The Hedge of Mist

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  "Moved?" I asked, surprised and alarmed. All these years it had been comfort to me, if I can call it that, to think Arthur and the rest lay where I had seen them fall. But now it seemed they had not been there. "Where, then?"

  "The Firehorn—the peak where they fell—has a twin," said Adamar. "In their youth both mountains were torches of Earth-heart; then the fire went from Scarva, the elder of the two, and now only the Firehorn, Mount Terror, still burns as of old. We took your folk in their ship and lodged them in Scarva, and there they remain. You may see if you wish. But we never troubled their rest again, and we would not have it troubled now, not even by their own folk and kin."

  "There may be another word as to that," I said carefully. "May we speak of it otherwhere?"

  He gestured royally. "Come."

  We rode to the Ras of Salhi where it loomed in the shade of its rosy cliffs. I was ceremoniously presented to various elders of this particular clann, which seemed to control all the country roundabouts, including the two great volcanoes. Adamar seemed to have been appointed my guide and docent: He took me at once to a spacious chamber with high grilled windows and painted ceilings, and we disposed ourselves on bright-colored patterned pillows and soft deep carpets, to speak of what must be spoken.

  In a formal bardic style—these folk seemed to appreciate and respond to formality—I recounted for the Salamandri the story as I knew it, in brief, for it made a long tale even so: of the battle at Camlann and the betrayal that occasioned it, of Arthur’s desperate throw that had brought us to the Morimaruse and to Fomor, and to Kholco in the end. And they listened, nodding gravely as my narrative brought guess and supposition into line. Adamar was there, and perhaps a dozen others, some of whom were noting down my words onto clay tablets as I spoke, and other some were using tiny sleek recorders that seemed utterly at variance with the setting.

  I remarked on that later to Adamar, when the others had taken leave for the night. The Salamand smiled.

  "Well, and a little of both styles is no bad thing, not so? I would wager you have much of a mix on your own worlds."

  "And that is a wager you would win," I said lightly. "But, Adamar, I am here for more than storytelling—

  "Indeed. That too shall come. But not tonight." He gestured to the chamber’s far corner, where in a deep alcove a deep divan had been made up with soft blankets and more of the ubiquitous cushions. "Tomorrow will be soon enough to begin that."

  I bade him goodnight, and then sleepwalked across to the divan, which was looking more and more inviting every moment. You may think it foolhardy of me, to trust so completely so alien a race—I had, as custom demanded, come unweaponed among them—but I was not seeing it so. The Salamandri and the Kelts had been friends of old; only Edeyrn had soured the concord, as he had done with all else. But the chief reason I felt so at ease among the Firefolk was a simpler one: If Artos could sleep safe here, so too then could I. And I did.

  I stayed six months among the Salamandri, all of it spent in teaching and being taught. If Arthur and the rest were going to sleep here forever, or at least until that one of my vision came to find them and bring the Treasures home, then it was well that the Firefolk should know all the story, and indeed they were most eager to hear.

  Adamar and I became fast friends, and I grew close to all his tribe; they were a most musical people, though their tonal scale was unlike to our own, and we learned much from one another. But I had not come here to spend my time so, however pleasant and instructive; my reasons were rather different, and one night after supper I spoke to Adamar my heart’s truth at last…

  "So," he said when I had finished; he had not interrupted all my long, long discourse once, but had listened attentively, at least judging by the half-dozen penetrating and intelligent questions he put me straightway. I answered my best, but I was trying to overcome my surprise at his, well, lack of surprise, and finally I put it to him forthwith.

  Adamar smiled at my ‘stonishment. "Your folk are not the only ones to have such seeings, Talyos. Nor is much of what you have told me just now new to us. We have long guessed more even than you have told me, and now it seems that we were right."

  "The prophecies?" I asked, humbled. "You have Seen too, then…"

  "Oh yes; we have seen more than that, even, at least where it works upon the Firefolk, though that is not your concern. But we are glad to know for sure, and though it must be put to a vote, the action you suggest is not unlike our own thought. I am sure it will be taken up and fall out as you could wish it."

