Twilight of Avalon

by Anna Elliott

  “Thank you for coming, Myrddin.”

  She had seen him seldom in the years since she and Con had been crowned. He had left the court to wander the lands as a bard, to live in a cave, to journey to the western Isle of Glass, depending on which story you chose to believe. But always he would appear again at Tintagel, to meet with Con and the rest of the king’s council before taking his leave once again. And he had arrived two days ago to pay final respects and join in the mourning for the High King.

  “Did you doubt that I would?” His voice was slow and deep, with something of the cadence of the western lands where it was said he had been born—and something, as well, of the hum of a harp, lingering in the air a moment after the words themselves. A brief smile touched the corners of his thin-lipped mouth, just visible beneath the snowy beard. “I heard on the road coming here that I’d run mad and gone to live wild in the forest—taken to keeping pigs and enchanting them to speak back to me like men.”

  Then the smile faded as his gaze fell on the coffin. He touched something at his belt that at first glance looked like a strand of yellowed beads, but was, Isolde saw, the skeleton of a snake, strung on another thin leather thong. Myrddin’s fingers caressed the yellowing bones, so that they moved almost with the semblance of life. Then, slowly, he raised one hand and made a brief gesture over Con’s breast. His skin was papery with age, the hand blue-veined, but beautifully formed even still, the movement graceful and sure.

  “There will be tales sung of him, now, in the fire halls,” he said. “As well as of Arthur.”

  It was almost an echo of what Isolde had thought only a moment before. “Arthur, king that was,” she said. “King that is. King that shall be. King who lies asleep in the mists of Avalon while his battle wounds heal—and will come again in the hour of Britain’s greatest need.”

  Myrddin gave a short laugh, a breath of mirth, no more, eyes crinkling above the flowing beard. “I wonder,” he said, “what Arthur himself would say if he could hear the tales told of him now. The harpers singing of how he bore a sword forged by the spirits of water and earth and triumphed at Badon by bearing the cross of Christ on his shoulders for three days and three nights.”

  He shook his head. “Probably the same as I do when I hear the poor fools babbling their tales of the Enchanter’s magic and talking swine. Arthur, who bristled at all talk of magic like a dog facing wolves—and set foot inside a church only once, to my knowledge. And then it was to demand that the priests sell their silver and gold plate from the altar and pay taxes to fund the Saxon war as the common folk do.”

  Myrddin stopped, and then added in a different tone, “Few of the tales told of those times are true, child. No man—or woman, either—is entirely villain or hero, except perhaps in the memories of those who remain.”

  Isolde started to answer, but, outside, the wind must have shifted to blow from the west. For all at once she heard a voice in the blustering moan about the chapel walls. Soft and indistinct at first, as the voices always were. Then swelling until the sound blotted out all else.

  She’d thought, at times like these, that perhaps the loss of the Sight had made her somehow a point of joining between present and past, truth and tale, like the hollow hills where the Otherworld and this one met.

  Or maybe it was like the men in her care, who groaned aloud with ghost-pains in an arm or leg months, even years, gone. She’d felt the aching loss of Sight as much, these last seven years, as any amputated limb.

  But though Sight was gone, every now and then—and only on a western wind—she would catch, briefly, the sound of a voice. The voice of someone who, like her grandmother, was nothing but a name to her now.

  MY NAME IS MORGAN. BUT MEN have given me many names besides. Sorceress…witch…whore. And now I am dying.

  A voice speaks beside me. The voice is sweet, clear, like the water I cannot swallow anymore, despite my cracked lips and swollen tongue. She is telling one of the old tales. As I taught her, long ago.

  “Far away, in Avalon, the holy isle, nine silver apples chime on the tree bough.”

  I saw my face in the water jar yesterday. Raised myself up and looked when I was alone. I can feel the sores, but it is different to see. To see my face a ruin of blackened, running cankers. Once I might have mourned.

  “And nine priestesses tend the Goddess flame,” the voice goes on. “And time is a curve, without beginning or end.”

