My thoughts flittered here and there, restless birds that could find no friendly roost; when I looked around, night had settled uneasily over Ynys Avallach, ending another foul day at last. I noticed, without pleasure, that though the year had turned, the change brought no rain; the drought persisted.
Aching with fatigue and thoroughly dispirited, I left the battlement, but not before casting a last glance towards the woodland to the east where the Grail, and all our brightest hopes, had disappeared. A bank of low cloud, darker even than the night sky, rose over the wood—as if the darkness Myrddin feared was drawing down upon us. I shivered with a wayward chill and hurried inside.
The next day, Arthur did not receive us. Bedwyr went to him for instructions, but returned saying that the king had shut himself in his chamber and would not see anyone.
“This is not right,” Cai asserted.
“Do you blame him?” Bedwyr snapped. His anger flared instantly. “None of this would have happened if not for us. The fault is ours.” He struck himself on the chest with the flat of his hand. “The fault is ours!”
“I am going to him,” said Cai, stalking from the hall.
He returned a short while later without having seen the king, and we spent a dismal day in an agony of bitter despair. Cymbrogi came and went throughout the day, anxious for a good word, but there was nothing to tell them. Dispirited, dejected, discouraged, we slipped further into the besetting gloom. At last, unable to stomach the bile of guilt any longer, I left my woeful companions and went in search of Myrddin.
Quitting the hall, I moved along the corridor towards the warriors’ quarters, passing by Avallach’s private chamber. The door was open slightly, and as I passed, I heard the moan of a man in pain. Pausing, I listened, and when the sound did not come again, I went to the door, pushed it gently open, and stepped inside.
Arthur yet sat in his chair, his head bowed upon his chest, the feeble glimmer of a single candle casting its bravely futile light into the close-gathered gloom. Oh, and it tore at my heart to see him, who was Earth and Sky to me, sitting alone in that darkened chamber. I regretted at once that I had intruded, and turned to go away again. But the king heard the sound of my soft footfall and said, “Leave me.”
His voice was not his own, and the strangeness of it filled me with dread. I cannot leave him like this, I thought, so turned and advanced. “It is Gwalchavad,” I whispered, approaching the chair.
At this he raised his head slightly; black shadows clung to him as if to drag him down into the depths. The room had grown chill, and the king sat with neither cloak nor brazier to warm him—a dragon torpid in his winter den. Even so, the eyes that gazed at me from beneath the grief-creased brow were fever-bright.
“Go away,” he muttered. “You can do nothing for me.”
“I thought I might sit with you,” I said, wondering how it was possible for a man to decline so swiftly and completely. A short while ago he had been aflame with righteous anger, and now it had burned to ashes, and those ashes were cold.
There was no other chair in the room, so I stood awkwardly, certain that I had made a mistake in coming and, for Arthur’s sake, regretting the intrusion. I was just thinking how best to make my retreat when the king said, “He has raised me up only to dash my head against the rocks.” The hopelessness in his tone made me shudder, for I knew whom he meant.
After a moment, he continued, saying, “I thought the time had come, Gwalchavad. I thought the world would change, and that we would bring peace and healing to the land. I saw the Kingdom of Summer so clearly, and I wanted it so—” Arthur’s voice became a strangled cry. “God help me…I wanted it so.”
He was silent for another long moment, as if considering what he had just uttered. I stood quietly, and he seemed not to heed my presence any longer. “Perhaps that is my failing—wanting it too much,” he said at last. “I thought he wanted it, too. I was so certain. I was never so certain of anything.”
The king sank further into his chair, only to start again out of it as rage suddenly overswept him. “Three days!” he shouted, his ragged cry ringing in the empty chamber. “Taliesin’s vision! Myrddin’s work of a lifetime! The promised realm of peace and light—and it lasts all of three paltry days!” The cry became a moan. “God, why? Why have you done this to me? There was such good to be gained…why have you turned against me? Why do you scorn me?”
