by Mike Ashley
For a long moment she looked at him, and then she sighed. “Perhaps it is so. Certainly I have not been so secure a custodian as I might wish, though the Goddess brought good from mischance in the end. But your reasoning does not entirely convince me – the lands of men have not seen you for years on end. Men thought you dead, or a legend. Why should the Grail draw you back?”
“Why, indeed? You are right to wonder. I have lived in the forest as a Wild Man, forgetting my humanity. I thought I would die there, but I am still strong. Perhaps the Grail will show me, as it has shown to others, a way I may be released from the world.”
And when he had said that, the priestess ceased to argue, and together they waited for night to fall.
“What is it that you expect to see?” asked the Lady of the Lake as she led him to the dell below the cave.
“A vessel, a container, a passage between the worlds . . .”
“And does the greatest mage in Britannia need such devices for his journeying?” Her voice was cool, but in her words he heard echoes of the Otherworld, and the hair on his body stood out as if from cold.
“For this journey, I do.”
“I will tell you once more. If it was the Cauldron that passed through Arthur’s hall that night, it was borne by no mortal hand.”
“Have you lost faith in your own Hallow, Lady?” He shook his head. “This is not the end of Desire, but this is where I must begin.”
The opening to the cave was a dark slash in the rough rock that pushed through the turf of the hill. Torches set to either side hissed and flickered, sending ruddy light pooling across the worn stone. Merlin sank down upon the boulder that faced it, keeping his breathing long and slow. But he could not control the pounding of his heart.
The silence deepened until he could hear the whisper of fine linen as the wind stirred the Lady’s veil. In the shadows of the cave mouth, something pale was moving. A female form, swathed in white, emerged from the darkness, torchlight flaring across the polished silver surface of the vessel she bore. She came to Merlin and set the Cauldron gently on the slab of stone before him.
It was half-filled with water.
“It is only water from the spring,” said the Lady. “What meaning you find there must come from within.”
“I know it.” Merlin lifted his hands in blessing and invocation. “By fire and water I summon truth to me, by the radiance of the spirit and the darkness of the womb.”
He felt, rather than heard, her leaving him. And then he was alone with the ripple of light on water and the surrounding shadows.
He saw, first, his own features, wild hair twining in distorted spirals like some ancient carving. Beneath the heavy brows, his eyes captured light from the torches’ flames. Merlin continued to gaze, breath passing in a slow and regular rhythm that barely stirred the hair of his beard, waiting for the water to still, the fires to burn low, until he saw only the shimmer of backlit hair like a halo around a mask of darkness.
Gazing, he allowed his consciousness to sink into those depths, until he no longer saw the Cauldron or his own face within it. Presently new images formed within the shadow – stars in a night sky and the dim shapes of trees, a face framed by the rim of a cauldron.
But the cauldron he looked into was wrought of black iron, and the face reflected from the steaming brew it contained was that of a boy.
“Stir it, Viaun, you wretched chid! Have not I told you the liquid must always be kept moving?” A white hand reachd past his head and cast pungent leaves of mugwort into the cauldron. The hand of Cerituend . . .
His grip tightened convulsively on the ladle and he began to draw it sunwise through the liquid once more. Already the sharp scent of the herb was melding with others – mints and sages, leek, salt and darker, heavier odours he did not want to name. It smelled like magic.
“It will not be long now. Do not fail me! I will be back soon!” Cerituend’s voice was like honey, like the scent of her, fading as she moved away. A memory that was not his own made him shiver with mingled fear and desire.
Merlin who was Viaun reached out to the nearby woodpile and slid more sticks beneath the pregnant bulge of the cauldron. Soon the brew was bubbling gently. The roiling of the liquid intensified. He slowed his stirring, trying to calm it. Perhaps he should not have added more fuel to the fire. She had said the potion was almost complete – as he stared into the cauldron, its contents heaved as if that last addition had awakened it. The potion was meant to give her son wisdom in compensation for his ugly countenance. No wonder it seemed to have a life of its own.
