The Hedge of Mist

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "Can it—could someone break through?"

  Morgan’s eyes shuttered. "Aye," she said quietly. "It is always possible; no vault is thief-proof. But this vault will be so constructed that to break in would take so stupendous an effort, and require so powerful a sorcerer and so fell a rann, that it is unlikely in the extreme. It is the least of my worries just now. The Pheryllt are a greater."

  I fell asleep that night with a greater understanding of the work my Morgan was called to; and a greater fear than ever. Not for the work; for her. For her alone. And so, of course, for myself.

  But I had a work of my own, and not bardic either. I had told Morgan and Gweniver and Ygrawn of Allyn’s visit, but no others; and similarly only they knew of my efforts to bring to the birth that which Allyn had told me was Nudd’s recommendation.

  Heeding well Allyn’s words, I had worked out a set of benchmarks by which candidates for this new Order might be chosen. No matter what they were othertimes—kern or duchess, bard or Fian, farmer or shopkeeper or tech—in this new company all would be equal before that which the Order served: And that was Magic. There would be no rankings, no titles, no hierarchy of officers: a chief and a summoner only, one to decide when assembly was needed, the other to call it. All and each would be equally valued, and the magic would be paramount. Each candidate would be required to demonstrate giftedness in at least one specialized magical discipline, and high proficiency in general.

  I knew well enough that I would not find enough such candidates at first to make up the numbers I had in mind; nor did I think that even at full strength, the Order should exceed ten thousand souls in all. If qualified persons were not thick on the ground, we would make do with however many we had, and not admit any comers just to make up numbers. What was wanted here was Keltia’s best; good-enough was not good enough.

  Yet still the Order had no name… But I was toying one night with my dragon medallion, studying the workmanship of it—surely of the Sidhe, I thought, or perhaps even of Earth?—when suddenly a voice spoke far inside my head, very small but very clear, and I repeated aloud the words it spoke to me, in wonder and in rueful recognition. Well of course this was the right and proper name, how not…

  "The Dragon Kinship," I said aloud, to the empty room, to myself, to Keltia. "Those whose Gift is magic supreme. They will be Kin to the Dragon. And to one another."

  And so they were.

  The Kinship when first formed was small indeed; pathetically so when compared to the ranks of the Companions. I had chosen for my own reasons to seat this new Order in Gwahanlen itself, and they looked all but lost in the reaches of that vast chamber. But Gwahanlen too had seemed all but lost these few years, never once used since the seven of us who had returned from Kholco spoke there to those who had remained behind. It felt right and correct that the Kinship, small though its numbers now were, should meet here.

  To fill the twelve twelves of seats at Rhodaur, that once the inner circle of Companions had filled, I had so far mustered only seventy-one Dragons. Some of whom you know well from these pages—Daronwy, Tryffin, Cristant, Morgan herself—but the most part were strangers to our comradeship, and there would be more to come.

  In those early days we did not trouble with robes and regalia, save that I had ordered made for each new Dragon one of the silver medallions to match my own; and these were worn proudly, if not yet always openly. For though the Kinship had been introduced to Keltia as gradually and as subtly as possible—the first new Order since the Bardic Association was founded in the year 347 Anno Brendani by Plenyth ap Alun, whose mantle of Pen-bardd had by common consent and usage fallen upon my own shoulders—still we thought it best prudence to keep as low a sail as possible against the sky, not to alarm the folk overmuch. They had endured enough these past years, and the blatant establishment of a new and potentially mighty order of sorcerers could very well appear to them as an arwydd, a portent according to the ancient prophecy: ‘Where the true king has perished a thousand magicians shall appear in the land.’ What then were the folk to think of a possible ten thousand magicians—for though they knew it not, the King had perished…

  So we went softly on. Our first effort as a body was to declare unqualified and unconditional public support for Morgan in her labors on the Wall; and our act, though we had intended it to sway the shogglers, had surprising and far-reaching effect. For the Pheryllt, who so long had balked at blessing the work, suddenly found themselves shamed into that which they had been refusing all along, purely because of the Kinship’s action.