  I leaned back on my pillows after he had gone. My othersense told me I had heard truth here; but, all the same, unless commanded, I would not leave Kholco—could not leave—until I had seen my last task at least begun.

  I had come to Kholco to give the Salamandri the truth of Arthur and the Company. Therefore I held nothing back; not Edeyrn, not the aftermath of Camlann, not the raising of the Wall, not the visions I had had. And the Firefolk had confirmed them, and were making them real: In the cavern just outer of the one in which Prydwen rested, a great work was beginning.

  Given the geology of their harsh and lovely world, it would have been odd indeed if the Salamandri, or the other reptile races that ruled here, had not gone in for petrographs, as decoration and teaching tool and mural historical record all alike. They were an artistic folk, and some of the cave paintings I had seen were extraordinary indeed, combining sculpture with brushwork in an amazing and beautiful way.

  And so, already, had Artos and Prydwen been immortalized in stone… Upon the rough rock of the cavern walls, places had been melted smooth as water with stonesappers and rockburners, and scenes and images most assuredly not of Kholco had been added to paintings already carved and tinted into the walls: the falling ship, the flaming mountain. Now I had come to give the story new verses, and the walls would have images afresh, and the clues at last suffice.

  As I looked on the work already completed, I was minded at once of Gwahanlen, and the tales of Keltic history told on its walls. But there the resemblance ended: These tapestries were woven not of cloth but of the living rock.

  I paced round the walls, ‘reading’ as I went. The lithoglyphs told the story of what had been, and now they were beginning to tell the story of what would be. I saw things I myself had told of, and things to which I had no clue as to their meaning.

  But if the Salamandri had secrets of their own to mesh with the one I had given, that was no concern of mine. My task had lain in this, the last thing I had to do for Arthur: to ensure that these signs and signals were left, so that the one, that red-haired queen I had Seen so vividly and so often she seemed by now as one of my kin—as perhaps she would be, or one of my Kin—would know beyond all and any doubt when she came at last that her course was a right and true one. And the Salamandri were a right and true folk to hold this message for her down they ears: They might add other seeings to this record for the future, as they Saw, or saw fit, but they would neither alter nor destroy what was here being set down according to my word.

  I reached out to brush gentle fingers over the pictoglyph before me: a woman in black, no Salamand but a true Kelt, with hair redder than Morgan’s and more golden than Arthur’s, the suncross upon which she stood and the crescent sigil above her head the twins of those that still hung around my neck. Oh aye, I thought, and hugged myself for certainty and joy, I think she will know this when she comes, when Gwyn sends her…

  Though one thing she would not know was how such an image had come here: On that the Salamandri and I were agreed. This tribe alone knew of my coming; and of them, only those of priestly caste and high rank, dwelling at the Ras across the plain from Scarva, had themselves undertaken the labor of creation and execution of the paintings. They alone knew of the message I had brought and would be leaving, here, where the horns of light burned before the gates of Uffern. How well I had been given to See, I thought, not for the first time nor yet the last, and how thankful I was for it.

  No
other word would be left behind here, except perhaps for some songs, and a poem or two, as obscure in their way as my work ‘Preithi Annuvin,’ which I had read here to great approval, had been in its own. In all ways else, I would be on Kholco—Avilion, Avallin, Afallinn—as dust in the wind. It was my geis, and my honor, and my pleasure to be so.

  And I know you are far too polite to ask outright so distressing a question, but are burning to know all the same: Did I, in all the months of my guesting among the Firefolk, so near all that time to my lost and loved ones, ever go within Prydwen and look upon them for myself?

  And I tell you now, I did not.

  Not for lack of wishing: Nay, not an hour went by when I did not long to look once more upon Artos’s face, or Tari’s or Betwyr’s or Alannagh’s—how could I not wish to see them once again? They would be as they had been in life; Arthur had laid a staying-spell upon them all—one of the last things he did—so that their bodies would not suffer the usual fate but would lie forever as if just fallen off to sleep. And I myself reinforced this rann almost immediately after my arrival, with the mightiest spells I knew and sorcerers of the Firefolk to help me; as I had done alone, years since, with Gwain.