He looked nervously over his shoulder, involved entirely in the vision now. Black branches netted the dim blue of the evening sky. And in that instant of inattention, he heard the bubbling of the potion intensify. In the next moment it was boiling over, splashing his hand. He squealed with pain and clapped it to his lips.
The concentrated liquid scalded, at once tart and sweet, bland and salty. Then the confusion of flavours became a maelstrom of meaning. He understood everything, the movements of the heavens and the growth of herbs, the ways of all beasts and the tongues of men. He comprehended, in that moment, the meaning of the Grail, and beyond that, overwhelming him with terror, knew that he had stolen the magic of the Goddess, and that She would destroy him.
He was Viaun and Merlin, he was every man who has transgressed Women’s Mysteries. He dropped the ladle on the grass and began to run.
For a time he ran blindly, but soon enough his new knowledge told him that She was coming after him. He became a hare, coursing swiftly through the undergrowth. But the Goddess had turned herself to a lean hound bitch to run him down. When he leaped skyward as a sparrow, she became a plummeting hawk. He was the stag that fled the wolf-bitch, the salmon that twisted away from the otter’s tooth, the vole that fled the owl. All these he had been, in that other lifetime when he was Merlin. As Viaun, he was pushed from transformation to transformation, fleeing the terrible Mother down the cycles of the years.
In the end he no longer possessed the strength or invention to continue his evasions. His last defence was to turn himself to something insignificant beyond her attention, one grain in a pile of corn. And there he waited, until the huge black hen pecked her way across the farmyard and swallowed him up into the dark.
For a time beyond time the soul that had been Merlin lay cradled in the pregnant womb of the World. And in that darkness came visions. He saw men of Camelot still searching for the Grail, some to give up the quest in despair, some to die, and some, under a dozen different guises, to find what they most desired. The veil of Time swirled, and he saw Arthur facing Mordred upon a bloody field. He struggled then, sure he could stop it if only he were free, and saw an oak tree in the heart of the forest whose trunk had the shape of a man.
“Have I failed entirely?’’ his spirit cried then. “Shall Camelot fall, and all my wisdom pass with it from the world?’’
“From whence did that wisdom come?’’ asked the Darkness.
After a time, Merlin answered slowly, “From the Cauldron, which holds the distilled essence of the earth.”
“Then how can it be lost? It is men’s knowledge of that wisdom that will disappear . . .”
“I have lived long, but this body is not immortal—”
“Then take a new one. I have taught you the way of transformation.” The answer, slow and amused, came to him. “Let your power be rooted in the land, and your spirit pass to the child of prophecy. Your wisdom will never be forgotten, so long as you remember that it came from Me . . .”
Merlin floated, thinking. The warm darkness that surrounded him was changing, becoming the slow surge of the sea. At last a final question came to him. Other men had asked whom the Grail served, but that was not what he needed to know.
“Who are you?’’
The attention of that Other intensified. Once more Merlin tried to get away, but how could he flee that which contained him?
“I am the Quest, and I am the
Grail. Men seek Me, not knowing that they will gain their desire only when I find them. They flee, not knowing that flight forces the transformation that will bring them to My arms. I am the Divine Darkness and the Light that shines beyond the circles of the world. I am the Truth beyond all goddesses and gods. I am the Mystery . . .’’
The rhythmic motion grew more violent. Dizzied, Merlin struggled against the membrane that contained him.
“Who—” he cried. “Who is the Child of Prophecy?’’
He was dying. He was being born. A last convulsion slammed him hard against an unyielding surface. The darkness that surrounded him was torn open and someone lifted him into the air.
“Look!” came a voice. “It is the Radiant Brow!”
When Merlin could think again, he found himself lying tangled in his cloak on the stones before the cave. The Lady of the Lake knelt beside him, but the Cauldron was gone. Had he dreamed its presence? It did not matter, for the vision it had given him still shimmered in memory.
“Are you all right?” she asked, helping him to sit up again. “Did you learn what you needed to know? You began to struggle, and then you cried out and collapsed.”
“I think so . . .” he nodded. “Help me to rise and I will tell you what I saw, lest it disappear like a dream.”
