The Hedge of Mist

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  At first it did not seem that there should be any doubt of the outcome here: Morgan was Domina, one of the mightiest sorceresses Keltia had ever seen; perhaps the greatest ever, if this today succeeded and was measure of her stature. Marguessan had been denied by her own mother the Ban-draoi training she had craved—rightly denied, I might add—and so had sought a teacher of her own in Edeyrn Marbh-draoi, her kindred’s greatest enemy. And Edeyrn, struck no doubt by the staggering irony of the thing, and seeing a chance to corrupt, had taught her such ranns as never are taught in honest schooling. If Birogue had given Morgan the secrets of the Sidhe in magic, Edeyrn himself was of the Sidhe, or half of them; and if the Shining Folk had a dark side not so shining, it would be certain that Edeyrn ap Seli ac Khun would have known how to use it—and would have taught it gladly to his star pupil.

  And Loherin, who had now a magic taught him by Avallac’h and given him by the Cup itself, made the third line of this terrible triad, the Three Who Fought on Tribruit, a greater fight perhaps than any of Arthur’s, not saving even his last…

  They spoke in the same instant. "Marguessan."

  "Morguenna."

  And in that double naming lay the doom of the Tynghed that my beloved had explained to me long time since, the reason the two sisters never spoke the other’s name. It was the Oath with Dan, that names and kills; invoked here, it meant that each should be the death of the other. And it meant too, I saw now, that each had named that part of the other in herself; a small part in each, to be sure, Light in Marguessan and Dark in Morgan. But however far each of us is inclined to the one or the other, rest assured both are present; else we could not live at all. It is as perilous to one’s soul to deny the Shadow in one as it is to deny the Light.

  It all happened, as I say, in what seemed one unbearably crowded and prolonged, eternal-feeling moment; doubtless it took real time in the world, but I have no idea. I myself was caught up in the Tynghed, as I had been ever since a ten-year-old princess with untidy blond braids, about to sail away in a magic silver-masted boat over an inland sea, tied a knot of remembrance into the cloak-fringe of a young bard. That knot had held me all my life, and would hold me past this moment, and for all my lives to come…

  Marguessan went first. The Gates before which Loherin still stood, implacable and impassive as Maharrion Rhen, shimmered and shut; the dreadful keening that the Dark Graal had kept up all this time, rising and falling like some duergar-dirge, was suddenly raised to a shriek that seemed to come from all ends of the earth and all airts of the compass, hung there an instant and was cut off as if by the stroke of some mystic sword in the hands of a hero or a god.

  And Marguessan was gone, or somewhatly: Something stood there before the Gates, something that may have been Marguessan as she truly was, or had become, or it may have been—well, something else. After the one brief glance I averted my eyes from it; whatever, or whoever, it might be, it was nothing I wished to imprint forever in myself. Know that it was ghastly, and it was enraged, and it was dangerous beyond anything I have ever known. It rose up in a choking black pillar, and yet also it stayed as it was. It is hard to explain in words; perhaps it is best so, lest your dreams be as haunted as mine.

  But Morgan was changing too; and though I stretched out my hand to her, heartsick, from the depths of my sorrow to come and my love that would ever be, I would not for all my lives have hindered or made difficult her going, and I let my hand fall, and turned my strength to help her go. It was the hardest thing I have ever been called upon to do; but it was correct, and, more importantly, it was what she wanted.

  For the Curtain Wall was fully charged now, the Pale had been raised; it now needed only to be set alight, and for that Morgan herself, her self, was needed. She had known all along that it would be so, this last thing be required of her as it had been required of her brother. It was her task alone: None other could perform it, and without it all the rest was in vain.

  She looked at me once, and smiled, and after that there was no need for us to look again. We had said all, now, then, before; and we would be saying it again. But just then the hill began to shake beneath our feet, and the magic circles shattered as if they had been glass, and looking eastward into a sudden looming shadow I felt my heart stop within me.

