All this flashed through my mind in the briefest of moments. But apart from my grief at the gods’ departure, and my natural selfish wish to go with them, there was something more…
But Dana was still before me, she who had never failed her folk and never would, and she spoke from the gathering splendor the words she knew I needed to hear.
"The Castle of the Graal, Taliesin! Caervanogue. The road to Fairlight, upon the western edge of the Dragonsea, east of east."
The brightness blazed and bloomed; it seemed as if a gate opened, a door swung somewhere outward—and they were gone.
I collapsed upon the cold ground, my bones gone to water, and pulled from my heart, as it were, the transfixing spear of grief. For a moment, indeed, I actually wondered if I could possibly bear it, the absence of what I had not known until mere minutes before could even be… Then I got a grasp of myself, dragging my spirit back, inch by protesting inch, from the place where the gods and I had met and spoken. It took a time for me to feel at home in my own body again, and all the while no coherent thought ran in my head but one exultant refrain: I have seen Rhian! I have seen Fionn! Dana the Queen came to bespeak me!
Their names echoed like far trumpets, and I felt flow back to me a tiny touch of their loving presence, a reminder that they were not gone utterly nor indeed for always. And, true to my bard’s instincts, I was actually already beginning to frame the whole thing in song. But for myself only, not to be sung for others, save perhaps Guenna and Arthur alone…
Then in another perfect panic I leapt to my feet, frantic lest I had already forgotten Dana’s words of guiding to our goal. But to my unspeakable relief, there it was, just where she had placed it, in my mind and heart and instincts. So much so that I would need no map to find it: Fairlight, east of east. There would come the others also, and that which we had sought so long and so hard. High time I took the road again; they would be waiting for me.
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
It was as if some great invisible barrier that had been before me all this while, before all of us most like, hindering, baffling, turning us aside into woeful byways, had been suddenly lifted out of our path. I rode swiftly and happily eastward, singing ‘Hob y deri dan do!’ and other such as I rode, and I doubt not the others did the same. For the first time since our quest began, I could sense their presences, as all of us began to draw near to Fairlight, upon the Dragonsea.
This was truly east of east: The Dragonsea is a wide, shallow, warm-watered bay, which laps the empty shores of the Northwest Continent on its western side and has for its other selvedge the rocky crags and tiny seaplots that are called the Easter Isles. Fairlight itself is no town, nor village even, though there are the ruins of an ancient castle, long thrown down—some say by Keian, though other some say rather Raighne (and in truth everyone in Keltia knows perfectly well that neither of those two great queens of might and legend ever set so much as a foot here. Or so at least is thought).
But from the shore at Fairlight runs out in the Dragonsea a road of white stones and crushed shells, that becomes a huge-blocked marble causeway where it disappears beneath the green waters of high tide. Twice a day this causey is uncovered by the tides that go out a league or so eastward, and then one can fare dry-shod all the way to the small single-peaked islet of Beckery that dominates the entire bay. But you had best have a good swift pace on you: The tides here are fierce and fast, come foaming in quicker than a man or even a horse can outrun them. It is well to take care, and to mark how the waves are breaking, before venturing across in anything that does not float. Being stranded upon Beckery would be the most pleasant of the fates that can befall the unwary walker upon the sands.
Not that just anyone can cross to Beckery; I have a thought that no one ventures over save that he or she has been summoned there. For upon the central crag that comprises just about the entire island stands a castle that, unlike its neighbor on the mainland, is not a ruin: Caervanogue, long uninhabited yet mysteriously not derelict, whose name has never been satisfactorily translated but which in the bardic tongue means Castle Rising. Once, long ago, the island of which this is the center and crown lay beneath the restless waters of the Dragonsea. Then the land rose in great seismic heavings, and for many centuries the island was thrown high out of the water, to become part of the mainland coast. When the earthshakes came again and let the waters back, it became an island once more; and perhaps its tale will end as it began, long centuries hence, when it sinks again beneath the waves.
