The Oak above the Kings

by Patricia Kennealy-Morrison

  Well. I was not dead of the fall from the cliff, so that must count for something. But I was here alone in the sea, and I knew that I had very few minutes left. I am not an especially strong swimmer even at the best of times—few Kelts are, for all we like to live so near the waters—and the freezing seas and bonebruising waves were fast draining away my strength with my body's warmth. The coast was too far to reach, and none could find me in the wild wastes.

  All at once I panicked, almost as if by reflex, thrashing my arms and legs, shouting, in a frenzied struggle to turn myself to the land, to catch someone's attention. But it was of course no use, and after a few minutes I could no longer remember why I had even wished to bother. Manaan's white horses would come galloping for me across the wavecrests, or the crystal ship in which he sails the Otherworld oceans would part the billow and take me safe aboard… I knew I could hold off the end for a few minutes more, did I choose to. But I cared not: Warmth was stealing over me from my neck down, and with the warmth came a delicious sleepiness, up from my toes. So that when the waters closed over my head at last, and silence sang in my ears, the loveliest sound I have ever heard, I remember only smiling, and closing my eyes to better hear the silence's song…

  Then a hard-muscled furry body thudded into me, startling me awake and shooting me back to the surface—which was very much farther away than I would have thought. I broke the water into cold booming noisy air, and retched hideously, struggling to breathe again, already a half-forgotten art, pulling air into lungs all but finally filled with water.

  It was of course a silkie who had propelled me up from drowning; the Sluagh-ron, the seal-folk, love to live along just such rocky coasts as these, and Kernow has ever been a favorite world of theirs. While I was thinking all this, my rescuer was joined by two more, and together they pulled me easily to shore through the towering seas.

  We came to land just to the east of Tyntagel's own cove, and while two of the silkies helped me clamber over the streaming rocks, the other slipped back into the water, arrowing through the breakers, round the giant headland to the castle cove, to tell my friends I had been found.

  The rocks were slick with spume-ice, and sharp as knives,—my clothes were cut to ribbons, and my feet—bare, I had kicked my boots off during my one attempt to save myself—were bloodied on the stones, and purple with the cold. I pulled myself up beyond the surf's reach and collapsed weeping, and by all gods I cannot tell you if I was glad or sorry to be there…

  When I could speak again, I rolled over onto my back and looked up into the furry faces that were watching me with such concern.

  "Thank you, my friends—" I was racked again by coughing, and they waited politely for me to recover myself. "You move marvellously in the waters."

  "And you in the airs of heaven—are you well enough, that you might sit up?"

  Strong brown four-fingered paws helped me to a sitting posture, and I leaned gratefully against the glossy-furred side of the silkie nearest me, for the air was bitter cold throughy through my drenched clothing, and I had begun to shiver violently. They saw this, and huddled me on either side, to warm me with their own bodies until help arrived, singing softly in my ear—or perhaps that part was hallucination, but it seemed most real to me just then, a strange wild song of life below the ocean's green salt roof.

  Then, long before I had thought to, I heard voices, and twisting to my left saw lanthorns bobbing toward us over the rough shore. The silkies drew back a little, shyly, as Morgan threw herself on me weeping; I had never seen her weep like that before, and I was distressed for her sake.

  "I knew you were not dead, Talyn, I kept my hand on you all the while, but Mighty Mother, it was a near thing—" she hugged me closer, and then Arthur and the rest caught up with her; so great had been her haste to get to me that she had left them all far behind.

  They had brought dry clothing, and boots—too big for me, but I cared not—and Morgan cast a scallaun round us while I changed my soaked garb, now almost frozen stiff by the winds,—Arthur himself struck fire from the sea, to warm me while I drank some usqua from Roric's flask.

  After a quarter-hour or so, I was feeling remarkably better, and thought I could venture back round the headland to Tyntagel. But Arthur had other plans, and once he was sure I was well enough to be moved, he sent out a call for a shuttle to come land on the beach and take us all aboard.

  I turned to the silkie who had saved me. "May I know your name, my brother?"

