voice that no bard living had ever used till now.
"What must come. What shall come. Trust. Do it now. The hour is here. Take it."
I stared wildly about me, but there was no help anywhere in the dark wood, no help for perhaps a thousand miles. Even the black hound gave no sign but lay in the grass flat on her belly, her nose on her paws, and would not look at me.
And in my stark desperation, my lastmost extremity, my despairing finalmost relinquishment of hope and thought and horror, just as I felt myself slipping over the edge into true madness and knew that in an instant now I would no longer know even that I was mad, in that moment came over me a feeling, I say, such as I had never felt before. It was not unlike to the Awen, that hushed immensity that comes down upon one like a mighty hand from heaven, and that raises one to the hugeness of itself. Not unlike; but it was different, and I knew in my deepest soul that, like the Awen, it must be obeyed. There was not even the choice to not obey…
So in the end I did as I had been bidden, though I could scarce see my ghastly work for the tears that blinded my eyes and streamed scalding ceaseless down my cheeks, and perhaps that was much the best for me. Oh, it was a right action that I performed here, and no mistake; but sometimes a right action can be clean contrary to our hearts’ inclination, can seem so not-right. But we must aye perform it all the same.
For tool I used the small bronze dagger that had come from beneath the faerie hill, had been Merlynn’s own gift to me. I would not have thought such a weapon could have accomplished such a deed, but it found the heart of the great white stag as if it had been forged only to that purpose. Perhaps it had been. I do not know.
Nor do I know where the silver nails came from, with which I fixed the majestic head to the trunk of the vast oak in the center of the clearing, nor yet the golden hammer I used to drive home the silver spikes. They were simply there for me to employ in this purpose, and I did not question how they came there, or where they went, after.
When I had finished, I stepped back, still weeping helplessly, angrily, and surveyed my grisly deed: the antlered head upon the oak, the headless body upon the bloody grass. And in that moment I hated the stag, and the Bhan-reann-ruadh, and the black hound, and the quest, and Arthur, and Keltia, and myself; and I howled then, a great keening lament, my whole body and spirit throbbing in sorrow and protest and fury. But the stag was still dead.
Spent at last in every part, I threw myself face down in the cool damp grass, then leaped up again, fired with a sudden resolve. This was one hart that would not be gralloched by any chance hunter who came after I had gone… I whirled round with all the force of my grief and rage and caught up a stout branch that lay on the ground nearby, and, with a single blast of druidry, such as I had never used once since my student days at Bargodion, I set the branch ablaze. I would burn the stag’s body, give him the clean honor of sending by the flame. This at least I could do for him, for the pointlessness of his sacrifice…
But as I turned to set the torch to the dry leaves and branches around the body, a voice came from behind me, and I stopped where I stood, as rigid on the instant as if some unseen bowman had put an arrow in my back. A blaze of silver light came softly welling over my shoulders, a cool gentle cloak that seemed to heal my anger and my sorrow alike; and I trembled from head to foot, in great shaking spasms, more terrified of that light and that voice than I have ever been in all my days; nay, not even the Marbh-draoi himself had filled me with more fear than now I felt. For the voice from behind me spoke my name.
I think it was the bravest thing I have ever done in my life, to turn into the unknown and face full on whoever it might be that had spoken—for bravery, as you doubtless know by now, is not the being fearless in face of peril but the willing oneself to act against the fear the peril causes, and then so acting. So I turned, so slowly, turned as if my body were suddenly no longer flesh and blood and bone as ever but fashioned now of ice-crystals, had become flesh of diamond, blood of silver, bone of the cold that lies between the stars… And yet I knew that I must turn, that I longed, even, to do so, and the burning branch was extinguished by a sudden wind.
The silver light came from the jewel between the stag’s great horns, welling up like the white water of Clears’s spring, spilling over the dead bloody muzzle and poll and neck, glittering upon the gold collar still buckled fast where it had been. The oak branch dropped unheeded from my suddenly strengthless fingers; and though I had turned, bravely or arrogantly or despairingly I will never know, to face that unknown, I could not move, could not stir nor hand nor foot, could not I think even comprehend what I saw now before me. My mind seemed to shut down, allowing only so much of this reality to enter in, protecting me against something it had no place to receive or accept. But if my mind could not comprehend what was here before me, something wiser or deeper or other could…
The stag’s head was no longer nailed to the oak, the stag’s body no longer lay upon the short dry grass. The stag was going, drawing together and changing in a way I shall never be able to explain, and in his place—I bit my lip until the blood came, bit it against the tears, against the disbelief, against the feeling that burst through me now; and I flung
back my head, lifting my face to the sapphire sky, and let the feeling take me. Whatever this feeling was: joy, power, love, rightness—even for a bard there come times when words are not enough. I was exultant, I was exploding, I was soaring out of myself and within myself all in one, rising up through all my selves and bringing my body with me, rigid with joyousness; it felt like the triumph of lovemaking and the victory of dying and the paroxysm of birth all together.
