As time passed and I felt myself gradually awakening, one thing did come to mind, and it troubled me greatly: a feeling as of some terrible and urgent task left undone, a charge upon which lives and even kingdoms turned, and I the only bearer of the tidings. When first this thought came floating into my ken, I dismissed it as mere vainglorious ravings: How could I, this humble dullard who could not even recall his own name and life and profession, shut up in a place unknown for offences unguessed at, ever be thought worthy to bear such a message of menace as this that I imagined?
But the thought would not leave me; and then, night after night, day upon day, the dreams began to come: of people mostly—a kingly man with hair like the red oak in autumn; a woman bright and dangerous as a blade; another woman—and from dreams of her I woke weeping—with clear eyes that seemed to offer her love and soul and spirit to save me, to bring me home, her hands outstretched, on one finger a ring of gold in form of two intertwined serpents with ruby eyes. Other faces there were, too, and beings that were shapes only, shadowy and faceless; but though I knew I knew them all, I did not know them, and it was torture not.
If they had messages of help for me, I could not hear them and in my dreams I strove mightily to tell them so, to pray them speak louder, longer, clearer. And whether because of my prayers and my tears, for pity of my asking, or for some other, greater reason, every now and again I broke through to the truth, I burned through the fog that bound me, my mind unclouded and I knew all; for a moment, only, but I did know! And then the slow soft dark would claim me again, and I forgot not only the knowledge but also the knowledge that I had remembered, and I fell back into dullness and stolid stuporous daze.
Who knows how many times I almost breached the walls of my mind-prison? Certain sure I never managed to make the smallest crack in the equally substantial walls of stone that held me just as surely. But after what might have been a month as easily as a millennium (though it was to prove something rather more than the former, if much less than the latter), real change came. I had a visitor; and for all of me I cannot now tell you, nor could I even then, whether I was glad or sorry that she had come to me at all.
It was on an afternoon of late winter or early spring; I know not how, but I had learned somehow to distinguish times of day and night even in that chamber cut off from outer time, and some sense in the very air told me it was thawing-time in the world without—the first weeks of March, maybe, the early days of the Wolf-moon that is full of winds and weathers unlike all other months. A significant month too, I had the feeling, though not my own birthmonth—that I knew from the runes tattooed upon my left shoulder. According to those, I had been born in the Badger-moon, in the second month of our year, the dying-time of the sun and its returning; so, not my birthmonth, but someone else’s, someone very dear to me? One of the shadowy dreamfolk: the woman with love in her eyes who tried so desperately to touch me, or that other woman, the dark-haired one whom lately I had dreamed wearing a crown…
Any road, the woman who so suddenly stood before me in my chamber-cell, as if she had come there by magic (and so she must have, for no door had opened to admit her), was no woman I had ever seen before, not even in my dreams. And yet, and yet…
"Do you know me?" she asked, and her voice was low and thrilling; but also full of menace, as if it burred just below my hearing, like the nathair’s evil buzz before it strikes.
I stared and stared, and shook my head. "Nay, lady," I said in all honesty, for her look compelled me, and any road it was the truth. Or so at least I believed; it seemed that never would I have forgotten such a one as this: She had a haunting look of that ringed woman I saw in dreams; but was not so tall, and more rounded, with curling light-gold hair, and the most extraordinary eyes I had ever beheld—blue they were, and startling, with broad black rims round the irises, almost as if she had taken a paintstick and drawn them there. The brows and the heavy lids were painted too, as were almost every woman’s in Keltia—Keltia! I had remembered the name of my world! I opened my mouth to speak the name in joy, but some warning brushed feather-soft over my cheek, and I shut my mouth again before I could say what I now knew I knew.
The woman stiffened a little, frowning, as if she perceived. I knew something I had not known a moment since; her eyes fought into mine, striving for the knowledge, but I would not give it up, and after a minute or so she released me. But she looked most ill pleased.
"You are quite certain you know me not?" she asked again. "Our paths have never crossed before this instant?" The honey in her voice thickened, but there was poison there too. "Tell me this then: What is your name, my master?"
At that question my bones went to water, and I sagged all over, a mannikin whose strings had been cut; for of course I had not the faintest idea what my name was. But I was wary now; and if I had no resources with which to defend myself, was as a naked unarmed child before a war-witch in battle armor, still I had the one weapon of my honest ignorance. And I employed it shaking my head and slumping down upon my couch as if in bewildered despair—which had the additional safeguarding advantage of being my true state of mind—and shielding my thoughts as best I might.
It seemed effective: She appeared convinced I did not know her, nor yet even my own identity, and to a very great degree she was certainly correct to think so. But if I did not know as yet who she was, I surely knew now what she was; and if the knowledge feared me, I also knew, just as surely, that she and I had indeed met before, and not for the better.
After she had gone, as abruptly as she had come, one instant there, the next gone (well, now at least I knew for sure it was magic afoot), I stretched out upon my couch, my arms extended to either side as if in some half-recollected ritual, and stared up at the rough-hewn rock ceiling. I was shaking a little in reaction: What in all the seven hells had just happened here? Who was this woman? This sorceress—for that much was plain by now—why was she keeping me here? Even my addled senses had computed by this time that she and no other was my jailer… And the question above all others: Who was I to be so jailed?