  It had already obliterated the Easter Isles, the ones that had lain in its path. Twice the height of Tribruit, it was green-black as siodarainn; blue lightning laced the foam crown it wore, and already we could feel its salt wind as it roared to meet us.

  And again everything seemed to happen at once, in one stretched moment: The Gates shone briefly out; then Loherin was among us, chivvying us within the solid stone walls of Caervanogue that suddenly stood behind us, rooted in more than earth, where nothing had stood before. I pushed Ygrawn and Cristant and Grehan before me into the open door of the Graal’s castle, then was myself flung likewise inside by Loherin. Just as the towering wave hit Garanwynion below us, consuming the beach where the horses had knelt and portunes had danced, I saw Morgan move forward and embrace the writhing pillar of darkness that had been, or still was, her sister Marguessan.

  What came next—well, again that is one of those moments I spoke of, when words are ridiculously not enough. What seemed to happen, what I myself saw happen (though the reality of it was doubtless very different; only Loherin saw that, and he was not saying), was that the wave somehow stripped away the darkness, leaving only light behind; and that that light, in the very same instant, went out from the hilltop like the rays of a crown, like one vast globe of splintered blue brilliance. It went in all directions, to all airts, and also it sank into the ground.

  And still gifted with the Sight Morgan had lent us, I saw, and the others also, the Wall itself leap into existence, far off in space.

  Saw a blue curtain shimmering across the stars, just as my mate had promised. In that moment, too, we felt the whip that such working carries with it: Upon the star-stations and all across Keltia, sorcerers died for the Wall’s making, and for the struggle with Marguessan also; they nickered and went out like pinched candles at day’s end.

  But they did not go unwilling and they did not go alone, nor did they go in vain; their power was added to Morgan’s, to the Wall’s own, to ours who remained. And never again would Kelts have to fear invasion from without; we were safe now, as Morgan had intended us to be. This end had come down the years to us, and would go down for thousands more: This that had had origin in an idle wondering—"How if a pale could be raised to protect all Keltia?"—had reality now in labor and in sacrifice. Our only peril now would come from within; or from one who scrupled as little as Marguessan, as Edeyrn, to use another such rann of the dark to break the Wall’s light.

  But if that was a peril to be faced, just now it lay far in the future, and others than ourselves must deal with it in their own time and turn. For now, there were other things to fear did we feel the need…though they would by comparison be small indeed next to that which we had seen here today.

  Inside the Graal’s walls—for Caervanogue was the Cup, in a way, and also it protected the Cup, in another way, and no doubt many other ways it had as well—we looked at one another in stupefaction and blind dumb terror. Then, just as we were getting worked up to it, the castle was gone again, and we were standing upon the bare hilltop. The turf was torn back with the wave’s passing might, and all around us reeked of salt and coldness and the far depths of Ocean. A real wave; and yet not so… Sent by Manaan Sea-lord, perhaps; maybe even now his crystal ship rode above the heaving waters, conveying Morgan and Marguessan to Caer Coronach, whence their true journey would begin. Perhaps this had all been played out by a greater than Manaan; or perhaps even Arthur had come to give his sisters escort to the other side of that Sea…

  For me, the one certain knowledge was that my Guenna was gone from me; and that was grief paramount, with which I would deal in time, or maybe it would deal with me. But it came to me too that at last I was free of Gwaelod; this wave t
hat had come to cleanse had come to heal also. As I stood there, apart from the others, I sensed someone by me, and I turned to see Loherin.

  He was himself, and more than himself; he had taken on that air Avallac’h had had, of sternness and serenity both, and was more beautiful than ever with what he now knew.

  He was smiling, and after a moment I smiled back at him.

  "Go to Caer-na-gael, Talyn," he said. "At the horns of the white moon. We shall meet again. But take them home now. It is done with. For now."

  * * *

  Chapter Thirty-three

  So I took them all home, home to Caerdroia, where Gweniver the Regent, looking in that moment very like Gweniver the High Queen, met us in a mood that I had never seen before, a kind of grieving triumph. Ygrawn spoke somewhat in her ear, then went alone straight to her chambers; just now she was best left so, to grapple in her own way and time with the loss of the last of her children.

