The Hedge of Mist

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  And now out of the heart of eastern light came a new brightness, boundlessly bright, blessedly bright, a brightness that cast no shadow and pained no eye. It came, as I say, from the east; but it seemed also to come equally from the other airts as well: For the direction from which it truly came had naught to do with our twelve earthly quarters, and that which the light heralded had all to do with mortal order…

  "When first the Hallows came to the Kelts," said Avallac’h, all but invisible himself in the soft lucent glory, "that was the Opening of the tale. They came, and they went away again; now they are come once more, and this is the First Continuation. And they shall go again—for things have dan even as people do—and come again, brought back to Keltia by one whose dan it will be to do so; and that shall be the Second Continuation."

  "And the Third?" asked Morgan beside me, very softly.

  "That shall be at the end of all. Some of you here may see it, though you will be wearing other forms than those you inhabit just now. But the Cup shall know you even then. And now let us bring it home for this time."

  He stepped down from the uneven ledge of dark-green, cream-veined marble upon which he had been standing, and bowed profoundly to the empty sea. But even as he did so we saw that the sea, and the air above it, and the shore beside it, was no longer empty: With joy and wonder I beheld grave tall spirits pacing the wave-crests, and the white horses of Manaan frolicking upon their wide salt plain like springtime colts; upon the sands fat little portunes ran between the legs of our own horses, who looked amiably on; and in the air soared feathered flames, crowned and winged hearts, and other heralds of the Hallow that now drew near.

  The light rose to a pitch of purity that, had it been sound instead of light, would have been well-nigh unbearable; it seemed to sink through our skin, soak into our bones, filling us, lifting us… And then quite suddenly, quite quietly, it was there with us, among us, the Graal, the Cup, Pair Dadeni that had been gone from the world and now was restored.

  I do not know how the others saw it—very few of us cared to speak of it after, or perhaps it was that we could scarce speak of it, out of a love and reverence and awe so deep and holy that even I can hardly bear to write of it, even here, even now. But you must know… For me, then, it was much as I had beheld it before: the great Cauldron of the Queen of the World, the Pair of Kerridwen Rhen, its spirals and symbols trembling as if alive.

  And it was alive, this Graal: Cam-Corainn it was, and An Cuach, and so many other names beside, so many other forms and appearances. For the Cup is different for each soul that comes to it; each person who seeks the Graal has different needs of it, different reasons—it is only right that each should achieve a different Graal in the end. And the Graal requires different things of each seeker, too: The Cup also has its own needs and reasons, and never asks the same thing of any two who have sought it. This is why we seek it at all, so long, so dearly; and why, of course, it seeks us.

  I do not know how long we stood there, upon the strand Garanwynion, living the Cup as the Cup lived us. I mind me that we bowed to it, deeper than we would do reverence to any mortal king or queen, or to any ruler of the Sidhe, even; our horses too knelt at its coming, touching their muzzles to the sand, forelegs bent in homage.

  And then suddenly the Cup was as it was, as it had been in the hall beneath the hill at Sychan, as it had appeared in the air above our heads at Mi-cuarta. It had put on mortality again, a kind of everyday dress—for even kings do not go about their daily work in crown and robe and court cloak. Once more it was the fair silver quaich of use that Brendan and Nia had brought to Keltia in the carved ironoak chest that Nudd kept so close; and as such, it was meant to be used…

  Donah and Loherin had come forward hand in hand, and they came with high intent, as if they now fulfilled a part and task they had known long since they would be called upon to perform. Indeed, even as I had foreseen, even I with my meager Sight… Graal Princess and Graal Server, they bowed unsmiling to the Cup, and to Avallac’h, and to each other, and to the rest of us. Then Donah, still grave-faced, turned to me expectantly, and though she said no word, I knew well what she required.

  I opened the leather pouch at my belt and removed the small crystal bottle that rested therein. The tiny flask was still filled with the rust-red water of Saint Clears’s Well: the spring Iscaroe, that was said to be proof against death itself. I handed the flask silently to Donah; I had begun to tremble, for I knew what was about to be done here, and I was glad and fearful both.

