The Hedge of Mist

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "Nay. She would not. And in more conformable times no more would I. But these times are very much other, and so I will let you to know, because you may have need of the knowledge before the end."

  Again she paused, as if she must forge the words deep within herself before bringing them out into speech. "Well then," she continued, "there is an oath we have among the High Ban-draoi, and they have it too among the Pheryllt. It is the sorcerer’s oath with dan, and it cannot be broken. Not even broken with consequences or punishments. Nay; once taken, it cannot be broken. And that is what is at work, between my sister and me."

  I was shivering a little by now, no matter the coverlets, quite certain that I did not wish to hear another word, sorry to my bones that ever I had asked. But I must hear, and she must tell me…

  For the oath of which she spoke, the Tynghed, was dreaded more than even death itself, for it bound more surely on both sides of the Door; I had heard only dimly of this terrible swearing, all Kelts had, but I had surely never thought to encounter it side by side with me in bed. But Morgan was speaking again, and with an effort almost physical I forced my head incline to her, to better hear her words.

  When they came, they were terrible indeed; and long it was before I could close my eyes after…

  I stole away in the darkness before dawnlight without waking Morgan; rose and clad myself in the dark—no arms taken, one did not go with earthly weapons into the faerie halls—dropped a gentle kiss on Morgan’s bare shoulder where it glowed like a pearl above the dark sleeping-furs, and went to join Arthur for the journey.

  He was already awaiting me, at the small landing-place between the palace proper and the great Keep where he was accustomed to keep an aircar standing ready, and when he saw me he thrust his gauntlets into his belt, nodded, and swung into the small ship. I glanced back up over my shoulder, though I knew perfectly well that the windows of the chamber where I had left Morgan asleep did not overlook this faha but faced on to the sea, and followed him inside.

  We touched down in the Hollow Mountains just after dawn had broken, leaving the aircar on the far side of the last ridge before Glenshee began. It was as close as we could come to the Hill of Fare, beneath which lay our destination, Dun Aengus, behind the great waterforce and stone passage known as Sychan, the Dry River. We would have a bit of a hike, I reflected, but it could not be helped, and with luck and a good strong pace we should come to Sychan by midday at the earliest.

  As usual, I had reckoned without thinking that the Sidhe might have ideas of their own; and as soon as Arthur and I had set foot over the ridge’s backbone into the lovely valley beyond, we were reminded of that in no uncertain fashion…

  We stood there a moment with all the vale spread out before us. Here, well north of Caerdroia, it was already autumn, and I looked in wonder at the spectacular fall tapestry that lay unrolled at my feet: red, yellow, gold, the shine-purple of sumacs, brown oak, with the bone-white of trees already bare veining themselves like ghost rivers out of the naming colored map of the forest wall.

  And a moment, quite literally, was all we had to behold it, for of a sudden came in the air around us a white light and a subtle vibration, and before I could cry out to Arthur we were taken up and set down again a few blank moments later before the great silver gates I well remembered.

  "I hate it when they do that," muttered Arthur, straightening his cloak and his shoulders under them.

  "Aye, well, it saves on boot leather, and it was a long walk from the ship." I was suddenly, unaccountably happy, with a joy that came from everywhere at once and nowhere at all, all but buckling my knees with the force of it. And when the gates swung open soundlessly, and I saw who stood on the other side to welcome us beneath the hill, I was not a whit surprised.

  Gwyn son of Nudd, prince of the Sidhe, bent his head to his guests and raised it again smiling.

  "It seemed best not to make you walk all that way," he said, in the voice I knew and yet could never keep in my head, between times of our meeting.

  "And we are both grateful for it," I said, with a swift sidewise glance at Arthur. "We thought there might be need of haste, that you did so."

  "There is indeed, and much to be done, for now all times run short until the end." He gestured us to follow him, and we passed the gates into the Dun.

  This time, unlike my last visit or even my first, the halls were full of the folk of the Dun; perhaps they had been present both those other times also, but my mortal eyes had not been permitted to behold them. I did not know. But we passed through halls and corridors that seemed not unfamiliar to me, then a chamber I knew I knew, and another and another—

  "We are going to Merlynn Llwyd," I said suddenly, and certainly.

