"He will be king himself by that age," said Merlynn, who had been watching our faces. "Even kings of the Sidhe do come at last to their reigns’ ending, as Nudd shall do—aye, and Gwyn after him."
"And you, athro?" I burst out, suddenly unable to bear another instant of this, it was too much for me, too fraught with dan. "Will you be there too for her, or them?"
But for the first time since I had known him, Merlynn Llwyd evaded a direct question. Oh, to be sure, plenty of times he had not—answered my askings, in that little way of his, but always he had done so with an answer of sorts. Not this asking; and that was yet another thing to puzzle at…
"Even shall I dwell in this house of glass," he said, "and the Thirteen Treasures be taken from here; even shall Arthur sleep in the island Afallinn, with his Companions round him, until such time as he comes again; and even shall seven alone return from Caer Rigor."
Caer Sidi, Caer Rigor—again I felt the Awen moving somewhere far away, felt a mighty sandal set on stone; but I had suddenly minded me of another thing, a different thing, a thing I had read of and wondered on greatly—
"Athro, when you and my mother came to me that night, in my vision in the Wood of Shapes," I began, halting-voiced, "I had not yet learned what true-treasure she had left for me. Oh, not the jewels and trinkets, though they are most fair, and knowing that she wore them and loved them means much to me; but rather the books and words and writings. For she too, it seems, was bard: Some of those writings were her own, but other some had been of others’ making, that she had written down for their truth or their beauty or their wisdom. And in these last was—was Arthur spoken of, and all we beside."
I half-heard Arthur’s gasp beside me, felt the startled pull of his hand in mine, saw Birogue’s slow lovely smile; but I pressed on, for this matter had troubled me long and greatly, and I knew well that this might be the only chance I should ever have in all my lives to learn the truth of it. I had never before even dared speak of it; had not shown those particular writings to Morgan or Gerrans, even, much less to Artos or to Gwen or to Ygrawn. Yet were they all written down therein; it was a mystery, and I would have it solved now and here.
"She—my mother said most carefully that they were but tales she recounted," I went on, after a moment. "Others had made them, she wrote, but she so loved them that she would record them to read again to herself in her new home of Keltia, lest they be forgot. They were tales of the folk, and bards’ work too, some of them; but all had the common thread: that they spoke of Arthur as King, by name, as if all men did know that name. Spoke of you, Merlynn the great sorcerer; and Gweniver, and Morgan—even of me!"
I paused again, for my voice had begun to tremble, and however understandable that may have been for Taliesin, not so for a bard and Pen-bardd.
"So I ask you now," I continued after a while, "how came the Lady Cathelin to know these things, to know of us—she who came to Keltia long before most of us were even born, much less named or crowned or chaired as bard or wizard? How came Earth to have tales of us here in Keltia centuries before we ever even were? Athro?"
The living, speaking Merlynn faded briefly, and the sleeping Merlynn shone strongly through, as a pulse-star will do far in its corner of space; then they were once more as they had been.
"Those tales your mother loved so on Earth and brought with her to Keltia," said Merlynn, and I all but died at the gentleness in his voice, "were not tales of things as they had been but things as they would be."
His face had taken on a look I had seldom seen upon it since my childhood, as if he would reach out to comfort me, hold me safe in his embrace; as sometimes, indeed, he had done—as my parents had not lived long enough to do. But he was speaking again, and I strained to follow, desperate to learn.
"The stories your mother copied down into her books were stories only to the main of the folk of Earth, and remained so; but to those whose knowing went deeper they were a prophecy. A prophecy Seen by one of us, just before that time when Brendan led out Gael and Danaan together from Earth in search of a place he was not sure existed. And that prophecy was spun into tales and fireside legends and nursery-lore by those—and not Kelts only—who lingered behind when the immrama began. Therefore are the names the same, and the titles, and the deeds: a story on Earth, but a prophecy for Keltia. And, as prophecies are wont to do, in the course of dan some things did change as the years and folks’ choices worked upon them. Lies were told, truths bent out of plumb, facts altered. But always the basic fabric remained intact and untorn, for the weave was true and the loom was Kelu’s."