He finished his story sitting with the Lady on the stone bench on the lakeshore, watching the sky grow bright above the eastern hills.
“I must go back to Arthur’s court,” Merlin said finally. “I cannot change what is to come, but I can bear witness, and pass to the Child of Prophecy the story . . . .”
“But who is he?” asked the Lady.
“He is Taliesin, the babe with the Radiant Brow. In forty years, he will be born—for the first time. And I will be waiting to teach him, for in body and spirit I will be one with this land. That body will die, but his spirit, my spirit, will come again and again, renewing the ancient magic, rebirthing the old stories into the world . . .”
A fish leaped from the Lake before them, the twisting body flaring gold. In the next moment it fell back again, but the impact sent ripples circling outward across the still water long after the
fish itself had disappeared.
“And did you find what you were looking for?”
The mage nodded, gazing out across the shining expanse
of water cupped within its sheltering hills. This is the Grail, he
thought. The Cauldron and all the other vessels, are but analogues
for this precious and lovely world, which is itself a sacrament, given
meaning by the life it holds.
And in that moment the sun lifted above the rim of the hill, and
sky and water and Merlin’s spirit were filled with light.
NAMER OF BEASTS, MAKER OF SOULS
THE ROMANCE OF SYLVESTER AND NIMUë
JESSICA AMANDA SALMONSON
I wanted Jessica Salmonson (b. 1950) to be in this volume right from the start. Other pressures and commitments meant that, for a while, it might not be possible. But, as a true professional, she came through at the end with a story that fair knocked me asunder. I’ve read no other Arthurian story like this, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It was no less than I expected from Jessica whose work has always shown not only an originality of treatment but depths of emotional power. Her works have often drawn upon legendary themes, including her earliest, Tomoe Gozen (1981), set in an alternative reality based on a mythical Japan. Several tales based on legends will be found in her collections Mystic Women: Their Ancient Tales and Legends (1991) and The Mysterious Doom and Other Ghost Stories of the Pacific Northwest (1993). This story originally grew out of a project to bring together a series of stories tracing the history of Lilith from prehistory to the present. Lilith is the archwitch of Jewish mythology, reckoned as the first wife of Adam, before Eve. Here Jessica translates the character of Lilith into the personality of Nimuë, and sets us on the road to Merlin’s fate.
They are many, and she but One
And I and she, like moon and sun,
So separate ever! Ah,
yet I follow her, follow her.
(Alfred Noyes, “The World’s Wedding”)
Just as there are two Liliths – Lilith the Elder, and Lilith the Younger called also Naamah – so too there are two Merlins: Merlin Ambrosius, and Merlin Sylvester called also Celidoine. Whoever despises one history of Merlin can say, “But that was not Ambrosius, a wonderworker from birth, who saw in the stars the rise of the House of Pendragon; rather, it was Celidonius, who lived always in a forest, and never strayed.” Yet such severe dichotomies cannot be fully made, for the two Merlins are One and Immortal, just as the two Liliths are One and Immortal.
Celidoine lived in the manner of Adam before the coming of Eve, when he was a seeker not fully enlightened. Merlin the forest shepherd dwelt in the roots of ash-trees, and was King of Beasts. He knew the True Names of animals, the very names first uttered by the voice of Adam. And beasts obeyed Celidoine with such implicitness that when he went into the meadows as a herdsman, a gigantic lioness that beforetimes belonged to the Great Mother of Tyre walked with him into his fold and lay down by his feet, purring sweetly, molesting neither sheep nor cow.
And this forest-Merlin possessed a living Throne of fiery amber, having a pulsing light within; and the Throne had a voice like unto that of a sweetly loving mother who sings lullabies to her children. The Throne was hemmed in on all sides by dense thickets of hazel; and when Merlin sat thereon, only the most meditative of seekers ever saw him.
From the left side of the Mother Throne issued a fire that joined sunlight and moonlight to every earthly hearth. At the right side of the Throne there arose a silent, shimmering curtain of motionless water that joined all earthly stores of water to the sparkling, celestial river. The Throne existed at that point of vibration where Fire and Water are harmonious lovers, and from whose embrace the Existential Universe first emanated by stages and degrees in the forms of a Crown, a Key, and an Egg.