Aye, truly, even for a bard words sometimes do not suffice. For He Who stood before me now, His back to the oak, was greater than them all.
And I saw Him! For an instant, all my mortal frame could bear or my mortal mind endure, He was there, the Cabarfeidh, that one of many names, He, the Goddess’s mate. Lord of the Wood, we call Him in the sacred Litany, and other names beside: He was before me, the Winter King, and in the glory of His nature I could dimly discern still the antler crown rising up from the dark hair that fell past His mighty shoulders. But that appearance was His grace to me: His presence made easier for me. In His true guise He stands with Her before Kelu’s throne, Their faces ever turned in love to Their creation; through Them both we come to the One. He is the Salmon of Knowledge and the Bull of Battle, the Wolf of Rannoch and the King-horse of Pride, the Hunter in the Dawn and the Master of the Hunt. I spread my hands and lifted them in the attitude of prayer, unaware that I chanted aloud, and did worship.
"Helm of the Gael…Lord of Lightnings…Dragon War-shout…Red Dragon of the Rock…Fire on Brega…Armor of Bards…Chief of Chiefs…Dun of Justice…Rider upon Storms… Fort of Eagles…Light of the Encompassing of Gwynfyd! Thou Who art the Heroes’ Way and the Road That Is Hidden, the Face That Teaches and the Hand That Reaches—"
And as the power rose up around me as I prayed, I passed it on to Him as I had been taught, to Him from Whom it had origin; and at the peak of prayer and power both I called Him by His truename, and He smiled, and before I died altogether of the beauty and the perfection He changed—
—and Fionn the Young stood before me, clad in black, the blazing jewel bound upon his brow, the Young Lord, Fionn who was both God and god alike, who could move between the higher and lower worlds as he did please; Fionn who was here a vestment the God had donned, a lesser raiment, an aspect that mortals could the more easily and comfortably comprehend. We are not built to bear too much pure divinity; we are not yet ready for it, it is what we are here to learn. But the smile was the same.
"Taliesin," came the deep voice, so beautiful; the voice of the stag, of the God. "We have put you through some harsh paces."
I bent my knee before Him then, bowed my head until my forehead all but touched the grasses, but did not speak; I did not trust my voice just yet. And then I was glad I had said no word, for another voice spoke instead, and when I turned from Fionn (only partway, to be sure, not done to turn one’s back upon Deity), I saw that it was the black deerhound who had spoken.
"And well he trod them out…"
But she too was changing, and I watched with calm joy, not surprised in the least; I had long had my suspicions about that hound, good it was to be proved right at the last…
Though She had not chosen to reveal Herself to me in Her completeness, as Her mate had done before putting on Fionn’s aspect (perhaps had I been Morgan, or any woman, She might have done so; but I was a man, and the Lady does as pleases Her best), still I was given to see somewhat of Her true, full nature, as a veil or coron-solais round the slim lithe form that stood now where the black hound had crouched. Not tall, long-muscled like a runner or a swordswoman, Rhian, the Maiden, the Young Goddess, shook out her streaming unbound brown hair and took her place beside the Young Lord, beneath the sacred oak.
Though They in Their divine kindness had assumed these shapes for my peace and easiness, still I could scarce bring myself to gaze upon Them. It was too much for me: All my life I had yearned—vaingloriously or impiously, as you please to call it—to be granted the grace of such a visitation as this, and now that it was vouchsafed me I felt suddenly shamed. Surely there are many souls in Keltia who merit this blessing far more than do I…
"Well, maybe not so many, but if you insist, Talyn, we will go and visit them instead," came Rhian’s voice, full of loving, teasing laughter. "But first there is a small matter of a vow I mind me of—"
I made reverence to her as I had done to Fionn, and rose again in a sort of fit of boot-scuffing modesty that, truly, ill became me.
"Well enough, but, Lady, my sorrow, I do not recall—"
"Ah, the memory of bards!" said Fionn, and he too was smiling. "I recall well enough, at the least, to the tune of how if that hound were only a hound, one here present would make a meal of his own toes—is not that much how it went?"
I had the grace to blush and the wit to laugh. "Aye, Lord, something very much like! Well, if your honors both insist, I would be pleased to—"
"Nay, nay!" came a rippling voice from behind the oak. "There will be no faring on footlings here!"