  Gwyn smiled. "Ah, the memory of a bard," he said. "Take care to keep it bright and sharp, Tal-bach; it shall be needed sorely, and that soon."

  With which ominous words he left us standing alone before a blank gray wall of solid granite. I glanced wildly about me, but we were alone in that place; no sense even of the Sidhe who were doubtless watching us unseen came to me, and I took a deep breath and turned back to the inconversable stone.

  "It is a test," I said helpfully. "With the Sidhe, there are always tests for mortals."

  "Well, you are bard," said Arthur, and for the first time in our lives I heard his voice shake just a little. "And you have been here oftener than I. Chaunt something."

  Slowly I unslung Frame of Harmony, which of course had accompanied me here, listening all the while for an unspoken word of bidding or forbidding. I cast out again with othersense to learn if it were even lawful for me to play here—though I had done so once before, among the Sidhe the rules change often and unaccountably. When I received no sign one way or the other, I sighed, and took the silence for assent, and began, as strongly as I could, to sing.

  "‘Bard am I full fraught

  With aptness not to be compelled.

  Be not perverse in the court of thy ruler;

  But as to the name of the versea nd the name of the vauntinga nd the name of the spherea nd the name of the substancea nd the name of the speecha nd the name of the sayer,

  Let those above and those below ask in stillness,a nd receive what may be said.’"

  Not perhaps my best making; but in the circumstances, quite the best that I could manage, and it served us well enough, for no sooner had the last echoes of the harp-chords died away than the stone wall became transparent before us, and then it was gone.

  And behind it was that same cavern-annat I had visited once before, the fane where Merlynn Llwyd lay in the crystal tree that was not quite his tomb. I moved confidently forward, and Arthur followed more warily.

  In the niche at the rear of the fane, all was as it had been when last I had stood in this place. Merlynn was unchanged, still entranced, or asleep, or removed, not dead if surely not alive as we are ‘customed to think of it, within the prism-prison that Edeyrn Marbh-draoi had set about him. Arthur, who had not until now beheld this admittedly unnerving sight (though by leave of the Sidhe I had recounted all to him, after my rescue from Oeth-Anoeth), was as staggered as I myself had been, and every bit as deeply moved. Merlynn had been his teacher and protector too, not mine alone; had guarded us our first five years of life, apart, and then the next fifty together; he was part of the fabric of our very souls.

  "Nay, touch not the tree," I murmured softly, as Arthur, seemingly in a trance, reached out a trembling hand to the cloudy ice of the crystal. He hesitated, then closed his fingers slowly, slowly, into a fist, and pulled his hand away.

  "Not so," came a low clear voice I knew well, not Gwyn’s, and both of us turned as one. Birogue of the Mountain came forward, and we bowed deeply to her as she entered the fane and looked upon her lord and mate.

  "This time you are bidden set your hands to it," she said, still smiling. "For rules do change beneath the hill—" She gave me a wicked amused cat-look, sidewise out of astonishing silver-green eyes, and I blushed and lau
ghed.

  But she grew grave again at once. "There are things you must hear, and know, and do. And only he"—she nodded once at Merlynn’s unchanged, unchanging form—"can let you to know what they might be."

  Arthur’s face was one great enormous question-hook, but he controlled himself nobly, and said not a syllable as Birogue took our hands by the wrists, Arthur’s right and my left, harp-hand and sword-hand, and with an air of consecration and holy purpose that I had seen before, and been awed by, in the Sidhe-folk, set our hands upon the crystal tree that entombed Merlynn Llwyd.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-three

  It was as if we had been plunged of a sudden into ard-na-speire, the overheaven that is hyperspace. There was the same thick furry darkness, the levin-blue lightlines that netted and fretted the stars, the sourceless opalescent glow that could never be seen by straight vision, only by sidesight (and then, from out the corners of your eyes, it filled the world). But we were still beneath the hill, fast in earth, on earth, of earth… or so at least I presumed, for I had become utterly unaware of my body, even of my hand that seemed frozen to the crystal tree of Edeyrn’s making and Merlynn’s inhabiting. It seemed that we were no longer in Dun Aengus nor yet Glenshee, but in something, somewhere, more akin perhaps to a thought, a construct, a postulatum; then suddenly to anchor me I heard Arthur’s voice speaking nearby, in a sort of dreamish drone.