From this seat Merlin gazed outward at all things, yea, the things of All. And the All was held fast where Merlin sat, even as the spokes of a wheel are sunrays anchored to a hub.
Meanwhile Merlin’s bride dwelt in all the rivers of the world, but most especially in a mountainous lake of Celidoine’s sacred wood, much as Adam’s first wife was the Lilith who dwelt in the Sea of Reeds, from whence she held back the waters for Moses, but not for Pharaoh.
She was called the Lady of the Lake because she was like unto a Well in whose black water all celestial Wisdom is reflected. The pooled gaze of Nimuë is like a concave mirror wherein the vastness of the universe is writ small, and held fast, so that the completeness of All is visible in her merest glance. And if we may suppose God is a Great God, and Merlin a Little God, then Nimuë was the concavity by which the little knew the large. Thereby she boasted, “By Me, God made the universe.”
All great and godly consorts are brother and sister, so that Nimuë was the same, though not entirely the same, as Ganicenda, Merlin’s twin. And despite that Ganicenda was one and the same with Nimuë the Lady of the Lake, she was at the same time distinct from her.
Ganicenda was mightiest on land, for she was of the fire that dwelt in the hearth and emanated from the left side of the Throne. She did not enter into water, for she was that part of Mother Earth whose hands restrained the Flood. It was said of her that her face was in heaven, while her feet went down to Sheol; that the sun was her Face, and the moon was her Crown; and the Apples of Avillion sprang from her very footsteps.
She was a waystation on the road to Sheol, but she was not of Sheol itself. She prepared banquets and invited evildoers into her house of seven pillars, and insinuated herself upon he that was blind to spiritual treasure. By slow degrees he perceived the way of salvation, saying, “Thou art Wisdom who hast turned my road about.” But if still a fool unable to perceive purity, he says, “Thou art a Harlot!” and continues his descent. For G
anicenda was a demoness to fools as wholeheartedly as she was Divine Wisdom to those with open hearts.
In an era when Merlin, wisest of earthly beings, was called Solomon, it was of Ganicenda he sang, “My sister, my bride.” Solomon the consort of Divine Wisdom was builder of the Two Temples, the one belonging to Yahweh, and the other to Ashtaroth of Sidon, established at the behest of Naamah the Amoritess, queenmother to Solomon’s doomed son, the forerunner of Merlin’s fosterling Arthur.
And it was said that Solomon did not build his two temples by any mortal means, but that a demoness of the Danites was bound into Solomon’s service. It was she that built the Temple of Ashtaroth, while her son, a Tyrian architect, built the Temple of Yahweh in accordance with his mother’s plan.
This demoness was Solomon’s twin; for when Solomon sucked at the left teat of Bathsheba, his sister sucked at the right; and when Solomon sucked at the right, his sister sucked at the left. When she was weaned, Queen Bathsheba sent her to live in Tyre, until Solomon was capable of receiving her in the form of the Temple of Ashtaroth, as Solomon took on the form of Yahweh’s Temple.
Now Ganicenda was a huntress whose companion on the chase was Fair Arawn, Lord of Death, called Adonis in the East, otherwise Adonai Sabaoth. And Arawn said to Ganicenda, “Ha ha! Your brother Sylvester is wise, yet he has no palace. He rules beasts but hasn’t even a barn to keep them in. How can he be master of the earth when his throne is in a thicket twixt fire and wave? Ha ha! He has no palace!”
Therefore the sister-bride Ganicenda built for her brother-husband a castle out of logs, deep in Sylvester’s hidden glade within the Forest of Broceliande. Like Behemoth foraging, Ganicenda rendered bald a thousand hills in Lebanon. She bound the cedars with hazel rope to form spires and minarets and flying buttresses, with vast rooms opening into other rooms which opened into others. She built the castle in a single night, though a thousand workers in a thousand years could never have achieved so much.