  I think, if I could feel anything at all, I would be afraid for her. But Arthur is dead. At last. And I am dust and ashes and nothing more.

  I even begged Marche to let us leave this place. For her sake—not mine. I, Morgan, went down, pleading, on my knees. And even that roused in me no feeling. None at all.

  Arthur is dead. And far away, on Avalon, the holy isle, nine silver apples chime on the bough.

  NOT THE SIGHT, FOR ALL THE voices seemed to echo in the hollow place inside her. The space where once she’d felt the voice of the earth, felt the ties that threaded together all life, and bound her up in the great pattern, as well.

  These were only voices. Echoes. She Saw nothing at all.

  As the voice now faded, Isolde drew in her breath. For a moment or two she knew—like a sleeper waking to the vague remembrance of a dream—that it was her grandmother’s voice that the wind had carried this time. But a moment later, even that knowledge was gone. And, as always, the words she’d heard slid through her grasp like water through clenched hands.

  Myrddin was watching her, eyes steady and grave, but he gave no sign that he, too, had heard the voice in the wind. Isolde moved her shoulder slightly, and said what she’d begun to say before.

  “The tales are a comfort to those who tell them. And in times like these, there are many with cause to wish that Arthur might come again.”

  Myrddin nodded. “Arthur was a brave man. And a good one, at heart.” He paused, then said quietly, looking down at Con’s lifeless face and still hands, “As was the young king here.”

  Something in the old man’s quiet tone pierced the numbness as nothing else in these long three days had, and brought the man, the husband Con, a step nearer. The man had struck her only once—and had cried after he’d done it like a child. Who’d loved her, in his way.

  As I suppose, Isolde thought, I must have loved him. It had been so long since she’d let herself think of loving that she’d never allowed herself to put a name to what she’d felt for Con. Friendship…respect…pity. But love must have been there, as well, else she’d not now feel this raw, familiar ache of grief in her chest.

  It was a moment before she could speak. Then, “Yes,” she said softly, “Constantine was both brave and good. He would have made—did make—a fine king.”

  Myrddin nodded again, and Isolde saw in his high-browed face a look, not of weariness, exactly, or even of age, but of steady, clear-eyed sorrow.

  “An evil day for Britain,” he said at last. He paused, and when he went on, the Welsh lilt in his voice was stronger. “There is a story from the old times—the Old Way. A tale of the king of a wasted kingdom, who grew old and was slain that his blood might water the land. That with his death, he and the land he ruled might be healed and born again. But I can see only grief and bloodshed in the wake of this death now.”

  Isolde studied the lined, ugly face, the steady sea-blue eyes. Then she asked, “Myrddin, do you mind?”

  Slowly, Myrddin looked from the coffin to the altar’s gleaming cross, and from there round the high-roofed chapel hall. “You mean, do I mind that the old days are past?” he asked. “That doorways to Avalon are closed and Britain will one day be a Christian land?”

  He paused, then shook his head slowly, one hand moving to lightly touch the serpent’s skeleton once more. “To all under the sun there is an ebb and flow. And perhaps the old ways will not die after all, but only fade into the mists like Avalon itself and sleep with Arthur and his men.”

  The candlelight played across his face, deepening the shadows about his
mouth and brow. His face was suddenly remote and ancient as a carving in stone, and Isolde saw, in that moment, what it was the common folk feared. But then he turned back to her, and the spell was abruptly broken, his face once more his own.

  “No, child, I do not mind. The god of the Christ may not be mine, but I do not begrudge him the victory. Nor the priests who serve him in places like these.”

  His eyes, too, had cleared, and he studied her face a long moment without speaking. Isolde looked away. And how much, she thought, does he guess—or know?

  It was Myrddin who broke the silence. “And now that I am here,” he said, “what is it you would have me do?”

  Isolde pushed aside the memory that had gathered, feeling as though she pried herself free of some great animal’s jaws. “I would ask you to journey to Camelerd, the land I hold in my own right as last of my mother’s line. A man called Drustan holds the kingdom for me. He has ruled there in my place since—”

  She stopped. “Since my mother left the world behind. And since I was given in marriage to Con.”