  She took the vial, unstoppering it of its silver cap, and emptied contents into the Cup that was itself proof against death, red water filled the silver bowl halfway to the pearled rim, and lifting the Graal in both hands, Donah saluted the Four Airts, then turned to face Loherin.

  "He Who Frees the Waters," she said, and saluted him with the Cup.

  He bowed and took the Cup from her. "She Who Binds the Lands," he responded as solemnly, and raised the Cup alike to her in turn.

  Donah reclaimed the great Graal into her own keeping; then, after the tiniest of pauses, a deep breath to center herself, she crossed to where Gwain Pendreic, who was cousin to them both, still lay upon his bier of cloak and spears. Kneeling beside his motionless form, she balanced the Cup against his lips, tilting it just so much, so that a tiny sip of the blood-colored water trickled into his mouth.

  And then—I cannot report of this so lucidly as I would other time have done, for tears were scalding my eyes and streaming down my face, and yet even so my head was flung back with the joy and wonder of it (and is again just now, as I write these words)—Gwain whom the Dolorous Blow had struck down, Gwain whom his own mother had magicked into needless and all unmerited death, Gwain whom I had killed, stirred, and opened his eyes, and sat up upon his bier.

  The hush into which he awakened to life again was profound—even the waves seemed to quiet themselves—so that of all of us Gwain himself seemed alone of an everyday demeanor. He looked around him, a small puzzled frown and smile together inhabiting his so recently reinhabited countenance, then catching sight of Gwen and Morgan and me he flashed us a cheerful grin. But before he could hail us or scramble eagerly to his feet, as he was so plainly on point of doing, Avallac’h’s shadow fell across him, and he looked up, startled now, as the awe came upon him.

  "Welcome back, kinsman," said Avallac’h then, and reached down a hand to pull Gwain to his feet. "Be thou reborn, by the Cup’s grace."

  Gwain, as well he might, looked astounded; he went from white to red to white again, and would have fallen back upon the cloak from which he had just arisen had not Donah moved quickly to support him.

  "I was dead," he said wonderingly, to all of us and none of us.

  "I was dead—I remember. . ." His gaze sought me out, and he looked at me with an expression of compassion and comprehension both together. "It was not you, my uncle," he said, shaking his head in the knowledge. "Not ever you…" And then it all came flooding back to him, we saw it come as a tide upon him; and he raked his glance over the company, searching for the one whom it had been, fury blazing in his face to kindle the air around.

  Morgan came swiftly forward, and courteously but firmly moved Donah aside.

  "She is gone, amhic," she said gently, and I heard the calm-tones in her voice; the suantrai, but raised to the pitch and power almost of a rann. And so he desperately needed just now, else he had gone mad entirely… "She is gone from here, and your sister with her." She touched his brow, and he shivered once, closing his eyes.

  I watched Morgan beckon to Gerrans and Cristant, a young Ban-draoi priestess who had led one of the other companies; they came to Gwain and gently led him away, and I was frankly glad it had not fallen to me to comfort my restored nephew. After all, it had been I who had slain him in the first place; and though I was joyful and grateful beyond all earthly measure that he had been returned to life by the Cup, still I should not like to have to tell him that not only had his mother arranged his murder by
his uncle but his only sister had herself perished in further darkworking against the Cup…

  Avallac’h spoke to their retreating backs. "Though this was well and rightly done," he said, a warning tone now in his voice, "and only what dan required, not wise to do so commonly. In such pass even Athyn hesitated, and in the end had sorrow as well as joy from a like use, though it too was fated and correct. Be warned."

  No fear!, I thought fervently. Life and death were never meant to be too often overset, either way; though Gwain’s restoral was an unimpeachable righting of a wrong done to him and to the Cup itself, and surely would never have been permitted had it been sin or misuse, still, to bring someone back from Arawn’s kingdom was an undertaking beyond all imagining, and only one in all our days in Keltia had ever imagined to achieve it. We would not be making a custom of it…

  Avallac’h seemed to have heard my thought. "For that was Marguessan’s intent and purpose," he said, nodding. "To wield that power over the folk for vainglory and tyranny, and to pervert the Cup to that end… Now she has failed in that hope, but has constructed for herself a dark Graal to set against Cam-Corainn; but the first sup of that Cup will be far the bitterest, while the last will be past fatal. She has already drunk too deep, indeed, of that draught which she has brewed for herself, and she is poisoned thereby." His voice and face, which had been hard as stone and deep as thunder, cleared now, and he gestured to Donah and Loherin who had stood quietly by. "Now let the land be cleansed."