"And then the Lady Cathelin came here," said Birogue, in the same soft voice that Merlynn had used, "and she it was by whom the prophecy was set into motion. And so we came to stand here today; there is no Uncaused Cause but the One. All things else, aye, even of the Goddess and the God Who work Kelu’s will through Their own, are made. Take comfort in that, both you, here and when you go out from here; as soon you must."
I closed my eyes, dropped my head back upon my neck and took a long, precisely drawn breath that seemed to reach down to my toes. Now I had not known, I admit, quite what to expect when I had asked my question of Merlynn Llwyd; but I do know, certain sure, that I had not been expecting anything even remotely like this for answer. And yet I did not doubt—nor, I could see, did Arthur—not for the least littlest instant. The ring of truth was in it all: I heard it in my old teacher’s voice, and in Birogue’s, and above all I knew I had heard it in my mother’s words.
"Dan’s hand is over many worlds," said Birogue, still softly. "To bring the Lady Cathelin together with the Lord Gwyddno, when she met him on that desperate brave journey of his to Earth; to cause them to love; to move her to follow him here to Keltia, to be his ban-charach and to give birth to you; to link with the dan that was unfolding here for so many others, Amris and Ygrawn and Uthyr and Leowyn and Gweniver and all the rest, and the Marbh-draoi being a prime worker of that dan even as was Cathelin of the other strand of the story—and all the long rolling tale set into motion, as it has been centuries past. And now it sends you from Keltia, as it brought Cathelin to Keltia: sends you to Afallinn, many to perish, seven to return—and one to go and return again long ages hence. In that you may rest secure."
"A tomb that is not a tomb," said Merlynn, his voice seeming to chime with his lady’s. "An isle that is not an isle… Powers shall sleep and not sleep; you and I, Arthur, shall both wake, though not wake alike. And in the Mysteries there shall be not breach nor break. The Graal will be served again; indeed, it will never cease to be served."
As he spoke I could see another fiala coming upon him, and for an instant his countenance was the countenance of Loherin, Graalkeeper, Guardian of the Gates; and then the face of Avallac’h his predecessor; and then in swift succession the faces of others I did not know, man and woman alike, all keepers and guardians of Caervanogue in time past or ages yet to be. And then he was once more Merlynn, and by his smile I knew our time together was all but run.
"Nay, do not think of it so!" he said, knowing the weight, the staggering weight, of the sorrow that was suddenly on us. "We shall meet many times more, doubt it not. And even when you doubt it, for doubt you will, even then do you believe."
Merlynn raised his hands, palms facing out to us, then reached out from the crystal, or across it, to touch our heads in blessing, his left hand upon Arthur’s, his right upon mine. And yet he still lay within the crystal treetrunk as Edeyrn had ensorcelled him, all those years ago at Nandruidion, when the Boar had been hunted by Gwyn himself…
And then he was gone, and we were fallen to our knees with the speed and surprise and grief of it; and standing beside Birogue, who was now behind us as earlier she had been, was that Hunter, that prince.
Gwyn ap Nudd smiled, and coming forward lifted us both from where we sprawled dazed as children upon the stone floor of the fane.
"Come, m’charai," he said, in that viol-voice of deep beauty which bards could onl
y envy. "We have much yet to do before you go out from the hill."
And so we went to do it. First of all we were conducted to the great throne-room we so well remembered from our first visit to this Dun, silver-walled and golden-roofed. The crystal throne of Nudd the King stood empty at the far end, no faerie courtier attended upon it or us; but Gwyn and Birogue gave sanction to our errand here, and together we took from its curtained niche aside the throne that ancient carved wood chest which held the Hallows; all save Fragarach, and that would we collect when we were once more at Caerdroia. Even the Cup was here, and I gave it a hard suspicious eyeing before I closed the lid upon it, half-thinking to see it fly up in the air for another such antic as it had put on once before.