  She looked up, and Myrddin nodded. “I have heard the name. A good man, so they say, and a strong fighter. Go on.”

  “I would ask you to carry the news of all that has occurred here to him. Tell him that my husband lies dead.”

  She broke off once more, her eyes instinctively sweeping the darkness beyond the pool of golden light in which she and Myrddin stood. All was silent and still, save for the distant throb of the sea far below, but still fear crawled over her at speaking the words aloud for the first time.

  But if I cannot trust Myrddin, she thought, I can truly trust none.

  “Tell Drustan,” she went on, with an effort to steady her voice, “that whatever the rumors, Con died not by any blow from the Saxons, but by a traitor’s hand.”

  Chapter Two

  ONE OF THE ALTAR CANDLES guttered, sending a dancing play of shadow across the chapel’s oaken benches and stone walls. Myrddin neither moved nor spoke, and the gray-blue eyes met Isolde’s without a trace of surprise. Perhaps, she thought, the whispers about him are true. Or perhaps the Sight showed him, as well.

  For a moment, the memory of Vision pressed against the backs of her eyes, and Isolde dug her nails hard into her palms with the effort of holding it at bay.

  “Drustan has been hard pressed of late by Irish sea-raiders,” she went on. “It was for that reason he could send no troops to aid in resisting this latest offensive of the Saxons against us in Cornwall—though Con summoned the kings from all parts of the realm to lend their aid. But Drustan will have heard that the battle was won. For the time, at least.”

  Isolde paused, looking down at her clenched hand. “With Constantine dead, though, another High King must be chosen—chosen from among those assembled at Tintagel now.”

  She stopped, and lifted from about her neck the gold chain that bore her own sealing ring, stamped with the image of the golden harp that had since ancient times been Camelerd’s royal sign. She held the chain out to Myrddin.

  “Here. Take this ring. Drustan will know, then, beyond question, that your message comes from me. Say…say that I ask him to come with all speed to my aid here, with as many men as his garrison can spare. For without him, I fear the throne of Britain will fall into a murderer’s hands.”

  Her own hands had unconsciously knotted in the dark green folds of her gown, and she drew a breath, forcing her fingers to relax. Then she looked up at Myrddin once more. The old man held the sealing ring up to the light a moment, then nodded, securing it in the leather pouch tied at his belt.

  “With luck and dry roads for travel, I shall return to you by Samhain.”

  His voice was still tranquil, his face calm, but all the same Isolde felt a sudden clutch of fear.

  “Myrddin, are you sure? The journey to Camelerd will be a dangerous one, through lands firmly under Saxon control. I would not lay this on you against your will.”

  Myrddin shook his head. “Less danger for me than for any other you might send. I will have my harp, and those on the road, Briton and Saxon alike, will see only a poor old wandering bard, anxious to find a place at the fire of some lord before the winter snows.” He turned once more to the coffined form, and his hand moved in a gesture Isolde recognized, this time, as one of blessing or farewell.

  “I will go,” he said, some of the cadence of a harper’s song creeping again into his tone. “I will go for the sake of Constantine, nephew and heir to Arthur, the king I served as advisor and bard.” He was still a moment, looking down at Con. Then he raised his head and added, more gently, “And for your sake, Isa.” He paused. “I would that I might have spared you much of what you have borne these past years.”

  Isolde turned her head slightly away. “There are many far worse off than I have been.”

  Myrddin let out his breath in something like a sigh, and Isolde wondered, for the first time, how old he was now. He’d changed scarcely at all since her first sight of him, nearly ten years ago. But he’d been present when Arthur himself was crowned. And he’d been an old man even then.

