And, truth to tell, I was not much disturbed at the prospect. Events seemed now to be woven in some vast tapestry to encompass all the worlds, not Keltia alone; my own life and death and life (or lives) again were but a tiny strandlet in that great and everlasting fabric. If, it were to be hoped, a goodly gleaming one… But I grieved just now more for Keils than for my own apparently quite imminent demise.
Marguessan was watching me quietly, and out of nowhere I asked her a question to which I had long desired an answer.
"Why do you and Morgan never speak the other’s name? I have noted it with you here today, and with her ever: Neither will allow the other one’s right name to cross her lips. It is always ‘my sister’ or ‘my twin’ or some such. No great matter; but I have always wondered."
She stared at me, her face so white it bore blue undertones, her expression one of pure terror. I stared back aghast, wondering now not about names or their unspeaking but why she looked so frighted at such a harmless question. Well! Therefore it must not be quite so harmless as I had thought; though why—
Marguessan had regained a little of her color by now, but still she had not answered me; and just as I was about to follow up my query to see if another innocent inquiry could produce the same ‘stonishing result, the doors opened at the far end of the chamber and Malgan Rheged entered alone.
He was a man of full age now, and as he approached us I felt the blood leaving my own face, draining away as swiftly as it had done from Marguessan’s. For the man who approached me where I sat bound in my chair by unseen restraints looked more like Arthur Penarvon than Arthur himself had looked at that age. Which meant, of course—
Malgan halted by Marguessan’s chair, looked across at me with an expression not altogether that of an enemy. The which he had never been to me, I reflected, nor I to him; perhaps now we should see if he recollected that as well and as clearly as did I.
It seemed that he did, for he nodded to me, his mouth tightening for a moment in what might have been a smile had it had a better reason.
"My sorrow to see you so, Prince Taliesin," he said. The voice at least was not Arthur’s, but lighter, and the eyes were the eyes I remembered from the latter days at Turusachan, before he left for Gwynedd, when he was lodged in the palace as a royal ward after his mother’s death. We had grown friends then, he and I…
"My sorrow to be so seen, Lord Malgan," I returned politely, and now the quirk was a smile.
But a fleeting one. "I say truly, Talyn," he said, dropping down into a chair across from both Marguessan and me, "when I say it is sorrow to me that you are caught up in this. But it will be; it is going to happen. You nor any can stop it now."
"Oh aye?" I asked with unfeigned interest. "What then is this I cannot stop?"
"Only but what I have told you," interposed Marguessan sharply. "My rightful claiming of the Throne of Scone from the usurping kindred who stole it from me and my line, what time my father Uthyr Ard-righ was let to die."
I cut my eyes over to her, and she must have read their flash aright, for she flinched a little and looked away.
"The High King my foster-father and matefather was by no means ‘let to die’ by any," I said, and my voice sounded dangerous even in my own ears. "He spent his last strength in battle, on his feet as a warrior, and died of that unholy magicked wound dealt him by Owein Rheged in the tent below Agned, after the battle of Cadarachta. A wound dealt with Edeyrn Marbh-draoi’s hand behind it; but the hand was Owein’s, and it was raised not only against Uthyr but against—Malgan’s father."
Malgan flushed. "I see you have come at last to the knowledge that has long time been denied me. But aye—I am not, it seems, ap Owein after all, but ap Arthur. The evidence is incontrovertible, there is proof now of what folk long have thought and mouthed behind their hands. I am as much a Pendreic as any here. And as royal."