  I must say, it was pleasant to swing the scales, especially with the Pheryllt and the entire of Druidry in the one tray and only seventy-one Dragons to our own; and certainly it gave us an immediate prestige and weight that, all things considered, we were not entirely either comfortable or discomfortable carrying. But if it made things easier on and for Morgan, then we were content to have it so for us.

  And so it seemed: With the capitulation of the Druids to assist the Wall’s work, all sorcerers in Keltia were committed, and all sore needed to accomplish the task at hand. With everything now in place outwardly, Morgan went off alone on retreat for a few days to prepare herself inwardly as well, at a Ban-draoi place of solitude, an island llan far in the Kyles of Ra. For to direct so vast a magic one needed a strong place from which to act; and this magic had been long in the making.

  You understand all this took years: By the time Morgan was ready to raise the Wall, and the Kinship was formed, Arthur had been near seven years gone. Soon Arawn would be of full age to rule alone; Gweniver’s freedom would soon be upon her—all manner of things would change, and the price of that change was still to be set.

  For myself, I knew in my heart that the raising of the Wall was going to cost me dearest of all; but even when Morgan returned from her retreat, her strong place built and all her armies massed, I could not speak of it.

  But lying wakeful that last night before the work commenced, I could not but feel that she was gone from me already; though we loved and spoke and loved again, with all our old fervor and intensity, it carried more of a valedictory air than either of us cared to admit for fear of alarming the other. Which was loving and noble and all the rest of it, but laid a certain strain over this night, which well might be our last at Turusachan or indeed anywhere else this life round. Yet still we would not speak of it; but one thing came through even so…

  Morgan, lying in my arms, her heavy hair flung across my throat in a silken cabled braid, stirred and moved closer, her arm moving up my chest so that she could brush her fingers over my beard.

  "I have not told you enough, cariad o’nghariad, but I am beyond all words grateful for the support your Kinship has given to the work of the Wall. Even the Pheryllt had to bend to you at the last, and were they not cross to have to do so! But—my thanks."

  I shrugged and kissed the top of her head where it lay just beneath my chin. "It was nothing, lady."

  "Not so modest, Pendragon! Without the Kinship—" She went on with quantities of praise, but I did not hear, so caught was I by a word of hers; and after a moment or two I laid my fingers across her lips to halt her discourse.

  "What was that you called me just now?"

  "‘Cariad o’nghariad’, as ever I have called you, what else—

  "Nay, not that. The other name."

  She was silent a few seconds, running back over her words in her mind.

  "‘Pendragon’?"

  "Aye, that is the one. Whence came that? Never have you used to me such a title before."

  "It is not mine to use, strictly speaking," she said, snugging closer. "It is what your own Dragons have taken to calling you, at least among themselves; and now the common run of folk have taken it up as well. But surely you have heard yourself called so before."

  I shook my head. "Nay. I have not." And nor was I sure that I liked it overmuch…

  Morgan seemed unaware of my uncertainties. "Oh, I can hardly believe that! They are calling
you so all across Keltia. ‘Dragon’ for that you lead the Kinship, you are chief Dragon; and ‘Pen’, which means ‘head’ or ‘chief, to echo your title of Pen-bardd—the which, if I may point out, never seemed to trouble you one way or other."

  "Ah, so much you know, madam," I said with dignity, giving her the Yamazai title to twit her. "You were not exactly close by to see how ill it sat upon me, what time Elphin first named me so…"

  Elphin—who had perished with Arthur on Kholco… I took a deep breath to stave off sudden tears. Morgan must have felt it, for she kissed my bare chest gently; I could see her head move in the moonlight. Outside, the light of Bellendain gave its faint ruby glow, like a Beltane fire seen over the rim of a distant hill.

  "It sat so ill on you only because Plenyth himself had borne it; and your modesty, which well became you, disquieted you, that such a name be given. But beloved, you have well deserved it—and this new name also. Can you not content you?"