  I myself was not quite ready to go to the rooms I had shared all these years with my wife, so I went instead to Gwahanlen, and I sat there alone until the leaded glass of the ceiling had grown dark with night and bright again with morning. I felt curiously light and detached from my body, not sad, and I wished to see no one, and to say nothing, and to do nothing, not for a long while yet. Perhaps not for a very long while.

  It seemed that the others who dwelled in Turusachan understood my wishes and my need, or perhaps I had unconsciously been sending it to them, for not until evening of that second day began to draw in did one come to Gwahanlen to trouble my vigil.

  The doors opened and closed. "Talyn," said Gweniver; no more.

  I had known it was she before she set hand to latch; but still I sat on in silence. Then drawing a breath I lifted my head and looked her in the eyes, there in the dim blue-litten room. What I saw in her face then—well, even in so open a telling as this there are some things I must keep for myself, and that is among them. But it was real.

  "They were not ours to keep," I said at length, and she held my gaze with a steadiness that was itself an acknowledgment.

  "They are Keltia’s to keep forever," she answered after a while. "And we, of course, are theirs."

  I smiled in spite of myself. "Now that is a thing either, or both, of them would have said to us."

  But still I could not speak of it any plainer; not of Morgan’s going, not of Arthur’s. Gweniver had had seven years to learn to live with her mate’s absence; I had had a bare thirty hours, more or less. But in that seven-year span, Gweniver had spoken Arthur’s name only when context demanded it; never once, to my knowledge, had she spoken of him of her free choice. And I knew it was not for lack of love or loss she did not speak so, but because both love and loss alike were for her too vast, too sacred, to share with others or to profane with speech… Too, neither of us had been granted the solace, even, of harrowing our dead: Artos lay on Kholco, Morgan only the Mother knew where. There would be a ritual for her, of course, and for the others who had also been taken by the backwash of Marguessan’s final evil; and that would be a comfort, such things are. But not even to know where she was; or, more accurately, where her mortal form had gone to—that was harder than I had thought it would be to master. And aye, I know, it was only a body, only flesh and bone, she was not there; but I had loved that body, it had been the vehicle by which Morguenna Pendreic had manifested her soul in the world. And not to know where it lay—though I daresay she would have preferred it so—well, it was a heavy thing to bear.

  But, widowed though I was, I was not the only one in Turusachan that night who had suffered loss; and in answer to Gwennach’s unspoken question I rose from my place at Rhodaur and went out with her, to comfort in my comfortlessness.

  Gerrans and Cristant were in their chambers in the Rose Tower; Sgilti, Anghaud the eldest and the lass Cathelin were with them. At my sudden entrance they raised stiff and still white faces, and Cathelin ran to me for hugging. I did so, looking across her at Gerrans, then gently released her and went to my son. They had all been told by Gweniver and Ygrawn what had happened there on Beckery, but they needed to hear it from me; only that could make it real for them. And to my everlasting surprise, I found that I needed to tell it, to make it real for myself also…

  Afterwards, the weeping and laughing done with (for at such moments there are both), I went alone to the familiar rooms in the small tower that overhung the sea; entered and closed the heavy oak door behind me, leaning back against it and staring at the chamber as if I had never seen it before. I was not seeing the room just then; I was seeing Morgan in that room, in many moods and all corners and every age of our lives. She was not here—not even her presence, though that would come later, and often—but it seemed even so that she had been here, for lying upon the bed was something small that gleamed in the light from the windows; something I knew very well had not been there when we set out for the castle of the Graal.

  Presently I went over to the bed and reached out, shivering, to pick it up in faltering fingers. Two disks shone gold and silver on a fine gold chain: the suncross of our Keltic faith and the sigil of the Ban-draoi that had been among my mother’s jewels passed on to me by Birogue.