  He ducked his head along my arm, unused to all the attention. Morgan reached out a hand, touched his shoulder, and he turned to her, his huge soft dark eyes brimming with astonishment as he felt her mindtouch on his own.

  "I am Hoen," he said. "My sisters are Joruth and Laan. We dwell in the—" He made a strange musical trill, like to that of a mother cat calling in her kittens, and gestured out to sea to the great Sound behind us. "I cannot say its name in your tongue, how we call it amongst our kin. But we heard you calling that one was lost from off the—" Again an untranslatable melodious chirrup, a different one this time, edged and somehow rougher, and I guessed he was now naming the Tyntagel castle rock.

  Forever bard! I was instantly lost in visions: seeing all Keltia as named from a silkie's perspective, an interspecies placename book, a silkie-to-Gaeloch primer…

  I came back to myself, caught by what he had said. "You were 'called'? Well—by whom? Who called?"

  "I did," said Morgan, and I laughed.

  "Now I wonder why that does not surprise me—but I thought only bards had the secret of the silkie-singing."

  Morgan smiled, but I could see what that kind of smile cost her. "Love can find out more secrets than that—when there is need."

  There was a gentle stirring among the silkies as they murmured to one another in their own tongue. Then Laan, the younger female: "We heard the call, and also we heard you, lord, as you sang in the sea. We found you by your song; that is all we needed. A small thing."

  "Not to me!" I spoke fervently to them then, tendering broken thanks, pledging friendship. Arthur too bespoke them, though they knew he was the High King and were even shyer than they had been with me. But they listened gravely; then, plainly anxious at being so long upon the land, turned to slip back into their homewaters.

  Hoen lingered last, ducked his sleek head against my side once more, and then he too was gone, going as easily and joyfully into the thundering waves as a child goes through a springtime clune. They all three were vanished in seconds; but I looked after them even so.

  We did not tarry longer: Morgan, suddenly all commands and concern, ordered me lifted up to the hovering shuttle in an invalid's litter, and saw to it that I was bestowed comfortably for the brief trip up to Prydwen.

  But once I was settled in my own familiar cabin, that had housed me all the way from Aojun, and had received the Ministrations of three healers, who all agreed that I had suffered but would take no lasting harm from my ordeal (Marc'h's swordcut was healed already, by skinfuser), I demanded an account of what had happened after my precipitous exit from Tyntagel rock.

  'We could not quite believe it," said Arthur happily, in that tone of strange enjoyment that seems almost to relish the horrors of the past that have turned out unexpectedly well. "I saw you go over, Talyn, and I do not think I believed my own eyes, that you could be gone. Now Guenna''—he nodded smiling at his sister, who sat holding my hand on the other side of the couch—"knew you were not dead, but it was hard for the rest of us to credit. Roric, I think, has not yet ceased to blame himself for not being swifter to seize you."

  "He came close enough, tell him it was well done." I snuggled down into the pillows. "But, cariad, how did you know?"

  Morgan considered a moment: how best to impart knowledge to the unknowing.

  "There is a kind of magic the Ban-draoi have," she said at last, "like a hand that reaches out to touch the ones we love. We call it the 'hand of the heart'; it is a touch of the spirit, a sensing—I would always
know where you were, Talynno, if you were in the next room, or in your grave, or a million light-years hence, or in your next life. Perhaps it is a woman's magic. Any road, I reached out, and I knew you were not gone. So I called the silkies and told them where to bring you. They had heard you already, singing, and so when you went under they were only yards away."

  She shivered involuntarily, and I raised her hand to my lips and gently kissed it; I had not meant to make her relive that moment.

  "I knew it was not your dan," she resumed. "But it was hard even so! The rest—well, as it was."

  I was restraining my impatience with difficulty. "Aye, but the rescue? Marc'h? Tryff and Ysild? The silkie—Hoen—said but one had fallen from the castle rock into the sea. What of Marc'h?"

  They were all silent for a moment, and I caught the picture from Morgan's mind. Then Arthur spoke.

  "Marc'h did not fall into the sea, Talyn. He fell on the rocks of the Carrai; there was nothing anyone could do for him."