A face formed before my eyes: the man’s face, the King, as I thought him. Dark-red hair to his shoulders, or just a bit past, deep-set eyes the color of peat-stained water, beard just beginning to be touched with gray: The vision cheered me, but vexed me more, for I knew I knew him, and knew him well, and loved him well—better perhaps than any living soul—and yet I could not say how, or even who.
I felt just as sorry as vexed, a poor case to be so used, for whatever, or whosever, reasons. Not to make great bones of it, but I was well aware there was a vast matter here, and that I, however grave or pitiable I thought my present case, was by no means the center pirn of the thing. Nay—I was merely a messenger, an errander, but with a commission of staggering import, and I was being kept here so that my message should go undelivered. That much I had puzzled out. But there was so much more to it than that—why, for example, did not my captors simply kill me, and stop my message then and there?—and that was why the woman had visited me just now.
All at once I felt perversely cheered. If she felt the need to reinforce my captivity, to assure herself of my ignorance, to shore up the spells I now knew were at work upon me to keep me in that ignorance, then perhaps in that outer world—Keltia, I said to myself, savoring the name as much as the regained knowledge of it, out there in Keltia—some force was at work against her, a force she feared, a force that could, perhaps, defeat her; a force that even now was set to save me.
My hand dropped to my tunic neck-slit, and I absently thrust my fingers through to scratch my chest. To my surprise, for I had not noticed this before—or, if I had, I had not remembered—there was somewhat lying there beneath my leinna: a chain, apparently, and upon it a pendant of some kind. How I had managed to miss this—for I stripped twice daily to bathe, as was the cleanly habit among all my folk—I could not imagine, save that I had been made to miss it…
But I tugged now on the chain, and it spilled
out into my hand: a beautifully crafted piece of work, each fine link of yellow gold hand-forged and soldered. And upon that chain—I stared in wonder at the pendant piece, and for no reason I could name tears started in my eyes as I gazed.
It was a feather of gold, every part of it most carefully carven, barb and quill and down and shaft lovingly detailed, strangely heavy for its dimensions. I turned it over in my fingers, and saw that it was cunningly hinged along one edge, and fastened with a tiny boss and catch on the other. A reliquary of some sort? I ran a fingernail along the latch edge and popped it open.
Inside was a clear crystal of what looked like white sapphire, shallowly faceted, forming a domed cover for what lay beneath: a hawk’s feather, gray and silver, brown and black. The gold casing that housed it so magnificently in its own likeness bore slight signs of age—the fine lines of the vaning were a touch blurred here and there, as if from long wear—but the real feather seemed new-plucked from the bird’s own pinion.
I stared at it a long time, but no message or memory came to me, and finally I snapped closed the locket casing, defeated and more than a little frustrated. Why had this one thing been left me, when so much else had not? Was it a kindness, or merely more subtle torture? But before I put it back safe beneath my leinna, I touched the case to my lips, and felt from somewhere very far and yet strangely nearby, very soft yet very clear, a wave of love and comfort and promise. Whoever had gifted me with this had loved me, long and greatly; and I was glad indeed to have even this little certainty of knowing.
And perhaps the discovery of the locket set free my chained memory in other directions as well, for of a sudden I felt coming upon me the words and the burden of a song, and I reached as if by instinct for the harp that stood against the wall. The music came more readily to my fingers than ever before in my time here; the words took longer, as if I were wrenching them to me past some arva-draoi or rann of hiding. But they came, oh aye, they came.
"‘Sleep through thunder—
We sleep shining like silver
And heavy like silver…
My life is turning eastwards
Since you and I were wed
My side warm with your
white breasts touching
You promised me magic
And logic
And love;
I have peace now
And power
And you beside me
breathing in an iron dawn
Your promises are well kept.
O love! Stir not yet!’"
I paused, astonished and barely daring to breathe, lest I disturb the stream of song; but I need not have feared. As I played the stream grew to a torrent, and I was carried far from my prison on the strength of it.
"‘My kinsman is content with his ragged mantle,
My kinsman has two tents and is pleased.
He took a woman of the camp to wife.
I have done better.
I carried off a maiden from a distant tribe
Surprised her at the well
And found she was their queen."
I drew breath for the verses I knew came next, the rounding-off of the song, the resolving of the mood that the song’s maker had set out—though who that maker was I knew not, save that it was not I—but I sat there, my chest that had been filled to chaunt sinking now in little gasps as the breath left it, driven out of me by the dwimmercraft that was on me, and I had forgotten all, yet again.
I huddled there motionless a while, too hurt and sad to move; then suddenly yawned hugely. Whether it was the spell renewed upon me or the work of the song upon my soul or maybe even the locket ensuring my safety, I was all at once tired beyond words, wearied as if I had been battling all day in fior-comlainn. Perhaps I had; but I drank off thirstily all the slightly musty water in the quaich beside the bed, then went over to the fount to plenish the cup again with fresh.