  And for that, of course, I had had to behold Prydwen as she was, in the inner cavern where the Salamandri had brought her, a steed of the stars in a stabling of earth. But to behold them, nay; that was beyond my strength. For many reasons, but chiefest among them was that should I look again upon my friends, upon my brother and my King, my wish to join them then and there, the wish of my heart ever since they went, would be too mighty for me to withstand, and I should give in to it without a fight. No one would blame me, I knew—no Kelt, and no Salamand either—but I could not do it. Another dan called me hence.

  At last came the day when all was accomplished. I looked upon the completed glyphs, and again upon Prydwen, and I was content. This was the last of it: The King slept in the island Avallinn, with his warriors about him; and upon Ufiern’s walls the message waited for the one called to hear it. I was free to go at last.

  So I did. I bade farewell to Adamar and his kin, knowing the secret would be kept, and I sailed my ship from Kholco in a direction no Kelt had taken for long and long, not since my own father had taken it two centuries past.

  I was heading to Earth: on a faring, a seeking; a choqa as Adamar’s people, who understood well such things, named it in their own tongue. One last quest; and, as ever with quests, I had not the least idea if I would ever come near achieving that which I sought. But that was not why I did seek it.

  I am going back to Earth to find my mother. Oh, not in any real sense, for I have seen her peaceful grave among the Sidhe; but to learn of her, whence she came, what had made her who and what she was—that in its turn had made me.

  I do not know what I shall find there, or even if I shall reach it alive, or remain so long thereafter should I come to it. In our legendry we have many tales of heroes going to Tir-na-n’-Og or Tir-fo-thuinn or Tir Tairngire—all the tirs are the same, the Otherworld of many names—and when they return to our world, if return they ever do, falling down straightway into a heap of dust. A risk; but I do not care. Better to be a handful of dust on the shore, having seen the Otherland, than a king breathing who never left home.

  The fiction that will go down in the Keltic histories—I know, for I arranged it so—is that Taliesin Pen-bardd died and was disembodied by the scadarc in the neat Fian way, disatomed on the wicker bier above the grave of his wife. But it comes to my mind now that that vision I had at the false corvaen, what time I was on quest for the Cup, showed a fate not unconsonant with any of this. An altar with a form laid upon it, and that myself, and I vanishing: Perhaps it had been a true Seeing in a false place.

  Or maybe it was truer even than I can know: Perhaps when I step upon Earth, set foot upon my mother’s world, I shall fall away to dust, like those heroes in the tales. Considering the paradox of time involved in my father’s immram, the reiving that won him my mother, I could well end up on Earth or ever I was born in Keltia; or be born instead a Terran, and have to live all my life, or someone’s life, over again—if indeed I lived at all.

  But the Hedge of Mist cannot be crossed alive, nor without change; and the nature of mist is that one cannot see through it, to discern aforetime what that change might be. The only way to know is to go; and to accept whatever lies on the Hedge’s other side.

  It is all one, that is the Mystery of it: the Hedge of Mist, the apple tree, the horn that Geraint blew; Donah with the Cup of all Creation in her two hands, the sun and moon and stars about her head and the radiance of heaven in her face; the Young Goddess, Rhian, at Ashnadarragh; Fionn the Young at the White Ford; the Bhan-reann-ruadh in the Wood of Shapes. Nearer still: Gwyn and Birogue upon the mountain and beneath the hill; Merlynn, my Ailithir, in his cold crystal tomb; Gweniver at Coldgates, when first I set eyes on her, a fourteen-year-old princess, shy and proud and frightened, using the pride to mask the shyness and the fear; Morgan at Collimare, Morgan at the Wall, Morgan my beloved in guises too many to count…

  And above all others, Arthur: on the October hillside at Daars, in the snows before Talgarth and after Moytura, in the sword-light at Cadarachta and in the torchlight of the Hall of Heroes and in Scarva’s dimness; a matchless spirit in a mighty frame.