"Ah well," I said comfortably, "I am but a Pendreic by my marriage’s grace, royal only by courtesy; not to be included in such company as this." But my bantering tone covered something much deeper: Though I had long believed—and the main of Keltia with me—that Malgan was indeed Arthur’s son by Gwenwynbar, not Owein’s who had claimed him, still it came as a levin-bolt from clear skies, a tailstar slamming into the planet, to hear it confirmed at last; and I strove to cover my staggerment with jest. And then the past rose blindly up to choke me. "Malgan—"
It was all I could say. I was remembering. Remembering Arthur with Gwenar at Llwynarth; before that, even, when I had stood by him at their brehon bridals in Gerwin’s hall; or later, when Gwenwynbar had shouted down the Bear’s Grove and fled before dawn, ending the marriage by declaration and heading straight for Caer Dathyl and Owein Rheged. We did not know she left us carrying a child. Perhaps she herself had not known, or told herself she did not. And when later on four of us saw her with Owein, that dramatic night of dinner with the Marbh-draoi, and heard of the boy’s birth some while later, still we did not know, and did not care to try.
But to think that he had been Arthur’s son all along, and did not know it, though doubtless he suspected even as did we—what he may have wished one way or another we never knew—nay, that was hard. I was sorry for the lad he had been and the man he now was, sorry for us that we had not known him for who and what he was; but sorriest of all for Artos, who had been denied his firstborn for these many years.
Nor was the screaming irony of it lost on me: Arthur had done to Malgan just exactly what had been done to him. He himself had not known himself to be Amris’s son until he was half-grown; now he had visited the same anguish and uncertainty and doubt upon his own son, though Malgan had had to wait many years more than Arthur before learning the truth of his parentage. And I, who had been with Arthur the night he heard that truth, remembered well how it had worked upon him, and pitied Malgan anew.
But then that little bardic voice—the one I ignored at my peril—came whispering inside me: If firstborn of Arthur, then surely Arthur’s heir… I sat up very straight, and stared at Malgan, and my jaw may have dropped just the smallest tiniest bit.
He read my thought; well, it would not have been hard just then, would it… "Aye, that too," he said equably. "But I am not out to displace Arawn; not for myself, any road. The High Kingship is not what I have longed for down the years, nor even in the short time since I have known for true whose son I am. And that is part of the reason I am here."
Now I had been wondering just that for some days: What could Malgan ap Owein, as we all still thought him, be doing here in the same castle with Marguessan? But now it seemed both clearer and muddier at once: Sith that he was Arthur’s son, gotten in lawful brehon marriage if not born so, that gave Malgan unassailable claim upon the Crown. And that being the case, would not he, or any with such a claim, be the uttermost last person in all the settled galaxy that Marguessan would even allow to live, much less sit down beside in amity? What was in all this for her?
"Ah, that is the rest of it, Talyn my brother," said Marguessan archly, who had followed my line of reasoning as easily as ever her sister had. "But as my new nephew has just now said, he does not, truly, covet my aims and goals, at least not for himself. And he has graciously—and wisely—seen his way to back my own claim upon the Crown, setting his aside."
I was neither impressed nor surprised; well, not very much. "What claim? What right?" I said scornfully. "You know the law of succession as well as I, sister Marguessan. Probably rather better."
"When my father died—" began Marguessan, stung.
"When your father died," I interrupted, riding over her words with the ease of my training, "you were never for one least little snippet of time the rightful Queen, nor yet heir whilst he still lived. Nay, let me: The Prince Amris Pendreic, far-charach of the Lady Ygrawn Tregaron, was heir to his mother Darowen Ard-rian. He had by his consort a son, Arthur, and died before becoming High King, much lamented. According to our longtime and excellent well-thought-out law which rules such events, his son,
still a minor, was set aside for the moment, and Leowyn, Amris’s next brother, was proclaimed the next Ard-righ to be. When he succeeded and died in turn, leaving his daughter Gweniver, she too was set aside as her cousin had been, and the last of the brothers, Uthyr, became Ard-righ. Now the difficulty here is—"
"—is that Arthur, set aside on Amris’s death, should have become High King on Leowyn’s," said Malgan impatiently, and I gave him an approving little nod.
"Just so; but Arthur was still a minor, and besides that, he had been hidden away by Merlynn Llwyd and by Ygrawn, so that none even knew he existed at all. When Leowyn died, Gweniver herself yet a minor, Uthyr took the throne-in-exile as you have said. But when he died, according again to law—
"—Arthur, set aside on Amris’s death, should have been named High King in his own right." That was Malgan again. "He was senior heir."