  Donah went at once to the rough marble slab upon which Avallac’h had stood, and poured out onto the sparkling stone half the remaining contents of the Cup. The green rock took the red water into it, seeming to shimmer and expand as it did so; and far out over the sea, between us and the Easter Isles, a storm rose up and began to move swiftly toward the land.

  A storm unlike to all others: It did not drench us, though from its dark boiling clouds blue lightnings lanced the sea and islands over which it passed, and the wind of its coming flung our hair back from our faces and our cloaks from our shoulders. It moved over Beckery, its torn skirts so low they all but scraped the castle’s towers, and then it was advancing on Fairlight and the Dragonsea’s western edges.

  "It will renew the lands," breathed Morgan, watching the storm’s shoulders broadening as it came upon the shore. "All Tara, and all Keltia, shall get good of it."

  We still stood beneath the storm’s shadow—it had grown vaster than any storm of earth—and in the roar of Garanwynion and the blue-litten seas beyond Avallac’h stood tall against the wind. High he held above his head now the Cup, which blazed with more than reflected lightnings, and he poured out the remnant of the sacred waters into the sea.

  As the holy vintage of Iscaroe, ruby in the stormy light, mingled with the waters of the First Ocean, linking sea to land, suddenly the clouds split above Caervanogue and a shaft of light shot through, to seize upon the Cup and make it blaze to outshine the levinfire. Avallac’h towered up amid the ruins of the storm, and the light grew, and with it a joyous certainty, and I knew the Cup was come truly home to Keltia.

  Avallac’h spoke to us then, long and long, most gravely and lovingly out of his centuries of guardianship. He gave the guardianship into our hands now, all of us here, made us knights of Cam-Corainn, investing us with the charge of the Cup and its fellow Hallows, giving us to drink of the Graal’s bounty. And though the touch of the Cup did not confer upon us any kind of immortality or invulnerability, still were we changed thereby; and with the bronze dagger Merlynn Llwyd had given me beneath the hill, Avallac’h, prince of Keltia and Keeper of the Graal, laid the accolade upon our shoulders, left, then right, then upon the crown of our heads, to helm us with the Light.

  So there in the golden morning we made peace with hand on Cup, there on the shingle of Garanwynion. The waves washed the tails of our horses, who had knelt when the Cup returned; and all had from the Cup that which they best loved to eat and drink, Donah and Loherin serving us, their beauty in that hour such that few could gaze long upon them.

  But at last the feast and revel were done, and the mood changed as Avallac’h spoke to us yet again. And this time we of the quest were not the only ones present on Beckery: The sprites and fetches that had welcomed the Cup’s return now drew nigh to hear his words also—spirits of each element rooted in each, water-spirits to the sea, air-beings in the lift, earth-feys upon the sands and fire-fetches upon the stones. And then, with a leap of my heart that moved my body forward in a sudden uncontrollable surge of gladness, I saw Gwyn ap Nudd and Birogue of the Mountain riding toward us over the sea.

  Not they alone, though it had needed only they to make this day’s joy complete: Overshadowing their forms were other aspects, other Presences and Powers I had come to know, a little, on this quest—Rhian the Young Goddess and Fionn the Young Lord. And the wonder was that not only did Their overshadowing lay upon Birogue and Gwyn but upon Donah and Loherin also, the fiala, the bright veil of Their divine presences, cloaking the two young mortals with a visible sheen.

  And I knew by that veiling, by the coming of the gods and the Sidhe, what was to happen next…

  First, though, Avallac’h would speak: He gathered us all in around him, mortal and unmortal and Immortal alike—for all are the Cup’s creatures and children, first to last.