I knew all this well, of course, when I arrived at last on the shore at Fairlight, and sought eagerly for the castle of my destination and my dan, as I had been told. But looked I never so closely, I could ascertain no trace of it: not the castle of Caervanogue, nor the island of Beckery, nor even the causey that led across—only an unbroken sealine all the way out to the nearest of the Easter Isles, dim and blue ten miles away. This was not the expected end to my quest, and I stood there staring a long time, baffled and, aye, I confess to it, angry with those who had sent me here.
Had it all been mockery, then? It did not feel so, nor had it seemed so, and I had the proofs to hand—the magic rose in my breast, the empty saddle of Gwain’s horse. More than that: the memory of Avallac’h, the words of my mother as she had come to me, the bottle of rust-colored water from the sacred spring. Nay, it had been real enough. But as I stared out in vain searching over the blank dazzling water, I came to a bleak conclusion.
Perhaps this was as far as I was permitted to come. Indeed, had not Morgan said in some dream or Seeing or some such that we should not be of the Cup? True it was that the finding was not the sole end of any quest; the seeking could be just as important to the seeker, if not to that which was being sought… Hard thoughts, these; but if I were not meant to come to the Cup after all then that was dan too. Perhaps what I had done to get here had put the holy Cup forever beyond my attaining… I did not know.
But I knew even as I thought it that if it were so, then so must I accept it. If I were unworthy, then so must it be; I could content myself and my soul with the quest, and with the knowledge that sometimes one must cast a circle for the power to be raised otherwhere…
So I got back on my horse, and gave one last look and salute and farewell to the quest and the quested-for, and turned Feldore’s head again westward, back along the road we had come.
And then all at once it was there, across the bay, perhaps a mile offshore from where I now so abruptly drew rein. All of it—Beckery, with its craggy hill and the machairs around its feet, and Caervanogue upon that crag, with its towers and courts and open gates, white-gold in the sunlight. But every part of a castle shines… It was as if—well, no as-if about it, really—the act of humbly turning away had called it into existence, the humility of acknowledging the possibility of failure was the final test to prove I did not deserve to fail… I do not know why, not truly. But I was glad.
The tide was out farther than ever I had seen tide withdraw itself. There was only clean packed sand on either side of the huge white marble blocks that formed the causeway leading to Beckery, no water even in the finely fitted joinings between blocks. I judged it still safe to ride across; and Feldore, Rylan and I were perhaps two-thirds of the way there when I noted with some alarm that broad silver stripes of water had crept in unnoticed across the sand, gray and smooth and shining, with fine dry sand, hard-packed, between each stripe. Even as I watched, the tide began to pour back in earnest, the stripes widening and rippling as they joined together on the flood, making one seamless gleaming skin of water that overlay the sand beneath to a depth of a few inches.
I kneed Feldore, clucked to Rylan, so that our pace quickened considerably, even as did the returning tide. We were safe on shore on Beckery perhaps ten minutes before the water began to rush with frightening speed at the causey sides, leaping up in little crashing fountains with its own force; and shortly thereafter there was nothing but unbroken water betwixt the mainland
and ourselves.
I turned my attention to our present location. I had seen no sign of the others as yet, but now I could sense their presence.
They were all here, and I the last to join them… So I left the horses in the machair-meadows, noting as I did so the fresh hoofprints of many other beasts tracking round the point, and began to climb as the others had obviously done, afoot to the castle above me.
As I drew near a buried memory came at me with a rush: Oeth-Anoeth. It had looked quite astonishingly like this very place, I saw with sudden swamping doubt and dismay. One castle can look very much like another, that is true enough, but the likeness was too great to dismiss as chance. Had Edeyrn built Oeth-Anoeth so a-purpose, and had Marguessan kept me there for a darker reason than I had known?
Then all such doubts and fears were for the moment dispelled, as I came to the castle gate and Morgan came running through, straight into my arms, the very first person I saw. Well, not saw, to be strictly accurate about it; I never saw her coming until she had flung herself upon me. But I did not complain.