  I closed my eyes, feeling again Marc'h's arms around me, pulling me over the coping. Only the Goddess's mercy had spared me from his fate, had sent me into the sea; and only dan had sent Marc'h of Kernow to his death on the stones of his own land. Dan, and Marguessan… And Gwenwyn too had met her fate here, at the Twice-dark Stronghold—I put a hand over my eyes, for cold tears were seeping down my cheeks, and all at once I had begun to shiver with reaction to my own ordeal.

  Morgan's arms slipped around me, and I clung to her. "Save for your unpredicted swim," she said, in a tone calculated to give me heart, "it all worked out to your plan. Ysild and Tryffin are safe in the next cabin, the troops are safe returned, Kernow is once again loyal to the Crown and restored to the Six Nations. Marc'h and Gwenwynbar—well, that too is plan, if not perhaps yours or Arthur's. And we know Marguessan to be behind it all."

  Though still not how… I raised my face to Arthur, who saw recovery in my eyes, stretched and stood up.

  "We will watch her," he promised. "Now that we know what is toward… For the moment, and I expect the future as well, since Gwennach and I will so confirm him, Tryffin is Duke of Kernow, with the soon-to-be Duchess Ysild. The rest can wait the telling. Sleep now. Guenna, make him do so."

  He kissed us both and was gone. Morgan looked after him as the door closed, and gave a gentle laugh.

  ''Sleep'! Easy enough for him to say so, I have seen him nod off in the midst of battle—but I do not think I shall ever sleep again, save it be beside you."

  "This couch is wide enough." I shifted myself to one side,—she stretched out beside me, above the coverlet, careful not to jostle any of my scratches or sorenesses, and spoke to dim the cabin lights to a soft warm glow.

  "Artos did not speak of Gwenwynbar," I said after the silence had grown long and sleepy.

  And Morgan answered after an even longer silence, "Did you truly think he would?"

  * * *

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  THE VERY FIRST THING Arthur Ard-righ did when we came home to Turusachan was to send for Malgan son of Gwenwynbar to come to Court.

  "So much for not speaking,' I observed to Morgan when I heard of it.

  "When my brother is not speaking, we know he is doing."

  But this he did now was a thing that would reverberate long after the first shock and surprise had subsided; and none of Arthur's close friends could let it rest.

  "Is it guilt, do you think, Talyn?" asked an exasperated Tarian Douglas. "Or it is just another of Artos's imprudences, yet another of his everlasting challenges to dan?"

  It was perhaps six months after Tyntagel. Tarian, Daronwy and I were sitting in my wife's solar; Morgan herself was across the castle square, at the Ban-draoi brugh up against the foot of Eagle, near the mouth of the Way of Souls.

  In half a year, much had changed, and much had changed not at all. Malgan ap Owein had come to Turusachan, this was true—arousing astonishment in all who saw him, so like was he to Arthur himself at that age. Gossip was rampant you can be sure. But the lad conducted himself impeccably, and if anyone knew for sure that his patronym ought to be altered, none said so aloud.

  "Guilt, surely," said Daronwy, when it appeared I would be making no such comment. "Why else did he forbid Ysild to make honor-price payment to Malgan, but took care of the restitution himself?"

  "He did not order her to kill Gwenwynbar," I pointed out. "That was all her own idea. I was there; I know."

  "Maybe," said Tarian, unimpressed. "But I daresay he did not deny himself a small little jig of despair when Ysild put that idea into train."

  "Nay, well, he may not have sought Gwenwynbar's death," I conceded. "And he may not have been overly grieved when it was accomplished… But she was his wife once, Tari, and there is the boy—"

  "Ah. The boy again." My old Companion Tari Douglas was gone, and the Taoiseach of Keltia spoke in her place. "Do you think he is Arthur's? You Taliesin Glyndour Pen-bardd, now,—not Talynno who has wed the High King's sister, not Tal-bach who has been the fostern of Artos from a five-years'-child. But the Bard of Keltia—what does he think?"