  “You’d not be wrong in blaming me, though,” Myrddin said. “It was I who persuaded the king’s council that you should be wedded to the young king. I thought it the best that could be done for you, but…”

  He paused, a faint smile, slightly tinged with sadness, touching the corners of his mouth. “I could wish, sometimes, for half the powers credited to me by the harpers’ songs. If I—”

  Isolde stopped him. “You’re not to blame. If I’d not been wedded to Con, I would only have been sent to join my mother in taking the veil—locked in a nun’s cell for the rest of my days.”

  Myrddin didn’t answer at once. Instead he watched her a moment, as though reading something more than she’d meant to reveal in her tone. “I don’t suppose you remember her, do you?” he asked at last. “Your mother, Gwynefar.”

  Isolde was silent, listening to the bluster of the wind outside. “I don’t remember her, no,” she said after a moment. “She took the veil almost as soon as I was born, you know. And died soon after.”

  Myrddin nodded, and for a moment Isolde caught again that shadow of sorrow in his lined face. “She had her path to follow. As had Arthur. And Modred. And as I have mine.”

  He stopped, and then put a hand on her shoulder, his eyes again steady and very clear on hers. “Remember that, Isa. That I have chosen this path. That you have laid nothing on me but what I choose to take up as mine.”

  The words were calmly spoken, but the sea-blue eyes had clouded, and Isolde felt another cold press of fear, stronger now, seeming to seep into her very bones.

  She asked, “Myrddin, have you seen something of how this will end?”

  But at that, the old man smiled again, shaking his head. “Would you tell me, then, that you believe the tales, as well? That Merlin”—he used the name given him by the common folk—“Merlin the Enchanter has lived time backwards? That he sees past and future as one?”

  He paused. Then: “Whatever my end, it will not be on the road to Camelerd. That much I can promise you. But all the same—”

  He stopped, smile lines gathering about the corners of his eyes. “All the same, if anything should happen to me, make up a story for me—one last tale to be sung at the hearths and the taverns and halls. Say”—the smile spread to the wide line of his mouth beneath the beard—“say that I was enchanted away by one of the fair-folk to dwell in the hollow hills. That would be a fitting end for the sorcerer’s tale.”

  Isolde felt his hand tighten, briefly, on her shoulder, and then he turned, melting into the shadows with scarcely a sound, as though he were an enchanter indeed.

  As she stood listening to the soft footfalls die away, Isolde felt, suddenly, as though he were already gone, vanished, as he had said, into the glass isles and hollow hills of the fairy world. And more than that.

  To all things, he had said, there is an ebb and a flow. And if Arthur’s death had been the
end to a tale, it seemed to Isolde that she stood now at a twilight, the end of an age.

  She closed her eyes, concentrating all of her will on the desperate hope that Myrddin would end his journey in safety, would return to Tintagel alive. And then she thought, with a bitter pang, That is all I can do, now.

  It might have been those echoing snatches she’d heard on the wind—or the looming memory of what she had Seen three nights before—that made her close her eyes and try, one last time. She stood utterly still, listening to the beat of her own heart, forcing her breaths to quiet and slow, as though she could summon out of shadows dancing over the stone walls the shifting barrier that hung like the sea fog itself between this world and the Other, between the room about her and the realms beyond.

  Seven years ago, the mists would have cleared for her without effort; now, even the attempt brought a sharp, lancing pain that pierced her from temples to brow. And still she met only silence and the blackness of her closed lids.

  The place inside her was empty as it had always been, these last seven years, whenever she’d tried to call back the Sight.

  It would seem, she thought, that whatever goddesses or gods or spirits of the earth bestowed such powers were as vindictive as the God of the Christ.

  At last Isolde opened her eyes, looking down at the ring Hunno had returned to her, the metal warm, now, with the heat of her skin. A heavy gold band set with a stone of glowing red, the sides twined with rearing serpents far older than the Pendragon on Con’s shield. And then her hand clenched on the serpent ring once more, so hard that the serpents’ raised golden scales dug into her palm.

  Seven years, she thought, without a flicker of the Sight. And then, whatever gods or fates rule the worlds beyond the veil grant a single flash of vision. When it can do no good at all. And then snatch the Sight away as though it had never come again.