  "A time that is not a time, a place that is not a place… Who is it brings us here? Edeyrn or Merlynn, Dark or Light—

  The note was not strange to me of hope and disbelief in his voice rising toward terror; how not, for I had heard it sound just so in my own ears, back there in the Wood of Shapes, and in plenty of other places before and since. I did the only thing I could for both of us: I reached blindly out to my side with my free hand, to find Arthur’s own, and when I found it I grasped it and I held on hard, as he and I had done from time to time as frighted children, back in Daars. And neither of us took shame of the comfort; not then, and not now.

  Our joined hands must somehow have sealed the circle, for the curtain of spark-shotten darkness seemed to turn to silver brightness and then roll back before us; and Merlynn Llwyd was there. Partly he stood on his feet a couple of paces in front of us, awake, alert, all-seeing as he had ever been in life; and partly he still lay in his enchanted sleep within the crystal coffer (or coffin—I could not make up my mind how to think of it). The one image of his reality, if such it was, seemed to change and pulse and shift through the other, like a thing seen doubly through water or a diamond or blowing smoke.

  But the voice was all unchanged; nor, it seemed, was the inhabiting spirit any the less for its strange sojourn.

  "Ard-righ, Pen-bardd—Then, warmer: "Artos, Talyn, do not be afraid! Only keep your hands upon the crystal, and in each other’s, so that I may continue to speak, and you to hear."

  "Athro?" That was Arthur, hesitant, wanting desperately to believe, yet fearing that to believe were a joy beyond all hope even of wishing, much less of attaining. "Is it you, truly?"

  "Who else?" came the well-remembered testy flash, and in spite of my awe I laughed aloud, for just so had the vision-Merlynn spoken to me on quest in that nighttime wood, beside the fountain where things happened; and I reflected yet again that some things are in one’s essential nature and change no whit upon the other shore; well, at least not straightway. And this I found rather more comforting than not. But Merlynn was speaking again.

  "I have leave to speak here but little time," he said. "So let us not squander that which has been allotted us. Aye, it is I, and aye again, it is you—both of you—and so let us take the thing as read. Now. Arthur, hear me."

  And Arthur leaned forward, though his booted feet did not move upon the stone; more a yearning forward, a moving into his arm that still stretched rigid between the crystal and himself.

  "When last you were here," said Merlynn, in an utterly familiar (and tiresome) tone of didactical reminder, "you were offered certain things by Nudd who is king beneath the hill. And of those Treasures you took only the one, to aid you in the fight against the Marbh-draoi."

  "Aye," said Arthur. "Fragarach I took, the Answerer, the great sword of divine forging; and left the other Hallows here. It did not seem their time to come away. And then the Cup was stolen by my sister, and I have wished often that I had accepted that at least when offered it, so that the theft could have been prevented."

  "Nothing and no one could have prevented it," said Merlynn. "Let your mind be at ease on that account. And a greater good came of your declining… But as Talyn and the others learned at Caervanogue, the Hallows have dan of their own even as souls do, a quest of their own to fulfill. Today you must take them from here, and when you leave Keltia, as you are very soon now about to do, you must take them with you."

  He must have seen, or sensed, the instant incredulous refusal in Arthur’s face—for surely I sensed it in Arthur’s hand—for he shook his head and smiled.

  "Nay, I speak correctly"—and that was purest Merlynn—"and I will not be doubted. It is dan, as I have told you. They came to Keltia, the Treasures, with Brendan and Nia, as did the Kelts themselves. And now it is their time to go from Keltia, with you and your Companions upon your last venturing."

  "‘Last’?" echoed Arthur after a rather packed silence. But he did not seem surprised, nor even much distressed; seemed somehow to have known this was someday to come, and now it had. It was not even a matter for his acceptance; you might as easily say that it had accepted him…

  Merlynn read our doubts; never had there been any hiding things from our Ailithir. "They shall return to Keltia one day, right enough. Brought back by one whose own dan shall be to do so… But for you yourself, and those who sail with you, no returning. Seven alone shall return from Caer Sidi."