I do not recall how we bore the chest away with us, through the halls and corridors of the Dun; but suddenly I found us all standing without that chamber wherein lay my mother’s grave, and with no words, eyes only, I sought permission of Gwyn and Birogue to visit her restplace one last time.
Pacing round the broad pool of mirror-silver water, I halted before the polished plate of stone that had been let into the cavern’s natural rock, the marker she had, behind which she lay, or all that was mortal of her lay.
And standing there, staring at the simple carven slab, touching with trembling fingers the letters of her name, I suddenly thought how better it was for her that she should lie here, far removed from all earthly visitors. Even with the best will in the world, they would have made a pollution and a circus-place of her grave, had she been laid to rest in more usual surrounds. Because of the singularity that was her own, her tomb would have been a curiosity for ape-mouthed strangers to stand round and leer and gape at, or worse; her peace, and that of her loving kindred, and above all others’ that of her beloved, would have been shattered beyond all bearing.
Nay—this solitude was cleaner, better, higher; this peace was alone what she deserved. And any road she was not here—not the Cathelin who mattered, the Cathelin who was real, the woman who had lived and loved and risked and died.
And suddenly I wished to leave something of mine here, something I loved, to be with her always and never to be taken away. After a moment’s puzzling, I smiled with certainty and lifted from around my neck the gold chain Arthur had crafted for me so long ago, and the gold locket that depended from it: the case that held the gray hawk’s feather which had been my mother’s first gift to me of all the gifts to come, save life alone.
I held the gold case clenched a moment in my fist, willing into it all my love and loss and blessing, then raised it to my lips and kissed it. And then I hooked the chain upon the corners of the slab of stone that bore my mother’s name, so that the gold locket in hawk-feather shape hung just below that name chiselled a finger-length deep into the rock: Cathelin. Ban-charach of Gwyddno Glyndour; Lady of Gwaelod; mother to Taliesin, mate-mother to Morguenna, dama-wyn to Geraint; a woman of Earth, and of Keltia also.
When I looked aside at Arthur, who had followed me in a few moments since, his face was streaming with tears, though his features were as iron.
"It is well bestowed," he said gently. "My honor, to have crafted it to find so fitting a lodgement."
"It is a good place," I agreed, suddenly lighter of heart than I had felt for many, many years.
"And here it shall remain," said Gwyn, who stood now with Birogue behind Arthur, on the ledge beside the pool. "For as long as our folk do dwell beneath this roof and hill."
He waited courteously with Birogue until I had finished my last farewells (Arthur too did reverence to this woman he had never known, who had played even in her absence so vast a part in all our story), and then led the way out of the chamber, so that I was last to leave. Never would I, or any other mortal, return here; and I for one was glad of that.
The rest of our duties were quickly accomplished: We bade greeting and farewell alike to Nudd himself and Seli his queen—not in the throne-room, but in a smaller hall, and alone—and to Allyn son of Midna, whom I had met in the Wood of Tiaquin and who (an-da-shalla told me) would have part in the coil to come; and now we stood with Gwyn and Birogue and the Hallows in their chest before the silver gates that led back to the world.
"The stream of dan is running swift now," said Birogue. "Taliesin, we shall meet again ere you launch your curragh from it. Arthur, not again in this life." She held out her hand, and Arthur went to one knee and kissed it, and she laid her other hand upon his bent dark head in blessing.
He rose, his countenance unreadable, and we turned as one to Gwyn.
"Have no fear for these," he said, nodding once at the chest which held the Treasures. "I shall be here to send their seeker on their track, and shall greet them and her with them when she brings them again home. I shall be with her, after, in the time of her great need and testing, and when he who sleeps below has awakened again to the worlds. She will be their savior, and they shall be hers. Be comforted, King in the Light; after loss and bitter pain, great joy."
"My days as King are drawing to a close," said Arthur without a trace of self-pity, merely as simple statement of fact. "And yours are yet to begin; shall our reigns never be destined to run in pace?"
"You shall never not rule as King of Kelts," said Gwyn. "For all reigns to come, monarchs in Keltia shall take their thrones in your name, make their laws in your name, fight their wars in your name. King once, king ever, king that shall be."