  When she had fallen asleep against my shoulder, I lay awake a while, watching the red-silver light change altogether to silver-blue, as Bellendain fled away westwards and Argialla stood at the midheaven.

  Pendragon. . . Well, if truth be told, I was secretly thrilled to be called so, if openly honored; and even more for that I had not boastfully claimed it for myself but had had it bestowed upon me by my own. I had not even known they had done so; surely modesty could live with that.

  And also, amazingly, it even echoed my own ainm-posta, my gamonymic, the marriage-name of Pendreic I had assumed according to our custom when Morgan and I were wed. For ‘Pendreic’ was, incredibly, the very same name in the Kymric as was ‘Pendragon’ in the general Gaeloch: Of old, ‘dreic’ or ‘dragon’ had both been bardic usages for ‘warrior,’ and ‘pen’, as Morgan had remarked, had ever meant ‘chief or ‘lord’.

  And that was as such not all so inappropriate, I thought drowsily, not even for me… Any road, there was not a hope of stopping it, not now. Pendragon I was, and would be, all the rest of my days; and those who would come to lead the Kinship after me, as first among equals, according to the Rule of the Order that I myself had set down, would call themselves likewise, or be called so by their fellows and their folk. Perhaps that was not a thing to be too much modest about, after all.

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-two

  I have said before now in these chronicles that words are sometimes not enough; that even bards—on occasion—can be failed by the tools of their craft. Not because the thing one seeks to tell of is imprecise, or invalid, or untrue—a feeling or thought too vague for describing. Nay; it is because the thing is too precise, too valid, too exact and rigorously itself, that there are no words near enough to it to name it rightly…

  What comes next is neither pleasant nor easy to speak of, but it is a thing most precise and itself for all that; and I am in all ways glad and proud indeed that I may tell how it was. For Morguenna Pendreic, like her brother and her father and her uncles before her, had a blow to strike for her people, and the time of its striking was come at last.

  We had done as much preparation as might be done and was demanded, for the raising of the Curtain Wall between us and the galaxy outside. And for a working that might seem to many so purely magical a task, it had proved surprisingly technical underneath; or perhaps it merely illustrates once again how magic and logic are not so distant cousins as we think.

  To create this vast arras of unlight and concealment, then, that Morgan had envisioned, four huge stations had been built in deep space, out in the blackness between the suns that light our worlds. They were positioned in such a way as to cover each a quarter of our borders, with a generous overlap for safety’s sake and a relay redundancy factor also, that one station might pick up the slack if another faltered or failed for some reason. I admit it is a daunting image, at least it was so for me—four wheels in space, caers among the stars that could generate a shield for our entire sector—and I found myself thinking of the stations as maigen-stones, like the one I had encountered outside Daars, on the road from Gwaelod. Markers for what lay within; but these were more—they not only signalled the protection, they were the protection.

  What they were, of course, was far more complex: stations to collect and then disperse the vast amounts of energies that Morgan’s great working was going to summon up; and to maintain it so forever (or as near as makes no differ). They would be charged by every sorcerer in Keltia and set alight by the death of five stars and a score of planets; the entire space of the Bawn would be scoured clean of any stellar body that was not inhabited or otherwise useful. It went hard with all of us to take this decision—Kelts as a rule do not destroy the Mother’s works so lightly—but we did not do so lightly this time. The Wall needed to be raised; the Wall needed power; there were five suns that would destroy themselves in time anyway: The logic and the need seemed to chime.

  So the stations were built, constructed in the void; and Morgan named them. Falias, Findias, Murias and Gorias they were called, after the Four Sacred Cities of the Airts, cities of the Danaans of old whence came the Treasures in the beginning days of all. Some argued with heat and cause that it was high blasphemy to name them so—I must confess I myself agreed at least somewhatly with this feeling—but Morgan dismissed all such doubts with uncharacteristic impatience.