The Bhan-reann-ruadh came round to us, drifting like mist through the forest dark, her starry mantle glowing about her. She made a graceful curtsy to Fionn and to Rhian, and they bowed their heads gravely in return.
I was pretty much past surprise now, and so when she too began to shimmer and alter aspect I merely watched and was not of any amazement; and when Dana stood in her form before the two gods and my mortal self, I bowed to her, though not so deeply as I had done reverence to the others. For though the Acs Danu are gods—indeed, had not the God Himself put on the aspect of Fionn just now?—or at the least closer to the Gods than we mortals are, and though Dana should be queen among them, still these two here were above her, as she herself had shown.
"Rian na Reanna…" I said, giving her one of her titles.
"Pen-bardd," she said in reply. "And Knight of the Graal that shall be… Indeed you have stood well to your tests."
I bent my head. "Not all the tests," I muttered, for honor compelled me, and I thought of Gwain.
Fionn smiled. "That too," he said, and said no more of it.
"And the others?" I asked after a moment.
"All testing now is done with," said Rhian. "All roads lead now to the Castle of the Graal. The Cup will come home to Keltia. And you shall be of those who see its return."
"And its leaving again also," said Fionn. "But you will hear that word in full at Caervanogue."
"Where—"
"All in good time," said Dana, and she did not smile. "It goes back a farther way than you can know. For the King received from the poisoned spear a wound that did not heal."
"Uthyr," I said with certainty.
"Uthyr, aye; but not Uthyr alone. He was not first to be touched by the wrongness… For the Lords of Dan had so ordered it, that a certain maiden should come to the world to wed and rule with a certain king, for she was his destined mate and he was hers. But though they met and loved and had union, they failed at their test. They did not wed or reign as had been meant, and so failure came upon them and the land alike."
"Amris," I said wonderingly. "And the maiden was Ygrawn, who should have been the Graal Princess, as he the Sacred King, the Graal Server. Yet Arthur was gotten between them all the same."
"Aye," said Fionn somberly. "And so the failure was not complete, and the land survived, if barely. As for their dan, it will weigh out accordingly. But mark: Neither was it the web that had been woven for these two, the dan that had been spun for each and both upon the Wheel. And this, Talyn, is why the sorrow came upon Keltia—why the Marbh-draoi reigned past his own dan’s time, why Marguessan was able to steal away the Cup, though it avails her not, even though she in her traha seeks to make herself the Sacred Queen. And so we sent the Quest."
"But Arthur—"
"Arthur too failed at the Wheel’s turning," said Rhian. "What does the name Gwenwynbar mean in the bardic speech?"
And I flinched as if she had struck me; for the name of Artos’s first wife, you may recall, meant in the metap
hor of bards the Poisoned Spear…
"When he wedded Gwenwynbar, she became the Poisoned Spear that wounded him, that had wounded all the land before, all the kings—Amris, Leowyn, Uthyr… Only when Arthur and Gweniver did wed was dan set right. But not entirely; and evil still shall come." Rhian lifted her white arm, stretched it out above me. "Taliesin. Evil came never out of the east."
And that was the second time I had been given that word of warning…
"But is not all set right now?" I asked humbly. "The Cup, you have said, will return; there is an heir now for Keltia doubly of the blood of Don Rhen; is the flaw not mended?"
But none of the three made answer to that. Presently Fionn spoke again.
"Taliesin. Seek until you find, and then be astonished. Neglect no part of this equation."
I nodded once, but said nothing. Then Rhian: Taliesin Morguenna’s mate. Live in the Light, by all means, but do not lose your shadow-vision. Do not forget how to see in the Dark."
Again I bent my head, and Dana’s clear voice rippled out above me.
"Taliesin Cathelin’s son. It is the Lance that kills, and the Cup that brings to life. You live the gods’ death, they live yours. Take care to love the highest when you see it; and mind well you mistake it not, for men are wont to do so more than women. Go then to the Graal."
I looked up in purest panic, for that had been valedictory; and indeed the three figures were beginning to blaze like king-torches, changing back into their natural states, leaving form behind them, cast off, the forms that had been their gift to my mortal sensibilities, for in their own kingdom they have no need of such… A pang of sorrow and loss lanced through me then, so sharp and piercing that I looked down full expecting to see an arrow in my heart; but the shaft was no less real, I think, for being of a different and unearthly fletching. This, then, is why the High Ones do not more often appear to mortals; they cannot bear the grief they cause us when they withdraw from us as they must, the grief that is by its very vehemence a measure of the joy we shall have when we join them beyond the misty hedge. Caer Coronach is but the name we give that place, in our sorrow; when we dwell therein it shall have another name.
The Hedge of Mist Page 17