  Never since I had first clasped the chain around Morgan’s neck had she removed these tokens from her, and I knew that, even as I knew I had seen them plain at her throat when she stood upon Tribruit… My hand closed round them, and I slowly toppled over onto the bed, lifting my fist to my lips, pulling Morgan’s pillows, still imprinted with her, into my arms and curling up around them…

  When I was done at last with weeping, or done for this time, at least, it was dark again, or maybe still; I felt all at once better, and took advantage of that by beginning to sort haphazardly through Morgan’s things. A mistake; and I did not get very much the farther before grief overtook me again, but I did manage to order some things—to sort through the writings on her desk, to set aside her jewels and my mother’s to divide among Gwen and Ygrawn and Gerrans, Arawn and Arwenna, Janjan and Donah, and our closest friends also; to keep a few of the pieces she had loved best for myself a while yet.

  But in the end I decided to alter nothing: I would continue to live in these rooms as I had lived in them with her, for so long as I continued to dwell in Turusachan. Nothing of hers would be changed or touched: Her cloak would hang on the back of the door where she had left it, her garb would stay in the chests and presses, things would remain as far as possible where she had set them. If that sounds perverse and strange to you, so be it; but should you come to such a place as I then stood in, perhaps you will do likewise, or at least comprehend my actions. It would be so for as long as I felt it necessary. After that—well, after that we should just have to see.

  When the five stars were exploded to power the Pale, I could not feel that they had died; well, no more could I now feel that Morgan had died. I knew she had—at least my mind knew the fact had happened—but it seemed somehow not true. And though it may sound a strange and loveless thing to say of the death of one’s own wife, I was oddly less distraught, less angry, at Morgan’s going than I had been at Arthur’s. Perhaps because I had, it seemed, always known how she would leave me, and his leaving was (to my way of seeing it) a surprise and a betrayal, however dan-ruled and well-intentioned. I could not help it, it was how I felt; but all the same I did not speak of it to the others.

  The ritual of sending was held for Morgan and Marguessan—aye, truly! Even she must be given the grace of such a farewell—and for all the others who had died in the raising of the Pale, a few nights later at Ni-maen. I had of course already conducted a private ritual, for her and for me, in our chamber; and a seven-night later, I held another for her, which closest kin and friends attended. The night after that, I took ship alone and headed east to Mount Keltia. It was the night of the first horns of Argialla, the waxing of the white moon, and I had been ordered to Caer-na-gael; and I thought I knew why.

  The silver-blue crescent blazed in the southern skies,
looking astonishingly close, as if I could reach up and touch it—the which I would not even if I could, for its tips were sgian-sharp. I set the aircar down on the high plateau below the great peak’s own horns; a little way away, Caer-na-gael stood ghostly in the meager light of the crescent and the greater luminosity of the Criosanna’s arching veils. I unshod in the usual manner; and, pausing briefly as I passed the entrance dolmens to right myself from the wave of pain that washed over me—the first time I had ever come here had suddenly been before me, more vividly than I could bear—I went within.

  At the heart of the circle lay as ever Yr Allawr Goch, the Red Altar that was neither one nor other part of its name; but this night something else lay there, half-shrouded in blue shadow. Then, as my eyes adjusted to the light, and Argialla helpfully mounted higher in the heavens, I saw what rested upon the ground before the great bluestone slab, and my world was unmade.

  It was a hollowed-out oak-trunk, carved with skill and care; within it, upon a cushioning of rich woven-stuffs, lay Morgan my wife. She looked as if she but slept, no mark upon her of her titanic struggle: Her face was white in the moon, she was clad in her Ban-draoi robes of office; and round her neck was the medallion of one who was Kin to the Dragon.

  I made not sound nor movement; only looked. And as I did so, a voice came quietly from the shadows beyond, from the great granite chair that had not been built to hold mortal form.

  "She felt no pain, Taliesin," said Gwyn ap Nudd, rising from the throne and coming forward into the light. "The Mother did not allow it; and we thought it right to bring her here. Do you object?"

  I shook my head, still gazing at Morgan where she lay. "Nay… That she should be here—" Then I startled and looked up at him, as his meaning came clear. "You mean—to barrow her here? Here beside—" But I could not say more.