  All are as one now, in memory and in something beyond memory: The cabin of my little ship is thick with presences, they are all with me now, here, and I cannot tell which were then and which are now and which are yet to be. But this chronicle goes with me to Earth; if it be found, that is dan, and if not, that too is dan.

  But a great bard of ours, who began to sing young and shone early, put it thus: ‘Darkness and Light contest; but they shall be one at the End, and that one neither Light nor Dark but both together.’

  It might be a long way to go to learn that; it might be I shall never reach it. But I am going all the same. Perhaps I shall see you there. In the name of all gods, it may be so.

  Maybe even it shall be so.

  * * *

  Aftertale

  And from that hour none knows where he went; not even I, Cathelin daughter of Geraint, sister of Sgilti and Anghaud who are of the Seven, cousin to Arawn Ard-righ.

  But I shall set down this brief aftertelling in the name and honor of my grandsir, Taliesin Glyndour ac Pendreic gan Morguenna, known as Pen-bardd, fostern to Arthur the King. Into my hands did he confide the gift of Frame of Harmony; I shall strive to sound it half as well as he did, and perhaps it will help me do so.

  It all fell out as he had planned it, of course: The folk have shrouded his ending with as much mystery as they have used to veil Arthur’s own, and it was even he who wove those veils for them. Though he told me and a scant few others of his last intent, we do not know if he achieved it, we shall never know: if Taliesin Pen-bardd came to Earth as he purposed, though I for one will ever mint so. There is a grand symmetry in it, a closing-off, that is pleasing to the bardic sensibility—like the lastverse and harp-tailing that round off a chaunt.

  My grandmother very like would think so also, thinks so when she now is, with him once more; she who is already known as Morgan Magistra among the folk. Indeed, some are even beginning to call her Saint Morgan of the Pale, realizing only now what she did for them, the great gift she gave all Keltia in the raising of the Wall though I shiver to think what she herself would say to such a title…

  But it makes no differ, either road. In the books my grandsir left me, the journals his mother, my namesake, brought with her from Earth, there is copied down a poem she much loved, and which he came to love as well. A bard of the Sassenaich (though not to be faulted purely for that), a lord also, set it down centuries since, and it seems to me to be apposite here. It tells of the hero Ulessos, on his own last immram, wondering what may befall him but fearing it not at all, indeed, rejoicing in it: ‘It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the grea
t Achilles, whom we knew. Tho’ much is taken, much abides…’

  Much. Taliesin will come again even as Arthur will, as Morgan will; they shall be together again. Perhaps even Merlynn will awaken to join them, as I know they believed and hoped. Until then, the songs will live forever. As he himself wrote it:

  ‘Their course, their bearing,

  their permitted way

  And their fate I know:

  until the end.

  Until the end.

  Until the End.’

  And what better end could there be for a bard than that?

  (Here ends The Hedge of Mist, last of The Tales of Arthur sequence of THE KELTIAD. The next will be Blackmantle, the story of Athyn and Morric.)

  * * *

  Glossary

  Words are Keltic except where otherwise noted, and follow Keltic (not Celtic) orthography and grammatical rules.

  adhalta: pupil, student; used in the vocative

  aer: sung satirical verse

  Aes Sidhe: (pron. eyes-shee) the Shining Ones; a race of possibly divine or immortal beings; their king is Nudd ap Llyr

  afanc: large, savage carnivore native to the planet Gwynedd

  aircar: small personal transport vehicle used on Keltic worlds; at the time in question, almost unheard-of

  Airts: the four magical directions to which sacred circles are oriented: East, South, West and North

  aisling: waking, wishful dream; daydream

  alanna: "child." "little one"; Erinnach endearment

  Alasdair Mor: the historical personage known as Alexander the Great

  amhic: "my son"; used in the vocative.

  anama-chara: "soul-friend"; term for those close and strong friends limited to one or two in a person's life

  an-da-shalla: "The Second Sight"; Keltic talent of precognition (also Sight or Seeing)