"And that is the foundation of your claim—my sorrow, I mean your non-claim—to the throne." I was enjoying myself now, in some most perverse way I could not begin to puzzle out. "But the weight of the law on both Arthur’s side and Gweniver’s was found to be so exactly equal to so far a calculation that none could decide one claim above the other. And so Uthyr’s wish and wisdom were honored in the end: to have them succeed him jointly, to rule as co-monarchs, High Queen and High King together. And so the problem was solved."
"Not quite solved!" That was Marguessan, more heated than before even. "Their rule, whether shared or single, meant that I was set aside upon my father’s death. I was Uthyr’s eldest child, his heir, and should have become High Queen to succeed him." When I began to remind her, gently still, of what she had pig-headedly ignored all these years: "Nay, Taliesin, none of your tiresome brehon rules! The law is outmoded, and should have been changed long since!"
I opened my mouth to reply, then changed my mind and closed it again, and she went on.
"The thing was simple, and should have been seen so. A king dies, and his heir succeeds. No more; but also no less."
It was hopeless, and useless; she would never see it. "And now?" I asked after a while.
"And now I make right that—error."
"And Malgan?" I asked, still quietly, still unclear as to where he fit into Marguessan’s grand picture.
"Ah," said Malgan, and rose from his chair to pace, and I was stabbed to the heart at his likeness to his father in that moment, just so did Artos pace the bridge, or the Council chamber—
"I have never had any wish to be High King," he said presently. "Though surely I did have the wish to know my father, and to be known in turn as his true son… and perhaps to have some small thing of my own to control—something like, perhaps, Gwynedd. Therefore I chose to throw my name and such power as I can command to the side of the Princess Marguessan’s claim. Her claim will be made the stronger thereby, one more contestant will stand away from the succession fight, and my childhood friend Mordryth will be Tanist, and King thereafter."
"And you get Gwynedd."
"And I get Gwynedd."
"And also you get revenge upon your father?" I asked, and felt a small grim satisfaction to see him flinch.
"Perhaps," he said evenly, but he did not look at me.
I leaned back in my prison-chair and smiled pleasantly at both of them, who were just now watching me lynx-eyed for I knew not what.
"So then," I said, and I smiled even more as I said it, "I think I do understand very well now. You have both made it all most clear, and for that I thank you." I turned my gaze on Malgan, and I looked at him for a long time before I spoke again. "So you are yet another of Marguessan’s ‘new things,’ then. Deny your father, renounce your rightful heritance and claim, and support hers in all its lunatic dubiety, and you will be tossed a planet for sop. Gwynedd shall not be your duchas, Malgan Pendreic ap Arthur, but the price of your soul."
He turned as white as had Marguessan earlier, at the name I gave him and the doom I pronounced. But I had chosen to do both quite deliberately, to see what he would do, how he might take it. And now I had seen in his eyes and face, as well as in his sudden bloodlessness, how he felt about it in his inmost heart. Well then, I thought behind my deepest shields, this one may yet be saved; and glad I was to know it. But for her, nay; no help or hope for it, she is past saving, lost to us forever now…
Which may seem to you a strange thing for me to be thinking, I who was just now on the very verge of being lost—or at the very least shoved unwilling into my next life—myself. And doubly strange of me to think thus of Marguessan, whom nearly all Keltia had held to be beyond redemption for these many years now. Still…
But Marguessan had stood up, an air of triumph and expectation about her, and Malgan with her, a sense of angry reluctance clinging to him. She gestured to me to rise also, and I did, tentatively at first, to find that the snaoim-draoi which had held me fast was gone. I looked full into Marguessan’s face as the hall doors opened once more to admit Rannick of Lissard, followed by a band of eight sworded guards, and I gathered my time was run out.
"Will you go with these, Taliesin, or must they take you?" she asked.
"Oh, go, by all means," I said, agreeably and at once. "I would for no sake—least of all mine, and surely not yours—choose to die under this roof. Without will serve me well enough."