As if remembering my presence once more. Arthur shifted in his chair and looked at me. “I was betrayed,” he spat, his voice harsh and thick. “Betrayed by one of my own. I loved him like a brother and trusted him. I trusted him with my life! And he repaid my trust with treachery. He has taken the Grail, and he has taken my wife.”
“If Morgian is at the root of this,” I ventured quietly, “then Llenlleawg was likely bewitched. He could not have done it otherwise.”
The king seemed not to hear me, however. Clenching his hand into a fist, he struck it hard against his chest, as if to quell the inner pain. He did it again, and I stepped nearer so as to prevent him from injuring himself, should he persist. But the fit passed and he slumped back in his chair, weak with misery.
“Arthur’s folly…” he muttered, closing his eyes once more. “They come—they come to see a miracle, and find nothing but a heap of stone raised by a fool of a king.”
I could no longer bear to see him berate himself so harshly. At risk of rousing his wrath against me, I spoke. “You could not know any of this would happen,” I said, trying to soothe him.
“King of Fools!” Arthur mocked. “Hear me, Gwalchavad, never trust an Irishman. The Irish will stab you in the back every time.”
“If it is as the Emrys believes, it was Morgian, not Llenlleawg, who did this,” I said. “You could never have foreseen that.”
“You hold me blameless?” he sneered. “Then why has destruction befallen me? Why am I forsaken? Why has God turned against me?”
Fearing I was making matters worse, I hesitated. Arthur seized on my reluctance as confirmation of his failing.
“There!” he shouted. “You see it, too! Everyone saw it but me. Oh, but I see it now….” He slammed his head sharply against the back of the chair with a cracking thump. “I see it now,” he said again, his voice breaking with anguish, “and now it is too late.”
“Arthur, it is not too late,” I countered. “We will find Llenlleawg and recover the Grail. Everything will be made right again. The Kingdom of Summer has not failed—it must wait a little longer, that is all.”
“I saw it, Gwalchavad,” he said, closing his eyes again. “I saw it all.”
He was exhausted, and I thought at last he might allow sleep to overtake him if I kept his mind from wandering along the more distressing paths. “What did you see, lord?”
“I saw the Summer Realm,” he replied, his voice growing soft and dreamy. “I was dying—I know that. Myrddin does not say it, but I know I must have been very near death when he prevailed upon Avallach to summon the Grail. Avallach was against using the Blessed Cup in that way.”
He paused, and I made bold to suggest that he should rest now. “Sleep, lord, you are tired.”
“Sleep!” Arthur growled. “How can I sleep when my wife is in danger?” He pressed his fingertips to his eyes as if to pluck them out of his head. In a moment, his hands dropped away and he continued. “Gwenhwyvar came to me. She was so brave—she did not want to let me see her crying. She kissed me for the last time, as she thought, and left me—Myrddin left, too—everyone left the Tor and then Avallach came into where I lay….”
I realized that I was about to hear how Arthur had been healed and restored to life by the Grail, so said no more about resting just now.
“I did not see either of them at first,” Arthur said, his voice falling to a whisper at the memory, “but I knew Avallach had entered the room, and that the Holy Grail was with him, for the bedchamber was suddenly filled with the most exquisite scent—like a forest of flowers, or a rain-washed meadow in f
ull blossom—like all the best fragrances I had ever known. The scent roused me, and I opened my eyes to see Avallach kneeling beside me, his hands cupped around an object that appeared to be a bowl….” Arthur licked his lips as he must have licked them at the time. “And I opened my mouth to receive the drink, and tasted the sweetest flavor—the finest mead is as muddy water compared to it—and this was merely the sweetness of the air I tasted, but he had not brought me a drink as I supposed. It was the Grail itself infusing the very air with its exquisite savor.”
Arthur drew the air deep into his lungs now as he had then. His tormented features smoothed as, in memory, he relived the marvel which had saved him.