  "Those Cities protected our folk once and long time, you know, Talyn; and then furnished us with the means of doing similarly forever by giving us the Hallows, of which present disposition we know. They will not take exception to having their names used so now, to denote these star-caers."

  Well, she was master of this working, she would know if any did what was right and what blasphemy. And so the names were bestowed and the stations blessed and brought on line; upon each one now stood a full complement of sorcerers—Ban-draoi, Druids, even hedge-priests and village witches. Every sorcerer in Keltia had been summoned by Morgan to this great undertaking; we had need of every scrap of power we could find. All (once the petulance of the Pheryllt had been banished as it deserved) stepped forward gladly to serve; all stood ready to give to Keltia the service of their magic and their love. And perhaps, of some, more still would be required, for this kind of working was not without its own particular perils. Always a few—usually the very young or the very advanced in years, who were at risk for different reasons—would fall in the great push that sent the magic onwards, and not one of the hundreds of thousands involved shirked the task or shrank from the danger.

  The last thing we did prior to the actual working was to make a sail of inspection out along what would soon become the Wall’s perimeter, an irregular, meandering line through now-featureless interstellar space. It was strange to look out and think that very soon now, this line we were travelling would be alive with the power of stars and sorcery alike…

  But Morgan had no time for such reflections. Over the past year or two, as the Wall became as real to the rest of Keltia as it had been in her mind ever since Coldgates, she had changed both subtly and plainly. Oh, not in any way that mattered; and certainly in no way that mattered to me, or that affected our love and bond. Still, there had been changes; and sometimes I wondered if some of Arthur’s restless flame of a spirit had not passed from him as he went, and touched a like flame within Morgan that had not until now been kindled.

  Watching her now as she quartered empty space like a questing hound drawing a starry covert, she reminded me so of her brother that almost I could not bear to watch her. But the job had to be done: These regions were soon going to be whelmed with washes and tides of energy such as had never been seen or imagined, in nature or in artifice; and, in any ritual, it is your life’s and work’s worth to know your sacred ground.

  Which was, just so, why Morgan had chosen that particular ground upon which she herself would take stand to direct her working, directing the magic inward to herself and then outward to where those upon the stations waited to receive it and pass it on in their turn. In the end
, all Keltia would be cloaked in a mantle of light that could not be seen but surely would make itself felt.

  For Morgan had chosen once more to go to Caervanogue, to the island of the Graal, and I was going with her.

  Well, not just we two, of course; some of the new Kinship came with us, and I had posted Kin to the Dragon on each of the four stations. But Morgan had summoned with us to Beckery those whose strength in battle she knew best and trusted most: Ygrawn, Daronwy, Grehan, Cristant, Alein Lysaght; other of our old Companions, comrades from the Graal seeking, fellow knights. Gweniver, who had been at our parting suddenly as remote as those starclouds in the southern skies we call the Veils of Aunya, remained at Caerdroia with Arawn and Gerrans and my two grandsons; Gwain, only other surviving cousin of that generation of Pendreic, came with us.

  Which you might not have thought he would wish to, considering how his last visit to Beckery had gone: his mother denouncing her kin and folk and faith, his sister sacrificed to that same mother’s dark aspirations. Not to mention the fact that he himself had arrived there dead, and been restored to life—a happy ending, if a strainful time for him. Still, we wondered at his decision. But he insisted.

  So we left Gweniver and the others at home, bidding farewell to them in Gwahanlen itself, where they would themselves join in our endeavor, to be with us in more than spirit; and we took ship at Mardale, flying this time, to the regions east of east so long unvisited.

  I looked down as we went, remembering my Quest: There lay Siennega, though the ruins of Inisguidrin were not visible from this height; over there was Ben Shulow; north stretched the Plains of Listellian—and I even spied a huge herd of the white and indifferent bison, many miles off to my left, moving imperceptibly over the green turf like a cloud come to rest. Far ahead, gleaming on the coast like a pearl, lay Fairlight.