"Be it so then." She nodded, and forestalling Rannick’s rough grab I strolled forward to take my place among the guards. Then, as I turned away with my escort: "Only remember, Talyn. I sent you back your ring, back there in Drum Wood."
"So you did," I said after the briefest of pauses, but I did not turn round to look at her, and I walked out steadily with the guards, out to the faha where my death presumably awaited.
But I never got there, and whether the guards and Rannick did or no I cannot say. For no sooner had I set boot without the castle gate, on green turf under bright skies, than something unseen came down from clear heaven and snatched me clean away. I was as surprised as I daresay were they: It seemed like a hand, then more like a whirlwind, then like some bubble of time or place that had of a sudden swooped me into it, and it was utterly unexpected, by me no less than any. I saw Rannick and the cohort blown and scattered like October leaves, tumbling over and over each other, helpless and doubtless furious. Though surely not so much as Marguessan, watching from her window, must have been…
And then I was gone from Saltcoats, and knew no more, until I opened my eyes against a great warm soft ruddy light. Was I dead, then? I could see nothing in the warm red glow; but if I were dead, should not someone be here by now to fetch me away? A dear kinsman or kinswoman—Uthyr, say, or Gorlas, or one of my sibs—or a significant mentor of the spirit or venerated hero from out the past: These are the usual guides sent to greet one who has just passed into the ‘next room’ of the time between life and lives to come.
But though I waited in expectation, no one showed up, though the light remained all round me, steady and red-gold. Could they have forgotten me? Was there a great crush just now in the Hither Hereafter, so that souls must wait their turn for guiding? The Guardians of the Door must surely know I was here? I would not have to find my own way to Caer Coronach, would I? I had merited better than that, had I not… And slowly I began to fear.
Then a hand came strong and white and slim and shining out of the red light, and I clutched it, and it tightened on mine, and I pulled, and the hand pulled, and I came up from somewhere into Morgan’s arms.
I fell heavily against her, holding her hand—her saving hand—in both of mine; we were both weeping, and she held me for a long time before I felt any wish to sit up and demand of her an explanation. When I did, we began to weep all over again between kisses, and this went on for quite a while longer before we seemed to have ourselves in hand once more.
"I thought I was dead," I said, in a voice which conveyed how pleased I was to find it not so.
"Almost," came Morgan’s voice from above my head, which was by then safely cuddled in her lap. "You never list
en, and you a bard… Did I not tell you again and again not to venture within Saltcoats? I did; and do you never hear me? You do not. Why else do you think we fashioned that little charade of the misfitting boots? All to keep you outside the walls of the castle and to winkle my sister out from behind them; and what do you do? You troop obediently within the instant someone invites you. You might just as well have thrown yourself at my sister’s feet and set one of those boots you made her upon your throat with your own hand. Bonehead." And she swatted me.
"And that is another thing," I began, diverted at once, to the point of ignoring the swat, by the non-mention yet again of Marguessan’s name. But Morgan put her fingertips across my mouth, silencing me gently, and I could tell by the touch the change of her mood.
"I did not think I would be able to lift you out of there in time," she said, and her voice trembled.
"And that is another thing again," I said, indignant all over. "You might have taken the trouble to inform me that you were going to use magic like some great cloudhook on me. I did not know what in all hells was toward. And then I thought I was dead! Perhaps I never listen, Guenna, but then you never tell me aught to begin with, so there it is."
I could hardly believe we were quarreling at such a moment, and all at once we both of us began to laugh.
"Ah me," said Morgan, wiping the tears from her eyes, tears of laughter and relief from terror both. "Never shall we do things like other folk, you and I… But I think you have brought no mirthful news with you from Saltcoats?"
"Aye so. That sister of yours, whose name you will not speak and who for her part will no more mention yours—"
"Just so. But you shall tell me now."
She lay down beside me on the bed (which I had only now discovered I was comfortably stretched out upon, in our own chamber at Tair Rhandir) and put an arm across my chest in her usual fashion, her cheek against my shoulder.
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