"Anwyl, anwylyd," I said raggedly, when we had stopped hugging and kissing and weeping and laughing long enough for speech, "how is it with you, oh gods, where have you been, what doing, why have we—"
She kissed me again. "Later," she whispered fiercely against my cheek. "Enough now to know that we are together and here. We have other business just now. It is what we have come for."
"I know that," I muttered in mild protest, but she slipped her arm through mine and dragged me through the faha and around the other side of the castle and down upon a great wide grassy place set over the sea. And then I saw them, all the rest, arrayed in half-circle ranks and all facing eastward. Donah, Gerrans (and my heart nearly failed me with sheer relief to see him there), Gweniver my friend and Queen, Loherin whom I had met upon the road… indeed, of the seven sevens that had been sent out, twenty-six souls had won through to Caervanogue; twice thirteen would witness the coming home of the Cup.
We all went down upon the strand that lay below the lawns, a wide white beach that stretched the length of the little island, facing the Easter Isles. I noticed that the horses too had come along—saw my two faithful friends among them—and smiled to see them. Well, and why should they not be here? Had they not quested and served as surely and as bravely and as devotedly as the rest of us? They were questers as much as we were, and should have their part in the quest’s happy resolution.
"This is Garanwynion," said Morgan then, gesturing to the white rocky sands before us. "And?"
"Not long now. We wait."
Indeed, not long. He came out of the eastern sun, so that none of us who awaited him saw his coming, quiet and simple: A path shone in the waters and then he was there, his presence a wonder of dan.
And I stared and smiled to see him, Avallac’h, the prince of my wife’s line, who had bought his freedom, and ours too maybe, with his service. He stood tall and straight before us, robed in green, and it seemed that he looked on each of us in turn, and knew us all—as later converse with my fellow seekers was to prove he did; each of us had passed our night in Inisguidrin with the Keeper of the Graal. He had fulfilled his self-chosen atonement in every particular, had paid his honor-price to the Cup and was free to move on. Yet here he was, and I drew a silent shivering breath, for I thought I knew why.
Before any word was spoken—and I saw Morgan and Gweniver moving near to him, intent on address—a sudden shadow came over us all. The sun seemed run behind a cloud, and all around was bleached of color, livid, as the world will look when you open your eyes wide on a hot summer day after they have been a long time closed. A fever-chill seemed to have taken us all, and I looked wildly around me, suddenly sure, for I knew that presence, had felt it myself not all that long since, in a silent grove at night, alone with a slain kinsman’s body… Looked round, and saw Marguessan Pendreic gliding like a nathair down the castle steps. Galeron, her daughter, was with her, as in the sending in the forest clearing, and on her other side—
I reeled, for the world seemed awry and unmade. On her other side was—Avallac’h? I whipped my outraged gaze back to the figure in green who stood before me on my left, his back still to the sea and his own gaze fixed calmly on the newcomers; then again to the one beside Marguessan. There was not a pin’s worth of difference between them, not an inch, not a crossic, not a cantlet, not a flitter. They were the same; how could this be… Even Morgan appeared for the moment discountenanced; as for the others, they looked as frightened and unsure as I was just now feeling.
And yet, and yet… Something there was that I was not remembering, and that was most needful I remember, for its hour was come.
For her part, Marguessan looked her old self. She had not glanced aside even at her own sister, but kept her gaze trained on Avallac’h, or he whom we had thought was Avallac’h. She did cut her glance furtively once to Gweniver and once to Loherin, but she would not look at Morgan and she would not look at me. Which suited me fine enough, especially after that last encounter of ours, when she had brazenly vaunted her hand in the death of her own son; and of course there was still between us that small matter of two years of my life in Oeth-Anoeth… But Morgan beside me seemed now untroubled, as if she too waited for something.