  And as he spoke those words I felt with a great inner gasp and shiver the wings of the Holy Awen brush against my soul, those mighty pinions beating upon a chill wind out of an unimaginable future; felt a great work being seeded somewhere far within me, as a child takes root in a woman’s womb, to be born in its own good time or ill. And that too was dan.

  "It is all part of the same seeking, the same quest," said Merlynn, "this sailing that shall be, and the return that shall come of it. And even that shall not be the end of it. You have Seen it yourselves, long since."

  At that my knees gave way all but entirely, for I minded me well of that long-ago Seeing, and of what each of us had Seen… Apparently Arthur remembered also, for he had startled likewise, his hand suddenly spasming, clutching mine, until I felt the stab and pinch of the seal ring he wore, the great emerald Athyn Cahanagh had had of Morric Douglas cutting into my flesh.

  "In Daars," said Arthur, in a drowned voice. "Talyn and I, in our little schoolroom—we had hoped and begged and badgered to see magic, and you lessoned us well by showing us some we wished we had never clapped eyes upon. You remember, Talynno." It was not a question, and he did not pause for my assent, seeming to sense it through my crushed fingers. "A dry harsh plain on an outfrenne world, a red sky; and out of that sky a dark-green ship, a starship, falling like an arrow straight into the flaming throat of a firemount."

  He was silent a long moment, then raised his head and brought his glance across Merlynn’s like a blade. "Prydwen," said Arthur. "My ship. My dan. Is that then the end?"

  Merlynn smiled, the old smile of Ailithir whom we loved. "Certainly it is not! There is no end to such matters as these—have I taught you nothing at all, and have you learned less even than that?"

  "But of us, athro?" I asked humbly. "Our end? Ourselves?"

  "Not in a thousand thousand lifetimes," came the cool clear voice of Birogue, whom we had not known was still present in this—whatever this was, vision or ashling or marana. She moved forward to take her place beside Merlynn who was her mate, and I blinked to clear my sight, for—as in the Wood of Seeming, as in Ashnadarragh which was the Place of the Oak, as upon the str
and Garanwynion—there came a wavering and a shimmering, and I Saw upon those two I loved and revered as soulparents the duality of the fiala come down, in likenesses of Two I loved and worshipped as Makers…

  "It goes on, Pen-bardd," said Birogue, knowing what I Saw; and making a gesture of showing with her hand; with Her hand.

  And as I had in that schoolroom, as I had at Cadarachta, as I had once here in this very Dun, I Saw—past, oh, far, far into the future, down along the track of years. Saw again, as I had Seen at Nandruidion, that one of whom Merlynn had just now spoken, the one to come whose certain dan would be to return to Keltia the Hallows that our dan in Keltia was yet to have us bear away; saw her come to them in their distant longtime home, out of her own desperate need—and knew, awed afresh, that I would be the one to send her after them, so that she might fetch them back. Again I saw her face, a look of Grehan about her, and of Tarian, and of Arthur and Morgan and Gweniver and myself and even of Majanah; and above all the look of a queen and a sorceress…

  I drew back shaking all over, almost severing the link; but throughout my Seeing I had kept my hand fixed upon the crystal treetrunk as if nailed there, and I kept it there now.

  "I charge you both," said Merlynn then, "none must know where the Treasures are bestowed when once they come there; none save we three here, and Gweniver and Morgan and Ygrawn, and Gwyn Prince of the Sidhe. This great secret must be kept, so that she who must redeem them shall come to them as dan decrees—hers and theirs and yours alike."

  "But how shall she know where she must go to find them, if the place be secret-kept?" asked Arthur, and his voice seemed stronger than before, stronger than it had been since this whole strange encounter had begun.

  "Gwyn shall give her the word of them," said Birogue simply. "The word that he shall receive of you, Talyn. We do not forget."

  And again I shivered as under a cold blast out of Northplain with the awe that was upon me, and turning I met Arthur’s eyes, which were just now as wide dark pools in the paleness of his face. Each knew what the other was thinking: Not only would word of what we did be passed to this longtime-descended queen, but Gwyn would give her that word himself, in his own person to her in her own person. He, who had been our friend in our time, would be hers in her own, so long-lived were the Folk of the Shining, and so young was he yet in the counting of their years.