  I shifted uncomfortably in my cushioned window-nook. Gods but I did hate that title… Yet since our return from Aojun, and latterly from Tyntagel, it had begun to be applied to me more often than not. And, aye, in some sense of course I was proud, for I knew I had earned it: In our long absence, word had begun to go round of what my labors had been in the Counterinsurgency's cause; how all those songs that folk so loved, that had kept hope alive in Edeyrn's blight, were songs born of my harp; word too of the Hanes Taliesin, which had become a benchmark of bardery amongst my Peers, perhaps the one thing I had done that I knew for sure Would live on after me.

  Still and all, it was hard to be hailed so, to be praised for things that I knew were no choices of mine at all. I had not decided to make the Hanes; it had been a gift from the gods of bardship. Had not studied to make those songs; they had chosen to come to me, and I was humbled and honored that they should choose so. To be called Pen-bardd, the title of Plenyth himself: Well, the praise was not to me, and I tried in pride and humility to pass it on as was fitting, to those to whom the praise was rightly due.

  Tarian was still waiting on my answer,—so I shrugged—what else could I do?—and found myself repeating a word of our dear Kei, dead at Nandruidion.

  "If he is not Arthur's, no matter. If he is Arthur's, we shall all know soon enough."

  And Tarian had to content herself with that. But more folk than she were asking, and not content to let it rest there…

  I have never believed in coincidence; all is dan, and though things of dan may be altered—we are creatures of the Highest, but creatures of order are still free to choose for themselves—I do believe that matters love to run in pace with one another much as mortals do, so that what may look to some like coincidence is in truth but part of a larger pattern whose weave we have not yet grasped.

  So I was thinking, any road, when I returned to my chambers from that afternoon's converse with my friends, to find waiting for me Malgan ap Owein. He leaped to his feet as I entered the room, flushed a little with shyness or presumption,—and politely deferred for me to speak first.

  "Greeting to you, Rheged." I had quite deliberately used the patronymic, and noted that he did not flinch or flicker. I gestured him to sit, and took my own usual chair by the hearth.

  He was, as I have said, a well-grown lad, tall above the average run, his hair more red than brown, his eyes a shade between blue and hazel; I had heard from my spies among the Fians that he was talented of fence, though but little gifted in the unarmed combat forms. He was still a minor under Keltic law, which posits a full legal age of thirty-three and gives limited privileges when a citizen reaches twenty-seven. But Malgan was not near either age just yet; and so Arthur, exercising his right as Ard-righ—indeed, his duty—to succor orphans and the kinlorn, had summoned the boy to Court, and made him a royal ward. That, at least, was the reason given o
ut; but all Keltia knew that Arthur had taken Malgan under his protection for Gwenwynbar's sake alone.

  And that seemed to be what the lad was here to address this night… He took the seat across from me, clasped his hands nervously over his knees and looked me in the face at last.

  "Prince," he began.

  "'Taliesin,' " I said as if by rote; why was it I had ever to explain my discomfiture at my royal title? "Please, 'Taliesin' only."

  "Well—my lord, then… I have need to say a thing, and I find I cannot say it to the King or the Queen; nor can I tell the Lady Morguenna, and so it falls on me to speak of it to you."

  "Speak, then," I said, but I said it gently, putting soothers into the tone and the emotion I sent with the words, and saw him visibly relax.

  "It has been a sixmonth since my mother was killed—no fault of any under this roof," he added hastily. "Indeed she brought it on herself—I tried to persuade her otherwise, always, but she would not—Well, it is only that I would let the High King know I am grateful to him for taking me in, knowing as he did who were my parents. I cannot say this to lord, truly I cannot"—here he looked up, and I saw that stood in his eyes—"so I would ask you to do it for me. It is something I want him to know, and maybe some time to come I will be able to tell him myself. But, please you, do it for me now."

  I did not answer at once, but continued looking at him, and though he flushed again under my steady regard (and under the kenning he doubtless knew was behind it), he held my eyes and did not shift away.

  What he had just done had taken courage and honesty; traits of Arthur's, to be sure, but neither were they inconsonant with Owein Rheged, who though he had been utterly wrong in his allegiances had nonetheless been utterly loyal to his chosen master. Loyalty misguided is yet loyalty all the same… and loyalty cut adrift may justly seek a new lord. As, perhaps, it did now…