  "I said earlier that the Graal would go and come again, as its dan commanded. But that is not all the truth… You have all wondered, I know, how the Cup came to be stolen in first instance: kept it, and its fellow Hallows, safe and close beneath the hill; how could it be that Marguessan Pendreic winkled it out? The truth is that the Cup itself chose to be reived away, for that Keltia had become too bound up with things of the world and needed to lose in order to learn. And you yourselves have been the docents: If created things are allowed too much, all creation suffers for lack of that which is past creation. And so undoubtedly the Cup will go again, though next time its healing graces shall not depart with it. But for the Cup itself, and more beside, a different dan is laid down, and far from here."

  "But not to be gone from us forever?" That was Gweniver, sounding more shaken than I had ever heard her sound; and, judging by the almost annihilating compassion in the glance Avallac’h bent now upon her, she knew more of this than she was just now prepared to share with the rest of us. "That would be too cruel, surely—"

  "Aye so, and therefore has Kerridwen Rhen Herself decreed otherwise. But though the Cup be gone for a thousand years, until that one I spoke of be born to fetch it home, the Cup’s Server shall here remain, to guard the Gates and welcome it when it comes again at Keltia’s need."

  A breath of awe touched me like a cold finger upon my nape; and again it was as if Avallac’h read my thought.

  "Nay, that Server shall not be I," he said, with the breath of a laugh in his voice. "My covenant with the Cup has been redeemed, my stand here at Caervanogue is relieved. I have served as the choice was given me, and my freedom is at hand. I shall go now, and the charge I have borne is now offered to another—though he too has that choice I was given, the choice to freely accept or freely set aside. I give him that choice now, does he care to make it."

  But Loherin was already striding across the strand to him, such a light of eagerness and joy upon him, transfiguring mere beauty into sacred, that I dropped my eyes before him. But then I raised my head to gaze steadfastly upon my young kinsman, to do honor to him and to the unimaginable task he took upon him. Of the actual moment, when the Keepership of the Graal was passed between the old lord and the new, when Avallac’h relinquished his holy charge and his magical existence, conferring both upon Loherin the fair, I know not; I did not see. Such sacredness is not for us to behold, however consecrated we ourselves might be to the same high ideal.

  All I saw for sure was a brightness that enveloped both of them, all I heard was Avallac’h’s voice from the heart of the splendor as he spoke to us.

  "You who have sought and found: Your task here is achieved, a
nd with honor. Tell Arthur Ard-righ so, the King in the Light; and tell him too that his own task also is well achieved. Naught more difficult than to wait in patience: Arthur’s severest test in this matter was not to seek, as you have done—that had been an easy task for his questing spirit—but to possess his soul in patience, and that is the thing he finds hardest of all to do."

  Loherin’s voice came, glad and young, already somehow subtly changed. "Arthur the King had no need to seek because he has already found; what seeking he yet must do shall come later, and in the end he himself shall be a quest—to be sought and found again."

  Well! It was all getting just a scrap too fraught with dan for me, if you take my meaning; still, since it was… Greatly daring, I took my chance, to speak the thought and hope of my heart, and risk the answer I might get.

  "And Merlynn Llwyd? What of him?"

  Avallac’h again: "So it is with hunting birds, son of Glyndour, as you well know, you who bear the gray hawk’s plume against your breast; for sparhawk chick or she-eagle, they cannot do other… Merlynn sleeps now in his esplumeor, that bright cage-place where hunting birds in the moult are kept while they renew themselves. Feathers must needs be shed and regrown, worn-out pinions be replaced by strong new growth, to support the flight of new deeds and new demands."

  "Yet surely this is what a soul does betwixt lives, as we are taught," said the young priestess Cristant, doubt in her clear voice. "Is not Merlynn Llwyd then dead as we thought?"

  I dared a quick glance at Birogue—Merlynn’s mate, though as yet that was a secret only I, and perhaps Morgan, was privy to—but her countenance revealed nothing; indeed, a snow-glazed stone at the winter solstice would have been more forthcoming. But that was the way of the Shining Folk.