He gave Arthur the straight-armed salute of the Fianna, hand to shoulder; and as his hand came down upon Arthur’s cloak the familiar spin and dazzle came with it, and we found ourselves outside in the gray dawnlight of what day we did not know. The little aircar in which we had flown from Caerdroia was close by, and the Hallows were safe in their chest at our feet.
We lifted the chest into the cabin, sealed the door after one last look back at the blank gray flank of the Hill of Fare, and headed west ahead of the rising sun. Neither of us ever saw Dun Aengus again.
* * *
Chapter Twenty-four
The very first thing Arthur did upon our arriving back in Turusachan was to place the Hallows, still within their gold-bound ironoak coffer and now joined by the Sword Fragarach, into a place of safe hiding, a niche where he could feel reasonably certain that they would remain concealed and undisturbed, until such time as they must depart with us; as had been so frequently and so wearisomely told us. The niche where he bestowed them was behind the Throne of Scone, in the fmdruinna-gated vestibule where the Nantosvelta debouched into the Hall of Heroes; belike the safest place in all Keltia.
And he might have thought more than once or twice about joining them there until that much-mentioned departure, for the second thing Arthur did upon returning to Turusachan was to formally declare Malgan Rheged his son.
Oh, strictly speaking, he did not have to trouble himself even so much as that: As soon as Malgan’s proofs had been submitted to those whose task it is to judge in such matters, the thing would have been done anyway, and Arthur need not have lifted a finger. But Arthur had never been one to shirk the truth or brook a lie, and I think this matter of Malgan’s delayed recognition had weighed heavily upon him all these years, so that he hastened now to make what amends he might.
But though the reaction of the realm varied from outrage to yawns, one there was from whom Arthur might have done well to hide himself along with the Hallows in the Nantosvelta: Gweniver. He told her first in private, of course, and what went on behind closed doors between those two in that moment is something none of us shall ever know. But her public reaction, and even her private display of feeling to her kin and friends, was a matter of record: Gweniver was incandescent with fury, at least at first. But when cooler and more disinterested souls pointed out to her that mere acknowledgment of fatherhood did not of necessity constitute any alteration in the Tanistry, and that in fact Malgan himself had disavowed all wish to displace his young halfbrother Arawn in the succession, Gwen seemed to grow rather less angered than resigned. But of course
she might have been fozing us all; although that had never been Gweniver’s way.
Whatever Arthur had hoped to accomplish with this declaration, though, it cannot have been achieved; for, scarce a fortnight later, Malgan joined Marguessan and Mordryth in a declaration of their own: civil war.
"And not civil merely," Tarian was saying to a hastily assembled meeting of the inner Company, "but she has hired outfrenne mercenaries to fight for her, as did Edeyrn Marbh-draoi afore-times."
"Doubtless contracted through those offworlders you saw, Talyn, at Caer Dathyl and Saltcoats," put in Grehan. "They are not now so shy of showing themselves with her, and boast brazenly of how they will be well rewarded for their actions."
"All in a day’s labor for folk of that sort. They are trash, and lower than pig-offal in the great plan of dan," said Ysild of Kernow, who had been here visiting at Tara when the strife broke out on Gwynedd. "We have before now crumbled better than they like crackers into soup; we can deal with these out of hand, surely."
"All most true." I rose in my place, for I had certain information that none here yet knew, not even Tari or Grehan, and I had been instructed by Gweniver—not present but closeted with Arthur and Ygrawn—to impart it to the Companions. I looked across the chamber Gwahanlen to the tapestry of King Cadivor and Juthahelo, and drew a deep breath.
"There is word received from our trading planet of Clero, and I am bidden by the Ard-rian tell you all: Raids have been made on our settlements there, and prisoners taken; and it is the Fomori and the Fir Bolg who do so." I lifted a hand for silence against the excited angry babble that ensued, and it died away like a stream drying up in the hills in drought-time. "And there is worse: Marguessan has brought the Coranians into this. They it is who will be coming against us here."
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