"Keeper," said Marguessan then, and though her voice was clear and carrying it was also threaded with the least tiniest uncertainty. Which meant she was very unsure indeed, for she had not let even that much show, given the choice. I harrowed my brain to recall what still eluded me; but the false-Avallac’h beside Marguessan stepped forward to face his mirror image ten yards away, and when he spoke it was in that voice I well remembered from my night in the marshes of Siennega.
"The Cup returns," he said, "and its Keeper has come to receive it."
The true-Avallac’h smiled. "Nay," he said courteously, in the very same voice as the other, "though the Cup returns, it will have a new Keeper from now. A new Server has come among us. Not thou, Avagddu, Aviach, Avarwyn. Not the living Graal for thee."
The false-Avallac’h made no response, but it seemed to us gathered breathless upon the foreshore that he—darkened somehow. And I suddenly wondered how he and Galeron and Marguessan had even come here in the first place, how they had even been suffered to set foot upon the isle of Beckery. Unless, of course, they had been called as we had been called? But to what purpose? And by whom? My musings were cut off by Marguessan.
"Who speaks so?" she said softly, and such was the sweet poisonous power of her voice that some of the less seasoned sorcerers among our company visibly flinched. I moved to steady Donah as she swayed a little on her feet, but she smiled tremulous thanks and gently shook me off, and Loherin on Morgan’s other side stood like a rock in the sea, like Rocabarra itself. Gerrans, as ever, was impassive, though the eye he bent on his aunt glittered darkly.
"Whose the word in the great glade?" said Marguessan then. "Stand aside, falseling, that the true Cup may come to its true Server."
Then, to my great and everlasting astonishment, I felt something roll over within my being and come surging to the fore; I felt myself moving forward, my hand delving under my leinna to bring something out into the light. For I remembered; and, remembering, I rejoiced.
I halted halfway between the two Avallac’hs. The one looked serenely upon me, unafraid, untroubled; the other glowered and bridled, started to speak. But I lifted my hand in an attitude of power, and he fell silent. I did not look at Marguessan.
But I looked at the first Avallac’h, the true Graalkeeper, and I smiled.
"Evil came never out of the east," I said, and I spoke to be heard not only by all that company, but by the island, and the Dragonsea, and the Cup itself, wherever it might be, wherever Marguessan’s evil workings had sent it. And as I spoke I held out upon my open palm that which had lain in my breast, all the long road from the hidden wood.
The rose was as fresh and supple-petalled as it had been when still it clung to its s
temlet; its color was clear true ruby in the sunlight, its fragrance clean and sweet and strong even over the wild sea-smell rising from the waves. And I remembered very well indeed the instruction I had been given concerning it: to give it into the Keeper’s hands, at the Castle of the Graal. Aye, I thought desperately, but which Keeper?
I swung instinctively toward the first Avallac’h, who seemed to have wrapped himself in calm expectation like a mantle, boundless as the sea behind him; and, cupping my hands carefully around the Rose, I lifted the flower to his stern lined face, so that he must inhale of the bloom’s perfume. He bent his head to it, drew in a deep long breath of the fragrance, then lifted his head again, eyes closed. When at last he opened them, he smiled.
I bowed, and turning I did likewise for the other Avallac’h, aware every instant of Marguessan’s eyes in my back like needles of ice, like fingers of fire. She knew, she knew… Now this Avallac’h fought for the same high calm as the other had so effortlessly attained to, and almost he reached it, or an appearance thereof; but all present could see the strain it cost him to do so. With a certain grim satisfaction I raised the Rose inexorably toward his face, in the end all but shoving it against his nostrils, so that he must perforce breathe of it or not breathe at all.
And he breathed; oh aye, he breathed it in. And as he did so the simulacrum of Avallac’h, the counterfeit of the true Keeper that had walked by Marguessan’s side down to the strand of Garanwynion, shivered and shimmered and faded; it cracked and crazed like a faulty pot-glaze in a firing-kiln. And then it was gone, and the man behind it was fallen to his knees upon the shore, and he was Mordryth, son of Marguessan.
The Hedge of Mist Page 18