Sipping small of the stingingly cold water, I lay down again, pondering the brief encounter with my captor, wondering at the song that had come to lift my heart, fingering the reassuring outline of the locket through my shirt and tunic. Perhaps it was an omen of better dan to come, that I should have recalled this particular song, should have become ‘ware of the locket when I did. Perhaps the dream-faces tonight would have answers for me; perhaps, at the very least, there should be a respite from questions and from fears.
I rolled myself up in the pieced sheepskins that served me as coverlet, feeling the small but definite weight of the gold feather against my chest, and gave myself over to sleep, the music still sounding somewhere far within, like the rush of a stream heard from a distance on a quiet night of fog and mist. How wrong, and how right, I was, would soon be proved; and in no uncertain manner.
* * *
Chapter Two
I was lying upon my couch, trying to recall a particularly tricky bit of fingering for an alternative chord, when suddenly there came a blur and vibration in the very air, and a haze began to form in one corner of my cell.
I was on my feet in an instant, my fingers moving as if of their own will in a pattern my conscious mind could not frame, a warding-spell of some sort. I was almost as astonished at this hitherto unremembered evidence of Druid training as I was at what occasioned it:Someone else was joining me in captivity.
Whoever it was, he or she was not arriving in the same easy manner in which my previous visitor had contrived to join me. This new arrival was probably but another poor bodach doomed to the same forgetful, and forgotten, existence as I myself had been seemingly sentenced to. Still—I brightened a little even in the face of the unknown cellmate’s misfortune—it would be someone at least to talk to, maybe even someone who had known me of old and could at last give me that little trifling detail of my own identity.
I had not long to wait: Almost as quickly as it takes to tell of it, the thing was done, and I was no longer alone. And I stared as if my eyes were on sticks, for the man now cutting a very sharp glance round the chamber was the man I had so often seen in dreams, the tall bearded lord with the air of a king.
He saw me at once, and stopped where he stood. Then a look of the most unutterable joy and sorrow together came over his handsome countenance, and he reached out a tentative hand to me where I lurked over against the far wall. He made as if to speak, but instead an extraordinary smile grazed the edge of his beard, and he seemed to settle back within himself.
His first words were an uncanny echo of those my last surprise visitor had spoken.
"Do you know me?"
I drew a deep shivering breath, and let it out again before I felt able to answer him.
"I think I must… I have seen you, often, in dreams; I feel, I know, that we have met—but nay, I cannot put name to you. Nor yet to myself, if you must know; so if you are looking to me to tell me who you are, you must look again, and we both be nameless together."
He smiled again, but now there were tears in his eyes, which astonished me even more. "Nay, that knowledge is nothing I need ask of you. But, truly, do you not know me—Taliesin?"
I wish I could say that at his pronouncing of what I knew at once to be my own name I remembered everything; but that would be a lie. Still, I was immediately certain of the truths in his words: I was Taliesin, and he and I knew each other well.
He was a little hurt, I could see, that I did not remember him; but he put it by at once, and turned with a devastatingly refreshing air of practicality to the greater matters at hand.
"Well, I know you, braud"—and the endearment somehow gave me a deeper pang than it seemed to warrant—"and I will prove it withal…" He was running that all-seeing glance of his into every corner of the stone chamber, searching for I knew not what.
"You will find no way out, I fear, save the one you came in by," I said presently, but I was by now shaking a little. "Will you not tell me who you are, and what I might be, before we are many minutes older?"
He laughed then, in real amusement, but did not for an instant
cease his searching. "All in good time, my Talynno… I know you have been here long and long in forgetfulness, but it is not yet safe for us to speak."
Oh, was it not? When, then? But I asked no question more, and withdrew to my couch to watch him complete his inspection of the chamber. He quartered every inch like a hunting-dog, peering into every corner, running his hands over the cold stone walls, even dipping cupped fingers into the waterfounts. At last it seemed that his curiosity was satisfied, for he sat down opposite me, on the pile of furs and bedding that had appeared at the same time as he himself, and which was apparently intended to serve as his place of repose, and looking straight at me he smiled.
"Not so ill as I had feared, though less good than I had hoped," he said, half to himself. "Any road, we are here, and we are together, and that alone is more than I had prayed so long should be…"
"How long?" I asked. "Have I been here such a span?"
Now he was no longer smiling. "Aye, braud, my sorrow for it… You have been two years in this place, and only a fortnight since did we learn that you were here at all."
When I made no immediate response to this rather staggering bit of information, he leaned forward, as if he were trying to reach me across that two-year chasm in his life and mine.
"Your name is Taliesin Glyndour ap Gwyddno," he said in a clear slow voice. "You are the youngest of the seven children of your father who was Lord of Cantred Gwaelod; your mother was Cathelin, a lady of Earth." He paused to see if this struck any strings, but I shook my head; it was as if he told me the tale of an utter stranger, or else a legend of old, and after a moment more he went on with a kind of desperate patience, as if he were trying not to fright me but knew also how greatly it mattered that he get through.
The Hedge of Mist Page 2