“I breathed the redolent air, and the vapors of death which had clouded my mind parted and rolled away. I came to myself again, and knew myself in the presence of an eminent and powerful spirit—not Avallach only, for though he is of great stature in the world of the spirit, this Other was more immense, more profound, more potent by far. My own spirit, hovering between life and death, seemed a feeble, fragile thing—a bird caught in a bush weakly fluttering wings for release. I was nothing beside them…nothing. My life had been wasted—”
Here I interrupted. “Arthur, it is not so. You have ever held true to that which has been given you.”
But the king would not hear it. He shook his head in denial. “My life has been wasted in the pursuit of things mean and ordinary—insignificant matters, meaningless and swiftly forgotten.”
“Peace and justice are not insignificant,” I countered, alarmed to hear him talk so. “Winning freedom for our people and our land is not meaningless, nor will it be quickly forgotten.”
This brought a wan, pitying smile to the king’s face. “Dust,” he said. “Nothing but dust carried away by the first wind that blows, lost forever and forever unknown. Who but a fool regards the dust beneath his feet?”
I made to protest again, but he raised his hand, saying, “Let it be, Gwalchavad. It matters not.” Returning to his recounting, he closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Shame,” he said. “I have never known such shame: it burned—how it burned!—as if to consume me from within. My guilt overwhelmed me. Guilt for the misuse of my life and the lives of so many, many others. I stood adjudged and knew myself condemned a thousand times over. Neither Avallach nor the Other with him so much as raised a finger in accusation. They had no need—my own spirit damned me. To die before making atonement filled me with such remorse, the tears flowed from my eyes in a flood as if to wash away the mountain of my guilt.
“But, oh, the Grail! The Grail was there, and even as the world dimmed before my eyes, Avallach held the sacred bowl before me, dipped in his finger, and touched his fingertip to my forehead. He sained me with the cross of Christ. It was, as I thought, the last rite for a dying man. Soon my soul would stand before the High King of Heaven, and I would face my judge.
“Yet even as Avallach touched me with his fingertip, I felt life surge within me. I was alive! What is more, I was forgiven. At Avallach’s touch, I was at once healed and released from the guilt and shame of my squandered existence. My former ways dropped from me like a sodden cloak, and like an eagle borne up on the winds of a gale, my soul rose from the pit and soared.
“The joy, the rapture, the delight overwhelmed me and kindled within me a fire which blazed with the love of goodness and right. And it was as if I stood on a high mountain, looking down at the world far below. I looked and saw a green and peaceful land spread out on the breast of the blue-green sea.
“I looked to see whence came this light, and lo! it was the Grail. I saw a shrine of stone set on a hill and, established within this shrine, the Blessed Cup of Christ. Even as I beheld the cup, a voice from Heaven said, ‘Feed the people, heal the land.’ The voice spoke these words three times, and I saw Britain shining like gold in the radiance of a light brighter than the sun.
“What could this mean but that I should build the shrine and set the Grail within it to shine as a beacon of truth and right throughout the land. From Britain would flow every good and perfect thing for the succor of the world; all men would look to the Island of the Mighty and hope would be renewed. Ynys Prydain would become that vessel through which great blessing would flow to all mankind.
“I vowed that this would be my work hereafter: to build the Grail Shrine, that the Blessed Cup might begin transforming the world. Thus, I stood up from my bed of death, fully healed, and possessed of an ardor to bring the vision granted me into living reality. I went out and greeted my wife—Myrddin and Llenlleawg were there, too, and all the Fair Folk.
“The next day I took the work in hand, and began laying plans for the Grail Shrine. From that day I have held but one thought uppermost: to honor my vow for the glory of God and the good of Britain and her people. This I have done”—he paused, raising his eyes briefly, only to turn them away again—“and for this I am brought down.”
Arthur lowered his chin to his chest once more and lifted a hand to his forehead. “Leave me,” he said, the glorious vision vanishing in the hollowness of his resignation. “I am tired, Gwalchavad. Leave me.”
I stood for a moment, longing to speak a word of solace to ease his hurt. “I am sorry, Arthur,” I said at last, then crept away, leaving the king to the cold misery of his woe.
Chapter Twenty-five
How many realms had Morgian ruined? How many men had she killed? In her relentless pursuit of power, how many lives had she destroyed?
Myrddin said she had returned, and I did not doubt it. Indeed, it was not difficult to believe the relentless, ever-vindictive Morgian had somehow preserved a portion of her power when she fled to her stronghold. Safe in the distant fastness of her dark dominion, she has been tirelessly assembling the remnants of her broken art from the wreckage. Even if Morgian was not as strong as before, she was still far more powerful than any other adversary mortal man could face. Dread Morgian was yet a force to be reckoned with, an implacable enemy as sly and deadly as any serpent and more wicked, more hateful, more vicious and rapacious than a whole host of demons.
These things I thought, and my thoughts were true. But no matter how hard I tried, I could find no good explanation for Morgaws. Who was she? What was her part in the cruel treacheries breaking upon us?
Myrddin, I thought, might hold the answers, so to Myrddin I went. After a search that took most of the day, I found him, not with the king, but in the old wooden shrine beside the abbey. One of the monks had seen him enter the shrine at break of day. “I never saw him leave, lord,” the monk said. “Perhaps he is still there even now.”
Entering the shrine quietly, I found him flat on his face before the tiny altar, arms outstretched in the priestly attitude of prayer practiced by the brown clerics.
“Lord Emrys?” I said, loath to speak at all—but he was so still I feared him dead.
At the sound of his name, he shifted. “Gwalchavad,” he said, raising his head. He made to rise, and I helped him to his feet. “How did you know to find me here?”
“I knew you had to be here,” I replied. He lifted an eyebrow inquiringly, and I added, “I have searched everywhere else—this was the only place left.”
He smiled at this, and I saw the light in his eyes, sharp and clear, the fire restored and burning bright once more. “I have been praying,” he said.
“All day?”
He shrugged. “I did not mark the time.”
“I wish Arthur had been with you—instead of gnawing out his heart in his chamber.” I told him of my conversation with the king the night before.
“Is he there now?” asked Myrddin as we stepped outside.
“I think so. He has shut the door against us and will see no one.”
Myrddin turned his farseeing eyes to the sky. The sun was going down and a chill twilight was swiftly drawing a veil of mist over a dismal day. “Will you go to him now?” I asked. “He needs you, Myrddin.”
“I will go to him,” promised the Wise Emrys, s
tarting down the path towards the lake. “But not yet.”
“He needs you now,” I insisted, darting after him.
“Let him imbibe his despair,” Myrddin said. “Truly, until he has drained that cup to the dregs, he will not hear a word I say.”
“How long must we wait?”
“God alone knows.” I frowned at this answer and he saw it. “Concern for the king is not what sent you looking for me, I think.”
“No,” I confessed, “though that is reason enough. It is Morgaws.”
“Yes?” He stopped abruptly and turned to me. “Have you remembered something?”
The question caught me unawares. “Remembered? What do you mean?” The Emrys made a sound of mild disgust in his throat and started walking again, and I chased after him. “I was thinking who she might be,” I said quickly. “I know she is not Morgian.”
“Why do you say that?”
“No matter what guise Morgian took, I would always know her,” I answered confidently.
“So would I,” Myrddin declared.
“Besides,” I continued, “she appeared to me.”
Myrddin stopped walking again and I almost collided with him. “Morgian appeared to you?” His eyes were daggers keen and bright, and leveled at me. “When?”
“Not long ago,” I said, more hesitant now.
Myrddin seized my arm and squeezed it hard. “Why have you waited until now?” he demanded angrily, releasing my arm and pushing it away.
“She came to me in a dream,” I explained quickly. “At least I thought it was only a dream.”
“Fool!” cried Myrddin. “Only a dream, he says! You should have told me.”
“I am sorry, Emrys. Believe me, I never meant to keep anything from you.”
Myrddin stared at me hard, then looked away and began walking again; we had almost reached the lake. We continued on in silence for a time before he spoke again; when he did, he said, “Morgaws is Morgian’s creature—whether daughter or foundling, I cannot say, but she serves her mistress well.”
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